Just Past the Horizon

Or so my students say.

Its dead around here. Like, no sound of traffic and crows cawing dead.

Free China souvenir and irrevocable BFF status to the person who can guess the oblique reference in the title. And who isn't named Andrew. He has an unfair advantage.

The first time I have a class, I like to start things off with a question and answer session. I go around the class and require every student to ask me one (or more) question (s). There are some common themes.

The girls typically ask:

1. Do you have a girlfriend? (I'm debating photoshopping one together for next semester. Or trying to convince them that I'm dating Scarlet Johanson. It wouldn't be as hard as you'd think.)

2. Do you like Chinese girls? (Guys. I've got nearly a decade on most of you. And I'm your teacher. Weird.)

There's the mandatory questions:

1. Do you like Chinese food? (I don't know. I mean, does Chinese food like me? Because Chinese food is kinda cute.)

2. What do you think of China? (I love China. Yes I do. And the Chinese government. And most of all, history's greatest leader, Chairman Mao. Taiwan is a province of the People's Republic!)

After your standard stock questions run out, things get a bit more interesting. One of the weirder questions I was posed: A boy rose and asked me to point out the girl in the class that I thought was the hottest. One of the most interesting: What do you think about Tienanmen square?

On day one, you've got to be on your feet.

I think, more than anything, students are curious about us foreigners: How do we survive in China? What are our live like compared to theirs? (they're endlessly asking me to compare things like Chinese students vs American students) One question that pops up with some regularity is:

Can you speak Chinese?

And when I answer no, it's usually followed, without pause and with genuine curiosity:

But how do you buy things?

I could tell you about a dozen stories about interesting/hilarious shopping excursions, but the following is my favorite.

When I first got to China, I went through a period of temporary insanity. I brought my X-box over here from the States, and after a week of searching, I couldn't find the power converter that I needed to get the thing working. Video games used to be pretty good stress relief for me, and I was really wanting to plug my console in and shoot some terrorists, or aliens, or whatever. Anything that would let me slip away for a little while.

Have you ever done something, not because you actually believed it would work, but because you really wanted it to work? Don't do that. Its a bad idea.

I may have plugged in my X-box without the power converter. I really wanted it to work. Maybe the power supply really could handle Chinese power, but it wasn't labeled as such. Right? Right?

My power supply, of course, made a loud popping sound. The “powered” light glowed for a few overly bright moments before dying away. My lower lip quivered a little.

A month or so later, my then neighbor and wingman, Benjamin Williams, told me about something he'd found in Wuchang, one of the three (or maybe four) cities that have formed into the mega-city of Wuhan. It was an X-box shop, and from what he could tell, the guys who ran it not only sold X-box supplies, but repaired stuff as well. That weekend, I packed my X-box up and Ben and I took the two hour bus ride out there, hoping that I could get the thing fixed.

How do you explain to a Chinese person that you'd played the fool and plugged your American power supply into a Chinese power outlet? That one wasn't as hard as you'd think. First, I used one of the few Chinese words I knew, the word for American, and pointed at the power supply. Once he caught on, I mimed plugging it into the wall and then made an explosion sound. He thought this was hilarious. When I tried to mime out him fixing the thing, however, he couldn't follow me.

A lady working in the shop came up with a pretty ingenious solution to our problem. She pulled up Google translate.

Guys, this was like a scene out of Star Trek.

The keyboard had the software capacity to type in both Chinese characters and English letters, so I would type in my half of the conversation, Google would translate it, the other guy would read it, and then repeat what I had done. Google translate was crude, but it did the job. Two people, who didn't share more than a handful of words with each other held a conversation.

If I didn't already have a religion, I'd probably start worshiping Google.

Think about this for a second though. If you have an internet connection and a computer, you can now have a conversation with anyone who can read and write one of the languages in Google's database. For free. There is no longer such a thing as a language barrier. Or if there is, we've punched an awful big hole in it.

In a decade, I wouldn't be surprised if you could get something like Google translate on a hand-held device (If you can't already). And how long after that would it be before a hand-held could understand speech patterns and translate them?

We take so much for granted. We really do live in an age of wonders.

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Howdy folks! Life goes on. I apologize again for being away. The last two weeks have been a little busy with final exams and things of that nature. To be honest though? I may have been having a wild and tempestuous love affair... with another blog! Gasp. But don't worry, I still love this one. The separation was only temporary. I've promised I'll stop seeing that other blog.

I'm still writing and reading my way along. Various writing projects have been set upon and defeated. I polished off Stephen King's Eye's of the Dragon (which I enjoyed), and also read Issac Asimov's Foundation. That was good too. It was even more of an interesting read because of how much other fiction Foundation has influenced. Asimov really was a visionary. I'm now reading two books side by side: Night Shift (a short story collection by Stephen King) and Moby Dick by Herman Melville. The idea is that when Moby Dick gets to be too dense and crunchy, I can take a break and dive into a Stephen King short story. The problem is I've made it a hundred pages into Night shift and one into Moby Dick. Oops.

Its also the new year. Crazy huh?

I better wrap things up for this post. It's already four o'clock and I've still got three writing projects to polish off/ work on today. Onwards and upwards.

