remembrance of things past

talking to my parents as we trimmed the tree this evening, we waxed poetic (or perhaps just waxed) about the ghosts of christmas trees past. we Routh are rather fond of our tree choices - those trees that are off-kilter, somehow slightly askew are the ones that invariably find themselves bedecked in years worth of yuletide trinket collection. so we paused while admiring the fruits of our bedecking labors in order to pay tribute to arbors of yore.

my favorite recollection is actually from that of my teacher in china, whose son's class was learning about western holiday traditions during my wintertime spent in changchun. Shu's son's teacher wanted a christmas tree for the classroom but of course could not find one to cut down (trees are rare enough in cities as to not be available for the taking, and the country is difficult to access without private transportation which few have), so she decided that each student should have to bring a branch in as homework. the teacher would then bind them together, and the class would have their tree! now Shu's husband is a police officer, but they love their son, and the prospect of him not having a branch for the classroom tree was too much to bear, so in the dead of night, he took a saw and went into nanhu park. as he started cutting into one of the branches, he looked around carefully to see if anyone was watching him only to find that there were a few other parents doing the same thing. i didn't get to see the "tree" that the teacher bound together, but i imagine it looks rather like one in line with Routh tree specifications.

a week after this story was just after christmas and my next lesson with Shu Laoshi. this was the telling of the Stocking Incident. along with learning about christmas trees at public school, Shu's son also learned about christmas stockings at his after-school english class. he insisted on having a christmas stocking with a tenacity that almost led Shu Laoshi to distraction. they made great ceremony of hanging the stocking by the fire (actually the radiator connected to the bloc's centralized furnace, but whatever) with care and then went off to bed. in the middle of the night, however, Shu's son shook her awake and begged that the stocking be taken down because he was afraid that he would get coal in it because he had been such a bad boy. Shu Laoshi, though not fluent in the semantics of western holiday traditions, is very quick on the uptake and a clever woman who knows how to answer the door when opportunity knocks. in the following five minutes, she learned a great deal of her son's recent transgressions which he believed would provoke a coal-ated stocking come christmas morning. he got candy in his stocking, but i am sure not without first promising both his mother and santa claus to be better next year.

keys and mooncakes

i am writing from my parents' computer where i have been camped out pretty much all night in an attempt to answer the 113 email messages from noble friends whose quips have been ignobly molding in my inbox. i am writing from my parents' computer because i locked my keys at work which prevents me from unlocking my bicycle and unlocking my house's front door among other conveniences. the good news is that i am not as bad off as last time, when i was locked out of my apartment in brooklyn for two days wearing only a sarong during a snowstorm. yes, sir, this is much better.

and even better is reading these jewels of prose! for instance, following is from Sasha Tian, a student from Chengdu, China. the Moon Festival was on sept. 18th, and i asked her the story behind mooncakes (a kind of pastry eaten only during the moon festival which everyone hates but everyone eats). here is her email (i hope it is okay to tell your story, Sasha!):

Mid-autumn Day is based on a legend.Long,long time ago,there were ten suns in the sky,people were very hot and didn't have enough water.Many people dead.The God was very worried and looked for someone who could shoot the suns in the sky.There was a man named Houyi,he was good at shooting.So the God gave him the super power and he finally shoot nine suns and left one in the sky.The God was very happy and he gave Houyi a medicine.It could make him young all his life.Houyi's wife(Cheng'e) knew this and stole the medicine.She eat it and to her surprise,she began to fly.She flew to the moon and could not come back.Houyi missed his wife and he ate mooncakes(his wife like eating mooncakes) every year in the middle Autumn.On that day the moon will be round.And you can see a woman on the moon.
So every year,family get together and eat mooncakes.
Also mooncakes are good presents.You can give them to your boss,teachers, friends...
To be honest,I don't like mooncake.I just the mooncakes with eggs inside.
Now you know the story about mooncakes and why they are so popular in China.
I miss you.520!!!!!

the annual letter (1st edition)

dearly beloved,

greetings and well-wishings during this festive time!
in true Routh tradition, this will reach you all long after you have taken down your lights and sent your tree (should you have one) to be recycled. perhaps we might all consider this a perpetuation of the holiday spirit rather than mere negligence and procrastination. hmm? what do you say to that?

as many of you know, i have spent the past nine months or so in Thailand after having lived in northern China for two years. The decision to move to Thailand was due, at least in part, to the fact that Alfy (my boyfriend) found a math teaching position in southern Thailand, and the thought of living in a beautiful Asian country with English bookstores sounded fine by me. i began my “Thai Period” in Sampran teaching English at a private Catholic school. while the vista was less than picturesque (our school was situated on the highway connecting Bangkok with Nakhon Pathom), my neighbors were quite exceptional. i refer (naturally!) to the elephant training ground and crocodile farm abutting the teachers’ dormitory. i hadn’t really lived before waking up to the sound of crocodiles slipping into a marsh or seeing an elephant pregnant with twins on my way to school. picture an elephant pregnant with twins in your mind right now, just for a second.

i moved to Suratthani in april to be closer to Alfy and to teach THEATRE at Suratthani Public School. the decision was not without difficulty. there is a community theatre in Bangkok, and taking the job in Surat meant relinquishing a juicy role in their Fringe Festival and being unavailable for a Gilbert & Sullivan (always wanted to do G&S out of silliness) production. luckily the decision to go onto greener pastures (literally and figuratively) was punctuated by a trip to new york to witness the jeff/amber union. this ceremony should be the precedent by which all marriage ceremonies should be judged - it was informal and meaningful and a galloping good time. a toast to you, pioneers in covalent love!

eight months later, we Thai residents hailing from temperate climates have had to trust that the calendar is not lying in saying that Christmas is just around the corner, because the weather certainly doesn’t recommend the fact. ten days before Christmas day, i was sunburned after kayaking on Ton Sai with two other teachers during a week break. the vacation leading up to Christmas week was shorter for me than for other teachers because Jason and i were still preparing for our school productions of "Peter Pan" and "Alice in Wonderland", performed on December 20th.

