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.