Hope life is treating you well.

Drop me a line sometime if you like. I love to hear from you all.

Later,

Derek

PS: 11 months, 7 days, 7 hours, 59 minutes, and 35, 34, 33... seconds until The Hobbit premiers in theaters.

I am the sort of person that wonders about things. If I read a book about baking, I wonder what it would be like to run a bakery. If I see a TV show about astronauts, I try to imagine what it would be like to float in space. I am by nature, a curious person.

Hello again. Your favorite wayward scribbler has finally put his blog writing hat back on for the new year.

If you spend any length of time in China, there is one fact of life that you'll quickly pick up on: China is a land of relationships. Credentials are nice, but the Chinese don't care what degree you've got or what company you're the head of, if they don't know you, they won't deal with you. If you want to get anything done, you've got to know a guy.

Daniel and I were at the gym the other day, standing around in our rather thin fall jackets. Winter is coming on in earnest here in China, and very few buildings have central heating. Needless to say we were shivering, and lamenting our lack of winter wear. (I may have packed one of my bags full of books when I moved over here rather than warm winter jackets and hats.) We were about to go back to our workouts when Jackie Chan, the gym's owner and fitness guru walked in sporting a brand new winter jacket. Drawn like boyscouts to a campfire, we crowded around Jackie with a group of Chinese people to marvel at his new coat.

"Holy crap," Dan said. "That's made by Arc-teryx."

"Yeah? So?" You'd think I'd know more about outdoor equipment brands considering all the camping I've done.

"Those things are really expensive at home. Like two to six hundred dollars."

Two to six hundred dollars is a lot of money in the States, but it's nothing compared to how much that sort of money is worth here. I don't even make a full six hundred in a month.

After some of the other people cleared out we asked Jackie about his new coat; it was obvious he wanted to show it off. Chinese people love to have the best cloths and to let other people know they've got the best cloths.

"You like it?" He looked down at himself and turned back and forth a bit. "I got it from a friend at good price," he told us. "Three hundred fifty yuan."

That's about fifty dollars.

For the last several weeks we've been planning a trip to a place in the south of China called Tiger Leaping Gorge. It may be in the south, but a lot of the terrain we'll be walking through is up in the mountains where it will be cold. None of us have the equipment we'll need, and we've been talking about how we might go about getting it. We've been looking at coat prices for a while, and you can't even get cheap coats for that price.

"Ah," Daniel said. "That is a very good price." (Daniel assumes his "talking with Chinese people" voice. It's very clear, and a little slower.) "We," he points at the two of us, "have been thinking about winter coats like that one. We don't have coats yet and it is getting very cold outside."

Another pointer for dealing with Chinese people. Chinese people speak in implication; many do not say what they are really thinking outright. I think it's considered a bit boorish. We, as foreigners aren't that good at implication yet, but we're getting better. Notice how we didn't ask him if he could help us out. You imply that you would like help rather than asking for it, as a refusal would cause you to loose face.

But Jackie, being Jackie, wouldn't refuse us help.

"Ah," he told us. "I will bring you to my friend. Maybe I could take you sometime..."

We were all over that.

The next week we met him at the gym. We waited for a while, letting him finish up some last minute errands before we went down and piled into his little white car. I had to control my laughter when I saw the interior seat covers, Micky and Mini mouse. Very Jackie. Soon we were out on the street heading into Hankou, a subsector of Wuhan.

"Chinese driver... many bad habit..." Jackie told us.

"The always do this...." He held up as hand as if to smoke.

"And this," he said while he mimed talking on a cell phone.

"And this..." He stuck some imaginary food in his mouth. With his imaginary third arm.

"Don't worry, you be okay. I have good habit."

I think he knows westerners are a bit afraid of Chinese drivers.

A while later he pulled the car up and parked along a street lined with food shops.

"First, we eat."

Jackie treated Daniel and I to what he called a "Wuhan breakfast". This consisted of some amazing fried bread and a cup of dumpling like things called Tsao Mai. It's a dumpling about the size of your palm filled with a rice/meat sauce. The closest thing I can compare the filling to is beef straugenove (spelling?) The sauce was increadibly sticky, and I was afraid that if I let the things cool off they'd turn into little cement balls.

"The breakfast of the emperor," Jackie told us. "Only rich people eat these in the ancient China."

After breakfast we drove further into Hankou's back streets where the traffic became thick and congested. Eventually we pulled up on a street corner and got out. Jackie led us into what looked like a computer store. Imagine a massive rectangular room filled with desks pilled high with new or salvaged computer equipment. I have no doubt Steven is salavating while reading this. Dark booths lined the walls around the central area and it seemed like you could buy anything. Anything computer related anyway.

"Okay, wait here a moment." Jackie stalked off to a nearby booth and spoke to a person for a few moments. Then he moved to another booth and spoke again. He led us to several other booths deeper in the store where he spoke to a few more people.

"Okay, this way," he told us.

In the back of the store there was a doorway covered in those clear plastic flaps they normally hang over the back warehouses in stores. The sort of flaps that say without saying "employees only." Jackie, heedless, went right on through them. Daniel and I followed, like the two Spaniards on the heels of Indiana Jones in Raiders.

