1am, and I am in transit again

Not a complaint, though the thought of finding a place to live in for more than a year at a time makes me ache a bit. I'm getting pretty good at packing, getting pretty good at not being attached to belongings and being ready to let things go, and I love always having new things to discover and new people to meet. But I would love to make some friends and know they will be around, that I will be around. That we might celebrate each others' birthdays more than once together.

That's a pretty angsty thought, given that before this year I lived in Iowa City for five years, and that before that I had lived my whole life in Iowa. But living around college students is a constant transition of relationships. Everyone is still deciding who they are and where they are going, and holding on to any one person too tight risks losing yourself.

We had our HNC commencement ceremony this afternoon. It was really nice. I have been so caught up in disappointment in myself, frustrated that I have been struggling so much with my own things (I am full of FEELINGS and sometimes it's a problem) and not taking full advantage of where I am that I have often lost sight of what a unique program I am in this year. I received (in an unashamedly fusia cover) a joint certificate in Chinese Studies from Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University. Stephen Roach, the Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and Zhang Yibin, Nanjing U's liberal arts vice president, were our commencement speakers. My classmates are truly warmhearted and have a lot of vision and commitment. I know that I personally really need a break to figure out how I want to use this experience, as well as my undergrad degrees, but this has been an incredible place to be. I am qualified to call myself a China expert, of sorts anyway.

I am looking forward to traveling and being around people I love in the next month and a half, and very much looking forward to the reflection and clarity of mind that both of those things bring me. Next year is going to be a more personally focused one. I am hoping to write a lot (knock on wood; if I set myself up with expectations now I'll drown in them by august) and clear my mind out a bit. Hopefully one of my next entries will begin to outline possible writing for the next year. I'm looking forward to it.

Love!

This post gets lots of hits too. Why, I ask you?

Previous title:  More of a pledge than a post

Hello, all! I have been sitting in our student lounge at the HNC for about nine hours. Not consistently, obviously, as I have been doing homework and thus taking every possible excuse to go somewhere else and do something else, but I have been here a long time. I have mostly solidified plans for a cruise on the Yangtze river in a couple of weeks. I will be finalizing them in a couple of days. I am hoping that it takes less time to upload photos here when I'm in the States. I am hoping to do posts on the World Expo, the Nanjing Massacre Museum (which I can promise will be aptly summed up with the word INTENSE), the Yangtze cruise, my time in Hebei with Xiaoxuan's family, and maybe the four days I'll be spending in Seoul before I head back to the States. Hopefully, hopefully.

I am really excited about the cruise (er, obviously) and about going to Langfang in Hebei province. Xiaoxuan told me on Friday when we ate out (at a Muslim restaurant on the Nanda campus-- no pork) that I will be the first foreigner any of her grandparents has met, except possibly her one grandfather who was a soldier in the Korean war. But, in her words, "that was maybe not so favorable." To give you some more of her words on a completely unrelated matter, one evening after a very long day of classes and lectures I kind of hyperventilated at her in mock-freak out that I couldn't decide what book to read in the few minutes I had before falling asleep.
"The Center is so cruel to you," she said calmly.
"Yes, you phrased that well," I replied, "it's not that I am crazy, it's that the Center is cruel."
"Actually, my meaning is that the Center is cruel and so you became crazy," she explained.
"Oh," said I.
"So it's still the Center's fault, but your situation is not so good."

I seem to attract this kind of lovingly mocking friendship. It works for me.

She's generally more encouraging than mocking. Today I was muttering at our Center T-shirt, trying to find where my Chinese name was written.
"Sorry," I said, "I'll go back and talk to myself in the lounge soon."
"And I will go to the library and talk to myself there," replied Xiaoxuan, "and we will leave a quiet dorm room"

I have been well, overall. I spent another weekend in Shanghai, commemorating the ascension of Baha'u'llah by saying prayers at 3am with five friends on the 29th of May. That was lovely, and together with other awesome friend-time made it a very recharging weekend for me. Since then I have been a lot better about waking up early enough in the morning that I have time to pray and meditate a little, and start my days with clarity rather than rushing and feelings of guilt.

I think that my Yangtze-Hebei adventures are going to involve two more day-long train rides. I am very excited. I love sitting on trains and looking out the window, knowing that I won't be arriving soon enough to worry about and all I need to think about is the meaning in the scenery, more than pretty much anything else I have done in China. I love trains.

Quick Update

Among my methods of schoolwork procrastination has been changing my mind repeatedly about my summer plans, and obsessively looking up plane tickets on vayama.com. These culminated tonight in the purchase of a round-trip ticket from Seoul to Des Moines and back- putting me in Iowa or thereabouts from Tuesday, July 6th until Sunday, August 1st.

Hope I'll be seeing you soon!

The end of the semester approaches!

I am outlining and researching for a paper comparing Renewable Energy Law in Germany and China. This points my research at the intersection of economic development and environmental protection in the two legal systems. It needs to be 5,000 characters by the end of the semester, which in double-spaced English would be upwards of 15 pages and in Chinese will be 10 or so.

The Chinese constitution mentions environmental protection in it's "General Principles" section, but does not include a clean environment in its fundamental rights (or Bill of Rights). The Environmental Protection Law is extensive, and the largest problem is that it is not enforced locally. It includes a clause stating that the appropriate government department will "in accordance with the national standards for environment quality and the country's economic and technological conditions, establish the national standards for the discharge of pollutants."

I am hoping to get a feel for the different strengths and weaknesses of approach between 'developed' country with relatively strict environmental policies (ie, Germany) and a quickly 'developing' country where economic development still for the most part takes places with little or no regard to environmental protection.

Not sure why this blog post gets so many dang views

Previously titled: 罗亚死了，罗亚死了

April has been a good month in a lot of ways.

