I want to give a recap of November, given that I have not posted to this blog in a while. In the middle of the month I was busy with midterm exams and late in November I took a Chinese proficiency exam for foreigners and minorities in China (all non-native speakers).
I’ve also been working at a new ESL school a few weekdays and every weekend. I haven’t had a lot of English classes to teach, instead my responsibilities have been replaced with other things such as putting together lesson plans for single classes and curriculums for nine- and ten-month courses. The school has hired a few foreign teachers, and it has been my responsibility to recruit and interview them. The Chinese teachers that are hired I interview briefly once to judge their English skills and pronunciation.
I also do simple training sessions with the Chinese staff about once a week. With the office staff, which includes a few receptionists, a number of marketers, an accountant and an IT guy, we work on practical and fairly basic English skills. They are fun because they screw up a lot and love to laugh and joke around with each other. The other training sessions are with the Chinese English teachers and a few administrators who have advanced English skills so we practice more specific skills. I like them because I normally work closely with them so I know them well. They are also able to express their ideas well in English and tackle more difficult subjects, so the sessions are more serious and productive. I also do a lot of translating and editing of all sorts of documents. I was the only foreign teacher a couple months ago when the school opened – I was there at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, and now we have a handful of teachers and a few full classes of students and couple of students who take one-on-one classes with me.
The exam last Sunday, the HSK, is taken by thousands of people across the country a few times of year. In 1991 there were 2,000 foreign learners taking the Chinese exam that later became the HSK. In 2005, the number of candidates has risen sharply to 117,660.
You can also take it in the US, where Chinese is the fastest growing foreign language. Although the number of students learning Chinese is tiny compared with how many study Spanish or French. But one report shows that pre-college enrollment nearly quadrupled between 1992 and 2002, from 6,000 to 24,000. When the College Board polled schools a couple years ago about offering an Advanced Placement program for Chinese, it expected perhaps a few hundred to say they were interested. Instead, 2,400 high schools said they wanted to offer the class.
The HSK on Sunday was the same day as the Shanghai Marathon. I ran in that marathon last year after training for 9-10 months. Learning Chinese is a mental marathon but this one required more involved and patient preparation than a real marathon. I prepared for that exam through nearly two and half years of studying and a couple months of doing practice exams. I think I did okay and hopefully it’s the first step in moving beyond being a Chinese language student and English teacher to doing other things in China. There’s a lot of things in China I want to do, such as writing, research, translation, or business, so having a good command of the language and some experience living in China will me help jump into new things.
One goal that I accomplished was getting an essay published in a little newspaper for and by foreign students at Nanjing Normal University. It was an essay written for a class assignment to write a story about animals so I wrote about visiting Gibraltar and seeing the monkeys there. Along with the honor of seeing my writing published in Chinese, I was also paid ¥10 ($1.50) for it!
Elsewhere in China in November, Obama made a visit to Shanghai and Beijing, in addition to Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. Obama mania extends to some to China in some ways.
As is typical in Chinese official functions (this is also the case in the US for the most part), all the politics, speeches, press conferences, and strategic dialogues didn’t make a stir. Instead, the country was captivated by the fact that Obama carried his own umbrella in the rain and by an attractive young female university student in a red coat. Obama did bring up freedom of speech and access to information in answering a question about Twitter being blocked in China, which was nice to hear.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Cars in China
The Chinese auto industry resembles that of the United States in the early 20th century. There are just over 70 auto manufactures in China, many of which started as parts suppliers and later began to put together their own cars and develop a brand, such as BYD, which was originally a battery producer, and Geely, which started as a refrigerator manufacturer, then moved into motorcycles and cars. Like the American car industry in its early stages, there will be a lot of consolidation and will eventually be just a handful of large companies.
China, which has 17 cars for every 1,000 people (compared to about 600 per thousand people in Germany and 800 per thousand people in the United States), is quickly expanding its private car fleet. Car sales topped one million for the first time in September, and earlier this year more cars were sold in China than in the United States, although that was mostly due to a severe slump in US car sales.
