Green Futures

Aug 14, 2009

Ziyang Summer Camp

From Daxin, we returned to Nanning, where we flew back to Chengdu for a breather. It was really not much more than a breather, as we left the next afternoon for our second summer camp, in Ziyang county of Sichuan. The morning was spent doing laundry, and I managed to squeeze in a visit with my Chengdu friends as well. In the process of heading over to their place, I began to notice that Chengdu’s omnipresent cloud cover was a bit darker than usual – quite dark, n fact! As nearly complete darkness descended, I remembered that there was an eclipse scheduled for that morning, and it had arrived right on time. It amused me to observe that the city had prepared well: for the five minutes or so of the eclipse, all the street lights turned on! Afterwards, we got to catch up with our former Chengdu teachers and have lunch with their current students, who are all Americans who teach Chinese in America, and want to improve their language and teaching skills.

The trip to Ziyang was fairly uneventful, as it was a mere 2-3 hours away from Chengdu. In the spirit of the monkey wrench, however, our vans arrived – minivans! These vans could comfortably squeeze eight people, as they had promised, but only if those eight people had no luggage. What resulted was a minivan full of people with their bulky luggage piled on top of them.

After arriving in Ziyang, which looked a lot bigger and more advanced than Daxin (leading us to wonder exactly how “rural” this experience was going to be), the first van of people checked in. The second half of our group got delayed, so we decided to take advantage of our good fortune (in not being the delayed group), and split off to explore. After losing the girls to a clothing shop, us men continued to wander, until I realized that we would probably have plenty of opportunities to walk in the vicinity of the hotel, but not to explore further away. We grabbed a taxi, and told him to take us to the nearest interesting place. He didn’t understand, so we told him to take us to the nearest city square. A short while later, we got off at a relatively unexciting square with a rusty old excuse for a children’s amusement park. We played around on it for a while, much to the consternation of the couple kids and old ladies scattered around; after purchasing some candy (for gifts and prizes for the kids) and other necessities at a nearby supermarket, we made it back in time for another scrumptious and superabundant dinner.

After dinner, we again felt the urge to find a pleasant diversion before we got back into teaching. Several options presented themselves, but one that most appealed to a number of our group was getting a massage. Massages in China are extremely cheap, and a few of my program members swore by them, Of course, there is a dark side to massage culture, as massage parlors are a frequent front for brothels; but the other students assured me that so long as your explicit that you want a legitimate establishment, you can avoid any misunderstandings. I figured, so many people (including middle-aged women!) had sung the praises of massages, I ought to give it a try sometime.

We were set to head out, but then the hotel told us that they had their own massage parlor, so we, feeling irrationally deflated, agreed to just stay at the hotel. We ascended up to the top floor, and then took the stairs up another flight, with red lights illuminating the hall. We were a little unnerved, as it is also common for very high class hotels to have less high-class portions. It turns out that we need not be concerned – this time, at least, the place was legitimate. The massage was about $10 for an hour and a half of foot washing and body massage. I was unnerved by the experience (I’m not one for strangers touching me, generally speaking, much less a massage…), and further discovered that when you are mostly bones and skin, the beneficial effects of a massage are negligible. I can’t say the experience was unpleasant, and it was fun to chat with the other four of us, but definitely not something I’ll be particularly excited to do again, especially if it requires paying money. Still, at least now I can say I’ve tried it.

(As a brief interlude, as I am writing this, I am here in the remote province of Qinghai, where in front of me an Australian is teaching a Tibetan employee of our hostel how to eat fried eggs with a knife and fork. I never realized that there are a fair number of rules that might not be intuitive; like how to hold your arms, whether or not to lick the knife, etc. It is quite amusing.)

The next morning we were greeting with pouring rain. It was a treacherous day for our party; getting onto our bus, one of my program fellows slipped and fell, soaking her pants. This bus, incidentally, was a regular public bus that we had hired to drive us for those three days. It clearly had not been modified too much for our use: every five minutes the loudspeaker would cheerfully admonish us, “Please be careful, the bus is about to stop!” Once it even announced a specific stop name.