"Peter Pan" deserves its own paragraph (it actually deserves a tome, but i am unambitious). this was the most frustrating and one of the most ultimately rewarding theatrical experiences i have ever had. most of my frustrations stemmed from communication and elusive keys. i felt that, just like Alice running after the White Rabbit, Jason and i were constantly seeking information, and i was always on a quest for some key or another. we spent 5 months trying to learn what our budget was, then another month (unsuccessfully) trying to see the set storage area (we found some items during clandestine adventures, but we are sure that most set pieces are hidden in some secret underground vault lined with gold). because so many students have after-school classes, we weren't allowed to have rehearsals after class. the first few weeks after receiving the budget amount, i was told i had to buy things through the school's thai staff. i won't go into the gory details, but the initial lumber purchase was harrowing! i had never seen a cutting list so unabashedly fubared. to make matters worse, two guys went to pick up my lumber without waiting for my class to finish as i had requested, so they paid for wood that in no way resembled the list i had given with money from the play budget which they then said was unreturnable and nonrefundable. after the "lumber incident", i insisted on buying everything myself to be reimbursed by the school.

so with the purchasing issue fixed, i moved onto phase 2 of production hell, Finding Space. because there is no set storage or workspace available in the english program, i moved my flats no less than 7 times during a 6-week period. i don't even have keys for our teacher's office, much less the wood shop or stage area. our first rehearsal onstage was three days before the production, which was also the first time the whole cast had a chance to rehearse together. try putting on a production with 100 non-native english speakers in a space only available three days before the performance date with no administrative help while other teachers and administrators take your actors away from backstage without notice or mention during dress rehearsals in order to "help you". oh, and don't forget the three weeks' holiday time just before the performance with one weeks' notice. i admit to crying myself to sleep more often than not. Jerry Lesch, however did you do it year after year?

despite the enormous odds and a dismal final dress rehearsal, both "Alice" and "Peter" turned into an unprecedented hit with the parents. students remembered their lines and blocking, parents were very proud of their children, and my sets actually got a shocked intake of breath and applause the first time we flipped and changed them. my kids were WONDERFUL, and they have talked about the play a lot since. and i got wine out of the deal as a thank-you from the departmental head which replaced the vodka i had been drinking copiously prior to december 20th!

in fact, the students have been the high point of my time here. i have never looked so forward to going to class as i have this year. they are helpful and funny and very quick to pick up spoken English. during the vacation preceding the play, a number of students came to paint the sets and mark the stage.

even the naughty students are naughty in such a creative way that it takes all my strength not to chuckle when i have to say things like, "Sun, now we're making costumes today which means you can't take the yellow fabric, wrap yourself like a monk, sit in the corner and chant sutras. what if everyone did that? and Taee, you should be sewing right now not enacting an indian bridal procession, i don't care how much you loved the bollywood movie you saw last night." last week i left a class to edit their papers for five minutes only to come back to class with the lights turned off and no students in sight. it took a second of staring to see a few giggling heads poking out. i was informed that class could not continue until i found ALL of the students. one managed to cram into a cabinet, so he was the last found. the list goes on and on, and i will happily relay some of the other more interesting ones if i can ever get out from under my grading burden.

Christmas in Thailand was pretty low-key, though we had a wonderful get-together with colleagues and friends a few days before. it's just not that easy to get into the Christmas spirit while wearing shorts, planning scuba diving trips and eating watermelon and pineapple.

the great shock, of course, came on Boxing Day when a tsunami hit the Andaman Coast of Thailand. we in Suratthani felt tremors in the morning, but i only discovered the extent of the catastrophe a day later. Ton Sai, where i had gotten my sunburn only two weeks before, is unrecognizably decimated. many people spent the following week trying to determine the fates of friends and family unfortunate enough to be in the affected areas. the hospitals were maelstroms of the injured transferred from kao lak and family members hoping to find their kin alive. i am sure everyone has seen the pictures and heard the stories, so i won't add to the tales. the missing pictures remind me so much of new york after 9/11 that the last two weeks have smacked of deja vu. i hope to be of some help in the next few months but right now can't help but feel useless in the midst of inconceivable destruction.

sometime after march i plan to head back to portland for an unspecified length of time to be my brother's "best person" at rob and jo's wedding. only my brother would know to dangle the undeniable temptation of wearing a tux at a wedding in order to get me home. there is another wedding shortly thereafter, so it looks like a season in america.

enough talking about myself! i hope this letter finds all of you, and finds you well. please know that at least until april you have a place to stay in Suratthani and a tour guide at your service. with joy and affection i extend my

best wishes,
steph

greetings from the grave

somewhere between the western and chinese new years, i heard a voice that reminded me of my journal's neglect. that voice sounded a lot like sandy malter's, and to ignore a suggestion from a wise source would be paramount to abject folly.

it's too late for christmas and too early for the chinese new year, so please consider this (my devoted two readers) a post-holiday card without the pomp or postage.

