February 16, 2018 - Chinese New Year

While we are vacationing in the USA, it's Chinese New Year! It's also known as Spring Festival and Lunar New Year. This is the Year of the Dog, which officially begins February 16, 2018 this year and ends March 2nd.  Most businesses are closed for a week beginning February 15.

This celebration has been happening since the 14th century B.C. except for a few years when Mao forbade it. Most people return to their hometowns, put up red posters, set off fireworks, eat special dumplings, and give family members red envelopes. Grandma's recipes are the best, we've heard, and some grandmas will hide a coin in a dumpling for one lucky person. Red is a symbol of prosperity, good luck, joy, and happiness. Since the number 8 is regarded as the luckiest number in Chinese culture, red envelopes often contain new bills in multiples of 8. Never coins. But the red envelope is more significant than the money inside.  And, in China, it is possible to send "electronic red envelopes" with money to family and friends.

Since it is the year of the dog, we thought we would share a few of the decorations we've seen along our travels.

Stores that feature red decorations, envelopes,
flowers and dogs. This is a typical store width. 

Lanterns decorate the market places

Coin decorations hang from trees. No current Chinese coins
look like this, but this replicates ancient coins. 

In the malls

Red lanterns about to be hung outside our hotel in Shenzhen

And dogs are everywhere!

At the entrance to a restaurant

Decorating the streets

Businesses decorate with dogs

Along a street in Hong Kong

Dog purses

Even dog mannequins to display human fashions!

Posters in the subway

And snow sculptures at the Ice and Snow Festival in Harbin, China

Happy New Year!  Have a wonderful and prosperous Year of the Dog! And as the Chinese say, may all your dreams come true this year.

February 4, 2018

Chinese New Year, also called Spring Festival, is the biggest and most important holiday in China, complete with special foods, decorations, and people going home from the cities to be with their families. Most employees in China have at least 7 days off work.  Our students have a month, but since our final was one of the earliest, we have six weeks off until schools starts again.  We spent a few days experiencing some new adventures in the Shanghai area and doing some house cleaning. On January 28th we left for southern China, visiting Sanya, Haikou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong.

Our trip consisted of flying to the southern tip of the south-most point of China, the city of Sanya on Hainan Island.  This is a great resort city, but seems not to be well known or visited by foreigners.  For us, it meant traveling from 30 degree Shanghai to 80 degree Sanya.  One day we were wearing long johns and coats, and the next we were wading in ocean water with no coats in sight. Nice!

Drying fish in the sun under a layer of salt

We visited a smaller, nearby "monkey island," roamed
among the monkeys for awhile, then took a tram back.

Some monkeys performed with goats.

Some were up close and personal

The tram provided great views of Sanya and fishing houseboats!

 At Sanya, there are spontaneous street dancers, bands, singers, etc. all along the beach promenade. We enjoyed the music, unless we got between two overlapping groups and had "dueling music." One evening, a dance group music played "The Skater's Waltz," so we had to join in and dance, too.

The Sanya beach as viewed from our hotel room

Lots of street performers along the beachfront sidewalk. 

From Sanya, we took a train to the north of the Island to the Hainan capital city of Haikou.  This was just an overnight stop before catching a flight to Shenzhen.  But a nice ride where we saw rice fields, mango bushes, - lots of crops along the way.

Rice paddies

Massive Chinese furniture in the hotel lobby at Haikou

Shenzhen was colder than normal. We had plans to spend the day at the China Splendid Park, which is a resort that celebrates all the ethnic groups in China.  There are 56 ethnic groups in China.  It was cold and rainy, so most of the shows and demonstrations were cancelled. We saw a couple of displays, took a boat ride (Because it had a roof, we thought it would shelter us from the rain, but then the rain came in sideways and got our seats!), then gave up and went to the hotel to dry out and warm up. All part of the adventure!

Kathy in a Tibet village house

We did visit a museum in Shenzhen that showed the rise of this amazingly new and prosperous city from a market town of 30,000 people in the 1970s to one of the world's fastest growing cities in the 1990s. 10.4 million people in 2010! As China was "opening up to the world" in 1980, Shenzhen was designated the first of China's "special economic zones" where ownership of property and foreign investment were encouraged. It worked.

