Christmas Part II: This Time We Got It Right

If you recall, last year's Christmas wasn't too ideal. While there were definitely good parts there were rough parts such as the government coming in last minute and making us take down our decorations and telling us we weren't allowed to do a school-wide Christmas event ever again. 

I thought that last year I could work through the day to distract me from the fact that I was away from my family. I ended up spending that day so annoyed I was working on Christmas for the first time in my life. This year I decided to do things differently. 

Earlier that week, I had a Christmas dinner with the trainers at my gym. In November we had discussed how they had never eaten turkey before and I decided that as a treat I would get them a turkey dinner. The only time they ended up being free was December 21st. To  my surprise they brought me Christmas gifts! I got a scarf and hat, boxing gloves, a traditional Chinese tea set, and a new water bottle. When they asked if they needed to bring anything to the dinner I said chips. They brought literally a garbage bag full of chips. It was surprisingly touching. 

Trainer Tony took this photo. You might notice a Husker hat on my trainer Robert.
From left to right: Jiang, Carter, Shanna, Boom, Robert, David.

We ate turkey, mashed potatoes, vegetables and for drinks I had apple cider and mulled wine (a first time making it for myself). One of my guests brought a cake for dessert. We spent the night talking and singing songs together. It was a great highlight to my year so far. 

Later that week the teachers in my office got together for a Christmas event at Teacher Fang Fang's house. We ate hotpot, played a card game, and sang and danced to Christmas songs. It was so fun!

For Christmas Day, I went to Shanghai first for church, then I went to the mall and bought myself some pajamas from the store Tutu Anna and ate pizza for lunch. Later I headed to the Shanghai Starbucks Roastery (I will talk about that in a separate post), rested in another mall, and ate supper and had a drink at Boxing Cat. For the finale I went to a free museum nearby and headed home. Then the cherry on top was calling my family when I got back to Jiaxing. 

Merry Christmas from China!

Tibetan Performance, You Bet!

Last Tuesday my TA and friend Jeanne got three free tickets to a Tibet singing and dancing show and invited me and another co-worker to go along with. We were excited to tag along!

Jeanne is the far right. 

We asked how she got the free tickets and a family friend of her's works in government. If anyone in China works for the government they usually get these kind of perks. It was surprising how many college kids were there but Jeanne stated that they were probably the children of the employees. The government most likely provided tickets for entire families. And here we were, three non-government employees and non-family members enjoying this performance. 

The dancing and singing varied quite a lot which surprised us. There were different costumes, music, and dances even though they all came from Tibet. It was noticed that some of the Tibetan dancing and singing incorporated Chinese and Western styles. 

On these dancers backs was a cape made out of dozens of small scarves of different colors. The capes were taken off and flipped back on throughout the dance. The men then did a dance that looked as if they were wrestling. 

Between each dance number there would be a single person who would sing in a Tibetan style or a Tibetan infused style. 

These women balanced three tea cups on their heads while they danced! This could be the Biwang style of dance. 

These women wore orange cones on their heads and the song went from slow to fast. It was my favorite!

Many of the dances involved the costumes having abnormally long sleeves that were swung around. This could be the Ralpa style of dance. 

The last performance we saw were these men who incorporated rapping and Tibetan chanting. 

After this performance I was excited to learn more but was hard to find information on this. I found this source which states that Tibetan dance started around the 11th Century. I hope to watch more of these dances in the future!

100 Days: Part II

It's that time of year again...100 Days of School! 

Last year I talked about the history of this celebration but this time our school photographer, Mia, got better pictures. This year was a little different than last year. 

Last year I had parent-teacher conferences but this year that was cancelled. The conferences were at the same time as the students' performance and many parents didn't want to miss the performance last year, so many didn't come. This was solved this year by not having them. 

The day started at 8:30 am where my TA, Jeanne and I gave a 20 minute presentation about the first grade English curriculum to the parents. Then each class was shortened from one hour to 30 minutes and all the parents could watch our classes. We ate lunch then it was off to the concert. 

Since I could watch all the performances this year I can tell you what each class did. 101, 102, and 103 each had to write the character for person, chant a poem about becoming an adult, and then performed a poem that was directed by their homeroom teacher. You can see that the students are wearing their traditional Han outfits again, however this year the water bowl was taken out of the program. 

The students having their knowledge chakra painted on. 

The students' calligraphy of person. 

101 had the students chant a poem and do a dance. 

102 the students dressed as lily pads and fish for their poem. 