Back at the Nanning conference I wasa discussing the mishmash of formalty, fussiness, and failure that seem to plague Chinese events. As I said then, for the Chinese, “Everything must be perfect – but nothing ever is.” This was exemplified over and over again during FS, and the Ziyang program was no different.

We were supposed to have a short oening ceremony (whici is absolutely necessary, and cannot be skipped = whatever we Americans might think), and then get right down to business; teaching class. Becausee it was raining, we went to our cllassrooms and would listen to the ceremony over the loudspeakers (I was quite amazed that even these rural schools have wireless microphones and a schoool-wide sound system. I guess it’s standard in most American schools too, but I hadn’t expected that particular aspects would be ensured, while other things, such as hygenic bathrooms, were neglected.).

After waiting awkwardly with my students for a good while, the time to begin class finally arrived, with no word from the loudspeaker. I proceeded to begin teaching class, and taught my first session. At the end, the loudspeaker finally voiced its will: all the foreign teachers should go to such-and-such a classroom . It turns out that we had spent the entire first half hour waiting for a lingdao (I think it was the principal, but his true identity is a mystery that mortals cannot know), who hadn’t shown up. Fan laoshi wanted to go on anyway, but she was told we had to wait for the lingdao, whenever he appeared. Our seecond class period was thus coopted by an elaborate andlong-windedopening cremony consisteing entirely of fei hua (literally, “waste words”;  empty speaches).

The only really redeeming aspect of this disruption of the day happened at the expense of Ke Ruiqi, one of my fellow program participants. She was walking back to her classroom in rain (it was still pouring down). I was following a few steps beehind, so I had a glorious view of her slipping, and falling comically bottom down, into a several inch puddle. It would have made Charlie Chaplin proud. I felt bad for her, of course, as her skirt was completely drenched and she had no other clothing with her, but I still can’t help smiling when I replay the image in my mind. And she did get anther skirt lent to her.

Unlike Daxin and Chengdu, at Ziyang we taught both middle school and elementary school kids. This made our teaching more interesting, because we had prepared and perfected our lessons for elementary school kids, and some of our activities wouldn’t work as well with older kids. On the other hand, we could do more advanced things with middle school kids. At the end of the first day, the middle school teachers and the elementary school teachers were all quite happy with their lot and didn’t want to rotate! By this point, aside from some modifications I had to make to teach middle school, I had memorized the lesson plans and knew more or less exactly how they would run. I was always surprised, however, at how different each class could still be; and it was entirely because of the kids. My teaching didn’t change significantly within a day, but some classes were amazing, and some were terrible. It made it kind of exciting to see how my fortume would be each time I walked into a classroom.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this earlier, but – Chinese students are great. Even though the Chinese educational system has serious problems (including cultivating millions of passive-response learner who can’t take initiative or think creatively), one nice effect is that Chinese students are extremely obedient. You tell them to do something, and they do it, just like that. It makes teaching much easier (and I say this as someone who is not naturally inclined to simply follow orders). And though about thirty minutes after my final class I would realize I was utterly exhausted, while teaching I was compleltely involved. It was fun.

The Ziyang school had an interesting layout. At the top of the hill was the kindergarten. Behind it, down the slope, was the elementary school. Behind that was the middle school (I didn’t see a high school).. It seemed pretty convenient, actually, and made our split-teaching not too troublesome.

