Hi friends, here are four emails from my China trip. I came home so grateful for all we have in the United States, especially blue skies and sun.
love
Edna
love
Edna
Hello from China,
I’ve been here for a week,
and I am loving it. I feel very comfortable here, maybe because I am cushioned
by the group or maybe because it's somewhere in my blood or past lives. It's a
wonderful place. The
group is ten plus two teachers, a great size. There’s an older couple and me
and seven younger students.
We spent three days in
Shanghai, which is quite like a big American city, or maybe more European,
except the signs are Chinese (and English, for the most part). Everything is
inexpensive in China except if you want to buy an apartment or register a car. Within
the first five minutes our Shanghai guide taught us how to recognize
counterfeit money (“Chinese people are very good at counterfeit money.”)
China is very capitalist in
the cities. There are acres of high-rises; it is development gone wild. It’s shocking,
like cancer. Traffic in the city part of Shanghai is nuts, cars everywhere
driving six inches from each other, plus bicycles, plus bicycles with platforms
or bins on them to carry stuff, plus motorcycles and motorcycles with bins on
them to carry stuff, plus scooters, plus people. Lots of accidents on the
freeways; most drivers are new drivers. The bikes and scooters and motorcycles
often go the wrong way on the streets, so you have to really really watch out
when crossing the street. It is wild.
Our first excursion was the
Shanghai Museum, beautiful and spectacular, a very new and modern building. We
saw amazing paintings, calligraphy, stunning jades, one oracle bone, old seals,
great sculpture, and bronzes. Then we paid a visit to Yu Garden, a Ming dynasty
gentleman's garden, beautiful scenes at every turn, rocks and more rocks!
The food is delicious and
inexpensive. Each meal is better than the last. Dumplings! There is always beer
or coke or sprite (they seem to like sprite here, go figure) with dinner. A
fantastic huge dinner is about $5. I am ruined for Chinese food in America.
Another day we visited a Ming
water canal town outside of Shanghai, very charming. Driving there, out of the
town and traffic, we saw tiny farms right next to factories next to high-rise
apartments. There were farmers spreading their wheat in the parking lots and on
the smaller roads for drying, all by hand, and women transporting farm stuff on
bicycles with carriers behind them. There were fishing boats on the water. In
China there is a constant juxtaposition of old and new. People in the country
are very poor.
We saw the Shanghai Chinese
acrobat show, spectacular.
Then we flew to Xian, the
ancient capital until a few hundred years ago, and a place with so much
history. It is a much smaller town (only 2 million people), less development
though it is still there. The oldest central part of the town is surrounded by
high, wide stone walls that were built in the Ming dynasty to protect the
emperor. Some of the wall is restored, and some is original. You can bike or
walk the eight miles around. Each side has huge entrance tunnels through which
all traffic in and out of town drives. I found it very touching to pass through
those walls. Beside all the development, it is good to see that the country is
also trying to maintain some of the history. The government is not allowing further
development inside the old Xian walls, for instance.
The Shaangxi Museum there had
great ancient stuff, from the oldest dynasties, including lots of great old
weapons and swords. The museum was packed, all Chinese people, interested in
their history. I can’t imagine a history museum in America so crowded.
We went to a dumpling banquet
and a Tang dynasty music and dance show.
We spent a morning with the
terracotta warriors, such a sight to behold, truly a wonder. The government has
developed the site a lot, with new buildings for each of the three pits that
are opened. There were many visitors there, 99% Chinese. Then we spent the
afternoon at a lovely Buddhist temple.
We flew to Beijing where we
will have the rest of the program. We are staying at Central Academy of Fine
Arts (CAFA), a prestigious art institute, in the international student dorms, a
lot like tai chi camp. So we’re not exactly tourists now. The tourist part was
packed and tiring, and the pace is slower now so I have time to write. We have
some half-days of classes (tai chi, language, history, painting, music, film
etc.) and will have some excursions (Great Wall, national art museum, national
opera house, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, and such). We’re here two more
weeks, then home.
So we’re learning tai chi
from Lisa, a cute young teacher from the Beijing Sports Academy. It’s yang 24
movements, taught outdoors in the morning. Very interesting indeed, two classes
so far. No shoulder width. Back leg straight in what we would call 70/30 (she
calls “bow stance”). Lots of wrists bent back, especially lower hand (“Press!”)
For brush knee, the forward hand also broken back (“Push!”). Never a mention of
relaxation. Lots of “hold ball.” Shifting weight is “change gravity.” Postures
are called styles (“We are going to learn two new styles today.”) No mention of
tan tien.
