¡KELLER'S COGITATIONS!

Good Memories

2011-08-07T23:57:00.000-07:00

Right now I’m sitting on the ground in the international terminal of the Manila airport, a place that offers free wifi but very few benches. My plane doesn’t leave for another five hours. That means I have plenty of time to reflect on what I’ll miss most about the Philippines:

1. The people. It’s unbelievable how nice everyone is here. I’ve commented particularly on the hospitality of lenders, but really almost everyone I’ve met has been kind and helpful.

2. Lack of scams. When I first arrived I was hyper-vigilant about keeping an eye out for tricksters, but outside of Manila that caution seems unnecessary. I’ve turned into a very lazy traveler, just passing money to jeep drivers and waiters and assuming I’ll get the correct change, so we’ll see what happens when I go to somewhere less friendly.

3. Motorcycles. They’re so fun! My foray into driving one was humbling and traumatic, but it’s really exhilarating to hop on board with an experienced driver and ride away into the mountains.

4. The fruit salad in Dumaguete. I miss it very much already.

5. The language. The people in my three research locations spoke three different languages (Visayan, Cebuano, and Waray-Waray), but all of the languages included enough Spanish that I could usually follow the gist of what interview subjects were saying. My favorite incident came when a woman said she usually spends money ‘para el abogado’. I asked her why she needed a lawyer and she gasped – why hadn’t I told her I spoke Visayan?

The scenery is also pretty and the transportation network is good, but I’ll hold myself to five. I’m currently facing one of the most tiring and constant challenges of the solo traveler: who’s going to watch my bag while I go to the bathroom?

I hope you all enjoyed these posts. It's been an unexpected, educational and adventurous summer for me, and I really enjoyed writing about it. I don't know when I'll start up the blog again. My tentative plan is to return to China (to dreaded Nanjing) in August 2012, but who knows what will happen before that. Hopefully something interesting will materialize!

Introduction

2011-08-06T23:30:00.000-07:00

I tried writing several final reflections but they all degenerated into schmaltz very quickly (‘sometimes bad events can be blessings in disguise’, ‘sometimes it’s more important to make friends than get data’), so instead I’m posting the introduction of my final report. All sensitive data have been removed. This is the first draft, so get out your red cyber-pens and mark away.

Cagayan de Oro is a town of 550,000 people on the northern tip of Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines. A large, slow river meanders through the center of they city, dividing the central Divisoria district from bustling beehive of Carmen market, and its muddy waters wash up along banks dotted with Christian churches, empty billboards, and women doing laundry. It’s a safe place for tourists. Don’t go any further south, though; the central highlands of the island are home to Islamic separatists, a group that occasionally highjacks busses and, after serious thought, christened itself the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

One of the most well-known moneylenders in Cagayan de Oro works from a small office at the top of a dark wooden stairway. He sits behind a wide, wooden desk and cools himself with a small fan that is fastened to one of the salmon-colored walls. He wore a loose black shirt and tinted glasses when we visited. Sixteen years ago he had started selling appliances on installments plans in Zamboanga, another city in Mindanao where the locals speak a dialect of Spanish with unconjugated verbs, and over time he had developed his business to its current position: a fulltime XXXX, ## collectors, and over #### clients.

Expansion wasn’t easy. In 1996, when the lender was still in Zamboanga, he was stabbed by a client in a public marketplace. The reason he survived, according to doctors, was because the six-inch blade was left in his back; if it had been removed he would have bled to death. He spent several months in the hospital convalescing and then moved to Cagayan de Oro with his wife. Permanently marked with a scar on his left shoulder, he decided to open a new lending business.

Why?, I ask.

“Lending is a risky business,” he smiles. “But a good one.”

Although lending may be a good business, almost all Filipinos agree that it makes for a very poor research topic.

Informal lending takes place in a hazy legal environment in the Philippines. Almost completely unregulated by the government, lenders are free to establish their own rates and terms but almost totally unable to enforce them through third-party means. Intimidation and social pressure become the preferred methods of persuasion. A clerk in a copy shop, learning the focus of my research, told me that lenders were “bad people.” A woman in the local government told me I “wasn’t old enough” to interact with them. Among the general population the consensus was that loan sharks worked in one world, American researchers worked in another, and that it was for the best that things remain that way.

The situation came to a head on June 10^th, 2011, when I interviewed a moneylender at a gas station on the outskirts of Cagayan de Oro. We sat on small plastic stools facing the highway, and even though it was dusk I fanned myself with the survey papers as she answered. After several minutes an old woman approached us.

“Go away,” she told me in English. She had orange hair done up in a perm and wore a bright purple shirt. “You don’t belong here.”

My translator explained that I was an American doing research. Hearing that, the woman turned to the small crowd that had gathered around us. “Always the Americans!” she cried out. “They need to stop coming here.” Looking back to me, she continued. “Go talk to the bank. Go talk to the co-ops. This place right here is for Filipinos. Leave us alone.”

After a few days in the Philippines it became clear that lending was a sensitive subject. Equally clear, though, was that it was an enormously important one. Informal lenders operate in abundance here. In Dumaguete, a college town on the island of Negros, my translator and I could take jeeps to nearby villages, start talking to vendors in the market around 8:30 am, and have identified four lenders by lunchtime. Considering the huge number of easily accessible banks, the demand for informal credit is staggering. Surprising, too, is the number of lenders willing to accept the risk of lending to their friends and neighbors. Every community I encountered supported at least one lender. About 75% of the people that my translators and I approached over the course of the project immediately admitted to knowing a loan shark, and most of them could share with us a phone number or address. It may be true that lenders are bad people, but even so, they certainly are popular ones.

The purpose of this paper is to answer several questions about informal lenders. First, why does the local population need so many of them? Second, how do the lenders build viable business models in such risky environments? Third, and most mystifying, what about lending is so appealing that even a knife in the back can’t keep a man away?

Family members, you're going to be seeing a lot of this report, so if you want to save your edits for after I'm finished that's okay.

Good Riddance

2011-08-06T05:10:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to believe, but I head home in less than 48 hours. The cold that I thought I had defeated during the week redeveloped this morning, leaving me uncomfortable and grumpy. I’m in the perfect mood to bring back a tradition I started in China: listing things I will not mind leaving behind.

1. The food. It’s just not very good. Most dishes tend to be extremely salty, very sweet, and completely devoid of any fruits, vegetables, or nutritional content. The exception to the no-veggies rule are the restaurants that sell single servings of pre-made dishes. These restaurants are sometimes okay but usually very mediocre, and the best one I found made me sick.

2. Slow transportation. There are no official jeepney stops, so when you want the driver to pull over you just shout out ‘stop!’ This sounds convenient, but it just means that the jeeps have to grind to a halt every 100 meters because everyone is too lazy to get their acts together and just walk a block.

3. Being mistaken for a sex tourist.

4. Lack of history. Coming from China, where every single little village has some important role in history that everyone wants to tell you about (“we’re famous for crabs!”), I find it strange to come to a country where nobody seems to care. I visited three history museums and they were all in varying state of disrepair, ranging from passable to pathetic to, tellingly, closed until future notice. Other than that I saw a few old Spanish churches that had been completely refurbished and took pictures of some old American buildings. That was it. And I was looking for history! I know a lot of it was destroyed in the wars, but still.

5. The food. Did I mention how disappointing the food is? What kills me is that it has so much potential. I spent a lot of time in markets so I know that there is a huge variety of local, fresh, delicious produce just sitting there, waiting for someone to cook it, but somehow those veggies always end up in something salty and sweet and saucy or, in the case of a pinakbet, a dish of pumpkin and okra that could really be something great, covered in immense gobs of terrible, terrible shrimp paste. Historically, this makes no sense. The two most powerful foreign influences before the 1900’s were China and Spain, two countries with really good chefs, so the food should be an amazing Chinese-Spanish fusion with tropical fruits and vegetables. But it’s not. Really, not at all.

The Philippines is a pretty awesome place. I can’t really think of anything else to complain about.

Cavalry Hill

2011-08-04T05:28:00.000-07:00

Today I interviewed more loan companies and cooperatives in the center of Tacloban. Although tedious, these surveys are accompanied by relatively little data entry, which meant that I had an hour free in the afternoon to climb nearby Cavalry Hill:

The view from the top, looking over Leyte

The path up the hill is marked by the Stations of the Cross.

The island across the water is Samar, a lawless land full of bandits (according to my translators). Factoid: Tacloban suffers from a persistent shortage of coins because the only overland route from the mint passes through Samar and the treasury directors are unwilling to risk sending trucks that way.

Lazy Day

2011-08-02T04:31:00.000-07:00

With only six days left in the Philippines I have come down with my first cold. Faithful readers of this blog will recall the several months I spent struggling with recurring colds in China; the upside to that long, irritating process is that now I’m pretty good at hunkering down all day in bed and watching TV. I do miss all the varieties of iced tea that were available in Nanjing and Guilin. Hydrating here in the Philippines is no fun.

Losing Steam

2011-07-31T05:22:00.000-07:00

Santa Fe

My ninth reflection.

A few days ago my translators and I rode a jeep out to Santa Fe, a small farming community about an hour away from Tacloban. The town was a collection of houses surrounded by rice paddies and connected by a two-lane highway, and because the sun had finally emerged after several days of rain the locals had spread their harvest on the asphalt to dry. Buffaloes sloshed through the water on either side of us. The weather was hot and shade was hard to come by; welcome refreshments were provided by groups of boys who had climbed up santol trees along the road and would toss down fresh pieces of fruit.

friendly harvesters

This free fruit fascinated me. Who planted these trees? Who tended to them? Why weren’t these boys in school? We didn’t locate any lenders in Santa Fe (an interesting finding in itself), but that afternoon as we very slowly rolled back to Tacloban on a bouncing and baking jeepney my head was still buzzing with questions.

rice on the highway

I wouldn’t say that I’ve lost interest in loan sharks, but my energy for the project has definitely waned. Part of the apathy is due to the extremely lukewarm reception from most of the lenders in Tacloban (the few of them who do seem to enjoy talking to me spend most of the time proselytizing, one of them to such an extent that I had to feign a bathroom emergency just to get out of the house), part of it is due to the hours of mind-numbing office work that accompany each interview, but mostly it’s because there are so many other interesting things to investigate here. Last Tuesday, for instance, my translators and I camped out in the central market for several hours. We found some lenders but much more interesting was the row of flamboyantly gay chicken butchers who sang along to American pop music as they separated the bird carcasses. The most outgoing one was a twenty-year old named Mario; if we wanted to find him after dark, he told us unnecessarily, we should ask around for Marianne.

These fruit-picking truants and cross-dressing butchers are an entertaining diversion from my work. But are they, I wonder, interesting because they are a diversion? If I had been sent to the Philippines to research homosexual culture, for example, would I have shaken my head when I met these guys and thought ‘oh no, another drag queen butcher’? Perhaps all research topics lose their luster as soon as the work begins.

Guiuan

2011-07-30T02:18:00.000-07:00

This weekend I went to Guiuan. The authors of the Lonely Planet, whose judgment I continually question, say the town has “remote remnants of WWII history on land, uncrowded surfbreaks on shore.” Here are some pics:

The best part of the trip was the drive. For a few kilometers the scenery looked like a miniature version of the hills and rivers surrounding Guilin. Luckily I was seated shotgun so I got some good views.

This airstrip was built by the Americans during WWII. According to the locals and nobody else, the Enola Gay departed from here before bombing Hiroshima. During the war the airport had two airstrips, but the second one has been overtaken by the jungle and turned into the very, very wide main street of a small neighborhood. Second tidbit: John F. Kennedy was stationed in Guiuan during the war.

This is the oldest church in the Philippines according to my tricycle driver. It looked very run down, broken windows and all. The bell tower next to it “used to be three times taller,” say the mystifying local tourism materials.

The décor in my hotel room. When I went to bed I found out the puppies glowed in the dark.

This is the island where Magellan first landed in the Philippines. My original plan for the weekend was to go there, but then I learned that the only vessels that travel between the islands are small Bangka boats (the ones with bamboos poles each side as stabilizers) and that the trip each way could take three hours. Considering that the weather had been fickle for the past few days I wussed out.

The original flagpole for the US Naval Supply Depot. This was the most concrete remnant from the American presence that I found (the airstrip has been repaved several times since the US forces left).

I splurged and paid 11 bucks to hire this tricycle for the day.

The view of Guiuan and the surrounding area from a nearby weather station.

Palo

2011-07-27T05:32:00.000-07:00

Today my translator and I took a jeep to Palo, a smallish town near Tacloban that has a large memorial statue of General MacArthur and other nameless solders walking on water. We started our hunt in the central market. I didn’t like it very much; one of the people we asked for help was a grilled pig vendor, and as my translator asked him for leads I stood next to a pig head that was swarming with flies and tried to ignore the mentally handicapped girl who was screaming nonsense at me from across the street and the boy who had Downs Syndrome and several open, bleeding wounds on his chest who was tugging at my elbow. I think a nearby vendor must have had an arrangement with a special-needs institution to put them to work.