(I am writing this particular section while on a long distance bus, populated predominantly by the Hui minority group, who are Muslims. My writing was just interrupted by a long argument that occurred over and around me between the crusty old man sitting next to me by the window, and a middle-aged fellow. The entire argument was conducted in a language other than Mandarin. The argument centered around a brown bag the old man, who had been sleeping, sequestered next to the window. The middle aged fellow wanted him to put it up top, either because he felt bad that I had little space and put my bag in the aisle, or because… or some other reason, I suppose. I think he was trying to set up folding chairs for the extra passengers and wanted the space my bag was taking to put down a chair, but even after I moved my bag of my own volition, he did not take any action, other than to continue his side of the vigorous argument. The old man, who while placidly sleeping seemed harmless enough, turn his cataract-covered eye on the younger fellow and defended himself vigorously, like a cornered wombat. The entire spectacle sounded something like a conversation between two people with speech  impediments replayed at triple speed. No one said a word to me. I love China).

The second day of teaching was also interrupted by a peculiar interlude: we only taught in the morning, and then rushed back to our hotel to get some extremely messy and bad-tasting boxed lunches  which we ate on our bus as we trundled along to a completely different school. They also had been holding a summer camp with the help of Chinese college students from Shanghai, but theirs was music and dance focused. They were holding a ending party, and we were a sideshow attraction bussed in, for who knows what reason. They had a perfectly good show without us, and we had never taught (or seen) these students before. Because we were participating in their ending party, we also were unable to have one with our own kids on the following day. Consequently, there was a lot of bad feeling among us about the whole deal, as we felt like we were being jerked around like some toy everyone wanted.

Nevertheless, we put on our smiling faces and the party went on all right. We sang our two Chinese songs, even getting others to jump up on stage and sing with us; the latter half of the show I missed, because of a frenzy that followed us at all the summer camps: name signing. The kids everywhere would hand us notebooks, envelopes, scrapes of waste paper – anything that could be written on, and insist that we sign both our Chinese and our English names. At this particular ending party, it went to new levels – swarms of students begging us to sign not only miscellaneous paper products, but also their shirts, and even umbrellas! I had a baby foisted at me and asked to sign his back, which he took in good spirit. We had to beat them off as we made our escape once the party ended.

The next two evenings, a bunch of us found a courtyard and played ultimate frisbee, a game foreign to these lands. It caused a great stir, with more people showing up each time to watch on the sidelines (as some of the tall, handsome male fellows took to playing shirtless, I suppose it’s not surprising that while the Chinese guys weren’t as interested, there was a large crown of girls from the nearby high school who formed a solid portion of the spectators). It was lots of fun, but the spectating was a bit odd. They don’t get many foreigners in Ziyang. We eventually took to strolling the streets instead.

On the third day we finished teaching. Once again, the niceness of the kids was amazing. They helped wipe the blackboard, and even wouldn’t let me take my own tray down (the first day I had been too fast for them). It really felt kinda special to be there. We had a quick and simple (by Chinese standards) closing ceremony, and after another bate of frenzied name-signing piled into the buses headed for home (Chengdu).

We were on a tight schedule, because by this point  our clothing situation had become critical: only a few of our group had any clean clothing whatsoever, and even they were down to their last day. Fan Laoshi had called the laundromat and convinced them to stay open an extra couple hours so we could wash our stuff. They assured us they would, but Fan Laoshi, worried that these were empty promises, called them every few hours to remind them that were still coming, and to update them on our progress. To to their word, and to our great relief, they stayed open.

The laundromat could easily be the basis for a television sitcom. They had all the necessary cast of characters: the elderly, somewhat senile grandparents who speak the incomprehensible local dialect, the middle-aged couple who run the place, their pretty 20-something daughter, and a couple younger kids and miscellaneous others of ambiguous relationship. They all pretty much lived there. And, of course, there would l be regular characters who come in, and the episodic features. This episode was the weird parade of foreigners with their bags and bags of clothing and strange habits.