From Shenzhen, we took a bus to Hong Kong, where we had BYU China teacher in-service meetings.  Crossing the border is rather interesting, as it is really two borders - the exit from China and the entrance to Hong Kong.  Luckily, at this crossing, the borders were at opposite ends of the same building.  For other crossing points you have to bus between them, unloading luggage at both points, even if they're only a few minutes apart.  Rather interesting, since Hong Kong is now part of China.

We were able to attend the Hong Kong Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The temple is the most sacred place on earth and a great experience to attend anywhere in the world.  What a blessing it is to us and our family to have the opportunity to enjoy the blessings of temple ordinances!

We spent three days in Hong Kong. Besides attending the temple, in-service training, and church services, we spent the rest of the time eating fun foods and visiting sites via bus, tram, trolley, subway, and the longest outdoor escalator in the world.

This beautiful picture of Christ with Asian children
 is in the LDS Asia Area HQ building in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong at night from Victoria Peak

Riding the tram to see Big Buddha. It was built by China in the
1990s as a good will gesture to welcome Hong Kong back.

View of the Buddhist Temple from Big Buddha

This sacred cow really wanted the apple cores they had in their
bag. A tug of war ensued - with the cow winning.

Dragons on the post at the Buddhist temple

We discovered Kowloon Park - and a tribute to comic characters.

Historic architecture among the modern skyscrapers. Notice
the ubiquitous double-decker buses of Hong Kong.

From Hong Kong, we left for America and will be visiting family and friends until we return to China on March 2nd.

January 28, 2018

This week we offer a few random tidbits about our life in China. We're trying to document all of these experiences in a way that allows us to share with our friends who want updates, keep track of all these pictures we're taking, and remember the small and interesting details about immersing ourselves in another culture.

We can have fresh strawberry freezer jam in China! Strawberries are at all the fruit stands now. (Luckily we brought pectin with us.) Goes great with peanut butter which, yes, is available.

We also made our first "Judy Bread" in China (perhaps the first EVER made in China--especially in a toaster oven!) John worked with Dick Rue in Iowa; occasionally Dick would bring in this strawberry bread his wife Judy made. Our neighbors confirmed the fact that it's delicious!

One day we had a fun time with an older Chinese couple in line for shui jian bao, pan fried dumplings. They wanted pictures with us, which is really common for our American friends who are extra tall or blond, but sometimes with us. People, especially from outlying rural areas, think "foreigners" are so exotic they want to document their experience of meeting them. Or show us off to their friends or something. But before we spent too long in the line for dumplings, they made sure we understood that we needed to pay and get a receipt before getting in that line. All with a combination of Chinese and charades. Later, they found us to say goodbye when they left. So cute!

Shui jian bao, ready to eat

The process - a ground meat and
vegetable mixture is wrapped in
dough, steamed, then partially fried.
You eat it with chopsticks, dipping
it in a soy sauce/vinegar mixture.

John sometimes orders things from Taobao, a Chinese version of Amazon. Which is quite a feat when you don't know Chinese, especially when the delivery guys call and try to find out where our apartment is. (We've been known to stop random people on the streets to try to talk to delivery people when we get a phone call.) He gets text messages in Chinese from Taobao. One day, after ordering some salsa, he received a message and copied it into Google translate. It reads as follows:

"Fu Zhen Food】 His Highness of Enlightenment, the little ones sent express delivery Ma Jia whipping serve the baby has been to Shanghai, can be presented soon, please check His Highness sign. Express in the pass."

He thought this meant our order for salsa had shipped.... Turns out that was true. Google translate is far from perfect, but we mostly get by. Usually with some humor.

When you are 60, many places give a senior discount, often 1/2 price admission. That part is nice. What isn't nice is when they call it an "elderly" instead of "senior" discount. It sounds so much worse!

It seems one of us is "elderly" - and
it's not Kathy...

It snowed in Shanghai - not a common occurrence. And nearby in Zhujiajiao, a local water town. It was particularly beautiful in the snow.

We found a lovely garden with statuary and bonsai trees
of different varieties.

Zhujiajiao - the place with fish pedicures!

Kathy cringes at misplaced apostrophes. This one seems particularly misplaced.

We spent some time cleaning and packing, getting ready for our holiday travel. We left January 28th and won't return until March; feel free to be jealous of our long break between semesters. China will celebrate Spring Festival and Chinese New Year while we are gone - the biggest celebration of the year.

January 14 & 21, 2018

We'll catch up on two weeks here - and you already know from last week's spoiler that we survived finals, as did our students.