Chinese auto companies are aggressively pushing hybrids and electric cars and several will start selling cars in Europe and the US soon.
So rising pollution and oil imports are two enormous problems, but I always worry about other problems in addition to further oil consumption and CO2 emissions that are seldom raised. There is simply no room for many more cars. Given that traffic and parking is already bad in large Chinese cities, adding tens of millions of more cars, whether hybrid or electric or something else, would be a disaster.
China, which has 17 cars for every 1,000 people (compared to about 600 per thousand people in Germany and 800 per thousand people in the United States), is quickly expanding its private car fleet. Car sales topped one million for the first time in September, and earlier this year more cars were sold in China than in the United States, although that was mostly due to a severe slump in US car sales.
Chinese auto companies are aggressively pushing hybrids and electric cars and several will start selling cars in Europe and the US soon.
So rising pollution and oil imports are two enormous problems, but I always worry about other problems in addition to further oil consumption and CO2 emissions that are seldom raised. There is simply no room for many more cars. Given that traffic and parking is already bad in large Chinese cities, adding tens of millions of more cars, whether hybrid or electric or something else, would be a disaster.
Books in China
China is the guest of honor at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, which was a controversial selection because the country bans about 600 books each year and holds dozens of journalists and authors in prison.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival
During the first week of October there is always a holiday for the October 1st National Day and this year another holiday, Mid-Autumn Festival, which occurs eight months after the Chinese New Year (all according to the Chinese lunar calendar), fell on October 3rd this year, so there was an extended break.
I saw some sites in Nanjing during those days off, including a huge fish market near the Yangtze river, a ferry ride to the other side of the river, Purple Mountain, and a memorial to John Rabe in his former home. Rabe was a German who lived in Nanjing in the 1930s and 40s, when he saved thousands of lives during the Rape of Nanking by offering refuge to locals in and around the Nanjing University campus) I also made the trip to an IKEA store in the southern suburb of Nanjing. It was my first time to an IKEA but from what I saw in the Nanjing store I’m fairly certain that Ikeas everywhere are all the same. Swedish meatballs and other family friendly food are served in the attached cafeteria and I recognized several pieces of furniture, a clock, paintings, and other things that my family has at home. I guess the only difference is that IKEA stores in China are packed, especially over a holiday, and are popular places to take pictures, as in, “so this is what an oven looks like!”
I taught a couple of English classes, went to a party organized by my English school for Mid-Autumn Festival, and was a involved in the opening and ribbon cutting at a new school location.
Pictures here
I saw some sites in Nanjing during those days off, including a huge fish market near the Yangtze river, a ferry ride to the other side of the river, Purple Mountain, and a memorial to John Rabe in his former home. Rabe was a German who lived in Nanjing in the 1930s and 40s, when he saved thousands of lives during the Rape of Nanking by offering refuge to locals in and around the Nanjing University campus) I also made the trip to an IKEA store in the southern suburb of Nanjing. It was my first time to an IKEA but from what I saw in the Nanjing store I’m fairly certain that Ikeas everywhere are all the same. Swedish meatballs and other family friendly food are served in the attached cafeteria and I recognized several pieces of furniture, a clock, paintings, and other things that my family has at home. I guess the only difference is that IKEA stores in China are packed, especially over a holiday, and are popular places to take pictures, as in, “so this is what an oven looks like!”
I taught a couple of English classes, went to a party organized by my English school for Mid-Autumn Festival, and was a involved in the opening and ribbon cutting at a new school location.
Pictures here
Friday, October 09, 2009
Nanjing
I live in a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor just inside one of the western gates of the ancient city wall. My bedroom overlooks a park where speakers play music and a fountain in a man-made lake runs and throughout the day, making it sound as if it were raining nonstop during daylight hours.
Nanjing Normal University is about a 20-minute walk to the north and the center of the downtown where I teach is a 30-minute walk to the east.