The next day was Sunday. I had been looking forward to finally getting back to church (I had not anticipated that our lives would be planned out with no regard for the Lord’s Day; especially since during our stay in Chengdu we had the weekends free from class) with the Christians I had met back on the train when I first went to Chengdu. I was particularly excited, as one of them (the one who insisted on writing up a detailed outline of each sermon in English for me – and her English was very good) told me that her fiancee was going to be there that week, and I could meet him. Our plans originally were for us to leave Chengdu at after noon, which would have been perfect; but alas, Fan and Tang Laoshi decided that it would be better to leave at the crack of dawn so we could go to some interesting sight that would take us a 12 hour bus ride to reach. They were really keen on it, and the rest of the students didn’t mind, which left me in a bad position. If I had known in advance, I would have talked with the two Laoshi’s privately, but since they had already made the announcement and folks had no problems, I was in quandary. I felt I couldn’t really require they all sacrifice whatever this thing was, and so I reluctantly held my peace.

To clarify, now that our second summer camp was over, we now had some free time to go visit more cool places and do stuff. Originally there had been plans for a second conference and a third summer camp, but they both fell through (one because of the ridiculous fear of Swine Flu, the other because  lingdao said so). As a result, our keepers had arranged for a visit to mountainous rural western Sichuan, where there be Tibetans, yaks, and high altitude grasslands.  We were on our way to some particularly scenic grassland, but at about hour 10 of our trip, we encountered a problem. The first 10 hours were defined by breathtakingly beautiful views of mountains and the snaking Dadu river beneath us. I say breathtaking not only because the views were stunning (they were) but also because we were pretty close to those cliffs, and also, we were getting up to where the air is thin. Around the 10^th hour, however, we found ourselves on the road that had been washed out by a heavy rain the day before. It was extremely bumpy, and the bus rocked its way slowly over the muddy road. I was sitting on the cliff-side of the bus, and so had a clear view of the several hundred-foot drop, with nothing but about a foot of road between us and it. Barriers, be they metal, concrete, or wood, are luxuries we Americans enjoy, but that the cliffs of Sichuan proudly deny.

Eventually, Fan and Tang Laoshi, plagued with visions of us all plummeting to our death on their watch, called off the last portion of the trip. We instead backtracked about an hour, and then waited in the bus for another hour or so as our tour guides tried to find accommodations for us in the mountain town of Kangding (we had  previously booked a place up on the grasslands). Going a little mad with cabin fever, I somewhat plaintively asked if we might be able to leave the bus to cross the street and play on the public exercise machines that dot the Chinese urban landscape. It was a simple diversion, and yet one that we took great pleasure in.

We ended up not finding a place in Kangding, and instead swung off a few kilometers to a hot springs resort that had seen better days. It was acceptable for our needs, however, and it was a neat place in its own expensive way. It was here that I once again chose to take up my long-abandoned attempt at running. At the prodding of a hostel friend in Beijing I had run a couple times there, but then prompted stopped once I left. Among the 15 other participants in the FS program, however, there was a good eight or so who ran religiously. And as we were no longer busy with real work, I decided to join my roommate and two other guys for a quick jog before dinner. Of course, I picked the worst possible day since my departure from Beijing: running in Beijing is stupid because it is extremely polluted; running in Kangding is stupid because it’s at a really high altitude. I ended up with a headache for a good couple hours after our little excursion, but it was entertaining while it lasted.

Our trip to Western Sichuan was rife with problems, and at the time (without the rosy-tint fuzziness that time brings), distinctly not fun. We were constantly hampered by our group size and safety concerns, which seemed to restrict us at every turn – another grassland we hoped to visit as an alternative was also canceled because of bad roads, and a leisurely hike along a different road was called off because of fears we would hit by cars. In the end, we spent an hour or so by a clear mountain stream skipping rocks but feeling quite dissatisfied with te constant let-downs, especially after a 12 hour trip starting at the crack of dawn to get way out there.

Our tour guide, incidentally, was an interesting character. A Tibetan who had decided to make it in the city, he ended up working for a tour company. He had great stories to tell, could sing really well, had amazingly white teeth, and won the favor of more than one of the girls on the trip. His legend lived on long after our paths had diverged.

