Blog

May 30, 2008
New friends....
Ningbo University ran a trip to an amusement park near Ningbo and we went.  On that trip we met a nice girl and her mother.  Her name is Victoria and she is from Russia, the part of Russia just north of Mongolia.  Emily and Victoria are the same age.  Victoria's native language is Russian and she is learning to speak Chinese.  She goes to a Chinese school and she says it is very difficult because she does not know what they are saying a lot of the time.  We use Chinese to communicate with her.  Emily and Victoria spent the whole day at the park together and we are planning to get together with Victoria and her mother some weekend.

 
This is Page Davison.  She's from Australia and her mom and dad are both new teachers at Emily's school.  Page is 9 going on 10, just like Emily, and they are in the same class.  We go out to eat with Page and her family every so often.

April 03, 2008
The Sun Rises Over the...  Smog... 
The weather has been just lovely recently.   The cherry blossoms are out and it is warm enough to go out without a coat.  Spring is here. The air quality is another matter.  It's been terrible lately.  Not sure if you can tell from the picture, but suffice it to say, that scene from our apartment usually has a lot more buildings in it.  You just can't see they through the smog.  In fact, on a clear day mountains can be seen in the distance.  But that's pretty unusual.

I went for a walk today as the weather has finally given us a nice warm day.  Well, there was still a bit of a chill in the air, but the sun was shining.  I walked through Zhongshan park, and as usual it was filled with mostly older people.  I stopped to listen to some Chinese opera.  There are many groups around the park that set up a little sound system and with their instruments begin to play various classical Chinese folk music.  They usually have someone with them to sing the opera, but other people sing with them as well.  I watched as various people from the crowd would come up to the group playing, someone would hand them a little microphone and this person from the crowd would sing a song.  Even a young man came over and sang a song.  This is real Chinese culture and I am going to try to remember it.

February 27, 2008
A Spring Day
I went for a walk today as the weather has finally given us a nice warm day.  Well, there was still a bit of a chill in the air, but the sun was shining.  I walked through Zhongshan park, and as usual it was filled with mostly older people.  I stopped to listen to some Chinese opera.  There are many groups around the park that set up a little sound system and with their instruments begin to play various classical Chinese folk music.  They usually have someone with them to sing the opera, but other people sing with them as well.  I watched as various people from the crowd would come up to the group playing, someone would hand them a little microphone and this person from the crowd would sing a song.  Even a young man came over and sang a song.  This is real Chinese culture and I am going to try to remember it.

February 19, 2008
Street Performer
This man found an interesting way to earn money.  We could see him from our apartment window, it looks like he has CP.  Up on the 19th floor we heard him coming because the sound system he was pushing was so loud.  He was singing to pre-recorded music, like Karaoke, and his voice sounded quite good.  The really interesting thing was that he choose to push his cart right down the center of the lane.  Well, interesting to me, it's not that uncommon here to see one thing or another being pushed down the center of a lane.  Cars, bicycles, and people went around him without even a beep, or the ring of a bicycle bell.  Some people along the side walk gave him money as he went by.

February 10, 2008
Fireworks in Shanghai
We went to Shanghai on February 8 to meet our friends the Salo's at the airport.  They are going to be staying with us for a few weeks.  We meet them and stayed a few days in Shanghai.  Chinese new year was February 7.  Well, there is some tradition that Kelly knew about, apparently 4 days after the new year there is another reason to light fireworks.  So, the night of February 10th we were awoken at about 11:30 PM by the sound of fireworks.  It was really amazing!  There were fireworks going off all around Shanghai.  Our room was on the 19th floor so we had a really good view of the city.  As the time neared 12:00 PM the fireworks got louder and more intense.  The smoke from the fireworks could be seen all around the city.  These were not organized fireworks shows, this was just from people lighting off their own fireworks.  There are not any organized displays.  No need.

February 02, 2008
A long drive back from Quzhou to Ningbo
I went to a town called Kai Hua the other day, actually, I went to a small village outside of Kai Hua. I went with our family friend Elina to help out at her old school. We hired a car to take us there because our bus was canceled. You can see pictures of the school here. This entry is about my conversation with the driver on the way back to Ningbo. I thought it was interesting. I always think it’s interesting to get the perspective of an average citizen. This man was from the northern city of Taishan in Shandong province.