She has some good teaching
techniques. She shows it, then we practice arm and leg movements separately. Then
we do it with her a few times; she shows, we do. Then we have to do it by
ourselves with her giving some hints and watching us. By the end we have to do
it by ourselves as a group. I can see the value in having to do it without a
leader. It has helped me to remember it. In the second class, we had to do it
in pairs with her watching at the end of class, and she gave each person some
personal feedback. We have six more classes in tai chi.
The dining halls on campus
are an experience. Nothing is labeled in English and the servers don’t speak
much English. Chinese people eat some seriously weird things for breakfast. I
don’t even know what some of that stuff is. Today we found the noodle bar at
lunch, where they make the noodles right there, cook them, put them with veggies
and meat and broth. It is a huge delicious bowl for 10 yuan, about $1.75. They
gave us a meal card for campus loaded with some money, and also gave us back
some program cash so that we have the option to eat other places in town.
That’s a nice way to do it I think. If we spend less than they gave us we keep
it. If we spend more, it’s out of our pockets.
For a place supposedly so
modern and technological, the state of internet access is a puzzle. The hotel
in Shanghai only had ethernet, and even that kept going in and out. Our Xian hotel,
quite a nice one, also had only ethernet, no wifi except in lobby. The campus,
a prestigious art college, has wifi, though it isn’t very fast and also can
disappear. Skype is maddening; calls are often dropped. Though I am grateful
for having the ability to talk to home.
I’ll write more when I can
and share photos when I get home.
Love to all of you,
Edna
PS. There are a LOT of
Chinese people here.
PPS. Everything you have ever
heard about Chinese toilets is true.
May 31, 2013
Hi friends,
So I either have a
cold or my sinuses are reacting to the bad air, and my eyes are very irritated
and itchy. I don't feel quite right, mostly because of my eyes, and I slept
three hours this afternoon. So I'm keeping my a/c on for the night.
So I went to the
pharmacy!! Got some Bi Yan Pian ("for nose") little yellow tablets
sealed in plastic and those sealed in foil. Very cheap, 36 tabs for 14 yuan,
two dollars and change. Also got some gan mao ("for cold"). They
didn't have ling, only ganmao qingre keli, which are granules to put in warm
water. Ten packets were expensive, 48 yuan, or $8.
They were very nice
at the pharmacy, and one lady spoke some English. My purchases were OTC so I
did not deal with the pharmacists. I did ask to take pictures since they happened
to be filling a prescription. I took a couple of pictures of the pharmacist
with his measuring scales, little piles of herbs in front of him, then
packaging them in little pieces of paper. I took another picture of the wall of
drawers, and also one of the entire wall of ginseng.
I also navigated the
7-11 for dental floss and batteries. I am very proud of myself!
Tai chi and language
was great again. Then we had a lecture on contemporary Chinese art from this
wonderful man with such an open heart. I really liked him. He is the head of
the international program here and travels all over the world to network for
CAFA. He showed lots of slides of contemporary art and talked about how in the
old days if you were born a farmer you stayed a farmer, never able to travel.
Then when the development started, there was a massive movement of farmers to
the cities to become construction workers, who were paid very low wages and couldn't
afford to live in what they built. But suddenly they were free to travel and
change their identity, and the whole fabric of society started to change. He
said they call it the hidden revolution. He showed some wonderful sculpture
from people who used to be farmers, and sculpture by a guy who used to be in
the military. This contemporary art isn't common or very popular, as is true in
US, but artists can freelance and there is a market for their art, since
collectors from the west are taking notice and buying it. Also there are many
noted female artists now.
love
EB
June 6, 2013
Hi friends,
This weekend we went
to the Beijing National Museum and to the Great Wall, the Mutianyu section that
is further from Beijing than other sections and thus less crowded.
The museum was
wonderful, older art and contemporary art. The theme of the contemporary
exhibit was, "Along With the Times," though I'm not sure exactly what
that means. There were wonderful traditional paintings. Maybe most interesting
was "The Revolutionary Memory" rooms, with paintings and sculptures
celebrating the triumphant worker as well as depicting the immense suffering of
the times.
The Great Wall is up
in the mountains, a long drive from Beijing. Along the way we saw larger farms
than outside of Shanghai, but nothing like the US. As in other areas, there
were huge electrical towers carrying many electrical wires, all above ground. I
never saw one of them that didn't have orchards, farms, homes and businesses
right underneath them.
