Grocery Shopping in Chengdu

It's always an adventure to go grocery shopping in Chengdu.  I usually go to a supermarket called "Trust Mart" which is owned by Walmart.  It's about a 20 minute walk from my apt.  I have complained in the U.S. when I've had to park my minivan in the very last parking spot in the lot which meant pushing my cart the length of the parking lot.  Poor Amy.  How she suffered so. 

Tianfu Square.  The center of Chengdu.

Now, of course, I don't have a car.  So, I've learned to shop frequently so that I don't have to lug a lot of heavy groceries back on my walk.  I tried to balance two grocery bags on my bike, but cycling requires every bit of my attention given that cars drive on the sidewalks, they pass each other, and they constantly honk which is disconcerting while balancing grocery bags.


I've figured out how to take the bus to the super Walmart which is where the pictures are taken below. It costs about 30 cents to ride the bus, and they go everywhere in the city. I have been unable to locate a map in English with the bus routes marked on it, but the city is pretty easy to navigate. Chengdu has 3 major ring roads that fan out from the center of the city which has a beautiful square where the large Chairman Mao statue is located. I live between the first and second ring road, so I can hop on a bus on either ring road and get to the general area of most spots in Chengdu.

The large supermarkets are located on 2 or 3 stories instead of spread out on one floor. You have to ride these moving ramps up and down which accommodate shopping carts and tired Walmart shoppers like the little girl here. She stared at me the whole way up the ramp.



I was merrily snapping pictures in the store until an angry looking butcher told me to stop. Here are some shots I thought you all might enjoy seeing.

Chicken feet.  It's what is for dinner.



Sausages for sale.

The fruit is gorgeous and yummy.  Durians look like weapons, eh?

I've never seen anyone buy a manta ray to cook.  We are miles from the sea!



Anybody hungry for some pig feet? 

A glimspe at rural China

These 3 exquisite 14-yr-olds were my guides when I got to the village.

I had a marvelous time on Friday at some workshops I facilitated at the Liajiamiao village which is east about 3 hours by bus and car from Chengdu.  Since Chengdu sits in a basin, we had to climb through some mountainous passes.  It was weird to see pampas grass, exotic ferns, and asiatic lilies growing in the wild.  I'm used to seeing them as container plants at Lowes.  It is much more subtropical here than I had imagined.  

The teachers and I are playing an introduction game. 

At a Consulate function, I met Professor Zhou who works for the West China School of Public Health in Chengdu.  She has lectured all over the world on the topic of public health policies and has taken a special interest in the village where I went because it is so isolated from the urban area of Chengdu.  Two of Professor Zhou's post graduate students accompanied me on a 2-hour bus ride to the town where the Director of the school picked us up for the hour ride to the village.  I met about 30 teachers for a "theory and practical activities" workshop.  They were outgoing and eagerly participated which was gratifying for me. 

 Everyone is very comfortable squatting.  I'm still getting used to it!

My favorite part of the day was working with the 50 middle school students. I was told this village was full of "left behind" children which means their parents left them in the village with their grandparents because the parents have to live in the city to work.  So, it is a village of very old people and children.  The grad students told me that Professor Zhou is doing a psychological study on these left behind children.  The students said that the School of Public Health was designing some intervention programs to see if the programs would influence the outlook, behavior, and the physical health of the left behind kids.

I took some pictures of the students playing Simon Says and Duck, Duck, Goose with English phrases, and in their chains of introductions.  They seemed to enjoy the outdoor active English games the most.  Kids are kids everywhere, eh?   

Cluck cluck.

I had to use the restroom so my 3 guides jumped up to show me where it was.  They held my hands, and we practically skipped to the outhouse behind the school that had no running water or a complete wall on the back.  I just can't imagine Izzy and her friends holding my hands and skipping to an outhouse where all of us would squat over our respective holes in the ground while at the same time maintaining our conversation.

I gave each student a state quarter from the United States which was a big hit.  As a mother of two middle school children, I wish I could have given more.  Their gift to me was their initial shy smiles that turned into laughter during the games.  I'm not sure they have seen very many foreigners flap their arms and cluck like a chicken.

