Chongqing, Chongqing.

We’ve spent the past few days wandering around Chongqing (pronounced Chong-ching for those not familiar with pinyin), completing errands, checking out our new place and generally getting ideas about the next two years. To Richy and I, Chongqing has the feel of Seoul and Bangkok combined. The palm trees, heat, grime and elevated train remind us of Bangkok, while the sheer scale, dimensionality, and hyper-dynamic feel of the city remind us of Seoul. All in all, I feel we can be comfortable making our home here. Evidence: for some reason a high of 39 C today (102.2 F) didn’t seem that strange to me. I felt like I was going to melt into the pavement, but I was able to approach the situation with an “I know I can handle this” attitude.

Our apartment building is the only remaining building on what used to be the North Campus of Chongqing University of Science and Technology. Called “Peach Garden Building” on “Petroleum Road,” you can imagine the contradictions embodied in our neighborhood. The building appears to have been built in the 70’s or 80’s and houses teachers from our university and their families. It is surrounded by brand new high-rise apartments and construction sites, where the rest of the campus used to be. Between the high-rises are small, ancient-looking dilapidated homes where peddlers and retirees seem to make their homes and businesses. Since there are no longer any teaching buildings here, we will be commuting 50 minutes to “University Town” on the outskirts of the city, where the new modern campus is located. Teacher residence buildings are being built there, but are not yet complete. Thankfully, we will not be on our own getting to the campus, as a free school bus travels between the teacher’s residences and the new campus several times a day. Apparently if we miss the last bus of the day back to the residence, the school also provides a small teacher’s dorm room on campus where we can stay the night.

Our apartment itself is large by Chinese standards, and certainly huge by Peace Corps standards. It has 3 bedrooms: a master bedroom, a guest room and a study. We also have a large living/dining room and a kitchen, as well as one and a half bathrooms. The half bath toilet apparently leaks, so I’m not sure how much we’ll be using it (it’s not like we really need it anyway). It’s kind of been set up as a cleaning closet, so we’ll probably just go with that. We’re hoping our stove hood gets fixed before we move in, because at this point we can’t get it to turn on. We have cages around all our windows, which I am hoping I can fill with planter boxes of basil, oregano and all manner of salad greens. Disinfecting my store bought salad greens with bleach as the Peace Corps medical office recommends just doesn’t sound very tasty or wholesome to me. One of the former volunteers apparently had a cat (something which is now against the rules) as evidenced by the left behind cat toys, paw prints all over the walls and scratched up leather furniture. Luckily no cat smell! It gives me a good reason to scrub down all the walls and cover the furniture I suppose. At this point, I am just excited to get into our place and get going on this whole living in China thing. That place will feel like home in no time (well, no time in a few weeks).

Tastes Like Noodles

Oh what a few days it has been. It's been a bit of an emotional roller coaster since we got our site placement, since we're going to be splitting off from so many of the people we've come to know and depend on at our training site. We had what felt like an intensely competitive "language simulation" on Friday, which basically felt like we were on some kind of Try to Survive in China game show. Followed by another "go find your way to this place and answer questions" field trip (on which I was thankfully able to score some occidental culinary herb seeds, which I will hopefully be able to grow), followed by beers with the training sitemates, followed by host family, followed by not enough sleep, more language classes, Chinese banquet simulation, then KTV (Chinese Karaoke), and finally, our very first Sichuan hotpot experience.

Our host family decided that celebrating our site placement was a good opportunity to introduce us to Chengdu style hotpot since Chongqing and Chengdu are in fierce competition for the title of Best Sichuan Hotpot. Chengdu is known for being more oily and Chongqing is known for being more brothy, but also more spicy. This particular eating venue also featured miniature Sichuan opera style performances. The pot looked generally like the ones Richy and I had eaten from for previous cook-your-food-in-broth-meals in Korea and at Beijing Hotpot in Portland, but you could tell that the oil to broth ratio was leaning much more toward the oil and that there were a heck of a lot of hot peppers floating on top. Spiciness is something we have definitely become accustomed to and expect from any decent Sichuanese meal, but we weren't expecting our typically non-offal eating host family to suddenly order duck intestine, cow stomach and cow kidney. What a celebration!

First to come to the table was a rack, kind of what you might expect to hang doll clothes on. But there were no doll clothes on this rack. There were clean, thinly sliced strips of duck intestine, looking very much like slightly pink shiny noodles. Not too terrifying looks-wise. Ge-ge puts one in the pot, pulls it out a few minutes later, dips it in sauce and slurps it like a noodle. Jie-jie asssures me "it does not smell or taste terrible." I followed Ge-ge's example and slurped up my duck intestine, which as long as you don't call it duck intestine, is actually not bad. It tastes just like a noodle, but with a very delicate texture. The next dish was very thinly sliced, and the way Jie-jie refused to tell us what it was, we knew it came from somewhere deep inside an animal. She told us she would tell us after we tried it. Again, she assures us, "it does not smell or taste terrible." We dipped the slightly shiny, pinkish-grey slices into the broth, let them cook, dipped them in oil and ate them. Flavor was not a factor, the texture reminded me of mushrooms, and I found myself thinking, "I am fine not knowing what this is." Apparently it was cow kidney. Next, Ge-ge offered us dark grey, prickly-looking slices that were most definitely not going in my mouth. At this point, I draw the line at things that look hairy. Which apparently means I draw the line at cow stomach. I don't think I would ever order these items for myself, but I feel I've reached a certain cultural turning point knowing that duck intestines taste as inoffensively as egg noodles.