as mentioned in the last entry from another time and place, i returned from a wonderful romp across china with my mother and her linfield students. i spent one more month at bai da wei school in changchun before heading in a southerly direction to dalian, china. why would one meander from one northern chinese city to another? one might well ask. the answer is a teaching position in dalian, the coastal town that boasts both the occasional beach and a glorious coffee shop. the workload at sea rich sino-british college was far more involved than my previous esl (e.nglish as a s.econd l.anguage) foray with bai da wei. although this cut into swimming and exploring time, it also provided an excuse to spend an inordinate amount of time with my fellow co-workers. michelle murray, another bai da wei teaching veteran, was one such colleague who made a similar relocation from changchun to dalian, via america. we became roommates as well as reunited colleagues in one of the most enviable apartments ever. i did not deserve such palatial quarters, and i know that i will never enjoy such domestic luxuriance again. this knowledge only leads me to cherish the time spent all the more, as well as the time spent learning how to cook chinese food with yang shifu.
i found the college students at sea rich to be taller than the 4-year-old tots in changchun. there are, of course, upsides to the additional height and worldly experience of one's students. together my post-adolescent students and i suffered through bibliographies and academic writing,yes, but we also enjoyed discussing "the truman show" and "the shawshank redemption." the chaucers of china, my first esl drama class, was a group formed by six talented students. talented and tall.
the jewel of dalian, of course, is not from dalian but from tianjin. she is the alpha and omega of chinese instruction, and many sea rich foreign-language teachers became foreign-language students after that annoying sea rich bell rang at the end of the day. where are you, dear rebecca, because my tones have gone to hell in a handbasket!

and then it was time to spend time with dad in thailand. an outsider might think that i hated my father, given what i put that unquellable spirit through. i strapped a heavy tank on his back and encouraged him to dive into shark-infested waters. i practically walked his feet off by showing him the backpacker's thailand (the only way to travel). i made him do hard time on a hard seat from nakhon sii thammarat to bangkok. and through all that he still found a way to say "i love you." what a guy.

the holidays were spent in portland and new york, and i am afraid that i would bore everyone with my potentially lengthy account tagged onto an already scandalously-long entry. let's just say they will be visits eagerly redone.

and now i'm in thailand, one hour from bangkok by bus and 2 minutes from an elephant training ground and a crocodile farm. if i don't get squashed or devoured, i will recount life here and try to do it justice.

hope all is well with you in whatever climate you find yourselves in!

a deep, prolonged silence

as many friends and family members have come to expect from one stephanie routh, it has been a vast expanse of time since i have written in this here journal. to all three devoted perusers, i offer my usual profound apologies.

THE BRIEF SYNOPSIS
an overview of the past few months in chilly changchun:
well, the ktv foreigner christmas special aired on christmas eve. the critics (meaning my pint-size students and hutong neighbors) received it favorably and sang me snippets from my solo with smiling faces. potential embarassment averted. the cast party included russians, koreans, irish, canadians, and nigerians. great fun and a lot of dancing.
i just finished spending about 3 weeks with my mom and a bunch of linfield students careening around beijing, xi'an, hangzhou, suzhou, and shanghai. this will require at least one full journal entry, so i will leave it for the near future. let's just say it was quite the grand experience.
after much searching, michelle murray aka meng ling and i are planning to swing over to dalian next semester to sling yet some more english. we have been assured by a kickin' cat named bernard that our students will be eye-level with us, as it is a college. excited to be teaching folks with whom i may converse beyond "i want to eat an apple", but will so miss my bourgeoning english speakers at bai da wei! this, too, will require its own entry as well as pictures so that everyone can fully understand the cute factor. no, you cannot have them because they will forever and always be mine.

look forward to a recount of spring festival, or "how i learned to the love the fireworks". must go swimming now but shall expand on this abstract of a tale in the near future. meaning this millenium.
best to all, and may we all learn to get along in perfect harmony.

6th floor isolation

it's been quite a raucus few days around here and thought i'd relay it to you, dear unsuspecting reader.

6TH FLOOR ISOLATION
this morning was an uncertain one for folks destined to rifle some english jabber into 6 year-old noggins. every monday morning, five of us depart for public school classes at 7:20am from bai da wei school. before such time, many of us run up to our school on the 6th floor to grab supplies and a cup of coffee. the elevator doesn't open until 7:30, so we get a little morning stair climb to wake ourselves. this morning, however, our vertical chariot was ready and waiting! little did we know that the reason for this was that the guy with the stairwell keys either was late in coming or just hadn't gotten around to opening the fricking doors. this becomes important when the elevator guy shuts off the elevator and the stairwell guy is still AWOL. the clock ticked louder as the cleaning ladies and stranded teachers all started mulling over the situation in not-so-subdued chinese. fire hazard came up a lot in those minutes of conversation, and i finally called our headmaster so that he could call the first floor so the stair guy could feel so inclined to use the keys given him. another word that came up a lot (in english, though after this episode i am bent on learning the chinese translation) was incompetence. i suppose if it had come down to it, one of the stranded foreigners is adept at rappelling (sp?) and might have jimmy-rigged some appropriate apparatus. happily, though, none of us missed classes.

