A December Compilation

The last weekend in November, we kicked of our holiday season with an extended weekend in Zhanjiang. Over four days we spent much needed time with friends, ate an abundance of Chinese food, laughed a lot, celebrated reunions, and cherished enjoying a bit of familiarity. Thus, with our socializing beaker overflowing, our halls sufficiently decked with 100 meters of lights, and the final stretch of the semester before us, we welcomed December and its tales. 

Disgraced Deities

Close to the Donghu village gate is a tiny temple that we have watched gradually become rather dusty, neglected, and disowned by the locals. We are unsure as to why this little shrine has become discarded - perhaps pissy ancestors, gods are on holiday, or the exorbitant amount of construction around the place has disturbed the fengshui. While the reason eludes us, the repercussions of a temple falling out of favor have been quite visible. While used incense sticks and the common temple bric-a-brac piled up over a couple of weeks, the addition of deities in plastic bags caused us to stop and investigate one week. Thus began the disgraced deities dump saga; which was us finding the abandoned bestowers of luck, knowledge, and prosperity in different dump positions every time we walked past until one afternoon stroll they were missing. Either someone took pity on their disgraced status and placed them in another temple, they made the jaunt to a much larger deity dump, or the locals were so fearful the two foreigners who kept stopping to admire them were going to steal them and bring famine and dishonor on the entire village. 

Beyond a Gate

After 10am on Fridays I am free, thus these became days when I would either lay in the sun, take gloriously long naps, or embark on solo explorations. On one such exploration this month, I wanted to see what was beyond a rather solitary traditional gate close to Haojiang. The immediate area past the gate was rather nasty and neglected, but a dented brown sign, adorned with a temple symbol, pointed up the hill.

A kilometer and a half up the hill, I discovered a vibrant and very thriving temple complex. The workers were just as bewildered to my presence as I was to theirs, though they set aside their gawking long enough point me in directions in which I needed to explore. I spent a couple of hours wandering the many layers, even spending time sitting and listening to the afternoon chant session taking place in the meditation hall.

The offerings before the deity are often something I like to take note of when wandering the temples. Most temples have the staples of fruit and buns, but, around here, actual food dishes are popular. Plus the presentation tends to be very picturesque. In my quest to find the offering halls on this day, I actually found the holding area for ancestor gifts. This was a first to see life-size paper furniture sets, houses, and even a car with a driver. I had no idea that Mercedes was the choice vehicle of the afterlife.

A Few Lights

As mentioned earlier, our halls were decked with 100 meters of Christmas lights this year. Our lights from years past met a nasty short last year, leaving our tree not so illuminated for the latter part of the holiday season. So, Taobao came to the rescue for our seasonal ambiance. My husband's bewilderment was so evident on his face when I pulled out a rather large wad of lights when the package arrived.

"One hundred meters!" he exclaimed.

"Yes."

"Amanda, do you know how long 100 meters is?"

"Long....I saw the hundred and got excited," I responded.

"It is the length of a football field," said my husband, with his hands on his hips.

"It was a good price," I said as I happily wound many lights around the tree.

One hundred meters is really long, so not only was the tree saturated but so was the window and the entire living room. Post-holiday season, we plan to drape the entire apartment, which is much nicer lighting than Chinese florescents and naked bulbs.

A Hong Kong Weekend

The third weekend of the month, we ran away to Hong Kong and it was a glorious three days. We think our hearts felt the semester was over, so our brains just followed the giddiness of freedom being fully cognizant that we still had three weeks left. Even so, we embraced this bustling metropolis and fully immersed ourselves in its offerings of abundant Christmas decorations and artwork on nearly every spare space.

Though we loved the slices of pizza, ever flowing chai tea lattes, ease of transportation, and the hours of aimless meandering, the real reason for our trip to Hong Kong was two fold. First, it was the opening weekend for The Last Jedi. Being the avid Star Wars fans that we are, we felt that we could not wait the extra three weeks for it to land on the mainland without it being spoiled in some way. Though, Star Wars is a brilliant excuse to do anything.

