Well, that was stupid.

So long story short, a tragedy brought me back to NC for about two weeks. A lot occurred during that homecoming, most of which is simply too sensitive to talk about right here. However, one spectacular instance of misfortune is simply too ridiculously stupid not to complain about.

So here goes-- during this time circumstances left me de facto in charge of the Youngblood Family Farm. One day I made the boneheaded move of agreeing to move our great tax deductions, aka the cattle, to a low-lying field next to the river which we endearingly call "the bottoms." Unfortunately neither I nor my reliable help, Bobby and Harris, anticipated the amount of rain we would be getting over the next few days and on Sunday night it rained so much that the river crested and turned "the bottoms" into a new pretty lake.

Thus that morning we discovered the cattle trapped in about 3-4 feet of water. Ok, we made a mistake (#1 of 2), but we were confident we could get them out, we just weren't sure how. We called them, but the stubborn bovines wouldn't move, even though it was perfectly calm, allowing them to wade through it. I''d also like to add that these wusses were the same polled herefords that had, only 2 days earlier, happily rushed into a pond while we were moving them down there in the first place.

But no, we had to go and get them. Now, we didn't want to just wade out there, so another friend brought a boat. But here's where more stupidity ensues. Some tractor repair guys (don't ask me how they came to be there) suggested we ride one of the John Deere tractors out to them. I agreed, even though 4 people could have probably fit on the boat. So I went and got the tractor, which turned out to be tragically undersized (though it was one of our biggest)

I drove the tractor into Bottoms Lake, with the repair guys riding on the back, taking care to not get stuck in the ditches (ironically meant to drain the fields when it rains). We got within about ten meters of the herd, when boom, we hit a sudden deep spot and the engine, now partly submerged, stalled.

So we ended up swimming anyway.

We got them out, but by that point the cattle were the smaller problem--the water was getting rising and soon the tractor would become a freshwater coral reef. The repair guys, feeling just a bit guilty I think, offered the best solution: go get a bigger tractor.



Fortunately, they had one (I'm sure they'd planned this all along). Within a half-hour, they had brought a massive, thrice-as-big Ford, rather dubiously named "Deere Slayer." It took them about 15 minutes to rescue the JD.

Sighhhh....leb wohl

Dispatches from the Quarantine Zone

I am reporting now from Ground Zero of the Changzhou Swine Flu Epidemic. Sources tell me that 16 students have confirmed cases of H1N1 and that 300 more are being kept in isolation.
Classes have been canceled until next week. For comparison around 100 cases have been reported at Wake Forest University and classes are continuing as usual...Ok, so the Chinese may be a little more paranoid about the flu. Either that or my alma mater's response to a pandemic is about as slow and plodding as their offensive game in football.

I wouldn't exactly call the Chinese reaction to the H1N1 outbreak hyperbolic. There are naturally contributing factors unique to China that lead to a heightened awareness when it comes to disease. First, the student's live in rather squalid 8-person dorm rooms. Second, sanitation tends to be more of a luxury around here.

And this is China--anything disruptive, be it intellectual or biological, is viewed as a potential seed of mass dissent. But I'll admit, when it comes to my health and the health of those around me, I don't mind the extra security. Still, when the authorities go beyond reasonable caution they run the risk of breeding the paranoia and fear they hoped to avoid.

And the fear is certainly there. My students (for the brief time I've had with them) asked me several times if I was afraid of H1N1. I've simply shrugged and downplayed the hysteria as best I could. However, after hearing about the conditions some students are facing in the quarantine location, I've grown a tad more apprehensive. If I caught it they probably wouldn't just let me "chill" in my penthouse apartment for a week.


Leb Wohl (und Gesundheit)

Back in the Orient

I'm back in China. It hasn't really changed much over the past two months (aside from blocking more websites). Of course I'm at a new school, which means I have new people and places to acquaint myself with AND it means the locals aren't used to me and will stare for the next few weeks. Other than that Changzhou (henceforth called the Cz) isn't that much different from the Jx. Just another relatively unremarkable prefecture-level city. But there is a pretty tall Pagoda in this one. And an H&M.