Topic 1:
Are all the police in Ningbo crooked? I have heard this from other people, like Taxi drivers. He answered with an emphatic “Yes”. All of them are crooked, they all live in large, beautiful apartments, and they all have lots of money. I asked him if this was just a Ningbo thing. He said, in his experience, it is much worse in Ningbo than in other cities he knows. He said in other cities there are some crooked cops, but in Ningbo they are all crooked.

Topic 2:
He was our driver and so of course, went everywhere Elina and I went. The whole point of the trip was to deliver school supplies to Elina’s old elementary school. So he knew of and saw everything I experienced. At Elina’s old school the children were so excited to be handed notebooks and pencils, an indication in my eyes that this was a poor school. The driver however, had a different perspective. He wanted me to know that by Ningbo standards this in fact, was a poor school, but by Chinese standards it was not nearly the poorest. He said he has seen schools were the children come from families so poor that the children don’t have shoes, and for some reason, are so ignorant, that they only wash their faces once a year. He said that there are many, many schools like this in China. And the children in those schools are not the worst off. Their family’s can afford the small fee it costs to send the children to school. In china public school is not free, you have to pay. We have heard that the fee is very, very small in some schools, but even so, some family’s don’t have any money, so their children do not attend school. Now, my friend Elina told Kelly that this is true, and in her case there were times that her family could not afford the school fee but the school allowed her to continue anyway.

This lead to another question, if the children were required to pay for school, why did they not have basic supplies? The answer: many village leaders are corrupt. The school fee’s and money from the central government does not make it to the classroom. So I asked, why doesn’t somebody tell the leaders in government at a higher level? In this man’s opinion the reason is that the problem is systemic. The stolen money is shared with those at the higher level. He believed that there was a lot of corruption in Chinese government. I asked him what he thought of Beijing government (The central government). He said he didn’t know. He didn’t really have a negative opinion of Beijing, he just didn’t know. I guess for him that (Beijing) was just an abstract concept. I can see his point.

I asked him if he thought things were getting better in China. He did think that things were getting better in China, it’s just that it is a big country and he thought it was going to be difficult for Beijing to deal with the corruption at the local level.

January 29, 2008
We woke up to snow today
We woke up to snow today.  There was about one quarter of an inch of snow on the ground.  The international school held regular class so Emily was disappointed.  I guess the Chinese schools were open too as I could see students heading to school.  There is one of them in the picture to the left, getting a ride from Dad, it looks like.

They are predicting more tomorrow.  The weather remained cold and there was still snow on the ground at the end of the day.

January 24, 2008
A beggar
I went and had lunch at McDonalds today. This McDonalds is in quite a lively part of town. Lots of foot traffic, lots of stores, and lots of street vendors. Because of this it is also a place that draws a lot of beggars. I have been in China for a while and am used to seeing beggars, and beggar children on the street. It is just a fact of life. This day I could see from the upstairs McDonalds window a beggar sitting on a blanket on the street with the usual plate set out in front of them. I noticed that quite a few Chinese were giving this beggar money. This is not common. As I left McDonalds I passed by this person. This person was small, with a face so badly burned that you could not tell gender or age.  The hands, and, I assume, arms were also badly burned.  Burned to the point of not being usable.  I gave this person all the change I had in my pockets. I know, you think I should have given more, it’s complicated here, difficult to explain. I gave, and this person told me thank you, “shay, shay... shay shay”. It was the voice of a child, perhaps 5 years old. I thought to myself, you would never see this in America. And you wouldn’t, not on the street. But what if a terrible thing like this happened to a child in America, a child of a poor family with no insurance. Would this child get reconstructive surgery? It is not clear to me what would happen. Who would pay? I have seen stories on the news in America about children who need care but their portents don’t have the money. You know, those feel good stories that tell about the whole town pitching in to help pay for the care. So what’s different? In America we would not allow the child to be set out on the street, too unsightly, but would America care for the child? Not so clear.  Why does the whole town have to pitch in?  It's not much different from setting your disfigured child on the street and asking "the town" to help.  I am drawn to the conclusion that, regarding health care, the situation is not so different between the two countries. I hope I’m wrong. Tell me if I’m wrong.
January 22, 2008
Taco night!
Kelly had some friends over for taco night.  Yep, tacos in China with Australian friends.  That's Emily and Andrew playing a game.  Andrew is one of Emily's classmates and he is in 5th grade.  Emily's school is small some they combine grades, her class has 3rd through 6th graders.

January 17, 2008
Cold and Rainy!