Take a look at this leaf!

I was relieved to hop on a motorcycle taxi and rumble away to the rural outskirts of the town. The scenery was beautiful. The taxi driver told us to be careful and to return immediately if it started to rain. The fields flood easily, apparently, and when the rice water covers the road it’s easy to catch a parasite that causes fever, cirrhosis, and psychosis.

Equally alarming, I received an unexpected visit in my hotel room today. The windows in my room face an outdoors walkway, which means that I can often see people walking past and that I can’t change clothes with the blinds open. Today I cracked the windows open to enjoy the nice rainy breeze. A few minutes later, as I lay in my bed and checked my emails, I was startled by one of the hotel interns when he pressed his face against the screen and, less than a foot away from my ear, shouted “HELLO!”

Waste of Time

2011-07-26T02:30:00.000-07:00

Today I encountered a character I know well from several years of mock trial, UHS, and humanities classes at ASU: the pointless arguer. He sat behind the desk at a lending company in Dulag, a small town about an hour away from Tacloban, and fortunately he spoke excellent English so my poor translators were spared the experience of talking to him. I could tell almost immediately that he wasn’t going to cooperate with our survey. The problem was that he worked for one of the most prominent informal lenders in town, Mr. Li, and continuously dropped hints that he might let us talk to his boss. Several times I tried to excuse myself politely. Thank you for your time, I’d say, but I’ll just be leaving now. Wait!, he’d say. I’m about to call Mr. Li. Just a few more questions…

A street in Dulag

Thirty minutes ended up disappearing into that black hole of a human. As we walked away my translator informed me that she had gone to high school with the guy. Everyone had hated him, she said, particularly the teachers.

The church in Dulag

In case you're wondering why confetti and balloons are exploding out of your computer, it's because this is my 300th post! Thanks, everyone, for reading.

Public Knowledge

2011-07-24T02:34:00.000-07:00

My eighth reflection.

My survey begins with a discussion of privacy. All information is confidential, I explain, and the lender can always refuse to answer. Speaking to a mango vendor at the Tacloban harbor, I assured her that nobody but my translators and me would hear her responses, a statement that was clearly contradicted by the crowd of about ten people who had gathered around us and, despite some half-hearted attempts by my translators to get them to leave, seemed to be making themselves comfortable with little portable stools and fresh green mango snacks.

Another pic from Siquijor

The first part of my training program was a three-hour online course about interacting with human subjects. I zoomed through it pretty quickly, but the takeaway message for my project was obvious: confidentiality is essential. My supervisors reiterated this point. We were supposed to encourage lenders to meet us in quiet, private places, where we could learn more about their business without making the lenders feel exposed or uncomfortable. We were even allocated money to buy sodas or small meals for the interview participants; when it came to privacy, we were to spare no expense.

View from Tacloban dock

In eight weeks, though, I’ve yet to buy a drink for a lender. When I suggest that we adjourn to somewhere discrete to complete the interview most of them say no, it’s too much of a hassle, we should just finish it in public. Almost every interview has been conducted in front of spectators. Sometimes these are family members, sometimes strangers and sometimes, most awkwardly, the clients themselves. Speaking to a woman in Cagayan de Oro at a motorcycle taxi stop, I asked where her clients came from; she said ‘right here’, and then pointed at the drivers gathered around us, who laughed and then quieted down as I continued.

Playing Marcos

I’m not sure how to approach this problem. I work for an American organization and the findings of the project will probably be published (if they are ever published) by an American press and read by an American audience. For this reason I feel compelled to abide by American privacy guidelines. At the same time, the actual Filipino survey participants seem totally indifferent to confidentiality. The solution I’ve found is to always explain the privacy protocol and then pretend that all the kibitzers are not there. If the lenders feel violated by the audience, I figure, they’ll deal with it themselves. I think I’d skew the data more if I started every interview with several minutes of chasing everyone away.

Shrine

2011-07-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I visited the Santa Nino Shrine. The Marcos family built it several decades ago as a combination church/meeting place/palace, and although the dining rooms have been used for events none of the bedrooms (including the Muslim room, full of Arabian knickknacks, and the butterfly room, decorated with boxes of preserved insects) have ever been slept in. One tour guide was tasked with all the visitors in the building, which meant that every so often she would zoom into a room, shout something like “this vase was from Mao Zedong!”, and then disappear. The place looked pretty run down. Here are some highlights:

The Huge Ballroom, said the guide

Little pants-less boy pillows, a gift from Mao Zedong

Returning home from the shrine, I found my dinosaur using my computer. The housekeepers here are hilarious.

Back at It

2011-07-21T01:47:00.000-07:00

After a week of housekeeping I was eager to return to the field this morning. We visited Tanauan, a small town near Tacloban that you probably recognize as the ‘Skimboarding Capital of the Philippines,’ and the lenders there did not disappoint. One woman owned a ‘Mini-Zoo.’ That means that she kept an eagle and a baboon in tiny cages on her porch; she grumpily refused to do an interview with us, and my translators agreed that it was probably because the zoo was illegal. The monkey said goodbye to us by shrieking and throwing his body against the bars.

After work I had lunch at the No Problem Foodhaus. This was my second day in a row eating there. Yesterday I ordered pumpkin and mung beans, delicious, and today I had eggplant and some banana product, which both tasted fine but made my mouth itchy:

$.84

And now I’m working on data entry and field notes in Libro, a trendy café/bookstore:

Chocolate cupcake and banana shake

Bathrooms

2011-07-20T01:43:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago I got the runs during an interview with a local politician. We had just started our introductions when my stomach grumbled; embarrassed, I excused myself and my translator and found a cab, in which I sat down and closed my eyes and attempted to transcend my earthly form as the car inched forward. After several minutes I told the driver to pull over into a gas station. An attendant guessed what I wanted and pointed me towards a dismal grey door in a dark corner of a nearby garage. I took a deep breath, plugged my nose, wiped the sweat off my face, and opened the door to the bathroom.

And it was nice!

Or, not nice, but really good for a gas station toilet. Faithful readers of the blog will remember several bathroom posts from my time in China, a full nine months I spent paralyzed by the fear that I would have nowhere to do my business. One of the most pleasant surprises of my weeks in the Philippines has been the overall quality of the restrooms here. Often small, dark, wet and curiously free of toilet seats, the bathrooms here at least don’t have standing piles (or, worse, smeared tracks) of feces on the ground. And that’s awesome.

For those readers who think that my internship consists entirely of getting snacks from loan sharks and going to the beach, I’m proud to say that I spent my last three days entering data, making copies, getting laminations, training a group of sullen translators who put on sunglasses when they got bored, training another new group of cheerful translators, and doing interviews at three local banks and cooperatives.

Irrelevant

2011-07-17T06:37:00.000-07:00

My seventh reflection.

Last week I interviewed a young woman in her home. We were seated on a red velvet sofa in front of an extremely loud television turned to Rod Stewart music videos, and my repeated attempts to complete the survey were stymied by the barking dogs, hollering roosters, sobbing babies, meddling mothers, and curious fathers that were competing for the lender’s attention. She seemed entirely disengaged until I asked if anyone had defaulted on a loan recently.

Yes!, she said, leaning in closer. Five months ago the lender had given some money to another girl who said she was a friend, but then the girl had found a foreign boyfriend, gotten addicted to drugs and disappeared. The lender had taken the girl’s sister to court. The sisters agreed to cover the debt, but then from out of nowhere the girl reappeared and mysteriously had enough money to pay off the loan.

This was interesting, but the problem is that there’s no code for “back-stabbing friends who use the loan to buy drugs for their expat boyfriends and then magically redeem themselves” on my data entry sheet. It's a dilemma I face daily in the field. I know exactly what my bosses want, clear-cut data, and I start every interview with the full intention of getting it; after a few minutes, though, I just want to kick back and listen to the lenders' insane stories. One man volunteered that he has an American client who takes out loans to support his three Filipino girlfriends and all their kids. That's awful, I said. Now, tell me more.

I like to think that these stories are still valuable data, perhaps just a little more nuanced and flavorful than most, but I know that (outside of this blog) most of them will never be heard. More than twenty interns have participated in this research project over a three-year period. I’m sure that all of us have encountered several bizarre stories, but that’s exactly the problem: at some point it becomes impossible to discern any sort of overarching narrative from such an enormous mosaic. The reason the survey includes such boring, mundane information is because that’s the sort of data that can be processed, analyzed, and then acted upon. It’s interesting to know that one lender in the Philippines has twenty little Chihuahua mutts; it does not, however, really suggest any policy reform.

The pictures come from one of my favorite TV channels, which plays karaoke videos of pop songs paired with random stock footage.

In the Laboratory

2011-07-16T03:36:00.000-07:00

I’m lodging at a “laboratory hotel” here in Tacloban, an adventurous-sounding name for what is really just a large building on the campus of Leyte Normal University where hospitality students can get real-world experience. The rooms are serviceable and the location is mediocre; the real draw is the massive staff of extremely obliging and easily overwhelmed 16 to 20 year-olds that (to a degree) keep the place running. At any hour of the day at least four attendants will greet me at the front desk. If I request an extra wastebasket then two people one bring one within minutes. It’s nice that when I complain about something the staff seem to see it as a new and exciting problem that they need to solve, not just a nuisance.

Living it a play-hotel has its drawbacks. None of the workers have figured out how to deal with the problem of my bathroom sink, which has separated from the wall and leans out at a 5-degree angle. The staff can also become overbearing; on my first day a dozen identically dressed housekeepers woke me up at 7 am to ask if they could all come in and clean.

On the tourism front, today I rode a jeep for 90 minutes and a then boat for an hour to visit a cave which, the guide pointed out anticlimactically, had a stalactite that looked just like a penis. Fortunately the scenery en route was beautiful.

Fruit Salad

2011-07-14T05:22:00.000-07:00

I’ve found the first Filipino dish that I’m really going to miss back in the states: street vendor fruit salad. The ingredients include diced banana, mango, apple, avocado, papaya and other local fruits, all floating in a sweet, creamy thin yogurt and served ice cold in plastic cups. Vendors carry it in unmarked Tupperware containers. It took me a while to try because it looks and sounds like the poster child of ‘things that will give me the runs’ but now I eat it twice a day, each time from a different vendor across town so that none of them know how enchanted I’ve become.

Today I was buying my second cup of the salad, this one from the vendor who adds gelatin and shredded coconut, when I heard the sound of American pop music coming from a nearby park. I wandered over to find a small stage surround by a throng of teenagers. I gathered from the decorations that today Dumaguete officially became a non-smoking city, and that this concert was the final event of a fun-packed agenda. A cover band had just started performing Katy Perry when I arrived. Everyone was going nuts. I stood behind the crowd with the full intention of being snarky for a few minutes and then heading home, but ended up watching for the whole 45-minute set. It was good! The band even got most of the rap breaks correct, and the only funny parts were when the singers would yell, between songs, “Isn’t this fun? Way better than smoking!”, and when the boys in the crowd became rowdy as the performer of “California Gurls” used a small towel to wipe off her stomach sweat.

Sari-Sari

2011-07-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

I haven’t seen any chain convenience stores in the southern Philippines. Instead, people tend to visit sari-sari shops, which look like small, dark prison cells that have been filled with snacks and then planted in random locations. You don’t go into a sari-sari store; rather, you peer through the bars and tell the shopkeeper what you want, kind of like a vending machine with a human inside.

Yesterday my translator and I rode a motorcycle up into the mountains to interview a lender who operated a sari-sari store. After an hour of interviewing and repeated suggestions from the lender that we break for refreshments I finally relented, holstering my survey notebook and accepting the icy Sprite he offered. After the drinks he allowed me to play around in his store:

homemade tuba

He also encouraged me to join him in a round of tuba, a mild liquor made from coconut sap. The jugs looked pretty ominous, dark red in color and foaming at the top, but I took a tiny little sip and was surprised to learn it wasn't poisonous or half bad.

People call me the cool surveyor

Mutts

2011-07-11T05:37:00.000-07:00

Today I spoke with a man who owned more than twenty dogs. Several years ago, he explained, a friend gave him two little purebred Chihuahuas. The dogs worked will as alarms, but one problem was that they would routinely sneak out the front gate, disappear for several days, and then return home tired and pregnant. The man never had the heart to kill the puppies; he keeps them all, instead, storing the smaller ones in several large cages behind his house and allowing the larger ones to roam free around the property.

Leaving his house, I felt like all I could see were Chihuahua-street dog mutts. They were everywhere. One was sleeping under the car. Another was moping around in the driveway. A third one followed my translator and me almost all the way to the gate, eventually leaving us to join the fourth and fifth dogs (his brother?) as they chased a group of chickens around the yard.

Inquisitors

2011-07-10T05:12:00.000-07:00

My sixth reflection

Last week I interviewed a very inquisitive lender.

