As the death toll of the earthquake keeps rising, I'm so so thankful that everyone I know is OK, but deeply mournful for those who are not. This disaster hit a lot closer to home than most; I felt the same rumbles that felled buildings and killed thousands of people who, just like me, were going about their lives with no expectation that something so disastrous would happen so suddenly.
Xi'an escaped mostly unscathed. I have heard that a crane fell and killed three construction workers and I have seen several slightly damaged buildings, but thankfully that seems to be the extent of it. People are shaken up and paranoid, but they're sleeping inside again.
I wish I could say the same for all of China, but what felt like a 5.8 earthquake here in Xi'an was a 7.9 in western Sichuan. Too many lives and homes have been lost. Thankfully my friend Meg in Chengdu is OK, both because she is a dear friend and wonderful person and also because she is working hard to help some of the people most affected to recover from this disaster. Meg's time thus far in China has been spent doing microfinance and community development with a rabbit farming village west of Chengdu, and she is able to use her skills and contacts at this crucial time to help villagers in the affected region begin the process of rebuilding. If you are able, please donate money to support this earthquake relief project. Every little bit will help.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
evidence that the chalk artists are well and working hard
After hearing from several commenters on my previous earthquake posts that there is a group of Americans here in Xi'an right now doing chalk art, I set out on a mission to find them. It was a pretty easy mission, since I got a comment telling me exactly where they were and it was the first place I was planning to check anyways.
So I showed up at Ginwa Plaza in the middle of the afternoon, found the chalk artists hard at work on their drawings, and interrupted them to tell them that I, Random Stranger, had received worried messages on my blog from some of their people back home. The delighted shock on Cyndi's face honestly made me tear up a little, but I'm excessively empathetic.
Paul, Marie, and Brenda: I spoke with Cyndi and Lori, and can now offer authoritative proof that they are alive and well after the earthquake:
Cyndi with her Superman-in-progress
There were lots of people crowding around watching the work in progress.
(That brown building in the background is actually a Starbucks, so I imagine they had no trouble finding coffee after the 4 am aftershock evacuation.)
So I showed up at Ginwa Plaza in the middle of the afternoon, found the chalk artists hard at work on their drawings, and interrupted them to tell them that I, Random Stranger, had received worried messages on my blog from some of their people back home. The delighted shock on Cyndi's face honestly made me tear up a little, but I'm excessively empathetic.
Paul, Marie, and Brenda: I spoke with Cyndi and Lori, and can now offer authoritative proof that they are alive and well after the earthquake:
Cyndi with her Superman-in-progress
There were lots of people crowding around watching the work in progress.(That brown building in the background is actually a Starbucks, so I imagine they had no trouble finding coffee after the 4 am aftershock evacuation.)
The chalk art is being commissioned by Century Ginwa Shopping Center to celebrate their 10th anniversary. I'm looking forward to going back later in the week and seeing what the finished product looks like. And it sounds like the chalk artists have had pretty limited communication with the outside world, so I was more than happy to be a go-between. There are few better things in this world than meeting friendly people and making their days a little brighter.
Update: Still Alive
As far as I know, everyone in Xi'an is fine.
In fact, the city feels more alive than ever before. Since the earthquake, there have been tons of people outside. This has been a little disconcerting, as I'm sure they know things I don't. We received cryptic warnings last night of a second earthquake to hit between 10 pm and midnight. I tried to find more info online, but all I could find were a few foreign news articles saying that there had been a warning posted on a Chinese news site, but it had been taken down and the government wasn't saying anything.
Here on campus, there were people camped out on the badminton courts, in the gardens, seemingly anywhere but inside. I found Lily studying for the GRE in the hotel lobby, but when I asked her what she knew, she said she'd heard from her dad in Shanghai that the rumors were false. She was mostly in the hotel lobby because it was a quiet place to study away from her jabbering roommates, though she figured being on the first floor wouldn't hurt in the event of more aftershocks. She recommended that I stay up until at least midnight, but I was far too exhausted to feel that paranoid.
If there were aftershocks at 4 am, I definitely didn't notice them. Further proof that I can sleep through anything.
My morning survey from my bedroom window reveals that there are STILL people camped out on the badminton courts, though not near as many as last night. Lily said that one of the boys dormitories on campus never seemed especially structurally sound in the first place; her labmates decided to sleep in the lab rather than on the 17th floor. Otherwise, things look mostly normal. It appears to be a nice sunny day, and I am about to be late for Chinese class.
But first, a message to the commenters on my last post: Hello strangers! Where can I find these street painters? I just graduated from college a year ago with an art major, so I can't sit around on campus all day while there are street painters somewhere in the city. I'll be at Chinese class all morning, but Mission: Street Painters will commence at 1400. I'm more than happy to ferry messages between you and your loved ones if I can find them.