I brought two books back here with me focus on different parts of Nanjing's modern history. One is The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, about the Japanese invasion of the city in 1937 and the atrocities committed under their rein through 1945. Nanjing (written as Nanking then) at that time was the capital of the Nationalist governed Republic of China, until the Nationalist officials and military fled and relocated the government to Chongqing (Chungking then). It was a capital for brief periods of time during several dynasties, blessed with fertile farmland in the Yangtze River valley and naturally protected by the winding river on to sides and mountains on the other. As Chang describes it:
"For centuries, water and mountain provided not only beauty for Nanjing but military protection. The Yangtze River to the west and the Purple mountain to the east shielded the city “like a coiling dragon and a crouching tiger,” to borrow an ancient phrase describing Nanjing’s natural strength."
Animals are often used in Chinese idioms, and the phrase “where tigers crouch and dragons coil” can describe a place with forbidden terrain. A similar phrase, “hidden dragon, crouching tiger” describes individuals who conceal their talents; the same phrase was reversed and used for the title of an Oscar-winning Ang Lee movie. My apartment, believe it or not, happens to be on the corner of Crouching Tiger Street （虎踞路）and Coiling Dragon Street (龙蟠路), with the address being 38 Crouching Tiger Street.
The other book that is largely set in Nanjing is Chinese Lessons by John Pomfret, a journalist with the Washington Post who was one of the first American students to study in Nanjing in the early 1980s. Universities fully reopened after the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s and the U.S. and China normalized diplomatic relations in 1979. Pomfret’s summary of Nanjing’s history:
“Nanjing, the name means “southern capital,” is a city where Chinese traditionally went to lick their wounds while barbarians from the north carved up their country. In medieval times, it served as the capital during six short-lived dynasties when northern China was occupied by nomadic tribes from beyond the Great Wall. Nanjing was also the capital at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty in the fourteenth century and then again during the two decades preceding the Communist Revolution.”
A crossroads for plunderers and poets, emperors and colonialists, Nanjing was a safe house for Chinese culture, home to great painters and writers and the sing-song girls who worked the flower boats and brothels that lined the Qinhuai River snaking through the city… Throughout the centuries, Nanjing has been pillaged, burned, rebuilt, forgotten, and rebuilt again. In the fourteenth century, the first Ming ruler emptied the city of its citizens, exiling more than three hundred thousand to the far corners of the empire. A hundred years later, a repopulated Nanjing was celebrated as one of the most beautiful cities on earth. In the 1920s, an American architect laid plans to rebuild the city as a modern capital, a melding of Washington, D.C., and Paris, France. First, Japanese aggression in the late 1930s and then the Communist Revolution put an end to that.”
His experiences as a student in Nanjing in the early 1980s are pretty wild. Many of his classmates were either poor peasants or were children of urban middle class families who were forced to spend years in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Some were not able to finish high school because of the social turmoil at the time and one student lost his parents, both professors at Nanjing Normal University, when they were accused of being "rightists" and beaten to death by teenage "Red Guards" in the university's mall. Things improved after the Cultural Revolution ended upon Mao's death, but life as a student was still tough at that time. Many goods like sugar, meat and bicycles were rationed, dancing was banned on campus, and students were assigned jobs from a government planning committee upon graduation. Needless to say, it is fascinating to read about Nanjing 30 years ago and ponder how dramatically it has changed.
Nanjing Normal University is about a 20-minute walk to the north and the center of the downtown where I teach is a 30-minute walk to the east.
I brought two books back here with me focus on different parts of Nanjing's modern history. One is The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, about the Japanese invasion of the city in 1937 and the atrocities committed under their rein through 1945. Nanjing (written as Nanking then) at that time was the capital of the Nationalist governed Republic of China, until the Nationalist officials and military fled and relocated the government to Chongqing (Chungking then). It was a capital for brief periods of time during several dynasties, blessed with fertile farmland in the Yangtze River valley and naturally protected by the winding river on to sides and mountains on the other. As Chang describes it:
"For centuries, water and mountain provided not only beauty for Nanjing but military protection. The Yangtze River to the west and the Purple mountain to the east shielded the city “like a coiling dragon and a crouching tiger,” to borrow an ancient phrase describing Nanjing’s natural strength."