The dock in Siquijor

“How old are you?” She asked me after responding to one of my questions. A few seconds later, “Do you like Dumaguete?”

The survey turned into a very strange contest of competing agendas. After giving me a little morsel of information about her business she would require something in return. “I have 50 clients,” she would say. “Now, what hotel are you staying in?”

I didn’t really mind, because I’m short on friends here and not in a position to be picky about conversation. She also inspired me to start being more inquisitive in general. In an earlier post I wrote about trying to find a way to make the interviews more enjoyable for the lender; I’ve found that spicing up the survey with irrelevant but interesting sections seems to do the trick (in some cases).

My bungalow for a night

On Thursday, for example, I talked a lender in a small rural village up in the mountains; trying to pin him down on exact rates of default, I could tell that my interview was rapidly losing its charm. We were seated on a pair of benches in front of his house. Piled on a table nearby were a bunch of small packages wrapped in banana leaves, and instead of moving on to the next interview section (business cycles, always a favorite) I asked him about what was inside the tubes. Cassava!, he exclaimed, and gave me some to snack on as he explained how it was produced. When we returned to the survey he seemed somewhat reinvigorated and eager to answer. It was a win-win for everyone: the lender got to talk about something he cared about, my translator got a break from the difficult economic terminology of my survey, and I learned that Philippine cassava snacks are very bland and should be avoided.

Siquijor

2011-07-09T01:30:00.000-07:00

This weekend I took a two-day trip to Siquijor. It’s a small island an hour away from Dumaguete that Lonely Planet describes as a “spooky province of mysterious healers, charming beaches and spellbinding sunsets”; that description seems like it’s compensating for something, and I now know that it leaves out the mind blowingly terrifying ferry ride there and back. I’m tuckered out, so I’ll just put up some pictures for now and get back to the longer posts tomorrow.

The beach at my cottage

Toilet spider, my Friday night entertainment

A beach

Fresh ube-flavored milk -- probably the best part of the weekend

Sunset from my cottage (or, from the construction site right next to my cottage)

Little Distractions

2011-07-06T06:29:00.001-07:00

One thing I have noticed after five weeks of research is that moneylenders tend to have adorable little dogs. Three of the four participants in my text message tracking program in Cagayan de Oro had dogs, a collection of animals that included one pregnant shih-tzu that would lie on her back and wait for someone to pet her and one mutt that would howl at me until I let him lick my shoelace. Moneylenders are the same here in Dumaguete; during our first interview this morning my translator had to clear her throat a few times before I realized we had all been sitting in silence while I watched two tiny white puppies wrestle each other. I have yet to establish causal nature to the trend.

Disappointingly, I have no pictures. It was threatening to rain today so I left my camera (my sister’s camera) at home.

Public Health

2011-07-05T05:15:00.000-07:00

The term for a ‘neighborhood’ here in the Philippines is a barangay. A good place to start looking for lenders is the Barangay Hall, a collection of buildings than usually includes an office and a basketball court and lots of people with little to do and plenty of time to talk to researchers. Today my translator and I visited the clinic in one of these Barangay Halls. While she spoke to the nurses I looked at a map on the wall; it laid out the barangay and pinpointed areas with health concerns, with different colored dots identifying things like ‘malnourished children’ and ‘dengue fever’. A light green dot, I was surprised to learn, indicated a lactating mother.

Irrelevant, but this is a strange tuna advertisement

My other interviews uncovered some really interesting stuff, but due to privacy restraints I can’t talk about it. In case anyone is wondering about why my posts are so short, it’s because it would be a breach of confidentiality if I shared information about project design, interview results, or possible trends in the data. Loose lips sink internships!

I can safely say that I got a haircut this afternoon, and that the hairdresser says I now look very handsome.

Getting Through

2011-07-03T02:32:00.000-07:00

My fifth reflection.

When I worked as a teacher in China I became very familiar with the vacant, conciliatory look of someone who doesn’t understand what I am talking about. After covering a complicated grammar point I would often ask if the class had followed my explanation; Yes Mr. Keller!, they would all cheer, even though I knew that some of them must have missed it. I dealt with this problem like this:

First, I would yell out a summary question. For example, “Do you understand how to use the word ‘stray?’” (‘Because of You,’ a huge crowd pleaser).

“Yes!” They would all respond.

“Really?”

“Yes,” less forcefully.

“Truly?”

And silence.

They almost always admitted to confusion by the third repeat. It occurred to me that perhaps they didn’t know what truly meant, but I chose to believe instead that my three-tiered skepticism created a classroom atmosphere of compassion and growth in which they all felt comfortable exposing their weaknesses. By the end of the class almost all of the students, thankfully, looked like they understood what I was talking about.

Back in Asia for a few months, I am once again becoming very familiar with the look of miscomprehension. This time it shows up on the face of the lenders; my research includes a text message tracking component that is a little bit confusing, and often as I watch my translator explain it to the lenders I can tell that the information is not being absorbed. Finishing with her prepared speech, my translator will ask the lenders if they understand what they are supposed to do. Yes!, they say, and my heart breaks just a little as they proceed to screw up the program in every possible way.

It’s a frustrating position for me. First, I don’t speak the language, so I can’t try to explain things myself. Second, and more difficult, I don’t know how to tell the lenders they are wrong. As a teacher, it was my job to correct my students, and I felt comfortable pointing out their errors. As a researcher, though, I depend on the lenders for my data, and I risk embarrassing or irritating them into attrition with constant critiques. Yesterday, for instance, I visited a lender who would consistently send her text message responses to the wrong number; I reminded her again about the proper destination for the messages, and her response was to stop sending them altogether. I would call it a Pyrrhic victory, except that I don’t know if correcting a banana vendor about how to participate in a research program counts as a victory at all.

But at least I’m getting some research done! Which after weeks of stomach issues, translator issues, travel issues, housing issues and general stalling, feels really good. The pictures come from my weekend trips to Casaroro Falls and the Twin Lakes.

Local Flavor

2011-06-30T06:51:00.000-07:00

My first interview today took place under a wooden shelter next to the roadside. At one point my translator needed a few seconds to collect her thoughts, during which time a man sitting next to me withdrew this baggie from his pocket and encouraged me to eat the contents:

He described it as ‘little fish that had been pounded, poured into a jug, and then put away until they were ready.’ The paste could be used as a dip for green mango and bananas. For the rest of the interview he kept nudging the bag towards me, distracting me from the finer points of the lender’s business strategy.

School Visits

2011-06-27T21:55:00.000-07:00

Although my two days of hunting for a translator have proven to be relatively fruitless so far, I have had the opportunity to explore the campuses of several universities in Dumaguete. First I went to Silliman, which is the oldest American university in the Philippines and one of the top six schools in Asia (says a woman I met there):

Next I went to Negros Oriental State University, which recently won a pan-Asian award for most racially insensitive epithets in a school’s name. I just made that up. It was registration day when I showed up, so every person I asked to point me towards the business school was either a timid incoming freshman or an exhausted staff member.

Finally I went to Foundation University. All the offices I visited were cool and comfortable and paneled with beautiful dark wood; the campus was really nice, too.

Last night one of the other interns started an email chain where we could let off steam about the challenges we’re facing. It was a brilliant idea. I was feeling pretty crabby about hiking all over town in the heat all day looking for anyone to be a translator, but my problems were put into perspective when I learned that another intern has been sick and unable to move for over a week and sleeps on the floor in a compound that is sealed shut at night because the UN considers the city to be dangerous. Whoa.

Damage Control

2011-06-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

All of these pictures are of Dumaguete

My fourth reflection.

Last night I slept in a small, windowless room with teal-colored walls and no air conditioning. Before going to bed I soaked my pajamas in cold water from the shower, but within an hour or so the moisture evaporated and I was left sweating on top of the covers. The room smelled strongly of cockroach repellent. The fan only circulated hot air. It was my first evening in Dumaguete, a small town on the island of Negros in the south of the Philippines, and as I lay prone and tried to avoid all movement I realized for the first time just how oppressive poverty can be.

Just kidding! I did, though, have plenty of time to trace the series of decisions that had led me there.

My internship requires me to conduct research in three cities around the Philippines. I get to select the locations, so after carefully considering a wide array of factors (size, relative rate of poverty, proximity to rural areas, local political climate, weather patterns, presence of support staff, access to day trips, pretty pictures of Google) I settled on Tacloban, a small town on the island of Leyte near where Imelda Marcos was born. I would stay there from late June to mid-July.

Unfortunately, I failed to consult a calendar before arriving. On June 29^th Tacloban hosts a body-painting festival so large and so important that the entire region shudders to a halt for a week as everyone pours into the city in order to honor their culture and occupy hotel rooms. Arriving in Tacloban on Thursday, my research partner and I learned that every single affordable place in town was fully booked for the week. Even if we did find somewhere to stay, the local staff told us, it was unlikely that we would get any work done. On Friday night I found myself in the alarming position of having no research prospects and, soon, no roof over my head.

Times like this can be discouraging. I begin to feel very much like a college student without his friends and family; travelling begins to resemble a long obstacle course that I have set up for myself. Facing my own failure to plan well, it strikes me how nice it is to hang around in the USA and do my homework.

But then again, what if a good traveller isn’t someone who plans everything perfectly, but rather someone who responds well to sudden changes? I like to think that this is true. Mainly, it redeems me. Beyond that, I think that flexibility really is important. I constantly become more and more aware of how impossible it is to prepare for every possible setback that can happen to a traveller. Foresight alone has its limits; flexibility can fill in the gaps.

In Tacloban I reached the limits of my foresight. My relocation to Dumaguete was an eleventh hour effort to salvage some research time, and so far it hasn’t turned out that badly. My night in the teal-colored sauna-dungeon, though not great, wasn’t dismal either, and this morning I found myself some new digs with air conditioning and cable TV (!!!!). This morning I explored the city. It’s a funky little town on the edge of a bay, complete with mossy Spanish ruins and a nice, wide boardwalk. I’m hesitantly optimistic about the next few weeks. And if things don’t work out, there are more cities only a boat ride away.

The Best Laid Plans

2011-06-24T20:50:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been a whirlwind exhibition of why I should never, under any circumstances, be allowed to plan an itinerary. Thursday morning I woke up in Cagayan de Oro. In the following 72 hours I took a plane to Manila, a plane to Tacloban, a bus to Ormoc, a ferry to Cebu, and finally a ferry to Dumaguete, a combined total of more than a day in transit that has left me approximately 100 miles from where I started:

Right now I’m waiting in the OceanJet terminal in Cebu to start the trip to Dumaguete. The safety presentation on my last ferry started with a long prayer. It must have worked, because we made it in one piece!

Distances

2011-06-22T05:49:00.000-07:00

Cagayan de Oro is like an optical illusion: it seems much bigger than it really is. I usually travel to a neighborhood called Bulua to interview lenders, a highway trip that lasts more than half an hour and transports us out of the city center and into nearby mountains. I considered this to be a long journey; today I learned that it’s only seven kilometers long. Seven kilometers! My accumulated hours of sitting in Jeepneys suddenly feel very misguided.

I think the reason Cagayan de Oro feels so big is because the modes of transportation are so slow. Today, for example, I rode a two-passenger man-powered tricycle around town. Watching children whiz by us on their bikes, I had plenty of time to enjoy the scenery and feel the breeze on my face. The driver even let me take over the ‘wheel’ for a few minutes. It turns out that passenger tricycles are relatively easy to power and surprisingly hard to steer, a fact I learned as I attempted in vain to keep us from lumbering off of the road and into a field.

(Internet is too slow for pictures)

Running on Empty

2011-06-20T02:34:00.000-07:00

The general policy on Camiguin Island is to rent out motorbikes with almost no gas in them. I think this is sneaky, because a few liters of gas costs the same amount as the rental, so my goal for my day of biking (besides enjoying the scenery, feeling the breeze in my hair and not hurling myself off a cliff) was to return the vehicle with absolutely no fuel left in the tank. That turned out to be a tough feat. The vehicle had no odometer and I didn’t know the length of my route, which is why yesterday afternoon you could have found me lurching into a small coastal town on a wheezing bike.

The Sunken Cemetery

Asking around for I could find some gas, everyone directed me to the convenience store under the mango tree. They could give no other distinguishing characteristics. An enormous man offered to hop up behind me and show me the way, but I was dubious about the power left in my bike and my own steering abilities. Eventually I ended up just stopping at every store under a tree, which, it turns out, was a lot of stores. At each one they would stand outside, under their own trees, and say, “No, not here. Go to the store under the mango tree!”

A stretch of road

I eventually found the right place. I tried to memorize what a mango tree looks like, but I still don’t think I could pick one out of a line-up.

A Helping Hand

2011-06-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

This is the third of my weekly reflections. The pictures come from a weekend trip to Camiguin, a small island near Cagayan de Oro, the cause for the short blogging hiatus.