Afterwards, I had an amazing banquet with all of the teachers in which all of these beautifully prepared dishes kept appearing by magic in this tiny cafe. The food is all placed on a gigantic lazy Susan in the middle of the table that it twirled around at a slow pace for everyone to pluck out of the bowls what they want.  Each teacher stood up and toasted me for bringing honor and new ideas to their classrooms.  So, I had to toss back quite a few beers given that was the only beverage available.  It was very weak, so I managed to maintain my dignity!   I'm proud to say that I can now boast that I have eaten pig ears.  

They didn't taste like chicken.

HOTPOTS

Mom and Dad on our way to dinner out the Little North Gate

On October 1, China celebrated the 62^nd anniversary of the founding of Communism.  This holiday is called Golden Week for instead of taking a day off, we had a 7 day holiday.  (Classes that were scheduled for Thursday were made up today and Friday classes will be made up tomorrow).  Lucky for me, my parents visited last week so we spent a week of whirlwind touring around Chengdu and the surrounding area.

Lynn and Mia at our table.  Tons of students were at this campus hotspot for hotpot.

 

Ma and Pa arrived on Friday night and were immediately taken to a hotpot dinner by two of my lovely post graduate students, named Lynn and Mia.   A “hotpot” is a boiling pan of spicy chili oil and broth that is flush with the table.  The gas canister is hidden from view under the table.  You can get the spicy broth which is traditional in Sichuan as well as a mild broth mixture. The round pan resembles a yin and yan symbol with red on one side and white on the other. 

The oil mixture had mushrooms, peppers, and tomatoes as well as unidentified spices in it.

Sichuan is famous for a special peppercorn that I’ve never had in the U.S.  It’s called a huajiao pepper that effectively numbs your mouth.  The food here is not as fiery spicy as New Mexican jalapeno dishes.  What makes the food unique is the use of this huajiao pepper that makes you feel like you are recovering from a dental filling.  It’s an odd yet pleasant culinary sensation to have a spicy bite of food that turns your mouth momentarily numb after you’ve swallowed it.

After the pot of oil is brought to your table to start heating, you are given a long list of ingredients from which to order.  Then, the selections are artfully arranged on a rolling vertical tray contraption.  We nixed the bullfrog, special duck intestine, and duck blood curds and settled instead on sliced lotus roots, tapioca noodles, shrimp dumplings, Chinese cabbage, tender beef, bamboo shoots, and 4 different kinds of mushrooms that were heavenly.  One by one you drop the various ingredients into either side of the boiling oil mixture  So, basically it is fondue Chinese style.  (No chocolate, though!) 

 

After you pull out the ingredient from the oil, you drop it into your own little bowl of oil, vinegar, fish paste, cilantro, and garlic.  Each person decides how much or if any of each of these ingredients he/she wants.  

My parents did a fine job of navigating solely with chopsticks.  I think beer helps!  I’m sure there is a scholarly paper in the making here of studying the relationship between chopsticks dexterity and beer consumption.  The food is so just so fresh and complex that the incentive to use the chopsticks is another factor to mention in this research.   

I must say as a food inhaler that using chopsticks has slowed down my rate of consumption which is certainly another positive quality in a country in which meals are enjoyed and not rushed.  

We spent the rest of the week visiting temples, parks, giant buddhas, sacred mountains, monasteries, and pandas.  More to come!   

Credit to papa for several of the photos in the next few entries.

Sichuan University

Water lily pond close to the Foreign Languages Building where my office is.

I'm teaching at Sichuan University which has 40,000 undergraduates and 20,000 graduate students.  There are 3 campuses - the oldest one where I live is in the center of Chengdu and the brand new one where I teach 3 days a week is a 45-minute bus ride away. I don't have anything to do with the Medical School campus!

Chairman Mao is located by the East Gate.  

The main campus is surrounded by an 8 foot wall, so it is a self-contained entity.  It takes about 30 minutes to walk from the north gate to the south gate and 20 minutes from the east gate to the west gate which gives you a rough idea of how huge this campus is.  Driving is discouraged on campus because the streets are narrow and full of students, bicycles and motorbikes.  However, there are still cars zipping about which makes riding my bike an adventure!  I still haven't quite figured out the choreography of the transportation dance in China.

Water lily on the pond near my office

There are enormous shade trees on campus as well as parks with palm trees and banana trees and lotus and waterlily ponds.  I've tried to take capture the beauty in my photos but Ansel Adams I am not. There are park benches around the large ponds and people hang out and read and talk.