103 pretended to be a class during recess with a strict teacher watching over them. When the "teacher's" back was turned the class snuck out of the theatre. It was by far the funniest one. 

                                  

After that the students had to solve rubik's cubes, did a dance with all the extra curricular sports, performed the two English songs I taught them, and then ended with an English skit that my TA's Jenny and Jeanne wrote. 

The sports dance. They had ribbon and flag dances and basketball players. 

                                      

Colors of the Rainbow was performed again along with If Your Happy and You Know It

I would say that this year was a total success! Also the parents are not as strict as the parents last year. This year the parents all stated that they thought the students' English was very good and were pleased with the discipline and homework. 

My reflection is that I do think that I am a better teacher this year. I found that I am better at giving directions because I know what the skill set of first graders are. My TA's also know what kind of videos and homework the students like to listen to and complete which means the turn in rate is much higher. After the midterm exams, we noticed that the average grades are an A compared to last year when they averaged a B. I am very happy with my second year of teaching here and hope to have a good finals exam week in January. 

You Have No Mail

Last year for Christmas I wanted to mail some Chinese-only items to my sister and my long time pen-pal Anita. A co-worker helped me get a FedEx to pick up and mail my package off to the Czech Republic and Portugal. I was able to track down where the package was and so were my recipients and all seemed going well. Strangely enough, when the package came within blocks of where they lived we hit a snag. 

FedEx said that both my sister and my friend had to go in-person to the FedEx office, bring their passports, and be there within three days or the packages would be sent back or DESTROYED. 
Both had a hard time getting time off to get to the FedEx office. Anita sent her boyfriend to pick it up for her but the employees denied him, saying Anita had to come in person and just her passport wouldn't do. My sister came in the day they told her to with her passport only to be told that the package was destroyed early that morning. 
Both of my packages ended up getting destroyed even though I expressly stated on the forms that I filled out when sending the packages that I wanted them sent back if there was a problem. Needless to say, none of us use FedEx anymore. 

(If you recall in a previous blog post, FedEx has let me down before.)

What is confusing is that while I was in the USA I could send packages to both Czech Republic and Portugal and had zero problems! The packages came in their mailboxes and there was no fuss. 

After doing some research I found that Europe has really tight restrictions against anything coming in from China. Everything is closely inspected and regulated compared to anything coming in from the USA. 

Sadly, the other way around is true as well. My two co-workers in 2017 were sent packages and post cards in August and then in December. A total of ZERO packages ended up getting delivered to them. Only one postcard out of three was ever delivered and it came in June of 2018. 
I have no proof but I am almost sure that the government is confiscating these items. When my co-workers checked online to see where their packages were, one seemed to be perpetually stuck in Shanghai. 

Last August my cousin asked if she could send me a project called Flat Stanley. It is now December and I am 100% sure that Flat Stanley has now become Confiscated Stanley. 

Now that the holidays are upon us, I have been asked by my loving family and friends if they can send me things and the answer is always no. I just can't risk these things getting "lost" for months on end or confiscated. I am not sure if these things will ever get delivered. 

One thing I know for sure is that the United States Postal Service is amazing at sending things overseas. 

The true mailing bae.

Chinese Thanksgiving

Last year for Thanksgiving my two co-workers and I went out to a restaurant and had to eat substitutes that we were used to for the traditional meal. Instead of turkey we had chicken feet, instead of mashed potatoes we had potato wedges, and instead of pumpkin pie we had a roasted pumpkin. 

This year for Thanksgiving I was able to find a turkey thanks to a new co-worker who knew of an online foreigner meat store. I decided to do a thank you dinner for my TA's and friends. 

First, if you are American than you know we buy things by the pound and the rest of the world uses the metric system. When the meat store advertised a 4kg and 6kg turkey, I decided to buy the 6kg turkey because I thought it wouldn't be that big. 

IT WAS THIRTEEN POUNDS!

The circled thing is the bones. I have no idea if I did a good job or not. Does it look okay?

  Now I had to figure out how to cook my monstrosity. They don't sell what we consider traditional ovens in China since 90% of the foods here are made in either woks or rice cookers. The ovens they sell here are toaster ovens and I knew that my heavy and giant turkey wasn't going to fit in my toaster oven, even if the store said it would. I immediately looked up recipes for rice cooker turkeys and they actually have a few! Since we work on Thanksgiving Thursday and one of my friends doesn't get off work on Sunday until the evening, I decided to have the dinner on Sunday night instead of the usual lunch time. 