In fact, the city feels more alive than ever before. Since the earthquake, there have been tons of people outside. This has been a little disconcerting, as I'm sure they know things I don't. We received cryptic warnings last night of a second earthquake to hit between 10 pm and midnight. I tried to find more info online, but all I could find were a few foreign news articles saying that there had been a warning posted on a Chinese news site, but it had been taken down and the government wasn't saying anything.
Here on campus, there were people camped out on the badminton courts, in the gardens, seemingly anywhere but inside. I found Lily studying for the GRE in the hotel lobby, but when I asked her what she knew, she said she'd heard from her dad in Shanghai that the rumors were false. She was mostly in the hotel lobby because it was a quiet place to study away from her jabbering roommates, though she figured being on the first floor wouldn't hurt in the event of more aftershocks. She recommended that I stay up until at least midnight, but I was far too exhausted to feel that paranoid.
If there were aftershocks at 4 am, I definitely didn't notice them. Further proof that I can sleep through anything.
My morning survey from my bedroom window reveals that there are STILL people camped out on the badminton courts, though not near as many as last night. Lily said that one of the boys dormitories on campus never seemed especially structurally sound in the first place; her labmates decided to sleep in the lab rather than on the 17th floor. Otherwise, things look mostly normal. It appears to be a nice sunny day, and I am about to be late for Chinese class.
But first, a message to the commenters on my last post: Hello strangers! Where can I find these street painters? I just graduated from college a year ago with an art major, so I can't sit around on campus all day while there are street painters somewhere in the city. I'll be at Chinese class all morning, but Mission: Street Painters will commence at 1400. I'm more than happy to ferry messages between you and your loved ones if I can find them.
Monday, May 12, 2008
EARTHQUAKE!
This afternoon at about 2:30, as I was laying in bed reading in between classes on the new campus, my stomach started to rumble. I thought maybe my lunch hadn't totally agreed with me until I noticed that the rumbling had grown, and soon the bed was shaking, the windows were shaking, the walls and floors were shaking. I have seen cartoons of earthquakes before and always thought that the undulating appearance of everything was a comic exaggeration, but it's not. That's exactly what it looked and felt like. I grabbed my laptop and stood in the doorway, a supposedly safer place. At that point I wasn't about to try to evacuate the building, what with everything moving as it was. After a few minutes the floor stopped moving, and a few more minutes after that the lights hanging from the ceiling stopped swinging, so I settled back in to my free afternoon.
Of course, Kitty came in about half an hour later to get some stuff and check if I was there and informed me that everyone else on campus had evacuated every building and were all standing outside waiting for further instruction. After going outside, Hou Laoshi (the teacher in charge of my freshman students) pointed out two huge cracks in a nearby academic building.
All afternoon classes were canceled, so I watched Kitty's students continue their game of kickball while we waited for more news. The news was mostly inconclusive, but eventually we found a student who had heard from Ma Jing that our evening classes would be canceled as well, so Kitty and I came home on the 6 o'clock bus.
This was my first earthquake, and apparently it was a 7.8 on the Richter scale in northwestern Sichuan province where it originated. The earthquake was felt as far away as Bangkok. Every time I check the news, it sounds worse. 4 kids dead in a collapsed elementary school in Chongqing. Somebody crushed by a fallen water tower. 900 students trapped in a high school in Sichuan. The latest confirmed death toll is 107, but estimates are up to 5000.
We've heard rumors of another quake coming within the next two hours, but the government hasn't released any official warning, and I have few sources of information. Cell phones mostly aren't working, and I haven't had any natural disaster units yet in Chinese class. Wish me luck.
Of course, Kitty came in about half an hour later to get some stuff and check if I was there and informed me that everyone else on campus had evacuated every building and were all standing outside waiting for further instruction. After going outside, Hou Laoshi (the teacher in charge of my freshman students) pointed out two huge cracks in a nearby academic building.
All afternoon classes were canceled, so I watched Kitty's students continue their game of kickball while we waited for more news. The news was mostly inconclusive, but eventually we found a student who had heard from Ma Jing that our evening classes would be canceled as well, so Kitty and I came home on the 6 o'clock bus.
This was my first earthquake, and apparently it was a 7.8 on the Richter scale in northwestern Sichuan province where it originated. The earthquake was felt as far away as Bangkok. Every time I check the news, it sounds worse. 4 kids dead in a collapsed elementary school in Chongqing. Somebody crushed by a fallen water tower. 900 students trapped in a high school in Sichuan. The latest confirmed death toll is 107, but estimates are up to 5000.