Animals are often used in Chinese idioms, and the phrase “where tigers crouch and dragons coil” can describe a place with forbidden terrain. A similar phrase, “hidden dragon, crouching tiger” describes individuals who conceal their talents; the same phrase was reversed and used for the title of an Oscar-winning Ang Lee movie. My apartment, believe it or not, happens to be on the corner of Crouching Tiger Street （虎踞路）and Coiling Dragon Street (龙蟠路), with the address being 38 Crouching Tiger Street.
The other book that is largely set in Nanjing is Chinese Lessons by John Pomfret, a journalist with the Washington Post who was one of the first American students to study in Nanjing in the early 1980s. Universities fully reopened after the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s and the U.S. and China normalized diplomatic relations in 1979. Pomfret’s summary of Nanjing’s history:
“Nanjing, the name means “southern capital,” is a city where Chinese traditionally went to lick their wounds while barbarians from the north carved up their country. In medieval times, it served as the capital during six short-lived dynasties when northern China was occupied by nomadic tribes from beyond the Great Wall. Nanjing was also the capital at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty in the fourteenth century and then again during the two decades preceding the Communist Revolution.”
A crossroads for plunderers and poets, emperors and colonialists, Nanjing was a safe house for Chinese culture, home to great painters and writers and the sing-song girls who worked the flower boats and brothels that lined the Qinhuai River snaking through the city… Throughout the centuries, Nanjing has been pillaged, burned, rebuilt, forgotten, and rebuilt again. In the fourteenth century, the first Ming ruler emptied the city of its citizens, exiling more than three hundred thousand to the far corners of the empire. A hundred years later, a repopulated Nanjing was celebrated as one of the most beautiful cities on earth. In the 1920s, an American architect laid plans to rebuild the city as a modern capital, a melding of Washington, D.C., and Paris, France. First, Japanese aggression in the late 1930s and then the Communist Revolution put an end to that.”
His experiences as a student in Nanjing in the early 1980s are pretty wild. Many of his classmates were either poor peasants or were children of urban middle class families who were forced to spend years in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Some were not able to finish high school because of the social turmoil at the time and one student lost his parents, both professors at Nanjing Normal University, when they were accused of being "rightists" and beaten to death by teenage "Red Guards" in the university's mall. Things improved after the Cultural Revolution ended upon Mao's death, but life as a student was still tough at that time. Many goods like sugar, meat and bicycles were rationed, dancing was banned on campus, and students were assigned jobs from a government planning committee upon graduation. Needless to say, it is fascinating to read about Nanjing 30 years ago and ponder how dramatically it has changed.
Friday, October 02, 2009
National Day
Yesterday was China’s National Day, marking the day when the People’s Republic of China was founded on October 1st, 1949. Every 10 years the celebrations are extended and virtually every military division is marched past Tiananmen.
It provides a time for people to look back at their country’s modern history, although usually back only until 1949, and most often overlooking the bad parts (e.g. the film Founding of a Republic was released to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the PRC’s founding conspicuously leaves out the darker periods). It’s important to look back at the entire past century of history, starting with the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 that brought Emperor Puyi and ended the long cycle of China’s dynasties. China’s modern history is chaotic and complicated – the country endured two revolutions, a prolonged civil war and occupation under imperial Japan that killed millions of people, a war against South Korea and the United States that cost one million Chinese lives, the disastrous Great Leap Forward that contributed to the world’s worst famine and 25 to 30 million dead, followed by the hysteria of the Cultural Revolution. Finally, after decades of regressive and destructive policies, China has reopened to the world and undergone a process of industrialization and urbanization at a scale and pace larger and faster than any country has ever experienced.
I’m also fascinated by stories of older people who have lived through so many periods of China’s recent history. There are some great stories about government officials, political dissidents, and ordinary citizens that the journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn met in Beijing and wrote about in the book China Wakes (and one I finished recently).