Jackie led us up a fight of stairs and out onto an open air hallway on the back side of the second floor. We could see other parts of the dense city around us, and have clambered out onto the roof of the adjacent building if we'd wished. Eventually we arrived at a set of rooms. Inside, the rooms were filled with boxes and a Chinese man sat on a chair next to the door. He and Jackie greeted each other when they met.

"This is my friend," Jackie said. "The price he give me will be the price he give for you."

When we reached the back room, Daniel and I stood gawking, turning round and round while in the background the Hallelujah chorus sang. There were shelves and tables covered in camping equipment. Stacked literally from floor to ceiling were various brands of hiking boots, coats, sleeping bags, camping stoves, gloves, and socks. There were also an assortment of used power tools, which was a little odd.

"Sometimes the factories will make too much. When they have to much sometimes they give things to people like him. They can sell for cheaper price and not pay taxes on the goods. The things you pay high price in your country for, we can get for very cheap."

Dan and I spent the next three hours picking through the pile, trying things on, checking ourselves out in the mirror outside. I now have some idea of what it must be like for girls when you guys go cloths shopping. I've just never found the right kind of cloths.

After it was all done and said, I bought two coats. One was a green and grey Arc-teryx that I paid about fifty dollars for. It's made lightweight and waterproof for hiking up in the mountains. I also bought a bright orange coat made by a Swedish company called Outventure. They make the coats exclusively to be sold in Russia apparently. The orange coat is crazy warm. I could survive a Siberian blizzard in that thing. And for only fifty four dollars.

I also bought a pair of Arc-teryx hiking gloves, which are very nice, and four pairs of hiking socks. The socks are glorious. I want to go back and buy twenty more pairs. They are easily the most comfortable socks I have ever worn.

My last buy was a pair of hiking boots made by CAT. They're nice brown shoes that have kept my feet a lot warmer in the winter weather.

Jackie also found something for himself.

"What you think?" he asked. He turned back and forth again, looking down at his shoes. They were bright blue, the kind with the white bottoms and end. The sort you often see skater kids or arsty kids wearing.

"I like them," he said. "But if my wife was here, she would say no."

"Why?" I asked him.

"I like to buy these kind of things. She doesn't like it. She always want to have the power." He smirked. "Always Jackie this, Jackie that. I like these shoes."

When I reminded him that his wife wasn't here Jackie's smirk became a broad toothy smile.

In total I think I spent a little over a hundred and twenty dollars on some very expensive stuff. All because Jackie knew a guy. To sweeten the deal Jackie got the guy to kick in some tiger balm, which is supposedly some sort of Chinese herbal healing remedy for aches and pains. So far all I know about it is that it smells funny. If I ever mess myself up, I'll try it out. Jackie also walked away with his new shoes.

Dan and I agree that if we weren't so poor we'd have bought out that entire back room. What was funny was that we ended up buying the same cloths. He also got the orange jacket and the green coat, though thankfully he bought a different pair of hiking boots. It's hilarious when he goes out on campus. Although we look nothing alike physically, Chinese people have a hard time telling Westerners apart. Some of my students have come up to him to say hello to me, recognizing the bright orange jacket. The looks he's described on their faces have been hilarious.

I could tell you a dozen other stories about how I've gotten something because I knew a guy. I got my xbox fixed because I knew a guy. I got a really cheap dvd player because I knew a guy. I can get almost any English movie or television series because I know a guy. Now I just need to find a book guy.

That's about all for today. I started writing this post weeks ago, and finished it up today. I'm feeling pretty bush-wacked since I got back from the gym. What's been amazing to me is how fast I'm putting on muscle mass. I am almost more cut now than I ever was in high school, and I can't even lift half the weight I used to. It's weird. It's probably all the vegetables I'm eating.

I've not read much more of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I'm hoping to bite in a bit more tonight. I've also put aside other writing projects in favor of a short story competition I spotted on the net. I've been brainstorming for it the last few days, but I've got nothing so far. I've got plenty of time though. The deadline isn't till February the 14th. Wish me luck. Catch you all later.

Derek

From time to time it becomes necessary to go shopping. I'll run out of laundry detergent, or need some supplies for class..... or whatever. There are several options for getting the essentials, but the easiest place to go is what the foreign teachers have dubbed JK. The Chinese character for the shopping mall resembles those two letters. We're a clever lot.

Just outside of the campus there are these golf cart looking things, little shuttle buses that run off nearly silent electric motors. The various carts run to different places in the nearby city, taking the back roads to avoid any real traffic, considering the cart can do maybe 15-20 miles per hour. I usually will take one to get to JK. On the way the cart passes through a poorer section of town, and it's when you're here that you get a look at what China is really like.

The first stop on the way to the mall is a huge open air food market that none of the Lao Wai are brave enough to shop at. I've stopped and looked around a few times, but I've never bought anything. Stretching though an open building that roughly resembles a giant hanger are vendors selling all types of food from meat, to fruits and vegetables. And they're fresh. Like really really fresh. The fish are still flopping around in a tank when you buy them. What's sorta creepy (yet admittedly fascinating in that eight year old boy sort of way) is watching the vendors gut an clean the fish after you've selected one. One of my favorite China moments so far came when I heard a chicken squawking in the distance in rising frenzy only to have the squawks suddenly cut off by a loud *KuThuck*.

