7-- Get back to School after Summer Hliday

Sunday, September 5/04--About 8:40 am

After my last email from Yangshuo, Ashley and I did lots of things--mostly with Maisie, sometimes without. We decided to go to a place called Shangri-La--it is about 15 minutes outside Yangshuo toward Guilin. We went by ourselves--with no group, or tour guide. The bus dropped us off at the gate, we paid our 50 Yuan to get in and we were amongst grass, lake, trees, waterwheel, landscaping, walkways. I went to Shangri-La last year with a bunch of students and teachers from Omeida College, but I loved it so encouraged Ashley to go with me again! It consists of about a 45 minute boat tour around a lake, islands--looking at all the sights along the way. I thought the boat would be crowded, but there were so few people there that day, that we had a boat to ourselves!!! Lucky! We go under stone bridges, go through tree tunnels, through a stone cave, and all along the way there are actors primed to put on a performance for us as we go by. They sing, dance with fans, dance with drums, act as spear-carrying natives who jump out from behind bushes to scare us. The boat blows its horn and we could see people getting into their positions of "it's show time folks!", from their comfortable positions of lying on the chairs snoozing, or sitting around looking bored! As soon as we pass, they go back to their positions of boredom! We see people of the nearby villages washing clothes in the river, men fishing, children swimming and playing in the water as their mother washes the clothes--we see so many ducks! All too soon the 45 minute tour is over and we head back to the dock, where we disembark to go through a series of buildings that show us local handicraft people at work. We are greeted at the entrance with a small shot of something sweet and alcoholic. I loved it--Ashley shuddered her chicken dance! We saw people spinning, weaving, hand-sewing neckties, carving bamboo, wood, painting. We saw people dancing. The grounds are landscaped--the buildings are beautiful, clean and a little escape from the realities of the outside world.

Another night we went cormorant fishing. Ashley, Lorlee (the Canadian who is arrving in Ningdu today) and I talked to Marcel who arranged it for us. Marcel, remember, is my favourite tour guide. We met the van who would take us to the cormorant boat and another person joined us--his name was John, from Denver. He was travelling and had been in Yangshuo for only 2 days. He didn't know what cormorant fishing was but he came along anyway. We were driven to Fuli, a village, just outside Yangshuo. Fuli is famous for the fan-painting family. Many of the fans you see in China, or at least in this part of China, are painted by this family. They paint fans, big and little, scrolls--some are gawdy, some are beautiful--depends on your perspective I guess. Anyway, in Fuli, we drive down to the lakeside--it has to be dark for this adventure, and dark it is! We get onto a wooden boat with benches along the inside for people to sit. Once again we lucked out. We are the only 4 going to observe this spectacle! The cormorant boat is separate from ours. We get on the boat and across the narrow bay we see the other boat, with a big light off its bow, many cormorants sitting on the bow at the ready. John saw them and said "oh, is this what this is? I'm so glad I came!" for about 40 minutes we watch the cormorants swim, dive, come up with a fish in his beak, go down for more. They have string tied around their necks so they can't swallow the fish, and every so often the fisherman brings them in to spit out their fish into his basket. Sometimes they would spit out 4 or 5 small fish. Sometimes we would witness a chase--a fish swimming away from a bird--sometimes the fish won, sometimes the bird--it was all exciting. After we finished fishing we visited one of the fan/scroll outlets. I bought a Yangshuo landscape which is now hanging in my apartment. We all were hungry after a hard night of fish/cormorant watching, so we decided to head to MC Blues for a snack and drink. It turned out that John was actually a pretty good guy to hang around with--that was lucky for us. While we were driving back from Fuli, we could see the lights on the mountains, and the banks of lights that light up the mountains, for the performance of Liu San Jie--the performance on water. It is a stunning sight!

My last day in Yangshuo, I wanted to hang around with Maisie and Ashley as much as I could. We went for lunch, did some last minute DVD shopping. (There is a DVD store on West Street that sells many, many DVDs--a lot of English ones--most of them illegal copies of course, so each one has to be checked to make sure it works--for 8 Yuan each. I bought about a dozen of them or more to bring back with me.) After lunch, Ashley headed back to Buckland and Maisie and I were wandering West Street when her cell phone rang--it was Tracy from Buckland trying to find me! It seems that the flight I was to be taking the next morning was cancelled, so I had to leave that night by an overnight bus from Yangshuo to Shenzhen (near Hong Kong), then get on a flight to Ganzhou, about 2 hours south of Ningdu. The ticket office where we were supposed to meet Tracy was quite near so we went there to see what was what. Well, I had to leave by 9 that night, and it was already close to 3. All of a sudden it dawned on us that I was leaving. We left the ticket office and in the middle of crossing the street, Maisie's arm tightened on mine and she said in a very teary voice: "I'm feeling a little bit sad!" and she started to cry quietly. Of course that brought my tears on, so here we were--an old western woman and a young Chinese woman walking down the street with tears running down our faces! Finally Maisie took a deep breath and said "don't think about it!"--easier said than done. However, I had lots of last minute packing, shower-taking to do. Ashley and I had plans with Maisie for dinner, so we had to set that sooner by a bit. I had to be ready to leave Buckland at 8:15 pm. I still had to buy a bag to carry stuff back that I had bought in Yangshuo--some clothes I had had made, books, DVDs, etc. Maisie and Ashley helped me get my stuff together after dinner and off we all went to the ticket office where the bus would pick me up. It was so, so difficult saying goodbye to Maisie and Ashley! Ashley gave me a card while we were still in my room, but I couldn't even read it until the next day at the airport.