Several nights ago I noticed that all the dirty laundry was missing from my hotel room. This was a strange turn of events; my electronics were all there, and my passport, and my money, but not my pajamas. Clearly nobody had robbed me. I came to the conclusion that the housekeepers, realizing that the clothes were dirty, had decided to do something with my laundry. But what?

Boys climbing boats at the dock in Balingoan

I hesitate to call the case of my missing laundry a clash of civilizations, but I think it does represent a failure to communicate between the local hotel staff and myself. Objectively, I realized that the maids probably had just wanted to tidy things up and had sent my stuff to the laundry. I had no issue with their intentions. It was the end of the day when I first noticed that the clothes were gone, though, and I was tired and just wanted to get some rest. Drifting off to sleep while wearing my dress clothes as pajamas, I knew that the maids were being helpful; I felt, though, like they were being meddlesome.

The motorbike I drove around the island

It’s a question that follows me during my research: do the moneylenders see me as helpful or just a good-hearted nuisance? My survey includes over 200 data points and covers some sensitive subjects. Forty-five minutes into the interview it often becomes painfully aware that the lenders would rather be doing just about anything than talking to a twenty-one year old American about their business practices. I like to think that the reason they stick around is because they have been so persuaded by my introduction about the importance of the research that they feel obligated to do their part on behalf of their countrymen and all of humanity, but I also recognize that they might just be acting out of politeness. I kept quiet about my missing laundry for a day because I didn’t want to step on any toes; maybe these lenders are just doing the same thing.

This is how you buy gasoline.

I’m not sure what can be done about this problem. My research is meddlesome by nature. My goal for the next few weeks, then, is to try to find a way to temper the nosy aspects of the interview with something a little more palatable. Maybe humor? Empathy? Factoids about Arizona? By lightening the mood a little, I hope to reshape the survey as something slightly less intrusive. I don’t want to be like the laundry-snatching maids, obliging but irritating. This research should be enjoyable (or, realistically, at least tolerable) to all parties involved.

View from the road

And where was my laundry? Several days later, I learned that the maids had put it in my closet. And that’s when I learned that my room had a closet.

Divisoria

2011-06-15T22:44:00.000-07:00

The center of downtown Cagayan de Oro is called Divisoria, a long, thin plaza that holds monuments to war heroes and which, at night, transforms into an enormous second-hand street market. A lot of the goods come from international donations. For example, I found this surveying bag from Korea:

It used to belong to Laura:

Live performances are held most nights of the week. Yesterday I stood in front of a bank of chairs where locals were getting head massages from people dressed as nurses and I listened to a cover band sing ‘Alone’ by Celine Dion. “Powerful!” exclaimed the emcee once the piece was finished, and everyone in the plaza applauded. The next song was a traditional Filipino favorite. I took that as my cue to return to the hotel and write up field notes from the day.

Snack Time

2011-06-15T03:12:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite snacks:

It is sliced mango covered in salt and chili sauce. Vendors sell it from street stalls all over town; they usually offer green mango and unripe papaya, too, and sometimes when I’m very bored I’ll find a discreet spot behind the vendor and watch him or her prepare the fruit. The flavor reminds me of spicy mango lollipops that we used to eat in elementary school.

Night Shift

2011-06-14T07:43:00.000-07:00

This evening my translator and I picked our way down a dark alley in order to pay an unannounced visit to the house of a turco, a middle-eastern lender who loans money at exceptionally high interest rates. Considering that these men are known for their cold-hearted business tactics I wasn’t expecting a positive reception to our little pop-in; when we finally found his home, guarded by both barbed wire and shards of broken glass sticking out of the wall, I was almost relieved to find out that he wasn’t there. We left a copy of the survey with his neighbor. Call us!, we wrote on the bottom.

On a less thrilling front, I’m befriending a woman who sells pork dumplings next to the copy shop I visit all the time.

None of My Business

2011-06-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

The river in Cagayan de Oro

My second weekly reflection:

Yesterday I interviewed a moneylender at a gas station on the outskirts of town. We sat on small plastic stools facing the highway, and even though it was dusk I fanned myself with the survey papers as she answered. After several minutes an old woman approached us.

“Go away,” she told me in English. She had orange hair done up in a perm and wore a bright purple shirt. “You don’t belong here.”

My translator tried to explain the purpose of my research. Hearing that I was an American, the woman turned to the small crowd that had gathered around us. “Always the Americans!” she cried out. “They need to stop coming here.” Looking back to me, she continued. “Go talk to the bank. Go talk to the co-ops. This place right here is for Filipinos. Leave us alone.”

And that was that. The moneylender informed me that she was no longer comfortable with the interview; my translator and I hopped on a passing jeepney and headed home.

This was an isolated incident. My first week of surveying has included many more desserts than diatribes, a sign of the incredible hospitality of the people here (hospitality so reliable that I now leave for fieldwork on an empty stomach). Still, the angry old woman at the gas station raised a serious question: how could I ever persuade an antagonistic audience that my research was relevant?

The central square, under construction

I thought back to my first year of mock trial when we learned Aristotle’s modes of persuasion, logos, pathos and ethos. I could logically explain the reason for my research (logos): we need to know the informal credit environment so that NGO’s could make their loan products more effective. I could appeal to her emotions (pathos) by pointing out the obvious poverty visible from our vantage point at the gas station. As for an ethical appeal (ethos), I struggled to find one that was reasonable. On a personal level, my short length of time in the Philippines prevented me from claiming a vested interest in the Filipino economy; on a more global level, the several decades of shellacking that the country received as a result of the American presence (coming not just from the USA but other nations as well) made any sort of concern appear a little belated. According to my mock trial coaches (hearsay!), Aristotle said that ethos was the most important element of any rhetorical piece; without coming up with a better ethical justification, I fear, my arguments will meet little success.

Jeepney

2011-06-09T23:12:00.000-07:00

The most common form of public transit here is the Jeepney. They were originally constructed out of American military jeeps left over from World War II; with a driver’s seat in the front and two long benches in the back, they can easily carry more than twenty people across town.

One of the most interesting things about Jeepneys is the method of payment. Passengers will simply pass some coins up to the front of the vehicle (kind of like a game of telephone, but passing along money instead of messages); the driver will count out change (as he drives) and then pass the coins back. Sometimes there will be someone in the back who collects money (in the local dialect, a ‘conductor’), but the rest of the time everything is based on the honor system.

Today while riding a Jeepney I dropped another passenger's change and couldn't find it.

Warm Welcome

2011-06-08T19:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I showed up unannounced at a woman’s house with a translator and asked if I could interview her about her unregistered moneylending business. I thought this seemed a bit optimistic.

the road there

My translator assured me that it would be fine; he knew the woman, he said, and she would be glad to talk to me. Sure enough, within minutes I was reclining on a Chinese-style wooden sofa and sipping ice water as we talked about the number of clients she had and what sort of interest rates she charged. After completing the interview we retired to the living room, where we watched Ice Age and ate some homemade bananas crème, a dessert of cooked bananas drenched in a toffee sauce. The visit ended with the lender’s husband driving us back to the bus stop. I don’t want to extrapolate too quickly, but based on this and other visits it seems that Filipinos are very hospitable. Or maybe they just really love talking to Americans about moneylending. Either way, I intend to include questions about desserts in future interviews.

getting the recipe, for research purposes

Risky Business

2011-06-07T17:19:00.001-07:00

My first interview took place in a room without windows at the top of a dark wooden stairway. One section of the interview focuses on the risks of being a moneylender, including possible loss of personal money and the potential likelihood of being robbed, and it was at this point that things got interesting.

“No,” the subject said from across his desk, “No one has ever tried to steal my money.”

“Ok,” I said, ready to move on to the next section, which deals with the less exciting subject of ‘Business Cycles.’

“But I was once stabbed.”

“What!” I said, forgetting my solemn pledge as a researcher to be impartial. I learned the lender was once attacked in a public marketplace by a delinquent borrower. At first all he felt was a numb pain in his shoulder; then, when he felt blood dripping on his feet and heard people screaming around him, he realized he had been stabbed. The next thing he remembers is waking up in the hospital. The only reason he survived and didn’t bleed to death, according to the doctors, is that the assailant left the six-inch blade in his back.

"Lending is a good business," he summarized. "But a risky one."

Hopefully all of my research subjects are this awesome! No pictures from yesterday because it was raining and I was nervous to take my camera.

Monster Mall

2011-06-05T02:45:00.000-07:00

On the hunt for a bath towel, I asked my guide where the nearest department store was. He pointed me to Gaisano Mall, located on the edge of downtown.

“But there’s a monster there!” He added. “It’s a giant serpent that belongs to the owner of the mall and brings them good luck. To survive it must eat humans. One of the stalls in one of the bathrooms has a trapdoor, and once a month a naughty child disappears.

“But don’t worry,” he added, seeing my stricken look. “It’s just an urban legend.”

Gaisano Mall, the Hogwarts of the Philippines! I saw no serpents but plenty of naughty children.

Chaos in the notebook section!

First Impressions

2011-06-04T01:44:00.000-07:00

Note: I have to write weekly reflections to get internship credit for this summer. 'Personal reflections' are a form of writing that I'd like to work on, since I see the upcoming few years as a marathon of admission and scholarship applications, so feel free to critique away! The normal short posts will return soon.

Sometimes when I’m very tired I think I can understand Tagalog. The
rhythm sounds distinctly like Spanish and a lot of the vocabulary comes directly from English, which means that often some especially sleep-addled part of my brain will pipe up and say, in the face of overwhelming odds, “Kevin, I think you just understood that radio advertisement. I think you really did!”

A church in Manila

My hallucinatory proficiency in Tagalog, however, won’t be enough to get me through a fifteen-page survey with moneylenders. That’s why yesterday I found myself in the somewhat surreal position of interviewing applicants for a translator position with my employer. Most of my interview experience has come from the other side of the table, and although I much prefer being the one asking questions I also found that the whole process felt a little bit like two interns playing dress-up. What gave me the right to judge these applicants? Since when did I know enough about my employer to represent their interests?

It wasn’t just the interviews that felt somewhat imaginary. It’s a feeling that I remember really well from ricocheting around several cities in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan last year: the first week in a new place always seem like an extended game of make-believe. Yesterday, for example, I ‘ran errands.’ My shopping list included towels, shampoo, notebooks and pens, and the afternoon felt like a pretend version of a normal day. I was just doing my thing, you know, buying some stuff, no big deal. Walking to the store with a grocery list in hand, it was easier to pretend that the heavy jungle heat and swarms of tuk-tuks were just a part of my new daily routine. “Look at you, Kevin!” the same optimistic part of my brain that thinks I understand Tagalog declared, “You’re just like a local!”

The fire escape at my hostel

But I’m not like a local at all. I don’t understand the language. I don’t know what Filipino interviews are like, I don’t know what brand of shampoo is good and, standing in the middle of a school supply store that looked like a battle zone and paging through notebooks with miniscule ruling, I realized that I don’t even know what the paper looks like. Everything is a mystery. No matter how much I pretend that I know what I’m doing, every decision I make is a bluff. An insufferable teacher once said that a tourist visits new places whereas a traveler experiences them. That may be true, but for the first few days perhaps the traveler is just a better actor.

Cagayan de Oro

2011-06-02T23:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we arrived in our first research destination. It’s a town named Cagayan de Oro on the northern end of Mindanao Island, and although the city itself is perfectly safe we were advised not to travel any further south or west due to bombings by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF!). Most of our time so far has been spent trying to figure out accommodations for the next few weeks. Several hotels market themselves as “Christian approved,” a designation I don’t fully understand, and one dormitory even required that all guests prove their Catholicism. The picture comes from a stroll I took last night and does a poor job of showing how congested and noisy and full of diesel fumes the city center truly is.

The Beach

2011-06-02T00:58:00.000-07:00

Manila, according to local tourism materials, is famous for its sunsets. A good place to watch is the boardwalk along Manila Bay, a crumbling walkway that stretches for several kilometers along a beach covered with garbage.

The place has a sort of funky charm. Instead of benches, local planners installed several swinging love seats; vendors cruise up and down the strand selling steaming ears of corn. Considering the potential of the boardwalk, it seems strange that the beach itself has become a combination landfill and sewage plant. Maybe the locals get used to the smell.

Taxi Driver

2011-05-31T16:48:00.000-07:00

It's very blurry, but this car has a TV in the front seat in case the driver gets bored.

Arriving into downtown Manila from the airport, I learned that my hostel was located in the red light district. “There are a lot of pretty girls here,” my taxi driver noted, pointing out of the window. “Americans love Filipinas. Especially black Americans.”

I tried my best non-committal noise, perfected from a year of invitations to karaoke in China. In the silence that followed my driver offered a story from his past. “One time an American asked for two Filipina girls. He used to be in the navy. Then he asked if they could meet in my car. You know what I mean? Sex. He offered me $300, so I took them out of the city and then left them alone.”

Relieved that I had put my luggage in the trunk instead of the backseat, I pointed behind me. “There?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I used to have a different car.”