What's really interesting is the various tidbits of land that line the road on the way to the mall. I kid you not, you know that two foot wide section of grass that lines the edge of the road in a lot of cities? Well, the industrious people of Wuhan have turned those little chunks of land into crop fields. Stretching through most of the back roads are fields of various types of vegetables, some of which, will no doubt go to be sold at the previously mentioned market.

I've seen a lot of things that have reminded me of how good I've got it. I drove through one section of Wuhan in a taxi, and during the drive we passed by a massive lumbar yard. What was amazing is about one of every three buildings looked like it housed a family on the lumber yard, rather than housing work space. Cloths hung out on lines and children ran and played amongst the lumber.

I could go on.

What's really interesting is that these parts of the city seem to me to be almost deliberately hidden from the eyes of people who travel through the city. The major throughways of the city always look "nice", but stray off the main roads too far... and its like walking into a whole 'nother city.

I think that's all for now. It's a nice Sunday night and my lesson plans are done. I recently got my xbox repaired, and I've discovered a source of nearly unlimited games to play. This may have had something to do with my recent absence. I've just finished the Best Short Stories of Issac Asimov, and I'll be going back to finish off Light soon. Catch you later.

Derek

No, not that Jackie Chan.

On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I drag my tired (and probably lazy)body down from my apartment and walk the hundred feet between my building and the gym. The gym is an unassuming place located on the second story of a large square building, the bottom floor of which serves as a water drum (the five gallon ones you see used as the stereotypical office "water cooler") distribution center for the campus. Always waiting there to greet me is a middled aged man who wears glasses as thick as Michigan ice, the gym's owner and sole personal trainer, Jackie Chan.

This is not likely his real name. Being the dumb westerners that we are, many Chinese people have discovered that it's more expedient to come up with a western sounding name rather than trying to teach us their Chinese ones. Thus, many of my students go by such illustrious names as Albert, Bill, Alice, John, Mike and my personal favorite: Boy Gaga. Real name or not, Jackie always waves hello, and assures me that if I need anything I only need to ask for it.

The gym is split into three sections. One section, which isn't gym-like at all, has a group of pool tables that attract Chinese students and western teachers alike for late night games of 8-ball. Another section consists of a large open space with hardwood floors walled off by glass. This section of the gym serves as the dance and yoga room for the girls as well as the kung fu room for the guys. It also houses Jackie's motley collection of treadmills and exercise bikes. The last room houses the things you'd be most likely to find in a gym: the free weights and machines.

All kinds show up there to work out, from scrawny boys that look like they might still be passing through the middle school stage of puberty to enormous guys who have mountains of muscle upon their low lying plains of muscle. There's even this seventy year old ex-champion weight lifter who comes in from time to time and puts us all to shame. The gym also has a cat, which belongs to Jackie, who will come out of Jackie's office and watch the weight lifters from time to time. As Jackie points out, "he knows that (and acts like) he is king here."

While the gym isn't the nicest place I've ever worked out in (the floor is dangerously uneven in places, and some of the machinery was probably in use back when Noah had his midlife crisis), it's certainly the most interesting. What really gives the place it's life is it's owner, Jackie.

When we all signed up for the gym early in the fall, Jackie offered each of us his services as a personal trainer. Most of us turned him down, but a few took him up on it. Word of mouth has spread Jackie's popularity. Jackie has his kung fu masters in training come in every day of the week and rotates through back, arm, leg, and chest exercises that leave his poor students ready to die afterwards. Then he takes them into the dance room to learn the fundamentals of kung fu.

If you watch Jackie at work, you lose a lot of incorrect pre-assumptions about him. He dresses well, usually in a nice sweater and a sharp pair of jeans, but he doesn't strike you as the macho, "I vill paump you aup!" type. At least until you see him roll up his sleeves.

One of Jackie's weight lifting strategies is to put way more weight than you could possibly lift into your hands. He helps you get it up in the air, and makes you let it back down. Inevitably, when you're getting ready to grunt, Jackie will roll up his sleeves (which always seem to fall back down between lifts) and grasps the weight with you. It's then that you spot the iron rods the man has for arms.

"If you here," (he points at your arm, while demonstrating a lifting technique) "and here," (he shows the next position and how to get there) " you will let out the power."

"But. If you do like this..." (he does an oddly apt impersonation of other people you've seen working in the gym, an impersonation that can often reduce even the bulkiest of men to gawky children again) "and this.." (he flops around a little more for added comic effect) "no good."

There's something about Jackie that makes you like him, one of those things that stolidly defies description. When Jackie gives you praise, you can't help but be pleased, and when he criticizes you, you can't help but feel disappointed in yourself.

I personally haven't gotten into Jackie's weight lifting routines (I have long established methods of my own which work to my satisfaction), but I've been drawn into his kung fu lessons like a moth to the flame. Between those and weight lifting, I usually spend two hours in the gym, getting the fat out, as Jackie says.

