Chickens in the Side Room and Other Mysteries

     Last night I walked down to the neighborhood store for breakfast milk.  There I ran into my neighbor, who had just returned from a 6-week visit with her family in the U.S.  While we stood by the yogurt drinks and caught up on news,  I caught a whiff or two of something that I didn't usually associate with a store.  Looking into a small room to the side, I saw the source:  two stacked cages, each with two light brown chickens in them.  I don't ever remember seeing live animals in this store before, except for the dogs that occasionally come in with their owners.  Have I not been paying attention, or is this a new venture?  I wondered if these chickens would end up in the meat case the next day, or if someone who was particular about freshness had ordered these chickens and would come and witness them being dressed.  Maybe they would be sold live to someone who was really particular about fresh meat.  Maybe the store owners, who live upstairs, like really fresh eggs or like the companionable cluck of chickens.*  

     A few more mysteries from the past week:

     •  On Thanksgiving Day, I stopped into a grocery store on my way home from school to look for some sweet potatoes.  I didn't find any, but walking away from the produce I went by a sliding-top refrigerator case with two heads of what had to be canines, looking very fang-y and mean.  We are in the Cantonese part of China, where anything and everything can appear on a table, but still....   I wondered how exactly this particular item would be prepared.  Does it purportedly cure some ailment, or is eating it nostalgic?

     •  Last Saturday morning during the Green Shoots English tutoring session, one of the custodial staff walked into the room carrying a sprayer with a yellowish liquid in the tank.  I told Andrew, the Chinese student leader, that he needed to tell her that she couldn't spray in the room while the kids were in there.  The woman loudly insisted that she had to do this right then and said that we could come back into the room again in 5 minutes.  That's what Andrew translated, anyway.  Before we'd all managed to exit the room, she plugged the sprayer into an outlet and started spraying the floor at the front of the room in front of the blackboard.  I walked out then so I didn't see what exactly she sprayed, but she couldn't have made her way around the room because she was was done and out of there in half a minute.  I assumed she was applying some sort of insecticide, as seems to be happening regularly on the grounds around the apartments where we live--though I didn't understand why she sprayed in only part of the room.  I found the whole thing quite upsetting, not just for our group of kids but for the kids who would sit in the room again on Monday morning. We moved our group outside onto the school playing field for the rest of the session.  Later when the tutors and I went by the room to collect our things, it smelled strongly of chlorine bleach.  Maybe this is a Saturday disinfecting routine? 

     •  Early this week, two pairs of 12' artificial trees appeared on either side of the broad steps leading up to the gate of our apartment complex.  These trees have small pink flowers and some newly emerging leaves, and there are red chenille stems wound around bandage-like on some of the lower limbs.  These could be Spring Festival/Chinese New Year decorations or Christmas decorations, or maybe both.   Chinese New Year is two months from today, on February 2.  So the timing would be comparable to Christmas decorations going up in the stores in the U.S. at the end of October.

* Tea Partiers in the U.S. would find this sight so heartening:  no business-stifling government restrictions preventing you from keeping live chickens a few feet away from the goods in your store!  Avian flu?  No outbreaks reported, why stomp on store owners for a mere possibility?  Think of all the tax money saved--no licenses, inspections, wasteful paperwork.

     

Thanksgiving in Shenzhen

     The highlight of our Thanksgiving was Terry and I each hearing words of gratitude from Chinese people, who knew this was an American holiday.  What a refreshing approach to this holiday:  saying thank you to someone for what you appreciate about them.    One of the young associates in Terry's office sent him a special email for Thanksgiving:  "I would like to thank you for all your self-giving sharing of your knowledge and experience. You are really a good teacher!! ~_~ Thank you so much."  This afternoon when I saw a Chinese friend, she said, "This is Thanksgiving.  I want to say thank you because I'm glad you are my friend.  So...are you going to a party tonight?"

     No, sorry to say that the Thanksgiving celebration in our household was a little lame!  It didn't seem like a holiday, since it was a work and school day as usual here.  We've always celebrated Thanksgiving with extended family, so that part was missing completely.  And 70º temps and palm trees don't exactly bring on thoughts of "Over the river and through the woods..."

     I did, however, make a special trip after school down Wanghai Road to the expat butcher shop to get some chicken for our dinner.  While there, I spotted three turkeys in the freezer case, two Jennie-O and one Norbest.  How about that?  Minnesota turkeys made it all the way to Shenzhen, China, for around $3/lb.

     We had a package of stuffing, dried cranberries and a can of pureed pumpkin stashed in our pantry after 

Terry's trip home in October.  Thanksgiving dinner tonight was stuffing with cranberries and braised chicken, baked sweet potatoes, baby bok choy with oyster sauce, and pumpkin custard for dessert.  Pretty good, all considering, I thought.  "Not the same," Leah lamented.  No, indeed.  It's the grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles around the groaning board, more than what's on the board, that's most missed.
     But none of us spent much time dwelling on that today.  We are feeling very grateful for the many kindnesses and opportunities that we're experiencing in China and for all the support from family and friends back in the U.S.  

A Few Novelties

     "Hey, this feels normal," I thought to myself on the way to school one morning last week.  I was making my way down the wide sidewalk next to Wanghai Road, the thoroughfare a few blocks from our apartment.  My brain has cubby holes now for the fishy smells from the harbor, the dips and bumps underneath my bike wheels, the warning beep-beeps from electric scooters fast approaching from behind, even a few familiar faces.  I was aware of the absence of the slightly tired and sick feeling I often have after breakfast when traveling in new place.  It's great to feel settled and comfortable.

     The downside, of course, is now that I've developed routines and so many things around me seem familiar, I miss the daily discoveries that come with being in a new place.  Yesterday, though, I came across a few novelties.

     The first was on the ground outside the apartment building behind us.  A massive white sofa wrapped in plastic was in a rope sling, the ropes hanging down from the 20th floor or so.  A few of the uniformed security guys were busy getting this monster ready to hoist way up into some newly redecorated living room.  I was cringing, thinking of accidents, insurance, liability.  Being a single family home dweller most of my life, I'm naive as to how such a furniture logistics problem might be solved at home...somehow I don't think it would be quite like this.   A boy ambles onto the scene and also stops to watch.  I start a conversation with him.  He says he watched something similar last year, but that time the sofa crashed into a balcony, the glass sliced the rope, and the sofa fell to the ground.  Hmmm, sounds improbable, but this seems like an interesting kid.  I ask his name and find out that he's a 5th grader at the middle school where I've done some subbing.  I tell him this and Addy says he thinks he remembers seeing me around.  Then I ask him if he knows Shrumi who lives in building 2.  Yes, he does, she's in 12C, he says.  I thought he might.  Shrumi is a friend who moved here around the same time we did, and she's a master networker.  She told me early on that she's met about 15 other families from India in our area of the city, and they get together to celebrate holidays.  So Addy's family must be among those 15.   It's fun to start weaving my own web of connections, each new connection a novelty built on the familiar.  

