Halloween in Nanjing

Today is October 31st in Nanjing. We have had two "Trick or Treaters" but they didn't have Halloween costumes on. We will be going to the Branch Halloween party in an hour or so. We had a good day. We went of visit a Buddhist Monastery called Xia Xiao Monastery. I have no idea where it is other than somewhere in the county about a 45 minute drive from Nanjing. It is one of the few working monasteries left in China and is very old.

We started out on the subway and then caught a county bus that had hard seats and gave us a very bumpy ride. As we drove through the countryside we saw many little market gardens. I recognized onions, cabbage, what looked like corn and some vines that may have been cucumber and there were other plants that I didn't recognize. It is still the growing season here.

It was a good day to visit the monastery because there were not hoards of people there. The worst thing was the beggars that hung around.

We were told that the maple trees are beautiful in the fall when their leaves turn red and that they should have turned red by now, but no such luck. All the trees were green.




There were many grottoes with statues in them. Many of them had missing heads and had been damaged by the Taipings when they set up their Heavenly Empire in Nanjing. (That little tidbit is for Kathy Wright who introduced me to "God's Chinese Son".)

We had a vegetarian lunch in their restaurant and it was good. We didn't have time to stay to hear the Monks chant at 4:00 p.m.

The whole week was busy. Bob had a supper meeting with the English Department on Monday. We went out to a birthday party at a German restaurant on Wednesday evening and I must say it was the best food I have had since I left Lethbridge - good beef with no gristle or fat. Bob went to a dinner and program at the Jinling Convention Center put on by Jiangsu Provincial People's Government celebrating 30 years of exchange programs with foreign universities and China. The premier of Ontario and the head of Waterloo University were there signing agreements. I didn't get home from my classes in time to attend. Apparently there were a lot of speeches and the program was very long.

At noon on Thursday I was sitting outside eating my lunch when a first year student who wanted to practise his English came and talked to me for an hour and a half. He tried to convince me that I should go home and look after my grandchildren.

Student: "Who looks after your grandchildren?"
Me: "Their mothers."
Student: "The mothers should be out working so they can buy a bigger house and car. When I get married I expect to live with my parents. They would be very lonely and hurt if I didn't live with them. Won't you be lonely when you go home and have just the two of you living in a big house?"

All week I did Halloween lessons with my classes. We did poems and readers' theatre and history of halloween. One of my students wanted a copy of my power point. He said it would be useful. I don't know what it would be useful for. I asked them what they did for Halloween in China and they said, "Study."

My history class has their mid-term on Monday. Some of them wanted copies of the previous power points I had done so they could study for their mid-term. Without remembering that my exam questions were in the same file I let them make copies. Then I had to redo the whole midterm exam. Then I got an e-mail telling me they had looked at the questions I had first prepared and they were way too hard. They didn't have time to study that much. Well we will see how they do on the second one I have ready.

Haircuts

Just for you, Sue-anne (Dad's looks the same as ever.)

Bob and I got our first haircuts since we have been in China. We paid 6 yuan each. That is over a dollar Canadian. If the dollar were the same as when we left Canada it would have been less than a dollar. Can I ever go back to paying $25 for a cut.

The man that cut my hair had very long fingernails on both his little fingers. Somewhere I read that men grew long nails on their little fingers to prove that they weren't peasants and didn't have to work the land.

Staff bussing and other little items

Nanjing University has three campuses. We live on the downtown campus called Gulou and we teach at Pukou campus which is across the Yangtze river from here. The third campus is still in the building state. Apparently they will be tearing down and selling off some of the property on the downtown campus when the third campus is finished. Is that capitalism at work?

The buses leave at exactly 7:00 a.m. for the Pukou campus. When we have 8:00 a.m. classes (which is three days a week for me) we leave the apartment about 6:35 to get to the bus on time.
The buses never are in the same place two days in a row and never take the same route to Pukou two days in a row. However, all of the buses (sometimes there are four) take the same route. I often wonder how they decide which way to go. Sometimes they seem to be racing each other along the way.

It takes anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes or more to get to the other campus. It all depends on the traffic and in the morning we are often late for class.

On Thursday morning we went down some narrow streets on the way and I was reading the English sub-titles on the signs along the way. One store was called "Clothes and Loving". Another was "Little Hong Kong Food".

Buses and taxis honk their horn a lot here. If they are going to pass they honk. Probably even if they think about passing and there is no one to pass they honk. On Thursday as we went down the narrow street we got behind a three wheeled bicycle with a huge load on the back and the driver followed it down the street honking all the way. The bicycle driver just kept pedaling and didn't even look back.

