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.