Week 12: L (continued)

Last night we found LABOR PARK on our way to our Thanksgiving meal, but it was too dark to take pictures. I returned today and snapped away.

Downtown Dalian in the background. Has a certain Central Park feel to it, doesn't it?

Me, after the Thanksgiving meal last night.

This park is famous for the giant soccer ball.

Isn't this called Chinese purple kale?

This must be fun in the summer.

Just another day of me hanging out with old people in the park.

Week 12: L

LU LAN: My Chinese name. After deciding that my first and last names have no Chinese sounds, we settled on picking my “family” name from my middle name (family names come first in Chinese). The lan means orchid, one of four celebrated plants in China, admired because it thrives even in adverse conditions. I thought that was a nice name to live up to. Lan is a pretty common name … think of the Disney movie Mulan.

This is a Chinese wall-hanging of a lan from my apartment:

As long as I am taking pictures in my apartment, this is our living room. As you can see, it is not all that different from a Western apartment. China seems to be like that....at times, it will seem like it is not that different from what we may see around the corner at home, and then in the next instant it will be completely different. In this picture, you can see the rocks that I collect at the beach of the Yellow Sea (exotic) that I have placed in a bowl I bought at Ikea (not exotic). While this living room looks pretty "normal," you can go into the bathroom where the shower is just a drain in the corner of the room, next to the washing machine, and in the kitchen the sink has no hot water and we have to boil even the water we use to wash fruit.

LAOWAI: Laowai means foreigner, and I have never felt more foreign than I feel here. We get everything from startled looks to stares as we walk down the street and ride the busses. In fact, the other day I was walking behind a midget with really bowed legs and I thought that at least that day I wouldn’t be the center of all the stares, but, would you believe it? I got more looks than the midget! Another day I was sitting at the beach when I heard a young child start wailing. I looked over, and what was the problem? It appears that the grandparents were forcing the child to come over and say “hi” to the foreigner, and the child was stricken. I waved and said “hi,” and that seemed to appease the family. Dalian is a pretty international city, with many Japanese and Korean immigrants as well as Russian students, so I can only imagine what the experience is in other Chinese cities. I can go for weeks in my neighborhood without seeing any other foreigners besides my fellow teachers.


LONELY day at the beach. I try to go to the sea at least one time a week. This day a biting Siberian wind was coming in from the north, so one old clam digger and I had the beach to ourselves.

Week 11: K

KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN: Much more so than Pizza Hut or McDonalds or Subway, KFC has made great inroads in China. When I ask my students what a perfect world would be, they respond, "Eating KFC every day!" This is a picture of the delivery fleet in downtown Dalian.

KITES: The easiest way to find a park is to look up and follow the kites. These kites were for sale on a gorgeous fall day.

Look at this fierce kite.

Now, look at the sweet girl flying it.

Week 10: J

Yowza, it's JIAOZI (it rhymes)! Jiaozi are steamed dumplings full of all sorts of goodness. I can pick up a take-out order for under $1 on my way home from work.

The evil JAPANESE: Good news for Americans....stemming from war-time atrocities, the Chinese hate the Japanese much more than they hate us.

As for Americans, we were talking about stereotypes last night and I asked what the Chinese thought of Americans. Are you ready? Racial discrimination, violence; they are strong and smile a lot.

Week 9: I

INCENSE:

Incense outside a Buddhist temple. (Well, kind of a Buddhist temple. Another miscommunication on our part, but we still liked the park.)

ITLIAT: Of all of the counterfeit goods I've seen here (Louis Buitton, Ducci, Real Stars [Converse All-Stars]), my favorites are the Kappa (at times, Lappa) jackets that say ITLIAT on them. Viva Itliat! I'm not exaggerating when I say that one in 10 people on the streets wears some sort of Italia jacket or t-shirt. Ma mi trovo in Cina o in Italia? Forza Azzurri!

INNER-MONGOLIAN: I can't begin to tell you how cool I think it is that I share my office with not one but two Inner-Mongolians. (The other one didn't want to have her picture taken because she was having a bad-hair day, and as part of the international sisterhood, I had to respect that.) This is Nancy.

INDIGESTION: Last night we went to the wedding dinner for one of my fellow teachers. This was the spread that met us at our table. Since we are in a coastal town, much of the dinner was fish-based. We had been at the restaurant for about two minutes when the waitresses ran up with forks and knives for the foreigners. That still didn't help me figure out how to eat the crab or sea urchins.

Here are the bride and groom. (Guess if I was on the bride's side or the groom's.)

A tradition at Chinese weddings is that the bride has to light cigarettes for the male guests and she has to unwrap candies and feed them to female guests. Because, you know, nothing says everlasting love like cancer sticks and decaying teeth.

Week 8: H (update)

HAIR: So, I bit the bullet and went to get my hair cut and colored, taking the Chinese Teacher with the best English with me. She talks to the hairdresser for a little bit, and then asks me, "Do you want the treatment that costs 70, 90, 120, or 150?" I was a bit confused and said that I'd just go ahead and pay for the one that works. Is that a crazy notion? Anyway, she talks to the hairdresser some more and tells me that the hairdresser will offer me a deal of a color treatment for 100, with a free haircut. Bargaining is everywhere in China, even, it appears, at the hairdresser's.

The end result is that I am here with a $14 color and cut. The hair is tingeing toward orange and the cut isn't as short as I wanted it, but the man I tutor said he liked it because it is smoothly. That can't be all bad, can it? Wouldn't you like smoothly hair?

Preparing for winter

Lately, I've been noticing something new hanging on the neighbors' clotheslines--vegetables. Following a tradition that developed because fresh fruits and vegetables were difficult to acquire in the winter, everyone has been drying out and salting squash, cabbage and leeks for the long winter ahead.

Here is a particularly pretty set of curlicue squash.

I took this picture from my kitchen window. I probably see about 20 trucks with cabbage on my walk to school.

Just 30 minutes later...and look at the crowd he is attracting.

Now, you ask, where do they store all of this produce? In the windowsill in the stairwell, of course. I can't imagine that this is the cleanest area in the building. I'm really looking forward to the smell of rotting cabbage hitting me in the mornings.

It ends up that the preparations for winter were very timely, as winter hit us in a wave on Saturday. We are in the 30s now, and the state won't turn on the heat in buildings until November 15. Yikes! How hard will it be to type with gloves on?

By the way...our preparations for the winter? Well, my roommate found real cocoa in the Western supermarket the other day!