Hanging Temple and Yungang Grottoes

Over my long weekend, my parents and I headed to the little known city of Datong in nearby Shanxi province.  We took and overnight train, which was another new experience for Mom and Dad, but pretty familiar for me by now.  Although usually it is a bad idea to listen to anyone offering taxis, hotels or tours outside the train station, I had done my research and knew that CITS, a large and reliable travel agency in China, often sent someone to wait for tourists at the train stations.  Since we had a limited time in Datong and the few sights we wanted to see were all a long drive away, we decided to go to the CITS office to see what they could offer us.  They called an English speaking driver for the day, and we were off.
First stop, the Hanging Temple.

The temple, built into the cliffside, is about an hour's drive away from Datong through rural Shanxi.  The area is very poor.  Most people are either subsistence farmers or coal miners.  The scenery along the way was beautiful, with jagged cliffs and hills, but peppered with rundown villages and cave homes.  It's definitely a far cry from the bright lights and wide avenues of Wangfujing, where my parents had stayed in Beijing.
The temple itself isn't too well known.  Although Datong is in the process of becoming a tourist destination (the center of the city was recently torn down to build a replica of the "old city" that used to be there), it hasn't really caught on yet.  There were a few other tourists at the temple, but not too many. 

Did I mention my mom is afraid of heights?  I'm not sure I still believe that, after the Great Wall and climbing up into the Hanging Temple.  I think the ski jump is next! 
We climbed up to the temple and walked through it, which didn't take very long.  It's pretty small, which makes sense considering how much work it must have taken to build it into the cliff.  Even so, it was one of the highlights of my parents' visit to China, and one of my favorite trips as well.
After seeing the Hanging Temple, we stopped for lunch with our driver and continued on to the Yungang Buddhist Grottoes, another hour's drive away. These grottoes, with over 50,000 statues, were carved 1,500 years ago.  They were really impressive, even though all three of us have an admitted ignorance about Buddhism and didn't know the significance of anything. 
I'm having internet problems right now, and it has suddenly decided not to let me upload any more photos, so you'll just have imagine the Yungang Grottoes for now.  Or Google them, I guess.

Visiting Dignitaries

Last week my parents were visiting China, and after a few days exploring Beijing and the Great Wall, they came down to Baoding and the Eastern Bilingual School.  They definitely got the royal treatment at school.  As when Elizabeth and Ben came in January, my students were so excited to see my parents that I was almost invisible to them.  I'm used to getting cheers and hugs when I enter a classroom, but my family all got more hugs and cheers than I ever did, and small gifts as well.  One girl gave my mom a tiny fake pearl. 
Entirely by chance, one of the days my parents were here was my school's annual kite flying festival.  The whole primary school, kindergarten, and the parents of the first grade were all gathered to open  the festival with a few speeches, the national anthem and a brief kite display.  After I met my parents at the school gate, we went out to the field to watch the proceedings.  I thought we could watch from the back of the crowd, but one of the teachers approached us and asked us to sit in front, facing the crowd, with the most important people from our school.  So, as the festival began, we sat facing over a thousand children, parents and teachers, and were announced alongside the principal, headmaster, and founder of the school.  Yeah, apparently foreign teacher (and parents!) is just as important as founder around here.  And, not to brag, but I did get the biggest cheer from the students.

The view from our seat

Some of the older students opening the festivities

After the flag raising and opening speeches, the older students went back to class, and even though I was supposed to have class, too, the school photographer wanted to take some pictures of us with the students and the kites.  First he had us link arms with some sixth graders and walk around looking at the different kites that students had decorated.  I don't teach sixth grade, so the students were a little shy about talking to me. 

Each student had a blank kite to decorate with their hopes and dreams

Of course, after all of the older students returned to class, we were asked to be in class photos of all six first grade classes, and some parents even asked me to take individual pictures with their students.  My face hurt from smiling so much!  I don't interact with my students' parents very often, obviously because I can't speak Chinese, so it was nice to meet some of them and for them to see their children speaking English with me and my parents.  By the way, the Chinese equivalent of "cheese" when taking a picture is "qiezi," the word for eggplant, because like the word cheese, it forces the speaker's mouth into a smile.