A later venture into Kangding proper produced interesting results. We bought scarves, yak cheese (which wasn’t very good), giant bread disks, and feasted on a traditional Tibetan dinner, which was delectably scrumptious. It was great to wander the town which was shaped somewhat like a starfish because of the steep mountains that restricted its growth. I bought a few Chinese books, and had a great conversation with a Muslim minority shop-keeper about his life and story: he came from Gansu province to sell souvenirs in the summer and household necessities in the winter. Some of oru group even went to see Terminator II dubbed in Chinese at the local movie theater.

The next morning, our Western Sichuan adventure came to a close. Leaving behind the mountains and a failed vacation, and were off to a new place: the Panda Research Base a couple hours outside of Chengdu.

I left my readers hanging, with the tempting prospect of hearing about the summer camps The FS group would be running. Though it is now a month later, and those camps seem eons away, I feel I ought to continue in chronological order so as not to confuse my loyal readers.

The First summer camp was also in Guangxi, in Daxin county. Daxin snuggles up next to Vietnam, which meant we were in one of the southernmost parts of China. We arrived late at night, after the marvelous sunset on the road had already passed. Though we were exhausted and would begin teaching class bright and early the next morning, my roommate, Linsen, and I decided to strike off in search of some food to sate our hungry bellies. Along the way, we could explore a tiny bit our new surroundings.

Heading off in a arbitrary direction, we found ourselves first in a barren wasteland of fashion-clothing shops, with nary a food stand in sight. After making some inquiries from a couple bored-looking (and uncharacteristically unhelpful) Chinese guys, we quickly found ourselves in a surreal landscape that bore resemblance to nothing other than a Tim Burton-created suburbia with Chinese characteristics. I had never before and never since seen anything like it in China. All the buildings and objects were pastel-rainbow shades of lime green, powder pink, baby blue, and more. The architecture was an attempt at European imitation, and the roads were wide, the store entrances bright and open, and the place nearly empty. Gone were the bold and gaudy colors that all Chinese love, even the reds and golds that define the Chinese life were nary to be seen. And yet, it was nothing that could ever exist in America or Europe. I felt like I had stepped into some eerie and disquieting landscape best never unearthed. Lin sen at first was confused at my discomfort, but gradually he too admitted that this was no China that he had ever seen before, and that it was freaky. There were nice looking cars parked on both sides of the street, for crying out loud!

After a time, we managed to find a grill that was still open, and ordered a medley of meet and vegetables on skewers to satisfy our hunger. We sat in on lime green chairs and looked at unnaturally chipper pastel pictures of fruit on the wall. Moving on, we found another place that sold stirfried rice noodles, and that solved our problem. We quickly returned to our hotel, where I found myself still ruminating over my experience. I realized that my disquietude stemmed not from the place being weird, but that I could not find a way to explain it in the context of the rest of my experiences in China. It just didn’t fit, and that was upsetting.

The next morning as we walked over to the Elementary school, we passed through that same neighborhood. It turns out that we had dined only a couple hundred feet away from the school! Over the next few days, I would still be perplexed by that part of town (especially because none of the Chinese people, whether locals or Fan Laosh, seemed to find it strange), but gradually came to an uneasy tolerance of it. I would discover later that it was not only external architecture that had been altered, but interior decorating as well: Linsen and I ate dinner with the family of one of our students. They were well off, and their kitchen-dining-living room were all the same white-and-pastel theme. I never found an answer to it; I can only imagine that some enterprising designer was good friends with an urban developer, and the locals caught on to the fad.

The first day of classes began a little late. I discovered about half an hour before-hand that I was supposed to co-represent ACC and say a few words of introduction. I hadn’t really prepared, and so I scratched out a few platitudes with the other student who was speaking, and together we didn’t embarrass ourselves, but didn’t do ourselves proud either. Unfortunately, we were shown up by the great speech by a ten year-old girl.

I was a bit nervous at beginning to teach class “for real”. I knew that I didn’t have any problems, having already taught my material many times back in Chengdu, but it had been a while since I last looked at my materials, and who knew what these kids might bring? As it turns out, they brought no new troubles or surprises. The first day of teaching was a success.