One interesting feature of my new apartment is that it overlooks (being on the 14th floor) a vast sprawling landscape of apartment blocks and the skeletons of future apartment blocks. Oh, and a Honda dealership. So basically I get a front-row seat to China's impossibly rapid development. In fact, my side of Changzhou is littered with the ruins of half-demolished buildings soon to be replaced by concrete monoliths of progress.

For a low-tier school, Jiangsu Teacher University of Tech. is itself quite impressive. The buildings are quintessentially Chinese--futuristic, but with every angle conformed to the harmony of socialist feng shui. The new library they're building is quite daunting--more like a modernist palace for party higher-ups than a place for reading books (even if said books are are about Marxist-Leninism).

I have already been accosted several times by students and teachers eager to practice English. One of these days I'm going to be cruel and respond in German (then again, my beloved Fremdsprache just so happens to be the second most-popular foreign language at this school) The competitiveness amongst the English majors here is staggering; Yesterday, a very nice junior named Jason was giving me a tour of the campus, when suddenly a senior with naturally better English butted in trying to steal my attention. I felt bad for Jason, and did my best to stear the conversation back to him. Another instance: Today someone at McDonald's (yeah, I ate there, what of it?) sat down at my table, asking me my preference between Amway and Herbalife--apparently he aspires to work for a direct-sales company and needs career advice. Being far from the strangest question I have ever been asked, I simply broke out the ever-handy "Wo bu zhidao." It did not stop there. Later he texted me about three more--Avon, Nuskin, and Mary Kay.

I told him I preferred Mary Kay--I have connections.

Leb Wohl

On the Home Front

Okay, so I'm not in China now, but I soon will be, and so I figured that I could go ahead and start writing again.  Either way a summary of the past seven weeks in Hendersonville seems in order.  But it's late and I'm tired to let me just give you the abstract: Family=Madness.  Ok now we can move on to more important China-related topics, like Facebook being banned there.  The life-blood of Generation...er...Y has been plugged by the Dragon.

Finnnaaallllly! 

I mean, you'd have thought they'd never get around to censoring something that should be censored. YouTube?  Come on!  You call yourself a socialist government and yet you block the greatest proletarian revolution in media?  Blogspot?  Blogs are just diaries that you want people to read.  Nobody really cares about them.  But Facebook may be the single most harmful thing on the internet right now.  Not only does it make it easier for people to tell you everything you never wanted to know about them, it also allows employers, enemies, ex-girlfriends, and the US Government to find out things about you that normally they would have to pay for.  And this says nothing about the complete alienation paradox this whole internet-networking thing creates.  We can know everything about someone while never actually conversing--you know, that talking thing where you ask meaningful questions and get sincere responses?

Ok, I promise I'm done ranting for the mom--HOW IN HEAVEN'S NAME CAN SOMEONE CALL THEMSELVES CHRISTIAN AND YET OPPOSE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE?!?!

Sorry, I don't know where that came from...probably best to just end it there.

Leb Wohl.

Fast Times in Jiaxing

Before I move to my planned topic, can I just say what's happening in Iran right now is both amazing and tragic?  Because it is.  Anyway, over the past few weeks I have determined that Chinese college students can, and often do, have exactly the same kind of fun American college students have way too much of.

Allow me to put this into perspective.  Chinese students live by the exam.  Tests are a major determinate of ones place in this society.  Their test scores are the biggest part of their grade (though not in MY classes) and their grades determine which schools they go to, which determines what kind of jobs they will be given  (For the other great determinate "guanxi"please await future posts).

Anyway, this is the time of year in which high schoolers have taken their college entrance exams, subsequently entering a depressive funk or...and here's where the fun comes in... celebrating!  Usually through travel or karaoke (In fact I ran into several of the former traveling in Leshan, Sichuan--I assume at least one of them had gotten good news).  Fun is a result of success, it is reward, unlike in the West where partying can usually happen on a whim.  

