Life of a Pilgrim

Thursday morning I headed out of my door with a skip in my step.  I was finally headed back to the classroom and I was certain there was nothing that could get me down.  Then I walked out of my building.  What I saw didn’t ruin my mood, but it did cause a frown to pass across my face.  Sometime while I was enjoying my last full day in pajama pants someone had been very busy out front of our apartment buildings.  What two days before had been sturdy little trees boasting numerous (albeit bare) branches had now become these glorified sticks.

The Chinese approach to spring cleaning and pruning at times mystifies me.  Their measures often appear quite drastic and severe.  However, there’s a fairly good chance they know a bit more about tending plants than I do.  Three years ago, these very same trees were planted in a similar very stick-like state outside our building.

As foreign teachers, we mocked the sticks mercilessly.  What were the planters thinking?  It would take years before these sticks could resemble anything close to a tree!  Needless to say, we all ate our words when we returned to campus in August to find these:

And the following spring, our little sticks were bursting forth with flowers.  Maybe those Chinese gardeners did know what they were doing after all.

This history of our sticks passed through my mind as I headed off to class.  There’s something about pruning that we seem to naturally despise.  The process, after all, is not in the least bit beautiful.  In fact, it is often the very parts that appear to be teeming with life that get cut off in the process of pruning.  What’s left behind ends up looking more dead than alive.  In fact, the naive passerby may scoff and doubt that life, never mind abundant life, could ever come from that.

How tempting is it to avoid pruning?  To the outside world, this avoidance is one way to keep up the appearance of life and fruit.  We may continue to flower, but we’ll never grow to our full potential.  We were made to bear fruit abundantly, and the simple fact is that such bearing requires much pruning.  Pruning that at times may by all appearances seem to be draining the life right from us.  But should we have patience, life–abundant life–awaits us.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  Every branch that bears fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.  If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit, apart from me you can do nothing.  This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit.

(Please excuse the poor photograph…it was late, I was hungry, and the lighting was horrible.)

I have lived five years in China without the knowledge of this dish.  That my friends is a sad, sad fact.  A week ago when we were having a reunion dinner with some teachers from the department, I was not the least bit excited to see this dish on the table.  Let’s be honest, it doesn’t look that good.  My first guess as to the contents of the mystery dish was stir fried balls of tofu.  Much to the astonishment of my students, who view the substance as a delicious staple, I still do not enjoy tofu.  Tofu comes in many shapes, sizes, textures and forms in China, but I have yet to find a version I like.  Consequently, when I saw this dish on the table I made a mental note to steer clear.  Luckily, I was at dinner with far braver folk who reported that the mystery balls were not tofu, but rather mashed potatoes.  You read that correctly.  Mashed potatoes.  Somehow formed into a ball.  Don’t ask me how.  Stir fried with onions and beef in a tasty brown sauce.  I fell in love instantaneously.  The restaurant also instantaneously earned a nickname among the foreigners: “the potato ball place”.  You see, we can’t read a lot of characters.  Which means we can’t read the name of restaurants.  Which means restaurants get nicknames based on their special dishes, experiences we have there, or other random observations.  There’s “Fight club”, named for a brawl we witnessed in said restaurant.  There’s “Ratatouille”, named for the large poster of the mouse from the movie.  There’s “Japanese Rice”, a restaurant that does not have Japanese Rice.  They have rice dishes.  And the picture of the lady on the menu looks Japanese.  I think you get my point.  To sum it all up, when Lauren asked if we wanted to go to “the potato ball place” for our single ladies dinner last night, she was met with a hearty “Yes!”.  I’ve got to make up for five years of no potato balls.

The following is a test of your intelligence and aptitude for navigating the confusing waters of Chinese scheduling.  As you remember, this Saturday is Monday, March 1st in the eyes of the university.  Except for a slight change now.  This Saturday morning is Monday, March 1st unless you teach in a multimedia classroom.  In the schedule shuffle, it seems the university forgot that Saturday must also be March 6th, since March 6th is the national date for the TEM-8, the English proficiency test for all English majors.  Consequently, all multimedia classrooms are in use for the examination Saturday morning.  I do indeed have a class in a multimedia classroom Saturday morning.  Here comes the true test of your mental prowess: Monday, March 8th is now Monday March 1st for the morning multimedia class and Wednesday March 10th is Monday March 8th.  Your head swimming yet?  Don’t worry, Saturday afternoon is still Monday, March 1st regardless of classroom type.