There is a supermarket about 2 blocks from my guesthouse and bicycle repair shops set up on the sidewalk every block or so.  Most of the food stands are located just outside the campus at each of the gates.  My students have taken me to eat at some of these stands which I'll describe in a later posting.  Retired teachers are allowed to live on campus so there is a wonderful mix of ages in the high rise apt buildings all around campus. There are 2 primary schools on campus and one middle school and one high school, so I see children all the time which makes me miss my own.

Foreign Language Building.  My office is on the 3rd floor.

Today I was invited to watch a group of retired women who are taking a singing class in which they sing English songs.  I walked in on 25 women singing "Way Down Upon the Swanee River".

Surreal doesn't begin to explain this day.

The singing instructor was a tiny woman about 30 years old who belted out an operatic version of Swanee River that almost made me cry.  She is a voice teacher at the Sichuan Music Conservatory which is near my university.  She invited me to see a performance on her campus tonight of a violin, cello, and piano trio visiting from Vienna.  I'm still speechless.  What a musical adventure I had today.

I hope you enjoy the photos of my lovely campus.

This is the Main Administration Building located at the North Gate

Do you notice how people ride their bikes and motorbikes on the sidewalks?  Also the map in the background has north on the bottom and south on the top...  Each map around campus seems to have a different orientation...

This kitty lives by the South Gate.  I don't think he looks particularly happy to be on a leash.  I know my look-alike cat Sylvester would not be thrilled to be leashed to the front door!

This is the outside of the Foreign Experts Building where I live.  My room is on the second floor and faces south.  You are looking east at the front of the building.

This is the plaza I walk across to get to my house which you can barely see between the pillars on the right.  Between classes this plaza is filled with undergraduates since these buildings here are full of undergraduate classrooms.  You can see a couple of tiny people in the picture to give you some idea of the scale of this massive building!

My Housing at Sichuan University

View front my front window into the courtyard
 with the koi/lily pond

For my flight to Chengdu which is about 1000 miles west of Beijing, I was driven to the airport in an embassy vehicle by the same driver who drove Vice President Biden around Beijing.  The driver was delighted that Mr. Biden chose to eat at a local noodle shop during his visit in August.  There was a picture of Biden eating in the restaurant on the front page of the national newspaper in China.  It’s interesting how seemingly inconsequential actions can have a significant impact on how people view Americans.

 Unlike domestic flights in the USA, China Air is still serving meals domestically.  I had a cunning tray of “oriental chicken”, canned pears, a cookie, and what I thought was a dinner roll until I discovered the bean paste inside.  When we landed in Chengdu, we had to walk down the stairs from the plane and board a bus to get to the terminal.  I fought the urge to grandly wave at the top of the stairs a la the President in the Airforce One photo ops.

Bedroom/office. (Pink bedding has been subsequently
replaced thanks to China Ikea!)

I was met by a Sichuan University contact who escorted me to my home for the next 4 months which is centrally located on campus in the Foreign Experts Building.  I have a living room, a small kitchen and bathroom, a huge bedroom/office and an enclosed balcony where I hang my clothes to dry.  This building is a hotel for visiting foreigners on campus.  One of my graduate students, who came over to show me how to operate the Chinese washing machine, said students affectionately refer to this building as the “panda building” because students cherish foreign teachers like foreign teachers cherish pandas.  As you can imagine, I adore my students!

I’ve spent the week at my new office at the Center for American Culture.  I will be teaching one graduate level class in ESL methodologies that meets once a week, and 3 classes in Freshman College English that meet twice a week.  I was told there would be 15-20 students in my graduate class.  52 showed up!  My freshman classes are at the new Sichuan University campus that is a 30 minute bus ride away.  My freshman students all have military training the first two weeks of the term, so I will meet them next week.  I heard the class size has been limited to 30 students.  We’ll see! 

Living room (Walk straight ahead into the kitchen or go right
into office/bedroom/enclosed balcony

The living room to the left is crying for some artwork.  I hope to get some pictures when I visit some of the touristy temples soon...  In the meantime, it is a bit bleak.  I would love to slap a coat of paint up... There are hooks all over the apt that have little cartoon characters on them.  Nails are not used I suppose because they would crack the plaster.  I can't explain the cutesy hooks.  

Kitchen with the bathroom to the left. It has a western style toilet.  Ahhhh.

Every morning I head up to the 3rd floor to fill my hot water thermos from the hotel boiler.  Then, I trot back downstairs for my cup of instant coffee before I switch to green tea.  The picture below shows the view from my kitchen window which also looks out on a courtyard where a pesky rooster welcomes me each morning. He crows in Engish.