I’m curious to learn more about Filipino attitudes towards Americans. I know that sex tourism is not a problem unique to the Philippines, but I can’t think of any other country that benefited as much in terms of infrastructure and development from the American presence. For that matter, I’m not even sure the Philippines did benefit at all from the American presence. Is the general concept of an American that of a benevolent helper, an invasive conqueror, or a wealthy sex-maniac? Good questions!

And for those of you who are curious, I saw no prostitutes hanging around my hotel. I did go to bed around 8:30, though.

View from my hostel

Packing

2011-05-28T21:16:00.000-07:00

I’m just about done packing. I think I did a much better job than for China, especially since the duffel bag includes three Chinese textbooks.

my luggage theme was 'something blue'

For those of you who want to keep track of me, I’ll be landing in Manila on Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday will be dedicated to meeting with the national staff, and then early Thursday morning I fly out to Cagayan de Oro, a university town on the island of Mindanao. I’ll probably stay there for a couple of weeks; after that, my itinerary is up in the air.

Summer Plans

2011-05-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. I’m back! And writing this post from my brand new little netbook. If you notice any typos they are probably a result of my fingers adapting to the smaller keyboard.

Early Monday morning I will head out to the Philippines for a 10-week research internship. My assignment is to quantitatively and qualitatively describe the credit market in rural and urban areas. I’m arriving a little bit late to the party; this project has been collecting data for three years now and has already analyzed a lot of information, so the specific goal this summer is to flesh out more fully the cost structure of a typical informal moneylender’s businesses. My research methodology consists mostly of interviewing moneylenders; pending extra cooperation, I will then engage in activity-tracking studies that range from relatively casual (daily journals kept by the lenders) to somewhat invasive (my constant presence).

It should be really interesting. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up the blogging pace I established in China. Here’s to summer of thoughtful, educational, and entertaining cogitating!

没有了(No More)

2010-06-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

The big update: I have returned to the United States. My life here isn't interesting enough to write about. I'm watching TV, catching up on magazines, and reacquainting myself with American gyms and their fascinating customs like wiping off machines and wearing clothes.

I'm not sure when I'll start up this blog again. If anyone has any ideas for things to write about, let me know. Otherwise, check back in next summer. I don't have any plans, but hopefully I'll be doing something exciting!

Thanks, everyone, for reading. Here's a poem about a goose that a child wrote 1,500 years ago:

"Goose, goose, goose,
bends its neck to the sky to sing,
White feathers floats in green water,
Red foot pushes clear waves."

Now you know why I don't quote classical Chinese poetry.

我会想中国 (I Will Miss China)

2010-06-19T02:55:00.000-07:00

I’m writing this in the Beijing Airport, reclining on a considerately provided chaise lounge and watching the planes take off. I only have six hours left in China. Time to count my blessings (and, thanks to my long layover, link them to other posts!)

1. The food (Good job, Medieval Sister, you guessed it right. I was considering switching the order just to prove you wrong but then decided I HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO). There’s not much I can say other than that everything is delicious, fresh, healty-ish, and cheap. Expensive meals cost two or three dollars. My usual dinner, dessert included, cost around $1.50.

I also enjoyed that I could walk into a restaurant and say “I want carrots, squash, and tofu!”, even if there was no such thing on the menu.

2. The scenery. Guilin is gorgeous. I’ve discussed the mountains and rivers at length already on this blog, so I’ll contain myself.

3. My class. The Chinese method of going to every class with the same group of people may feel sort of elementary school-ish, but it also fosters really close friendships with your classmates. Friday was my last day at Guangxi Normal University. To celebrate, the class monitor bought a cake with my name on it, another student brought two bottles of Coca Cola (my name), and we all took pictures with each other as one of the Vietnamese girls wrote farewell notes on her country’s currency. I’ll miss ‘em!

4. This blog. Is this narcissistic? I don’t know. But I really enjoyed blogging about China.

5. The Chinese people. Or, really, only some of the Chinese people; maybe just a few of them. My interactions with the locals tended overwhelming towards the awkward/frustrating, but sometimes I met people who were really open, interesting, opinionated, and able to understand my American accent. These conversations were extremely rewarding.

6. The other students. Last semester I studied with 30 Americans and that was interesting because I learned all about different kinds of college life in the United States. This semester, though, I was the only one from the USA; my classmates came from Poland, Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and Myanmar, and my network of acquaintances included citizens of Mexico, Estonia, Costa Rica, Kyrgyzstan, and Chile. Talking to them about their lives and motivations for studying Chinese was fascinating. For example, I didn’t even know they had schools in Myanmar.

7. The excitement. I have no idea what’s going to happen on any given day. I might have a midterm exam, I might go on a day trip, it might rain and I might be fired. A good symbol of this unpredictability, and the suspense that goes with it, is the elevator in my building. Over four months, I have seen the following things in the elevator: a bunch of toddlers with no adults, a family with a bunch of balloons, trash, suspicious puddles of liquids, two people on bicycles, and a woman on a rumbling motorcycle.

This excitement is also stressful and tiring. I’m ready for several weeks of predictability.

8. The Porno Gym. I could never forget you.

9. The prices. Most things are so cheap in China. If you lock yourself out of the bathroom in the middle of the night, it’s nice that you can have a locksmith come and open it for you for $4.

10. The invincibility. I can do whatever weird things I want here and just offer as an explanation “I’m a foreigner/American.” If I forget my umbrella and come to school soaking wet, it’s not because I’m absentminded; it’s because that’s what Americans do. I may have left several Chinese people with skewed views on American culture, but I saved a lot of face. Which is all that matters.

Whew, I made it to 10! I really am going to miss China (as opposed to last semester, when I would have happily forgone a second semester abroad to return to ASU or work in a coal mine), and I look forward to coming back soon and often.

If I had fully absorbed Chinese culture I would now reference a poem from the Tang Dynasty about flowers or bird or rain, but I haven’t, so I’ll sign off with a quote from A Far Off Place by Laurens Van Der Post (a book that avid readers of this blog with remember I already recommended):

"The beauty invested in all, even the most trivial of things, when one believes oneself to be looking on them for the last time, overwhelmed him."

真受不了中国 (I Can't Stand China)

2010-06-17T16:41:00.000-07:00

Today I came to the depressing realization that all my shoes smell like sewage. It happened during Comprehensive Chinese class. ‘Why does this room smell so bad?’ I wondered, sniffing around as my teacher described the difference between the intransitive and transitive forms of ‘to command’.

‘Oh,’ I then realized, ‘it’s my feet.’

I have two nights left here. I’ll use this one to pick out the ten things I will miss least about China.

The internet. The censorship is bad enough (linguistic side note: when a website has been blocked by the government, young people say that it has bei hexie, or ‘made harmonious’), but most of the time it doesn’t even matter because my connection is too slow to reach allowable websites. Loading pictures on to this blog was a huge pain in my butt. I hope you are all grateful.

The brutal honesty of Chinese people. If you want to experience Asian openness at its finest, move to China and get a pimple. Strangers will point at their own face and say ‘pimple!”, acquaintances will point at your face and say “look!”, and your very best friends will just poke the pimple and laugh. That’s what happened to me, at least.

Messiness. I’m about to indulge in some generalizations, so bear with me. Chinese people are really messy. Trash is all over the streets, and five of the seven Chinese people I have lived with never washed their dishes. When I want to take out the trash, I just carry my wastebasket to the stairway in my building and throw my garbage on the top of a pile.

Getting yelled at. People yell at me all the time, usually things like “Foreigner!” or “Halllllo!”. I don’t think they mean anything bad, but it still gets tiring. I complained about this to my high school class.

“I get really annoyed when Chinese people yell ‘Foreigner!’ at me,” I told them.

“Wait,” they asked. “So when a foreigner walks by, what should we yell at them?”

Lack of Schedules. Nothing is planned ahead here. And everybody is always late and things never start on time. My classmates still don’t know when their finals will take place. More broadly (generalization alert!), this is symptomatic of a general disdain for the rights and opinions of people in ‘inferior’ positions. One is expected to be completely receptive to the whims of his superiors and willing to change his own schedule without complaint. I hated, hated, hated this.

Language barrier. Although my Mandarin has improved, misunderstandings persist. This difficulty was expected and unavoidable. I still didn’t like it.

The babies going to the bathroom on the street.

Weather. Winter is brutal here, and the rainy season has left all my clothes moldy and all my books curvy. My shoes smell like sewage because I have to walk through puddles all the way to school.

Memorization. The Chinese method of language acquisition is based entirely on repetition. Our textbooks are full of example texts. Before class, we must read the assigned text and annotate it with tone marks, pronunciation and, if necessary, English definitions. During class, we recite the text together. After class, we complete homework assignments that often consist of mainly copying the text. This process is tedious. It’s bearable when we are discussing subjects like ‘Smoking-Society’s Silent Killer?’ or ‘Lhasa’s Scenery’, but it becomes excruciating when covering ‘Contracts’.

Several weeks ago, my writing teacher approached my Australian friend and scolded him for not responding closely enough to the essay prompt she had assigned us (side note: for this particular assignment, I copied a text straight out the book and got an A+).

“Sorry,” he said, “I just wanted to be creative.”

“You’re not here to be creative,” she answered. “You are here to learn Chinese.”

Money Obsession. Everyone always asks how much everything costs. Haircuts, plane tickets, lunches, loaves of bread, everything. This is not an exaggeration. It’s not targeted especially at foreigners, since Chinese people ask each other the same thing, but it tends to lead to uncomfortable situations. Regrettably, I told one of my roommates’ girlfriends that I earned 100 RMB (about USD $15) per hour as an English teacher. At the time, she commented that my voice must be very valuable; since then, she routinely brings up stories about how little Chinese people earn per month (or, sometimes, per year), each time exclaiming “And remember, you earn X times that per hour!”

Also, I’m tired of Chinese people always telling me I pay too much for stuff.

I’ll hold myself to ten complaints. There are more, like the surfeit of counterfeit goods and the absence of toiletries (OH and how NOISY EVERYTHING IS, I CAN’T BELIEVE I FORGOT THAT), but I’m trying to keep my spirit up.

The “10 Things I Will Miss Most About China” post is coming soon. I wanted to save that one for my last day and end on a high note.

我们上课吧 (Let's Go To Class)

2010-06-16T16:37:00.000-07:00

Now that I’m almost done with classes, I think it would be appropriate to explain how my university’s class schedule works. It resembles a high school more than an American university; classes start at 8:40 each morning and each period is 40 minutes long. A bell signals the end of each period. During ‘passing periods’ the entire campus is bombarded with songs, including one especially rousing tune that goes “one, two, three…” up to “eight!” and is accompanied by a detailed calisthenics routine. A more unsettling song features Chinese lyrics with the English chorus “Chin! Up! CHINA!”

Noon-2:30 is rest time. Don’t try to schedule any appointments.

Classes resume from 2:30 until 5:50. Overachievers can sign up for nighttime courses, which run from 7:30 until 10. Rumor has it that a wake-up song is broadcasted every morning, but I can’t corroborate this claim.

Note: I don’t have class every day from 8:30 to 5:00. Rather, my classes are held during the campus-wide time slots (for example, on Wednesday I have writing from 10:30-12:00 and then speaking from 2:30-4:00). A student’s schedule corresponds to his/her major. At least I think the majors for Chinese students work the same way. But I’m not positive.

亲爱的同学们 (Beloved Classmates)

2010-06-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

Every day for the past 14 weeks I have attended Chinese lessons with the same group of 15 students. The Chinese idea of a ‘class’ is different than the American. It’s a very intimate, tightly knit group; we all get meals together, we transform into a sports team for intramural tournaments, and we exchange telephone numbers and email addresses. As I prepare to return to the USA, I feel I have become very familiar, maybe even friends, with most (if not all) of the people in my class.

Which is why it came as such as surprise when at 11:30 last night an email titled “Sexy Sex” arrived in my inbox. It came from an unknown sender, but the first few lines of the email (and therefore the ones I could view without opening it) listed the email addresses of several of my classmates. A couple of the guys in my class tend to send out mass emails, usually harmless little slide shows about Vietnam, and one Burmese girl occasionally distributes sale and event notifications, so I assumed that this email was probably some sort of funny cartoon or something that one of my classmates had forwarded. Nope. Upon opening the email I found that it was twenty pornographic pictures. No funny cartoons.

Someone has some explaining to do.

The picture above is of more vice in China: it's an arcade game, and if you win you get a pack of cigarettes.

两封短信 (Two Texts)

2010-06-12T17:14:00.000-07:00

Today I got two texts in a row. One was from the government, warning me of a torrential downpour sometime within the next 48 hours. The other one was from my phone company (and therefore, the government), informing me that someone had just added 10 RMB to my cell phone account. The first one pushed my soggy self into an even deeper state of dejection; the second one provided a much needed upper. Who was giving me this money?, I wondered. A secret admirer?