One of my first grade classes with their kites

After all of the pictures, we followed the students and their parents out to the field where we all flew kites and ran around for a while.

After the kite flying festivities, the rest of my parents' visit to Baoding was pretty tame, although we did go to all of my favorite restaurants and spend time with my American and Chinese friends before leaving for a weekend trip to Datong. 

Fear of Heights

I'm not the one who's scared of heights.  That's my mom.  And no, even though I knew about the chair lift and alpine slide at the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, I didn't mention it until we got there. 

This was another first for me as well.  I don't know what the section I went to in the fall is called.  It was billed by my hostel as "Secret Great Wall," and it did seem pretty secret as there were very few people there.  However, I'd heard many good things about the Mutianyu section, so that's where I decided to take my parents. 
Upon arrival, we had to take a chair lift up from the parking lot to the wall.  There, we had a choice of which way to hike and of course we chose the unrestored section, and completely ignored the "not open to public" sign.  To be fair, lots of other people ignored it too.

The restored section, with the now familiar smog

Our path

After walking as far as we could along the unrestored part of the wall, we headed back to our starting point, where our options to return to the parking lot and our driver were either the chair lift back down or an alpine slide.

Which do you think we chose?

We couldn't pass up the chance to take an alpine slide, after all.

Despite a bit of smog, we had a lovely day at the Great Wall.  I know that the Wall inspired thoughts of grandeur and, well, greatness, but actually I'm much more inspired and awed by the sections that are so crumbled and old that it is barely recognizable as a wall at all.  I think my parents felt the same way.  After all, we share a devotion to Antiques Roadshow and American Pickers, and always take their lessons to heart.  Don't restore anything, don't repaint anything, don't fix anything.  It's a lesson China could try to learn. 

Beijing Duck

I take Hugh Grant pretty seriously, especially as the awkward but wise prime minister in Love Actually.  His opening line, "Whenever I start to get gloomy about the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport," has been running around in my head for the past couple weeks, especially as I headed for the arrivals gate at Beijing Airport to pick up my parents last week.

At the Summer Palace

After seven months away from home, it is hard to describe how happy I was to see my parents at the arrivals gate.  We had a full two weeks planned, spanning Beijing and two provinces.  The first thing on the agenda was a visit to the Summer Palace in Beijing.  We had some pretty smoggy weather, but not nearly as bad as it was in January.  Still, the Summer Palace is beautiful in any weather and great for walking and exploring.
Later that day we tried the famous Beijing roast duck. Despite having lived so close to Beijing for over half a year, this was the first time that I tried Beijing duck.  I feel a little bad saying this, but I was seriously underwhelmed.  With all of the hype, I expected Beijing duck to be a highlight of my culinary experience in China.  Instead, it was pretty boring compared to my favorite Chinese foods.

At least the presentation was good.  They carved the duck at our table and one of the waitresses showed us the correct way to eat the duck

Condiments for the duck

After carving the duck at our table, one of the waitresses showed us how to eat it.  We dipped the skin in sugar, and wrapped the meat in pancakes with the other condiments.  It was aesthetically interesting, but somewhat bland.  After we got there, I realized that there Beijing duck was not the easiest first meal for chopstick newbies.  By the end of their time here, my parents were experts at chopsticks (most of the time), but our first meal made it clear that they needed more practice. 

Dumpling Day

Today is dumpling day in the cafeteria, and I thought I would take the extra free time to update my blog with some short school related anecdotes.