After I have my hot drinks, I pour the boiling water into a pitcher to cool it down before I put it in my Barbie sized fridge.

Picture of the boiler with my trusty thermos.  All of the teacher lounges on campus have hot water thermoses for the teachers.  

Beijing Orientation

Dear Family, Friends, and Colleagues,

Swanky hotel room in Beijing

I arrived in Beijing on August 28 for my English Language Fellow (ELF) Training.  I was delighted by all of the trees, rose buses, and canna lilies that were planted on the major thoroughfare from the airport to downtown.  Apparently this beautification was done for the 2008 Olympics.  Visibility was low because of the pollution but my spirits were high to be in China.

I met the other 5 ELFs none of whom wore pointy green shoes.  4 of the 5 had lived in China for at least a year or more and were positive about their experiences which was a great comfort to me.  We are at universities all around China, so we had our in-country orientation together in Beijing. 

View of Beijing from my hotel room

On our first day of orientation we met with the Fulbright scholars in China.  Gary Locke, our new Ambassador to China, welcomed us to China and talked about the US/China relationship which he stressed was so very important right now given our economic state.  He mentioned there are always misunderstandings between cultures that can be overcome by mutual understanding which is why we are all serving as goodwill ambassadors for the United States. 

Before Ambassador Locke’s presentation, I was in the coffee room loading up on coffee to combat jet lag when I whirled around and almost bumped into him.  My first close encounter with an ambassador almost ended in a coffee disaster.  Whew.  My parents didn’t name me “Grace” for a reason.

Next, we had a briefing by the Embassy Security Officer which was basically to not break any laws because even though we are guests here, we must obey Chinese law.  He did assure us that we would get a monthly visit by a U.S. representative if we were imprisoned.  Ahh.  Now that’s a relief!

Roofline of one of many Pagodas in the Forbidden City

Our orientation also included a visit from the Press Office and the Cultural Affairs Office who filled us in on the status of journalistic freedom in China and the need for us to help promote American culture in China through workshops and lectures.  All in all it was a fascinating orientation that culminated in how to best treat diarrhea by the Embassy doctor.   That conversation puts a whole new spin on the idea of finishing a presentation by “leaving with a bang”. 

Wednesday morning, I took an extremely clean subway down to the Forbidden City to walk around before I left for Chengdu which will be my permanent home in China for the next 10 months.  More about Chengdu later.

Pillars of a Pagoda in the Forbidden City

Outside the Forbidden City

I'm off to China!



Sichuan Universith Main Admin Bldg (photo courtesy of SCU website)

 On August 21, I will be leaving CNM for 10 months to teach in Chengdu, China with the English Language Fellow program.  According to the website http://elf.georgetown.edu/

“The English Language (EL) Fellow Program promotes English language learning around the world and fosters mutual understanding between the people of the United States and those of other countries. The EL Fellow Program promotes English language learning and enhances English teaching capacity abroad. Through U.S. embassy projects, Fellows share their expertise, hone their skills, gain international experience, and learn other cultures.”

The EL Fellow Program is funded by the U.S. Department of State (DOS) within the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), Office of English Language Programs, and is administered by the Center for Intercultural Education and Development (CIED) at Georgetown University, Washington, DC.

My specific job at Sichuan University is to teach 8 hours of Oral English to non-English majors and teach a graduate class in ESL methodology.  The other part of my job is to help promote the first Center for American Culture in China.  This Center opened in December of 2010 and is joint venture between Arizona State University and Sichuan University.  The plan is to use this center as a prototype to open 10 more Centers for American Culture in China in the next couple of years.

Chengdu is a city of 13 million people in the southwest part of China.  Its claim to fame seems to be that it is the home of the Giant Panda preserve in China, and it is the gateway to Tibet.  It’s also supposed to have some of the best fiery food in all of China which pleases this green chili lover.  Chengdu is the training city for all Peace Corp volunteers in China, so I think I will have the chance to take some Mandarin lessons there which I need since I don’t speak a word!

 I will be there alone until Christmas when my husband will join me with our two kids.  He will leave after two weeks, and my kids will stay for the next 6 months.  We will be living in the Foreign Guest Housing on the Sichuan campus with opportunities to travel on the weekends.

I would be delighted to start collecting questions you have about China to address in this block. 

Send 'em in!