Saying Goodbye to CDU

I woke up before the sun...as I always do, and I began reflecting on my PST so far at CDU. I have learned so much here both about China and about myself. My host family lives a very different life than my family back home. I've seen some wonderful things, some shocking things, and some valuable things. I've fallen in love with a puppy and he's fallen in love with me. I've eaten new foods, had to overcome language barriers, and studied for hours a day. I had one of the worst exams I've ever experienced, feeling like I was completely unprepared for what happened to me once I sat down. I've felt let down and propped up. I sang at KTV and danced in a classroom. Overall, it was a rewarding and significant experience that I will take with me always.

My host family lives at their store most of the time, but I slept in their three-bedroom apartment that they own a block away. It's always been my dream to be able to walk to work. Now I know why. The convenience of having your entire life in just a few city blocks is unparallelled. It's been a fantastic experience walking everywhere I need to go. Shopping in Chengdu is an interesting experience. There are many stores, including convenience stores, fruit sellers on the street, markets, clothing stores, and mini department/CVS stores everywhere, but they all carry the exact same items. Looking for a dress? You can go to your local shop and buy it there or you can go to a mall and buy it there for twice the price! Need a bottle of water? The store underneath your apartment sells them as does the street vendor sitting outside the bus station (be careful there, though, as that same vendor was rifling through the trash looking for empty bottles yesterday...) Would you like a vegetarian pancake wrap? Well, there is an entire line of vendors that set up shop in the evenings less than two blocks away! There are also restaurants everywhere, but only three real varieties: noodle restaurants (mian fanguanr), rice restaurants (mi fan fanguanr) with local dishes, and hot pot (huo guo). These are your options, folks!

Shopping on the weekends is a surreal experience. Stores set up huge stands in front of them and blare music on repeat (sometimes American, like yesterday when the clothing store next to my host family's store was blaring a song requesting all female listeners, "make that booty clap.") Sometimes they have games or prizes you can win. They can be quite elaborate in the system one must undertake to win the prizes, like the one I recently witnessed where one bought an item, won a chance to break a golden egg, and picked a prize based on the ticket inside.

The school itself is beautiful. The classrooms in some buildings are being redone right now. We had our model school in one of the older buildings. It was a fascinating and very hot experience, but it was lovely working with all these amazing kids. Stephen and I chose the younger kids to work with and I'm glad we did. It was nice to see where my future students probably came from and what they were like only a few short years ago.

The CDU campus is wide open with many trees and lily ponds. It's beautiful walking around it and seeing all there is to take in. We even had a PCT versus China Host Family basketball game where my host mama and I both played!

Speaking of my host mama, this morning she came into my room as I was writing this and told me I sneezed because the air conditioning was on. I told her it was just dust. She didn't understand that. Then I asked her for some space and quiet so I could finish writing this blog, so she sat down on my bed and started listening to her voice messages on WeChat on her speaker as loud as it would go. This is what China is like, very little personal space or understanding of needing space or quiet. Kids read out loud in class as a unit to memorize and study and people just don't get that your space or body is off limits for them to touch or comment on. I've been called "fat," "older than I look," and "too tall," many times since coming here. My friend's host mom makes fun of my laugh and screams in my face until I respond in English, laughing hysterically, then doing it all over again. These are the parts of China that have been a test in patience. 

Yet these people also took me around the lake I love to run at in the evenings and joked with me and tried to get to know me despite the language barrier. They fed me and clothed me and took me into their homes and made me a part of their families. That is why the barrier doesn't exist. It's why she opens my door and comes in and sits on my bed and pinches my elbow and tells me I'm getting thinner and that too much AC is bad for one's health. She cares. She cares that I get enough food and enough exercise and enough fresh air. 

Last night, Xiao Fu came over, dropped onto his side, and put his head directly on my foot. My host mama said, "tommorrow, Xiao Fu will be sad. He will miss Sūn Méi." This morning she said, "when Sūn Méi gets to CNU, she send email to mama." Yes, this family is overbearing and a little too in my business. It's not that different from my family back home really. I will definitely miss them and CDU. It's been a hell of an experience!

Hard or Soft Taozi

I've been having a debate with my host mama although I'm not sure she 100% knows it. Every time she gives me a peach to eat, I gently push on the flesh to see how hard/soft it is. If it is too hard (I like ripe peaches) I hand it back and say, "wo bu yao!" (I don't want) she then shoves the peach back at me saying, "hao chi! Hao chi!" (Delicious, delicious!) I stare at her, shaking my head, and repeat, "wo bu yao!" Sometimes I knock it with my knuckles and give her the side-eye like, 'how could you give me this rock to break my teeth on?!?!' I've told her I didn't want it because it wasn't ripe, but in China, it's simply a piece of fruit. There is no real word for "ripe." This concept is foreign to her. If you have a piece of fruit, you eat it. There is no waiting period for ripeness to develop. Yet for me, eating a hard crunchy peach is sacrilegious.

I posed this question to my Site Manager, Chloe, a Chinese woman who has experience overseas and she laughed and told me that this is an actual debate online here in China: Which is better? Hard or soft peaches? 