Some cats live around here and seem to like the heating pipes we can see out our window. Unfortunately we often hear them yowling at night. It is getting cooler now. I even think that maybe I will soon need to wear a jacket.


They can't be selling off all of Goulou campus because they are still building new buildings and planting trees .

Time must be going by quickly. On Monday morning my history class students were all upset wanting to know about their mid-term exam next week. I told them not to worry because the exam wouldn't be until the end of October. They told me the end of October was next week, so I said we would put it off until November so now I am frantically preparing an exam.

Of my six classes two are more enjoyable than the others. The last one of the week is one of the fun ones. They are much more responsive, although it means I have to have more material prepared because they get through the lessons faster than some of the classes. Last Thursday I couldn't understand one of the words a boy was using and asked him to spell it. Just as he was telling me the letters and I had written m on the board someone else in the class said the word and it was mountain. Mountain is one of the Chinese symbols that I know and it is easy to write so I wrote the Chinese symbol on the board. They all said yes and smiled and clapped. That was a good feeling.

Next week in all my classes except history we are going to do Halloween - Halloween pictures, poems and ghost stories. Hopefully it will not be so boring as some of the textbook lessons.

Hot, Humid and Foggy

It is again warm in Nanjing. I have had the air conditioner going since Thursday. Today when we crossed the Yangtze river on the way to classes it was very foggy and it was hard to see anything on the river.

On Saturday my internet suddenly quit working and the internet office was closed so I was without internet until I was able to get to the office after my class today. We pay a deposit on the internet and the money gradually gets used up. However after using only 20 yuan worth in September, I was shocked that 3o yuan worth was used up by the 18th October and I mentioned it to the lady in the office. She looked up my record and asked what I downloaded on the 12th Oct. because I used up 24 yuan worth that day. I couldn't remember downloading anything, but on the way home it hit me that that was the Sunday the branch watched general conference at the Church. Instead of getting dressed and going to Church I stayed at the apartment and watched three sessions on the computer, so that was what depleted my internet deposit.

The Chinese have trouble telling the foreign teachers apart. A friend and I were waiting for the bus the other day and we got introduced to a Chinese teacher. He said he couldn't tell us apart. My friend is about 5 foot 2 and weighs about 125 pounds. I guess I shouldn't mind being confused with her. Her husband is over 6 feet and one of the students told Bob he could tell the difference between the two of them because Bob always wore a tie to classes.

It was a quiet week for us, but the campus was very busy over the week-end. I think it must have been graduation, but I am not certain.

We went to Billy's Steak House on Friday evening. None of the waitresses spoke English and we had 4 giggling waitresses trying to take our order. The menu had English sub-titles for the main dishes but not for the sauces and side dishes and they tried to figure out how the steaks were to be cooked. We decided this was one place we didn't need to go back to.

I sat beside a Chinese teacher on the bus Thursday. She teaches English writing and showed me a passage from the text book and asked me to explain it. How do you explain anal-retentive legal principal?

Bob visited the Massacre Museum on Saturday. I had read the book "Rape of Nanjing" and I didn't want to hear any more about it. It was quite gruesome. Bob admired the architecture of the building.

Yesterday was High Council Sunday in our ward. The high councilor was Wayne Schmirler. He and his wife both spoke. She was raised in Taber and used to be in 3rd Ward when Leo Davidson was bishop. He is from Calgary. They lived in Magrath at one time.

Thanksgiving today

Apparently the place to find turkeys in China is in the zoo. The students here know about pie - they buy them from McDonalds!

Enjoy your turkey dinner. Wish I was there to share it with you.

We had to do English Corner last night. It is the English club and we are supposed to mingle and lead a discussion getting the students to participate. With about 80 students in attendence it was very hard and besides their desks are all attached to the floor so it is impossible to change the arrangements of desks. The executive of the English Club took us out to dinner and waited at the bus with us when we were finished so we did get to communicate with them.

Back to the Grind

I just finished the first week where I had all six of my two hour classes. Thursday is my worst day with three classes. With four classes that I hadn't met before it is difficult trying to keep the students straight. One of the classes had 16 students on the roll and there were 23 when I went to the class. Every other class has thirty students. I am thinking I should take a camera and take a picture of each class.

Bob acquired another English class this week. Now he has four classes.

One of the girls came up to me during the break and said that old people in China go to their village and stay in their houses and wondered why I was coming to China at my age. Did she think I was old?

