I've been trying to write a post for the past two hours, but it has all come to naught. In lieu of my own words, here are some from other people that I've been mulling over lately.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

--Socrates, from Plato's Apology

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

--the Son, from Matthew

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

--T.S. Eliot, from "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock"

I wish I had a river I could skate away on.

--Joni Mitchell, "River"

I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

But when he, the Spirit of Truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.

--the Son, from John

I'm leaving Nanchang in two days, and China in six. All peace to you.

I've been sifting through the many aspects of thought lately. Take an honest minute and "think" about these things.

A girl with small white sneakers who just put her trust in something unfailing.

A questioner who took a leap and found solid rock.

A friend whose first-love joy is so tangible that it increases mine.

Another nearing the end of the road who will have to make a choice.

It's likely you're in my thoughts too. Praise him!

Aiyah!* Fie upon my own fickleness in keeping this blog updated, and all prizes to you for checking it after a whopping 46 days of silence. Again, there is too much to tell, but here are some pictures.

*Aiyah is the Chinese cry for universal surprise, frustration, or pain.


The first week of May is a holiday in China. Labor Day, the holiday of the workers! Hooray for the workers! Hooray for no classes! One of my students, Marie, invited me to visit her hometown. After a seven hour journey by crowded train and van, we arrived in her village. This is Marie, her father, and her mother in front of their home, which doubles as a motorcycle shop. They live in three rooms above the shop, have a kitchen in an alley behind, and a backyard with a well for washing. They were unflinchingly hospitable to me, even though I could hardly speak more than three words of Chinese. Marie proved to be a proficient translator during our two days there. Actually, the most trying part of the visit for me was having to repeatedly refuse the outpouring of their kindness.

People wake up early in the countryside, both because the roosters' jubilation begins at 5:00 in the morning and because the cool part of the day is a prime time to get things done. Everyone was out on the streets by 6:00, gathered around the corner market, sweeping their front sidewalks, pulling weeds in their roadside gardens, or preparing another batch of dumplings to sell.

For all that Chinese food is delicious, I have retained some mental barriers to certain foods, and my gag reflex is fully functioning. Having heard horror stories of friends choking on unfamiliar dishes like turtle, snails, chicken feet, and other "delicacies," I still hadn't come up with a plan for how to graciously avoid strange foods when Marie and I arrived late the first night. Marie's mother, extending traditional Chinese hospitality, had prepared an enormous dinner even though it was past 10:00. We sat down to eat, and Marie ladled a heaping serving of soup into my bowl. It was liquified chicken fat and chainsaw chicken--chicken that has been chopped up whole without being de-boned...which means beak, talons, and ribs...the whole thing. It was a moment of crisis. I slurped up the broth, but fed the chicken bones to the three dogs running around underneath the table. It's customary to drop or spit bones onto the floor anyway, but I was thankful for the dogs. At least her mother wasn't offended by sweeping up my un-gnawed chunks of chicken. I got along much better with the garlic shoots. Hen chi. (Delicious.)



Marie eating a zhongzi (that is spelled completely wrong)...it's a pyramid of glutinous rice and ham wrapped in bamboo leaves and steamed. According to Marie, "It is a specialty of China for the Dragon Boat Festival." After a two-hour taxi ride from Marie's hometown to the train station, we ate them for breakfast before our train left from JiAn.

On the last Saturday of May Holiday, I accompanied Esther and her friend to MeiLing Mountain, a one-hour bus ride from Nanchang.

This pagoda was intriguing because contrary to all expectations, it was outfitted with it's own sound system, electricity, and a fresh coat of paint. Even the stone lions at the front were untarnished. Conclusion: it was newly built for the tourists, all nine stories of it. Oh, China!

Office hours!
One Saturday evening, Anna, Sarah Jane, Sarah, and Laura came over to my apartment to show me how to make dumplings. I'll give it a try when I come home. Prepare to be subjected to my dumpling experiments!

Random Fact: Many private universities send out/ force their underclassmen students to go recruiting during May holiday and well into the months of May and June. The students are paid if they entice anyone to come, but in the meantime they're missing classes...my classes. Including the final exam. Is this an educational institution or a business? Mmmmmmm.

Contextualization

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not rice, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

I am the rice of life.

Sometimes you just have to cross the street and trust that the cars won’t hit you. In fact, this is the only way to cross the street in China. If you try to wait for the cars to clear up, you’ll wait a long time, so the best plan is to inch your way out into the street and let the taxis and motorbikes go around you, like a river around a boulder.

I recently had to make a decision about whether or not to stay in China for another year. I had been thinking about it since January, asking the father to give me direction, sorting out my own motives for making a decision either way, trying to distance myself from everything that frightens me about staying and about coming home. I wish I could tell you that on the day the decision was due, I had certainty about what to do, but the truth is I was no closer to knowing than I had been in January. It was Thursday, March 15 (beware the Ides of March), and I was in agony as I hourly changed my mind.