     I couldn't stay and watch the sofa on ropes drama, since I was on my way to Green Shoots for Saturday morning English classes.   Later during the class break, I walked up to chat with one of the high school English tutors, who's a senior in the IB program with Leah.  The first thing the tutor said to me was, "Do you know where I can get some liver from a chicken and from a cow?"  That's a first, I thought, me the American with comparatively narrow tastes  being asked this question by a Cantonese person; the Cantonese are known for the wide variety of plants and animals and animals parts that they eat.  Since our family doesn't employ an ayi like many expats here--that's a housekeeper who often does the shopping and cooking--I'm rather familiar with the nearby supermarkets, and I actually did have a couple suggestions for her.  I asked what she needed the liver for.  A biology experiment, she said.  She was interested in following up on an experiment they'd done with liver in class.  I asked if she's thinking of studying biology in college.  Yes, I want to study food science and then hotel and restaurant management, she said.  It seems as if I've recently heard an unusual number of Chinese young people express an interest in that field.  

     

On my way home from Green Shoots, I decided to avoid some congested traffic and made a turn down a street that I haven't been on for awhile.  About 5 blocks from our apartment I came across this scene, all new since my last pass on this street.  This may not look very exciting to you, but it's the most exciting thing I've come across all week.  It's a subway entrance!  At last!  I've been reading since we arrived here that the new subway line out to our area of the city is supposed to be finished by the end of 2010, and I've been wondering exactly where the nearest stop would be.  Within another year this line is supposed to extend all the way out to the airport. 

     Shenzhen is one of at least 15 cities in China that are building or expanding subway lines right now.  The Chinese government has been encouraging spending on infrastructure to help make up for decreased exports to western countries afflicted with sluggish economies.  One western economy seems to be benefitting from this construction trend more than others:  Germany's. A German company makes the tunneling equipment often used for subway construction, for example.

Here's the last of yesterday's novelties:  durian.  I've been reading for years about this Asian fruit, known to many westerners for its supposedly pungent, repulsive smell--and to many Asians for its heavenly scent and taste.  I see whole ones often in the grocery stores.  They look sort of like green, spiny footballs.  Usually next to the whole ones there are packages with just a few pieces wrapped up.  I've never tried durian, so yesterday I decided to buy a small package.  Terry was not so very pleased about this purchase.  He's eaten this fruit, and although he doesn't mind the smell and taste, it's not a favorite.  He insisted that I put the tray out on the balcony, since the smell is supposed to quickly permeate everything around it, even if it's well-wrapped, and Leah was expecting some friends to come over.  After sampling it, I have to say that I don't understand what all the fuss is about.  I thought it tasted like fibery,  deeply musky banana.  The surprising part was the mouth feel from the fat in the fruit.  The smell was not objectionable to me.  In fact, I didn't think it had much smell at all.   Terry said this particular durian was past its prime, since it's supposed to have a custardy interior.  I've read that the older the durian is, the more objectionable the smell and taste.  So, assuming I can pick out less aged durian, my next sample can only be better!  

     

     

School in a Shopping Mall

When I walked into this school building  last month to drop off my paperwork for substitute teaching, I wondered what kind of swanky international school had escalators instead of stairs, a huge foyer with stylish lighting and several sets of matching upholstered furniture, and a veneered snack bar just like you'd see in an upscale mall.  I later found out that it was originally a shopping mall.  After the mall failed a few years ago, the school bought the building, did some remodeling, and moved their secondary campus here.

     If you were to continue along the sidewalk on the lower right side of the photo, you'd walk past about 5 blocks of businesses catering mostly to expats and well-off Chinese, everything from spas to pet shops to apartment rental agencies.  Several of these have closed within the few months that we've been here. Almost immediately workmen have shown up to begin overhauling the space for a new venture--but there are no transformations as dramatic as the shopping mall-to-school.
     This school was founded 20-some years ago by oil companies for American employees' families.  Right now there are 230 middle and high school students enrolled here, hardly any of them American.  The majority are from South Korea.  It's by far the most expensive American international school in our part of the city:  annual tuition is $22-23K for secondary students.
     Late last Sunday night I got a call from a secretary at this school, asking if I could be there at 8:00 the next morning to sub for a math teacher who'd just called in sick.  Since there are so few students at this school and there's a list of 20 substitutes, I felt fortunate to finally get a foot in the door.  I felt really fortunate to end up working there every day last week, and to get asked back for 4 days this coming week.
     As is the case at the middle school where I've substituted here, working at this school is very different from working in the urban public schools at home.  The atmosphere is...pleasant.  It's bustling, it's serious, but absent is the pervasive tension and exhaustion that come from teachers and staff working so hard to educate so many kids, many of whom are dealing with challenging circumstances of one kind or another.  Not that some of these kids don't have their own challenges, one of which is extreme pressure to be the best.  Another difference is in the daily schedule.  Just as at Leah's school, students here have 4 classes a day, each 80-90 minutes long, and they go to each class every other day.  Teachers see 35-45 students a day at most.  High school students each have their own laptop they bring to each class, purchased on a rent-to-own plan through the school, and they're required to use them often, both to access curriculum and to deliver their daily work and projects.   In addition, students can use their laptops to take a wide variety of Virtual High School classes that a small school like this can't offer.  Seniors at this school who need to take Calculus 2 would take it as a VHS class, for example.  One other difference is that the students were respectful and friendly toward me from the first day.  I'm used to having to work for awhile with a group of students to earn that.
 


      

Saturday Out and About

I took a new route this morning to Yucai Elementary School for the Saturday morning English class.  Last week I rode in the rain to and from the school, so today's sunny weather seemed particularly beautiful, as did the trees on this street.  Nanshan Mountain is in the distance.    Checking behind me as I stood by the curb, I realized that a car had approached, stopped and was patiently waiting for me to get  moving so it could claim the parking space where I was standing.  How delightful not to get honked at, I thought.  Probably because I'm considered elderly and feeble, though.  Not so delightful.

