October 29, 2017

We wake up each day not being able to believe we live in the biggest city in the world.  A couple of small town folks who think Chicago is too big a place for us to live, living here and loving it.  What a blessing! What an experience!

There are 14 different Metro (subway) lines in Shanghai.  The Metro is an amazingly clean and efficient system, although sometimes crowded. Each line has both a number and its own color.  Signs are clearly marked and include English.  It's very easy to get around (once you figure out how to get and load subway cards on Chinese machines).  We can't believe that we don't miss driving at all. But the subway has taught us about the "Chinese massage" we heard a tour guide reference--when an area is so crowded with people that it's like a giant massage. Urgh. But we feel very safe. The subway isn't usually terribly crowded, but we don't often get to sit down, either. We keep track of our purses, etc., but for a major metropolitan area, it's a surprisingly safe environment.

We love going exploring. Picking a subway station and "popping up" to see what's above ground there.  Friday night we had a group dinner with the international vice president of BYU at a restaurant in the "French Concession." We hear you can get good crepes there. Shanghai has a complex history, but briefly, from 1842 for about a century, Western powers were dominant in Shanghai; there were areas that belonged to the British, the Americans, the French, etc.  Their influences as well as those of other nations remain and make Shanghai a very international experience.

After dinner, we strolled around the metro stop, where there is a Buddhist Temple, and the sights and sounds were amazing.  Street musicians, sidewalk market stalls (decorated for Halloween--they're catering to cultures that celebrate Halloween), color-changing lights along the street.  Simply amazing!

We have spent time exploring shopping areas near us that have a larger variety of international foods. We truly can get a wide variety of Western foods if we are so inclined. Cold cereal, however, is pretty expensive. Outside one supermarket near us was a little shop with a long line (which is a good sign!).  Turns out they make something that looks much like a quesadilla, with a flakier bread and filled with scrambled eggs and green vegetables (maybe leeks).  Delicious!

We both got our first Chinese haircuts this week. Kathy (after wondering what she could do to get Kathy Arzani to move to China) saw a salon that looked clean and like they were using a technique that works well on her hair. When she went in to ask whether they had any appointments available, they had to send out for someone who could speak English in order to answer her. We have "Google translate" on our phones, where we can speak and it will translate what we said into Chinese, and where someone else can speak and it will translate what they said into English, but it didn't help a lot. They communicated with us that it would be "just a minute" and served her some biscuits and water while she waited. Sign language worked pretty well during the haircut until it got to the point where she wanted a little more taken off her bangs...But all in all, it was a good haircut with a nice shampoo and some styling afterward. For about $10.

Kathy got nice little Chinese girl bangs...

And John's is SHORT!

It cost John about $5--at a different shop--which for him included washing hair, cutting, and washing hair again - then trimming just a little more to make sure it looked good, probably because his is so thick and curly. There was a person at the desk who spoke English - confirmed John wanted scissor cut on top and clippers on the side, which was about the extent of the communicating until finished.

We finally got work permits this week!  Which means we were able to apply for employment visas!  Our current guest visas expire on November 14.  Our passports with new visas will be back November 7.  An exciting week on that front!

Yesterday our branch held a Halloween party which included a chili competition among several of the men.  John has won this at our church in Iowa before, so his ego was on the line.  And he felt handicapped by not being able to find jalapeno peppers, cayenne powder, or Graziano sausage (Iowa friends will understand).  But he forged ahead and used four other peppers, bacon, and a very dark chili powder we found.  And how did it turn out???  Tied for 1st place!!  His ego remains intact, but it was close.

As we approached church today, a Chinese man was headed the other direction.  He stopped us to ask in very broken English if we were Mormon.  We said yes, he shook our hands, said "The Lord bless you," and went on his way.  It was so touching!

We coordinate a dinner on Sunday for the young single adults after the church services. (It's a challenge carrying all that on the subway--see above for reference to Chinese massage!)  Today we had 11 singles there for the dinner, including individuals from Brazil, Russia, Australia, France, the Philippines, Nigeria, China, Tonga, and two from the USA.  Six continents represented!  What an amazing experience.  We are so blessed to be having the experiences we are.

October 22, 2017

First of all, making up for the missed week just isn't going to happen, so we'll just combine the last two! 

We are having a new adventure every day and finding that this town has a whole different feel every time we pop our heads out of a new subway stop.  Last weekend was a District Conference for our church, so members from the larger geographic area came to Shanghai for meetings.  We are involved with the ex-pat young single adults (basically, singles 18 and older), and there were about 80 here.  Most are going to school or teaching English at various elementary schools. A tour of downtown Shanghai was set up for them for Saturday before the meetings, where we toured the Yuyuan Gardens.  What a fun market area and beautiful gardens!

