Our Boat Is Named The PUKE

Cynthia told me what the Chinese characters meant but I quickly forgot because I couldn’t get the pinyin name out of my head. Yes this boat was named “PUKE”, but thank goodness the boat ride did not encourage any of those reactions.

Putuoshan & Zhoushan

I got Kris and Jim to take a couple of my classes so Cynthia and I could take a little side trip. Tuesday afternoon we hoped on a bus and then another bus and a ferry to Zhoushan City, which is an island with a very large harbor and many fishing vessels. We sort of walked around the town the first night, walking by 60 tents that were really outdoor seafood restaurants set up by the bay. Each one had about 4 dinning tables and one table with lots of seafood set out for you to pick your meal from. They had everything from horseshoe crabs, hammerhead sharks to lobster and many, many other types of fresh seafood that I didn’t recognize. I figured I would take a picture the next morning on the way to the boat that would take us to Putuoshan but none of the restaurants were there, but there was a person sitting in each completely empty tent “saving their place” for that nights meal. The next afternoon we saw some of the tables, chairs and gas grills being brought in on bicycles for the next night meals. Talk about fast food.

XiTang

XiTang is a little ancient water town sort of half way between Hangzhou and Shanghai. It has lots of well preserved Tang and Qing dynasty buildings (really old - 700 to 1300 yrs- side note: the students can rattle off the order of the dynasties like our kids rattle off the alphabet). Besides having lots of ancient buildings and waterways another thing they are noted for is that lots of Chinese soap operas and movies are filmed here. Most of their soap operas are either set in ancient time periods or have a military theme to them. When I get a massage, the TV is always on so I sort of enjoy watching the soups set in ancient time periods because of the neat costumes – especially since I can’t understand a word they say.

Wenzi

Cranky – that is how I woke up this morning because I didn’t sleep very much last night. I was fighting with the wenzi most of the night. Wenzi are mosquitos! Tiny and annoying. When I made my bed this morning I counted 5 carcasses but I can’t claim victory because I have about 10 bites. Score one for the wenzi. I can’t figure out how they are getting in. I live on the 6th floor and have screens on my windows. They look very small so maybe they are very young – could they be getting in thru the plumbing drains? At least once or twice a day the water cuts off in the building and generally you will hear the pipes sucking air. So any of you builder/plumber/water inspector people that might be reading this blog…. is it possible for those little annoying bugs to be breeding in my pipes and then visiting me for their first meal at night?

Side Note: Picture above is of the thousands of paper cranes made by the ZUFE students to honor the victims of the Wenchuan earthquake. We have had 3 days of mourning where at 2:28 pm everyday the students would stand and bow their heads and remain silent for 3 minutes. The numbers of dead, injured and homeless are almost too big for me to comprehend. Help if you can.

Twister

Most of the kids watch the TV show Friends here. If you think about it, the show really does give some insights on young American culture. Well one of the students mentioned the game Twister that they had seen on it. I decided that it would be neat to play with the kids here, so now I owe Gail a big one – she went to Wal-mart and picked up the game (can’t find it anywhere here even though it is made in China) and mailed it to me. We played it this week in class. We played boys vs boys and girls vs girls. The guys here are not hung up on appearing macho so it worked great except that they cooperate and support their classmates so well that is was against their nature to make it hard for their opponent. That made for some long turns. I made the students spin and call the commands I was laughing too hard.

For my students I put all the Twister Pictures up on the internet here …..
http://picasaweb.google.com/katiea48/TwisterAndZUFEAtNight

Weddings in China

There is a surprisingly large park squeezed inbetween a couple of the colleges north of my campus. Mostly on Sundays you will see a line of black fancy cars with their hoods decorated with flowers, teddy bears and dolls parked at the entrance to this park (or any other park). The Sunday of the May 1st holday, which is considered lucky, I walked thru the park where at least 30 weddings were taking place. They like to have their ceremonies on days that have been predicted as lucky for the couple (not any date that has a 4) in it. Anyway, most of brides and grooms were in the picture taking mode. I saw 6 wedding couples in paddle boats, and many more being posed in different locations. Most of the wedding guests were in jeans. They are definitely not boring stuffy affairs.

My students said that most brides rent their wedding dresses. They also said that there were 1 or 2 brides maids and 1 groomsman but I saw no evidence of the typically unflattering matching bridesmaids dresses strolling around the park (lucky them). Some of their “wedding day” photos are taken months before the wedding. Some of the pre-wedding photos will even have the bride and groom in romantic costumes, which might be displayed on a large poster on the day of the wedding. I have noticed many wedding processions going down the streets with a van in front with the back doors open taking a video of the procession and traffic. I was taking lots of pictures of as many couples as I could as I walked thru the park and weirdly at the same time, my picture was being taken by their photographer.

The casually dressed wedding guests are generally expected to give the bride and groom a red envelope containing at least 600 or 800 Yuan. I am not sure about the ceremony part of the day but one of the Chinese men at the last English corner said that today’s Chinese weddings were more like a theater production with all the videos and businesses involved. Maybe I will get to go to one and see the whole thing and not just the photo taking part.

If you are still interested in MODERN Chinese Weddings – I found this on the internet and it explains things way better than I did.
http://www.gluckman.com/ChinaWed2004.html
If you are interested in traditional Chinese Weddings check this web site out http://www.chcp.org/wedding.html

Earthquake in China

It happened a little bit west of Chengdu (where Cynthia and I went at the beginning of April to see the Leshan Buddha) about 1000 miles due west of where I am located in Hangzhou (1400 miles by rail). A few people here felt some little vibrations but I was oblivious to the whole thing. I get most of my news of the quake from the china daily web site http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ and from whatever Gail tells me on Skype from the American side. Very sad.

You can make the map a little bigger by clicking on it (for people like me that need it bigger to see all the fine print without my Walmart cheater glasses)