SEYMORE LAOSHI
so that was early morning. my last public school class of the day occurs right before lunch and held its own little twist. one fellow in my 1.4 class (1st grade) is named seymore, and he's a pretty bright chap by any account. today, however, he spent more time talking to his neighbor than paying attention in class, and belinda (the ji che chang teacher) put both he and gillian in front of the class for a few minutes as punishment. they were able to go back to their seats after promising not to talk anymore, and i kept at lessons with "what's this? how do you spell it? how many are there?" but seymore apparently just couldn't withstand the temptation to rattle on and on and . . . so i brought him up in front of class and asked him if he would like to be the teacher since he liked talking so much in class. he replied that he certainly wouldn't mind (i'm paraphrasing), and i sat down in his seat. so he got a dog flashcard (it was the last object on our worksheet today) and asked "what's this?" the class responded. "how do you spell?" he called on one of his friends who gave the correct answer, which he then WROTE on the board! "how many dogs?" he called on someone else to answer. it was stunning!!! i was shocked and giddy, although the original purpose was to get him to stop talking in class. he told belinda after class that he wants to be teacher next class, too, and might just talk to his heart's content until he's allowed. may i remind you all that this boy is 6 years old. we'll see what happens.

THE WHITE CHICK FROM XINJIANG
last week sandy and i hung at the bathhouse together, including submerging ourselves under hot pebbles for 30 minutes (fantastic, but can i just say "sweat"?). as we were taking our final shower, one woman (there is usually at least one every time i take a communal shower) was remarking on how white i was. when she asked sandy where i was from, i replied that i was chinese. sandy then told her that i was a minority from the xinjiang province and chinese was my second language. she looked at me and my white belly in shock. i thought she got the joke until she pointed me out to a friend who had just come in and remarked about how white they were in the xinjiang province. i felt kind of guilty listening to this and told her before towelling off that i am actually american. she blinked a few times and went on again about my whiteness. sandy and i both chuckled over it on the way home.

THE RECORDING STUDIO
we recorded the chorus numbers and the duet last night at jilin broadcasting studio. it was the first time i've ever recorded in such a place. great fun, though sadly mr. star search couldn't make it (see previous entry). we tried to get along without him the best we could. the recording supervisor (i couldn't ascertain his exact area of expertise) spent a good deal of time hollaring chinese into the headsets, and david kept telling him, "hold on just a minute" in chinese. there were a few koreans and a russian and a nigerian who only spoke chinese, no english. the recording staff was chinese as well, so translation between english and chinese definitely added amusement. we couldn't get rolling until 7:30pm because of class schedules, so the wrapup finally came at 10pm. our last song of the night was "auld lang syne," which sounded like a dirge hindered by the doppler effect upon playback. but the staff was tired, so the dirge take is what will be playing on national television. oy veh!

that's about all i can think of at present. tonight i am watching "amelie" on vcd with a chinese friend of mine. it's in french with chinese subtitles, and i can understand just enough spoken french and read just enough chinese to get the general idea, but there are a few holes that i'm looking forward to filling in. my big question mark is what the contents of the letter were to amelie's downstairs neighbor that made her kiss the bullfighter's portrait. anyone know?

hope all is well. sandy says hello and you're not wearing enough clothes, wherever you are.

a KTV christmas

well, it's still bone-crackin' cold here in northern china with a high today of -4 celsius. happy unthanksgiving to all and hope those of you who indulged in post-thanksgiving consumerism were not trampled into wafers.

STRANGE SIGHTINGS
Acrobats--four high school students were seen travelling on one bicycle last week.
Hazy Shade of Winter--a few weeks ago the snow started up, and all us shivering inhabitants fell asleep to the glow of a white world only to wake up the next morning to an orange one. occasionally the wind direction changes and we get a visit from the gobi desert's more nomadic elements. the change in hue was, to say the least, notable.
Michelle's Restaurant--okay, this one is second-hand. michelle, another bai da wei teacher, lives above a restaurant which formerly belonged to a friend of ours. as she was walking home last week, she noticed one of the cooks take out some garbage to the dump in back, remove some meat on top of his bag, sniff at it, shrug, and walk back into the kitchen with sniffed meat in hand. despite this invitation to avoid eating there, michelle tried their fare and, shockingly enough (sarcastically), it wasn't very good. shockingly enough (sincerely), she didn't get retchingly ill from the experience.

GANENJIE ("THANKSGIVING")
everyone at bai da wei had america's thanksgiving day off for which we were all very thankful. the restaurant on the first floor affiliated with the school was also closed, and we were able to prepare a thanksgiving meal for 45 people in the kitchen. greg was in charge of the lamb, turkey and stuffing, nell in charge of pavlova, shea in charge of buttermilk biscuits, new michelle in charge of gravy, and i heading up the mashed potato front. the turkey was about a 35-pounder (according to my conversion from jin to kilograms to pounds) and came with claws, head and brains. sadly, my vegetarian self was not around to see the dead bird with head and feet intact, but shea tells me it was quite a sight to behold. the head and brains were on display in the fridge for all to see, and the claws were cooked with the rest of the carcass. serving the food had only one hitch, being that most of the chinese guests had any idea what stuffing or gravy were.

the pavlova was a hoot! pavlova is a baked australian
confection covered with fruit and whipped cream. nell the australian opted for kiwi as the fruit of choice, and she was in the process of slicing up the kiwi when kim the new zealander entered the kitchen. as you probably know, new zealanders are often referred to as kiwis since both the bird and the fruit are native to new zealand. so greg the south african told kim the kiwi to see what nell the australian was cutting up, and poor kim ran away screaming in outrage or fear (couldn't tell which). i won't belabor recounting our thanksgiving, but it was quite a gas and salved being so far removed from american freinds and family.