And the winner is...

… Chongqing! We are pleased to announce that we will be teaching in one of the biggest up-and-coming cities in China. Separated into it's own municipality from Sichuan in 1997, Chongqing municipality has over 30 million residents. The city itself houses only about 10 million, and we will be living near the center of it. Apparently our "Peace Corps experience" will include a 5^th floor, 3 bedroom, 2 story apartment with 2 bathrooms (and a bathtub). This is why Peace Corps China is sometimes referred to as "Posh Corps." I would like to point out however, that this is also one of a handful of Peace Corps China sites where we will be issued a household air filter as a matter of course (can't wait to breathe in that filtered apartment air!). We will also be living in one of China's so-called "three furnaces" which as you could guess, means the summers will be unbearably hot. Consider: we find Chengdu unbearably hot and humid as it is, but there are people visiting here to escape the heat of Chongqing.

 

Nonetheless, we are pretty excited to finally have a form with which to mould our future plans. We will be working at Chongqing University of Science and Technology where have been told we will be teaching mostly male students. Also many of our students will be majoring in petroleum-related fields. I am hoping the "green curriculum" we have been given by the Peace Corps will be well received. We'll have a much better idea about all this after our site visit next week. In the meantime, we're trying to get our heads around this next phase and preparing ourselves for another stint in one of the mega-urban centers of Asia. Ni Hao Chongqing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Energy and Enthusiasm

July 30^th, 2010

The air has felt like a furnace the past two days. We realized it was hot when our host family finally turned on their air conditioner for the first time this season (we've been using the one in our room daily for weeks). Today reached up to 35 degrees Celsius (95 F) with more than 85% humidity. To top it off, last night the power went out at about 2 am because of the power drain from all the air conditioners. We woke up soaked in sweat, feeling the heavy air in our faces. It didn't come back on until about 5 am. The demand simply overloaded the system. Since today has been even hotter, I imagine it could likely happen again tonight. The experience has made me reflect on China's power supply, the growing middle class demand for modern conveniences in China, and how people in the US take such things (modern appliances and an ample power supply) for granted.

Even though our host family is doing very well by Chinese standards, they live without many of the power sucking appliances that we consider everyday parts of life in the US: an oven, a clothes dryer, a dishwasher, a microwave, and a toaster oven for example. Their kitchen consists of a two-burner gas stove (with the ever-present large wok and a steamer on top), a rice cooker, and a small refrigerator (what we would probably consider college dorm size). Their gas stove has an impressive hood with an ingenious oil capture system, where all the oil collects in a funnel shaped clear jar hanging in the center. They have probably four air conditioners in the house, but the only one that has seen any use before yesterday is the one in our bedroom. Other than that, they have cell phones (blackberry-style), a flat screen TV mounted on the wall in the living room, and an oscillating fan near the TV that gets daily use. They also have a small older generation laptop computer, but as far as I can tell, they never use it since their blackberries cover all their connection and information needs. Compared with most American families, I estimate that these folks typically use about ¼ of the household energy (and much less in the countryside where many people don't have even the basics). Of course that's a figure that I just completely pulled out of the air, since we don't have a reliable internet connection to look up any statistics. I think this lifestyle is something to think about when we hear news stories about China surpassing the US in energy use, and the use of coal power and other environmentally damaging methods of power production. They are not eating up more and more power in order to live a luxurious lifestyle. They just want what many in the US would consider less than basic. Even though they are relatively minimalist when it comes to household energy use, the sheer numbers of people here and the energy shortage means that a neighborhood of people choosing to use an air conditioner only on one of the hottest, most unbearable nights of the year causes a power outage. The US has less than a quarter of the people, and until recently, used more energy. It's a realization that I am certainly going to be carrying home with me, and one that is going to shape my energy use decisions for the rest of my time here.

July 31, 2010

Last Thursday, Richy and I had our last round of Japanese encephalitis, rabies, and hepatitis shots, and gave our last bit of input into the process that will decide where we will be serving for the next two years. We will get the final answer on Thursday, August 5^th. The fact that our fate is being decided this week gives me anxious jitters, but I also know that worrying about it is pointless because all we can do is learn to love our site when we get there, wherever it may be.

We finished up model school yesterday, so we can go back to our major focus of learning to speak Chinese next week. I didn't think I'd be looking forward to the four hour language blocks again, but here I am, daydreaming about the grammar structures I might know by next weekend. My vocabulary has been steadily growing each day, and I've been able to grasp some Chinese grammar without mangling it too much, but the 2^nd and 4^th tones still seem to disappear when I string together a sentence. I am also having trouble with the ji, xi, qi, ri, and re initials. All these issues can only be solved by painstaking repetition and correction, and like a child learning to play the violin, no one really wants to hear it until you know what you're doing. All my grammar and vocabulary won't matter a whit if I can't pronounce it in a way that the average Chinese person can understand.