 This week I have been playing Jeopardy with my older classes, and one of the categories was Questions About the Teacher.  I got a few very interesting answers.  The question "What's my name?"got the following answers: Teacher, Michael Jackson, Kitty, Meinu (Beautiful Woman in Chinese), and Monkey.  When I asked my third graders where I was from, they replied "Chinada" which I can only imagine is a hilarious hybrid of China and Canada.  And when I asked "How old am I?" I got a few very distressing answers.  I mean, do I really look like I'm 37? My co-teachers just sat in the back and laughed the whole time.

  For a long time I have been wondering whether my first graders understood that I was teaching them a different language.  They almost always speak to me in Chinese when I come to their class, no matter how much I shake my head and repeat "I don't know." One example of this was when I was trying to teach food vocabulary.  Even though I had them repeat the word "rice" tons of times, when I held up a picture of rice they still shouted "mifan" triumphantly, all absolutely certain that it was the right answer.  Last week one student even asked me, in Chinese, whether I was Chinese or foreign. But today there was a breakthrough when some of my first graders began teaching me Chinese words for fruit and laughing hysterically whenever I repeated them. 

   Celine Dion was on the Spring Festival Gala on TV this year, and one of my students must have really enjoyed her performance because every time I see him he asks me, "Who is Celine Dion?" and then when I say she's a singer he says, "Me too!"

   And in other news, my Chinese friend Ada just got engaged, and my parents will be in China tomorrow!

A Kissing Problem

One of the big perks of my job is that my students are always happy to see me.  They know that my class is a break from their regularly scheduled programming of memorization and homework.  They know that we will sing songs and play games and that I probably won't discipline them at all.  I like to think that they also like me as a person.  Even when they see me every week it isn't out of the ordinary for students to cheer when I enter their classroom, so this week when my students were seeing me for the first time in nearly six weeks, I got a several standing ovations and lots of hugs. 
My first and second graders are very physically affectionate.  They don't see their parents often, so I think they come to see the teachers here as parent figures in some ways.  I'm used to spending time with kids and I don't mind hugging kids even if their nose is running and even if I know there is no hand soap in the bathrooms.  Some of my second graders, all girls, also like to kiss me on the cheek when they see me, and although this made me a little uncomfortable at first, I knew that they were just trying to show me that they liked me, so I figured it was ok.  But, I have one student (now named Sophie), who really wants to kiss me on the lips.  She always mimes this and reaches for my face while pursing her lips.  This started last semester and I have so far fended her off.  I usually just try to pretend that I don't understand what she wants.  I talked with some of my coworkers about this, and they said that it was fine and normal, especially since she's a girl.  They all told me that it was fine for the girl to kiss me, but I guess my own cultural perception of student and teacher kissing is too ingrained in me.  It makes me feel uncomfortable, but of course there is no way for me to convey this to Sophie other than pushing her away when she tries to kiss me.  Obviously I don't want to push her away.  I don't want her to think that I don't like her or that affection is bad, but still, I cannot let her kiss me. 

Draco, Darcy and Friend

This week we started school again here at the 雙語學校.  My students and coworkers were all very happy to see me and hear about my adventures.  I missed them all so much!  It's great to be back here, and to know that my students and coworkers missed me too. 
I decided to start off the new semester by helping my students choose English names.  English students in China are notorious for choosing ridiculous names.  My friends who teach at a university here in Baoding have class lists that read more like grocery lists or weather reports.  I've heard of students named Banana, Snow, Happy and T-Rex.  Often when choosing English names, students seem to just choose any word that they like the sound of.  I actually think it is cute and a little poetic, but I wanted my students to have real names regardless.  Not that I was entirely honest about what names are "popular" in the US.  I compiled a list of names including many of my friends and family and some of my favorite literary characters.  Then I read the list to my students, and had them choose from the list.  So now Baoding Eastern Bilingual School is populated with all of my favorite people and the entire cast of characters from Harry Potter.  For some reason no one wanted to be named Knightley, Mercutio, Juliet or Sherlock, but I did convince one boy to take the name Darcy. 
Some of my older students already had names in mind, and of course I let them choose whatever name they wanted, so I also ended up with a boy named Friend and a girl named Bubbles.