That evening, we were invited to dinner with the local lingdaos. The term lingdao is usually translated as “officials” in English, but I think that “bigwig” is just as good and accurate a translation. These are people who have authority and power, though where or how exactly, no one knows. One of my greatest frustrations during FS was not knowing who was controlling what, and why. The explanation, when given, was that it was something the lingdao had decided (and to make this lack of information even less informative, lingdao can be singular or plural). In our case, the lingdaos were almost always associated with education in some way. I think.

Another aspect of lingdaos in China is that they act very much like local strongmen, or maybe like gang leaders. They may not have a lot of power in the big scheme, but they rule their tiny fiefdoms without question. This peculiarity of Chinese culture (especially rural culture) would become relevant to us all too soon. But first, we had dinner with some of them.

As mentioned earlier, Zhuang people are the specialty of Guangxi province. Some of our lingdaos were Zhuang people, and so they took it upon themselves to introduce to us some aspects of Zhuang culture, particularly the ceremony of alcohol-drinking between host and guest. The host brings a bowl of rice wine (approximately 40 proof; a nice mid-level alcohol in Chinese livers) and spoon-feeds two generous sips of wine to the guest; the guest then takes the second ladle and does the same for his host. This is above and beyond the regular free flow of beer that naturally must accompany a formal dinner. We had been warned that an abundance of alcohol was one of the challenges we would face in our field studies, so I was excited at the event, even though I find little pleasure in the bottle.

As the dinner progressed, I realized that I had already gone beyond my previous alcohol record (set at 3 large bottles of beer while in Chengdu), but that I would be fine – I’m rather conservative, but I can manage when I need to. It was at that point, however, when the biggest lingdao rose from his chair and made an offer for anyone who was interested to go to his house (to continue drinking, of course). It was then I had a choice: to stay behind, get to bed early, and not have any negative effects from our evening, or to go into the wild beyond, suffer harms, but perhaps obtain knowledge and understanding by my efforts. There were five of us who went with him.

Chinese men can drink, and I am no match for them. I knew that if I went, I would get drunk, throw up, and be absolutely miserable the next morning. Yet I went – because it was the only way I could see the way this part of Chinese culture works; I could never get this window traveling on my own. Furthermore, I reasoned, should down the road I find myself in a situation requiring me to do the same, perhaps to seal some important business decision, or to get some American citizens freed from jail or what have you, I would be better off to figure out what goes on now, when I’m a nobody student and the negative results would not have any long-term or important impact.

It turns out that we went to the fellow’s brother’s apartment, where there was a table completely covered in food and surrounded by doughty men in their mid-fourties or so. We were offered samples of the food, including what we later discovered was almost certainly an endangered snake, and the obligatory many cheers of rice wine (as an aside, at least this rice wine, unlike the clear fire-water they call baijiu, didn’t taste like industrial cleaner mixed with chemical waste). Having gained entrance, I spent most of the rest of the evening camped out in the corner trying to be inconspicuous to avoid too many cheers of alcohol, and focusing on keeping my head as clear as possible. Eventually the festivities ended, we had one last cheer (which I, realizing I was quite beyond any reasonable consumption limit, spat out once we got politely out of the building), and made ourr wending way back to the hotel, where I proceeded to spend the entire night throwing up anything that was in my stomach, or even had the intention of going into my stomach.

At 7 in the morning I was still throwing up. At 8, I girded up my loins and ventured out into the street to teach my five classes of eager elementary school kids. It was hit-or-miss for a while, I kept a solid eye on the waste bin location in each classroom, and I didn’t eat a bite of food until dinner, but I made it through the day. One girl even came up and told me that all the other classes had felt like an eternity, but my class went so well it only felt like ten minutes! After a good nap I felt much refreshed, but the final test was dinner.