When the night's over, I wave to Jackie, and his cat, whose name translates into English as Stupid Bowl (Jackie says that if you give your pet a derogatory name it will live longer)before I go back to my apartment and drag myself back up the five flights of stairs to my room. It's weird how satisfied beating the crap out of your body can feel.

Life goes on. I'm reading through Danse Macabre, a piece of nonfiction by Stephen King dealing with the horror genre between the years of 1950 and 1980. I have to recommend Stephen's nonfiction, which is some of the most entertaining I've ever read, especially if you're interested in what he's talking about. I'd sometimes pick it up over a piece of fiction. Sorry Chris; Light will have to wait a few more days. I'm also stewing on other writing projects now that my time has been freed up.

Catch you all later.

PS: (The famous Jackie Chan's Chinese name is Cheng Long, for those of you who were wondering.)

If you walk out of the front gate of Jiang Han University and take a right you'll only need walk a block down before you find one of my favorite parts of China: what the local teachers call "The Night Market".

At five o'clock the street corner is empty. Cars streak by, weaving in and out of legal and illegal lanes. If you walk away for a little while you'll be surprised when you come back. Less than twenty minutes later food stands, tables, and chairs have all appeared in their places ready to serve customers. The vendors stretch almost a hundred feet, and you can buy all sorts of different kinds of food, from noodles, to spring rolls, to my personal favorite: meat on a stick. (probably lamb kabobs, but I couldn't really tell you)The vendors will be there, rain or shine, and so far the October weather hasn't kept them away either.

My favorite part of going down there is establishing a relationship of sorts with the vendors. When I arrive each night and scan the stalls to see whats for sale all the vendors will wave, and say Hello!. I like to think that their just friendly, but it probably has more to do with the fact that I'm a lao wai, and of course, all lao wai are rich beyond imagining. I don't think they'd be too shocked if I decided to pay in gold coins one night. The vendors I visit regularly however, know what I want without really needing to ask, which is entertaining. I usually walk up, wave hello, then hand them money without a word and they cook up my regular order.

One vendor sells me spring rolls. He has a little stall three to four feet wide and three feet deep on which he has a big wok filled with cooking oil. He fries up spring rolls, some sort of tofu, and rice balls (filled with meat or tofu, I'm not sure which). I usually get some spring rolls off him.

The next person I visit is the Kabob Man. He has a long narrow grill, lit with propane which he cooks kabobs over. I get the meat kabobs, though I've seen a few other kinds. I couldn't tell you what they were exactly. This is a common theme when ordering food: you often wonder what it was you just ate.

My last stop is at the Muslim vendor. A pair of young men work there, I believe they're brothers, and they also sell various kabobs. More important is their grilled bread. The bread has already been baked once: it's shaped like a cooked pizza crust, thin on the inside and raised around the edge, just slightly brown. They put this between some sort of metal grilling apparatus and baste the thing with oil. While its cooking over the coals they put on various herbs and spices, liberally applying more oil with a brush. When it's done its cut up into four pieces and brought on a metal plate covered in plastic. The frying action of the oil while the bread is on the grill makes the thin middle of the bread sort of crunchy, while the outside stays soft in the middle. This is on the list of best food I've had in China.

The only downside to The Night Market is that it often makes the westerners sick. While I wouldn't trade the place for the world, it's not the most sanitary, and eating at the market is a good way to ensure that you'll have the runs the next day. Even my iron bowls have gotten irritable after eating there. I've only gotten the toilet troubles once, but I've been close often. I can only go two days in a row before my intestines begin to growl and complain.

Life goes on in the greater world. My classes are progressing smoothly, and I'm getting involved in all sorts of new and interesting things. I'm learning how to play Chinese chess with some of the other teachers and next week I'm going to start taking Chinese lessons. Still slacking of on starting Light: I'm still a little burnt out on reading since the Count of Monte Cristo.

Every living place has its own distinctive background noise. When you're away from home on a long trip, its one of those things that prevents you from getting proper sleep at night: you miss the sounds of home. The sound of cars going by in the city, or the chirping critters and windy nights of the country. I sleep best to the sound of thunderstorms.

I've learned that China's sort of hostile to the whole notion of peaceful sleep. You've got to get to bed at decent hour if you want a good night's rest. Take a night from a few days ago as an example.

I've finished classes for the day. As I walk out of the building where I teach, J16, I listen to the buzz of incomprehensible voices that surround me like a river, each heading to their own destinations for the evening. The buzzing fades to a helter skelter percussion beat as I walk by the basketball courts: the footfalls and bouncing basketballs of over a hundred Chinese students sometimes brings me to a stop, and I watch them.

I get home and my key rattles in the front door. My footsteps echo as I climb up to my fifth floor apartment. My door always opens and shuts with a metallic thunderclap. It looks a lot like a bank vault door, and has six pins that slide into the wall. (I don't worry about thieves much) I strip off my outer dress shirt and change into a pair of shorts. In the distance you can hear the nasal, high pitched yells of Chinese women, which never really fade. Some poor henpecked husband somewhere is getting told what for. I bust out my laptop and start my work for the night, usually planning future lessons or getting a little writing done. AC/DC keeps me going, reminding me that when you "work, work," "money made." When ten o'clock rolls around, its time for bed, regardless of whether I've got work the next day or not.

