The Word Is: Go

I decided to leave behind the lesson planning, the assignment grading, the newspaper advising and all that has been the chaos of Chinese education in my first month of the new semester. I headed west for the seven-day National Holiday break for a long but short excursion to the Xinjiang and Gansu provinces in western China.

There is a lot to write about—the 32-hour train rides, the pointedly different “Chinese” culture in Urumqi, Xinjiang, the history of the Silk Road destinations. But one story at a time. On the last night of the trip, desert camping was on the agenda and one scene in particular is worth a short description.

A motionless and milky Silk Road streaked through the layers of stars kept in a deep aquarium of midnight blue as our guide sang a Dunhuang tune—his confident quiver placed nicely in front of the camel’s bell—and the fire glowed at the bottom of the scene while pushing an orange and purple warm at our feet in the desert chill.

The Word Is: Desert 沙漠 [shāmò]

Action verb: “a word belonging to the part of speech that is the center of the predicate and which describes an act or activity.”

Parentheses: “a word, clause, or sentence inserted as an explanation or afterthought into a passage that is grammatically complete without it, in writing usually marked off by curved brackets.”

The following is a list of some of the things I’ve been doing (along with some explanations and afterthoughts).

Showering (daily in my dungeon of a bathroom)

[Show as slideshow]

Skyping (with blond howler monkeys and Vegetable Innovation Interns. Separate conversations, of course.)

Thinking (way too hard, it seems)

Chopsticking (Chinese food)

Websiting (at times without internet… long story)

Running through fountains (why not?)

Climbing Chinese mountains (because “climbing” sounds way more hardcore than “hiking”)

[Show as slideshow]

[Show as slideshow]

Watching (people; the World Cup)

Memorizing (Chinese poems and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air song)

春晓 [Chūn Xiǎo] Spring Morning by 孟浩然 [Mèng Hàorán]

春 眠 不 觉 晓，
[chūn mián bù jué xiǎo,
]

处 处 闻 啼 鸟。[chù chù wén tí niǎo.]

夜 来 风 雨 声，[
yè lái fēng yǔ shēng
,]

花 落 知 多 少。[
huā luò zhī duō shǎo.]

Learning (informational information about teethpicks and blueteeth)

Teaching (less and less as the school year dwindles)

Speaking (worse and worse as my Chinese studying wanes)

Plotting (an alternate Asian course)

Riding buses (for-ev-urrr)

Pushing-up (myself) and sitting-up and pulling-up

Preparing (for Chinese middle school students and weddings (neither my own))

View Summer 2010 in a larger map

The Word Is: Action (”move about” or “take action”) 行动 [xíngdòng]

I haven’t been writing near as often as I’d like. My theory: no matter where I am in the world, spring is always a busy time. This spring has further supported this theory.

Over the past few months, I have been working on a few things, including a virtual global classroom project that connected my university writing students with Bob Manning and his Stillwater Jr. High School geography students.

This project provided a way for students to compare their lives with students from another country. The American students in Minnesota shared their culture with Chinese students at Shaanxi University of Science and Technology in Xi’an.

The Premise:

• People around the world are becoming more connected
• It is important to understand the people with whom we are being connected
  
• The more we understand each other, the more likely our interactions will be successful

We connected via the Classroom Connections Blog that now displays several different layers of the project. First, SJHS students made short videos about American culture and daily life, and then Chinese students followed suit with short written compositions about Chinese culture (and they even made a few videos as well). Then, students on both ends were able to comment on each others work, and we even had a chance to connect some of the students using Skype in the classroom.

• Chinese students’ projects
• American students’ projects
• Students’ reflections
• Footage from the Skype conversation

As spring turns to summer, I’m hoping to get a few more posts onto this malnourished, neglected blog, so check in for more updates.

The Word Is: Connect 连接 [liánjiē]

This assignment was short and sweet. I asked students to create a new slogan for the University, and students came back with meaningful one-liners. We built off of a class discussion that loosely and broadly defined our school’s purpose and also acknowledged the current slogan (translated to the best of our ability): “Striving for Integrity. Striving for Knowledge.” Or in Chinese: 至诚至博.

Check out the Student Work page for a sample of some of their work.

The Word Is: Slogan 口号 [kǒuhào]

The red Chairman turns cobalt, turquoise, tan, purple then to a familiar green. A rainbow of symbolism seeps from the Ren Min Bi as mood ring analogies strut onto the page: green with envy and red with passion and every feeling and hue between. More than 100 years of change change change has sprung a massive population of work hard harder hardest. Work hard on what? Raging bureaucracies in a top-down system ensure that the most worthwhile accomplishments go unnoticed. Rising budgets amidst rising materialism reveals a hunger unpolished. A young Chinese generation hopes wishes wants money to appear in neat piles but no plan comes to mind; ideologies are marked by their absence. Making a lot of money is a must but details of the plan are lost among daydreams of a colorful life. All the while overflowing pressures fall onto students and twenty-somethings as daydreams drown into nightmarish expectations.