We student-teachers had been divided into roommate pairs and were sent off to local family’s homes to have dinner with them. It was a way for them to show hospitality, and we got to chat with the local families in their own homes. A local teacher accompanied each pair to make sure things all worked out well. Fan Laoshi had already spread the word that we had gotten a little tipsy the night before, and me particular – which I felt was a little unfair, as I drank as responsibly as possible, weigh approximately nothing, and still clear-headed enough to dig out our schedule and correctly set my alarm clock the night before. Never-the-less, the positive result of this was that the good intentions of the family host, manifested in the jug of rice wine sitting close at hand, had to transpose themselves onto a moderate single bottle of beer each for Linsen and me. I entertained well enough, if I say so myself, and our evening went pleasantly.

That was the end of my first and only experience with being drunk. I don’t regret it, because I got to experience a taste (or more than just a taste…) of Chinese culture, but why anyone would ever subject themselves to that voluntarily boggles my mind. The process of getting drunk isn’t fun anyway, and the resulting incapacitation is miserable. Long live teetotalers!

Alcohol, however, can be even worse when mixed with some bad cultural trends. Later that night, when Linsen and I were considering calling it a (long) day and hitting the sack, we got a call from Fan Laoshi, telling us to head to her room, pronto, for an emergency meeting. It turns out that while I was trying to teach class without throwing up, a couple other teachers were having trouble teaching class as well: the principal of the school, who was not among the host of lingdaos whom we had met already, suddenly made a drunker appearance, and made some inappropriate moves on several of our female program members – while they were teaching class!

To make matters much, much worse, he ended up going to the same house for dinner as two of the girls. The accompanying teacher for some reason didn’t stay, so they had an extremely uncomfortable time dealing with the still-drunk principal. Eventually our general liason got wind of what was going on, and gave Fan Laoshi a phone call, telling her, “I think you might want to go to that house.” – Chinese indirectness at its best. Fan Laoshi went over figured out what was going on, and waited for another half an hour for the accompanying teacher to show up (“to give him face,” she explained), and then hoofed it with the girls. Afterwards, she called the principal and let loose with all the expletives that Chinese can offer, and all the anger that this peace-loving people suppress most of the time, threatening to make this an international incident, among other more colorful suggestions.

The meeting Linsen and I were called to was to explain these events (of which we had been completely ignorant), and detain our battle plan for the next (and our final) day of teaching. Should the principal make an appearance, we were to instantly stop teaching, tell the students that because their principal was an alcoholic scoundrel we were leaving, and then proceed to leave. We were to keep an ear out for the loudspeaker, because Fan Laoshi would announce if we were going to walk out. It was a very intense experience.

That meeting also revealed other things I had not noticed earlier; first, that we had been watched by a secret policeman for the entirety of our stay; second, that our rooms had microphones in them. This all became even more prevalent the next day, however, when we found ourselves being tailed by a half-dozen men whenever we wandered, and where uniformed policemen guarded the school (and they later formed an 8-man escort for Tang Laoshi when she had to go back to the hotel to get something). All of this was to make sure that we saw neither hide nor hair of the principal that day. And so we didn’t. I still have never seen him.

This whole event was perhaps the single most insightful experience I have had in China. From seeing the way all the players reacted over the course of those 24 hours, I learned much about China’s culture; how even though the principal was a drunkard and a scoundrel, no one had dared to try to oust him – because he had connections and was a lingdao. It was only until another matter of face intervened (namely, foreign teachers) that folks were willing to (or felt they were able to) act. The police were unable or unwilling to, say, take him into custody, but they were willing to form a guard battalion. And Fan Laoshi’s reaction, unlike the American knee-jerk response, was also to consider the “face” of other people involved. To further emphasize cultural differences, the good lingdaos apologized profusely to us all (they brought baskets of the local “dragon eye” fruit for us), and offered to take us out to dinner to indicate their apology. The Americans, just wanting to put the issue behind them, felt that an “apology dinner” would be awkward and undesirable. It was a terrible experience, but from it, I gained a deep understanding of underlying currents in Chinese culture.