To get to the wall
you drive up into the mountains, then walk up a paved road up a steep hill,
often with stairs, then take a hair-raising cable car ride straight up. The
part we saw was from the Ming dynasty and is very well preserved. Once on the
wall it goes up and down, hills and stairs, along the mountains. The smog was
terrible, as it has been since I got here, so you couldn't see very far at all.
We had two days in Beijing with blue skies and low humidity; the rest have had
air that is terribly polluted here and many of us have had sinus
troubles.
There is a large
platform below where you step onto the wall, and there were 30 or so young
people (age 18 or so?), boys and girls, all in matching red t-shirts,
socializing and having a wonderful time. Eventually they all lined up, raised
right fists, and recited a pledge with the Chinese flag held up in front. Our
guide told us they were joining the communist party.
Last night I
experienced a quintessential Chinese thing, a traditional foot massage. I had
heard that they were wonderful, so I asked Yifei our teacher where to go. He
took I and another student to check out two possible places, both within two
blocks of the school. One was very simple and clean, and I liked the person who
welcomed us very much. The other was fancier and more expensive, and the people
were much more standoffish. So we chose the less expensive place and were glad
we did.
I asked Yifei if
only women got foot massages, and he said that actually men go more often. In
fact, businessmen have meetings at foot massage places. When he goes home in
the summer in the south his friends welcome him with a foot massage
gathering.
So he helped us by
talking to them about price and what we wanted, and so on, and stayed until we
got started. First we sat on sort of hassocks and put our feet into a tub of
warm herbal tea and they brought us tea to drink. Each of us had our own
massage person, neither of whom spoke any English. While we were soaking, the
ladies massaged our shoulders, back, neck and head, while clothed, for about 15
minutes. It was an excellent massage, deep and vigorous. Then our feet were out
of the bath and we reclined on tables with raised backs and got our feet and
calves massaged every which way you could imagine for about 45 minutes. I loved
it. Total price...around $10. China has no tax and no tips: I can get used to
this.
Afterwards the young
receptionist asked us to sit with her. Turns out she is studying English and
wanted to talk with us. She had a computer program that was saying Chinese and
then English for her to practice. I don't remember all of the sentences, but
two jumped out at me: "Can I get you another whiskey?" and "I'd
like to show you around the factory." All the things you need to know how
to say in English.
Anyhow we had a
great time and ended up sharing iPhone apps to learn English and Chinese. It
was a great experience. I'm going back before I come home.
I like being off the
tourist path. Tonight I had dinner with Yifei my teacher and we went to a hole
in the wall restaurant down the street, one of a string of maybe eight tiny
restaurants all next to each other, all Chinese food. There are very, very few
restaurants in China that aren't Chinese food. We walked by them and he said,
"This one is food from the northwest of China...this one is from the
northeast...this one is from the south, Sichuan...etc. Each one had a different
regional cuisine. Two dishes plus rice and beer was 39 yuan, around $3.50 each.
Delicious too.
Most of the menus in
the restaurants have pictures of the dishes, not just words, and show the
price, so I can easily go back there myself or with others from the program.
It's been good to be here at the school because we have to navigate stores,
restaurants, foot massage places and the like. I've purchased a couple of
things from the art store. Most people speak at least a little bit of English
because they learn it in school, but they don't practice it much.
There is a
Starbuck's sort of store across the street, Pacific Coffee. It is quite
expensive for here, 30 yuan, $5 for a tall latte or frozen coffee drink. Coffee
is ka fei. Chocolate is qiao ke li. As you can see, Chinese is very easy.
love
Edna
June 12, 2013
Hi friends,
Capitalism and development
China
is very capitalist. Our teacher Yifei says that China has adopted the worst of
capitalism. Everyone is selling something. The markets are full of people hawking
stuff. Even the students here have flea markets outside. Restaurants and
groceries have fixed costs, as do the more expensive stores, but most other
shopping involves bargaining, which I hate to do, but by necessity I’ve gotten
better at it. It can be fun to brag about what a good deal you just got.