A KTV CHRISTMAS
so i guess i'm going to be on a nationally televised christmas program in china. david, the headmaster of my school, is directing the show and asked a bunch of us teachers to be in the special. nell and old michelle are performing a snowman dance (i'm looking forward to it) and the chorus is doing a few numbers in chinese and english. i am doing a solo and a duet in addition to the chorus stuff. the solo is "mai tang yuan," a vendor song about a kind of soup used to celebrate the lantern festival, and the duet is in catalan with a kick-ass woman named roser (her hometown is not far from cardona, marc torres-gual's hometown). none of the music is live for one reason or another, so we recorded the solo yesterday and are recording the other music today. during the solo recording, we went through it once straight and david then said to add character. "imagine you're missing teeth and have the clap." i'm looking forward to seeing the costume. perhaps the most interesting guy in this whole scene is robert, whom i will hereafter refer to as "mr. star search." during the intial organization meeting, mr. star search asked repeatedly when prospective soloists could expect a call and what opportunities for extra numbers there were and could we expect to be on national television more than once and could we receive individual copies of the program. i hear that one of his desired solos was sinatra's "my way." sadly, this wasn't deemed christmasy enough.

DINNER WITH KATE
i had dinner the other evening with kate, an english teacher at jilin university, and her friend darlington. after hearing about her students chronically cheating and her hardships with learning the language due in part to knowing so many chinese students who speak english well and in part to living on campus, i am beginning to rethink teaching at a university. my kids may not know much english but they are cute as hell. plus, i live in a small hutong and have to use chinese on a regular basis. decision pending.
darlington is from southern china, and he tapped two fingers on the table after i poured beer into his glass. i told him i had never seen anyone say thanks like that before, and kate asked me how i knew what that meant. i finally remembered that neal stephenson had referred to it in "the diamond age". the man does his homework.

sweet god, this entry is long!!! sorry. i'll finish by relaying that my mensa class (they're my smartest class) loves "you're older than you've ever been" by they might be giants. hope your thanksgiving was marvy and talk to you soon!

hot rocks with maple

CROWDED CAREENING
it occurs to me that i have forgotten to relay a swell bus tale from a few weeks ago. Robin, a swinging chick who is also a teacher at bai da wei, has occasionally accompanied me to my swimming hole at xian guanchang. the first of our tandem submerged exploits began with the single most crowded mode of transportation i have ever been in. many buses in changchun are actually glorified (i use the term glorified lightly) minibuses that have no maximum capacity. on this particular occasion, there were so many people on the bus that no one budged as we careened around roundabouts and plunged into stophood at red lights. there is usually a person to take money at the door, and his task on this venture was to jam people in and yank people out of the bus. at one point there were so many people that he could not rejoin the bus' swelling population and the door closed on him. the bus driver, oblivious to his comrade's screams over the din of his disgruntled cargo, started driving on. the money-taker/yanker/pusher banged on the door to little effect, since the occupants were so crammed in that they could not reach the handle to pull the door open. he finally had to rush in front of the bus to get the driver to stop. i wish i could have gotten to my camera.

HOT ROCKS WITH MAPLE
this past tuesday was spent in the company of Shea and Maple, a new friend of Shea's and hence a happy acquaintance of mine. many teachers have been on the lookout for a bona fide bathhouse/sauna that didn't peddle more services than one would care to explain to mother. Maple knew of such a place and was kind enough to invite Shea and myself to attend. such bliss! we got white pajamas and unlimited use of the milk sauna and oh-so-warm showers. one room had a pile of hot rocks and a stretching session led by an instructor. there was another room with hot pebbles that you could pour over yourself and sleep on, with an adjacent area for sleeping or swinging under heat lamps. the wooden swings under red light seemed so dreamlike, so peaceful and quirkily well-placed. when we were all taking a final shower before joining the clothed world (shea took a sauna), i happened to have a conversation with a woman who was stunned by my white body. she asked if i was married, complimented my chinese, and asked if i would like her to introduce me to a good-looking boy of hers. she asked Maple the same thing about 5 minutes later and i wondered if it was the same boy or if she had a list of eligibles somewhere in her purse. it has to have been one of the most memorable afternoons in changchun for its other-worldliness. the feeling lasted just up until the time that my wet hair froze upon contact with the outside air. the best part was that i saw no flesh-peddling (if you don't count the woman tring to marry maple or myself)! woo-hoo! anyway, i believe a group of us are planning to go next time. will keep you posted.

i was planning to talk about learning chinese chess and discussing the triathalon in chinese during a recent swimming escapade and a televised christmas program i am probably going to take part in and the new teacher whose pluck is immeasurable, but i suppose this will all have to wait. time to study a bunch of characters and prepare for the next day of slinging english with a bunch of aspiring young minds. hope all is well.

3 truckers and a beer

well, it's been a quiet week in changchun, my hometown. halloween passed with great pomp and a little circumstance. i dressed as a mermaid by borrowing nell's skirt and cutting up an old bedsheet to make scales which were subsequently safety-pinned to aforementioned skirt. that and makeup a la ty's makeup design class (thanks ty) actually allowed most people to guess what i was. the top costumes had to go to lavendar and sharon, who dressed up as a spider and a princess, respectively. lavendar had the best makeup job i have ever seen for halloween, and sharon actually won a costume contest at a nearby foreigner's bar by declaring herself to be a "princess with a bottle of beer" into a microphone when asked. she won 6 bottles of beer, and the rest of us were kind enough to drink her prize. our young students were off their head about speaking one sentence of english ("trrick or treat") and getting a few pieces of candy. it has certainly improved participation in classes, although i think they are beginning to wise up to the fact that candy for a sentence in english is not likely to come around for another year. ahh! the trials and tribulations of children wising up to bribery!