Two interesting life stories that were profiled in newspapers recently are those of
Wu Jinglian, who helped formulate China’s policies of “reform and opening” in the 1970s, only to be persecuted for speaking out against corruption and poor governance, and the 103 year-old Zhou Youguang who helped create the pinyin system of writing Chinese characters in the Roman alphabet.
What’s in store for China during this century? The are massive problems to work on, all consequences of a rapid and messy process of industrialization and modernization, such as protecting the environment, improving education, reducing income inequality, and reconciling the gap between a liberalized and free economy liberalization and a nondemocratic, authoritarian government. But like Zhou Yougang, I’m optimistic. I only hope to be as intimately involved in the country as he was and to be able to live through more than a century of its changes.
It provides a time for people to look back at their country’s modern history, although usually back only until 1949, and most often overlooking the bad parts (e.g. the film Founding of a Republic was released to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the PRC’s founding conspicuously leaves out the darker periods). It’s important to look back at the entire past century of history, starting with the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 that brought Emperor Puyi and ended the long cycle of China’s dynasties. China’s modern history is chaotic and complicated – the country endured two revolutions, a prolonged civil war and occupation under imperial Japan that killed millions of people, a war against South Korea and the United States that cost one million Chinese lives, the disastrous Great Leap Forward that contributed to the world’s worst famine and 25 to 30 million dead, followed by the hysteria of the Cultural Revolution. Finally, after decades of regressive and destructive policies, China has reopened to the world and undergone a process of industrialization and urbanization at a scale and pace larger and faster than any country has ever experienced.
I’m also fascinated by stories of older people who have lived through so many periods of China’s recent history. There are some great stories about government officials, political dissidents, and ordinary citizens that the journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn met in Beijing and wrote about in the book China Wakes (and one I finished recently).
Two interesting life stories that were profiled in newspapers recently are those of
Wu Jinglian, who helped formulate China’s policies of “reform and opening” in the 1970s, only to be persecuted for speaking out against corruption and poor governance, and the 103 year-old Zhou Youguang who helped create the pinyin system of writing Chinese characters in the Roman alphabet.
What’s in store for China during this century? The are massive problems to work on, all consequences of a rapid and messy process of industrialization and modernization, such as protecting the environment, improving education, reducing income inequality, and reconciling the gap between a liberalized and free economy liberalization and a nondemocratic, authoritarian government. But like Zhou Yougang, I’m optimistic. I only hope to be as intimately involved in the country as he was and to be able to live through more than a century of its changes.
Friday, September 18, 2009
San Francisco
On Saturday night we saw Chinatown and the North Beach, which is the Italian neighborhood. The Chinatown was pretty big and aside from all the cheap souvenirs for sale, it seemed authentic. In North Beach’s, where we had some tiramisu and cheesecake at an Italian café, the sidewalks were packed with people bundled up in coats and scarves and the restaurants and bars were all busy. It was pretty chilly that night, but I guess that is typical weather at night in San Francisco, even in August, because the city is surrounded by water on three sides and often has a brisk and cool wind coming from the Pacific.
Sukey and Pat both had Sunday off so we all drove to the Golden Gate Bridge and hiked a part way across the bridge. It was extremely windy and cool up there. We saw a few more neighborhoods, including the Haight and Ashbury area where rock music matured in the 1960s. That night we had dinner with Patrick Delahunt and Suzy Delahunt and her husband and daughter at a lakeside restaurant in Oakland. On Monday, Charlie and I saw more of San Francisco, from sea lions in the wharf to chocolate in the big Ghirardelli store. On Tuesday we drove through parts of Silicon Valley and saw the Stanford campus and the Google headquarters (from the parking lot).
Sukey and Pat both had Sunday off so we all drove to the Golden Gate Bridge and hiked a part way across the bridge. It was extremely windy and cool up there. We saw a few more neighborhoods, including the Haight and Ashbury area where rock music matured in the 1960s. That night we had dinner with Patrick Delahunt and Suzy Delahunt and her husband and daughter at a lakeside restaurant in Oakland. On Monday, Charlie and I saw more of San Francisco, from sea lions in the wharf to chocolate in the big Ghirardelli store. On Tuesday we drove through parts of Silicon Valley and saw the Stanford campus and the Google headquarters (from the parking lot).