Everywhere
there is materialistic development gone wild next to beautiful and quality old
things:
Factories
right next to farms right next to apartment buildings…
Farms
and homes directly underneath giant electrical towers full of wires…
Farmers
outside of Shanghai spreading their wheat on the roads and parking lots so the
cars will drive over it and separate it; then they gather it up and transport
it by bicycle…
Modern
campus of stone bricks, and outdoor cleaners sweeping with brooms made of twigs
with a bamboo handle…
Outside
the Olympic bird’s nest stadium, cleaners sweeping with twig brooms…
Acupuncture
street-front clinic with neon signs all over the window and a moving neon sign
of characters above the door…
MacDonald’s
next to the herbal pharmacy…
In
the art district, a beautiful old Chinese double door with a brand new scooter
and an ancient bicycle parked right in front…
Beijing
is huge, 20 million people. Traffic is unbelievably awful. We noticed there
were no old cars and no pickup trucks and found out that neither is allowed in
Beijing. When a car gets to a certain age, it has to go to the country.
We
saw colossal ultra-modern office buildings all over downtown. A two-bedroom apartment
can cost two million dollars.
Beijing
is a very international city. We went to the opera house to see a French ballet
called La Peri, a fairy tale set in Iran, performed by the German national
ballet company. You have probably seen the National Center for the Performing
Arts, a stunning building that has a moat around it, looks like a big egg, and
has three theaters in it.
The
government owns ALL the land. One hundred percent. You buy a house or
apartment, but never the land underneath, which you rent for a certain period
of time. So if the government wants the land back, y0u have to go. Farmers rent
their farms and never own them, so the government can take them back also.
That’s why the development has been so dramatic, because the government can do
whatever it wants.
Free speech
In
the cities people are mostly allowed to say what they want and to have opinions
about policy. Speech is much less controlled than it was in the 80’s and 90’s. Of
course they can’t write anything
against policy: the government controls all media. And nothing can happen in
public.
Our
guides in Shanghai and Xian did not work for the government, but for travel
agencies, which are either privately owned or joint private-government
ventures. Our Xian guide said that she is allowed to say, “In my opinion…” to a
question about policy…except in Tiananmen Square. Because it is the symbol of
the government, she can only state facts of policy there. If someone overheard
her saying otherwise, she could lose her job. There were police and army all
over Tiananmen Square, whereas there were few anywhere else that we went. There
were security guards on campus, in our hotels, and at tourist sites. Outside of
the cities it is generally not as free, since you have the local government to
contend with.
The
government has absolute power. People pay income taxes, according to our
teacher Yifei, but they don’t really realize they do because it is taken away
before they get paid and they don’t know how much it is (up to 40%). So they
have no sense of ownership in the government.
The
government does not provide health care; you must pay for it as you need it.
You must pay for your pension out of your salary. There is a tiny safety net
now for old people with no family, though they get paid a very minimal monthly
amount.
When I told Yifei about the
students we saw joining the communist party, he said, “Terrible! Brainwashing!”
Yes, they might get better jobs, he said, but then they get money and get
corrupt. “China has a big problem…there is a lot of corruption.”
Our language teacher Dan
Dan told me that most people do not join the party, though it is necessary to
join order to work for the government.
Yifei has no love for the
communists. His father worked for the nationalist government, fighting the
Japanese when they invaded China, which made it very difficult for his whole
family when the communists took over. He is now in his mid-50’s. When he was
16, he was sent to the country during the Cultural Revolution and had to work
on a farm (“backbreaking labor and sometimes no food”) for six years. So his
life and education were interrupted. There was no alternative at the time;
there was no other choice for him. His mother was a teacher, and he eventually
was able to return home and train to be a teacher. He ended up living in
America.
Yifei believes that the new
Chinese leader is more like Mao than Deng, more traditionally communist, and is
more likely to take the country backward rather than forward.
Confucianism/Daoism/Buddhism
Conversation with Shanghai guide
Zhou Yan:
EB. Is it true Confucianism
is coming back in China?
ZY. Yes it is. It helps you
to be a better person and to live better with other people. People need that.
EB. Are many people
Buddhist?
ZY. When they want
something they are…
EB. Are many people Daoist?
ZY. Well not so many…Daoist
philosophy is…very impractical.
Xian tour guide Kathy:
Confucius is definitely
coming back in China. There are temples, and the one in Xian is now a museum,
with old tablets of texts preserved. Most people don’t practice Buddhism per
se, but they do drop by the temple to pray, “just in case.” The God of Heaven
is a Chinese addition to Buddhism, not original to India. He keeps you safe
from ghosts by trampling on them. Also Guan Yin is a Chinese addition of a
female Buddha, to attract female worshipers. There are also Daoist temples in
China.
Western and Chinese medicine
Shanghai
guide Zhou Yan:
People can choose the
western or the Chinese hospital. All doctor’s offices are in the hospital;
there are no private clinics. Doctors train for seven to eight years. They are
paid by the government and get a commission on how much medication they sell.