Seconds later I got a call from an unknown number. Unwisely, I answered; the woman on the other end was the person who had deposited the money in my account and who, based on the level of background noise, was probably standing in the middle of the busiest street in town, and after having a good laugh over the fact that I was a foreigner she started talking really fast and giving me instructions that I didn’t understand. At my request she repeated herself. Eventually I got the gist of what she was saying. She wanted me to call the phone company, talk to them, explain that this woman had accidentally put money in my account, ask them to transfer the money to her account, and then call her again to confirm that the transaction had been processed successfully.

“Really?” I asked. We were talking about $1.50.

My exquisite wit was lost in translation. “Thanks!” she said, and hung up.

I never called the phone company.

On a side note, the wastebasket is missing from my kitchen. Who loses wastebaskets?

(Once again, my internet is too slow for pictures.)

药店 (Pharmacy)

2010-06-11T17:30:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning with a cold. Since I’m only in China for another week I took this opportunity to explore the exciting world of Eastern medicine.

Medicine stores are all over the place here. I can find at least ten within a one-mile radius of my apartment, allowing me to window shop a little bit and search for the perfect therapy for a gunky throat. I settled on a store with a cooler in the front. Each shelf was stocked with two-liter soda bottles full of homemade tonics and syrups. I got a to-go baggy of “cough tea,” which tasted good when I first drank it but then turned extremely bitter. I feel better now; I also just took a nap, though.

双皮奶 (Double Skinned Milk)

2010-06-09T16:47:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since my last food post, but don’t worry, I’m still eating. Almost every day I buy a shuangpinai (pictured above, literally means “double-skinned milk). It tastes like very cold, jello-textured milk pudding, and the name comes from the thin and slightly bouncy skin that covers the top. All the tea stands around town sell it. Every stand adds kidney bean on top and a few good places thrown in some jelly coconut, but when I really want my socks knocked off I go to a little store just across from the university that covers its shuangpinai with mounds of freshly chopped fruit and a delicious sweet milk sauce. Price: $.30.

舞会飞机 (Party Plane)

2010-06-07T18:51:00.000-07:00

Last night I flew from Shanghai back to Guilin. I had booked a screaming deal on the brand new Juneyao Air, and as I pushed and scrambled my way on to the airplane I looked forward to a few restful hours in which I could recuperate from the hectic lifestyle of Shanghai.

The plane, it turned out, was even more bustling than the city it flew out of. As we accelerated down the runway a cheer rose from the front of the cabin and rippled its way back; applause broke out as soon as the wheels left the ground. Skipping up and down the aisle, children knocked from armrest to armrest as the plane hit turbulence on its ascent. Several women in front of me stood up to exchange the shrink-wrapped chicken legs that they had packed beforehand.

The real party began once we reached the cruising altitude. Wheeling a cart to the front of the plane, one of the stewards grabbed the in-cabin microphone and began a two-hour infomercial. The first item for sale was a Disney-themed water bottle (30 RMB); both easy to clean and simple to transport, this bottle would make a perfect gift for any friend. Next up was a model airplane (choking-proofed, 200 RMB), a watch that included a flash drive and recording device (perfect for your child to prepare for college placements tests, 350 RMB), a powder pink hairdryer, and, best of all, an oversized Minnie Mouse-themed beach blanket. Waitresses dashed up and down the aisle to deliver the products to interested buyers, collecting all money in green barf bags.

The light show segment of the program started once we began our descent. As the plane navigated its way through Guilin’s permanent cloud cover the cabin lights flashed on and off at random intervals, roughly corresponding the air pockets that jolted the craft from side to side. Fortunately we landed safe and sound, the journey leaving me 400 RMB poorer, a little bit wiser, and, thanks to the excruciating lack of food service, significantly hungrier.

自然历史博物馆 (Natural History Museum)

2010-06-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a friend and I visited the Shanghai Natural History Museum. A four story brontosaurus fossil greeted us, flanked on one side my a stegosaurus, on the other side by a mammoth, and in the front by a pooping baby who was being held up by his mother and watched by a passing janitor. The best exhibit was the one about human evolution; it started with pictures of deformed half-man half-apes, then casually lumped humanity into three different races (including the vigorous Negroids, whose representative statues banged on drums and danced around a fire), and then finished with a sad little placard from the 1980’s that apologized about the poor quality of the exhibit. The rest of the museum was equally captivating. For example, look at this huge crab:

Shanghai -- 植物园 (Botanical Garden)

2010-06-05T07:17:00.000-07:00

Today I treaded carefully away from the established tourist trail and visited the Shanghai Botanical Gardens. They really aren’t spectacular. A couple big white flowers were in bloom, and there was a neat bamboo tunnel, but other than that the only real draw was a large greenhouse that cost an additional 30 RMB to enter and therefore was not graced by my presence. The area seemed geared very much towards young children, who watered the lawns in abundance, old people, who kept a watch on the young children, and lovers, who hid under leafy trees and made out. Needless to say, I felt out of place.

Shanghai -- 博物馆 (Museum)

2010-06-04T05:45:00.000-07:00

Today we visited the Chinese Propaganda Museum. It’s an astounding collection of Communist posters from 1949 to the 1980’s and handwritten public notices from the Cultural Revolution, and it has an appropriately covert location: the basement of an unmarked apartment building. To visit, you must first locate the apartment complex. Then find the guard with the red beret and tell him your destination; he will give you a small card with a map, which you must follow to Apartment Building B. Once inside, go down the narrow stairway and turn right. Awesome!

Shanghai -- 世博会 (World Expo)

2010-06-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

Today we visited the World Expo. On display were hundreds of pavilions from nations around the world and thousands of Chinese people shoving and crowding and waiting for hours on end to enter each and every one.

I started the day on a strong note. Walking past the Czech Republic Pavilion, I noticed they were allowing in a steady stream of visitors; even though I wasn’t so bully on the real Czech Republic I thought I’d give the fake one a shot, and to my delight I was informed as soon as I entered that I had been randomly selected to participate in an exciting new experiment! I was led into a glass room empty except for an enormous golden teardrop and a rack full of vials. A woman attached a set of sensors to my head and explained that a computer would read my brainwaves, analyze the results, and then produce a cologne that would suit my personality perfectly.

“Think happy thoughts!” she commanded, and then left the room. Within seconds a mob of Chinese people had pressed up on each side of the room, their faces and arms and cameras squashed against the windows to get a glimpse of the strange white boy with a machine on his head. If anyone is interested, this is how you make Eau de Kevin: take some Olibanum Liquer, add in Black Agar, and then stir in just a pinch of Lemon Oil.

On my way out the woman gave me a small vial of my cologne. She also said that I was only the 659^th person selected to participate; considering that the Expo gets over 100,000 visitors per day, I feel pretty lucky.

After that I moseyed over to Argentina, which was closed because a famous basketball player was visiting. His name was Luis Scola. I had no idea who he was, but I’m a sucker for celebrity so I waited around for about half an hour until he arrived. I got this sweet paparazzi pic:

That’s about the end of the day’s excitement. I took a culturally appropriate siesta on top of the Mexico pavilion. Nothing else really.

Shanghai -- 到了 (Arrived)

2010-06-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

Today I flew out of Guilin to begin a five-day trip to Shanghai. I’m travelling with a group of twenty students and professors from Virginia Tech on a study tour, which means that I don’t have to worry about any of the transportation problems and that I can audit Chinese history lectures whenever my heart desires. What bliss!

We arrived at our hostel at about 10:30 last night. Our room overlooks a small back alley, and as a sort of welcome presentation a man right below our window gave himself a sponge-bath by the glow of a naked yellow light bulb. Fortunately he didn’t get all the way naked. Although he didn’t expose himself, he did expose (!) an interesting juxtaposition between the extreme wealth evident in the skyscrapers around him and the still basic living conditions of many of the cities citizens. Or maybe he just likes spongebaths. Or maybe he’s exhibitionist (!).

(!) indicates puns/plays on words that I only noticed when I just proofread the paragraph. My subconscious is witty!

新职业(New Occupation)

2010-06-01T19:49:00.000-07:00

After getting fired via text message a month ago, it only seems appropriate that my latest job was offered in the same way. Yours truly is now the esteemed editor of a new English textbook. For those keeping track, this is my third job in a month; what a workhorse!

The text concentrates on the administration of artistic performances, specifically detailing the misadventures of a club of university students who call each other by their last names and operate under the slightly unsettling moniker of “The Black Cat.” I’m only on lesson six, but the tension is already building; the New Years Gala is only nine weeks away, and as Davis points out to his friend Goodman, “time and tide wait for no man!”

虐待动物 (Animal Abuse)

2010-05-30T17:09:00.000-07:00

Avid readers will remember this post about doggies and IV’s. On the way to the gym today I passed the same vet. Once again there was a dog on a metal stretcher, but instead of just hanging out and shooting the breeze with his friends he was pinned down by his owner and screaming and shaking and twitching his tail back and forth. A certain bystander walked by especially slowly and pretended to be fully focused on his bottle of yogurt, but even long stares in the dog’s direction didn’t reveal exactly what was going on.

Continuing in the same vein, I later got on a bus to go downtown and ended up standing next to a guy with a chicken in a plastic baggie. The bird quietly gasped and rolled its eyes around for the entire journey, behavior I attributed to the sticky, oppressive heat of the bus and how silly his outfit was.

(The picture is of a dog meat restaurant, a few yards down the street from the vet and right next to a pet store.)

暴雨 (Torrential Downpour)

2010-05-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

One nice thing about Guilin is that every day at 4:45 PM the phone company (and therefore government) sends me text messages with the next day’s weather report. Unfortunately these reports aren’t always accurate, which is why yesterday around 1 PM you could have found me dashing back to my apartment in the middle of a ‘torrential downpour’, resignedly splashing through puddles that were gushing up, geyser-like, from overfilled sewer grates.

It took me about an hour and a half to dry. By then the storm had mostly blown over, replaced by crystal clear air and cool, windy weather. I grabbed my camera and set off for the countryside, where I took these pictures.

树木 (Trees)

2010-05-26T16:43:00.000-07:00

The streets in my neighborhood of Guilin are all lined with large, leafy trees that provide welcome shade for my walks to school. This morning, however, a bunch of government workers cut them down. All that remains are the trunks, looking like big sticks poking out of the ground, and fallen branches that block the sidewalks. It was nice while it lasted.

On a side note, ever since I arrived in China my internet browser has done this weird thing where every so often it won’t load a website, instead turning completely white and playing Chinese Nationalist songs. I figured this happened to everybody. I didn’t worry about it until last week, when I joked about it at a dinner and realized that nobody else had encountered the phenomenon. Uh oh!

足球 (Soccer)

2010-05-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

Sunday marked the first day of the Guangxi Normal International Soccer Friendship Tournament. The field consists of seven teams from Vietnam and one mish mash team from Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Costa Rica and, you guessed it, the USA; the winner gets 700 kuai (approximately USD $100). Losers get nothing. Worse than nothing, in fact, because (in a somewhat suspicious move) teams must pay 10 kuai for each yellow card they incur and 20 kuai for each red. At the opening ceremony the event organizer led us in a heavily Vietnamese-accented cheer: Let the best team win!

Unfortunately, what my team offers in cosmopolitanism we utterly lack in skill. We lost our first game 5-1 to the “Angels,” a team whose name suited their sunny disposition. For the second game we drafted a Chinese ringer, only to lose 8-1. I’m not too upset, since the Vietnamese community seems pretty involved in the whole event, their sidelines full of wives and girlfriends and children. Incidentally, women were not allowed to participate in this tournament. There are no plans afoot for a female tournament, either.

录音 (Recording)

2010-05-22T18:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my fellow program-mate and I were recruited to record our voices for a new series of English phonics textbooks. Seated in a soundproofed studio and facing large microphones, we recited sentences like “Children like jelly best” and “The pink pig is eating a peanut.” Every lesson contained a dialogue; my friend played Jane, the heroine of the book, and I channeled my inner thespian to not only recite but really perform the three roles of Jane’s friend Peter, Jane’s mother, and Jane’s teacher. Fame and glory, here I come!

Afterwards I stopped by a sports shop to buy some shinguards for an upcoming soccer tournament. The only ones I could find were relatively soft, but the shop owner assured me that they would become hard once I put them on. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed.

(The studio we worked in wasn't quite as nice as the picture. It was more like a little room in a shabby apartment, one floor below someone who was hammering something.)

英文书 (English Book)

2010-05-21T16:40:00.000-07:00

Today I looked for some English reading material. Although Guilin offers one expansive four-story bookstore with a reasonable array of American and British classics, I instead went to the more flavorful book market next to my old school; the English section consists of one small shelf of photocopied bestsellers, shrink wrapped and bound in counterfeit covers. I purchased A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, a man who is (according to the cover) “a well-informed guide who lo3 ves his patch” and then, in a moment of weakness that I’m sure my Medieval Sister would understand, added a copy of the “comples novel” The Queen of the Damned. Together they cost about USD $2.