Due to rain, the closing ceremony at the school was truncated and broadcast via loudspeaker. We sang our signature Chinese song, “invisible wings” and said a few words about how great our experience had been.

After that, we began our “Guangxi cultural tour” which was code for “sightseeing trip”.

The pride of Daxin is the Detian International Waterfall. Thus area for a long time was effectively inaccessible because it had been a favorite planting ground for land mines during the Chinese-Vietnam war (I didn’t know there had been a war either). Eventually relations warmed between the two countries, China decided it needed another tourist spot, and a Cantonese business consortium decided it wanted to develop the waterrfall: these factors resulted in the land minds being cleared away, and a quite pleasant tourist spot being set up. It was only minimally kitschy, and the waterfall was quite beautiful. There are some big claims about this waterfall, something about it’s great height spread over multiple cascades; I think this mostly is the Chinese way of saying, “we have a pretty modest waterfall here that instead of having one cool big fall, has a lot of little ones, because the slope isn’t that steep.” But We enjoyed it anyway, and the scenery was stunning.

Key highlights of the waterfall included the purchase of a British African Explorer hat, something I have long desired, for about $1.30. It was universally acclaimed as fitting me perfectly. Two other students, including Yanxiang (who will feature prominently in later blog postings) also purchased hats that fit their personalities quite well.

A second highlight included an unexpected trip to Vietnam. China and Vietnam’s border is defined by a river (which explains why the waterfall is international), and the road we took follows the river. Consequently, we were tantalized by the view of Vietnam a five minute swim (or, in some cases, a five minute wade) across the way. It’s green hills and unguarded forests beckoned. Of course, we speculated that should we actually make a break for it and cross the river, hidden soldiers in bamboo hats would spring up and gun us down.

As a matter of fact, we were greeted not by soldier, but by children hawking caramel candy. At the top of the waterfall, some rocks and dirt had been strewn over the river to make a land bridge over the river, and we, tittering like small children sneaking into the forbidden parlor, slipped over the border to Vietnam. Vietnam, to conclude from my entire experience in that country, is comprised primarily of people with Vietnamese, Guangxi dialect, standard Mandarin, Zhuang, and English language abilities. They seem pretty happy and friendly, and their kids can drive a hard bargain. We all concluded that it was much better to be a Vietnamese kid than a Chinese kid; they only have to go to school for a half day, and their summer break is a month longer!

Our second trip was also to a waterfall. It was even grander and more exciting than Detian’s. The waterfall was really something out of a book. Nestled back in a remote valley, we traveled down flights of steps as spray sprinkled down on us, we wandered through the jungle-like undergrowth at the bottom, eventually arriving at a massive fall streaming over downy emerald peaks. I stopped and simply stared for five minutes. It was an earthly paradise, but one that was real. Our path didn’t end. We snaked down under the cliffs, ducking along the carved out path to find the second half of the waterfall – a rushing, rocky, torrential cave fall, light with red and orange lights.

Completely satisfied, and running behind schedule, we pushed on. I figured we had already seen the cool stuff, and the rest would be half-baked. No! Breakthrough another cave path, we popped out to see another paradise splayed out before us, with a river running down toward and under our path, and an arching stone hallow behind. From there, we followed the path on, and found ourselves pressing through a fantastical subterranean world, one that reminded more than one of us of the underground city of C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair. There was a dark river, strange rock formations, and other things that in our rush to return on time to our bus, we could only glance at. The marvels were grand, and we eventually emerged again into the sun in a wild mountain grassland, with the river (or another river? The magical place revealed no secrets) transformed into a burbling little stream. A wooden cabin across the stream was inhabited by a beautiful girl in traditional dress who sang folk songs, while a trio of Chinese girl tourists in modern jeans sang popular songs back at her. Eventually the path wound up at a small gravel parking lot, and we hopped in, having spent a day in a secret world.