The young man in the white polo is Jersey, a school friend one of the English tutor organizers.  He came to perform card tricks for the 6th graders during the last half-hour of class today--he was good!  The boys were a particularly enthusiastic audience.  I asked Jersey where he learned his tricks.  The first few he got from the internet, he said.  Then he met some other guys who also did tricks and they taught each other.  I should have asked him where he got his name.  He did  mention that he was born in New York City and that his parents came back to China when he was a few months old.

On the way home right outside a supermarket were these fellows selling fresh sugarcane today.  The couple on the right carefully selected two canes.  The vendors then made short work of peeling it, whacking it into foot-long sticks, and bagging it up.  I see fresh sugarcane for sale often and I suppose I really should give it a try, but the idea of eating a stick of sugar, even if it's fresh,  doesn't appeal to me very much.

That's rice for sale in the big bin at the left.

The group of ten marching in formation (sort of) and shouting responses to their "commander" at the left I think are security personnel for the apartment complex next to ours.  I'm not sure if they were doing coming-on-duty warm-ups or if they're in training.  I smiled when several little kids and the dog, some pictured here, chased after them and began running between the two rows, messing up the marchers' attempt to look serious.

The pink and white structure in the background is a commercial building on the fishing harbor.

Late this afternoon the fishing boats in the harbor a few minutes' walk from our apartment building were anchored in threesies and foursies.  I was wondering if they did this just to be congenial and to talk fishing business, after working alone all day.  Later I watched a few fishermen that pulled up closer to the shore.  They weren't talking, they were busy pulling fish and critters out of the nets.  My next theory was that they organize their boats into these side-by-side parking groups to leave pathways open for boats that need to move.

Hangman and I Spy with the Yucai Kids

  
"Sports" was the topic during the first half of the Green Shoots Academy English class this morning at Yucai Elementary School.  Andrew, one of the co-leaders, had a paper and pencil vocabulary handout all ready for the 6th graders to do first thing in their small groups.  One of the high school tutors came up with the hangman idea on the fly, as a way to continue going over sports words after her group had sped through the handout.  That's Andrew up at the blackboard, and tutors CT and Jillian standing to the right.  Andrew and CT are in Leah's senior class at school.
     When Leah saw Jillian in my photos this afternoon she said, "Oh, that's the freshman girl who rides to school with me in the morning."  Leah had never mentioned her name before.  She'd said early on that they didn't really talk, given the age difference.  (This is hard for me to understand, but there's so much that I, mere parent, do not understand.)  The expat rental agency that helped us find our apartment also helped us link into a private taxi arrangement that takes the two girls to school every morning.  Because two girls split the cost, it's slightly less than a regular taxi, which can be hard to find at 8 a.m.
     Notice the pink desks.  I wonder if this color has a calming effect on the students who use the room during the week!

After Hangman, the students stepped outside the classroom to play I Spy, as in, "I spy with my little eye something that is...red!"  Then they would take turns trying to guess which red object the spy-er had in mind.  I was surprised how long both the Hangman and I Spy games held their attention.  Maybe they play fewer video games and watch fewer TV shows than American kids.  Aren't these students a precious bunch?

We take a 10-minute break in the middle of the two-hour Green Shoots class.  These three girls had fun drawing on the board during break time.  The girl in the middle, whose English name is Kelly, seems to be be an anime fan.  I noticed her doing anime doodles at her desk, and she's signed at least one of the board drawings.
     What's my role during this Saturday morning English class for the 6th graders?  Andrew asked if I'd supervise the Green Shoots high school tutors, who are logging community service hours.  Today there were seven tutors, all of them from the American international school that Leah goes to.  It's impressive to see these high schoolers own the Green Shoots program.  They meet mid-week during lunch at school to plan out the activities for the upcoming Saturday class, and then Andrew emails me the plan and asks for input.  During the class, I circulate around the two rooms where the tutors cluster with their small groups, listening in and helping out if I'm needed.  So today, for example, one of the tutors had brought an English picture book to read to her group during the second half of class.  She asked for my help explaining the meaning of a few words from the book like "sturdy" and "cozy".  All of the tutors have excellent English skills, but only one of them is from the U.S.--and he's mostly lived in Bali since he was four years old.  The other tutors are from China, South Korea, Germany and Iceland.

Thoughts about Supporting a Rural Chinese School

     One morning at school this week I had to wait a few minutes for the principal to come by and give me the details for my subbing assignment that day.  I stepped outside the empty administrators' office and passed the time looking at a display in the hallway about a charity project that the school has been supporting in a province west of here.  School families  have been encouraged to donate money to support a small rural school there.

     Great idea, I thought.  I'd like to donate to this effort.  I can't think of a better way to promote a more civilized world than through educating young children, especially those who live in poverty.  I also like the idea of the privileged families at this private school in Shenzhen sharing their good fortune with some students who need help. 

     Later I began thinking about this charity project in light of what I'm reading in Out of Mao's Shadow:  The Struggle for the Soul of a New China.  The author, Philip Pan, is a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post who based this 2008 book on seven years of research throughout China. There has been political progress since Mao's demise, but the one-party state remains firmly in place.  Pan asserts that the party's unchecked power has created opportunities for greedy, corrupt bureaucrats to continue to inflict misery on people, especially in rural areas.  He writes that party policy has favored the development of industry and urban areas over rural agricultural areas where the majority of Chinese live. In particular, rural people have been taxed at significantly higher rates than urban Chinese.  Furthermore, some rural officials have gotten away with arbitrarily raising taxes and fees to increase their own salaries and benefits, while spending next to nothing on local public services, including schools.  

     I wondered if this charity project exists because of money mismanagement by local Chinese officials.  Even if that's not the case, perhaps China could afford to fund its public schools more generously, especially in poor rural areas.  There seems to be plenty of money to lend to the U.S. to fund our overspending.  There's also been plenty of money to fund infrastructure for such projects as the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the 2010 Expo in Shanghai, and the newly created Special Economic Zone of Kashgar on China's northwestern border.  It seems a shame that piecemeal charity projects do the job that government could and should do to educate the country's children.