First, a friend of a friend visited Nanjing, and in helping to show her the city I finally saw a bit of the city myself. We went to Purple Mountain:

(this buddha statue was created as a tourist attraction in the late 90's, and we saw some other folks sitting on his lap, so we decided we wouldn't be disrespecting him or anyone else by following suit)

And visited a temple and a Ming Dynasty city wall that are both within 30 minutes walking distance from my Center. Who knew?

Pagoda in the temple:

View of the lake and Ming wall from the top of the pagoda:

I have ALSO been buying myself some books. These include: an anthology of Chinese fantasy writing from 2008, "Swordbird" (a book written by an 11 year old Chinese girl who lives in the US in both Chinese and English. Think Redwall series, except birds. Holding swords), a Chinese dictionary (not Chinese-English. Just Chinese), and a copy of China's National Geographic (or 黄夏地理). Xiaoxuan just helped me order a science fiction anthology and a selection of Lu Xun's writings (linked to Wikipedia). He was a very influential thinker in the decades after the Nationalist revolution in 1911. Many Chinese have to read bits of his writing in high school, and the woman that I have been helping to practice English highly recommended reading his complete stories (as in full texts, not necessarily everything he's written).

I am feeling good about my life plan. This is good. I have been feeling foolishly insecure all year about one thing or another. The plan a little farther out: I am moving to Korea next year, then I think back to China to work for a year and reapplying to grad schools for fall 2012. Then I'm hoping somewhere will let me teach and take students abroad, and maybe I'll work on a PhD.

I've realized I need to actually post about China more, and not keep this blog so self-centered. Now that I feel like I've got myself figured out a little more (haha, ask tomorrow) that is my plan. If you've got questions to guide my writing, I'd love to hear 'em!

Title is from one of the fantasy stories I'm reading, yo. "Luoya is dead, Luoya is dead"

She may cry but her tears will dry when I hand her the keys to a shiney new Australia

Welp, I have some major updates on the status on my brain and future plans.

Update Eins: I did not get into grad school. Despite the feelings of numerous friends and relatives, I do not seem to be the end-all, be-all of prospective researchers. Since I’d decided that I NEED some time away from school, this is really okay. My ego remains slightly bruised, but my ego generally needs to be taken down a notch or two.

Update Zwei: I am planning on moving to Korea in the fall to teach English for a year. This will give me some more experience teaching, and hopefully help me decide if I’m aiming to teach kids or older students. After I get the lesson planning figured out, it will also give me lots of time to work on other projects and figure myself out.

Update Drei: I’m afraid that right now I’m not planning on coming back to the US this summer. Plane tickets are expensive, and I’ve decided to use the money to travel around China since I’ll still have a visa to be here the rest of the summer. This I’m traveling with a Canadian friend and then visiting Xiaoxuan’s family in Hebei Province, near Beijing.

Update Vier: I love you!

Title is from "Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog"

Final thoughts on Bazhong

I’m not really sure where to start updating you about the rest of the week. Definitely the best and most important part was working with the kidsI think pretty much all of them were excited about my class simply because it took them away from normal assignments and classwork (as any self-respecting seventh grader should be) and many were also excited to meet us.

Playing Jeopardy in our second lesson with each class was hilarious. It wasn’t exactly Jeopardy, we had lots of questions about US culture and such divided into two groups: Easy and Hard. When I explained the game, I first told them that I’d be asking them questions and some of them would be hard, then that they were in groups, then that each group would choose either an easy question or a hard one. Whenever Genbao finished translating that, everyone would yell “Easy!” and I would put my hands up and say “but! And easy question is worth ten points, and a hard question is worth thirty” and a hush would be followed by whispers of “三十”[thirty]and sometimes a round of yelled “Hard!” They were attentive and excited about the questions. I didn’t tell anyone out loud if they were right or not- half the time looking back at the kids anxiously before doing so. The scores were always greeting with cheers and groans.

I think I mentioned before that Genbao was a fantastic co-teacher. He helped a lot (one could also say “did most of the work”) lesson planning, and then the night before we first taught he said “I think that because you are native speaker, you should teach. And I- I will translate!” He was great.

We got a good reputation because we spent a lot of time of phonics the first day- all the teachers who sat in on our class did all the phonics work along with me and the kids.

The more ridiculous things are usually a better story, but I’m afraid that focusing on them too easily gives a skewed vision of my life in China.

Ridiculous Thing 1, I already mentioned, was in my mind the fact that we met with the mayor and local Communist Party Secretariat. They wanted to meet with us to support our visit, and possibly the fellowship that’s supposed to be happening in Bazhong next year. It was a kind gesture, overall, but still a strange one.

Ridiculous Thing 2 involved our return trip. On the way there I and three other classmates rode a train to Guangyuan, the nearest train station. We rode the public bus, which is scheduled to take three and a half hours, driving on mountain rodes and stopping now and then to let passangers off. Our trip back to Guangyuan took only a little more than two hours. Why, you ask? And I will tell you. We took a different road, a highway. Why does the public bus not use this highway? Well, I’ll tell you that too. It isn’t finished. No one uses it. We loaded onto a bus, our luggage crammed in around us, with two students in a small silver sedan along with the school’s headmaster leading the way. The sedan and our bus flashed their hazard lights the whole way- “foreigners on board-foreigners on board-attention.” We breezed past a family car stopped at the blockade and onto the unopened section of the highway. We had to turn around on one overpass, the middle of which was blocked off with piles of construction materials, sending us down an entrance ramp and back up the other side. We passed many groups of construction workers who got out of the way for us to pass.

Overall, the trip was awesome. I got closer to some classmates, got to interact with a bunch of really bright students both in my classes in the middle school and at the high school English Corner. I returned worn out but very happy.