Sunday, April 17, 2011

Longtan park 龙滩公园

Okay, here is my first attempt at writing about the every day experience of China, opposed to telling the stories of me running around with my friends until the wee hours of the morning.  So I my first edition is about Longtan park.  Longtan park is a very large park very close to my school.  I go running through here almost every day.  I try to run every day but since I have no plans to run in any races in the near future motivation can be a little hard to come by some days.  So now I'm just trying to run because it's something that I love to do, opposed to something that I feel like I have to do and if I don't get out I feel guilty about myself (which has been the case at various times in my life).

So, on to the park.  The gate is about a 10-15 minute walk from my apartment or a 4 minute run (I've only walked into longtan 2 or 3 times).  So upon entering the gate of the park, you seriously enter a different world.  Gone are the hundreds of cars and thousands of electric scooters that drive like pedestrians do not exist.  Also, the air is notably better in the park, and there is green space, something that is mostly nonexistent in chinese cities.  So naturally this place is a big attraction in the city and can become very very crowded at times.  So when I go running in longtan I try to avoid times when the crowds are the biggest, basically the middle of the day.  The park is quite wooded with a small lake in the middle.  There are also several karst peaks that have steps to the top.  I have yet to climb any of these.  So the roads in the park are roughly laid out like the greek letter Phi.  One main road in the middle and two roads that make a circle around the lake in one half and through the woods in the other.  There are a few trails around the park but they're not really suitable for running.  I feel pretty fortunate to have the park this close because I easily have access to a decent running grounds.  I have figured out how to cut up the roads into various loops and have made a series of routes that I go on depending the amount of time that I want to run.

Longtan park likes to pride itself on being a "natural" park where development is limited.  While yes, Longtan is better than most chinese parks at having open fields and forests (most parks are based around large public squares) it still has almost all the features of every park.  It has various carnival type rides; looping pirate ship, go-karts, bumper cars, bumper boats, log flume, carnival games, etc.  I mean, it still is quite nice but there is still the obvious objective of making money here.

As I run through the park I often become one of the attractions for the Chinese people.  I probably am in 100s of photos that people try to discretely take of me.  I can typically figure out when people want to take a picture of me, its actually quite easy.  usually, someone will be pretending to take a picture of something that is quite unremarkable, like a tree, then quickly turn their cameras towards me and snap the shot.  When I catch them doing this I try to make a face of some sort, give a thumbs up or look away.  I gotta to show them that I'm smarter than they think I am. Another thing they love doing is just yelling "hello" at me and then turn and start laughing with their friends.  Most of the time it is kids that do this but other times older people will join in on the act.  They think they're so clever!

One of the most interesting things about the park is when you go there in the morning.  Hundreds of elderly people will be there walking around, playing music, dancing, singing, writing calligraphy on the ground with water, playing cards, and so on.  I feel like this is something America could really learn from the Chinese.  There is so much benefit to regular social interaction that I feel is missed out on by some of the elderly in the US.  Also the elderly are still very active despite their age and I feel that this stems from a culture that values active lifestyles and social interaction in public places.

Okay, I dont really know where to go from here.  I feel that there is a lot more I can talk about but don't know how to put it together.  The weather is great here now, upper 70's and sunny so I'm enjoying it!

Monday, April 11, 2011

Tomb Sweeping Day

Hello everyone!  Its been a pretty slow monday night so I've decided to give the blog a good ole updating.  So, from where I left off last, I had just finished a long weekend where I had thursday and friday off of lessons.  So the next week I was informed that I would have to work on a saturday and then have sunday, monday and tuesday off for the Chinese holiday "tomb sweeping day", but more on that later.  So being informed that I had to work a 6 day week, I was a little baffled why would they just have monday off.  Regardless, they said work and I did....

So yeah, events during my 6 day week were not too exciting.  The first half was pretty typical, teaching and what not.  Then on Thursday i believe, laura had a friend from home visit us here in Liuzhou!  Jackie (laura's friend) worked for the British Council in Hong Kong.  She explained to me what she did exactly, but I don't really remember.  So on thursday night we went to Soho for a little while, but we couldn't be out late because we had to teach early on Friday.  Friday night a big group (me, laura, elaina, jackie, xiao liao, william edison and CC) of us headed out to a restaurant in the city center.  I don't know the name but everyone just called it the bamboo restaurant.  So yeah, from there we went to time bar for a bit, and then to Soho.  We were probably out a little too late for our own good, given we had to teach the next day, but not until 11:15 so I was able to sleep in.  So saturday I begrudgingly (Side note, i just spelt that word correctly on the first try, gotta be worth something!?) dragged myself to school and taught my relatively easy lesson. After lessons, I said goodbye to jackie as laura took her to the train station to catch the train to shenzhen.  Saturday night I met up with william, and we went to, you guessed it soho.  I dont know why we always go here, its a fun spot but there are plenty of other places to hang out as well.  I dunno.