Well, goodbyes and hugs done (not done, but no time for more) I was directed to my "bed" in the sleeper bus. It was clean, and there was no smoking--those were the good things. My bed was at the very back, which I like, but my bed was in the middle, between 2 other beds, with an aisle barely wide enough to walk sideways between us. I was right over the engine, which meant that first, there was a platform between the 3 back beds and second--it was blazing hot!!! The bus was air-conditioned, fortunately, but under me was so hot I felt like I was in a sweat lodge! My bed was also very short and I could never straighten out my legs! On top of all this, the space for 3 was made into a space for 4. A man was in a make-shift bed right against mine--his young daughter was in the bed against the window, so he needed to stay with her. He apologized for my discomfort about his being so close, which made me think he was an ok guy--but this apology I did not hear until the next morning, from the English speaking Chinese person who was going to Ganzhou also. She got on the bus first, so naturally took the longer bed by the window. The man talked to her about me and when I asked what he said, she didn't answer me. She only told me the next morning that the night before he had asked her to apologize for him. Anyway, I didn't sleep very well, with the heat, and the strange bedfellow partly on my bed. I wish I could have seen something out the windows--we travelled through a large city at one point. I don't know what it was. We drove all across Guandong Province which I have never been in, so I would have like to see it. Anyway we arrived in Shenzhen in the pouring rain the next morning about 7:10 am. We got a taxi to the airport and had to wait until 12:20 for our flight to leave. It left late--around 1:10, but I got to watch the final girls volleyball at the Olympics. I cheered out loud when China got the gold medal!

I was met in Ganzhou by Tom and a driver. The drive to Ningdu was about 2 hours--they drove me around Ganzhou a bit before heading home. I was anxious, sad and a little nervous to get "home" to Ningdu. Well, I walked into my apartment and nothing had been done that was supposed to be done! The floors still had dried cement all over them from when they laid the tile. I had a new softer mattress, so they helped me put it on my bed. When I unlocked my bedroom door to do this I was hit by a sight. Some mold on my desk around something. I took off my bedding and discovered it was all moldy--the sheets and my bamboo mat. The sheets went straight out the the balcony for washing, the mat went to the garbage. All I could say was "oh, my God!!" over and over again. I opened my cupboard door and saw mold all over my clothes! I know you warned me David, and I thought I was being careful, but not careful enough, obviously! I took all my clothes out of my closet to wash and saw mold growing inside and outside the cupboard. This was a small part my fault for closing my bedroom door, but mostly Mr. Zhou's fault because I do not trust that man! Partly it is the season in South China, too. I smell mold everywhere from the stores when I walk down the street. Well, this was too much for the guys so they all left me to clean up the mess. After they left, I decided to see if they had fixed the TV while I was gone. There wasn't even any power!! They were just leaving the downstairs gate, fortunately, when I yelled to them out my window. They came back upstairs. They turned on the power--the TV, the phone and the computer didn't work at all. Well, this was too much for me. I told Tom that this stuff should have been done while I was gone--not after I told them to do it when I got home! Tom said they were sorry, but there was nothing they could do. Bullshit!! They could have had it done!! Anyway, with tears in my eyes, I asked them all to leave. Tom said they would fix things the next day. They called in about an hour to invite me to have dinner with them, but as you can imagine, I didn't feel like eating, so I declined. I started on the laundry. I have done about 12 loads of laundry in less than a week! They finally got the phone working, the TV working (the next day) and the internet sort of working. To try to make this long story a bit shorter, it has been an uphill battle all week, trying to get things done around here. Every time I say something isn't working, they give me excuses about why they can't do anything, then find a way to fix it. After 4 days, the internet was finally working pretty well.

I have not felt like going out at all--I need to have my house in order before I can face the outside world. I finally went out and saw some people that I know who were happy to see me back. I put on a happy face for them. Others are acting as if I am a mass murderer! They stare, shout Lao Wei!! (foreigner) and point at me. I ignore them and go home as quickly as possible. I thought I was used to the staring and the pointing, but a steady diet of it get to me a bit much sometimes--especially when I am not feeling sociable and am feeling a little depressed.