Since I have never met anyone that cooked a turkey in a rice cooker I knew that I had to test out a few recipes first, which I did with a chicken. This is the recipe I chose for the potatoes, vegetables, and turkey. For the gravy I chose to do this recipe. 

To fit the turkey into my rice cooker I had to butcher the beast by myself, which was a first for me. I then had to do cook the turkey in sections. It only took 30 minutes to cook the turkey that was in the rice cooker, but I had to do it five times. I started at 2:30 pm and got done at 5:30 pm. While the turkey and vegetables were going, I made apple crisp and apple pie. To my sadness I forgot to put the flour in the pie, so it came out soupy but people still seemed to like it. I included vanilla ice cream as a topper as well. 

The "drained" pie

For drinks I made apple cider which was a big hit! They don't have the drink in China and almost two containers of apple juice were gone by the end of the night. I also had Czech wine, Sprite, Coca-Cola, and my friend brought rice wine. Another friend made banana and chocolate muffins to share with us. 

My friend Susan brought me flowers.

Overall, I was incredibly pleased with my Thanksgiving. I had cooked everything and it was all delicious! My friends asked to take some of the leftovers home with them which I was very happy to do. 

I also taught them about the wish bone which they found very fun and exciting. A few mentioned they wanted to try it with chicken bones. 

At one moment, I was looking out at all my guests eating and chatting and laughing and I got emotional. It was fulfilling to see people I loved eating the food I made and having a good time. Even though I wasn't around my American friends and family, at least I could eat turkey, mashed potatoes, apple pie, and roasted vegetables like I could in America and I could still feel loved. 

Your Lucky Numbers Are...

If you have ever gotten a fortune cookie then you will know that on the back of the fortune they will have a list of lucky numbers. You can read about how 110 people got lucky with their numbers here and the history of the fortune cookie! (Spoiler: they aren't Chinese.)

Even if fortune cookies aren't Chinese, I have found that every culture does believe in lucky numbers and they vary by region. 

In America, you will know that a lucky number is 7 and an unlucky number is 13 and the "devil's number" is 666. 

In China, lucky numbers include 520, 888, and 666 and an unlucky number is 4. 

Wait? 666? The devil's number?

I know right? Why is 666 a bad number in the West and a lucky number in China?

How are any of these numbers lucky or unlucky?

Let's start with America. 

Western lucky numbers have to do with the Old Testament of the Bible. Seven is the number of days that it took God to create the universe, therefore seven must be the most perfect number (Got Questions). 

What I was told when I was in Catholic school is that the number six, the number right below seven, must be the most imperfect number and "un-God like." If it is unlike God, then it must be the devil's number. If you are Christian than you may believe there are three parts to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If the devil wants to mock God then he would chose to use the symbolic three for his number, 666. There is also the fact that the Book of Revelations states that an evil beast will number 666 (Schorn, Joel).

What about 13? There are a lot of theories actually. Since our days are set on a 12 hour system, it is believed 13 would be odd unbalanced, therefore unlucky. 13 also isn't divisible by a single number, making it unbalanced again.  Judas was said to be the 13th guest at the last supper, the man who betrayed Jesus. Similarly, Loki, the god of mischief, was the 13th guest at Valhalla (Maranzani, Barbara). 

For Chinese, the lucky numbers are actually homographs with Chinese words. 

520 in Chinese sounds like "wu er ling." "I love you" in Chinese sounds like "wo ai ni". The reason 520 is lucky is because it sounds like "I love you" in Chinese. If you are ever invited to a Chinese wedding, you may find the number all over the venue. It is also why May 20th is the Chinese Valentine's Day. 

The number four sounds a lot like the Chinese word for death "si" so the number is highly avoided. 

Six sounds like "lucky" and eight sounds like "rich." Nine sounds like "long" so by saying 999 you are wishing someone a long life (Attract China). September 9th is also a day where Chinese people go to visit and honor their elders. 

Putting numbers in threes together is like tripling the good luck. Since four is an unlucky number, you will only see 666 together and not 6666. 

The next time you are buying your lucky numbers at the lottery, maybe you can try Chinese numbers alongside your American numbers. 