a few days ago was rife for some reason with requests for my drinking or my hand in marriage. i imagine for some women that this is a common practice, but it struck me as a bit odd. one restaurant i walked into had a waitress who was all hip to matchmake and three truckers who insisted i come and drink some beer with them. what a wacky evening!

oy! gotta get to class! talk to you all soon.

wanshengjie wiles

well, it's been quite some time since my last little slough of jargon flew up on this posting space. ever so much has transpired in the last few weeks, and i'm sure the same can easily be said of readers and writer alike.

strange sightings: three suit-clad businessmen were seen pissing on the side of a major roundabout near numerous government buildings (incidentally next door to my place of employ) last week, nonchalantly shooting the breeze during what i can only assume is for them common elimination procedure. i had to dodge grazing cows on my way home from the trolleybus over a week ago, which i thought strange since their de facto grazing land was smack dab between railroad tracks and busy avenue (is this a chinese version of free range, i wonder?). since the weather has turned cold, most children have transformed into vaguely ambulatory clothing bundles. too funny to watch said bundles perching precariously atop a bicycle. sadly that's all i can think of off the top of my head, but i will surely think of more in the next few days.

BRRRRRRR!
well, it's downright chilly here in northeast china. we had a sudden onslaught of freeze about a few weeks ago, and i shudder just a touch to think that this is only the beginning of what is shaping up to be a hypothermia-friendly winter. as i've mentioned to a few folks, central heating is turned on by calendar day, not temperature, and that day is november first. now i have to preface the upcoming tirade by saying that in china, as in no other place i have been, the weather is not an idle topic. it is, rather, a living and predominantly malificent entity whose sole mission is to make northern chinese the toughest, most resilient population (outside new york subway commuters) i have ever come across. that said, you can imagine what most people discuss on an average day when the weather is below freezing and one's apartment is colder than outside. our headmaster woke up one morning to find his sink lined with frozen water. i have never experienced bonechilling weather before, but it has a peculiar effect on brain activity. most people wear at least three layers of clothing, tip to tail. my students look more like bushels of yarn than aspiring young minds, though i'm sure the clever little tykes are in there somewhere. waiguorens are known for not dressing for cold weather, so more than one chinese friend of mine has unceremoniously pulled up my shirt and pants to see how i am dressed. they all reply that i'm not wearing nearly enough. most subsequently display their own layering system so as to give me a point of reference. i'm still a few weeks from my yarn underwear purchase, thank you. any thoughts i previously had of swimming in nanhu park this winter are gone, gone, gone! some bloc's heat was turned on october 25th to avoid frostbite hospital admittals, and my bloc was one of the lucky few. i think this has something to do with the fact that my apartment is located behind a hospital. happy me! i won't belabor a topic that is probably dismal to those of you situated in comparatively tropic climates, but just know that there are millions of dongbeiren (northeast china inhabitants) who are jealous of your single-layer attire (but you're still not wearing enough).

WANSHENGJIE
tomorrow is halloween ("wanshengjie" in chinese)! this is a holiday not observed in china, so i have been acquainting my students with some of the practices. of the holiday observances, you can imagine that candy acquisition rates first and foremost. nancy and i (my co-teacher at ji che chang primary school) have explained trick-or-treating, witches and costumes. this has been met with a cavalcade (is that the right word?) of questions. "are there really witches?" "if i dress as a witch, can i fly, too?" "what happens if a person doesn't give you candy?" "why do you wear costumes?" "are there REALLY witches?" "how does the broom fly?" they are so gosh-darn cute!! i can't wait until tomorrow when we trick-or-treat (after their test, of course). will be sure to take pictures, though i am still working on finding a scanner i can use in this coal-ridden city.

NI JIAO SHENME MINGZI?
thanks to those who helped with the colossal task of naming! of the 300 students i helped name in the past few months, i've tried not to give any name more than twice. tried to approximate the sound of their given name or its meaning. one of my favorites was naming justice, a boy whose chinese name means "ambitious." ambition should be tempered with justice in my estimation, and his given name sounded much like justice. ahhh, small victories! it has also been heartening to meet a few students who didn't want an english name. i had tried to state as firmly as i could that english names are only for those who want one, and it was glorious to see that my speeches seemed to hit home. i'm sadly currently slaughtering their chinese names, but i have vowed to improve with time and practice.

anyway, more soon. thanks to all for sticking out the length of this email as well as the length of my silence. hope to hear from you and to hear that all is well.

nothing short of paradise

october first is national day in china. the week surrounding aforementioned holiday is a time when most everyone in china has between 4 and 7 days free to travel or shoot the breeze or bao jiaozi or . . . (and, dear reader, perhaps you can understand what this means for the majority of the greatest population on earth to be suddenly unshackled from its occupational dens). as for me, i decided to embark on an adventure to dalian, one of the most renouned coastal towns in northern china.

as it turned out, Jeff (a coworker and friend) and i stayed a day at his friend's place in shenyang (midway between changchun and the much-anticipated dalian) before jetting off to dalian. his friend in shenyang ended up playing host to three or four friends during the holiday, as he is within a stone's throw from his alma mater and hence visited by old classmates. a lively time had by all. Zhao Hao's fiancee is also a grad student in english, so i even had someone to talk to while Jeff, Zhao Hao and Zhao Hai long spoke of days gone by. we played mahjiong, ate good fish and walked to the nearest park. as i may have mentioned to some before in personal emails, most parks in china are green excuses for amusement parks. why, when strolling around a peaceful lake punctuated by the occasional willow tree, there seems to be a burning need for bumper car rides and tilt-a-whirls, i will never understand. maybe it is my poor unsophisticated aestheticism. who knows? but on this particular day, the day before the holiday officially began, battalions of uniform-clad tykes paraded through nanhu park determined to buy every chintsy inflated plastic thingy and to ride every manual-powered amusement ride they could afford. it was so funny to watch the Young Pioneers pedalling away on their roller-coaster-like car or pondering a purchase (useless inflated plastic purple club or useless inflated plastic pink duck?) that the amusement assault on an otherwise serene park evaporated from my noggin.