Road Trip to California
I went west to go east. Six days ago I flew to Denver and Charlie picked me up to drive an hour north to Loveland where we stayed with our aunt and uncle. The air was noticeably drier, the skies were clear and blue, and the front rage of the Rockies was always in sight. The backdrop of mountains got us excited to drive across them all the way to the Pacific.
The next morning from Loveland we drove back towards Denver and then took Interstate 70 through the mountains, by ski resorts like Copper and Vail and old mining towns such as Leadville. By late afternoon, we had reached Utah and took a small road off the interstate – a shortcut our aunt Sara told us about – towards Moab. We came across very few cars during that half hour drive, but we did see an old wood bridge where only the steel wires remained and a panoramic view of mesas and spires of red rock. In one beautiful spot with a parking area for photographs, we took some pictures of the landscape that turned out to be identical to that of postcards we saw later at the gas stations in town.
We spent just one night in Moab and both Charlie and I fell in love with the place. Unfortunately, we didn’t have two mountain bikes nor did we have much time, but we did take out our two bikes with skinny wheels out and went up and down a paved bike path that follows the Colorado River. We had crossed the Colorado River several times during our drive that day, and now it was our chance to cross it by bike on a rust-colored pedestrian and bicycle bridge. Moab was a fun Western town full of nice cafés, bars, bike shops, and tour companies and outfitters.
We ate breakfast early in Moab – Japanese style tofu and seaweed over brown rice, a breakfast burrito, and roasted potatoes – because we had a long drive to do that day. Utah was long and dry but had lots of beautiful red rocks and mesas. Nevada was even longer and just as hot, but it got a little greener and was a seemingly endless series of mountain ridges and valleys. We took US route 50, which is known as “The Loneliest Road in America.” It took six or seven hours to cross the state and we went through four towns. They were all Western towns no more than a few blocks long. Around dusk we got to Reno in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We had an awesome dinner of authentic Mexican food that tasted even better after a long day in the van and only snacking on packaged foods.
We spent the night in a motel room just outside Sacramento. After driving for about 12 hours through three states, we were exhausted and quickly fell asleep, but we arose early the next morning to see four cities that day. Over breakfast in Moab I read an article about “The Great California Garage Sale” taking place that weekend – an attempt by the state government to alleviate its massive debt by selling of cars, office furniture, computers, and other surplus state owned things. We happened to drive by the site of the garage sale so the next morning so we decided to stop and take a look. We considered picking up a computer for under $50, an old desk or some bright yellow pants with reflective stripes, but ended up leaving empty handed.
Not far west of Sacramento we reached Davis and spent a few hours there biking around campus, the university arboretum, and the “downtown,” making stops at the enology building, the math building, Charlie’s house, the farmer’s market, the Davis Co-op food store and a self-serve frozen yogurt shop (in all three of the latter places we indulged in some amazing food). It was a little like the near west side of Madison, a compact and green college town dominated by large university buildings and sports fields. There’s an excellent system of bike and pedestrian paths, complete with roundabouts and miniature traffic signs, and an endless rows of bike rakes outside of every campus building.
By now it was mid-day and we were ready to finally get to the Pacific coast, so we drove towards the Bay area and stopped in Berkeley for a couple hours, where we bike around campus (more like up and down campus, as it’s all on situated on a hill). There were some delicious looking restaurants in Berkeley, including Alice Water’s Chez Panisse and numerous Indian and Thai restaurants. We weren’t very hungry after eating our way through Davis so we just split a fruit and yogurt smoothie.