Though not usually under  quite as much pressure as high schoolers, Chinese college students are also very celebratory, something I witnessed first hand.  Two of my classes invited me out for after-term dinners.  It was the usual affair with circular tables and those little wheels in the middle upon which the various dishes are rotated.  Supposedly the occasions were in my honor, by I suspected that these dinners were a end-of-term tradition for every class unit, which tend to be very tightly-knit

The breakdown of fun is as follows:

It begins with dinner, which already tends to be a little wild.  Then comes the beer, which is consumed first via toasts, then more casually without the formality, and then in competitive shots (Please note that binge-drinking does not occur, at least it hasn't around me)

Sometimes it ends there, or sometimes the fun moves to KTV, the staple institution of Chinese karaoke culture.  The drinking stopped for us when we got there, and instead we sobered up with flavored drink.  Unfortunately this meant everyone was sober when I sang, and so they found out how bad I am at karaoke (but not singing in general--that I'm great at).  

While  some people sang somewhat-generic Chinese pop (or Backstreet Boys) the rest played this clever card game where the losers had to perform dares with one another.  The typical Chinese dare usual involves a romantic theme.  Consequently several proposals of marriage were made, one of which was from me.

Leb Wohl

Separation Anxiety

Classes are over. Exams are finished and grades completed.  Already I miss my students.  The 16 weeks we spent together was far too short.  

Exams were surprisingly good.  Once again I was amazed by their creativity.  We took class pictures and afterwards all of them wanted individual shots with there cameras.  Some of them cried...no they didn't, that was me.

Right now is the stage were I reminisce about our classes.  The fun and awkwardness.  The successes and epic fails.  There is so much I could've done better as a teacher, but hopefully they still learned something.  Well, according to the grades all but a few did.  No really, thanks to my bad marking system my students have gotten obscenely high grades.  Of course that hasn't stopped a few texting me to complain about 90s.  But I can't blame them for being perfectionists.  After all, I aspire (foolishly) to be one myself.

Enlightenment and Extortion on Putuoshan

One of the reasons I came to China was to experience a little bit of the religion. This was somewhat of a dubious goal since religion has more or less been marginalized since the Cultural Revolution. As, one of my Chinese friends told me "superstition," rather than the organized religion communist governments tends to oppose, is the opiate of the masses. This could range from typical burial rites on a family plot to various auspicious acts one can do (though certainly not required) to appease various deities providing such services as dream-free sleep, babies, or fortune.

Buddhism, a bastion of religious and philosophical thought, was once mighty in this country, easily fitting in with the two other giants, Daoism and Confucianism. But I would not describe China or many of her people Buddhist (exept Tibetans of course). To put this into perspective I recently went to one of the four "sacred" Buddhist mountains in China--an island of the coast of Zhejiang called Putuoshan. The island is devoted to Guanyin, a Buddhist goddess of mercy. There is an immense statue of her greeting the new arrivals who come on the ferry from Ningbo (which is the only way to get to the island). After paying a steep price for admission to the national park, you enter the land of tour groups and souveniers. Like so much in China, Putuo mountain is a tourist trap and without hostels or simple hole-in-the wall restaurants, it is a considerably expensive one.

But though its original identity has been obscured by commercialism, the island is still Buddhist. There are many monks. In fact I talked with one name Shi quite a bit (with some comprehension). The island and beaches are beautiful, and the temples are impressive and sacred-feeling. And most of the "tourists,"whether they are legitimitely Buddhist or just the superstious kind pay their respects by lighting their incense-burining sticks, bowing in all four directions, kneeling before the statues, and leaving an offering.

So there is a peace to Putuoshan. Yes, the same secularism and commercialism typical of China is evident, but it is still a holy place. Though I am not Buddhist I even felt compelled to bow now and again. My visit gave me renewed hope about finding more of the "spiritual China."

Leb wohl.