     On the other hand, the U.S. pumps enormous sums into its public education system.  Yet a number of students fail to learn much in our American schools.  Money alone won't assure an education.  It takes desire and effort from  teachers, students and students' families/communities.  It seems a greater shame that the privilege of 13 years of free public education available to every young person in the U.S. does not inspire the desire and effort to make it happen.  

     The kids and teachers pictured outside their rural schools in the display by the school office would most likely be thrilled to have such a privilege.

     

     

Hong Kong Day Trip

     Our Chinese visas are good for a year, but we can only stay in the country for 90 days at a time.  Terry has already left China several times since we arrived in mid-August, but sometime before Nov. 10 Leah and I needed to leave so we wouldn't violate the 90-day rule.  Fortunately we live in Shenzhen, right across the border from Hong Kong.  Although the British returned it to China in 1997, Hong Kong is designated a special administrative region and has a different political system from mainland China, so when you cross the border you have to go through immigration and customs, just as if you were going to a foreign country.  If we were in a big hurry, we could cross into Hong Kong, get our exit chop, and then get in line to come right back to Shenzhen, all set to stay for another 90 days.  We decided to do just a little better than that.  Terry had to go to Hong Kong today anyway because tomorrow morning he has an early flight back to the U.S.  And today was a beautiful cool fall day, good weather for exploring.

We took a taxi from our apartment to the MTR (train/subway) station on the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border.  Outside the MTR station there were at least 5-6 vendors like this couple, mostly Muslim, it would appear from this woman's scarf and from the hats that most of the men were wearing. They were selling walnuts, several kinds of raisins and dried apricots, all newly harvested I assume.  Yum!  But we didn't buy any.  We headed for the long lines to present our passports and departure cards.  After getting checked through, we joined the hoards walking across the wide covered footbridge over the Shenzhen River, which forms the border between mainland China and Hong Kong.  Then there was another very long line through immigration on the Hong Kong side.  Once through that line, it was a short walk to buy transit cards and board the train for the 50-minute ride to Hong Kong, when we amused ourselves watching very cute little kids doing interesting things like eating, drinking and sleeping.  All told, it took 3 hours to get from our apartment to the Central District of Hong Kong, where Terry stowed his travel gear at a hotel.

Our favorite way to explore a city is to choose  something we want to find, and then see what we run into on the way to finding it. We had two Hong Kong destination ideas for today.  One was the Tuck Chong Sum Kee Bamboo Steamer Co., where artisans still make dumpling steamers by hand,  one of Terry's funky online finds.  The other was a couple of streets with costume-y attire that Leah had looked up.  She is going to a Halloween/birthday party for a school friend tonight and wanted to find a sailor hat.  So hats became our quest du jour.  We first checked out the stalls on this narrow little street not far from our subway stop.  These cobbled-together retail arrangements are a charming relief from all the sleek international designer establishments on the Hong Kong thoroughfares.  But there were no sailor hats on this stretch.

Here's Leah about to head up the next retail warren on her list, where she eventually found her sailor hat.  While she was busy with her errand, Terry and I took off exploring the perpendicular street, where we found a great little Vietnamese restaurant for lunch.  Like many businesses in densely-populated Hong Kong--which is often called the most vertical city in the world because businesses and residences are layered on top of each other--there was a sign at street level directing customers to the restaurant on an upper level.  In this case, it was up merely one narrow set of stairs.  My lunch was delicious:  2 very fresh grilled prawns, on a huge bed of pomelo chunks, cucumber matchsticks, shallots and a few cashews with a slightly vinegary dressing.

Contributing to its dense settlement is metropolitan Hong Kong's hilly and mountainous terrain.  The low rise of these wide steps made this street considerably easier to navigate than many we walked on today.

Driving Hong Kong streets is an ordeal.  You can see why most people take the subway.  It's estimated that 90% of the day-to-day trips people make in Hong Kong are on public transit, the highest usage rate in the world.  Most people in metropolitan Hong Kong live within a few minutes' walk from a subway station.

I say metropolitan because there's a rural, undeveloped part of Hong Kong that many Americans probably don't know about.  Hong Kong residents live  on only 30% of the land areas on the islands that comprise Hong Kong.  The other 70% is used for agriculture or parks or nature reserves.  Back in Shenzhen, when we look out our apartment windows a few miles across Shenzhen Bay, we see some of the beautiful hills of the undeveloped part of Hong Kong.

We saw quite a few streets with festive Halloween decorations like this, frequently with a pirate theme.  Given that Hong Kong is a maritime center, that particular theme makes sense.

After emerging from the train station back in Shenzhen late this afternoon, Leah and I walked by this man who was making peacocks, flowers and grasshoppers out of leaves.  I bought a grasshopper.  Not only was this one of those  "how did he do that?" processes, but the man did beautiful work.  What was amazing is that he had only one hand.  You can't see this in the photo, but his left arm ended at the elbow.

Here's the grasshopper, which rivals the coolness of anything we saw in cosmopolitan Hong Kong today.

Show & Tell: Kitchen

Here is our kitchen as it looked tonight while I was making our supper.  This is a deluxe kitchen, compared to what many Chinese have.  By American standards it's small, but because our kitchen, dining and living area is one big 15x30' room, it doesn't seem so small.  We have a mere 20" of counter space between the sink and the stove top, so we innovated a bit to create more space for chopping all those vegetables we seem to eat.  We moved the hot water pot and small glass teapot to the top of the exhaust hood, an arrangement that OSHA would frown upon.  It was Leah's idea to hang the two baskets under the cabinets to get the dirty dishes off the counter.  Why don't we just put them in the dishwasher over there to the right?  It's not a dishwasher, it's a dish sterilizer.  We wash and rinse our dishes in the sink and put them in one of the two wire "drawers" of the sterilizer, which heats up and dries the dishes.  Over the dish sterilizer is a countertop oven that looks like a nice big toaster oven, and stacked on top of that is a microwave.  To the far right is an LG side-by-side refrigerator/freezer that's almost the size of our fridge at home.  When we were looking at apartments this summer, most had dorm room size fridges.  As I understand it, most Chinese buy fresh ingredients every day if they're cooking, and they don't eat leftovers, so they don't need much fridge space.   We like having leftovers.  For her lunch at school Leah carries warmed-up leftovers in the silver Thermos you see in the wire basket over the sink, just as she did in Minnesota.