We've heard rumors of another quake coming within the next two hours, but the government hasn't released any official warning, and I have few sources of information. Cell phones mostly aren't working, and I haven't had any natural disaster units yet in Chinese class. Wish me luck.
Friday, May 9, 2008
my silkmoth, his sad life, and its eventual improvement
This semester, I have been tutoring three 10-year olds once a week. Every Sunday evening, the kids greet me outside Anna's apartment complex. Sam gestures in the open air and says, "Teacher, come in! This way please!" "Teacher, please go first!" "Teacher, welcome to your home!" His grasp of English may not be amazing, but his hospitality is top-notch. Jinlin usually arrives a little late, which gives Anna's mom plenty of time to bring me tea and talk to me in way more fast Chinese than I can understand. She thinks my Chinese skills are better than they are because I've learned which parts of her questions to repeat in order to give a satisfactory answer.
Our hour-long tutoring session usually starts with textbook dialogues and devolves into the kids drawing pictures on the whiteboard saying, "Teacher, what's this?", Anna using new vocabulary to insult Sam, Sam getting annoyed with Anna and trying to overtake everyone else's turns to speak, and Anna turning any conversation into one about her rabbit, who then must make an appearance. Our first lesson couldn't begin until Anna had shown me her rabbit (who is either incredibly tolerant or has learned that resistance is futile), turtle, fish, and silkworms. One week there were tadpoles. She tried to give me some, until Jinlin's mother convinced her that this was impractical since I live in a hotel.
I usually can't make it out without some sort of gift. The first two weeks Anna wanted to play songs for me on the piano after class. Her mother has often sent me home with snacks, including a Chinese donut thing, various candies, an entire bunch of bananas, and two lemons. Last week there were no snacks, but Anna gave me a silkworm pupa.
Yes, a silkworm pupa. Her worms, whose weekly progress I had been monitoring as they grew and munched mulberry leaves, had all spun their cocoons and gone into hiding. Anna handed one to me and told me to put it in a container with a napkin on top when I got home. I tried to ask her if I needed to feed it eventually, but every time I asked "What does it eat?" she answered "Yes." So I put it in a bowl with a napkin on top, and waited to see what would happen.
A few days later when I checked on my silkpod, there was a creepy silkmoth standing next to it, and a weird trail of something that looks like blood coming out of the cocoon:
Research reveals that it is not blood, but enzymes that the moth uses to make a hole in the cocoon. Research also reveals that silkworms are pretty fascinating creatures. They aren't actually worms at all. They are caterpillars, and are perhaps the most domesticated creature, since they are now completely reliant on humans for survival. Each cocoon is made of a continuous thread of silk almost a kilometer long, and the annual world production of silk filament could make more than 300 round trips to the sun.
Unfortunately for silkmoths, research also reveals that adult silkmoths cannot fly or eat; all they do is reproduce and die within two weeks. Sad life. Even sadder: If I had wanted to harvest the silk, I should have BOILED the silkmoth to death inside the silkpod so that it wouldn't cut the fibers on its way out.
Instead, I got a sad and lonely little pet. When I lamented to Lily about his loneliness and inability to perform his only remaining function, she recommended that I ask Anna for another silkmoth, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about telling a 10-year-old, "Hey, my silkmoth is horny and needs a woman."
Luckily, Anna is wise to facts of silkmoth life, and after class tonight she told me that I actually need two silkmoths. I took a lady silkmoth, in the hopes that my guess about the sex of the original was correct. And I'm pretty sure it was, because he perked up immediately upon the arrival of his new companion and began flapping his wings nonstop and trying to figure out how to do what he was supposed to do.
Hopefully I'll have silkworm babies someday soon.
(If you're interested in learning more about the mating habits of insects, I recommend checking out Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno, a series of short films in which she wears hilarious bug costumes and demonstrates their bizarre sexual practices. I can't watch it yet from China, but I've heard good things. And don't worry Grandma, it's not really porno, just a funny Italian lady pretending to be an insect!)
Our hour-long tutoring session usually starts with textbook dialogues and devolves into the kids drawing pictures on the whiteboard saying, "Teacher, what's this?", Anna using new vocabulary to insult Sam, Sam getting annoyed with Anna and trying to overtake everyone else's turns to speak, and Anna turning any conversation into one about her rabbit, who then must make an appearance. Our first lesson couldn't begin until Anna had shown me her rabbit (who is either incredibly tolerant or has learned that resistance is futile), turtle, fish, and silkworms. One week there were tadpoles. She tried to give me some, until Jinlin's mother convinced her that this was impractical since I live in a hotel.