The trip across the Bay Bridge was really cool, once we finally got onto it after waiting in the severely backed up toll lines. We reached Sukey and Pat’s place around 4 p.m., which was the perfect destination. We could see the ocean and even feel it in the cool and damp breeze coming off the water – a palpable sign that the continent, and our road trip, had finally come to an end. I am sure Charlie was relieved to know that after three and half days of driving, there was no more land to drive across. And the van, with close to 160,000 miles on it and carrying a full load, had completed the trip without a problem.
The next morning from Loveland we drove back towards Denver and then took Interstate 70 through the mountains, by ski resorts like Copper and Vail and old mining towns such as Leadville. By late afternoon, we had reached Utah and took a small road off the interstate – a shortcut our aunt Sara told us about – towards Moab. We came across very few cars during that half hour drive, but we did see an old wood bridge where only the steel wires remained and a panoramic view of mesas and spires of red rock. In one beautiful spot with a parking area for photographs, we took some pictures of the landscape that turned out to be identical to that of postcards we saw later at the gas stations in town.
We spent just one night in Moab and both Charlie and I fell in love with the place. Unfortunately, we didn’t have two mountain bikes nor did we have much time, but we did take out our two bikes with skinny wheels out and went up and down a paved bike path that follows the Colorado River. We had crossed the Colorado River several times during our drive that day, and now it was our chance to cross it by bike on a rust-colored pedestrian and bicycle bridge. Moab was a fun Western town full of nice cafés, bars, bike shops, and tour companies and outfitters.
We ate breakfast early in Moab – Japanese style tofu and seaweed over brown rice, a breakfast burrito, and roasted potatoes – because we had a long drive to do that day. Utah was long and dry but had lots of beautiful red rocks and mesas. Nevada was even longer and just as hot, but it got a little greener and was a seemingly endless series of mountain ridges and valleys. We took US route 50, which is known as “The Loneliest Road in America.” It took six or seven hours to cross the state and we went through four towns. They were all Western towns no more than a few blocks long. Around dusk we got to Reno in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We had an awesome dinner of authentic Mexican food that tasted even better after a long day in the van and only snacking on packaged foods.
We spent the night in a motel room just outside Sacramento. After driving for about 12 hours through three states, we were exhausted and quickly fell asleep, but we arose early the next morning to see four cities that day. Over breakfast in Moab I read an article about “The Great California Garage Sale” taking place that weekend – an attempt by the state government to alleviate its massive debt by selling of cars, office furniture, computers, and other surplus state owned things. We happened to drive by the site of the garage sale so the next morning so we decided to stop and take a look. We considered picking up a computer for under $50, an old desk or some bright yellow pants with reflective stripes, but ended up leaving empty handed.
Not far west of Sacramento we reached Davis and spent a few hours there biking around campus, the university arboretum, and the “downtown,” making stops at the enology building, the math building, Charlie’s house, the farmer’s market, the Davis Co-op food store and a self-serve frozen yogurt shop (in all three of the latter places we indulged in some amazing food). It was a little like the near west side of Madison, a compact and green college town dominated by large university buildings and sports fields. There’s an excellent system of bike and pedestrian paths, complete with roundabouts and miniature traffic signs, and an endless rows of bike rakes outside of every campus building.
By now it was mid-day and we were ready to finally get to the Pacific coast, so we drove towards the Bay area and stopped in Berkeley for a couple hours, where we bike around campus (more like up and down campus, as it’s all on situated on a hill). There were some delicious looking restaurants in Berkeley, including Alice Water’s Chez Panisse and numerous Indian and Thai restaurants. We weren’t very hungry after eating our way through Davis so we just split a fruit and yogurt smoothie.
The trip across the Bay Bridge was really cool, once we finally got onto it after waiting in the severely backed up toll lines. We reached Sukey and Pat’s place around 4 p.m., which was the perfect destination. We could see the ocean and even feel it in the cool and damp breeze coming off the water – a palpable sign that the continent, and our road trip, had finally come to an end. I am sure Charlie was relieved to know that after three and half days of driving, there was no more land to drive across. And the van, with close to 160,000 miles on it and carrying a full load, had completed the trip without a problem.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Summer
Soon after arriving in Milwaukee, I saw the Big Bang fireworks show on July 3rd, followed by the fireworks at Atwater beach on the fourth. I spent a few days in Washington D.C., a weekend in northern Wisconsin, and lots of time seeing family and friends in Milwaukee and Oconomowoc. In August, Charlie and I spent a weekend in Chicago and saw a lot of music in Grant Park. When Martha returned home from camp, we skied on Lac La Belle and spent time at our grandparent's house.