So what does this all really mean?  Basically, it means I’m a few weeks out from really finding a routine.  However, I went out and bought school supplies today and am arranging all my materials.  By this time tomorrow I will be back in the classroom and all will be right in the world again…in a typical twisted, unpredictable, confusing Chinese manner.

China is changing rapidly.  (And yes, I’m aware that that is a “well, duh” statement.)  It is remarkable to think about how much people’s lives have changed just in the past ten years.  The greatest migration in the history of this planet is happening right now as millions of people leave behind familiarity in the countryside and embark on the unknown and insecure frontiers of the city.  Just how do people cope with all of this change?  How is stability and harmony (or at least a surface level appearance of stability and harmony) maintained?  The explanations are many and varied from fields of history, psychology, sociology, and politics.  However, I will give you one simple tiny partial explanation.  For two weeks every year the nation is let loose to blow stuff up non-stop with little to no actual regulations.  If blowing up large quantities of explosives doesn’t relieve tension, I don’t know what will.

From lunar new year’s eve through the lantern festival two weeks later, the Chinese skies are alight with fireworks.  These aren’t your minor mom and pop fireworks of the states.  These are full blown, major fireworks set off in between high rise apartment buildings by your Uncle Zhao and Cousin Li.

Americans pack up dinners and camp out by riverbanks for hours in anticipation of a fifteen minute fireworks show on the fourth.  In China, you can sit back in your lazy boy and watch a six hour show outside your window that will rival any piddly July fourth display.

And really, I challenge you to find the person whose cares and burdens aren’t lightened to some extent by waving around sparklers and blowing things up.  In fact, you might even say it’s downright therapeutic.

As I was sorting through some documents this week I stumble upon this quote I had jotted down while reading a tragically beautiful book.  I highly recommend picking up The City of Joy if you haven’t read it yet; below is one of my favorite conversations from the book.

‘Who is that?’ he asked, surprised.

‘It’s Jesus.’

The leper looked incredulous.  ‘Jesus?  No, it can’t be.  He doesn’t look like he usually does.  Why does your Jesus have his eyes closed and look so sad?’

Stephen Kovalski knew that Indian iconography reproduced images of Christ in abundance, but those of a Christ with blue eyes, triumphant and brightly colored, like the gods of the Hindu pantheon.  ‘He has suffered,’ said the priest.  The Pole sensed that further explanation was necessary.  ‘His eyes are closed, so that he can see us better,’ he went on.  ‘And so that we, for our part, can look at him more readily.  Perhaps if his eyes were open, we wouldn’t dare to, because our eyes are not pure, nor are our hearts, and we carry a large share of the responsibility for his suffering.  For if he is suffering, it’s because of me, you, all of us; because of our sins, because of the evil that we do.  Still he loves us so much that he forgives us.  He wants us to look at him.  And to love him.  And  to do as he does and forgive everyone and love everyone, especially those who suffer like him, they invite me to love you who are suffering like him.’

The leper seemed deeply moved.  His dark eyes were shining.

‘He is in pain,’ Stephen Kovalski went on, ‘but he doesn’t want us to weep for him, but rather for those that are suffering today, because he suffers in them, in the bodies and hearts of the lonely, the abandoned, the despised, as well as in the minds of the insane, the neurotic, and the deranged.  You see, that’s why I love that picture, because it reminds me of all that.’

The leper nodded his head thoughtfully.  Then, raising his stump in the direction of the picture, he said, ‘Your Jesus is much more beautiful than the one in all our pictures.’”

~Dominique Lapierre, The City of Joy

The pattern has been that every semester, the department hands us the class schedule two, at most three, days before the start of classes.  The foreign teachers get together for a marathon meeting of divvying up the class load, and then set up times for planning groups (those teaching the same class) to meet together in the day or two before classes begin.  It’s a chaotic way to start the semester, but we chalk it up as life in China and have come to expect the mayhem.

Imagine our shock, therefore, when the entire schedule for this semester was handed to us before we left to travel.  We had the entire schedule in our hands at the beginning of January.  Before we packed our bags full of sunscreen, flip flops, and t-shirts we each knew what subjects and what specific classes of students we would teach.  Granted, we held the schedule loosely knowing things could change, but we had a good idea of where we would be March 1st.

