Sprung

Winter has finally broken here in Chongqing (yes, I’m fully aware that you’re having midsummer weather already back in MN), and in honor of this I want to comment on the weather, environment, and scenery here. Forgive me if I repeat something I have mentioned before. Sometimes the same observation strikes me, and I can’t be arsed to check over every post to see if I have written it before. As always with this blog, you get what you pay for. Onward.

The sun started shining after making but a few appearances since September. On a clear day you see a fantastic tableau of skyscrapers, mountains, cranes, and people. Well, actually, the people are always there, they’re just bathed in a bit more sunlight than usual. One quickly forgets what you can see here because the fog and grayness are so pervasive. Next to a bridge I ride over every day is a small community of farms nestled into a hill next to a dirty little stream. Behind these little farms is an expansive vista of 40-story towers spreading beyond into the mountains. Within a few years those farms will certainly give way to the inevitable and all-consuming sprawl that proliferates daily. But for now, seeing these rural images in the middle of a megacity is a severe apposition to what China (and specifically this region) was, and what it is becoming. As for the aforementioned mountains, besides the fact that one is often ascending and descending hills on foot or by bus, it is remarkably easy to forget that Chongqing is surrounded by mountains. On a clear day you see just how fully the city is built upon, and encompassed by, whatever range this happens to be. As for watching the air pollution, instead of the smoke from the power plant stacks simply blending into the low hanging moisture giving off the illusion of a toxic blanket settling over the city every day, the pollutants simply dissipate into the blue sky. Delightful! No less poisonous, mind you, but certainly less ominous.

On Saturday I went into the center of the city for one of my favorite pastimes: the old self-guided walking tour, something I haven’t done in many months (in CQ, anyway). After wandering into new areas of the sunlit city, I took a walk across the river. As I did so, I came to the realization that I’ve lived by two of the world’s great rivers (well, three if you count the Liffey in all of her majesty, but that may be a bit of a homer call). Unfortunately, I was shortsighted and left my proper camera at home, but below are a few shots from my phone, and an extra one that a student of mine just sent me of one of my classes.

Another thing that struck me as I was walking around the city is that after seven months of living here the pace of growth is something that I have not grown accustomed to and something at which I constantly marvel. You are never in a part of the city that does not have some building happening. I have repeated this observation many times since I have come here, but seeing the manic nature of construction here is an image that is undeniably impressive. Also, I still see striking visuals on a daily basis. Because I see novel images every day, I often can’t even remember the ones that make me take notice. But they are there, and I’m sure they’ll come out when recalling the stories. “And that was the time I saw the mother sleeping while riding sidesaddle on the back of the moped and somehow cradling her newborn child…”

I think that I’ll leave off there for the week. Like I said, a few pictures below. I hope you’re all enjoying the weather and scenes from wherever you are reading this.

Urban farming. Unfortunately the angle isn't great, but what you see here is an old lady tending to a plot of vegetables that is seemingly being swallowed by the multitude of towers surrounding it.

What do the people want? A hall, of course. Chongqing's People's Hall. I was going to do the snarky thing and use the picture of the other side of the building showing the KFC attached to it and then point out the inherent irony and hypocrisy of it all (akin to that of the Rolex clock slapped on the top of the People's Liberation Monument commemorating the communist victors post-WWII), but I decided against it. Then I wrote the comment and took the low road anyway.

Prepare for the worst. If an emergency strikes, this location is good and ready to handle it.

Music in the park is an international phenomenon.

A little primary school tucked into the neighboring towers. Cooler looking than my phone can do justice.

Classy.

St. Patrick's Day the CQ way

I hope everyone had an enjoyable St. Patrick’s Day back home. Mine was a good blend of the old and the new; a refreshing change of pace, as much of my life here has been. Speaking of pace, let’s get to the start of the festivities.