The second reason, was to meet Ada and Roger for a day in their transit to Australia. This meet up included a night at the theatre to watch The Nutcracker. This was my first experience to see the iconic Christmas production in totality and on stage. I was really excited and it was stunning. Though, for as much as I thought I knew the story, there were moments I was confused, especially concerning the Rat King - I definitely thought he had a more prominent role.

After our theatre stop, we had drinks at a swanky bar bar overlooking the harbor. Over our cocktails, mocktails, and juice, we enjoyed sharing memories of Hong Kong, travel stories, and the travels soon to come. We so enjoy our friendship with these two.

Culinary Explorations

With the lack of food in this no mans land, I have definitely expanded my cooking repertoire. Perusing holiday recipes, I spotted a recipe for babka. I love making bread, so the idea of such a pretty bread was intriguing. A couple of days later, I made the embarked on my first venture into babka making and I am hooked. It is the prettiest bread to make and it tastes so good. With the first batch, I watched my husband devour an entire loaf. The first round, I made the chocolate version. Second round, it was cinnamon sugar. While both are good, the chocolate wins for moistness and flavor.

The Extra Stuff

Intermingled with the highlights are the day to day adventures of teaching and living. The last two weeks were our final exams, which have been a source of ample frustrations and tear-inducing laughter. We have had students not show up for their exam, groups speak Chinese for the entire exam, and even a student or two walk out during the exam. We have had students, who could not speak English, try to get a friend (who speaks minimal English) to beg for a passing grade. It is here that we see the failure of the Chinese education system; we are at a degree mill, not a school.

We were invited to a new year school celebration which actually ended up being a oh-hail-communism extravaganza. Not only was it a bait and switch, but we learned there is a one-performance-fits-all for the show we saw was one we had already seen at GDOU. Different people, but same songs and same dances. While I would love to say that I am surprised, I am not.

We received holiday love in the form of cardboard boxes from friends and family, near and far. Of course, we had a debacle with one and I had a lovely battle of words with our liaison.

We have been asked so many times by students if we are returning next semester that I am suspicious that we have been fired and the office has yet to tell us. However, our fellow foreign teacher discovered in one of her question sessions that the foreigners last year left before Christmas and never returned - as one student said, "they left for the Christmas and we never saw them again."

We dealt with the lack of water and honed our bucket bathing skills. When we left for Hong Kong, we were without water, and when we returned, there is was no water. It was not lost on us that our FAO told us about campus having no water until after he knew we were in Shantou.

This was probably our quietest holiday season since moving to China. While not unpleasant, it was weird. We are on the cusp of our annual winter holiday travel and I think we are both really excited to get out, see people, eat something more than my cooking, and experience a bit more day to day life than we have here. 

Little Yellow Flowers

Over the past couple of weeks, large areas of wilderness bloomed into a vibrant yellow and snowy white. While the sudden burst of color among untamed green definitely caught my attention, it was the heads - either donned with very gray hair or a ginormous bonnet - that would periodically pop above the flowers that held my attention. I definitely stood and gawked for hidden among the blooms were women, perched on tiny stools, plucking the the blooms.

I was perplexed as to the need to harvest them. Chinese are notorious for consuming a wide variety of things, but I could not place yellow flowers among the dishes I have seen here. In the coming days, the blooms gradually disappeared, but squished blobs of greenery appeared in drying baskets perched in every sunlit patch along the village walkways.

Tea.

By my assumptions, yellow flower tea.

It is a tea flavor that I have tried, nor I am too keen to, but I thoroughly enjoyed (accidentally) watching the harvesting process, whether it was a lone picker or a gang of giggling women gossiping away the time. 

Professional Festival Finders

The signs that a festival is afoot are subtle - a building usually cloistered found to have a wide open entryway, hunched elders toting multicolored baskets to and fro, an increased amount of things being burned, more than normal firecrackers popping, or people wearing more red. Unlike the forethought and planning culture of the west, Chinese festivals are more on-a-whim with a heavy dose of chaos. Even the government mandated cultural holidays tend to have a manic aspect to them and one will be lucky to find out if any activity is happening to mark the occasion. I joke with students that even on the biggest festival of the year, Spring Festival, a visitor will most likely not even realize a holiday is forthcoming. Red couplets, red lanterns, and lion dances are just as common outside of the Spring Festival as they are during; the only difference is that during, the iconic decorations are new and lacking the thick layer of dust.

