seeing stars

I just read a heartbreaking journal entry written by one of my students. For Thanksgiving, I asked them to write about what they are most thankful for (I know that was awhile ago, but I only collected journals twice during the semester and am just finishing the last little stack of them tonight). This student wrote that he is most thankful for the sky. He wrote about laying around watching the sky as a child in the countryside, counting stars with his grandfather on summer nights, then wrote about how the sky is grey now and he can't see the stars under all the city lights. He is thankful for the sky because it gave him a happy childhood, showed him the beauty of nature, and teaches him that some things are very rare and easily broken and should be cherished. "I have lost the blue sky, I don't want to lose other 'blue sky' any more."

Tonight walking to dinner with Jens and Sarah were talking about how I am still grading journals, since I can't bring myself to do them all at once and thus it seems like I am constantly grading them and have been grading them for ever. I mentioned how mind-numbing it can be to go through too many in a row, and we joked that I shouldn't let my students know that a little piece of my heart dies every time I have to grade a journal. Usually that is not true, but maybe it was for this one.

It can be easy to forget about the stars when you can't see them every night. I miss them. That was one of the most wonderful things about climbing Mount Hua (beginning of October, still haven't blogged about it, photos at least to come very soon!): I could see the stars, and they looked amazing.

So for the benefit of all of us, here is a photo of the Milky Way taken by my newspaper-photographer-turned-recreational-astronomer uncle:

(Don't steal his picture for anything other than personal use [i.e. looking at it and remembering how good life is; Uncle Jerry says "I find it gives me a sense of scale to any problems/frustrations"], but if you do, at least give credit and good karma to Jerry Telfer.)

In other news, I hope everyone has been enjoying the holiday season and is looking forward to another new year!

It was a little weird not being home for Christmas, but I had a lot of fun celebrating it here. Mostly it just felt like a completely different holiday, which was pretty exciting, though I'll look forward to having Christmas-as-I-know-it again next year. Still, there was lots of merriment and good food and good company and a small mountain of presents (my mom went a bit overboard -- thanks!!!), which is what any good holiday is made of (except for the presents -- a good holiday doesn't actually need presents).

I leave in three days for Taiwan, where I will spend a week and a half, followed by a week back in Xi'an and surrounding areas with Steve, followed by a solid month of travel to such exciting destinations as Chengdu, Thailand, and Cambodia (specifically, Angkor Wat!!). I'm hoping to do some serious blogging catch-up before I leave, as I'll obviously have a LOT more to say when I get back, but I can make no real guarantees. I'm also hoping to write all of the long emails I have been owing people (if you've sent me an email and haven't heard back, you know who you are), but again, no guarantees. So if you don't hear from me, know that I'm thinking of all of you and missing you and wishing we were together in real life so you wouldn't have to be tortured by my agonizingly slow blog and email response rates. I am 15 hours in the future and running out of time!

recycling and related thoughts

Check out this video from China's Green Beat, which I recently discovered via TreeHugger:



Of course, I started seeing bicycles like this immediately after arriving in China -- I remember that one of the things that surprised me the most when I arrived jetlagged in Beijing 2.5 years ago on my scholar garden trip was the sheer quantity of things that could fit on one bicycle -- but I didn't realize right away how comprehensively all the trash is sorted. I asked Ma Jing awhile back if there was anywhere I could take my recycling, since the hotel maids just took everything with the trash. She said I didn't need to worry about it, that all the trash would get sorted and recycled. And now I know how.

I have mixed feelings about China's relationship to the environment. On one hand, China is burning massive amounts of coal and has surpassed U.S. carbon emissions (of course, it also has more than four times the population, and the U.S. is largely implicated in creating and perpetuating the pollution problem by relying on cheap consumer goods made in China). On the other hand, people in China use much less and re-use much more (see Kitty's blog for an example of re-use taken too far). It isn't about the environment as much as it is about what is viable in a highly populated developing country. And I worry about that word developing, because so many of the ways in which China is environmentally superior to the U.S. (smaller apartments in high-density mixed-use urban areas, lots of public transit and bicycles, fewer private cars, more repair and reuse of damaged goods rather than discarding and repurchasing, etc.) seem to be at odds with the consumer culture, dare I say the "American dream," that so much of the world aspires to, a culture and dream that have historically disregarded environmental protection in pursuit of economic growth.

I've been reading and thinking a lot about this lately. I've been following the news about the UN conference in Bali, where the Bush administration wouldn't agree to set targets for greenhouse gas reductions and doesn't want to agree to anything if China and India won't agree to limit their emissions as well. I don't think that economic growth and environmentalism must necessarily be at odds (in the long run, they certainly aren't), but I don't see how we can expect China to develop in the most environmental way possible if we aren't willing to make amends for the fact that we didn't.

And it doesn't matter whether or not you believe that global warming is happening and is caused by humans (though I certainly do) -- in any case, I don't think that we are entitled to consume so much more than our fair share of resources, and I don't think we should rely on energy sources that create so much pollution when there are other potential options, and I don't think that having so much stuff makes us any happier.

So I'm trying to stop being a hypocrite and start doing my part in being kinder to our planet and the other people who are living on it. I drinking boiled tap water stored in reused bottles instead of buying bottled water. I am taking the stairs. I am only washing my clothes when they really need it, and don't have a dryer. I am wearing more layers instead of turning up the heat. I am being vigilant about lightswitches. I am not taking showers when I don't need them. I am walking and taking the bus whenever possible instead of taking a taxi. I am saving and reusing whatever I can -- bottles, bags, papers that my students have written notes to me on one side of. I spent three weeks in class talking with my students -- future airplane designers, weapons designers, members of the communist party -- about environmental issues, about what we can do as individuals, about what China can do as a country, and about the relationship between the environment and the economy. I am not buying things I won't fully use. I am trying to keep educating myself and keep getting better, though I have a lot further to go and sometimes feel limited by my circumstances, especially when language barriers keep me from making more-informed choices.