桃子(Peach)

2010-05-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

The seasons are changing here in Guilin. That means less rain, more heat and baskets and baskets of little itty-bitty peaches!

(I image-searched “peaches” right now on Hong Kong Google and ended up with a page full of semi-porn. For those interested, “peach” also means a woman’s you-know-what. The things you learn!)

Anyway, the peaches are delicious. Small enough to finish in about three bites, they cost about ten cents each and come in white and yellow varieties. I might have been overindulging in them. This morning my permanent retained snapped off as I bit into a particularly crisp one, leaving me with small shards of glue stuck to my teeth and a little piece of metal that I’m not sure if I want to keep as a souvenir:

Another interesting fact about the word “peach”: a popular game among high school boys is “monkey steals the peach,” in which a bunch of friends run around trying to grab each other’s you-know-whats.

乱扔 (Litter)

2010-05-16T16:52:00.000-07:00

Look at this: a popsicle in an elevator!

A few months ago I bought a cup of soybean milk from a street vendor. After removing the straw from the plastic wrapper, I asked the vendor if he had a trashcan; no, he said, just throw it on the street. Somebody would pick it up.

China’s indifference towards garbage is nothing short of fascinating. Tissues, boxes, plastic bags, skewers, and pieces of food clutter the streets. Public stairways are often sticky. The lesson to be learned? Go ahead. Mess with China.

(Which I mean in a totally non-political way!)

小香港 (Little Hong Kong)

2010-05-15T18:16:00.000-07:00

Continuing in my endeavor to assimilate into Chinese culture, yesterday I went shopping. My destination: Little Hong Kong.

Spreading an entire city block and accessed by broken escalators that are littered with used skewer sticks and plastic wrappers, Little Hong Kong is a subterranean nightmare. All the shops are crammed right next to each other, and most shop owners, stymied by the lack of space in their little cubbyhole, have spread their merchandise into the already-narrow aisles. You don’t walk around Little Hong Kong; you push and shove. The only way to escape is to find a breeze and then follow it to an exit stairway. These stairways usually have at least one baby peeing on them.

But it’s not all bad. Most people love Little Hong Kong. The clothes are unusual, the prices are low, and the shop owners are always willing to help with your Chinese. And, after surviving yesterday, I come bearing tidings of great joy: shopping can be fun! I found a pair of glasses, a pair of sunglasses, a shirt, and shiny black pants (for Halloween, don’t worry) for $30. I don’t know if I would ever shop there for day-to-day clothes, but it certainly offers a smorgasbord of costume options.

The main drawback is that owners always charge me at least 30 kuai (a little less that $5) more than usual because I am white; eventually, me and my (Asian) companions worked out a system where I would find something I liked, leave, and then they would return about half an hour later to do the bargaining.

(The pictures are from a similar market in Shanghai. The ceilings in Little Hong Kong are lower. I didn't take my camera yesterday.)

剪头发 (Haircut)

2010-05-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finally caved in and got a haircut. It turned out pretty well. They tried to give me a faux-hawk but I set them straight. My favorite part was watching my barber react as my hair dried and slowly started to curl; when he saw a cowlick emerging, he just cut it off.

When I got back to my apartment, my roomies asked how much the haircut cost. I told them 20 RMB( about $2.80); they told me I was ripped off.

In other news, Dog-Gone Chic! is going through a renaissance. I've got enough pictures for two or three weeks of new posts. Check it out!

冠岩 (Guanyan)

2010-05-11T17:50:00.000-07:00

Recently unemployed, I now have plenty of time for day trips! Today I hopped on a bus to Guanyan, a city about an hour outside of Guilin. I had never heard of it before so I didn’t really know what to expect, but I figured that it would probably be interesting, and even if it wasn’t it couldn’t be that ugly.

Wrong! It was disgusting, distinguished from most other towns of a similar size only by the pervasive smell of drying fish and the overwhelming number of homeless dogs. I was tempted to traipse back on to the bus and call it a day.

Luckily I stuck it out a little longer, and a quick walk outside of the town brought me to the Guanyan Scenic area, famous for a cave and accessed by a funky little train. I was too cheap to buy any tickets, but I wandered around for free; it wasn’t spectacular, but it was beautiful and certainly worth the $1.50 bus ticket from Guilin. On the way back to the bus station I got lost and stumbled across an amazing little mud-brick village that bordered an expansive field of green rice paddies. It was especially interesting because people (and chickens) actually lived there, so it felt a little more authentic than most “antique villages.”

Note: I didn't take any pictures of Guanyan because it was so dreadful.

健身馆的人们 (Gym People)

2010-05-10T16:51:00.000-07:00

This is how the Porno Gym is arranged: there is one big huge room with treadmills, freeweights, and other machines, and surrounding that big room are smaller rooms that are used for spinning class, karate, boxing, and dancing. The wall between the dance studio and the big weight room is made of glass.

Yesterday a new, exciting character showed up at the gym. She was a young woman with a short skirt made out of glittery metal disks and a tee-shirt that was rolled up to expose her stomach. Stationing herself in the middle of the dance studio, she looked at herself in the mirrors on each side and then, confident that her appearance was up to snuff, pointed a remote control at a hidden boombox. Nothing happened. She kept standing there.

BUT THEN EARSPLITTINGLY LOUD CHINESE HIP HOP. Stunned into inaction, I could only watch as the woman proceeded to move, shake, thrust and shimmy what her mama gave her. It looked like some bizarre combination of pole dancing and belly dancing with a little bit of locking thrown in, but whatever it was it seemed to work; within seconds a crowd of men had gathered in front of the window, all them watching silently as she jingled and jangled around the studio.

Also working out today was one of my other favorite characters, a short, stocky man who runs and lifts weights with no shirt on and cutoff jeans.

The picture is of the protein powder the gym sells: Massive Gainer.

路先生 (Mister Lu)

2010-05-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

Last night I rode the bus home from Yangshuo so that I could get a solid night of rest in my own bed before a long day of bike riding. On the way, I talked to the Chinese guy sitting in front of me; his name was Mr. Lu, he had long white hair, he was in Guilin on business, and his home was in Nanjing. Showing me a picture of his daughter, he informed me that he would pay for the airline tickets if I flew out to tutor her for a weekend. I wasn’t sure how to respond. Mistaking my silence for a bargaining strategy, he added two nights in a hotel and all my meals to the offer, at which point I semi-acquiesced and told him that I would look at my schedule.

I’m almost positive I will not take him up on the offer. I can’t think of any way this could turn out well.

In a possibly unrelated note, I received the following three text messages from an anonymous number this morning (originally in Chinese, idiomatically and insightfully translated by moi)

7:58 AM :: (Something about “doing pretty well” and “excuse me”)

8:29 AM :: What are you doing? This is called text messaging. I sent you a message, but you still haven’t returned one. I am a hero! Fool!

(ME) 8:30 AM :: Who is this?

9:24 AM :: Are you dissatisfied?

Que misterioso! I stopped responding, because it might be some sort of phone scam.

(This picture is taken from Moon Hill, near Yangshuo)

北京吗？ (Beijing?)

2010-05-06T23:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was showing my friends around Yangshuo when I found a store selling cool magnets. One of them was a picture of the Bund with the word “Shanghai” under it; another one, titled “Guilin,” had a picture of several famous hills. This was my favorite:

Uh—Beijing?

I told the shopkeeper that it looked more like Greece or Rome to me, but she was adamant. That was definitely Beijing. I asked her exactly what part of Beijing it was, and she said The Sacred Way:

I wasn’t convinced. The shopkeeper stopped a few random Chinese tourists on the street and asked them about the magnet, and they all agreed that it was a picture of Beijing. I started to call over my friends when all of a sudden she got really angry and told me that if I didn’t believe her then I didn’t have to buy it, and when I tried to bargain she absolutely refused to budge on her price. Sensing that I had touched a nerve, I agreed to pay about $1.40.

可乐被解雇 (I Get Fired)

2010-05-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

Last week there was a mix-up at my high school about my work schedule that involved my showing up and then being told that I didn’t have class, so today to vent my passive aggressive rage I sent this text to my boss:

“I usually have class on Tuesday, but I just want to make sure: do I have class today?”

A few minutes later I got this reply:

“Hi Kele. Regretfully, you can no longer work at this school. Sorry.”

Whoa! That’ll teach me to show dissatisfaction. I was angry, since my class started in two hours and I had already prepared my materials (not to mention that I had had to initiate the “you’re fired” conversation), but there was really nothing to do about it.

I went to school anyway to collect my last paycheck, and my boss called me into her office. The school was under investigation, she said, and because I didn’t have a work visa they could no longer afford to employ me. Oh well. Hopefully I can find another teaching job for the next month and a half.

大圩 (Daxu)

2010-05-01T23:31:00.000-07:00

Today I took a bus out to Daxu, a small town about half an hour outside of Guilin. It was beautiful in a generic Chinese way.

Pretty little towns like this are all over China. It’s kind of tiring, because there’s only so many times that I can look at narrow alleys with red lanterns and black tile roofs and think ‘Amazing!’ On the other hand, it’s also a relief, because I don’t feel as obligated to visit all the blockbuster old towns in the Lonely Planet. Another benefit is that it’s easy to stray from the beaten path and ‘discover’ a beautiful little village. So, you know, there are plusses and minuses.

I’m also kind of down of Daxu because just as I was leaving a bug flew into my neck, burrowed its way into my shirt, buzzed around and then bit me on the nipple as I slapped my chest. It hurt for the whole ride back.

Note: This post isn't meant to complain about how many pretty little towns there are. I just think it's interesting how travel websites and guide books talk about 'hidden rural gems' that manage to preserve traditional culture and how impossible it is to find them. They're everywhere! But I guess a guidebook doesn't make much money if it says "Just get on a bus and go wherever."

Loves and Lives of the Chinese Nation

2010-05-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

Some of you said you wanted more posts about Chinese relationship blogs. This letter comes from a Dear Abby copycat. I warn you ahead of time, it gets pretty soapy. And dirty. But it’s interesting, too! Culturally!

Dear Teacher Gun,

I found out last year that my husband ejaculates prematurely. We have been married for twelve years; I believe it was my ignorance that harmed me. We are both 36 years old. We have two sons, 11 and 2. I am a very conservative and traditional woman, so I waited until I was married to have sex. We married as soon as we met; I believe that, in the beginning, he didn’t realize he had a problem.

After a few years he went to see a doctor. At this time, we had only one child. I asked him what was wrong, and he said nothing. I am the most stupid, naïve woman in the world. After several years of having sex that lasted only two minutes, I began to suspect that something was abnormal. Embarrassed, I asked several close friends about how long their sex lasted, and they all told me 15-30 minutes. Because my husband is brave and powerful man who highly values face, I didn’t tell them my own situation.

I don’t usually read the newspaper or books, so it wasn’t until last year, when I saw an article on my friend’s QQ page, that I realized what was wrong. The article was about emotional problems in marriages, and when I read it everything became revealed. I bravely asked my friends again about their love lives. They all agreed that the climax from masturbating was nowhere near as good as the climax from sex; after hearing this, I immediately became dissatisfied. I think my situation is pitiable. 12 years without an orgasm from sex. And I don’t even masturbate much.

I want a divorce, but I can’t bear to leave my kids. When I confronted my husband last year he said he loved me very much and didn’t want me to leave. He said that he would become proficient in (some strange method, literally “overcast spasm block break technique”) as soon as possible if I would just give him a chance. I think about sex all the time. I feel like I was swindled by him. He knew he had a problem before we had two kids. I’m at a loss. Should I get a divorce?

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_49be626b0100hwi4.html

Kevin’s thoughts:

Whoa there! None of our beeswax!. I don’t know how graphic American relationship blogs are, so I can’t really compare, but suffice to say I glossed over a lot of the more descriptive bits here. Perhaps a more open attitude towards sex?
But if there is a more open attitude, then how did she not know about premature ejaculation? And why was she so embarrassed to talk to friends about it?
On the topic of sex, my class actually studied the word for ‘climax’. Except, our teacher told us it meant “the high point of something, like a fad”; she never mentioned any relationship to sex. Imagine the hilarity!
The woman learns about premature ejaculation on QQ. QQ is everywhere.
Who puts articles about premature ejaculation on their profile?
Shouldn’t the woman be really happy to have two sons?
I think the woman is probably from the countryside because a.) she’s very conservative b.) she hints at an arranged marriage (alert!: possibly incorrect reading between the lines) and c.) she doesn’t mention a fine for the second child (rural people are allowed to have more than one kid). The story I have in my mind is that she got married in the country, was doing great, then moved to the city and realized that her husband had a problem and decided to throw away her tradition and get a divorce so that she could sleep with other men. Civilization and its discontents!
Yes, it has occurred to me that this letter might be fake. Even if it is, I don’t really have anything better to do.

Thoughts?

Do you want more of these, or too trashy?