“Everyone wants to be a doctor.”
EB. Which do people prefer?
ZY. Most people prefer
Chinese medicine because it can cure your disease instead of just fixing your
symptoms.
EB. Which do you prefer?
ZY. I prefer Chinese
medicine. Of course I prefer no doctors at all. I prefer drinking more water to
taking a pill.
Xian
guide Cathy
Because of the stresses of
my job, when I get sick I prefer Western medicine because it is faster. In the
off-season, I prefer Chinese medicine because it gets to the cause. Even though
it is slower than western medicine, it is better because it goes to the root.
My mother prefers Chinese medicine.
In
the afternoons on campus our younger students often played basketball on the
outdoor courts. Sometimes the Chinese students gathered to watch, laugh, and
take photos—because boys and girls were playing together. Lisa our tai chi
teacher told us that some girls play basketball, but not so many, and never
with boys. “Boys are strong!” She herself plays basketball, and in fact her
major at the Beijing Sports Academy is basketball. She will be a physical
education teacher. She comes from the very south of China, near Vietnam. It
takes her 40 hours on the train to go home.
I
asked our language teacher Dan Dan if students who graduate have to find their
own jobs. She said that ten or twenty years ago, there were few college
graduates and the government would give them jobs. Now there are many college
graduates, and they need to find their own jobs.
There
is a national college entrance exam that all high school seniors take, and then
the better schools also have their own examinations. The school we stayed at, the
Central Academy of Fine Arts, is very expensive, costing the equivalent of
$40,000 per year tuition. The regular student dorms house six people per room
in bunk beds, and they have to use communal showers in another building to
bathe. We in the international dorms have the luxury of double rooms (I paid
extra for a single) and individual bathrooms (with western toilets).
Food
Delicious.
Every area has its own specialties and most of them have restaurants in the big
cities. It is ever so much lighter than Chinese food in America, much less
salty and with little soy sauce. It is difficult to be a vegetarian in China,
since the Chinese can’t imagine why someone wouldn’t eat meat. Restaurant
dishes listed as vegetable may still come with a little meat.
In
the cities most menus come with a big color picture of each dish so you can see
it. Good thing, since some of the English translations are puzzling to say the
least. Here are some of our favorites, most of which looked delicious and most
of which we didn’t eat, I hope:
Dish
cap combination
Bumpkins
eggplant
Investigate
the benefits of chamomile salad (peanut)
The
small cephalomappa of Hunan taste
Secret
system of hairtail
Beijing
accent burst duck breast
Old
Beijing nostalgia peach kernel chicken
The
old Beijing gurgle tofu
Old
Beijing fried enema (what??)
Old
pineapple pluck pulp
Chicken
public hotpot in Chongqing
Local
flavour roasts lute leg
Oil
drenches the camphor tree tea duck
Mountain
city hair blood is flourishing
All
colors pull the skin
The
bean curd rolls up a peasant family
The
hemp burns duck intestines
Tibial
sauce
Spicy
gluttonous frog
Greedy
bullfrog
Stir-fry
a bullfrog
Red
dates bakes of a leg for meals
First
rank is usually stir-fried
Boiler
baby food (!!!)
Pollution
Is
the air as bad as they say? Oh, yes, even worse, at least in the cities. Some
days better, some terrible, never clear. In 23 days in China we saw the sun
three times. Though there were a lot of sunny days, the grey/white air
pollution covered the sun. When we flew into Xian we could see a big grey cloud
hovering over the city. Even out of the city in the
mountains at the Great Wall the air was so bad you could hardly see anything in
the distance.
Mostly
it was in the high 80s in the day, humid and mostly comfortable enough in the
mornings and evenings. It rained quite a bit also, which we welcomed because it
cooled the air down and cleaned it a little.
Because
the air is so bad, the surface of everything outside is dirty. When our younger
students played basketball, the ball turned grey and their hands turned black
from what the ball picked up from the court floor.
There
was however nearly no litter. Beijing surely cleaned up for the Olympics,
though it was just as tidy in Xian and Shanghai. We saw people all over the
place sweeping the sidewalks and streets with bamboo twig brooms.
I’m mostly packed
and leaving for home tomorrow afternoon. It’s about 22 hours door to door,
about 16 hours actually flying, first to Toronto and then to Maryland. I hope I
see you all soon. I will share pictures when I sort them out.
Love
Edna
