FAQ and Interview Request

I would like to make a comprehensive FAQ of questions that you may have about living in Zhengzhou. These can be about where to find employment, the process, places to go, basic services available, tourist information, what to expect from people there, what to expect from employers, visa questions, food... If you have a question, please put it in the comments of this post and I will try to answer it. I may even dedicate an entire post to your question.

I am also looking to interview you about your experiences living in Zhengzhou so that I can provide more perspectives beyond my own about what it is like to live there. If you are willing to be interviewed, please let me know in the comments.

Also, if you are a native of Zhengzhou, i'd like you to give me a native's perspective in an interview as well.

Thank you!

The End (?)

Wow! It's been a long time since I wrote anything here. I'd like to give a bit of a postmortem looking back at my experiences in China and to give some sort of closure to this blog. There are a couple of  things I'd like to touch on: a little bit of an update as to what happened to me after the last post and a critique of what I have posted here from my current point of view.

Catching Up 2

Sang's village turned out to be a metaphor for all of China - a showcase for all the progress its people have made, but a stark testament to how far China still has to go before we can truly call it a developed nation. Sang proudly showed me the progress his village had made. The central road of the village of 3000 people now had pavement and streetlights, most of the buildings were "western" instead of traditional Chinese and many had more than one floor. For Sang, this was an indication of the great improvements Chinese people have had since the times of Chairman Mao.

Though Mao himself is still widely revered in China as a man who founded the modern Chinese state, most Chinese acknowledge that his later economic and cultural policies did a lot of harm to Chinese people. This does not diminish their respect for him, however. They are inclined to forgive him for his mistakes. This is compounded by the fact that the official Chinese government narrative about Mao does not allow a completely clear or accurate picture of his life. They don't tell outright lies about him, as many people in the older generations of China remember his policies all too clearly, but neither do they articulate them particularly well to educate the younger generations. As a result, people like Sang absorb a conflicting message to "think of him as a great man, despite all his mistakes".

Despite the improvements that Sang pointed out to me, this was my first true instance of culture shock.

Catching Up 1

Just prior to Spring Festival in January, I went with Sang and his friend to his tiny home village of Gu Fo Si (古佛寺) which is about a 10- minute drive outside Chang Ge, a town of about 100000 people an hour's drive southeast of Zhengzhou. The drive really should be an hour, but it actually takes about two hours because of terrible driving conditions, insane drivers in China and the fact that said bad driving conditions and insane drivers means that all vehicles drive extremely slowly to avoid massive fireballs of death occurring at regular intervals. As it is, more than 100000 people die in car accidents in China annually. I'd rather have a slow trip than add my name to the statistics.

Chang Ge is a well-known town in China as it was the chosen capital city of the famous Cao Cao, a major figure in Chinese history and ruler of the northern kingdom of Wei in the warring states period depicted in the famous novel "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", which is one of China's four great novels. While many westerners would condemn Cao Cao for his cruelty, in China he is widely admired for his ambition. Cao Cao is particularly beloved here in Henan, where he spent a large part of his life.

A Cultural Commentary

Comparison of Google Maps with Baidu (China's leading search engine and Google clone/pirate), to scale.


View Larger Map

http://j.map.baidu.com/qkn7

(Sorry, don't know how to embed the Baidu map, but this is a great way to hide the spoiler!)

Please draw your own conclusions!

January 31 - Exams, Customer Service, and New Firsts

January 4th was the day of the final exam, which was to be held from 10am to noon. I had drawn up more than one version of the test and had been hoping for a gymnasium test so I could properly keep an eye on all my students. I had written up rules of conduct and allowed materials. I had given notice of my zero tolerance policy for cheating and had gone over my plans with the school administration. The administration told me they could not accommodate my plans for using a gym for all the students at once and, in fact, had never even heard of such an idea before. Instead they wanted to divide my students into several classrooms in one building with a couple of invigilators to watch over each room. This meant, of course, that I had to divide my attention among different rooms, so I couldn't ensure the rules were followed adequately.