We paint our financial portraits as vibrantly or as dimly as we’d like. We wish, hope and pray for more money, and we work incredibly hard for it as well. We use low funds as a great excuse to stay in our comfort zones — to stay home — and we let our emotions run with whatever financial peak or valley we find ourselves. Everyone handles money a little differently, but we all save it hold it keep it spend it waste it give it. And the fact remains that if we aren’t creative in the way we handle it, money (or lack thereof) will prevent us from doing the things that keep life colorful.

The Word Is: Money 钱 [qián]

下次见 [Xià cì jiàn]! See you later!

Two months of nothing. 65 days and no written rain. No new stories, or even tidbits, to wet readers’ whistles. And I realize the dust is starting to kick-up. Yes, I’m thirsty too.

I can’t think of a  better way to turn on the flow again than to publish some material from other writers. This should start to stir the writing atmosphere and hopefully bring in some much needed moisture.

I’ve just posted a few more compositions from my writing students onto the Student Page. This latest assignment is titled Big & Small. Here, I challenged students to write about one object/thing/idea from two different perspectives: from the macro and the micro (hence, Big & Small). This was an especially abstract assignment for students, and I even struggled to clearly explain what I was hoping to see in their final compositions. The results were predominantly one part compare and contrast, one part personal narrative. A great mix, for sure. It all comes down to this: changing the way you look at the world changes your understanding of it. Click here to read a few examples of the Big & Small assignment.

My younger brother, Sam, has also recently started publishing his own work online. The depth of his poetry continually surprises me, and I recommend taking a look at a few of his poems on Teen Ink, an online literary magazine for teenagers. Sam currently has nine poems up and ready for readers.  Visit his site, rate his poems and give him feedback on his work. You can do it all here:                         http://www.teenink.com/users/abeatlesfan65

With these nudges of inspiration from my students and brother, and a little more free time in my schedule, I have grand plans of ending the drought. Look for more writing in the coming weeks.

The Word Is: Thanks 谢谢 [xièxie]

下次见 [Xià cì jiàn]! See you later!

“It is hardly unusual for a young man to be drawn to a pursuit considered reckless by his elders; engaging in risky behavior is a rite of passage in our culture no less than in most others. Danger has always held a certain allure. That, in large part, is why so many teenagers drive too fast and drink too much and take too many drugs, why it has always been so easy for nations to recruit young men to go to war. It can be argued that youthful derring-do is in fact evolutionarily adaptive, a behavior encoded in our genes.”

Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild

It started with bungy jumping.

Sometimes I mistakenly label my life here in Xi’an as quiet. I find it easy to lose sight of how much happens every week, every day, every hour under the false pretenses of a routine schedule. I may have an identical class schedule each week, but variety comes in large doses as people constantly surprise me with their perspectives.

So, in response to my “quiet” life, I decided to jump off a 12-story platform with a rubber band around my ankles. Seemed like a good solution to my alleged problem. Part of this idea stemmed from my days in Queenstown, New Zealand where bungy jumping arguably originated. I was broke for most of my stay in NZ, and my former boss put it well - “bungy jumping is over-priced adrenaline.” Her words supported my lack of funds, and I never took the dive. But distant regrets of a missed Queenstown adventure, combined with information of a nearby bungy-jumping facility here in Xi’an, put me over the edge. I had to do it.

Cost wasn’t an issue this time as I paid a cool ¥160 (US$23.44). Yes, I went bungy jumping for $23. I feel like cheap bungy is scarier than expensive bungy, but I got a very official “Beaver Certificate.” To be clear, “Beaver” was absolutely a Chinglish misprint, but this random badge of honor added to the experience.

Three of my students, Anjoline, Rain and Stephanie, came as witnesses, but they stayed at ground-level to capture the moment from below as I went up the platform with two non-English speaking technicians. Their qualifications were unknown to me, and they weren’t especially friendly or patient. My apprehension grew. They sat me down and untied my shoes. That’s when the clear packing tape came out. PACKING TAPE. They took a few laps around my jacket and a few loops around each of my shoes and then quickly began to prepare the other contraptions for my downfall. In my opinion, packing tape, in any capacity, shouldn’t be a part of the bungy jumping experience.

My keepers were talking to each other, and I can’t say that I was armed with any Chinese bungy jumping vocabulary, so I tried not to listen as I looked at my shoes wrapped with strong but not-really-that-strong tape. Without any mental prep time, I was summoned to the edge of the platform. These guys were professional and efficient but not in a comforting way. No countdown. Just a slight push. No opportunity to yell since the free fall took my breath away. Tension, tension, stretch, stretch, stretch, tape holding, stretch, stretch, stretch. And finally the rebound. Blood rushed to my head in a way that I had never experienced. I was 9,000 miles away from home and disoriented as the staff lowered me into a hot-pink rubber raft. For the moment, I was literally cross-eyed. Solid ground, please.