The schedule, shockingly, has not changed (yet).  However, tentatively the start date of the semester has.  Sort of.  Yesterday my teammate Mark was chatting to some of the people in the Foreign Affairs Office about taking a trip to Beijing to have his arm checked out (which he broke riding a motorbike in Thailand…another story for another day).  He was talking about how he didn’t want to leave until he finished his classes on Tuesday to which they replied, “Oh, classes don’t start until Wednesday.”  Mark came to report the news to us, to which my response was, “Seriously!  Am I ever going to get to start work again?”  I’m sorry folks, I love my job and I’m just plumb tired of vacation.  I want to be in a classroom…NOW!  Anyways, Wu made the call to confirm the change with the department.

Technically, we still are starting on “March 1st”.  Only now, March 6th has become March 1st.  Welcome to the twisted Chinese logic of making-up holidays.  Sunday is Lantern Festival in China, a holiday that brings Spring Festival to a close and restores normalcy to the stores, restaurants, and the rest of the nation that’s been taking a rest.  Consequently, my logic works out that they didn’t want to have students returning to school on the festival.  Which would be great if the students actually knew classes didn’t start until Wednesday; the ones I’ve talked to are unaware of the new start date.  However, it appears March 1st has been moved to March 6th, and March 2nd has been moved to March 13th.  Technically we still begin on the first, it’s just that Saturday has become Monday.  Tentatively.  Yes, that’s the phraseology of the department.  This latest updated schedule is tentative.  Sometime in the next week (let’s hope), I should be back to work.

On another note, I highly recommend reading this article and this article about the plight of many recent university grads in China.  While searching for employment in the big cities, many of these grads have formed communities called “Ant hills” on the outskirts of town.  It is likely that some of my former students are a part of these communities now, and that some current students are headed that way.

I used to hate eggplant.  The thought of the so-perceived slimy purple vegetable was enough to make me turn up my nose.  However, the Chinese managed to break down my aversion to eggplant.  The Chinese know how to cook eggplant; in fact, some of my favorite dishes over here are eggplant dishes.  And no, I don’t have Chinese recipes for eggplant preparation.  Five years in China and I have yet to master a single Chinese dish.  I know, it’s a shame.  Anyways, back to my original line of thought.  Thanks to the Chinese, when I saw this recipe for a roasted eggplant and tomato pizza from one of my favorite cooking blogs, I was willing to give it a try.  And boy was it worth it!  First of all, the crust was the absolute perfect combination of chewy and crispy.  It will now be the sole recipe for all of my pizza crusts.  Secondly, the flavor of this pizza was incredible.  I took the suggested add-on advice and put a layer of pesto sauce on top of the crust, which is a step I would definitely recommend.  Eggplant would have never been my first choice for pizza toppings before, but trust me, give it a try!  (If you’re looking for another Italian delight, check out the new recipe for breadsticks under “from the kitchen”.)

It is gray today.  Stark, dark, gloomy, dreary gray.  The type of gray that requires having lights on all day.  The type of gray that encourages curling up under a blanket letting the hours melt away in unproductiveness (which apparently is not a word; can someone please inform me why “productiveness” is a word, but unproductiveness is not?  I speak…and teach…the most ridiculous language…).  Anyways, the landscape outside my window today is the extreme opposite of the landscape I was enjoying just over a week ago.  After Laos, Lisa and I headed to two Thai islands, Samui and Phangan.  We spent most of our time on Phangan, where we were blessed to stay right on the beach.  I applied sun screen, read, swam, applied sun screen, read, swam, applied sun screen…I think you get the drift.  I finished four books, three of my choosing and one for a graduate class.

I also took pictures of Lisa.  I consider it one of my duties to capture the beauty of dear friends for boyfriends who are thousands of miles away.  It makes me popular among the menfolk.  That is, popular among the already-taken menfolk.

I also took pictures of sunsets.  Many pictures of sunsets.  When the Father lays out such a magnificent array of color before you, you just can’t help but want to capture it.  The shot below is one of my favorites.  Beautiful sunset and siblings and water wings and holding hands.  You just can’t script that.

But one of my favorite parts of our beach time was our nightly dinners.  For all except one meal, Lisa and I kept returning to the same restaurant.  The food was terrific, and since we were the only customers every night, the service was also spectacular.  But more than that, we kept coming back because of the cook.