After 2 nights of sleeping on my "new" mattress I couldn't stand it anymore. It smelled too mildewy and moldy. It was new--it had been shrink-wrapped until we put it on my bed, but it still smelled too much for me to sleep. The bedding and my night-shirt smelled so much I had to wash them every day. Finally I asked Mr. Zhou and Tom to smell the mattress. They said there is nothing they can do--that all the new mattresses smell this way! My cupboard drawers--which I had used for only 2 weeks before I went to Yangshuo, also broke--they wouldn't stay on the track. A man came to fix it by putting in a cardboard shim. I made him put his cigarette out and he didn't like me very much. Tom brought me some rice vinegar (at my request) to wash the cupboard with, some moth balls to help absorb the moisture and some air freshener for my closet. My cupboard is finally getting better and my clothes are now back in it, but I am still sleeping on my sofa. It is like sleeping on an airport bench! I put a quilt down so it is a bit softer, and it is very narrow, but smells better than the mattress. I have the air conditioning on all night in the bedroom, on "remove moisture" setting. It might be helping a bit. At this rate it will take about another 2 weeks for the smell to go away so I can move back into my bedroom.

They hired some men to clean the cement off the floors--they got off the top layer, but the new floors still look dirty all the time, during the day when the light is shining on them.
School started at the middle school this week. Some of the classrooms are mere feet outside my windows--my computer room window and off my balcony. So when I am doing my laundry and hanging up my clothes I have an audience. The last straw was 2 days ago when I was standing at my sink, just outside the stall that encloses the toilet and shower, and just outside my bedroom door, on the opposite side of my apartment from the school building. I was combing my hair and happened to look to my left, through my computer room and out the window to see about a dozen girls in the classroom all crowding at the window watching me!! I blew! I stormed to the computer room and slammed the door. A minute later I opened it again and closed the curtains--they were still watching! I immediately phoned Tom to tell him and to tell him that something needed to be done. Of course he had no idea! I gave him several options--put dark film on the windows so they couldn't see in was one. Of course that costs money, so they won't do that. Of course I would never be able to open the windows in this room again. Last night they came and installed venetian blinds on the window--they will let light in if I slant them right. They are so heavy and wide they buckle when I raise them, but during class time I will never raise them. It will be pretty dark in this room , but it is better than having bored students watching me in my own, private apartment. In the process of installing blinds in Ashley's former apartment--one below mine, they knocked the internet out. I told Tom and he said the internet was working just fine in the first apartment. He almost told me it was my imagination! I called him 2 hours later and said it still wasn't working. He told me he would call someone this morning--this morning he called and told me it was working, that they had done something last night when they were installing the blinds. Well, duh!

I have asked many times when I am teaching and where--I know I will be teaching Senior Grade 2 at Ningdu Number 1 Middle School--right next to my building. I know I will be teaching 20 classes a week, but I have no idea what time I start tomorrow morning, or where I go to start. I am starting to think that they are purposely keeping from me the things I need to know.

A couple of nights when Tom was here I started to cry. I told him that for the first time since I came to China I was truly unhappy, and that I was seriously starting to think of going home--not to another school, but home! He ordered me to stop crying. I told him I would cry if I wanted to, because I was upset and that maybe he should just leave. He picked up the phone. I told him not to phone Mr. Zhou. He did anyway. I have emailed Ashley and a couple of others about all this and feel better after their feedback and support, but my god--when will it end? It seems that every step I take there is more trouble! I feel really god about being in China, in Ningdu, then along comes Mr. Zhou and I am back at square one!
I had to go to the Normal School for 2 days in a row last week to meet some students. That's fine--I love doing that. I was told it would be sort of like an open house--people coming and going and just talking to me. I asked if they expected a speech or a class and was told definitely not! Well! I arrived and this enormous lecture room started filling up! I again asked Tom what they were expecting--he said nothing, just free talk. Well, surprise--they expected me to run a 2 hour class!!! It all worked out, but I absolutely hate not being told things! Next time this happens (Owen I hope you are reading every word of this), I will walk out!! I have heard that these surprise things happen all the time--a westerner being invited to give a lecture with no warning--but when I specifically ask and am told NO, that is a lie, and I cannot stand being lied to!!
Well, maybe I have bored many of you, but as I have said before, this is my journal. Please if you do not want to receive these writings any more, just let me know!!! I will not be offended.

Tom and Mr. Zhou have gone to Ganzhou today to pick up one westerner. Lorlee from Canada. They did not invite me to go with them--I am surprised they didn't, but then again, not really surprised. I think they have had enough of me, and would actually be pleased if I left the area altogether. Unless things get bad after school starts, I will stay here for the year, then who knows what? But now I am on my guard, I am on the defensive. Mr. Zhou is staying away from me altogether--Tom is the one who has to talk to me, and his understanding of English is not that good!

I will leave you with this happy thought. It is a tiny mite cooler these days. It is still very hot, but I can feel the cool air trying to interrupt this hot stream.

I miss you all...right now I miss Canada.
Happy Labour Day...
Love, Mom/Judy