We're Not in Changsha Anymore

Zhuzhou, Hunan -- the Xiang Jiang River

Guys -- This is a really long entry. If you don't want to read the WHOLE thing, we've divided it into sections below. Miss you and hope you are all well!

David and Tiffany

Zhuzhou

So here we are in Zhuzhou, Hunan, People's Republic of China. It is an industrial city of nearly 4 million people. People keep telling us that is a small town here in China, but it definitely doesn't feel that way to us! We're told that the city was rebuilt with the Soviets' help after it had been destroyed by the Japanese in WWII. As a result, most of the city is relatively modern and well organized. Parks, residences, and small businesses are in one part of town; factories (and there are a lot of factories) are in another.

Zhuzhou is also one of the 5 largest train hubs in China. Because of this, many countryside people and travelers make their way through our town to sell, trade, or just catch a connecting train to somewhere else. This is good news for us, as it means that we can hop on a direct train to nearly anywhere within China fairly easily. If only we could read the signs, tell the ticket agents where we wanted to go, or even make it to the front of the line at the train station to attempt to purchase our tickets because lines don't matter here (More on this below)!

Zhuzhou is about an hour away from Changsha, the city we had training in. The city lies in the midst of small hills on a river (the Xiang Jiang) that is a branch of the Yangzte. If you talk to people within our province, they will tell you that our city is famous for it's factories. If you searched Zhuzhou online you might find that last year it was ranked as one of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world. Some days it's not so bad, but others are downright scary! On the bad mornings, you can look out your window and swear you're seeing fog rolling in like over San Francisco Bay. You can't see the other side of the river or sky scrapers in the distance. I'm no environmental expert, but that can't be good.

To add to the air quality problems in our area, the people who run a small farm just across the fence from our apartment perform a monthly ritual, "The Burning of the Trash." This ritual was performed for the first time yesterday. Not having heard of this ritual before, we saw billowing clouds of black smoke completely engulfing our apartment and immediately thought our building was on fire. We quickly packed up our passports and computer and ran outside only to realize that nobody else was panicking. As such, we began to wonder, "is this a normal occurrence?" David was curious and walked through a cloud of smoke to peek out a 5th story window in our stairwell. Sure enough, a big pile of garbage was burning fiercely down below. WOW, it smelled! No lie; we both noticed later that afternoon when we blew our noses that the Kleenexes had turned black (Gross!).

The Burning of the Trash

The People Here are Amazing!
Okay, but to put China back into your travel plans for the future, I do have to say some positive things. For one, we have never met more kind and helpful people. The local people we've met seem to understand the huge challenge we have ahead of us as we struggle to adapt to life in their country and have been extremely generous with their time, money, and any other resources they might have. The bus drivers are always looking out for us, hollering "hello, hello, hello!!!" (because that is the only English word they know) to indicate that we’ve arrived at our stop. Several times we've been lost in the city and struggled a bit with how (or who) to ask for help. Each time this has happened, a local person has gone well out of his way to get us back on track. On a recent trip to Yueyang in Northern Hunan, a woman standing on the side of the road (who spoke no English) noticed that we were lost. After we showed her in our guidebook where we were trying to go, she pulled out her cell phone and called her husband. Within minutes, he pulled up in a mini-van to take our group of 5 to our desired destination for free.

Our experience with a college student we’ve befriended named Nick epitomizes the generosity we’ve seen of the Chinese people. We met Nick through some fellow foreign English teachers. Nick and his dad (who holds a fairly high position with the local police department) offered a great deal of their time over the last week serving as our personal tour guides for Zhuzhou and the surrounding area. One day, they drove us (in his father’s police car) about 2 hours west into the town of Shaoshan to see the Birthplace of Chairman Mao (More on this below). The next day, they drove us about an hour east to the city of Liling to get a behind the scenes tour of a Chinese porcelain factory. Nick helped us get our first care package from home at the local post office (who really, really, REALLY didn’t want to give us our package, but that’s another story), helped us negotiate with the bike salesmen for bicycles (and even let David borrow his bike for the year), and helped us with our first experience buying train tickets for a trip. During this time, his dad must have treated us to no fewer than 5 banquet dinners, refusing to let us help pay, even when we took his family out to dinner and told them beforehand that it was our treat (we even tried to sneak out and find the waitress before she brought the bill but Nick’s mom caught on to us and intercepted the waitress before we could pay). The people of Zhuzhou really want us to feel welcome here! The picture at the top of the page was taken of Zhuzhou from Nick's parent's condo.

Guanxi
One thing we’ve learned a lot about since coming to China is Guanxi (pronounced Gwan shee). It is a word that represents the importance of relationships and is sort of like “goodwill.” You start out with no Guanxi (like us) and you gain Guanxi by treating the right people with gifts and favors. If you do give a gift or a simple kind gesture, you have automatically entered the cycle of Guanxi with that person and it is expected that they will do something for you in return when needed.

In Zhuzhou, Nick’s dad has a lot of Guanxi. He seems to know just about anybody you might need to know to get a good deal around here. He was able to get us a behind the scenes tour of the porcelain factory (see above) because he was friends with the owner. At the end of the tour, he was able to secure a free porcelain cup for each of us on the tour and get us a 60% discount on anything else we wanted to buy there. He’s friends with many of the owners of restaurants in town where he treated us to dinner; he also seems to have an endless supply of friends who helped drive our group (which was a bit too large for one car) around town and other destinations.

We’re learning that Guanxi is a tricky game for us foreigners to play, however. For example, we came well prepared to begin building Guanxi with the bosses at our school (I give you an American T-Shirt or hat, and in return you make an effort to have the repairman fix the leaking pipes in my apartment’s wall and ceiling). We’d brought a supply of Green and Gold Baylor University caps to give to school representatives (Good idea, right? Everyone loves a free hat – and they were one size fits all!). However When we handed it to one person, he refused our gift (actually, it was almost as if he didn’t even want to touch it). Somewhat surprised, we wondered what was wrong with our hat. He responded by saying that in our part of China, wearing a green hat is considered a sign that your spouse is cheating on you and you don’t yet know. Who knew?! So, we owe him a different gift and now have a drawer full of green hats we can no longer give to anyone (unless we travel up to northwestern China, where green hats are apparently a sign of power and strength). Needless to say, we aren't climbing up the Guanxi ladder very quickly. Maybe that explains why our apartment is still plagued by a pipe leak from the apartment above, burnt out lights, and drippy faucets more than a week after our move in date!

No Guanxi = Leaky Apartment

School in China
School starts for us on Monday (at least, we’re pretty sure that’s the case). One big difference between schools in America and schools in China is the timing of when schedules are published. In America, you know well in advance when the first day of school is, when the holidays are, etc. Here in China, things aren’t really finalized until the last minute. For example, tomorrow is the first day of classes here, but we still don’t have our class schedule yet. Are we teaching tomorrow? Hopefully, we’ll find out soon. As of last Sunday, the school hadn’t officially told the teachers when the first day of classes would be. It works the same way with vacations – we know the general time frame of certain vacation days that we’ll get during the year, but the school doesn’t release the actual dates until a couple of weeks beforehand (and even when they do choose dates, the schools can still change them if they want). That makes planning trips awfully difficult! I’m not really sure how this works, but nobody here seems to mind. Teachers, students, and their families must be very flexible and patient!

Another big difference between schools in the US and China is the distinction between public and private schools. Everyone is supposed to go to primary school (although it is still not technically free and some families – especially in rural China -- can’t afford for their child to go). Past that, not everyone is necessarily “required” to go to school.

If you want to go to a Chinese middle school or high school, you pay for your tuition no matter what. As part of the application process, each student takes a standardized test. Kids with higher scores on the tests get into the public schools, which are cheaper. Kids with scores too low to get into public school can apply to private schools, which are more expensive. Thus, the higher performing -- at least according to the standardized test -- go to public schools and the lower performing kids end up at private schools. So, it's not like you can just go to the school near your home. The school has to accept you AND you have to have enough money to go. Our school is a private boarding school. It is not considered the “best” school in Zhuzhou (that distinction belongs to the public school down the road), but it is still a very good school with TONS of resources (flat screen TVs in every room for presentations). We’re told the parents of the students here pay a lot of money for them to attend.

One note – the paragraph above begs the question: Why are we teaching for so little pay at a school that has so many resources and so much money? What is the need? Apparently, Hunan province, an inland industrial and agricultural province, has a much harder time getting native English speakers to come to its schools and teach than the wealthier provinces along the coast. English is a still a big part of the curriculum required by the Chinese Department of Education (DOE) and it is on the test students take to get into college. Further, many students here have aspirations of studying in American universities and English is definitely a requirement for them. Thus, it is important for the students to learn English. There are places in China with far fewer resources than Hunan where we could theoretically teach. However, the problem is that those areas are so impoverished that they have more basic needs (i.e. food) to be met than learning English. As such, Hunan province appears to have the appropriate balance of conditions for our skills to be put to good use.

As for our school: It is a large, modern campus. The buildings all have a consistent theme on campus: bland, grey, brick, straight edges, etc. Some people have said it looks like a bit like a prison, and I can’t say I disagree. Generally, it’s a pretty nice, new campus though. The security guards at the school gates and the workers in the cafeteria have gotten to know our faces and have been really friendly with us even though we can’t really communicate verbally with them. The school ranges from primary 1 (1st grade) to senior level 3 (12th grade). Most of the students are from Zhuzhou or surrounding cities, but since our school is a boarding school they all still live on campus (with the exception of the 1st and 2nd graders, who are a bit too young to leave home for school). It was very emotional for us to see parents of the 3rd graders dropping off their only children to live at school! I wonder who does their laundry? ( I'll let you know when I find out).