Over the years, Zach and I have become rather proficient on sussing out celebrations, especially in the villages. Granted, most of the time it is pure luck that we happen to stroll through the village and notice the subtle changes in decor and activity. If anything, we tend to find the after effects of the event more often and lament what we missed. However, we have had a good run of discoveries in Shantou. The latest being in the village next to our school, Donghu. It was a classic case of we-need-to-walk-explore-and-buy-vegetables. As we walked we saw the signs; a rather docile village suddenly a bit more alive. Across the hunched shoulders of the adults were bamboo poles bearing brimming baskets, while children ran amok with candy in hand. A square normally vacant was filled with incense smoke and trails of people coming and going. I started asking questions and received the expected answer - a festival of something. The something varied from person to person - holiday, god, a different god, an ancestor. While whatever the reason remained more a mystery, we spent a weekend enjoying a local festival.

Shantou is continually proving itself to be an immensely superstitious area, which was reflected in the village offerings. Mounds of food and fruit along with lamps are common, but the ginormous paper robes, diversity of lamps, and the elaborate headdresses were a new sight. I had read and heard about the robes, but was unaware they would be meshed with the paper ancestor homes. Each robe is intricately colored and decorated with deities and gods on the upper half, while the lower half is a 2D house with people within in the windows and placed in the front courtyard. They were really stunning pieces of artistry, as were the headdresses that I could only assume matched a robe hanging on the wall. 

The bonus to the festivities was the Chaoshan opera (Chaoju) we watched one evening. Familiar to Leizhou opera (Leiju), the source of the banshee-esque sqawks heard often around GDOU, I really wanted to see a Chaoshan production because I have been told multiple times that is it better and more famous. Granted, the terms better and famous are attributed to everything in China, so I was looking to have a more side by side comparison. After one round, I can say that Chaoju is definitely not so screechy but rather more nasally. It is more pleasant to the ear, but the singing is much slower, which means the action seems a bit snail-like. Have you ever seen an fight scene that took ten minutes and the actors barely moved? I have now and it was the best part of the entire production because it was more action than we had seen during the previous hour. As for costumes, Chaoju is more subtle with colors, props, and make up whereas Leiju is extremely vibrant and heavy on the face makeup. Overall, I cannot distinguish what would make Chaoju the best or most famous of operas; I think it is a classic case of everything-from-my-hometown-is-the-best syndrome.

While we enjoyed this new theatrical form, we were the entertainment for the locals. Children running wild, would run circles around us, inching closer with each round until they were brave enough to touch a knee or stand, wide-eyed before us. From the adults, there was lots of pointing, staring, open mouth gaping, and not-so-secret picture taking. Zach and I continuously joke that if this is how Chinese act today in the era of internet and abundant western movies, I cannot fathom what gawking looked like in the early 1900s or earlier. While they gawked, we joked, laughed, took a lot of pictures, and enjoyed the success of finding a festival jotted down somewhere on a mythical calendar. 

A Few New Things

Our day's quest took us to the Zhongshan Park area, a park created in the 1920s to show the expertise of Chinese gardening to the world. A placard read that it was one of four, the other three long gone but this one still stands. Sadly, as with most things in China, the overselling of its grandeur and importance was belied by the algae-infested ponds, trash dancing on the breeze, and the tacky carnival games, rides, and statues stashed between garden walls. Granted, we only saw one side of the park, but that one side did not inspire a want to return to explore the other side.

Our actual destination was to be found on the left side of the park fence, tucked in the rear corner - a behemoth of a concrete building known as the Shantou Museum. Walking towards its entrance, we prepared ourselves for the barrage of reasons why we would not be able to enter - wrong shoes, wrong nationality, wrong hours...to name a few we have heard in the past. We arrived during the final minutes of the siesta hour to wide open doors and no security guards. We quickly ducked into a gallery in hopes of staying unnoticed for a while.