[Show as slideshow]

Bungy jumping was voluntary, but I hadn’t expected routine public bus rides to become so treacherous.

Well over a billion people live in China and most of them don’t have cars. My public transportation commutes have generally been crowded, but post-bungy, they seemed to be of a higher density. On an especially busy ride one afternoon, I took a headcount. There were 25 people in my vicinity. I judged how many other groups of 25 there were throughout the rest of the bus, and I came to a number just short of 150 people. As I stood in the stairwell holding the public transportation version of an oh-shit bar, I felt vulnerable. I signed a waiver before I bungy jumped, but there was no paper trail as I squeezed my way onto Bus 336.

Unfortunately, the bus travels through a construction site, cavernous road and all, on the trip to the smooth downtown Xi’an roads. Small bumps become mountains with so much body weight and the leaning, swaying and near-tipping becomes unnerving when you look at how many people are forced into an upright, mobile game of Twister. Limbs are stretched out in every direction as I reach my arm over a guy’s head to grab something stationary at the same time putting way too much weight onto one foot for balance. It seems that no one wants to lose the game, so everyone attempts to stay still as the bus jolts back and forth.

Pictures of grasping hands and heads of black hair can highlight the claustrophobia that ensues, but nothing replicates the experience of wearing one too many layers of clothing around so many other bodies while holding a few bags of groceries in your tense hand as your personal bubble completely disappears amongst other cramped and confined passengers. Solid ground, please.

Evidently, bungy jumping and bus rides weren’t enough to prevent a quiet week. A few days after my previous adventures, I woke up to a silent and confusing rumble as my bed shook. Before I opened my eyes, I wondered who was shaking my bed. I grew up in the absence of earthquakes, so tectonic plate movement wasn’t the first thing to cross my mind when the room started to shake. However, a text message from one of my students confirmed that I had jut been through my first (minor) earthquake: “Hey, be careful and be alert, for there was an earthquake at 7:30.” Solid ground, please.

Sorry, no pictures of the earthquake. It’s difficult to capture this sort of unstable moment with still photography.

My life isn’t quiet, and this became remarkably apparent as I jumped, swayed and shook — one right after another. An especially jostling week reminded me that I have plenty to talk about as the days pass and new experiences continue to come my way. Needless to say, though, I’ll be looking for sturdy, grounded excitement as I move through the next few weeks.

The Word Is: Bungy 蹦级 [bèng jí]

下次见 [Xià cì jiàn]! See you later!

I have just posted some work from my current students here in Xi’an. It’s taken me a while to get these published but better late than never. these are examples of my introductory assignment at the beginning of the semester. Their mission: to write one sentence beginning with the word “I.” Mission accomplished. Check out some of their work on my Student Work page.

The Word Is: I (or me) 我 [wǒ]

Rain and clouds are all the rage in Xi’an. Must be sumthin in the water. In my first seven weeks here, I’ve been trudging under gray skies and through my fair share of puddles.

While putting one foot in front of the other around campus and downtown, I’ve had to look to the ground more often to avoid wet shoes, wet socks, and, what it all comes down to, wet feet. It’s this view where I’ve found the equal and opposite world that appears below us after a good (or bad) rain. With the help of Chinese drainage, water sticks around because subtle peaks and valleys along sidewalks and streets pool water in the most inconvenient places.

These inconvenient places include inside my Xinxiang, Henan apartment last year. With any good (or bad) rain, my leaky windows invited the water inside to gather. Both my kitchen and bathroom sat at opposite ends of the hallway, so constant mopping or frequent wading were my options. Neither was ideal.

[Show as slideshow]

Rashes of gray and rainy weeks sometimes bring on feelings of ill-motivation. However, the reflections that appear at our feet provide the ultimate buddy system. We’re never alone on a puddled street, or in my case, a soaked hallway floor. Small clusters of palm trees in Singapore find themselves among a small plantation as their numbers double in the rain during the summer of 2009; one guy with one umbrella suddenly turns to two guys with two umbrellas, and they always keep the same pace; a student basketball player gets a teammate (or opponent) as he plays the morning after a rain shower.

Just an Asian phenomenon? Obviously not. But let’s be honest, “Puddles” without the “Asian” in front of it lacks the splash I need in a blog post title. In an attempt at equal playing time, I’ll give North American puddles some of my written attention now. I was in New York about 18 months ago and flew in on a rainy day. One pair of yellow New York galoshes turned into two thanks to a messy, in-the-middle-of-the-walking-path puddle.

Call to action: from my wet experience in Xi’an, puddles are here to stay. A closer look into the rippled world at our feet may just be the best way to double the fun on an otherwise average walk.

The Word Is: Puddle 水坑 [shuǐkēng]

下次见 [Xià cì jiàn]! See you later!

I have just posted one of my final writing assignments from last spring in Xinxiang (took me long enough). Students created photo captions, and I have highlighted the really exceptional work on the Student Work page. Check it out!

The Word Is: Photograph 照片 [zhàopiàn]