OK, I know you're curious about what's cooking.  In the wok is a chicken breast that I'd cut up into small pieces with a nifty sharp meat scissors and sauteed in olive oil with onion and garlic.  The chicken I buy here has been ranging for awhile, so it needs to braise for a least a half-hour to get tender.  About the Italian olive oil sitting on the counter by the wok:  we're on our second liter of it since firing up our kitchen here in mid-August.  The expat population must buy a lot of it, because I can find it in every grocery store in this part of the city, sometimes 5 or 6 different brands.  Next in line for the wok is the pile of onions, a couple cloves of garlic, some sliced black mushrooms, and some medium hot red and green peppers.   Last in will be the spinach that's in the colander in the sink, some dried basil, and a little more olive oil.  Meanwhile, I cook some Australian corkscrew pasta, and I use the oven to roast those delicious cauliflower florets that you see in a shallow pan to the left of the wok.  Voila, pasta with chicken, spinach and mushrooms and some roasted cauliflower on the side, which we ate with chopsticks!  We are very busy fusing food cultures here.

Back to School

     The 5th-floor windows in the art classroom I was in today looked out toward Nanshan Mountain, the prettiest view I've ever had from a school building.  If you had been outside looking into this classroom, the view would have been pretty good, too.  Like yesterday, the students were good-natured as they went about their classwork.  The math classes in the morning were working on a slope assignment,  and the art classes in the afternoon were working on self portrait drawings or colorful abstract designs.  It was a relief to see some normal middle school shenanigans today:  a girl arriving 15 minutes late with a vague excuse, another girl sneaking nibbles from a chocolate bar, some flirting, a little poking with a ruler, a few tears over some girl vs. girl drama, and a little too much talking sometimes.  But nothing serious.  I had fun circulating and helping kids with their work.
     At the end of the day, one of the office workers brought up a slip that would allow me to collect my pay  for subbing yesterday and today.  Subs can collect their pay every Friday in the school's business office, although it's not called "pay".  Substitute teachers at this international school officially volunteer their time and are given an honorarium, paid in cash, in U.S. dollars.  (There's the cash economy again.)   The honorarium is about 2/3 of what a sub would earn in Minneapolis/St. Paul.
     The honorarium is a handy way for the school to get around the work permit issue.  It's a very long, complicated process getting a permit to work in China.  If you want to work here, you have to prove that you are doing a job that no Chinese person could do.  Terry is still working on getting his permit, and his business visa suffices in the meantime. He's been told that China is second only to the U.S. as far as difficulty getting a permit to work in the country.

Off to School

     I woke up to a duo of "firsts" today:  open windows in our apartment, and a job.  Early this morning Terry had shut off the air conditioning for the first time this fall, taking advantage of a brisk, fresh breeze courtesy of Typhoon Megi.  The coolish air didn't last for more than a few hours, but it certainly put a little more wind in my sails as I got ready for my first day of substitute teaching here in Shenzhen.  This morning I was remembering that I had said about the time the weather cooled down a bit here, I'd be ready to start subbing.  How coincidental that the day it was finally cool enough to open the windows was also my first day off to school.
     Another delay to getting started subbing was transportation.  Specifically, I had to get over not having a car.  I have three choices for getting to a school in my area of the city:  taking a taxi, walking, or biking.  Taxis can be next to impossible to find during the morning and evening rush hours.  Walking to the school where I worked today takes about 35-40 minutes, which gets to be a long trek while carrying a school bag, especially at the end of the day, even when it's not hot.  That leaves biking.
     Last week I had a Chinese friend take me to a bike shop and help me buy a traditional Chinese bike.  By traditional Chinese I mean spending the least amount of money to get the job done.  For 260 RMB, just under $40, I came home with a lightweight cruiser and two locks.  I sprung for a few luxuries:  front and rear fenders, a basket for the front and a rack for the back, AND a kick stand.  So far, my bike is sufficient for my needs.  After walking most everywhere in my neighborhood for nine weeks, it's been a treat to finally get wheels.  It took me a little over 15 minutes to bike to school this morning.  This was with my extra measure of caution, given all the potential problems presenting themselves to a new bicyclist in China, even in this relatively calm and westernized part of the city we live in.  That's a topic for a separate blog.
     Today I was working on the middle school campus of the American international school that Leah attends.  The school is participating in a regional athletic event, and today my job was to fill in for an 8th-grade teacher who's a volleyball coach.  I had an English class, a writing class and two different math classes.  This was a different world altogether from subbing back at home.  A mild-mannered administrator who could take time to give me a 10-minute tour first thing. 18-20 kids in a classroom.  No bells, no passes, no need to take attendance after first period because apparently kids don't skip.  Students listened when I spoke.  They got right down to work and stayed on task until the very end of class.  No dreamers, no laggards, no complainers, no one was sneaking texts under the desk.  The teacher had left very detailed notes, including names of a few potential troublemakers.  "Chatting" seemed to be the potential trouble, but pretty much the only chatting was about the assignments.  Either I'm a real Viola Swamp (the formidable sub from the Miss Nelson picture books that we read to Em and Leah when they were little), or life in a private international school in China really is different.
     I think back to the worst things that have happened in classrooms on my watch:  hate-filled, hair-pulling fights that have ignited in a flash, chairs getting tossed out the art room window, a snake getting let loose.  Fortunately these sorts of events were rare, and they did not happen in classes of academically ambitious kids like those in today's classrooms.  But even in the classrooms with similarly able and ambitious students at home, there always seemed to be some kids testing the limits somehow--there wasn't this predictable, calm atmosphere of obedience.  There's something about the deviant and the edgy in a challenging classroom that seems more real to me.  To use a neighborhood analogy, it's kind of like the difference between the wide, quiet, sanitized expat stroll down Wanghai Road that has lots of comfortable shops and businesses, versus a watch-your-feet walk down winding, narrow, disheveled Old Street, a three-block stretch that's left over from this place's fishing village days, where people are busy making a living at all kinds of things, and where you never quite know what you'll run into.
     So that's what I'm thinking about after one day in one classroom at one school.  Tomorrow I'll go back to this same school for a different teacher, who has math and art classes.
  