The main exhibit was of traditional paintings and calligraphy, the foyer holding a very long painting depicting the eastern coast of the Guangdong province. It was quite lovely and informative. The other galleries included the typical pottery stash, a local history lesson, and a Buddhist statue exhibit that had amazing lighting and decor ambiance, complete with English information.

After our stroll through the museum, we began the hunt for the local fabric market. With a little help from Google, Baidu, and a Chinese speaker, we had sussed that one should be in the area. Hunting for such things is truly like a treasure hunt - a button store on this corner, a lace shop down the road on the other side of the road, a curtain tailor around the bend. It is the fabric breadcrumbs that lead to the hub. We followed the clues and found not a market, but a district. It was an overwhelming labyrinth of textiles; a labyrinth that will take many hours of exploration.

I spared Zach such in-depth exploration and we meandered on to see what else could be found in the area - such as this old building. We do not know its original purpose or what it currently houses, but we have noticed that Shantou architecture favors curved buildings on corners.

Monday evening we were invited the campus Chaoshan Opera Association performance. We were really excited to see a different style of opera, but quickly became a bit disgruntled when it began 45 minutes late and the performers were older individuals in sequined gowns, poofy prom dresses, and blue jeans. With this performance, we realized that the costumes are a must to truly appreciate the art form. I see it similar to Broadway; the songs are great, but add the costumes and a set and it is magical. The same applies to Chaoshan opera.

The show was not a complete bust, for we were able to see a traditional puppet show. While this may seem childish and not that grand to many, a bit of information needs to be provided. This is definitely a dying art form in China. For seven years, I have heard about the traditional puppet shows, seen the puppets in museums, been told about shows during their childhood from village-dwelling students, and have seen a picture or two. However, I have never seen a live performance until now. It was fascinating and so enjoyable. I snapped only three photos, for I did not want to miss the experience of such a rare show.

Zach joked afterwards that if we wanted to make our own puppet, we knew where the fabric (and costume) district was thanks to another weekend of exploration. 

The Sea Goddess Comes to Town

Haojiang is the closest bustling hub to our school. Between here and there, it is a twenty minute bus ride through a desolate wasteland of abandoned concrete buildings. Every time we ride through it, I try to fathom what happened to make it look like a war torn area either by mortars or walking dead. Sadly, boxy concrete behemoths will be China's legacy.

As for Haojiang, it is a thriving cluster of  patchwork buildings. On its outer fringe, it even has a McDonalds. We have found ourselves meandering this village a lot as of late; it has the hustle bustle of life that we love about living in China. Hawkers, markets, winding pathways, surprise temples - the things that range from the days of old to the modern encroachment. It was on a stroll this past Sunday that we realized that a festival was afoot. Lanterns were being hung, gold mylar was being draped, and the temples were busy. We asked locals as we went, but as many of them do not speak Mandarin, it was a bit futile. However, when we made a stop to buy a couple of electronic items, we found our fount of information with the boss and his dad. The dad was ecstatic about our arrival, yet became even more so when I started speaking to him in Mandarin. The boss a younger guy and could actually speak some English. So between his broken English and our broken Chinese, we learned that the week was to be spent celebrating the sea goddess, Mazu. They were adamant that Wednesday was the day for the parade and we must return to see it. We walked away from the shop thrilled with our newfound knowledge and a wechat account of Haojiang events. 

On Wednesdays, I have class at 8am and 2pm, whereas Zach has class at 10am. Thus, our plan was for me to go to Haojiang directly after my class at 10am, Zach would come after his at noon, and we would try to find each other (because I don't have a phone) in the crowd. If that did not work, we would meet at McDonald's at 1:15pm.

The route into Haojiang was bedecked with flags, and sporadically beside the road I would see a red offering table loaded with fruit and sweets surrounded by a cluster of people. After exiting the bus, I stopped to chat with an event volunteer (known by her mandated yellow vest) about the parade route. She was helpful, but as with all Chinese events, the timing was not known. She kept repeating fast, but fast in China usually means an hour or two. Therefore, I walked. Of course, I encountered the usual gawkers and creepy followers, but in general, the locals seemed bemused that a foreigner would come to their local festival.