I doze off. Sometimes sleep is delayed by the buzzing of mosquitoes if I've forgotten to close the door to my balcony. The hours tick by and I sleep the sleep of the dead, restful and care free.

One o'clock in the morning:

I wake up to the sound of barking dogs. Barking dogs?, I ask. I the middle of the campus? I try to ignore it, but it's not just any dog, its the shrill bark of a bunch of little yappy dogs. Where did they come from? Who knows? I finally get up and go out onto the balcony. Sure enough, there's a pack of four of them down there, running in circles, chasing each other, wagging their devilishly cute little tails.

"Shut up," I yell. Unfortunately, Chinese dogs, like Chinese people, don't speak much English. They keep barking.

I lay back down. To get rid of the dogs I'd have to walk down five flights of stairs in the middle of the night. I hope they will go away. I'm disappointed for the next half hour. If you could see my face in the dark you'd see my brows, which start off relatively straight, forming a steeper and steeper V shape. My mind, naturally morbid to begin with, starts concocting a plan. In the evenings, the English teachers from the apartment sit up on the roof and have a few beers. There are a lot of empty bottles up there.

I smile.

Whistling "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", I grab my keys and head up to the roof. I'd forgotten. Not only are there beer bottles, but there is the occasional rock as well. Perfect.

I look around and select a palm sized rock, no sense in making some poor Chinese street cleaner pick up a bunch of broken glass. I look over the edge of the roof and find the dogs. I cock my arm back, taking aim.

"Shuuuuuuuuuuuut Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!" I yell again. I've found that you can sometimes penetrate the language barrier if you repeat yourself slowly and more distinctly.

The rock (more like a hunk of roofing material) explodes when it hits the ground, and all the dogs simultaneously jump in the air, landing to look in the direction where the rock landed. I throw a few more, hoping to scare them off, but it doesn't. Now they just have something to bark at, rather than barking randomly.

Defeated, I go back to my room. I encourage myself by thinking about a restaurant nearby that serves dog. The dogs did go away eventually, though it was something like three o'clock by the time they did. I dropped off immediately after they left, drifting back into the wonderland of dreams.

Six o'clock in the morning:

BANG.

Groggy mumble. Ten seconds pass.

BANG.

Whah?

BANG. This bang literally reverberates through my room. It sounds like somebody is up on the roof with a sledge hammer. Randomly hitting things. This doesn't surprise you much after you've lived in China for a while.

There may have been some yelling in my room. Perhaps some indistinct swearing and oath taking, but it didn't make man with hammer stop what he was doing. There wasn't anything I could do about it. I got up, showered, dressed, and got ready for class. Then I left for class so I wouldn't have to listen to the pounding above me. I thought about going up to see what was going on, but I thought better of it. An encounter involving myself and man with hammer may have ended in him accidentally falling off the roof.

Later that day, I was coming back with one of the other Engish teachers, Daniel. He lives on the floor above me, the top floor. Whatever man with hammer is doing it's right above Daniel's head.

"I thought about going up there and pushing him off the roof," Daniel confided to me, sounding a little ashamed. We decided that our tempers had cooled off to a point where we might be able to visit man with hammer, so we went up to the roof to take a look around.

Now, you have to know a bit about the layout of our roof before I can continue. The room is divided into flat sections with high walls that connect a row of three apartment buildings. Each building has a tower situated on top, this is where the door is located to go back down into the apartments.

We got up to the door, and looked out to see that man with hammer had been busy while we'd been teaching. I kid you not, he'd dug a trench a little over a foot wide and a foot and a half deep around the tower. I couldn't tell you why. When we got out onto the roof we discovered man with hammer had two companions, man with pickax, and man with hardhat who watches man with hammer and man with pickax, but doesn't seem to do anything. Man with hammer and man with pickax were crouched around the trench they'd dug and were pulling out the concrete they'd broken up while man with hardhat looked on, occasionally pointing and giving suggestions. I suspect man with hardhat is management. Some things stay the same, no matter where you go.

When I look back I'll always remember man with hammer. It's not because of the trench he dug (and will hopefully fill with water and piranhas as a defense against crafty wall climbing thieves), but because he personifies the sound of China so well, the sound of construction. I've taken a number of walks around the school, and on those walks I can think of at least eleven buildings that I've seen that are under construction. There are probably more. Everywhere you go, China is absolutely exploding, not just in population, but in infrastructure as well. Three of the "buildings" (one of them is a football pitch) out of the eleven I've mentioned are being put up directly around my apartment. To say the least, I've gotten used to the sound of jackhammers and construction machinery during the day.

It's mid morning on Sunday. I got all of my work for next week done on Saturday, so it's going to be a relaxing day. I think I'll go down by the lake and read a book. Maybe take a walk afterwards. I've been devilishly busy lately, so it will be nice to be able to kick back for a while. The one thing I've neglected while I've been here is my intention to get involved in the stock market. I probably won't dig into that today, but I just might sometime during the week. The university has asked the English teachers to do a two hour lecture on a topic of our choice, (mine was western fairy tales and folk lore) so I'll probably get some of that done as well. I really need to get started on Light, the book I'm currently reading. I've only gotten a chapter in so far.