but enough of pseudo-serene parks! onto dalian! Jeff decided to accompany me to dalian since his sister, an accountant like himself, couldn't get the time off they would have needed for a harbin holiday. we checked out xinghai park and laohutan park (suprise! they both had amusement rides complete with ferris wheel). the view, if you could just eject the giant waterslide from your mind, is bafflingly gorgeous. xinghai park has bungee jumping, which we watched for a good half hour. people spend a lot of money to feel like they are on the verge of dying while being constantly assured beforehand that the feeling is not an anticipation of actual result. after laohutan park and a 2-hour walk back into town, Jeff and i searched for a particular restaurant he remembered from a previous trip to dalian (sorry Jeff, but must tell the story. hope you forgive me). we ended up getting information from a woman who did not have all of her marbles that she knew the place we were thinking of and it was a short bus ride to the big restaurant. we ended up taking a long friggin' bus ride to a tiny restaurant that was, to make matters even more interesting, on military-occupied land and therefore off-limits to foreigners. one of the other passengers, as it became apparent that the woman was telling both Jeff and i to stay on board past the daytime checkpoint, that she was crazy and more than a little stupid to invite a foreigner into a military community. needless to say, we took the next possible bus back and Jeff FOUND THE RESTAURANT!! i had a sea urchin for the first time ever (very odd taste). beer and sleep melted all military hypotheticals away.

after Jeff left for changchun, i stayed on and went swimming fujiazhuang jingqu, a park WITHOUT AMUSEMENT RIDES!!!! i knew from that moment that it was going to be alright. i walked up a little hill and found a patch of zero-traffic woodedness and held on there for at least an hour. silence in chinese wilderness is not easily come by, and i lapped it up sure as shootin'. after this interlude came the real business - swimming. a kindly fellow who looked like he could be a lifeguard (i was suprised when he told me he wasn't) watched my bag while i had the single greatest ocean swimming experience of my life. i feel that's saying a lot. the waves weren't forbidding, the floor pebbly and quickly falling away to great depth, the other swimmers (all men, oddly enough) friendly and ready to either converse or ignore depending on your humor, and the water clear and salty. a covey of fishermen in ancient wooden boats were testing their luck just off shore, but no netfishing. i didn't even care if someone absconded with my bags (the real meat - my train ticket, alien residence card and atm card - were taped to the back of a picture in my hotel room and probably safe) but was pleasantly suprised to find it and the lifeguard-like fellow waiting upon my soggy return. i left to change and eat breakfast shortly after the kindly lifeguard inquired after my marital status. no need to go overboard with souvenirs, i believe.

sweet moses! sorry this entry is so long! i will finish later. in the dalian final edition: japanese food, haircuts, and a few things that haven't happened yet. also why i'm a bad travel companion.

thanks for hanging in there! as my aunt pat always says, "work hard, be happy, make friends."

a Peng by any other name . . .

the new public school year started recently and with it came about 200+ new students i am currently teaching. all of these students want an english name, and so i have been racking brains, web pages, cast lists and any oracles that will help me to complete this daunting task. since my capacity to read names using chinese characters is shaky at best, the homeroom teacher has been kind enough to provide a pinyin-ated listing for 100 of the 200 impatient tykes (all first graders), and i have been at it for the past week or so. most students have three names - the first is their family name followed by one or two given names. names are very important in chinese culture, so in picking a name one must be cognizant of the chinese name's sound and meaning and the english name's sound and meaning. for instance, the english teacher's name at ji che chang (my public school) is Nancy, and she told me that her name acquisition was originally met with hearty objections from her sister. Nancy sounds very much like "nan xi" which means southwest. her sister asked her why she didn't just name herself dongbei ("northeast"). another example (and sorry, Shea, but it must be told again) is Heather's laudable decision to be known as Shea. a lovely name in my estimation. however, it carried with it one small issue in that shea sounds exactly like "shui" which means "who" in chinese. so the first few days introducing her to marketowners and fellow teachers proved interesting, a sort of "who's on first, what's on second" feel. i'll give you a second to recreate the conversation in your mind's eye. "ta shi shea" (lit: she is who?). "wo bu zhidao" (lit: i don't know). "bu shi. ta shi shea" (see above). "wo gaosu ni le. wo bu renshi ta" (i told you, i don't know this woman). it was an interesting few days. i still catch myself in pockets of confusion about it, but i'm learning.

this all brings me to my request for help: i have 5 boys all with the given name Peng (sounds like pung with a rising tone) and i have no idea what to name them. so here is your big chance to name a child whom you don't have to put up with through adolescence. thoughts?