Yuck!!  The weather has been cold and rainy for a week.  There was snow in the air today.  We have been told it is very rare to have snow here in Ningbo.  It does happen, but not too often.  We didn't see any last winter.  I didn't get a picture of the snow though, I was out when it happened and I didn't have my camera.  To the left is a typical rainy day scene of a pair of commuters getting to work on their electric scooter.  Don't get me wrong, there are lots of cars on the road, but still plenty of bikes and scooters.

January 12, 2008
Dinner at KFC!
The weather has turned cold here.  It was around 40 F yesterday.... and rainy.  We decided to walk down the street to KFC for dinner.  Sometimes you can just tell that the young person behind the counter is really looking forward to using their English.  The KFC's in China all have mixed language menus at the counter.  Really, the order could be made with no spoken language at all, just pointing.  But usually the staff say with a smile, "May I help you" or "What would you like" and other common terms like "big", "small", "spicy or not spicy", and they usually tell us the cost in English (even though it can be seen on the register).  Tonight was no exception, this young girl was so happy to be trying out her English that she could hardly talk through her big smile.  Kelly and Emily went to the second floor of this KFC to get a table (KFC's are almost always crowded) while I ordered.  Kelly told me that when she and Emily arrived on the second floor a Chinese family motioned to them to come over, because they were leaving.  Kelly said that when she and Emily arrived at the table, a adolescent girl at the table looked at them and said loudly, with a big smile, "Welcome to China".

January 10, 2008
Nice Weather

Well, the weather was just beautiful today.  I bet it was 65 F today. 

To the left is a picture of a woman fishing in a near by canal.  There were people up and down the canal walking and fishing.  We were all overdressed.

I saw a funny thing today.  Well, not really funny, odd.  I watched a garbage collector empty a garbage bin into his cart.  But there was, apparently, some garbage stuck to the bottom of the can.  So he walked over to the edge of the canal wall and knocked the can on the edge, so rest of the trash would fall into the canal.  I suppose he figured the canal garbage collectors would come by and pick it up.  I see things like this a lot.  The masses, in general, do not respect public spaces.  Some Chinese tell me it's just a matter of education, or lack of it.

Well anyway... I had a nice walk.. to KFC!!  For lunch.

January 5, 2008
Returning Faulty Merchandise
“Santa” brought Emily an MP4 player this year. She loves it! After one use of the charger, the charger stopped working. An MP4 player is not much use without a charger. “Santa” left a receipt with the charger. Apparently he gets some of his gifts from China. The MP4 player was from a reputable “brick and mortar” store, not from the trunk of car.
Well, I went back to the store with the merchandise, showed them my receipt, and told them the problem. (Note that my Chinese is good enough that there is no communication problem with such simple matters, not to mentions some store clerks speak business English fairly well) The clerk tried it out, the charger obviously did not work, and said wait one moment. She returned with another one (slightly different) and tried it. It worked. Great! Then she said it would be 25 RMB.  I said, “But the one you sold to me is broken!/?” “Why do I need to buy a new one?” “The person I bought this from said I had one month to return the whole thing.” She said, “No, you can return the MP4 player but it is impossible to return the charger.” If you the reader can not tell, being in the situation, it was painfully obvious this was a poorly executed, off the cuff lie. I said, “let me speak to the manager”. She said, “he’s not here”. I said, “let me speak with the manager” She said, “the store does not have one”. She was smiling. Now, many of you may not know this, but I have about 40 years of pent of anger to draw on. I said, “Everybody has a cell phone, give me his cell phone number’. She said, “he’ll just tell you the same thing I am telling you.” Lots of yelling in Chinese and English ensued. She said she was sorry. I said “I am sorry that I will have to come back here every day yelling in your face until I get what I want”. I used English here. I think she understood me. She said “10 RMB”. Finally, I said “5 RMB”. She said “10”. I said “7”. She said “10”. I said “7 and you never have to see me again”. Done. Now.. I don’t know if you think this story is funny, but I can tell you it is not unique. Here, everything is cash based and “buyer beware”. If your coming here to live you can certainly expect the same. don’t get me wrong, I have seen interesting things here and met nice people. I guess I want to start telling the whole story. If you are Chinese and your reading this, I can tell you that this kind of situation is very unusual in the United States.  I would have simply brought it back and the clerk would have given me a new one.  No questions asked.  Sometimes you don’t even need to have a receipt.

January 2, 2008
The internet in China