Later everybody,

Derek

PS: I've noticed a lack of material from certain blogs that I follow. I find this lack of material disturbing.

Maybe you guys should get on that *hint, wink, nudge, poke, prod*. (Kudos to Chris though)

One of these days I'm going to have enough spare time in conjunction with high levels of motivation to write a substantial post on China, or on some of the things I've seen. I'm hoping it may happen sometime before the next planetary alignment.

Today I was wandering about campus, as I sometimes do. It's my birthday today, and as a result I was feeling a bit melancholy and lonely. Birthday's, after all, just aren't the same without friends and family to make them something special. I missed you all pretty badly today.

I went and visited the boss, asked her some random questions. Then I wandered over to the campus library. I'm not really sure why. After all, what good does a library in a foreign language do me?

It was raining, so it was nice to step under the shelter of the library's roof. There were a group of art students gathered around the entrance, sketching passers by and various campus buildings that could be seen in the distance. Inside, the library was nice and quiet, and the first floor surprisingly empty. The first floor consists of a lobby and various nooks and crannies filled with pictures and Chinese words.

I went up to the second floor since I couldn't find any books on the first, and was amazed (though I can't imagine why at this point) at the sudden change. The temperature rose nearly ten degrees from the first floor, and it's not because the heating was mysteriously working there. From wall to wall, Chinese students sat at desks in various states of study, some looking at books, others learning by osmosis, and others reciting things they no doubt needed to memorize for class. I looked around, and found that floor two seemed to be where the periodicals and magazines were stored. What was weird is that the actual library is separate from the study area. The magazines were in a pristine room separated from the rest of the library by glass walls. Only a single librarian was inside. The more time I spent in the library, the more I got the impression that the books were mostly for show. Eventually I got bored looking through the windows into the periodicals section and summoned an elevator to take me to the third floor.

The third floor was basically the same deal, except the periodicals had given way to actual text books. I had though about looking for a place to sit down, but gave up on the idea, there was no chance of becoming comfortable with so many people crammed into the the room. I was amused as students who looked up from their studies caught sight of me and began to stare, as Chinese people are wont to do when they spot a lau wai (a foreigner).

Floor four? I asked myself.

Why not? I replied.

The elevator dinged. Doors closed and opened. Sadly, the Chinese don't believe in elevator music.

I wasn't planning on spending much time of the forth floor, but as I was gazing through the windows into the book stacks, I noticed a book that had a title written in English.

I don't really think I can do justice to the desire a person living in a foreign country begins to feel for things familiar to their own language and customs. Suffice it to say I was suddenly excited. I may have let out an ecstatic laugh or two. Once again the Chinese kids stared at the mysterious lau wai.

"Do you think he's seen a cute girl? Or maybe a squirrel?"

"Who knows, Lau wai laugh for strange reasons. I've heard they're all mad. Too many of those potato chips make their brains fat."

"I've heard that they eat their young."

"I don't think that's actually true, but I do know that they can all juggle, sing, and dance. I always watch them closely, hoping they will do a trick for me. So far I've been disappointed."

I walked through the opening in the glass walls, and was practically punched in the face with that musty book smell that all old tomes seem to acquire. It was lovely. Almost as good as the smell of gunpowder.

"Uh, hello," the librarian tending this section said. There is a peculiar manner in which the Chinese say hello. We typically say it with an emphasis on the first syllable, where they place no emphasis at all. It feels like more of a statement than a greeting.

"Hi, do you mind if I," I made a circle gesture with my hand, "look around?"

I let him process for a few moments. It's likely been a while since he's heard or spoken English.

"Oh. Um. Why?"

"I saw a book that was in English. I just want to look" -- I tried to gesture to my eyes without appearing rude or condescending-- "around." I have a feeling that he understood me, since I spoke to him a bit more, I think he was just hesitant to let me into his section.

"Uh... okay." He gestured to the room, as if to say, "the place is yours."

Past the first possible hurdle, I turned to the book stacks on my right. I figured I'd have to go looking for the book I'd seen outside amongst the others. You can imagine my surprise when I noticed that the entire shelf was filled with English books. And so was the second. And the third. And the forth.

"Can I help find something?" His voice was devoid of emotion in the way stereotypically attributed to librarians. It was all a little surreal.

"Yeah, sure," I told him. History books, art books, business management.... I'd seen a decent variety so far. Why not put the library to the test?

"I'm looking for some books on poetry."

My other boss, Dr. Zho is getting his doctorate in contemporary poetry (he's doing it through Purdue University no less), so I had poetry on the brain.

"Po?" The librarian held out his hand, and wrote in it, as if trying to spell the word, I helped him out.

"P-O-E-T-R-Y, poetry."

"Ah." He took me over to his computer and typed the word into a word search. He referenced the results and then led me down the book stacks to the left. He stopped halfway down a row and leaned over searching through titles. It was this moment that the lights chose to go out. It wasn't the power for the building that failed. Just for the room. Somehow.

The librarian made an irritated noise in a manner that only the Chinese can.