He was a friendly guy with quite the story to tell.  Each night after making our food, he would come out to chat with us and tell us about his life.  His life in Burma.  His time working as a medical assistant for the government.  About making the move to Thailand and leaving behind his wife and kids in Burma.  About the headaches of returning for his yearly visit.  About the fact that his wife’s nagging makes him ready to come back to Thailand by the end of that visit.  About his grandpa from China.  About learning how to cook Western food through experimentation.  We had a “make-up” birthday dinner at his restaurant.  As Lisa remarked, I never would have guessed I’d see the day when a Burmese guy sang Happy Birthday to me.

Oh, one other great thing about the beach?  The designs on the toast.  It’s the small things that bring joy to my days…

And that folks, is the end of the travel updates.  It is time to move back to “normal” life, which I must be honest, I’m thrilled about.  We just weren’t made to live our lives on vacation!

Candle.  Coffee.  Stack of books.  Reading chair.  Soft, thick blanket.  To me, that’s home.  Since returning a week ago I’ve spent a large majority of my time right here.  And an embarrassingly large majority of that time in pajamas.  The past couple days I have changed out of pajamas to work out (which, after six weeks of leisure and eating out is quite the painful experience).  Then I shower.  Then I put pajamas back on.  I just thought I’d give you a real glimpse into my life.

One of the few things that have coaxed me out of my warm apartment and cozy reading chair is a visit to the orphanage.  I was quite excited to get back to the kids and see how much they had grown in the past six weeks.  This time the toddlers remembered who I was and greeted me with grins and open arms.  This response was quite a change from their usual tears after the strange foreign faces show up after a long time away.

As if that reaction wasn’t enough to make me giddy with happiness, the workers passed along the news that five of the kids had been matched with their forever families.  After no adoptions in the past semester, this news was such a joy to hear.  I’ve had the privilege of feeding, rocking, singing, playing and loving on most of these kids since they were tiny little babies and I’m thrilled to know they’re finally headed home in the next few months.

However, I was too enamored cuddling cuties like this little guy (who we’ve nicknamed Benjamin) to take many pictures.  Doesn’t he just melt your heart?

One more travel update to come once I get the pictures sorted and loaded on flickr.  In the meantime, it’s time to go put pajamas back on and settle into my reading chair.  One week until I’m back in the classroom!

My first stop after conference was in the ancient capital of Laos, Luang Prabang.  My stay there largely centered around our riverside bungalows, especially considering I was intimately tied to our bungalow’s bathroom for two out of the four and a half days we were in Laos (and yes, I’ll spare you further details of that experience).  However, it wasn’t such a bad place to be cooped up in.  The Thongbay bungalows sit outside of the city, directly on the Mekong river.  Our bungalow had a huge porch with southeast Asian lounging pads overlooking the river.  It was the perfect place to lounge and read…and enjoy hot crepes in the morning.

The guesthouse had this white board where you fill out your breakfast order and the time you want it delivered to your bungalow.  How amazing is that?  The staff at the guesthouse were extraordinarily helpful and friendly, and even were planning on getting me a birthday cake until my body decided to reject all food.  They treated us to a meal at the end of our stay, and adorned us with free scarves…which almost made up for the one downside of the place–a loud bar/restaurant just down the river that loved blasting music at night.  With all of the other positives of the place, though, this fact was forgivable.

On the days I actually made it out of the bungalows, Lisa and I toured the sights around Luang Prabang, which meant seeing a lot of the old temples.  There are a plethora of pictures up on my flickr site.

A few of my other favorite things about Laos are:

Fresh coffee shakes and baguette sandwich stalls lining the street.  One positive result of French control in southeast Asia is excellent bread and coffee.  The French could certainly teach the Chinese a few things about this.

A chill and laid back market.  Lisa and I were astounded!  This was the calmest market we’ve been to anywhere in Asia.  Sellers don’t harass you.  In fact, at least half of the sellers were napping.  We could hear crickets chirping.  It made shopping quite the pleasant experience.

Lastly, the people.  I love the people in Laos.  Everything centers around relationship in Laos, and this shows in all interactions.  Lisa and I ran into these guys while touring one of the mountain temples and we stopped and chatted for a bit.  They were working as tour guides in the city and were looking to practice their English for a bit.