  
 

Green Shoots

     Leah attends an American international school here in Shenzhen, where a number of the students are Chinese.  At a school event a few weeks ago, I sat next to a Chinese mother who told me about her son Andrew, who is a senior just as Leah is.  He has a plan to start up a Saturday-morning English tutoring program at a local public elementary school.  He's calling his ambitious project Green Shoots Academy, which is an offshoot of a tutoring project he did this summer for children of the workers in his parents' electronics factory.  Many students at American schools have to log community service hours in order to graduate, and Andrew knew this would be a motivator for fellow students to sign up to be a Green Shoots tutor.  I met Andrew at the post-event reception that night and told him that I'd be interested in going along with the group to the elementary school.
     The first Green Shoots meeting was held today.  I had been told that there might be 60 kids from the elementary school who would show up.  What a relief that there were only 28, that they were 6th graders who spoke some English, and that they wanted to be there.  For some reason I'd been vaguely dreading lots of squirrelly little kids running around and yelling and hitting each other, not listening, not following directions--the worst of all the exasperating behavior I've experienced in urban classrooms at home.  These kids were a teacher's dream.  Today anyway.
  

Here are some of the students who showed up at Yucai Elementary School this morning for the Green Shoots tutoring program. While we were waiting to get started, I first noted that there were 46 desks in this Chinese public school classroom.  Then I went around to all the kids individually to introduce myself and ask them their names.  The high school tutors and I had brainstormed a long list of English names ahead of time so each of these kids could get one today.  However, the majority of the kids introduced themselves to me with their already-in-use English names, among them Jenny, Lydia, Helen, Amy, Jimmy, Luke and...Bob Johnson.  Not just Bob, but Bob Johnson.  One of the tutors asked him how he had gotten that name.  He said that his father had given it to him.

5 tutors came today.  They were an exceptional group of sharp, enthusiastic, take-charge high schoolers.  Each tutor lead a small group of 6th graders as they did introductions,  chose a group mascot and played an animal guessing game.  Then the whole group went outside and played several rounds of Simon Says.  A mother who came along with her 6th grader commented to me afterwards that students who understood English more quickly were perhaps less likely to win.  On the left in the photo is Romzy, who co-leads Green Shoots Academy with Andrew.  The boy on the far right is Bob Johnson; I can tell already that he'll likely add some zip to the group.  I'm looking forward to going along next Saturday.

Scarcity and Creativity

     Even though most Chinese people in this city are not desperately poor, plenty of them are a mere generation removed from times of near-starvation.  So it's second nature for many to conserve their yuan by finding a cheaper or even a free way to do something.  This makes for interesting sights around town.    

     A short walk from our sprawling apartment complex is a 3-block stretch close to the fishing harbor, where there's lots of re-use happening.  Just inside the locked gate leading to the harbor is a rusty, faded orange Hyundai cargo container, seeing a second life as a storage building.  Empty detergent and peanut oil bottles, gleaned from the garbage, are strung together and lying on the sidewalk, maybe to float a fishing net.  A long freight train of well-used styrofoam boxes, all shapes and sizes, sit end-to-end on this same sidewalk.  Often people stop by on their bikes, pick up a few, and ride away.  I've seen people use these to keep food cool.    One afternoon a mother with 2 young children had found an unusually clean, white styro box, great for a playpen.  She was sitting in it with her two youngsters while they had fun, right there on the sidewalk.   Another mother sat in the shade on a stool, holding her baby to the side when it was time for business.  A checkbook-sized fallen leaf picked up from the sidewalk waited under the baby, her bare bottom peeking through the split seat.  Who needs a diaper?  

     Today the sun shone all day, for the first time in many days, so that inspired lots of laundry activity.  People along "Old Street" had lots of clothing out drying this afternoon.  Flopped on fences.  On hangers in the trees.   Over the handlebars, basket, seat and rear rack of a bicycle.  Over the handle, frame and canopy of a baby stroller.  Who needs a clothesline?

     The most engaging scene of the day was a man using the sidewalk for his livelihood.   On a busy, wide walkway just behind a bus stop, a man was busy writing a narrative.  At least I assume that's what it was, a 6' long work that he was slowly and neatly adding to.  A gaggle of schoolboys in their uniforms were among those gathered around reading quietly as they waited for a bus.  The calligraphy was beautiful.  This browned and dirty man of the street was not.  His bare feet were deformed so that he couldn't walk.  He was lying on his belly on a dolly, which was covered with a few blankets and custom-accessorized with an attached umbrella that he could put up for shade.  He used a piece of thick foam right in front of the dolly to cushion his elbows, as his upper body hung over the front to do his writing.  He'd dip a rag in a container of water and wet down a horizontal line of bricks in the sidewalk.  Then he'd take a piece of white chalk  and carefully write perfectly-spaced characters in each brick.  Because the bricks were wet, the chalk made sharp, clean lines.  After he finished a line, he wiped his brow, scooted the dolly backwards, and wet down the next row of bricks.  He had a bowl for coins set out at the beginning of his story.  Who needs paper or a computer or a publisher to be a writer?  

Shopping Locally

Most of the time I have to walk and carry home anything that I buy here.  That means buying less and having to make more trips--very different from driving to the store in the U.S. and coming home with several heavy bags of stuff, letting the car to all the hauling.  I shop almost every day for our produce  at this little grocery store a block away from our apartment.  It's in a long strip mall that runs between two huge apartment complexes, so there are lots of apartment rental agencies in the mall.  The two young men in white shirts and black trousers work for one of the agencies.

I always head to the back of the store for veggies and fruit.  Nothing you see here is refrigerated, so by late in the afternoon, the greens are likely to be wilted.  Some items like snow peas, broccoli and mushrooms are in a refrigerator case with the tofu and meat, located off the right side of the photo.  Most vegetables are very reasonably priced, especially greens--$.30-.60 for a nice bunch of spinach, baby bok choy, or napa cabbage.  Someone will come to this counter, weigh the produce I've picked out, and stick a bar-coded label on the bag.  A lot of plastic gets used to bag up produce, although most people bring a tote to use at the checkout.

I think that an extended family runs the store.  These are two of the familiar faces there.  The fellow on the left is very quiet, but he's paying attention.  Last week when he saw me eyeing the few pathetic-looking carrots that were left, he came over and opened up the big box of fresher ones under the counter for me to choose from.  Later when he was weighing my pears, he reached in and took out one that had a spot on the stem end and pointed it out to me.  Good customer service, I'd say.  I have never seen the fellow on the right not wear this pink shirt.  He speaks a little English, more  than anyone else who works there.   Today when he was beeping through the barcodes on my veggies at the register, he was quite conversational:  "Hmmm...cooking..."  And later as he slowly set two very ripe persimmons on top of of everything else in the tote, he patted them and said (approximately), "Careful."  Knowing all the people who work in this little store and exchanging pleasantries with them, even nonverbal ones, are good outcomes of having to shop locally and often in a new place.