With the flurry of firecrackers, I knew the processional was beginning (and I still have aspirations to be a confetti canon attendant in one of these festive occasions.) I was a bit perplexed as to why this parade was more vehicle-inclusive than previous parades I have seen, but was quite humored by the reactions of those in the vehicles who spotted me on the sidewalk. As I snapped pictures of them, they were taking even more of me.

I nearly missed the goddess. Tucked between a strange float contraption and a truck full of old men, her arrival was diminished by the sleazy, smoking men riding in her carriage who were jeering at me. It was a moment I felt the sea goddess should conjure an epic wave smoting or at least an invisible hand smack across their heads. It was not to be, but a woman strolling past me made a remark in disgust and I agreed with her in Chinese. She stopped, stunned, and then proceeded to carry on a lovely conversation with me, which I greatly enjoyed. I asked why the parade was so short. Her answer involved too many Chinese words that I did not know but got the idea that there was to be more later. I thanked her profusely and then began walking, which is when I stumbled across another street still decorated with offering tables.

As I walked, I talked and asked questions. The parade was going to return later.

At this point, it was nearing 12:15pm, so I headed towards to the bus stop to see if I could intercept Zach, which I did. As we walked along the road looking at the decorations, I filled him in on the morning and what I thought the afternoon would be based on my investigative chatting. I told him to temper his parade expectations over a McDonald's lunch.

As I walked out of the teaching building after class, I saw Zach sitting on the steps. I asked, "How was the parade rerun?"

He responded, with a sly smile, "Oh, I got a parade."

Zach saw the grand event; the full extravaganza of costumes, dancing, music, and the ginormous goddess entourage. I was so jealous, yet thrilled that his afternoon was so delightful. His pictures were incredible and his stories captivating. We laughed so hard at his photo series involving a plump Darth Vader and cronies - all puffing on cigarettes while looking miserable. We felt this was a Chinese cigarette company ad in the making.

In hindsight, we realized that my parade was for the arrival of the goddess into the area, whereas Zach's parade was the celebratory parade in her honor.

An extra note to this tale involves the goddess, Mazu. While Chinese normally make a fuss over their deities and heavily involve their statues into the festivities, this statue was especially unique as it was brought from Fujian. This week, I learned that Meizhou, Fujian is home to the (supposedly) oldest Mazu temple. Why she is on tour and how her parade routes are chosen, I still do not know, but it was obvious that this statue is of great importance by her entourage size, which included a lot of police. I hope she enjoyed her visit, for we enjoyed hers and the festivities she instigated in our little village by the sea. 

The Sound of October Whooshing Past

We began the month celebrating the revered Golden Holiday and ended it with an evening of insane trick or treating. As the title suggests, the month swooshed by quite quickly and was busier than expected. Thus, here are the tales, beginning to end and the stuff smooshed in between them.

Golden Week Holiday: Qingyuan

At the end of the September, we made the decision that we had to get away during the holiday. Our first month in Shantou had been trying and we needed to reset and be reminded why we enjoy living in this country. We tossed around a couple of ideas, but realized that one of the best people to help us re-calibrate would be Emma, former student turned friend. Over the years, she has repeatedly invited us to her hometown, Qingyuan, so we finally said yes.

It was everything we needed - we laughed, we talked, we walked, and we were able to celebrate her birthday and Mid-Autumn festival. We played mahjong. We soaked in hot springs. We ate a lot of great Chinese food.

On our return journey, we spent a night in Guangzhou and reconnected with our friend, Shaun. It had been three years between meetings and it was wonderful to sit and regale each other with the stories of the missing years. It was a night that reminded us that some friendships never feel the strain of time apart; for Shaun, it felt as though we had just had coffee the previous week.

Yan's Grandparents

Tucked within the rambling alleyways of an older section of Qingyuan, we spent part of an afternoon chatting and drinking tea with Emma's friend, Yan, and her grandparents. Sitting in the concrete bunker-style home, filled with a medley of furniture and knick knacks spanning the decades, Yan's grandparents were welcoming and even endured the stream of questions that this foreigner asked to be translated. As the ancestors watched us from the perch high on the wall, we learned about their marriage spanning sixty years - where and how they met, their jobs as laborers, and that the grandmother still has trouble using her mobile phone. While the picture I captured shows them quite stoic, the smiles I saw without the camera were beautiful.