Let that sink in for a moment. In China, there is a debate on whether peaches are better crisp or juicy... They say that crisp like an apple or sweet and juicy and soft are the two types of ripeness for the fruit. This is an actual ongoing debate/conversation, yet they have no real word to describe ripeness that is understood the way Americans do. It's a linguistic lacking in my humble opinion.

Here, the Taoist teachings say fruit has two parts like yin and yang. I spoke to my Language teacher and she explained that there is an ancient Chinese tradition that says that eating the skin AND the flesh provides a person with balance. In China, people peel almost all fruit because they believe this prevents them from injesting pesticides. You would not believe the conversations I've had about pesticides, antioxidants, and organic farming methods since I got here. Chinese people are fascinated by the concept of systemic fruit. I had to explain that even most Americans don't understand how fruit actually grows and that systemic fruit has pesticides throughout the flesh.  Throwing away the peel only prevents one from injesting the part of the fruit with the highest concentration of antioxidants and doesn't prevent one from injesting pesticides basically at all. 

But back to the soft versus hard debate, if I could use a peach as a hammer, I don't want to try and put it anywhere near my mouth. Period. Sometimes I get a beautiful and magical ripe peach, perfect in its soft and juicy glory. Those are happy days indeed. Even my closest friend here has gotten in on this and sends me messages every time he gets a decently ripe peach. Sometimes the pictures he sends with the messages are downright pornographic. This is how we entertain ourselves in China. We send each other well lit pictures of the juicy ripe fruit our Zhongguo mamas give us. It's a hard life... 

Chengdu Sidewalks

To walk... You think you know but you have no idea. Have you ever walked out on a wet deck in flip-flops? The kind that is really new and has just been sealed? The slippery kind where you could basically just slide right across it? Where your flip-flop, because it has so little tread, just wants to slip out from under you and fly off your foot, leaving you hopping on this slip and slide of death in your flip-flop, hoping for the best but knowing your butt is about to land 'kerplunk,' right onto that slippery nightmare of pain? No? Okay, well I have, and as a sometimes clumsy person, it isn't fun. In fact, it's dangerous. Yet on a deck in the US there are usually railings or furniture pieces of some sort to grab a hold of for steadying.

Now imagine you are on that slippery deck, only is marble. Wet marble. You are in any type of shoe imaginable. It doesn't matter. Tread be damned. You are going to slide. You are going to slide until your foot hits the grooved ridges magically appearing in nine inch spaces from the slippery and ungrooved other nine inch space behind/flanking/in front of it. That is what it's like to walk on the sidewalk in China.

We call them 'Suicide Sidewalks,' because no matter how slowly or how carefully you place each step, the sliding from one grooved pavement piece to the next is inevitable at some point. Even worse, on most campuses, there are brick sidewalks worn down over time to a slick surface where in summer, moss and algae and mold grow, the Chengdu heat and humidity mixing in the perfect storm of slippery danger. Most Chinese people tell you to just, "walk in street. That safer."

Yes, walking in China can be hazardous and sometimes walking in the street can be safer than walking on the sidewalk. Mix in the fact that liability laws here are apparently nonexistent, so canals have no barriers, stairs often lack hand rails, and nobody is required to provide unslick walking surfaces, it can sometimes feel like an obstacle course in the rain. Yet this got me thinking. Without such strict liability laws, individuals are left with only one option when it comes to their own safety: pay attention. It is nobody's fault but your own if you can't walk properly. Nobody is responsible for salting ice that Mother Nature laid down on the ground. If you fall on someone else's property, get up, shake it off, and next time stay home if it's icy and order delivery instead of take-out.

As a former insurance agent, I've seen some interesting and ridiculous liability claims. Claims where people claim it is an establishment or business or individual's responsibility to basically combat Mother Nature and make an "inside" environment for their outside, essentially eliminating any natural elements just in case a person wants to walk in their door. Which has made our lawyers fat...and our personal responsibility nonexistent. It's always someone else's fault when we get hurt, not our own. We are not responsible for our fall by leaving our houses and entering the world. It's someone else's for not making that experience of leaving the house come with bumpers and handrails. Personal responsibility/culpability starts on this low level of simply being responsible for one's own safety while walking.

When Guiliani took over being Mayor in NYC he did one very small thing to combat crime. He ordered the local police force to start giving out jay walking tickets. I'm sure there was a more elaborate plan, but that was the basic source of crime reduction. Jay walking fines. If you can't even walk across a street at designated intersections at pre-determined times (it's blaringly obvious by the visual and audio aide) without getting a fine, what happens if you do something major? Basically, the idea is: personal responsibility starts small.

I realize that this is a little bit of a leap when it comes to hand rails and guard rails and slippery "slopes" if you will, but essentially, this is how I see Western China's "Suicide Sidewalks." You, as an individual, are responsible for being more careful when it rains. Step lightly. Pay attention. Follow the basic human rules for survival in the society in which you live. Don't pass the buck and don't escalate. It is so simple really. If you end up in a creek, it's your own fault.