Saturday was the annual marathon held in Chongqing. Though I haven’t developed into enough of a masochist to sign up for the marathon, I did participate in the 9km race. There were four races that day: a full marathon, half marathon, 9km, and 5km. Each started from outside the Sheraton (those gaudy golden towers that I posted a picture of long ago), and was run along the Yangtze River. Prior to the race I was standing around with a few expat friends, and though normally the Chinese refrain from taking pictures of the foreigners (or at least do so discretely), on a special occasion like this, the cameras were out in full force. Though I regretfully did not bring my own camera to take pictures, I know for a fact that there are at least a few dozen pictures of me floating out there in the ether of the web. Another pre-race highlight was watching some of the running gear clad Chinese men stretching with a smoke hanging out the side of their mouth. Their dedication is unimpeachable. Back to the race.

The marathon runners started first, then respectively down the line. The starting positions for the different lengths were lined up at intervals of about .5km behind the elite (read: mainly east African) marathon runners. I have written about the general sense of chaos that fills public spaces and roads here, and this was acutely amplified when you threw in thousands (hard to ball park a guess, but there was a serious sea of people there that day) of runners of varying skills, motivations, and goals. The proverbial shit-storm ensued.

I have been running at the gym since I arrived here, and this was to be my first real race since the elementary school track meets. I wanted to do well. So my initial frustration with the mob of walkers, photo-posers, and people of greatly differing age groups (sorry, a sanctioned stampede is no place to take your child for a stroll along the river), was quickly avoided as I followed some of the more ambitious runners up onto the sidewalk to get ahead of the meanderers on the main road. Once the road opened up, I was back on track and feeling pretty good.

The run itself went smoothly enough, though sucking in good, old, unfiltered Chongqing air probably isn’t the best way to execute a long distance run. Another slight obstacle was the curious runners who wanted to have a little get-to-know-you chat during the race. I’m pretty friendly when it comes to entertaining people who want to strike up a conversation with a foreigner, but come on lads, there’s a time and a place for this sort of thing. Again, I was moving along at a good clip, and there was no one around me with the 9km number on them. This is where things went awry.

When I got to the 8km mark, I decided to go hard the last 1km. I was pretty tired because I was giving this my all, and so when the 9km marker past and there was no finish area like I had seen at the 5km marker, I thought to myself, “Well maybe they’re marking the beginning of the kilometers, not the end.” (This logic flying in the face of what I had seen at the 5km spot, but I wasn’t at the top of my thinking game at this point.) When the 10km mark past, I was a little concerned, then I hit the turnaround point for the half marathon, and knew I had blown it. After some woefully unsuccessful interaction with a few race officials at the turnaround, a nice young lady came over and gave me a hand with the communication. Apparently, I had missed the turn off for the 9km finish. Shite.

After walking the 2km back to the 9km finish line (no more running, I had run flat out for 11km already), I saw all the lollygaggers that I had left behind at the starting line. I sincerely believe that had I not blown where I should have turned off for the 9km finish that I would have been right at the top of the 9km finishers. I’m not too disappointed because I felt that I ran very well, which was my goal, but damn, it would have been nice to finish at the top. But that day, there was no time to wallow in what-ifs; I had an ancestral tradition in which I was obligated by blood to partake.

Showered and changed from this:

Into this:

Headed down to the Harp, had a few cheeky pints and some laughs, and that was St. Patrick’s Day.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I picked up the Star Wars trilogy this weekend, and The Empire Strikes Back is calling. Enjoy the week.

Too soon?

I had my first random pang of anxiety about returning home when I was daydreaming on the bus today. Though there are plenty things I could do without here, I've also become undeniably accustomed to, and quite fond of, certain aspects of my life. It is relatively simple and endlessly interesting. The environment is not so sanitized as parts of home, giving it a strong, unique character. The dichotomies of the architecture can be fascinating to observe: the old and the new, the big and the small, the rich and poor, all mixed together rather than segregated. The food that I have written about before: often cheap, convenient to the point of over-saturation, and unfailingly delicious. The nature of neighborhoods and city. Not having to drive everywhere, being able to walk to the restaurants, gym, coffee shops, grocery stores, etc. The people; especially my newfound opportunity to go deep with my students several times a week.