I've posted some pictures from the summer on Flickr.
At the end of August lies one more trip, and this one will lead me eventually back to Nanjing, China. On the 26th I'll fly to Denver to meet Charlie and stay with out aunt Sara and uncle Glen in Loveland, CO. On the 27th we'll drive to Utah and camp for a night. On the 28th we'll be near Reno and Lake Tahoe. On the 29th we'll reach San Francisco and stay with our cousin Sukey in the Bay Area. On September 1st I'll catch a flight to Shanghai and from there a train to Nanjing. School starts on the 7th.
I've posted some pictures from the summer on Flickr.
At the end of August lies one more trip, and this one will lead me eventually back to Nanjing, China. On the 26th I'll fly to Denver to meet Charlie and stay with out aunt Sara and uncle Glen in Loveland, CO. On the 27th we'll drive to Utah and camp for a night. On the 28th we'll be near Reno and Lake Tahoe. On the 29th we'll reach San Francisco and stay with our cousin Sukey in the Bay Area. On September 1st I'll catch a flight to Shanghai and from there a train to Nanjing. School starts on the 7th.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
English mania
There is a brief video, titled “The world’s English mania,” in the TED talks online about how English has become the world’s second language and what purpose it serves. There are some clips of Chinese students studying for and taking the “gao kao” – the Chinese university entrance exam. The gao kao takes place every year for three days in early June. A few weeks ago, on two consecutive days I ran into a huge crowd of parents and grandparents huddling outside a school while I was on my way to teach English. When I returned a few hours the students had just finished and were heading home with their parents. Some were in tears, some looked exhausted, but most seemed happy just to be done.
The speaker in the video, Jay Walker, states that ¼ of the gao kao score is based on English. Several recent college grads and professors that I’ve asked all say that it changes every year, and recently nearly one of the three days of the exam is taken up by English. A large minority of students don’t not score high enough to enter any university – spots are limited – so they work, attend a private school or a technical school, or wait a year to take the exam again. The pressure to learn English is immense.
In the video there are some shots of English camps where thousands of students practice and recite English together. The largest class I’ve taught was about 100 students in a primary school gym, so it was a little bit like that. I’ve also gone to outdoor events where, on stage using a microphone, I say a few things, sing a Chinese song and an English song, or do tongue twisters, in front of 100+ people. The purpose of those classes at local schools or appearances at other events is to promote my school and get students to attend, where our classes have 5-10 students. Our classes meet several times a week with both Chinese and foreign teachers, and provide activities on weekends and holidays, and a language camp and trips in the summer. The tuition for an eight month long course is more than a semester’s tuition at a public university.
The speaker in the video, Jay Walker, states that ¼ of the gao kao score is based on English. Several recent college grads and professors that I’ve asked all say that it changes every year, and recently nearly one of the three days of the exam is taken up by English. A large minority of students don’t not score high enough to enter any university – spots are limited – so they work, attend a private school or a technical school, or wait a year to take the exam again. The pressure to learn English is immense.
In the video there are some shots of English camps where thousands of students practice and recite English together. The largest class I’ve taught was about 100 students in a primary school gym, so it was a little bit like that. I’ve also gone to outdoor events where, on stage using a microphone, I say a few things, sing a Chinese song and an English song, or do tongue twisters, in front of 100+ people. The purpose of those classes at local schools or appearances at other events is to promote my school and get students to attend, where our classes have 5-10 students. Our classes meet several times a week with both Chinese and foreign teachers, and provide activities on weekends and holidays, and a language camp and trips in the summer. The tuition for an eight month long course is more than a semester’s tuition at a public university.
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