My students all cheated blatantly.

January 31 - Christmas and New Year's

I spent my first ever Christmas away from my family this past holiday, which was quite sad. I did manage to get on Skype and give them a call to spend some time with them, but it's not the same. I think my parents must have been very lonely too. My brother was also away in Europe at the time on a last-minute vacation, so they were hit with their first ever empty-nest Christmas.

圣诞节(sheng dan jie; holy birth festival) is the Chinese name for Christmas, and they celebrate it exactly the same way we do in the West, albeit far more commercially and no pretense at all of any relation to religion. 圣诞老人(sheng dan lao ren; Christmas Old Guy) is their name for Santa, which I completely cracked up about when I first heard it. My friend couldn't understand what was so funny, so that was a bit awkward, but I couldn't stop smiling. I think it's cute.

Missing photos of dumplings from previous post

So here are dumpling photos. Good lighting was at lunch, harsh lighting was at night. Gratuitous pics of ice cream and booze.

January 28 - Winter Solstice Festival

They have a festival here in China called 冬至 (dong zhi; winter's arrival), which is their name for the winter solstice. There doesn't appear to be any real folkloric aspects to celebrating this festival, but a requirement is that everyone must make their own 饺子 (jiao zi; dumplings) for themselves and eat them in massive quantities. Some restaurants will accomodate large groups and some will provide the filling and dough for the dumplings in addition to boiling them for you, while others make you bring your own food which they will boil for you once you've put them together.

I was invited by some of my students to take part in this festival which I am tempted to dub 'Dumpling Day', but will refrain from doing so since I think it devalues the real happiness Chinese people in the North derive from this special day (in the southern parts of China, they don't really experience winter, so they don't celebrate the festival).

January 28 - Catching up (and going all the way back to December 19!)

So this is the first in a series of back-logged things that I wanted to post, but never got around to doing. I'll hopefully get it all out soon.

When I arrived here, back at the end of October, I was planning to stretch about $500 I had brought with me until my first paycheque arrived, supposedly one month later. As I learned, however, that is frequently not how things work here.

It started out simply enough. I was advised to bring enough money to cover one month's expenses before the first paycheque, and $500 turned out to be way more than I needed to cover my first month's expenses, especially since my students were always paying for things for me at that time in the rush of paying their respects to their new professor.

However, payday arrived and no money came. I wasn't worried, but I fired off an email just the same to my employer in Canada. After that, things got ugly. Apparently, my employer thought it was only their responsibility to pay me if they had received payment of my salary first from the university in China (I have a middle man arrangement whereby the recruiter in Canada pays me to work at a university in Zhengzhou). The university here, for there part, were bureaucratically bumbling incompetents who weren't getting their act together. This process dragged out, and I ran out of money, to the point where I was living on my food stores (white rice, instant noodles and water) and $6 for three weeks.

December 25 - Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from China!

I have been extremely busy for the last little while with everyone seeming to want to celebrate with me. I've got a bunch of things I'm planning to share on here, but it may only be possible in a few days from now.

I'm celebrating today with some students who will come over to make me traditional Chinese food. Yesterday, I had lunch with the vice-president of the school, and was introduced to the three-glass toast. Three wishes for good luck - three glasses of wine in quick succession to go with them. Needless to say it was an interesting lunch. They even gave us a Christmas gift. I'm now the proud owner of a brand new paperweight. Not sure why they thought of giving us paperweights, but what can I say.

Hope you all have a happy holiday.

December 18 - Informal attendance at a formal gala

Last weekend, I was asked to be a judge for the finals of the College of Foreign Studies English debating competition. I told you about judging the semi-finals in a previous post. Irene (she refuses to tell me her Chinese name) took me to the previous competition, which was held in an office building's conference room with maybe thirty people in attendance. The setting was really intimate and quite relaxed. That was, at least, until the debating teams really started ripping into each other.