On the plane coming from Xi an last Sunday I sat next to a man who had worked at the U. of C. from 2001 to 2004. His son graduated from Western Canadian High School in Calgary and is now attending the U. of Waterloo. He said he talks to his son in Chinese and his son answers in English.

The Silk Road - Turpan, Dunhuang & Xi an

We traveled overnight across miles of desert on the soft sleeper train and arrived in Dunhuang about 10 a.m. The compartments were cozy and four people shared one. The bathrooms were at the end of the car - one western, the other Chinese.

After checking in at the Dunhuang International Hotel and having lunch we visited a Unesco site, The Mogao Grottoes, commonly known as the "Thousand Buddha Caves". Around 366 A.D. a Buddist monk looked up at the cliff and saw Buddha so he started building a cave in the cliffs. Other monks followed and over the years 735 caves were built. In each cave is a picture of Buddha - sitting Buddha, reclining Buddha, kneeling Buddha etc. Some of the caves took as long as 30 years to build. No cameras were allowed into the caves in order to help preserve the pictures.




We then went out into the desert and rode a camel to the Sound Sand Mountain and Crescent Moon Lake (not much bigger than a puddle).
For extra cash we could have had a much longer camel ride or we could have ridden in an ultra-light. After riding the camel I sympathize with the wise men. They must have had a very boring journey. Here is a picture of Bob and the camel. I won't publish mine as Iwas gritting my teeth and holding on with white knuckles. The sand was beautiful (where the camels hadn't been).




The following morning we caught a flight to Xi an, the eastern end of the silk road. We left the desert behind as we crossed the mountains. We spent the afternoon on the city wall where some of our group rented bikes and some walked around on the wall. The wall is 13 kilometres around and one of the bike riders lost a rear wheel about half way around. It was very crowded. My favorite thing was watching the kite fliers. One of them had 70 kites on his string.



The towers on the wall were lit up at night and this was taken from our hotel window.



Saturday was our day, along with thousands of others, to visit the Terra-Cotta Warriors site. It is amazing the extent to which an Emperor will go to furnish a burial place for himself in preparation for the afterlife. Here is the scariest warrior of all:

It is also amazing that all these warriors that had been bashed to pieces hundreds of years ago could be put together.


The evening ended with a dumpling banquet and a Tang Dynesty Singing and dance show.

Sunday morning we divided up because there weren't enough tickets for all to go through the museum. The ladies went to Shaanxi History Museum and the men to the Wild Goose Pagoda.
There were many relics from thousands of years ago that were very facinating.

Pictures that follow are from the Wild Goose Pagoda.





So ended our National Day Holiday. Our flight left Xi an in the afternoon and we arrived back in Nanjing to our real life.

More Silk Road

After a night in the Turpan Hotel we were on the road again. We visited the ruins of another ancient city called Jiaohe. It was also originally a Han garrison town, but has no city walls because the site is bounded by steep ravines.



The same day we visited the Karez Irrigation system. It was built 2000 years ago and is one of the three great projects of ancient China (the Great Wall and the Grand Canal being the other two). It consists of four sections of underground channel, vertical shaft, open channel and
resevoir. Here is a picture of one of the underground channels:

Again for you Southern Albertans who know Gerald and Velma Litchfield here is a picture of Gerald's sister, Maureen. She worked at Stringam Denecky a year or two before Bob joined the firm. She is standing under the grapes growing outside the Irrigation site.


We also visited a Urghur family home, but only because it was included in the price for seeing the other sites. We had to pay for it whether we visited it or not. The family served us watermelon and we looked at their house and sat around for a while.

Silk Road continued

Tuesday morning we left Urumqi by bus and drove to Turpan. That afternoon we visited several sights in the area. Tuesday was a good day because there were not hoards of tourists at the places we went. We went to Tuyugou Valley village - a Ughur village that hasn't changed in centuries (except for the motorcycles and trucks). A band of friendly little boys followed us around but they would throw rocks when your back was turned or try to steal your pocket watch. This village was in a canyon which was about 1 kilometer in width. The Flaming Mountain is on the sides of the canyon.

Around the Canyon are numerous cultural heritage and historical sites. At the north side lies a vast grave yard of the ancient Gushi People, a tribe living in this area.

This is the village mosque but we were not allowed to enter it.

Part of the cemetery
Peppers drying in the sun

We visited the ancient city of Gaochang by donkey cart. It was originally a Han Garrison town.


In the Pachikli Grottos on the cliffs there is now nothing much in the caves as they were stripped by several German expeditions. Entrances have been built around each of the caves.

For you Southern Albertans who know Richard and Judy O'Brien here they are enjoying the local culture.