We have met some really great teachers here who have offered to help us cook Chinese food and show us some of their favorite things to do around town. When we got here, the principals had a fancy banquet for us at a restaurant near school, and when we got into our apartment for the 1st time they'd placed a rose on our bed. We're excited to get to know more people as the year goes on.

Our School

Our apartment is fairly large and new. It has 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, a study, and a large, wide hallway that also serves as both the kitchen, dining room, and common area. We’ve also got 2 balconies, perfect for drying clothes!

Our Kitchen

Trips!

We've had 10 days between arriving in Zhuzhou and the 1st day of classes. We haven’t been completely free to do any long-distance trips because our school is holding onto our passports until our residence permits are finalized. We did take some day trips that were interesting:

We traveled 2 hours by car through some beautiful hills and countryside to Shaoshan, Mao Zedong’s birthplace. On display was the house Mao grew up in and a museum dedicated to his life and tenure as a leader in China. Also, for a lot of money, you could buy a large, bronze bust of Chairman Mao.

Shaoshan

Porcelain Factory in Liling

We traveled about an hour east to the porcelain factory in Liling (as mentioned above). It was unreal to see how much is still done with very basic tools and by hand. Still, I think the drive was the best part. Seeing crops of rice and summer vegetables through the rolling hills was really cool! We have had really great fresh fruits and veggies in this region!

We even had a successful train experience for a day-long outing. We traveled 2.5 hours north to Yueyang where we visited Dongting Lake, the 2nd largest freshwater lake in China (huge!!). While we were there, we took a boat out to an island where silver needle tea is grown. It was a rainy, cloudy day, but we still enjoyed the trip.

An Island on Dongting Lake where Silver Needle Tea is grown

Riding a Train in China

The trip to Dongting Lake, as is often the case in China, was more about the journey than the destination, however. We were pretty impressed by the fact that we just made it there and back! For a non-Chinese speaker, the Train station definitely requires “3 P’s”: Patience, Preparation, and a Phrasebook. The line at the train station has got to be one of the most frustrating things about China. At first glance, things appear to be very organized and orderly. However, if you look more closely at the front of the line, you notice that things get a bit more chaotic. At the front of the line, right up near the ticket window, people seem to forget the concept of "line" and begin to jockey for position. Other people just skip the back of the line altogether and try walking straight up to the ticket window, cutting in front of everyone else who'd been waiting for the past hour or so. A teenage girl tried to pull this tactic on us, but luckily the woman in the ticket window told her to go to the back of the line. Unfortunately, once we communicated what tickets we wanted to the ticket salesperson, we found out that there were no seats left for the train we wanted. However, there was still standing room available, we purchased a standing-room-only ticket on a 7am train the next morning!

Boarding the train was also an unusual experience. Once again, things seemed fairly orderly at first in the waiting lounge (before the train arrived). However, as boarding time got closer and closer, people began to crowd the gate and jockey for position (this is because all the people with standing-room-only tickets want to hop on the train first and take any open seats). Once the gate opened, things really got chaotic. Basically, it was every man for himself. Running and pushing seemed not only to be acceptable, but expected. Our group ran to get onto the train for fear that it would leave without us. We'd heard that Chinese trains are very prompt. Our train was to leave at 7:07. By my watch, they opened the gate to board the train at 7:05. That gave us about 2 minutes to get from the waiting lounge to our train car (not a short distance since our car was all the way at the end of the train, and which required going down 2 flights of stairs). David used his best juke moves to navigate through the crowd and get to the car 1st in case the train tried to leave without our group (I'm not sure what he thought he was going to do since he didn't speak Chinese and the train attendant at our car spoke no English, but maybe if he was animated enough he could convince the train to stay?) Luckily, the train left a few minutes late and our group was able to board with minutes to spare.

Once we got on the train, things were less frantic, but still interesting. People watching has never been better than on a train! There are metal trays laid on the ground and tables for spitting, shooting snot into, or dropping your peels of strange fruit/food items into along the ride. We saw lots of students heading to school, Grandparents with their grandchildren traveling in standing room only, and people carrying their luggage in plastic garbage bags. However, I think the biggest attraction on the train was our group of Americans. Our fellow passengers were not afraid to make that clear! Another girl traveling with us was standing next to me, and an elderly man gestured several times that we were both white, but her legs were bigger than mine (not saying much since I have chicken legs myself). The people – especially from the countryside – are definitely very, very, blunt here!

Waiting for the Train

Well, I feel like I’ve written a novel here. If you’ve made it to the end of this, I’m impressed! Please know that we miss everyone back home very much and are looking forward to keeping in touch with you all over the course of the school year (although I doubt our future entries will be quite this long!) Talk to you soon!

Tiffany and David