December 13 - Chinese Lessons

I've started taking Chinese lessons on Wednesdays and Thursdays. I only get 4 hours of instruction per week, but it's much better than nothing. Plus, it's all free! I couldn't ask for a better benefit of being a foreign teacher here. I have two different classes. One class is for grammar and reading, the other is for speaking. Each class is two hours long. My teachers are very nice young ladies who are fun to talk with. They're serious about teaching me and they prefer that I speak only in Chinese with them, but they also like to chat and experiment in Chinese conversations rather than just stick with the textbook all the time as I have seen some other Chinese teachers do.

December 9 - Singing Patriotic Songs and Busy Weekend (Warning: Epic Post)

I had planned for a relaxing weekend on the fourth and fifth after feeling sick on Thursday and Friday, but life had other plans for me. After class on Friday, I was invited by a young woman to go see her 功夫 (gong fu; kung fu) class on Saturday and then by Arthur to another impromptu basketball game (Arthur being the guy who first invited me to play basketball a little while ago). Even though I was feeling quite under the weather, I agreed to both. Arthur and I planned to meet at 3 o'clock, but we ended up missing each other in an unfortunate coincidence. I wasn't at the basketball courts when he arrived, so he set out to my apartment. I left my apartment and headed for the basketball court, arriving at 3:05, but we took different routes. As a result, he ended up waiting at my apartment for 10 minutes then heading back to the courts, while I waited for 20 minutes at the courts looking for signs of him. When he finally showed up, we even managed to miss each other briefly at the courts themselves, even though I was standing right in the entranceway. I was facing the wrong direction, since he took a route I wasn't expecting and he somehow missed the tall white guy standing right in front of the one and only (small) entrance to the basketball courts.

December 1 - Checking in

I've just learned that my last day of classes for the semester will be on December 24. My parents are considering coming to see me here during the Christmas break, so finishing on Christmas Eve will be perfect. I've still got to give my students a final exam though, which will take place in the following two weeks or so. Either way, after I finish marking exams, I'll be off until the end of February. In China, they don't do one long four month summer break like they do in Canada. Instead, they split the breaks into two month periods with one half in January and February and the other in August and September. I'm not sure how the students can handle the heat of June and July, but apparently they cope. Also, June and July is the rainy season in China, so I guess that helps too. It's not much fun to be on break if it's always raining.

November 24 - The Bad Road - before they made it worse

I keep forgetting to upload my pictures in the same post. My fault. I'll try to be better about that.

November 24 - The past two weeks (Part 3/3)

In my last post, I wrote December 10th. I meant November 10th. My mistake. I'd edit the post, but I cannot since the blog is blocked in China.

As I said earlier, it's a really good thing that I have a bike that is in fairly good working condition. A couple of days after my bike was repaired, I decided to bike to work. It's a good thing that I did because, overnight, the city had torn up a certain length of one of the two lanes of the street between me and my workplace. At the time, I was really amazed with the astonishing efficiency of Chinese workers. Unfortunately, this street happens to be an extremely busy stretch of road, particularly during morning rush hour. It also eliminated the option of taking the bus. 

November 21 - The past two weeks (Part 2/3)

One of the things that had been bothering me a lot is self-sufficiency. I can cook for myself well enough, but ordering food was a problem. Since my first day here when I felt like I was all alone and might starve, food has become a more important topic for me. In some ways, I always took for granted that food would always be available. Now I find myself planning my entire day around how next to secure a meal. For much of the first week, this wasn't a problem. My students took me out and paid for every meal except breakfast, and I was eating bananas for breakfast every morning.

November 20 - The past two weeks (Part 1/3)

So I've been here for three weeks now, and while my first week here was pretty tumultuous, the subsequent two weeks have certainly not been lacking in excitement either. Here are some of the highlights, lowlights and just plain weird things that have happened to me:

November 18 Pictures of the People's park entrance

These are the only pictures I have of the park. I'll try to get more in future.