In the end, I decided to come home, and it feels like I’ve stepped out into six lanes of oncoming traffic. Father, do not abandon the works of your hands.

Some Vital Statistics and Definitions



A girl’s dorm room on the old campus is roughly 21x10.5x8=1764 sq. ft, contains four double bunk beds, eight girls and their possessions, four desks and four stools. Concrete floor, hand-wash your clothes in the bathroom down the hall, hang them up to dry out the window.

I break 2.3 pieces of chalk per class period. In one week, that’s 19.2* pieces of broken chalk.

Nanchang receives 5 feet of rainfall each year, most of that in spring (right now).

3 of my 4 potted plants have had near death experiences. If plants could talk, I would ask them how it feels to come creeping back from the brink of annihilation.

33, 36, 54, 56. The number of students in my four classes. Total count =179.

In Class 2, fifty percent of the students said they would rather earn a hefty amount of money and work far away from their families and fifty percent would rather earn small wages and work close to their families. (It’s not uncommon for parents to take better paying jobs far away from their children, leaving them to be raised by grandparents and visiting once a year at Spring Festival. When they do visit, they bring gifts and toys.)

I say “Hello” to random students and strangers and average of 47 times a day, excluding the weekend.

There were 52 people on the #208 bus from old to new campus this afternoon. Twenty-one of them were sitting. Twenty-two if you count the bus driver.

800 RMB (100 US dollars) is the amount of money a student receives if he successfully recruits a new student to the college. Many students will be absent come April and May due to recruiting. They fund their own travel, but work on commission. If they’re good salesmen, it’s worth it.

*Note that colored chalk is 4 times less likely to break. My favorite color is blue = technicolor fingers = technicolor smudges on face.

A Cross-section of Definitions from Quiz Number Two

Burp:
I’m very sorry. I forgot it, but it will not turn up longer. Please, believe in me. –Anna
When you have had enough food, you may get rid of some air from your throat. –Paul
Somebody have air in here………, and then --Eddy

Hiccup:
When you drink all the wine, you will happen this appearance. –Christine
Make a voice from one’s neck. –Lynn
Caused by sudden tightening of a muscle blow chest. –Amy
Caused by sudden tightening of a mouse blow caer. –Eddy*

Sneeze:
Air comes from your mouth and you can’t stop it. –Eric
When you catch a cold, you feel uncomfortable in you snose. You’ll then do the action of spouting some air away. –Paul
Cover your mouth when you want to do it. –Christine

Gasp:
A bottle filled with gas. –Eric

Cough:
An art or cough cold of the lungers. –Robin

Dear Teacher:
Because of my own business, I came back to school later than normal. So I was absent in your last class. And I didn’t know that homework. But I will make up to do it. And if you are free in the other time, I can have the dictation in your office. Please forgive me! Thank you! –Mary Joy

*Cheating gone wrong. Note that nearly all students cheat in China. As part of the collectivist mindset, it’s considered selfish not to share your answers with your classmates and cause them to lose “face.”



Random Fact of the Day:
Every fifth shop on the street south of our campus is a haircutting place. Strangely enough, the hip career for young men in their teens and twenties is hairdressing. These men—fitted, patched jeans, spiked hair, funky t-shirts, comb in the back pocket—can work for hours on the tiniest trim. The trademark of their business is the techno music that blares from gargantuan speakers strategically placed just outside the doors. (I think noise pollution should be illegal. You only get one set of eardrums.)

I know that it is ten o’clock because the police lights are flashing outside the window. Every night a patrol car circles the basketball courts on campus, searching for any students who might be violating curfew. It’s definitely too late to play basketball, but couples have a tendency to congregate along the sidewalk and whisper in the dark, especially under the trees leading up to our building. It's been drizzling all day, though, so I don’t think the police will find anyone out tonight.


On Saturday, Alli, Mikayla, Emily, Dan, and I took a long walk down Beijing Lu to a three-story supermarket. Here is the record of our adventure in pictures. This is very much what we see daily... the wild, the gloomy, the weird, and the quirky.


Our back ally in pineapple season.


Wang, our lady of the succulent flat bread.


You can't go anywhere in Nanchang without being in sight of bamboo scaffolding or the concrete shells of unfinished buildings. This one is directly west of our back gate...we joke that it's going to be a second Metro with a new America on the top floor.


A dwelling.


An ally. (Note how it doubles as a clothes dryer.)


A boy. With a banana.


Everything travels by bike.



Garbage truck.



At the supermarket:
It's so interactive!


Select your own eel, frog, or turtle!



Scoop your own rice!


Catch your own fish!


Smile at the ducks! They're smiling at you.

At the vegetable market:







Random fact of the day:
Question: What do you do if your hands get cold on a motorcycle?
Answer: