Village Life

It is time for the Chinese New Year and I had a 2 month break from work. I decided to visit the home village of one of my Chinese friends. My friend had been talking up how beautiful the countryside was and how quaint and wonderful the village was and my expectations were high.

I think the village was beautiful in the same way that the west lake was beautiful. It was a shell which could have been beautiful, but overpopulation (along with the belief that nature is not beautiful and is improved by clear cutting and planting unhealthy saplings which never get well tended and have a 30% die off rate) has made the area horrible. One of the things my friend had claimed was great was that he had a forest he could relax in right outside his front door. The "forest" was a small stand of perhaps a score of unhealthy trees that had been stripped of all branches other than the very tip top ones which I don't believe they had a ladder tall enough to get to in the village.

The village had a population which easily could have qualified as a city in America and unlike Hangzhou, there was not a fleet of workers cleaning up trash. there were small garbage piles next to every object which could stop wind blown garbage. They had a river floating through the village which yo could almost walk across the debris floating down it.

Despite all of this, my friend continued to praise how beautiful the village was and how peaceful. Whatever, here are what pretty pictures I was able to muster.

Snow

Christmas season

It has been an interesting couple of months. I have been very busy. After my father passed my school insisted that I take 2 weeks off and that I would not have to make up the classes. Shortly after me taking 2 weeks off, someone above the person who made the initial motion of kindness reneged on that and I have been forced to make up two weeks worth of classes in spare odd moments of my life. I have been at school (or in transit to school) for 16 hours a day, 5 days a week for almost a full month now. I am exhausted. I got ill last week and began coughing up blood. It was strange- one day I was fine; The next day I had a runny nose; The following day I was coughing up blood; without medical attention I had stopped coughing but had a really sore throat the next day. I went to the doctor despite the lack of a cough of course and I just had strep (I think that is what the doctor was trying to tell me, my friend I took as a translator said "your throat is sick but your lungs are very healthy"). I am much better now though.
I had to work the morning of Christmas eve but I insisted on having the night and Christmas day off. We therefore threw a party. I invited a lot of people and had 8 or 9 definite yes's...until Christmas eve of course. I ended up with 3 guests total but it was maybe better that way. We did a white elephant gift exchange and had some good conversation. We then headed out to what we thought would be a good Christmas party in downtown Hangzhou. It was held at a big international business center and we were under the impression that it would be a nice indoor party. It was, in fact, an outdoor party in 40 degree weather where we were more likely to be pickpocketed than have a good time. We were expecting more foreigners (locals are fine, but I have more in common with a middle aged German woman with the locals most of the time so it makes conversation hard) but there were 3 or 4 foreigners and 500 or so locals crammed into a small plaza outside. We left and went to a bar, had a really bad, really expensive bottle of wine and called it a night.
I worked my part time job last night (the day after Christmas) and to my surprise, I recieved a dozen presents from my students. I really enjoy that class. I have another job opportunity which I would recieve double my present pay but it would cut out my ability to teach this Saturday class. I am considering it, but my pay is sufficient to live off of currently and I don't feel like I need more money to live here, it is just that I need much more money to create a nest egg to take back home with me.
I am tired, but I only have 2 more 16 hour days and then I go back to my regular teaching 3 10 hour das a week and 4 days off. That is an acceptable work schedule!

Elegy Written on a Cramped Airplane

When I was growing up my father told me that when he was a kid, he was petrified of Papa, his dad. Papa was a very traditional sort of man. He was not shy to whoop his kids until they couldn’t sit down. As an added bonus, Papa was the school principal. If Dad did something at school, he got it twice as bad as the other kids at school, but Papa was a man who separated work from home, so don’t you think that that extra hard whoopin’ staved off any of Papa’s wrath by the time they got home for the traditional you got punished at school, now you’re getting punished at home. One of the things Dad feared most from Grandma were the words, “Just wait until your father gets home”.

Dad told me that he hoped to instill this fear in me. Let me tell you, if this was his goal as a father, my dad failed miserably. “Just wait until your dad gets home” for my mother meant him slapping the bed with a belt and us yelling, even when he did whoop us, he was gentler than mother was, she was perfectly willing to not have us sit down. Dad, on the other hand, had a completely different style of punishment that was much more effective than the fear of pain.

You have to understand the complete and utter respect Dad instilled in us kids. He is so kind and gentle. He is intelligent, hardworking, and just generally a great man. We understood that there really isn’t a better choice we could have had for a father. The only major flaw in parenting he had was to raise kids who understand and enjoy his humor. I personally expect this to be a major drawback in my life as I crack the wrong joke at an interview or some other such nonsense.

This complete respect breeds a side effect that is impossible to beat. Fear keeps you well behaved because you want self preservation. Respect keeps you well behaved because you don’t want to risk disappointment. Fear makes you do what is right even though you don’t want to. Respect makes you want to do what is right. My father failed to instill fear in us, he just took away all desire to do anything wrong. Respect-If I could define my father as a man, that is how I would define him.

Pictures!

The view from my window.

60th anniversary propaganda.

Taken on a boat ride across the lake.

Flowers for the 60th anniversary.

A mountain temple wall.

Sunset by the West Lake...

Oh, what a terrible place to live, a quick bus ride to a trashy dump like this!