Soggy Days

We have quickly learned that living on the east coast means that any typhoon in the area - whether passing by on its way to the western coasts or even migrating farther north - means this area will have a deluge for a couple of days. The day that I snapped this picture, I was the lucky one not to have a scheduled class (Zach did), thus I enjoyed watching this colorful parade from my very dry balcony.

Football Tournament

Mowing the field combined with Zach's star power, a new fervor of football has taken over the campus. With this new emergence of football mania, a pocket of students instigated a 5 on 5 tournament this month. It was quite official with Gatorade sponsoring and the leaders giving an official speech prior to the opening game.

Throughout the month, the games were a battlefield for the players and a source of afternoon entertainment for the spectators. Zach's team won third prize; their semifinal game coming down to penalty kicks by phone lights. He was pleased with the result, though the past week has been one of recuperation since he took a hard knock to a knee and a handful of good stomps to the ankle. 

...Another Temple...

In Ghostly Echoes, William Ritter wrote, "We bring with us the spirits of our ancestors. We are haunted by their demons and protected by their deities." There were many quotes within that book that resonated, but I find myself contemplating this one oh so often while strolling through the villages around us. Obviously, temples are a staple of the Chinese landscape, but we are discovering that this area of Shantou is especially temple saturated. (It should also be noted that there is a bizarre abundance of Christian churches as well.) These temples are stashed everywhere: a nook between staircases, around the corner from a house, and tucked beneath a tree on a random path. It is not uncommon to overhear one of us saying, "...and there is another one..."

Along with the abundance of temples comes a great host of rituals, which we seem to stumble across rather frequently even though it is not a recognized holiday. These traditions take many forms from burning paper money in front of the house to offering food, but over the past weeks, I have definitely seen things that are new to me. Superstitions run rampant here and daily activities portray such beliefs. It has been fascinating. 

Trick or Treat Extravaganza

We definitely waffled between the have and have not when it came to deciding whether to have our annual Trick or Treating extravaganza this year. We feared that no one would come because these students are just that lazy, but we also wondered if they craved something (anything) to do on this campus like us. Obviously, by this post and picture, we chose to have it. Reactions from students were mixed when we talked about it class, but on Halloween night they arrived in droves and surpassed our expectations.

Many of them actually donned costumes or used make up to create scary faces. They were thrilled to get candy, but even more so to take pictures with friends, us, the jack o'lantern, and our sparkly photo booth. We had so many trick or treaters that we ran out of candy by 9:40pm. Sadly, the late stragglers walked away empty handed but had a few fun snapshots on their phones.

The trick or treat extravaganza was the trending topic on WeChat and many of the students still talk about what a fun night it was for them. I guess we all crave a little action around this place.   

Photo Journal: Old Shantou

We have loosely established an exploratory schedule to coincide with a school-provided driver picking us up at 10pm from the downtown area every other week. Otherwise, our explorations would be limited in area and time since the bus stops running the route at 5pm...or stops at 3:30pm for no reason and leaves dozens stranded downtown (which happened to us last weekend.) Today, we had a driver, so we pinpointed a location and pounded the pavement for hours. Sadly, the government has gotten a hold of Old Shantou, so most of the locals have been removed, the buildings are encased with scaffolding and netting, and a good dose of disney-fication is underway. Luckily, China only worries about the facades, so a turn down an alleyway reveals the charm of years past.

I would have loved to hear this woman's thoughts as she silently stood in the middle of the road, for a long time, gazing at the mayhem around her.

Electrical lines are the perfect laundry line.

We were completely amazed yet baffled how a ginormous tree grew on a roof and survives long after the roof is gone. 

Bakeries are the land of bizarre labels.

Much to our surprise, churches are in abundance in Shantou. This Catholic church was the perfect location to hide from honking motobikes and insane drivers.

When the delivery truck doubles as a siesta hideout.