  

 Works Cited

Attract China. (2014, November 19). Symbolic Meanings of Chinese Numbers. Retrieved from Attract China Blog: http://www.attractchina.com/symbolic-meanings-chinese-numbers/

Got Questions. (2018). What is the Biblical Significance of the Number 7? Retrieved from Got Questions: https://www.gotquestions.org/number-7-seven.html

Maranzani, B. (2013, September 13). What's so Unlucky About the Number 13? Retrieved from History.com: https://www.history.com/news/whats-so-unlucky-about-the-number-13

Schorn, J. (2013, October). What is 666 in the Bible? Retrieved from U.S. Catholic: https://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201309/what-666-bible-27901

What is in a Name?

If you are in your mid-twenties or older than chances are you have friends, family, and co-workers your age having babies. Usually the top question asked is, "Do you have names picked out?" In China they don't ask this question. Why? Because they have...

*Astrology*

I thought it was really interesting and will share my very basic knowledge on the subject. 

In Western culture we typically name children after relatives or after religious figures. Even if you aren't religious, there is a good chance your name is related to the Old or New Testaments of the Bible (John, Luke, Mark, Sarah, Mary, Elizabeth as a few examples). 

In the Chinese culture, names are picked out based on the year, month, day, and time that a child is born. A baby could be named as late as a month after being born. If you are familiar with the Zodiac years you will know that there are 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac and each year is related to an animal. 2018 is the dog and 2019 is the pig. 

The animals are rabbit, tiger, rooster, dragon, snake, mouse, pig, sheep, monkey, dog, ox, and horse.

Then the year is broken up into the five elements of nature: earth, wood, fire, water, and metal. Fall season is metal, winter is water, spring is wood, summer is fire, and earth is between seasons (The Five Elements).

Then on each day there is a specific item related to that element. I tried finding a calendar online that had a comprehensive list of what each day relates to what element and all I could find were fortune telling websites where it wanted me to pay money. The closest I could get was this chart below. In fact, most Chinese people will go see a psychic who can tell them the names they should pick based on the Five Elements Calendar. 

This is also where the idea of Chinese medicine comes from

HOWEVER I do have a friend who was named based on this theory and this is what she told me. 

My friend was born during the wood element season and on her specific day was the day of the forest. Then the hour she was born was during the cedar tree. So her name means Girl of the Cedar Forest. She told me that there is a belief that being named after an element that is the opposite of the day you were born brings permanent bad luck. If her family named her after a fire element when she was born on the cedar forest day, she could be in deep crap right now...according to this idea. 

If you ever get a chance to be an English teacher, then you will sometimes be asked to give people an English name. I got to name a lot of my first grade students and a few people's babies. I try my best to translate the Chinese name to an English name but it is nearly impossible to get it right. 

My best example story is a woman who asked me to name her daughter. When I asked what her daughter's name meant it was something along the lines of, "Girl of serenity and strength of a great and deep lake." I told her we don't have names that could incorporate all those meanings but could get one of those. I offered the names Marissa (means ocean), Audra (strength), or Serenity (take a wild guess). She was really disappointed that I couldn't get all the meanings in and decided to wait on giving her daughter an English name. 

Usually when I name Chinese people I try to go by the sound if the meaning is something that doesn't translate well. For example if the name sounds like Jia then I might name them Jaiden or Jay. 

I have noticed that some Chinese people who choose to name themselves might make simple mistakes or not realize that the name sounds odd to a Western person. 

For example, not all names are gendered in China so they may choose a typical boy/girl name without realizing. 

Real names that I have encountered: Carol for a boy. Rex for a girl. Both have now changed their names. Now they are Carter and Abigail. 

Or they may pick a name that sounds cool but seem silly to Westerners. 

Real names that I have encountered: Boom, Poker, Hulk. 

Chinese people usually want an English name because their names are hard to pronounce for those who don't speak the language. You can read it about it in this blog post!  They would rather choose an English name they chose than have a person continue to mess up their real name-which is sad and we can go into the colonial implications of all that later but that is the short version of why they want English names. 

But guess what? Sometimes Westerners will be given a Chinese name! I do have a Chinese name which I got written on a stamp. The name they gave wasn't based on the calendar but based on the sound of my name (just like I name my Chinese kids). It is pronounced zhuo shi (kind of like Chelsea). The name means "exquisite poetry" which makes sense for an English teacher!

What is in a name? As Juliet would say, if we called rose by any other name it would smell just as sweet but maybe translating the Chinese name Graceful Rose of Wonderful Serenity into an English name would just lose some of that wonderful context. So I hope being called just Rose is okay and all the rest of the meaning can be gotten through personality. 

Source:

The Five Elements (Wu Xing). (n.d.). Retrieved November 3, 2018, from https://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/astrology/five-elements.htm