Up Nanshan Mountain

     Nanshan is a landmark in our area of Shenzhen.  It's a tree-covered mountain a few miles west of our apartment, visible as soon as we begin walking away from this cluster of high rises.  A few times when I've gotten sort of lost on one of my walks, I've used Nanshan to orient myself.  Today I finally climbed to the top of Nanshan Mountain, taking advantage of favorable weather.  The last two days it's been cloudy and much cooler, in the low 70's.
     My Chinese friend Yan met me here on the plaza at our apartment complex at 10 this morning.  She pedaled up on her bicycle and suggested that we should bike to the mountain and save our walking energy for going up.  That sounds good, I said, but I don't have a bike.  No problem, she said.  I could ride sidesaddle on the rack behind her seat.  Here I thought we'd be taking a bus or a taxi to the mountain--this would be way more exciting and way more Chinese!  I see people here riding two to a bike all the time, three if there's a child.  But it didn't quite seem fair for Yan, hardly 90 lbs.,  to have to pedal my dead weight around.  Again, no problem, she said.  She bikes every day and is used to having someone ride on the back.
     Yan hadn't had breakfast, so the first stop was for dumplings out of a bamboo steamer from one of the  vendors on the street.  She bought 4 dumplings the size of small apples for 4 RMB ($.60) and offered one to me.  I declined because I'd just had my oatmeal, but the veggie one she bit into smelled really good.  I often see people getting dumplings-to-go in little plastic bags like this in the morning.
     We walked the rest of the way to the foot of the mountain, where she locked up her bike in a rack right outside a business place with a big 3M sign.  I just had to point out that this company is based in the city right next to my home--and that this is the company that invented sticky notes, which I know she uses because she gave me her phone number on one!
     There are 5 paths up Nanshan.  The one we picked had winding, well-maintained steps all the way up and plenty of places to stop and rest and admire the views.  The trees and shrubs were gorgeous and seemed to scrub some of the city out of the air.  All the way up we had lots of jovial company, many people on their Golden Week holiday taking advantage of a cool day for the hike.

This was the view looking east from Nanshan Mountain today. (Actually that's redundant because "shan" means mountain in Chinese.)  Peer through the haze and find the forested mound in the middle of the photo.  That's a small mountain near our apartment complex.  Our building is to the right of this low mountain, nearly all the way to the water of Shenzhen Bay.  Leah's school would be  located just off the left side of this photo, near the swath of trees a thumb's width from the bottom of the photo.  It's been hazy most of the time since we arrived in mid-August, sometimes more than this.

We came down the mountain a different way than we went up.  You can just barely see the path we took in the bit of mountain that shows between the two trees in the foreground.  Once at the bottom, we walked by a long strip of what looked like park land.  Several people were getting set up to sell some honey along the way here.  Yan said that she thought there was a small farm somewhere in the trees along this strip and that the honey came from bees at this farm.

After our hike up and down the mountain, our legs felt a little like noodles--so of course we had to go find some noodles for lunch.  Yan suggested a simple Muslim restaurant not far from where we live.   What a coincidence!  Terry and I had stopped for some takeout noodles at this very same shop a few weeks ago, the only time we've been to a restaurant in our neighborhood.  In most Chinese cities it's fairly easy to find noodle shops like this one, run by Muslims who migrate from western China.  Our soup was simple, but delicious.  Halfway through my bowlful, though, I made the mistake of adding a very tiny bit of the spicy red pepper condiment at the table.  The first bite or two was OK, but then my throat suddenly seemed to constrict and I found myself wheezing and gasping for air.  I took my cup of tea, got up and went outside, where I sipped tea and paced in respiratory distress for a couple minutes.  I've never reacted like this to spicy peppers before, and I will not be tempted to dress my food with them in the future.

Terry's Chop

At left is the chop, or seal, that Terry had made in a shop we passed by while we were in Shanghai last weekend.  At the shop he chose an auspicious double-headed dragon stone, negotiated what he thought was a fair price, gave them his business card with his logo, and returned a half-hour later to pick up his finished chop.  At the time, he thought a chop might be useful someday.  He didn't know that a mere four days later, he was asked for his chop when he signed a contract.  In China you're expected to not only sign your name but also put your chop on many contracts in order to make them legally binding.  Red ink is almost always used.

     The tradition of stone chops goes back thousands of years in China.  It originated possibly 8,000 years ago when people used a seal to mark their possessions to prevent theft--a sort of ancient Operation ID.  Until fairly recently in history, many Chinese businessmen were illiterate and were unable to sign their name to contracts.  So they used a seal with their family name or symbol carved into the flat smooth edge of a stone. The seal was dipped in red ink, symbolizing a signature set in stone and written in blood, about as binding as you can get.  Artists traditionally stamp their work with their chop to guarantee that the work is authentic.  Even in our everyday paperwork, a red seal is found on many of the bills or receipts we get, everything from the phone bill to taxi or plane ticket receipts.

Today Is National Day

     October 1 is National Day in China, a public holiday.  Mao Zedong declared the establishment of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949.  Today also marks the beginning of National Day Golden Week.  Since 1999 many Chinese people have been given 7 days beginning on National Day to travel and visit family.  There has been discussion about modifying Golden Week since it's somewhat disruptive to the economy, particularly in international business.  Last fall when Terry was working here, he ended up scheduling a last-minute trip back to the U.S. on National Day, after he found out that none of the people he was working with would be around during the first week or so of October.  And he's doing the same thing this year, leaving in a couple days to go back to the U.S.  There will be another 7 days of holiday during Spring Festival Golden Week in early February.
     I took a walk this afternoon to check out the National Day scene in our neighborhood.  Families were out and about, and traffic was light.  Half the business places I passed by were closed.  Several groups of men were sitting on the sidewalk playing cards, with cell phones, cigarette packs and wagers laid out on a scrap of cardboard they used as a card table.  There were quite a few fishermen casting lines over the rail into the harbor.  Shenzhen is not exactly a hotbed of Communist political fervor, given its status as China's most successful Special Economic Zone, so it's not surprising that this was a fairly quiet day off work for a lot of people, and that's about it.