These amazing rocks were carved by a river

KFC sign on Ming dynasty architecture--near the
birthplace of a popular type of Chinese steamed bun.
Lines for the buns went down the street.

The back wall of our church meeting place on Sunday--
some people spent the night in various locations in order
to make it to all the conference sessions. They brought
their luggage to church when they checked out.

This week, however, we'll mostly update you on what we are really here in China for:  teaching!

In China there are a lot of programs with English teachers, some teaching in elementary schools, etc.  Several only require that you have a college degree and speak English. Some don't require any degree.We are part of Brigham Young University's China Teachers Program.  Each year BYU recommends teachers (usually retired couples with teaching credentials and/or extensive experience in subject areas) to 17 of the most prestigious universities in 8 cities in China, primarily in the eastern cities.  These universities extend offers, and there are generally about 80 teachers who end up in the program.

We are teaching at Tongji University in Shanghai, ranked 9th in China out of over 2200 universities; they require English teachers to have advanced degrees and at least two years of teaching experience.  Our students are English majors.  Each week we teach 5 classes each: 2 classes of Freshmen Oral English, 2 classes of Sophomore Oral English, and a Business English class (mostly Juniors).  Our class size ranges from 12 - 24 and are primarily girls.  Our students are very good with reading and writing English, and actually pretty good with oral English.

For Oral English classes, we spend much of our class time with students speaking. They present reports on news items , give impromptu speeches, and work as groups to conduct class activities that teach each other the concepts in TED talks we assign them to watch as homework. 

In our Business English classes we are teaching from a "Principles of Management" textbook, discussing and testing them on principles and vocabulary used in management.  We also have a weekly business case, drawn from real-life companies and challenges they've faced with business, ethics, or personnel issues.  We have the class divided into teams and each team analyzes the case and submits a solution that the other teams review and vote on best solutions, followed by a (sometimes energetic) debate.  Again, we are working for them to use their verbal skills extensively.

We hold an "English Corner" on Tuesday nights, which is open forum for all students to come and get additional exposure to oral English.  So far, we've had 100-140 attending each week!  A few pictures of this event:

Students discussing in groups - in English

Some were brave enough to come to the front of the room!

Finally, we help mentor speech and debate contestants for several English speaking competitions.  One was last weekend - an invitation event with universities from Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macau.  We were coaching them via WeChat (a Chinese social media tool that allows audio files) on Friday night for a Saturday competition.  One of our students took 1st place and received a special commendation award from the judges!

We are having a great time working with these amazing young people.

October 8, 2017

Golden Week! A week of holiday created by the coincidence of National Day (October 1), which celebrates the founding of the PRC in 1949, and the Mid-Autumn Festival, which takes place at the time of the harvest moon (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival).  As a result, many businesses, government offices, and all the schools were closed.  It is celebrated by festivities, many people traveling, and the eating of moon cakes.  They are everywhere!  There are 200 varieties of these stuffed little pastries, with new varieties being created every year.



We had a week off from teaching and used it to tour as much of China as possible with a group of about 50 English teachers in China--most part of the BYU China Teachers Program. We visited cities along the ancient Silk Road - the route established about 200 BC to trade silk for other commodities, such as horses.

Our route: we began by flying to the northwestern part of China--a very unique place in present-day and historical China 

We began our adventure by flying from Shanghai to Urumqi, relatively close to Kyrgyzstan.  Urumqi holds the record of being the most remote city from any sea in the world.  It also the largest city of China's interior and the of Central Asia.

She is called "Loulan Beauty"

It's the site of many ancient dwellings and excavations, including incredibly well preserved mummies dating back to 1800 BC, due to the dry desert environment. Many have their hair intact as well as cloth burial wrappings.

We took a bus ride to nearby Turpan and saw so many grape vines!  They claim to have the sweetest grapes in the world -- that they have been compared to California grapes and found to be sweeter.  Nearly every building has a ventilated drying room on top of the building, used for hanging grapes while they dry. The grapes dry in the hot air but not the sun, which is too harsh. We passed miles of 100-yard long greenhouses. One side of each greenhouse is earthen, and the other is open in the summer and covered with huge sheets of plastic in the winter.








The local market had stall after stall, each with MANY varieties of raisins, along with dried apricots, kiwis, figs, etc.
 

We visited an old Uyghur (ethnically Turkish and primarily Muslim) village. We wandered the streets and could even look in a few of the homes.  In this one, we saw the bed, which is basically a clay platform with blankets.  Notice the bed heater - a little stove with a pipe that goes into the clay bed cavity.  There is also a small, sleeping child on the bed.  His mom was in the kitchen cooking.  The houses are made from packed earth, and floors are dirt.