Whew! That turned into a much longer post than the "check out this video" I was intending, but I guess there is a lot to say.

Christmas preparations, China style

Last night Sarah and I attempted to make gingerbread men, which was certainly a comedy of errors given our attempts to make do with the ingredients and kitchen resources available to us in China.

This started with an afternoon adventure to Metro, a German chain paradise of imported goodies that we had heard about but not yet seen. I was willed a Metro card with a blurry picture of a white female with brown hair by a previous Whitman in China teacher, so we could have used that to get in, but Ali managed to get me a letter in Chinese from the university that said something to the effect of, "Shelby is a teacher at our university; give her a damn Metro card!" It worked, well enough to get Metro cards for Jens and Sarah too. Metro is huge and apparently sells everything -- mostly things we could get at Ren Ren Le without the long bus ride across town, but we were on a mission for various Christmas recipe spices and baking ingredients, and a side-mission for cheese and gin.

We couldn't find all the spices we were looking for. There is seemingly no nutmeg in China, and we found outrageously expensive vanilla beans but no vanilla extract. No baking soda either, though perhaps that is around and we just don't know where to look. This means no eggnog and a carefully selected fudge recipe.

The cheese, however was plentiful. I almost bought a 5 kg brick of cheddar which was misleadingly labeled as costing 77 kuai (less than $10), when in fact that was the price per kilogram. Of course it had to be -- no way could imported cheese really be that cheap -- but I had even asked somebody who worked there and she made it sound like that was the price for the whole thing, so I carried it around the store for awhile until finding out it was really too expensive and abandoning it. I did get a little package of Australian white cheddar though, which claims to be "sharp and bitey." Can't wait to try it.

Anyways. Gingerbread men. Sarah had a recipe from her mother, which called for very British things like treacle (which we've decided is probably the same as molasses) and golden syrup (which is made from sugar cane juice). When Sarah first described golden syrup it sounded a lot like simple syrup, so we tried to make some of that as a substitute, but ended up with a sugary disaster when Sarah didn't heed my warnings that we should keep the heat low and it probably would never get as thick as golden syrup. Ooops. Take two, I just skipped making syrup and went to the next part of the recipe, where the syrup was to be combined with the non-existent treacle, brown sugar, and butter. This seemed successful, but the measurements were off somewhere, because when we mixed it with the flour and ginger it was way too dry to possibly resemble a dough. So we added more, ended up with a sticky mess, added a ton more flour as I eventually worked my gingerbread-covered hands into something that seemed the right consistency. So we thought we were doing well, and proceeded to roll out the dough and cut out people and Christmas trees, as well as other great shapes such as a Christmas rhino, Christmas anvil, and Christmas giraffe.

Of course, then we had to bake the things in Sarah's oven, which is basically a glorified toaster oven. The first batch ended up extraordinarily hard and crunchy, but we took the second batch out sooner and they were mildly better. Sarah tried to decorate one with the "frosting" we had picked up at Ren Ren Le. After using it and inspecting the packaging in greater detail, we discovered that it was actually strawberry-flavored sweetened condensed milk that came in a tube. Oooops. We didn't make it through all of the dough last night, as it was going on 2 am, but I suppose we made a lot of mistakes and discoveries that Sarah can benefit from when she tries to make another batch for her Christmas party next weekend.

I'll be making fudge. I have all the ingredients, but don't trust myself to make fudge this far in advance and still have it around for the party. Steve is in Colorado and ate dinner with my mom the other night, who brought him lots of cookies and fudge, which reminded me how good fudge is and how I will have to make it myself if I want to eat it anytime soon.

I apologize for the detailed technicality of the above kitchen rambling. I miss cooking! I really do. The one major downside to living in a hotel is that my kitchen is pretty insufficient, meaning that I have no stovetop and no oven. I've been getting pretty creative with my rice-cooker -- who knew that you could hard-steam an egg, or steam frozen lamb meat? -- but there are a lot of things that I just can't make. Of course, there is little need to cook, considering how plentiful, inexpensive, quick, and delicious all of the restaurants around here are, but every time I think of something I want to make I am again thwarted by my kitchen. (Also by lack of ingredients. I made an amazing raspberry-lime pie last year; there are no raspberries OR limes [probably my two favorite fruits] in China.)

In other news, the Christmas season is in full swing here. I absolutely wasn't expecting that, but Ren Ren Le has been filled with Christmas decorations and music since the end of November, and lots of other stores and restaurants have been slowly following suit. There are Christmas trees with lights and ornaments. There are big cardboard Santa faces on every hotel door. There is Christmas music sung in Chinese. It will be interesting to see how Christmas is actually celebrated -- I've heard rumblings about a Christmas Eve downtown that is part Mardi Gras, part New Year's Eve, part 4th of July parade, and very little like any Christmas Eve I have ever experienced (which have mostly consisted of Christmas books, candlelight church services, and the traditional family Christmas Eve chili and Pepsi). It should be an interesting evening.

Here is my own little Christmas tree, courtesy of Aunt Marita and Amazon.com:


Apparently my mom saw the same thing at Barnes & Noble, thought it would be perfect for me, forgot that Aunt Marita had sent me one, and shipped it in my Christmas box, which will hopefully arrive soon. Oooops! Free Christmas tree for Kitty!

More to come soon, with lots of photos. At least I've realized that the fact that I'm way behind on blogging should NOT keep me from blogging until I've caught up.