A sad, neglected website
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Lidan and Brian in Lin'an
After one year and nearly five months since my fiance and I began the K1 Visa process that would allow her to come to the US she finally had her Visa interview at the consulate in Guangzhou, China. All the waiting and hard work came down to a half-hour (or less?) interview with an unknown bureaucrat who could decide our fate on a whim. Naturally, Lidan passed with flying colors as I knew she would. How did I know this? Because she kicks ass. That’s how.
Living alone in a foreign country and living a bachelor lifestyle, I’ve developed a few unsavory or unwise habits that I should break when I return home to the States.
There’s probably more. Not to mention the plethora of other bad habits I’ve had since the day of my birth.
I believe I am addicted to a substance found here in China. It is an “herbal” tea, and I am certain this herbal element must be something illicit and narcotic. How else to explain my addiction? Soon, in this heat and ridiculous humidity, my sweat must surely turn red as I exude this delicious liquid. Then perhaps I will lick it from my arms and imbibe it once again.
Okay, seriously, it’s good stuff, and I wish that I could get some while in the States. It’s great cold, and perhaps even better hot. So listen up, you Wang Lao Ji manufacturers, start selling this stuff in American. And I expect the price to stay around 3.5 yuan.
In other news that’s not even vaguely exciting, I’ve re-uploaded a few galleries.
These are all rather old pictures.
It had been a while since I looked at my class photos from Wenzhou, and I found that I miss those students. As students, they were very good and teaching them was one of my high points when I was in Wenzhou. I hated taking the long, bumpy bus ride to the campus, and I didn’t like the campus very much, but the students were great. It is sort of the opposite situation in my current position, to some extent.
To my former students, I hope you are doing well. If I were guaranteed to have students like you, I’d love to teach in China again, but otherwise, I’m not so sure.
Despite all of your best efforts, I still live. The knives in the dark alleyway, the poison-laced wine, the acid-filled Wanglaoji can, and the ravenous rabies-infected giant panda — I have bested them all. Though they have induced in me, apparently, a condition that causes me to overuse hyphens. No matter, I shall survive that as well.
There are times, though, that I almost wished you had succeeded. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with children in the classroom. I don’t mean real children, I mean the zombie-fied little menaces masquerading as university students, and who have yet to discover their purpose on this planet. Though the latter is a common predicament, isn’t it?
I don’t want to get into that at the moment.
Let’s talk about you. You are a vile, gluttonous (and glutenous), swarthy, pig-headed mote of a being. The next time you see me will be the last time you see anything. You will die with my smile reflected in your bulbous eyes, and I will take them as trophies for my mantle place, if only I had a mantle. So I will have to keep them preserved until the point when I do acquire a mantle. That could be quite a long while, as I don’t expect to own a mantle any time soon. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what a mantle is. Above a fireplace, usually, right?
Be warned, and step warily…
I wrote this a while ago for mailing list I belong to. It has been edited a little.
About China:
1) It’s big, yet has only one time zone
2) There are a gazillion people, and they all stare at me
3) The people are generally friendly, curious, and kind, but they have no concept of a personal “bubble”, and have a somewhat different understanding of courtesy than we do in the U.S.
4) My students are college sophomores, but seem more like Highschool students — without the guns, of course.
5) Everyone’s home town is “beautiful” and “famous” for something, from fruit, to pork, to neckties.
6) It is old. Really old. But they haven’t yet discovered deoderant.
7) The Chinese language is cool, interesting, and fun.
The Chinese language is horrifying, evil, and only for masochists.
Every Westerner in China, except weirdos and traitors, eventually gets tired of eating Chinese food every day and begins to long for change, and more than that, for old favorites from home. If you live in Beijing, Shanghai, or another large, modern city, there’s a good chance you can satisfy these desires. But if you’re like me, living in little Lin’an, you have few options.
So when I went to Hangzhou last week I intended to make up for that, and hoped to, at worst, find a Pizza Hut. We did that, my girlfriend and I, and also ended up having a nice surprise. A little treat. Earlier in the day we went to a large public square, I’ve forgetton the name already, which was lined with many booths of sellers hawking various odds and ends — mostly junk, but interesting none the less. I was rather daunted by the surging mass of Chinese flowing, bumping, nudging against and around me to the point I quickly lost my appetite for shopping. But as we made our way through this morass of humanity I spotted something unexpected: a sign with a large ‘D’ immediately followed by a large ‘Q’. Bliss! “Follow me woman!” I ordered my girlfriend, and pulled her along.
Good afternoon Internet. Now that I have been here for one month, I can say with some certainty that I like it. First of all, the school, at least my department, is better than the school at which I taught previously. Here we, the foreign teachers, are made to feel a little more a part of the university. We are not completely segregated, nor left out of the loop. Though of course, we’re not completely a part of the university either. We’ll always be foreigners first, and teachers second in the minds of the Chinese. Maybe that will change some day.