in hopes that you are well,
steph

long promised, now delivered

so here it is - the long-awaited (well, at least long promoted) story of the motorbike, followed by the russian-speaking chinese grandmother.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH VELOCITY
i acquired my second bike about a month ago after the first one had been stolen from my chicken-saturated hutong (this more or less means tiny street in chinese) in april and was again becoming accustomed to "riding euphoria". anyone who has ever tried to navigate a borderline anarchic road system such as new york, bangkok or china (to name a few) will readily appreciate the courage and detachment involved in bicycle navigation. so armored, i was returning from a swell swim and peddling to my heart's content around a roundabout (dastardly things) when a motorbike ripped around like hell on wheels and pounded into my poor unsuspecting front tire. i flew like a superhero and landed on my backpack (blessings be to towels and soggy suits) before i even saw the feller's shirttails whipping in the wind as he accelerated away. now i should not have taken offense. the ways of the chinese street are as yet still foreign to this waiguoren, and i should know better than to curl my fist in the air. but the fact that it was a BRAND SPANKIN' BIKE (i named it clyde), that he was most definitely going the wrong way around the intersection, that he sped up expressly to hit me and then didn't stop to see if i was alright really got my goat. and i don't even have a goat (though my neighbors do). the rest of the day was spent as a transformed me, from contented swimmer to anger ball. this feeling subsided as soon as i took my much-abused clyde to an able bike mechanic for a 20-minute overhaul. the fellow, like most bike mechanics in this area, have a set of tools and a chair or two. this guy had a deluxe setup, with added features such as large umbrella and two chairs for waiting customers. for 8 yuan (referred hereafter as kuai), he tightened my spokes, set my handlebars to rights, straightened my wheel, realigned my brakes and filled my tires. and clyde shone like my blue steed again. all was mended. ahhh!

THE ALLEGED RUSSIAN
as i become more and more acquainted with this wacky language of mandarin (aka hanyu aka putonghua aka zhongwen aka . . .) i understand more of what people say about me. as it happens, i am finding that everyone and his chicken, goat and donkey thinks i'm russian. considering jilin province is within a discus throw of russia, this is not an unwise assumption. and since most people over the age of 35 were compelled to study russian in school, some feel it a great opportunity to exercise their linguistic skills in my general direction. my ignorance of aforementioned language is met with disappointment or suprise, but in a few cases with blinking disbelief. and so it happened one evening that my friend, michelle, and i strolled into a store ("shangdian") with every intention of buying chocolate. during our perusal, i noticed an elderly woman staring at the two of us, and once she caught my eye she started touching my arm and spattering off a line of speak that met my ears as jibberish. it took a few solid seconds to realize she was speaking russian. no matter how hard i tried to tell her that i'm american, not russian, she would not stop. her daughter behind the counter even joined my plea to dispense with russian, but she was not budging. i felt so ashamed that i had not spent more time trying to learn russian from stacie or my brother, but i figured that regardless of my desire to communicate, the few words and phrases known to me (hello, how are you, out the window there's a church choir) would be of little sustained use to a woman bent on lengthy communication. and so i left the store bereft of chocolate and with a greater sense of how very much in this life i have to learn.

anyway, that's the news from here. sorry for the length, hope you slogged through, and thanks again to those of you who have been reading this! so marvy to know that my meanderings aren't sputnik. as perhaps can be seen, i have realigned my last email to its true temporal state.

mood indigo

yesterday was marked by two special occasions - the chinese moon festival and Shea's (aka Heather Springer's) birthday. the moon festival (and please correct me if i'm wrong, those of you more heavily knowledgeable of chinese culture) is a holiday in which families reunite, eat a lot, and watch the moon at its fullest. the big delicacy at this time is mooncakes, which are thick pastries stuffed to the hilt with gooey sweet . . . goo. a few friends and i decided that mooncakes would make great trail food and we should remember to bring some hiking with us if we can only get our hands on them between festivals. of course, this is all assuming that they don't turned into the hardened oversized hockey pucks i envision given a week of air and mysterious nonpreservative evolution. mooncakes could become the basis for the next in a long line of extreme olympic sports, and i wonder if i could make a suggestion to the 2008 beijing committee to this purpose. can you buy stock in chinese companies? i put all my money in pastry manufacturers. all 200 yuan of it.

Shea enjoyed one of the two main birthday traditions it has been my pleasure to witness here in china, and that is the Candle That Never Ends. it is a plastic version of a lotus flower that, when stuck on a huge white cake and lit in the middle, opens up into numerous candle-festooned petals. there is then a flash in the middle and "happy birthday" squealed eternally and excrutiatingly. this ear-rending natal salutation is powered by a battery that could solve the energy crisis. you can imagine why birthdays are so memorable here. the other long-lived tradition to which our dear shea was not subjected was the birthday noodle, a torturously long and truck-lane wide noodle that could be used to repave broadway. it is supposedly bad luck to break the noodle while eating, but i have as yet only seen one person slurp the whole thing down. either good luck is not dependant on the birthday noodle, or only one person within my circle of friends lives untouchable.

golly, what else has happened recently? since i'm not sure if anyone will ever read this, i feel as though any typed meanderings will just find themselves spiralling through an unobserved vacuum like sputnik. i have daydreams of neal stephenson randomly finding my prosed spacejunk and going "hmmmm . . . interesting." if you're reading this, neal, i loved "zodiac".
i promised i would talk about the russian-speaking chinese woman and being run over by a motorbike, but i would rather close this entry with last night's phonecall. i get numerous phonecalls from people trying to contact my landlord. last night's was the most rigorous and loquatious (sp?) of all the inquirers, and i thought it was because i was tired and dressed in my sarong pajamas and reading "the diamond age" again (another neal stephenson reference) and therefore not prone to discussion. but as it turns out he kept talking because he thought i was chinese! he must have been REALLY tired or been kind of gone on baijiu not to notice my tendency to ask him to repeat everything he said, but i took it as a compliment anyway. right before i dozed off with the beautiful girl in the moon to watch over me.

that's all from me. hope all is well with you.