Speaking of beds, the hotel beds in China are HARD.  Evidently, hard is preferred here and the beds are like sleeping on a board with a sheet on it.  Much like the picture above, only not made of earth.

We travelled between two cities in an overnight sleeper train.  This was our first experience with this-- and was rather interesting.  Much smaller and more cozy than anticipated... and less hygienic.

We saw the Gobi Desert, up close and personal.

And experienced several lively street markets.

And interesting street scenes...

Yes, those are chickens on the back of a three-wheeled carriage.
The cardboard sign on top has the phone number you can call to buy one.

Some things never change!  This is a rest stop.  Notice the line for the men's toilet is about 3 people long.  And about 50 for the women's toilet.  The traditional Chinese toilet is not the "western" style that you can sit on; it's a squat toilet.  But that hasn't been our challenge - it's the smell.  In the rural areas, or tourist areas in general, the restrooms are not for the faint of heart.

Another visit was to the "Thousand Buddha Grottoes" or Mogao Caves.  More than 700 cave temples were built over a period of 1000 years.  They each have intricate artwork and Buddhas.  Photography inside is not allowed, but they were amazing -- even though we only viewed a handful of them.

On to Xi'an, the end of the Silk Road, and visits to sites there, including the Terra Cotta Warriors.  This is an amazing site, made more so by learning that all but one of the figures were broken up to prevent the Emperor who had them built from enjoying his afterlife.  What warriors exist have been (and continue to be) reconstructed piece by piece.  Humpty-Dumpty times 8000, with more being discovered. But those not already unearthed will stay underground until the technology is developed to keep their brilliant colors from oxidizing--apparently these clay-colored figures used to be very colorful but lost their color rapidly after being discovered.

There was a sign along the street that made us think of some we've seen in America - "No farmers, no food."  Except it was a tribute to the farmer who discovered the first warrior on his land when he was digging a well:

Outside of the Terra Cotta pits are street vendors selling all kinds of things.  The majority are pomegranates and persimmons, but one had a tank of scorpions and put them on shish-kabobs to grill.  But, we were in a hurry and skipped trying them....

Before heading back to Shanghai, we attended a dumpling dinner with about 15 different kinds of dumplings and a traditional song and dance show representing the Tang Dynasty. Great music and costuming!

This traditional dance is one where they unfurl, wave, and regather long sleeves.

And there were some special rose moments on our trip...

Caught outside the Imin Minaret, built in 1777.

Our blog would not be complete without sharing some of the signs we saw along the way:

This was in a hotel room--they didn't want us to slip in the shower, we think...

This was at "Flaming Mountain," an important
mountain in Chinese legend, and an
area where China is lowest in altitude
and hottest in temperature.

September 30, 2017

We are slow to get our blog posted as we've been traveling across China - but more about that in our next entry.  This blog includes some tidbits from the last week of September:

It's been raining a lot, and one day we woke up to find water on our bedroom floor near the window.  We let the housekeeper know (she comes in every day to empty the trash cans and wave a broom around), and she passed the word along.  Later in the day, we found this note had been slid under our door:

We felt reassured to a certain extent...

On the corner down the street from us, right across from the main entrance to our university, there is "street dancing" - sometimes referred to as "square dancing" because they are dancing on an open square.  The music is festive and fun to watch. It's mostly older women, which is common in China, but our corner has a rather different flair than other square dances we've heard of. They set up a fake fire with a horizontal fan and lights under some red tissue paper "flames." Men participate, too, in cowboy hats and with skirts over their pants. Some people have bells.

There's an Apple store going in near us.  It's about 5 feet wide and 16 feet deep - which is about the size of the dry cleaners, the barber shop, the hardware store, and several "take out" food places...

And we finally were caught up enough with planning our classes and getting organized to go exploring a little farther beyond our neighborhood.  The "Bund," a major business district and tourist stop - kind of the "Times Square" of Shanghai, is not far from where we live - yet an entirely different world.  We are in a suburb off the beaten path and in a much more affordable area.  But this was fun to walk along The Bund, see the Shanghai Tower (the second tallest building in the world), the Pearl Tower, the Russian consulate, and eat dumplings.

The Pearl Tower on the left is just over 1500 feet tall.  The Shanghai Tower on the right is over 2000 feet tall.

Ant's eye view of the Pearl Tower at night

Consulate General of the Russian Federation - in this building since 1917.

The Bund is a popular place for wedding pictures.
We saw several, but this one was the most colorful.

And we found 100 flavors of ice cream!  Flavors from all over the world! Baskin-Robbins, eat your heart out!

We also found our local (3 subway stops from us) WalMart.  And we are not in Arkansas (or Iowa) anymore!

The deli has ducks!

Individually wrapped everything!  Must go in school lunches?

And, of course, dried duck tongues - Great Value brand!