So after another random night of running around I decided on sunday morning to go to Yangshuo.  I kinda went to yangshuo out of necessity but I definitely was excited to head back to my old stomping grounds!  Because of the holiday the trains were packed so i had to wait an hour to catch one of the slowest trains to guilin.  It was mildly frustrating but I still managed to get there.  So then in guilin I wanted to catch the express bus which left from the bus station a few minutes down the road.  For whatever reason I couldn't find the station, to only find out that the last express bus left at 6. the exact time when my train pulled in.  So after wasting away an hour I ended up taking the normal bus that left from the train station.  I finally arrived in yangshuo at around 830 and made my way to the school as fast as I could.  It was really exciting to see all my old friends back at the school.  So from there we went to the grand reopening of the Stone Rose.  It was pretty fun seeing how different the place looks from before.  The weekend in Yangshuo wasn't the most exciting but it was just good to spend time with the people there.  I also talked to Isabella for some time about my options for staying in China longer.  So that was a very useful conversation.  On that note this is something I really have been thinking a lot about recently.  I am really enjoying my time here and could see myself here for a year.  The school really wants me to stay and I would get paid more.  But if I did stay that means I would miss coaching cross country this fall, something I really really enjoyed last year.  Right now I am siding on staying longer because I feel once I leave China, It will be quite a long time until I come back.  Also, I think I'll need more time to work on the language.

So my return trip was kinda funny, looking back at it.  On the bus back to the train station I sat next to this chinese girl, and I talked to her for a few minutes but then i dosed off to sleep, waking up about 5 minutes from the station.  So just before we arrive, she does a totally chinese thing.  She gives me her phone and says "can we make friends" okay, she wants my cellphone number.  But when I was talking to her she said that she lives in Nanning.  So will I ever talk to her again?  no.  Regardless I gave her my number anyways and I have hers, never to be used.  So I go to buy my ticket at the train station for the train that leaves in 15 minutes, a woman comes up to me trying to sell me her ticket.  I look at it and it seemed legit, but I didnt want to buy it from her because you never know.  I don't know why I didn't pull the "i cant speak chinese, I dont understand you" card.  Anyways my ticket ended up being a standing room only ticket (the lady's was too).  So when I got on the train I wandered around for a bit and ended up sitting on a step.  This wasn't all that bad since this was only a 2 hour train back to liuzhou.  So I arrive home and call it an early night, exhausted from the long weekend of running around until the wee hours of the morning.

So this week was a 3 day week which was awesome.  But one of the most terrifying things happened to me in class on friday (actually its the week before but i'm telling it to you now).  So I'm teaching my lesson and then all of a sudden my phone starts ringing.  Not too loud, or anything and typically this is NBD but then a group of girls start laughing in the corner.  this meant only one thing THE STUPID GIRLS HAD MY CELLPHONE NUMBER.  This had potential to be one of the worst things ever.  I had no idea how they got it and they wouldn't tell me.  But I do have a pretty good theory (they went through their written english teacher's phone).

This past weekend was pretty typical.  Me and laura went to the city center friday night and met up with edison, william, cc stephen and xiao liao.  We hung out at time bar for a while and then laura and I went to money box.  We hung out there for a while and then these chinese guys invited us to their table.  we played some dice with them and whatnot.  Once things started winding down they invited us to hang out at their place in the city center.  "their place" turned out to be the Liuzhou Grand Hotel.  The hotel would be really nice by western standards so I had to guess these guys were quite minted.  So we just kinda sat around there doing nothing for a while, until they got us some KFC and after an hour or so we rolled home (side note, KFC and McDonalds deliver in china).  On saturday I agreed to meet up with this girl who I met the week before. She had been texting me non stop for a while, so I finally gave in.  I made every effort in the book to reinforce that this was not a date.  I told her that I might bring my friends and she said she didnt care.  good deal.  So I met her, and then we go meet some of her friends, who were with this german guy that I had seen around the city.  We wen't to get some food n such, then her friends left.  So then we were going to go play pool, but none of the tables were open so we walked over to williams place because he said he was getting people together to hang out in his apt.  We hang out over there for a while and then hit up our typical spot, soho.  We ended up not being there for too long before heading home.

Okay, so I now that i'm up to speed I will explain what tomb sweeping day is.  Tomb Sweeping Day is a holiday where Chinese family go visit the tombs of their ancestors. Of course, they light off firecrackers (to scare the bad spirits away).  At first I thought this was just a pretty basic holiday, but then on the train ride back to Liuzhou I was thinking about what if we had this.  To make a point of going to visit the ones who have passed before us.  Then I realized that I have never visited my Grandfathers grave.  He died almost 5 years ago and the last time I was there was at his funeral.  Yeah, it's about a 6 hour drive away but Chinese people will take train rides that are exponentially longer just to clean the tomb of their ancestors.  Just some food for thought.

Okay, to cap off this blog I think I'm going to try to change the tone of it a bit.  I think I will write more about chinese culture and traditions and so on.  I felt this blog post was mostly about nightlife and whatnot. I am doing a lot more than that, but it just feels like more day-to-day things like going running, teaching lessons and stuff that just doesn't seem to noteworthy.  but its in these day-to-day things is where I really experience the regular culture.  I will try to think of things but If you have any specific questions about things you want to hear, let me know!