As I said, there are plenty of things I could do without and many more things that I miss from home, but upon reflection of why I had that pang, I reflected upon some of the facets that I love about my life here. I'm far from a full-fledged and unblinking Sinophile (I have seen that kind here, not my style), but I know what I love about my life here. 

When I was talking about the expat experience with a friend living in India, he described the nature of that experience as having highs and lows in your daily life that regularly surpass their respective experiences back home. Often one can feel these extremes within a matter of hours of each other. That happened to me today. When I do return home, some discomfort is inevitable, and I do not fear this. However, it came as a bit of a shock to me today to experience the feeling that at some point, this little adventure will come to an end.

Those who can't do...

We’re a quarter of the way into the second semester, so I thought I would talk about the teaching and my students today. First off, I can feel a marked difference between how this semester and last semester kicked off. This is for several different reasons: I’m now familiar with some of my students, I have some lesson plans stocked up, I know my environment much more than I did when I first began; but mostly it boils down to having that first semester of experience under my belt. On the first day of classes, I already felt more confident and in control. Not that this was an issue last semester, but setting a precedent for how class with proceed from the first day makes an undeniable impact on how things will unfold. So this semester started off as well as one could hope. I was well rested, more seasoned, and looking forward to new students and courses.

Though some of my courses are similar to what I taught last semester, there have been some interesting additions. One is my Thesis Writing course to prepare juniors for the writing of their bachelor’s thesis next year. It is serendipitous timing that I am teaching this class, as I am currently working on a thesis of my own. Many of the same principles and practices apply to the teaching of this course that I learned in preparation for writing my own thesis. I also have some personal experiences and habits that I may impart upon them. I was thinking about doing a class on procrastination this week, but I think I’ll tackle it later in the semester, just too busy right now.

The joys of teaching thesis writing aside, my absolute favorite teaching experience thus far is my Advanced English Conversation Course. They can dress up the title however they please, but really it’s just myself and a small group of students (6-9) sitting around and talking for 30 minutes each week. I have about nine of these classes interspersed amongst my more rigorous teaching responsibilities, but for selfish reasons, these are undoubtedly my favorite classes. It is the best opportunity I have had to delve into the interests, opinions, confusions, and experiences of my students. For me, it is one of the great learning opportunities I have been afforded here. I let them determine the topics, and then I facilitate a discussion. Sometimes they want to talk about Transformers and Kung Fu Panda 2, other times I have had fascinating conversations about a myriad of topics. Though bar rules apply (no religion or politics), if I trust that we aren’t treading on too thin of ice, I’ve let the conversation wander into topics such as Tiananmen or Taiwan. We rarely stay on these topics long, but I’ve been able to glean some interesting insight into their views on these topics. The responses range from ambivalence to cautious curiosity to toeing the party line, but mostly there is an understandable disinterest in these issues. Most students have very little access to, or interest in, the news and what is available to them isn’t exactly coming from a sterling example of free press. Regardless, whatever they intimate regarding these issues is of unending interest to me. I will spare you the regurgitation of each of the topics we discussed in these groups, but the opportunity to have these discussions perfectly sates one of my major desires for coming to China.

Another surprising aspect of these groups is that some students who were utterly silent first semester are now speaking in the groups with abandon. I understand this is for a number of reasons: they know me better than they did last semester, they’re less afraid of making mistakes in front of the small group rather than the large class, they are in control of the topics discussed, etc., but it is still shocking to see some students who I assumed could not speak for medical reasons (I seriously did not see some kids talk at all in a couple of classes I had last semester) all of a sudden chatting away gleefully and uninhibitedly. Seeing this really accentuates certain facets of classroom and social dynamics I have come to notice here.

I think I’ll end there for this week. I could go on about this topic for a while, but I should save some things to share with you all when I’m back in the summer. Just know that teaching is going swimmingly right now, and I’m enjoying my time on campus more than ever.