"Wait here," he told me. I heard some banging in the background, and what may have been swearing in Chinese. A few moments later he returned and began flipping circuit breakers. One at a time the lights in the room came back on, at least until he got to my row. When he flipped that switch, the lights came on for half a second, then I heard a popping noise and they went out again. This was followed by more muttering in Chinese. Eventually the lights came back on, and he came back.

He'd led me into the library's literature section. I was surrounded by contemporary and classic literature of high caliber, and I had been drooling all over the floor since he'd left.

"Did you..." he paused "... find it?"

"Yeah." I pointed to some books. Poetry was scattered throughout the shelves. "Thanks," I told him. "There are many good books here."

"Tell your students," he said, with a look that was almost wry.

I spent most of the afternoon perusing the library. It has anything I could possibly want to study, from economics to psychology to whatnot. It also has a good literature section that I'd not likely finish in the next ten years, not to mention one or two. This discovery made my day. While I can't check out books (yet) I'm free to sit in the library and read all I like between the hours of 9:00 am and 4:30 pm. The librarian told me that I could borrow books if I got a library card, but that's not going to be as easy as it sound. Nothing involving Chinese bureaucracy ever is.

All in all though, the universe was pretty good to me today. Part of the stress of working this job has been the lack of research materials to improve my English and teaching skills. Not a problem now. I also have tons of intersting Chinese legend and lore that I can delve into without needing to learn the language, not to mention most of the famous works of literature and philosophy from the 19th and early 20th century.

"The libary is closing," the librarian told me at four thirty. I was saddened. I'd started reading through the introduction of a college writing book.

"Will you come back tomorrow?" He looked strangely hopeful. I suspect that he gets lonely by himself in the stacks. I told him I would.

"What's your name?" he asked me. I told him and asked him his. I really need to start carrying a notebook with me so I can write these names down. Chinese names are hard.

That's about all for now. I'm feeling pretty frazzled at the moment. I should probably hit the sack. I need to start reading the new book I'm reading, something one of the other English teachers lent me, Light by M. John Harrison.

Goodnight world.

The engine shifts from a high wine to a low growl as a foot presses down the clutch and slams the gear shift into third. Tires screech as the car weaves nimbly, back and forth, back and forth. The clock ticks as the driver races to his destination. You'd think this was a formula one race, but you'd be wrong.

Welcome to the inside of a Chinese taxi cab.

"Oh God, we're dead," my friend Barry says as the taxi driver tries to slip between a pair of buses. The bus on the right doesn't seem to see us and is merging into our lane. This doesn't phase our driver, who speeds up and lays on the horn, waving his other hand in the air, muttering in Chinese.

"What's he doing?!" Dan, asks. After narrowly escaping being crushed to a smooth paste, we've emerged from between the two buses only to swerve across four lanes of traffic to dodge a clump of slow moving cars. The four lanes are rapidly becoming two as the outer lanes are blocked off by a concrete wall, protecting workers who do road repairs during the day. Just as deftly as the driver dodged the cars from behind, he slips in front of them now, with under a hundred feet to spare between us and the wall.

You'd think I was describing a one time event, something that happened to the group of us once while we were riding through Wuhan. You'd be wrong again. It'd be more accurate to say that I'm describing a weekly ritual.

On the weekends several of the boys, including myself, enjoy going out to an Irish pub called the Toucan. Being British, most of my friends are die hard futbal fanatics and take any opportunity they can get to catch games, which are regularly shown at the pub.

By the time we arrive wide eyed, dizzy, and somewhat pale, we stumble out of the cab and pay the drivers, who we must admit, often save us a little money by getting us to the pub so quickly. Too bad they don't realize that we're probably trading years off the end of our lives. One of these days I'm going to learn how to say slow down in Chinese.

The Toucan is an interesting pub; it's a hotel pub nestled in the back of a gigantic Holiday Inn. It's a draw for a lot of ex-pats in the area, giving westerners a place to congregate with people of like culture and language. There are also a surprising number of Chinese people who come to the bar as well, about half of them women, likely looking for a western husband. A live band also comes to the pub, which is universally hated by our group since they drown out the futbal game half the time, and are terrible on top of it. There's also a fuse-ball table (the most common fixture of western bars in China) and a lovely outer room, where we can usually sit and watch the games unmolested by the pub's other patrons.

The best part about the pub, other then the futbal, is the western food they serve. It's crazy expensive, but it's a nice change of pace from the typical Chinese cuisine we subsist on normally. I ordered a pizza there one week with pepperoni, sausage, ham, and two other meats that I can't think of right now on top. It was epic. Next month, I'm going to try the steak sandwich.

What's really going to be fun is when the Six nations and Tri nations cups start up, the big rugby matches in Europe and the Pacific respectively. I haven't watched rugby in nearly four years, but I have fond memories of it from my time in Australia.

It's quiet right now at my apartment, other then the barking of a pack of stray dogs which sometimes rove around the campus. I mentioned a while back that I was reading Wuthering Heights. I've since finished it (it was good by the way) and moved on to The Count of Monte Cristo. The Count is a monster of a book, and I'll probably be on that one for a while, though I don't mind by any means. It's been great so far.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Hangzhou and Nanjing, so it will be a while before you hear from me again. Take care everybody.

Derek