But during that week (January 8-14) one surprise was when we found out we were to give our Business English finals together in the same room.  Good thing we had already planned to use the same final - just one of those surprises due to lack of communication that seems to be a regular part of life in China.  And good thing that particular room was big enough for two classes.

We had a fair amount of grading to do before grades could be submitted. One of the things we did in each of our classes was assign students to select a “self-improvement goal” and write in a journal throughout the semester about their progress. At the end of the semester, they also had to write a 2-3 page “Thought Paper” about their project – really a summary of the goal and what they accomplished.

So, besides the final, we had journals and this “Thought Paper” to read from each student. It made the end of the semester a lot of work for us, but it was so rewarding! Many of our students shared quite personal aspects of their lives. In one case, a female student had a goal to lose weight. During her project, she got very discouraged because she wasn’t losing weight in spite of hardly eating anything. Then, she came to recognize the influence of the media and realized that women don’t have to accept this image – they can feel beautiful even if they are not skinny. It was wonderful to see how the project had changed her, but mentally more than physically, and it was valuable growth.

The journals were windows into their souls. Our students work so hard! They are so respectful! And they turn in their assignments with both hands and a bow. They are a delight to work with.

We began our celebrating by (finally) going to a Shanghai Sharks game and watching Jimmer play. It wasn't as high scoring - either for him or the team - as is usual for them, but they still won over the Beijing Ducks.

Jimmer #32

We did have a challenge that week.  Kathy tripped and fell "up" some stairs, but had her hands in her pockets.  She mostly caught herself with her elbows, except that her face hit a step.  Well, her glasses did.  They didn't break, but hit hard enough to push the frames to cut into her eyebrows, and to twist the frames.

Kathy says, "Let it be known that this was very minor and didn't hurt
anything but my pride. Good thing I brought an old pair of glasses!" 

Our end of semester celebration continued with a visit to Shanghai Disneyland.  It's about an hour away by subway. John made friends with three 5- and 6-year-old children on the subway.  They were friends with a day off from school headed for Disneyland, too (with parents).

Shanghai Disney, the good and bad (when visiting in January)

Bad:

• It was an unusually cold day. Yes, it was January, but colder than normal.
• More was in Chinese than expected. Signs were bilingual, but dialogue in the shows was not.
• Fastpass was broken most of the day.
• If there is too much pollution, they don't use fireworks for the final show, only the lights.  Still spectacular, but not the same.  

Good:

• Okay, mixed. It's a relatively small park. We think it will expand as other Disney locations have, especially as well as this park has done financially.  So fewer rides, but easy to get around the park.
• Cheaper than other Disney sites we've been to.  This was about $55 USD per person.
• Lots of shows in addition to the rides. Jack Sparrow having a battle in a vertical wind tunnel was amazing!  Did you know Jack speaks Mandarin very well?  But with the same inflections and swagger as we expect from Jack.
• The Pirates ride is the best ever! We understand they spent 20% of the cost of the park, or $1 billion, on this ride alone. It's an "under the sea" experience for part of the ride.
• It's Disneyland.  

Jack Sparrow in the show.

The fight in the air. They are suspended only from the air
blowing up from a wind tunnel.

Heading in to the Pirates ride

This Pirates ride takes you under the sea. Very spectacular!

Kathy rode the Tron ride. Fastpass only gave us one pass instead of two - and she likes roller coasters a lot more than John does.  She made a friend from Nanjing University, the girl who sat next to her on the ride.

See Kathy on the ride?

Another highlight was a Shanghai city tribute and thank you for "high-level talents and foreign experts" in the city. I guess we must be one of those.  We were taken by bus to the Shanghai Theatre building - a beautiful venue where opera and concerts are performed in downtown Shanghai.  The event was an anthology of arts - a children's chorus, opera, ballet, acrobats, a tenor trio, concert piano, etc. It was some of the top talent in China performing, along with reminders between the pieces about how important the partnership between Shanghai and foreign experts is and how we are contributing to all that Shanghai is accomplishing.  It was a delightful evening - but with a very definite message.

Roses and Ansteads, the only BYU teachers at Tongji University

We finished with week by seeing "Star Wars VIII."  It got to China a month later than the US.  Our version included text on the screen explaining the back story of some of the main characters.  The Chinese are not very familiar with this franchise - it wasn't shown here 30 years ago with the saga began.  Most of our students have never seen a Star Wars movie and this one did not do well here, either. But we enjoyed it very much. In our next post, the celebration continues...