Mao died in 1976.  Less than 2 years later, Deng Xiaoping's capitalist initiatives set China on a path of tremendous economic growth, which especially benefited Shenzhen, a former sleepy fishing town.  Mao likely couldn't have imagined that in 2010 an American living in Shenzhen could go to an English language bookstore in Shanghai and find wrapping paper printed with the images at left.

Fall Weekend in Shanghai - Part 2

The blue brother-of-Gumby icon on the posters is all over Shanghai promoting the 2010 World Expo.  The green logo of three waving figures is made from the Chinese character for "world".  Better City, Better Life is the theme of the six-month Expo.  It's billed as an international idea exchange for improving modern cities.  Thousands of people and several hundred businesses were displaced to create the Expo grounds.  Hopefully all of them now have a better life....   On a sweltering day in mid-September Terry attended the Expo as part of his meeting with a group of American businessmen, and he got his fill of crowds and hype.  So we didn't even consider going during our weekend in Shanghai. 

We skirted People's Square on our way to visit the Shanghai Museum, but they weren't allowing any more people into the building by the time we got there.  So we took off on a winding narrow street nearby, where we saw all sorts of goldfish, turtles, birds, bunnies, and crickets for sale.  On our China-bound plane in August I told Leah that I thought we probably should go to the market and find a little cricket in a cage for our apartment.  These are the first crickets I've seen for sale, and I've now changed my mind.  I pictured a modest-sized Minnesota cricket that would chirp companionably this fall, not one of these humongous critters.

There were other  quaint sights on the critter street, including this man, boy and dog on the scooter.  We think of Chinese people having considerable restrictions on their freedom, yet Americans live with far more restrictions when it comes to transportation and child safety.

This was part of the wet market in an alley just around the corner from the apartment we stayed in.  It's called a wet market, not because it looks wet (it was raining that morning), but because it's where you buy fresh food, some so fresh that it's still alive.  The man is washing a chicken he's just dressed.  There were lots of swimming things to eat in the tubs.  I found some early season clementines on the other side of the market.  I was so excited after actually understanding the vendor when she said "qi kuai", which is 7 RMB or just over $1, that I didn't even think about bargaining and then dropped my shopping tote in the muck as I fumbled to find correct change.

This is an amazing site in Shanghai:  no people!  It rained all day Sunday, otherwise there would have been lots of people out strolling in this pleasant park in the French Concessions.  We hoisted our umbrellas that afternoon and did a walking tour out of a Lonely Planet guidebook.  Leah said she much preferred rain to hot, sticky air for touring.

Monday it didn't rain, so the crowds were out again, especially at tourist sites like this one just outside the entrance to Shanghai's famous Yu Gardens.  The structure in the middle is the Huxinting Teahouse, built in the late 1700's by cotton merchants.  The zigzag bridge was supposed to protect the building, since evil spirits aren't supposed to be able to turn corners.  That's a huge swirl of goldfish in the murky water.

Here's Leah inside the Yu Gardens, which were built during the Ming dynasty in the late 1500's, partially destroyed several times, and now are restored.  There were six walled areas of winding paths through the gardens and buildings, which made it seem like a maze.  Whew, we found our way out in time to catch a taxi to the airport Monday afternoon.

Fall Weekend in Shanghai - Part 1

     We returned to Shenzhen Monday night, after spending a long weekend in Shanghai.  Leah doesn't have many school breaks when we'll be able to travel in China, so we took advantage of her vacation this week.  It seems unusual to have a full week off only five weeks into the school year when everyone's just starting to get some traction.  But this is holiday time, between the Moon Festival last week and National Day coming up on October 1.

We stayed in the French Concession district of Shanghai.  Despite the name, there never were all that many French who lived here after France made this part of Shanghai a sort of outpost in the mid-1800's, subject to French rather than Chinese law  until the 1940's.  We stayed in a small apartment in the peachy-tan building to the left in the background.  The young Chinese-American owners were doing a brisk online business renting it out for short stays now during the 2010 World Expo going on in Shanghai through the end of October.  The location was great:  interesting neighborhood, tree-lined streets, a few small wet markets nearby, and a 5-minute walk from a Metro stop.  We rode the Metro a number of times and were impressed.  It was well-marked, clean, much faster than a taxi or bus, and a mere 3-4 RMB ($.45-.60) per ride.  China has spent a lot of money in Shanghai the last few years on infrastructure like the Metro, getting ready to show off the city to the rest of the world during the Expo.  In the photo, notice the laundry drying on the rods extending out over the street.  Electric clothes dryers are not used much in China, even by those who could afford one.

Saturday morning we awoke to classical piano music blaring over a loudspeaker.  Looking out our window we saw these students lined up in formation, going through morning exercises on this playing field.   After a half-hour they broke out into squads of 20 or so, and neatly jogged two-abreast off the field.

The next two mornings it wasn't music, but car horns that we heard, and not just stray beeps, but conversations between horns,  as impatient drivers competed for road space even on a weekend in this congested city of 17 million people.  This was a lively contrast to our apartment in Shenzhen, where we are on the bay side of the building, with no road and no car noise.

Bikes and scooters abound in Shanghai, much moreso than in Shenzhen.  We had to be careful whenever we stepped off a curb, because they were everywhere.  I took this shot as I crossed on a green light, perhaps overly confident that all these cyclists would wait at their red light.  The woman on the left is wearing a helmet, a rarity, although it doesn't look substantial enough to offer much protection.

Here's a motorcycle taxi, one of a few we saw on the Shanghai streets.  The image on the side of the taxi is famously modern Shanghai, looking out over the Huangpu River toward Pudong's skyscrapers.  Prior to China declaring Pudong a Special Economic Zone less than 20 years ago,  it was mostly swampy farmland.

And here we are, pasted into the same scene as the one on the side of the taxi above.  I'm sure you pick out the Oriental Pearl Tower in the Pudong skyline.  This much-discussed structure with its multiple spheres, some of them hot pink, is a good example of what I think of as a certain exuberance in some modern Chinese styling.  What a contrast to the uniform drabness of the Cultural Revolution.

We are standing on the Bund, which is an elevated wide walkway along the Huangpu River.  On one side of the river is ultra-modern Pudong, and on the other are the huge old colonial banks, trading houses and hotels built in the 1920's and 30's, reminders that Shanghai was the busiest international port in Asia in the 1930's.  The Bund was filled with tourists when we were there on a Saturday afternoon, not just foreigners, but lots of ordinary Chinese people, too.