Studying Chinese wouldn't nearly be as much fun if it weren't for the awesome group of ladies that serve as our Language-Culture Facilitators (LCFs) aka: our Chinese teachers. One of my favorites is Hu Laoshi (Miss Hu), who leaves me these gems of encouraging advice in my Trainee Assessment Packet: "You're very great! You speak well and you participation in classroom. You do all things very well, so just still do it! Only more practice the pronunciation on "r" and 2^nd tones in a sentence." Quite possibly the most motivating part is that her English is so much better than my Chinese. I especially love the voices she does in class when she acts out the dialogues. Her "man-at-the-hotel-desk" impersonation is pure comic genius.

I am also anxiously looking forward to Monday's qipao shopping trip. Our LCFs are going to take us out to order traditional Chinese dresses to wear to our swearing in ceremony at the end of August. After today's trip to the Sichuan museum I was fantasizing about my qipao while gazing at antique silk brocade. I am sure there will be nothing even remotely like it in my price range, but it does serve to remind me of why traditional Chinese clothing has such an allure in the first place. Richy wants to see if he can get a Sun Yatsen suit (also known by Westerners as a "Mao suit") for a reasonable sum. Of course the term "reasonable sum" is relative here, where we're probably looking at 200 kuai for a decent tailored outfit, which while translating into only $30, could also translate into 100 between class beverages, 40 spicy lunches, 50 cross-town bus rides, or if you prefer, four and a half days of our Peace Corps China living allowance.

 

A Giant Buddha and the Weekend of the Chinese Bus

This last weekend served to acquaint us with the realities of Chinese transportation methods. On Saturday our LCF (Language and Culture Facilitators) scheduled us for a little "field trip." This outing began by being handed a piece of paper with no instructions. Instead the paper had several questions such as "What bus gets you to the train station? Do you have to transfer any buses to get there? Where is the entrance and the exit to the train station?" I hadn't realized this would be that kind of outing. We were then told, "Go to the train station." When we asked "How?" our LCFs just shrugged, told us to answer the questions and shooed us away. Once I realized that we were really being set off on our own, I jumped at the opportunity to be treated like an adult. However, after the first Chinese person looked at us like we were crazy for wanting to take a bus and suggested a taxi, we knew we were not in for an enjoyable Saturday afternoon on the town.

 

4 kuai (about 75 cents), two buses, a short walk and about an hour later we were confronted with the chaos that is a Chinese transit hub. Hundreds, if not thousands of  people were milling about, (some seemingly camped out) and while cabs, bicycles, and busses swirled around. We still had more questions to answer, so we set out to navigate the crowds and make educated guesses about the content of the train timetables. Our classmate Lindsey made the statement, "I hope never to come here again." A statement, which, while I wholeheartedly agree, I cringe to repeat aloud myself since the future undoubtedly holds countless more trips here.

 

After a hearty meal of dumplings and a well earned room temperature beer near the station, we set out to find a cab that could take us back to the campus. Once we saw the taxi line however, our plans drifted back to the bus. Thanks to traffic on the ring road, the trip back took about two hours, with standing room only. The highlight was when at 4 ½ foot tall Chinese woman sidled up next to me and began fanning her heavily made up face, whapping me in the boob with each pass. It was a small price to pay for the cool breeze she shared with my right armpit.

Field trip lessons learned:

-       Always take a cab to and from the train station if possible.

-       Personal space really is an illusion in China.

-       A beer before a long, crowded city bus ride on a humid day makes life slightly more bearable.

 

The second Chinese bus installment of our weekend was voluntary, and thankfully featured coach buses that took us to the city of Leshan, which is the home of the largest Buddha statue in the world (ever since the Taliban did us the favor of blowing up the biggest ones in Afghanistan).  The bus ride there took 2 hours, and included air conditioning as well as seatbelts (a true luxury in this sea of wild driving habits). When we arrived, we fended off a gang of aggressive cab drivers, and instead opted for a cheap public tour bus that advertised taking us in the direction of the big Buddha. Unfortunately we didn't realize that the bus was taking us to the East Gate of the park, which would cost us about twice as much as if we had made it to the South Gate. Either way, it was probably better that we ended up at the East Gate because we got to see several other sites including the world's largest reclining Buddha. The South Gate approach also would have been disappointing because the paths down to the base of the Buddha were closed because of flooding and torrential rain (but happily these factors also meant that there were no crowds to contend with). The Buddha was actually originally built because a monk got the idea that turning a huge rock face above the river into a Buddha would have a calming effect on the river. Of course since tons of rocks were removed from the cliffs and dropped to the bottom of the river, the Buddha did indeed have a calming effect on the river.

 

On the way back, we found more traffic, and got to spend three hours on the bus instead of two. Our weekend Chinese bus grand total came to 8 hours. I wonder how long it will be until we can break this prestigious record…

 

Big Buddha lesson learned:

-       Torrential rain can restore personal space in public spaces.