酸奶 (Yogurt)

2010-04-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

Not much happened today. A Chinese girl on the street said I looked like an Indian. A Costan Rican guy on my intramural soccer team called me some bad names that he thought I didn’t understand. That’s about it.

Here’s a picture of the yogurt I drink every day. It comes in a glass bottle that you have to recycle and I’m pretty sure it’s fresh. My favorite yogurt shop offers two flavors: sour (pink cap) and stinky (orange cap). Strangely, the stinky one is sweet and reminiscent of American yogurt, whereas the sour one smells bad and tastes like Kraft Mac and Cheese. It’s not as good as the Yak Yogurt of Yunnan, but at $.30 a bottle it’ll do.

Update: I got the picture from a news article (since my internet is too slow to upload my own pictures). It turns out that one yogurt packaging plant in Hainan is in serious trouble because its machinery has been infested with insects, meaning that the milk, yogurt, and other merchandise it produces is often infested with bug eggs. See the brown spots above? Eggs.

So far, I have yet to find bugs in my yogurt.

春游 (Spring Trip)

2010-04-28T16:44:00.000-07:00

Today I skipped speaking class to go on an “Enjoying Spring” field trip with all the English teachers at my high school. Our destination was Chuan Shan, the same mountain where I met all those Chinese people, except that instead of climbing the mountain we instead walked around the bottom for a while and then visited a brand new housing development, the most expensive in Guilin, where apartments would sell for $10,000 kuai (6.8 kuai = 1 dollar) per square foot (maybe, my listening skills shouldn’t be trusted). I think we avoided climbing because all of the teachers were women in high heels. I think that’s also why we left the park after an hour and drove over to the mall. That’s when I returned home.

Here’s a picture of all of us. Guess who the other foreign teacher is!

厕所在哪里? (Where Is The Bathroom?)

2010-04-26T17:50:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I had a bathroom post. I’d like to start this one with a small anecdote, this one taking place at the Hong Kong airport on February 20^th, 2010.

That day I was scheduled to fly from Hong Kong to Guilin to begin my second semester in China. I was waiting at the gate, reading my awesome book (A Far Off Place by Laurens Van Der Post, read it!), when I noticed a little baby across the aisle from me. He was sporting a pair of bottomless pants; these pants have an open seam across the butt, so that babies can do their business whenever they want without spoiling the fabric. This baby boy was running around, his butt flapping in the wind, having a great time, when all of a sudden he started crying. He ran up to his mother and hugged her leg. The mother put down her book, lifted the baby by the armpits, gave a little squeeze, and looked around the terminal as the baby in her arms exploded diarrhea all over the carpet.

Welcome to the PRC!

In Nanjing, it was possible but rare to see babies going to the bathroom on the street; in Guilin, it’s uncommon not to. Conscientious parents place their pooping babies in planters or next to drainage grates. Most of the time, though, babies just pop a squat anywhere on the sidewalk, or, in the case of one little girl I saw yesterday whose mother must have been in a hurry, in the middle of a street, while her mother idled on a motorcycle right next to her. Words of advice to anyone planning a visit to Guilin: watch your step.

I have come to terms with this bathroom culture. I am a tolerant, open-minded young scholar. Confucius says: “If I see three men walking together, I can learn something from at least one of them.” Perhaps the same goes for three babies, pooping?

Yesterday, though, I saw a full grown man, dressed in a suit, pooping on the sidewalk. Babies are one thing; businessmen are another. For the sake of maintaining this site’s reputation, I didn’t take a picture. But trust me that it was a sight to behold.

The picture is of a nice bathroom in Hong Kong, where this kind of behavior is not accepted.

卧虎藏花花公子(Crouching Tiger Hidden Playboy)

2010-04-25T06:12:00.000-07:00

It’s a lonely Sunday night here in Guilin and I’ve resorted to reading trashy Chinese blogs. According to “Elle’s Chinese Website,” a blog that has pictures of Elle magazine but, I’m pretty sure, no actual relation, here are “Eight Ways to See through That Playboy at Your Office”:

He makes you sit in the back seat of the car.
He invites you to parties and gets you drunk.
He plays footsie with you at the Mahjong table.
He is always on QQ.
He stares at you through the window.
He eagerly refills your teacup.
He delivers your lunch as soon as break begins.
He takes you on business trips.

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4be9bfb50100iyg6.html?tj=1

Those sneaky playboys!

The post has been read by 34,000 people; the blog has been visited almost 6 million times.

For the record, I found the blog by looking at the profiles of one of my students on QQ. Not that I’m always on QQ or anything.

Let me know if you find this post about the love lives of the Chinese people interesting. I’m bookmarking several “social blogs,” including one with a Dear Abby format that has already provided me with one exciting story (full of drinking, mistresses, school exams and hours spent on QQ!), and I’d be happy to translate them.

I'm also looking for gentlemen-oriented blogs, but coming up blank so far. Several of the comments on the above post were generated by men (for example, "Sorry, we are just so lusty!"), so maybe these gossip blogs are supposed to appeal to both genders? It's too early to say. I'll continue exploring.

Again, no pictures because of slow internet speed. Sorry.

糟糕 (Oh My Lady Gaga)

2010-04-24T17:10:00.000-07:00

It wasn’t raining today, so I grabbed the bull by the horns and cobbled together a spur-of-the-moment trip to the Guilin Botanical Gardens. I plotted my route on my city bus map. I brought along plenty of water; I was prepared for some serious fun!

But then I ended up in some butt-ugly part of the city that was full of motorcycle repair shops and chickens that were tied to trees and tried to peck me as I walked by. The Botanical Garden looked huge on my map. I should have been able to find it. But after about half an hour of trekking around the neighborhood and fruitlessly searching for signs of a garden while simultaneously avoiding the puddles of baby pee and piles of baby poop on the sidewalk (babies do their business on the street here – interesting!) I realized that the day was getting hazy and that the park probably wouldn’t be pretty anyway. I gave up and headed home.

Note: Recently, young people in China have started saying “Oh My Lady Gaga!” instead of “Oh My God!” For example: Oh my Lady Gaga, this homework is hard!, or, Oh my Lady Gaga, those are weird shoes.

Note 2: The Chinese title of this post, 糟糕, is often translated as “darn!” or “how unfortunate!” If you translate it directly from Chinese, however, it means ‘sour, sloppy cake!”

The picture of is of the park I never found.

可乐帮助别人 (I Help Other People)

2010-04-22T16:52:00.000-07:00

Today my Comprehensive Chinese teacher approached me before class and asked,

“Kele, you say that you are an English teacher. Would you mind giving me English lessons?”

The rest of the class was listening, and they were all surprised that our teacher wanted to learn English. It turns out that she used to be one of the top English speakers in her high school class, planned on majoring in it when she entered university in the early 1980’s, but was advised by a somewhat shortsighted advisor that it wouldn’t be very useful.

“I have a better idea,” said one of my classmates. “Since we all want to learn English, how about Kele just gives a lesson at the end of class!”

“Yeah!” said everyone else.

So for fifteen minutes I stood in front of the class and translated our vocab list, writing sample sentences on the board and working on pronunciation. All the Vietnamese and Burmese students took notes, and everyone repeated after me as I led them through difficult words like “preposterous” and “dumbstruck.” At last, I make a contribution to class!

(Again, sorry for no picture, but my internet is wacky.)

我的袜子湿透了 (My Socks Are Soaked)

2010-04-20T16:58:00.000-07:00

It rained today, just like it did yesterday, and the day before that, and all weekend, and all last week, except for the brief period of time on Friday when the sun broke through the clouds. I don’t have any dry socks. My shoes are moldy. My book bag is soggy and all my papers are soft and squishy.

But at least it’s not cold! And my hair has become beautiful and curly.

An unfortunate side effect of the rain is that it keeps me from carrying my camera around. Which is why I don’t have any photos of the Lijiang River, the main waterway in Guilin, overflowing and flooding the waterfront promenade, or any pictures of the brigade of workers standing at the river’s edge, pushing the water away with little brooms.

Instead, I give you a picture of my poor little socks that will never dry (Note: ‘Socks’ is one of my favorite words in Chinese. It is pronounced ‘waw-zzzz”)

小流氓 (Little Urchins)

2010-04-18T17:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I was working out at the Porno Gym, minding my own business and taking note of the brand new posters of enormous black bodybuilders dressed in red sequin thongs, when a group of fifteen middle-school aged boys rushed into the weight room. They swarmed around the dumbbell rack and each grabbed a 5-20 pound weight. Yelling and jumping, they threw the weights at each other; after the initial celebration, some of the more diligent ones picked up the scattered dumbbells and started windmill-ing their arms around. The less motivated ones slapped each other. After a few minutes I realized that one of boys was not a teenager but actually a short middle-aged man, and although I assume he was a teacher he didn’t really act like one, at one point picking up the smallest student and dropping him on the floor. Fearing that I might get caught in some sort of crossfire, I left.

On the way out, I asked one of the workers what was up with all the boys, and if they belonged to some sort of weight-lifting class. He said he didn’t know; they just showed up sometimes.

(Sorry about the continued lack of pictures. My internet has been verrrrrrrry slooooooooowwwww lately.)

我的QQ (My QQ)

2010-04-16T17:09:00.000-07:00

Due to popular demand at Sun Yat Sen Secondary School, I recently registered for a QQ account. QQ is the Chinese version of AIM (AOL Instant Messaging); users can chat with each other online, set up conferences, and choose an icon to represent themselves on other user’s friend lists. For over ten years, it has been the most popular form of internet communication. Everyone has ‘a QQ’. Everyone. Right now, at 9:00 on a Friday night, 104,046,262 users are signed in.

For the past week I have been logging in to QQ to chat with my students. Today, my tutor taught me how to fully take advantage of my account; I learned several interesting things.

First of all, and this isn’t a really big deal, but here are the questions under the space for “basic info” on everyone’s profile:

Gender:

Age:

Date of Birth:

Zodiac Sign:

Blood Type:

Horoscope:

Blood type? Why do they need that? I tried to ask my tutor whether or not blood type was in some way related to destiny or temperament in Eastern thinking (it’s squished between Zodiac and Horoscope, after all), but she said no, it was just there. I suspect people with O-type blood get lots of anonymous friend requests.

Second, each QQ account has a corresponding ‘space’ attached to it. The space is basically a Facebook page, where users can post pictures, write notes, communicate with each other, and antagonize their English teachers by incorrectly using the terms we just studied in class. This is the creepy part: you can see who visits your ‘space.’

“It is weird,” my tutor admitted, “But it’s also helpful. For example, if you like a boy and you give him your QQ number, you can see if he likes you by how many times he visits your page!”

Yay!

(I tried uploading pictures, but my blog won't let me right now. I'll try again later.)

(For the three of four of you that read Dog-Gone Chic!, there are two new posts!)

自杀 (Suicide)

2010-04-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

This story comes from my Child’s First Book of Chengyu:

覆水难收

During the Han Dynasty there lived a man named Zhu Maichen. He was a poor scholar, diligently pursuing his studies but refusing to take a job. His wife, Cui Shi, couldn’t stand this lifestyle; at last, she left him.

Later, Zhu Maichen became governor of his province (this book’s stories often have large, unexplained holes like this).

When Cui Shi heard of her husband’s success, she went to him right away. She begged him to take her back.

While she was talking, a servant carrying a bowl of water entered the room. Some of the water spilled.

“Cui Shi,” Zhu Maichen said, “If you can take that spilled water and put it back in the bowl, I will remarry you.”

Upon hearing this, Cui Shi was extremely ashamed. She hung herself right away.

Suicide seems to be a very common theme in Chinese history and society. I study poetry sometimes with my one-on-one teacher, and both of the poets we have studied ended up killing themselves; I attended one modern literature class, and the novel we focused on started with a young woman attempting to commit suicide after becoming engaged to a man she didn’t love.

I know that one story, one novel, and two poets don’t really make for a convincing trend. But isn’t it interesting?

打针 (Getting Shots)

2010-04-13T17:09:00.000-07:00

Here are one, two, three little puppies getting IV’s!

To celebrate the fact that I now have medical insurance (after an unexpected month and a half without any coverage, the result of my less-than-spectacular attention to detail in regards to what is included in my program), I’ll describe the Chinese medical system.

If you get sick, you go to the hospital. There are no doctor’s offices or clinics.

From here on out, it’s all hearsay; I’ve never gone to the hospital, instead opting for long days in my bed with bottles of Gatorade. According to my friends, though, the workers at the hospital give you an IV regardless of your symptoms. Sore throat? IV. Nauseous? IV. Fever? IV!

In Guilin they add another layer to the weirdness by putting the IV facilities on the street instead of inside the hospitals, then kick the weirdness up a notch giving infants forehead-IV’s, and then finally hit the weird-ness baseball out of the park by including doggies as IV recipients. I’ve seen little babies, each attached to their own saline drip, chasing each other on the street; I’ve seen upset women sitting in hospital windows, gripping little puppies that lie prone on stretchers.