I usually can't make it out without some sort of gift. The first two weeks Anna wanted to play songs for me on the piano after class. Her mother has often sent me home with snacks, including a Chinese donut thing, various candies, an entire bunch of bananas, and two lemons. Last week there were no snacks, but Anna gave me a silkworm pupa.
Yes, a silkworm pupa. Her worms, whose weekly progress I had been monitoring as they grew and munched mulberry leaves, had all spun their cocoons and gone into hiding. Anna handed one to me and told me to put it in a container with a napkin on top when I got home. I tried to ask her if I needed to feed it eventually, but every time I asked "What does it eat?" she answered "Yes." So I put it in a bowl with a napkin on top, and waited to see what would happen.
A few days later when I checked on my silkpod, there was a creepy silkmoth standing next to it, and a weird trail of something that looks like blood coming out of the cocoon:
Research reveals that it is not blood, but enzymes that the moth uses to make a hole in the cocoon. Research also reveals that silkworms are pretty fascinating creatures. They aren't actually worms at all. They are caterpillars, and are perhaps the most domesticated creature, since they are now completely reliant on humans for survival. Each cocoon is made of a continuous thread of silk almost a kilometer long, and the annual world production of silk filament could make more than 300 round trips to the sun.
Unfortunately for silkmoths, research also reveals that adult silkmoths cannot fly or eat; all they do is reproduce and die within two weeks. Sad life. Even sadder: If I had wanted to harvest the silk, I should have BOILED the silkmoth to death inside the silkpod so that it wouldn't cut the fibers on its way out.
Instead, I got a sad and lonely little pet. When I lamented to Lily about his loneliness and inability to perform his only remaining function, she recommended that I ask Anna for another silkmoth, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about telling a 10-year-old, "Hey, my silkmoth is horny and needs a woman."
Luckily, Anna is wise to facts of silkmoth life, and after class tonight she told me that I actually need two silkmoths. I took a lady silkmoth, in the hopes that my guess about the sex of the original was correct. And I'm pretty sure it was, because he perked up immediately upon the arrival of his new companion and began flapping his wings nonstop and trying to figure out how to do what he was supposed to do.
Hopefully I'll have silkworm babies someday soon.
(If you're interested in learning more about the mating habits of insects, I recommend checking out Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno, a series of short films in which she wears hilarious bug costumes and demonstrates their bizarre sexual practices. I can't watch it yet from China, but I've heard good things. And don't worry Grandma, it's not really porno, just a funny Italian lady pretending to be an insect!)
Monday, April 21, 2008
Oft trifft West
I just stumbled across a project called Oft trifft West by Yang Liu, a Chinese artist living in Germany, which attempts to explain several differences between Chinese and German culture. I'm not German, but close enough:
This is a obviously a somewhat simplistic view of things, but sometimes it really does feel like this. Especially when you know you need to leave China two weeks before your contract ends to attend one of your best friends' weddings and would like to get proper permission to do so. I've been asking questions since I got here, but probably won't arrive at the answer until a week or two before I leave the country. I'm confident that I will eventually get the permission I need, but there are several hoops I must jump through and people I must appeal to before that can happen. In any case, I've booked a plane ticket and I'll cut and run if I have to.
This is a obviously a somewhat simplistic view of things, but sometimes it really does feel like this. Especially when you know you need to leave China two weeks before your contract ends to attend one of your best friends' weddings and would like to get proper permission to do so. I've been asking questions since I got here, but probably won't arrive at the answer until a week or two before I leave the country. I'm confident that I will eventually get the permission I need, but there are several hoops I must jump through and people I must appeal to before that can happen. In any case, I've booked a plane ticket and I'll cut and run if I have to.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
CCTV strikes again
This morning I was reading an article about the promise of concentrated solar power, and now CCTV International is teaching me about the Yang Sui, a mirror mentioned in the article that was used during the Zhou dynasty to start fires with concentrated sunlight. This is a rare moment of convergence between CCTV and any other media I may consume.
CCTV International can be pretty amusing though. Since I turned the TV on a little bit ago while sorting my laundry, I have seen:
CCTV International can be pretty amusing though. Since I turned the TV on a little bit ago while sorting my laundry, I have seen:
- several westerners in China saying what a shame it is that the Olympics have become so politicized
- a Chinese language-learning program focusing on words associated with ping pong
- a comparison of three of the most popular skin-whitening products
- interviews with several foreign students in Beijing who will volunteer at the Olympics
- a stock car race taking place in Shanghai
- an instrumental cover of One Night in Beijing (perhaps our favorite Chinese song!) played on the erhu, the pipa, and the dizi
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