Five things I did not do in Dalian

Dalian was wonderful. It is a big city--3.5 million to 7 million depending on how you count--and renowned for its beaches. It was not beach weather this weekend, though, so I did a lot of other fun things with my friend. Here are five things that I did not do:

I did not go rollerblading, but I did ride the scariest of the rides and go bowling in a fallout shelter.

I did not give a 100 RMB to a bird at the bird show, but somebody else in the crowd did.

I did not get my picture drawn by a street artist, but I did get my photograph taken a lot by random people.

I did not receive the group activity large-scale sandy beach party.

 

I did not feed Coke to a Tibetan bear, though many others did just to see them unscrew the top and guzzle. In this video, he is eating crackers from a plastic bag as the trash from tourists floats around him. 

Into the Bustle of China’s Boom

This was such a wonderful article that sums up my sense of excitement about being here that I wanted to share it with this blog community: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/jobs/26pre.html?src=recg#h[IaaAew].

Siberian Tigers, oh my!

Yesterday, I went to Jingyuetan National Forest Park--a AAAAA-rated tourist site--for the third time. For the first time, I forked over a little less than ten US dollars (60 RMB) and entered the Jilin Provincial Siberian Tiger Park.

I am not sure what I did to incur his attention, but I was nearly mauled by a red-crowned crane. Should I feel good that I was nearly nipped by the beak of the revered bird of fidelity, luck and longevity? After I fled a few feet, he continued to follow me around for the next ten minutes until I wandered off to look at peacocks and parrots.

Jingyuetan or Moon Lake

The entrance to the Tiger Park wherein also lie great birds of prey and beasts of the forest.

A beautiful tree along the shore of the reservoir.

A girl pets a chained Siberian Tiger cub.

Adorable lemurs running about in their display area.

Through the glass, a Chinese girl and her brother tantalized the little creatures. You could pay extra to go inside and have them jump up on you like a jungle gym.

An owl.

A large bug that landed on my shirt. Ewww.

My hunter.

My attacker.

My careful observer. We both watched each other carefully after my initial encounter.

Another magnificent bird.

Certainly the most exciting and excitable bird that we saw.

I declined an opportunity to hold this bird on my hand, having just had a run in with a crane almost equal to me in height.

In love...with China

I should be asleep. Tomorrow is my marathon day from 7:40 AM to 8:50 PM with a couple of hour long breaks for lunch and dinner, but I cannot sleep...so I write:

CHINA

As I delve into your ancient soil, it occurs to me that you are a hoyden.
The moon hurls its umbra into your uberous rivers, surging with fecundity.
By day, a jaded phoenix emerges in the sunlight with a vermillion dragon,
A Manchurian crane with its ruby diadem stabs around in the bullrushes for sushi,
Wukong's needle tucked behind his ear, itself full of a thousand years of enigmas
Whispered in the hutongs and verboten palaces where dynasties once reigned.
Today, your gamine only-children set out smeared with technicolor stigmas,
Proclaiming jingles their illiterate grandmother's would not have deigned;
Stuffed rabbits and monkeys poking corpus spongiosa out of vade mecum sacks,
More heavy with science tomes than Latin texts to ply their insomnious skulls.
They crowd the pedestrian byways and honk themselves down teeming highways,
Emperors of our destiny disguised as Burberry and Louis Vuitton trulls.
Still bursting with five millennia of pride as it was once and will be always.

A Chinese-style funeral

This morning at 3:55 AM my alarm went off and I hurriedly donned my suit and went out the door to meet my colleagues for the funeral procession. We met at school and our cars and buses and vans all had a 68 written on them--the age of the deceased. Jack would have turned 69 this weekend.

I went in the American car of a doctor from my class of doctor's and Leader Lee, a nurse from my class, and another one of my students were in the car on the return trip.  My landlord was there and so were a dozen notable members of the local government, including the head of the health bureau and a deputy principle from the High School Attached to Northeast Normal University. Janet, the widow, did all right and her son was there, too. He looks like her.

Imagine fifteen of these (only oblong) being thrown into a fire.

If you want to learn more about Chinese customs surrounding death and burial, there is a good summary at China Culture. We each were presented with a flower on the way into the building which we lay at his head. Our hands were washed with grain alcohol on the way out. We all wore white sachets.

For me, the most appalling part was that we burned ten of fifteen 6x3 foot panels of styrofoam with plastic flowers in a big open air chimney at the conclusion of the ceremony. That will happen a couple dozen more times today. The western part of Changchun, where the private funeral home is, was home to the first car plant and was as polluted as Shenyang. The black soot issuing from the chimney as we drove away was disconcerting. There is a new train station being built very close to the funeral home. Steve, my doctor friend, told me that the municipal cremation place is on the other side of the city and that there are only two in all of Changchun--a city of 7 million or so.

How you decide to honor and deal with the bodies of 1.3 billion people is not a small matter. I remember the most fascinating Green Drinks that I attended in Concord was a couple of women who specialize in green burial practices. If you have any interest, see Green Burial - the final recycling effort.

Jack Murray, May He Rest in Peace

See http://changchunfriends.net/forum/topics/jack-murray-founder-and?xg_source=activity.

The school that Jack founded will continue to grow and expand, offering a wide variety of challenging, fun English learning opportunities for students of all ages and walks of life. I am not able to offer many more details at this time, but will keep you posted.

Chinglish Reducks: T-shirts, Real Estate Ads, and more

Sorry for my quackery in the title of this post, but I thought it was time to share a little bit more hard evidence of the bastardization of the King's English here in the Mediocre Kingdom. T-shirts are the funniest. A friend of mine met me for a walk in Peony Park a couple weeks ago wearing a T-shirt that said (across her bosom) something like, "I would prefer that you did not look at this." When I asked her if she understood her T-shirt, she said that she had not read it and was mortified. There are a large number of women (and some men) wandering around China in a similar predicament...or if they have read their Chinglish T-shirts, one is left wondering why they would not rather go topless. The turns of phrase and mixed metaphors on some are much more "yellow" (the Chinese expression for X-rated) than bare breasts.

Most of the T-shirts just don't make sense. You hardly ever see one in Chinese, though. English writing on T-shirts is in vogue. There was one in a window near here a couple days ago that said, "Two Typhoons Make a Zeitgeist."

2nd to T-Shirts in compleat and udder disreguard of speling or grammer is real estate ads. I hate to think what the kontract wood look like at one of these play says.

poly charming land, elegance from gentlefokl
Charming lanD

Next, eating establishments and supermarkets dice, chop, and burn the language. There is the "Glazed Fruid" stand at WalMart (why does a company that size not have quality control for its signage?) and my friend, who is German (er, Geman), was rather happy to shoot this photograph:

One rather hopes, but does not imagine, that the "sign painter" dipped his ink cartridge in toner on the way up from the cellar.

WalMart: Look out for the pieces of glass in the glazed fruid! No, not really, but food safety is a hot topic here. (This picture was posted previously.)

Finally, my friend snapped this one:

TOOFUNNY