The Blind Advantage

Sidewalks all over China have about a 1-2 foot section where the brick or concrete has been replaced with this, for lack of a better term, bumpy strip. I have wondered off and on for years what it's for. It doesn't seem to matter how wide or narrow the sidewalk is, which city I'm in, this strip is almost always there. When the sidewalk is really narrow it is the sidewalk. I was especially confused when in Suzhou, the sidwalk didn't have it and they then proceeded to tear up the bricks and install it. After a trip to Shenzhen I noticed they had painted a pedestrian on one side and a bike on the other, so I assumed it must be a dividing line, but that never seemed quite right, espcially since sometimes the strip runs down the middle of the sidewalk and others is all the way to the side. How are you supposed to walk or ride on the three inches left on the other side?

After 2 years of living in China I have finally discovered it's for blind people. It is to let blind people know where to go. The amount of thought and money that has been put into the care and help for blind people to navigate the city, know where curbs are, lead them to a counter to buy metro tickets and know when to stop is astounding!!! I am impressed. I am also incredibly confused.

1. Why are blind people so special??

2. As with most things in China, this idea has only been half-way thought through.

3. Why just this form of help? You see brail ocassionally, but traffic lights don't make that beeping noise so the person can know when to cross.

4. What about all the other handicap people in China?

If you're in a wheelchair you don't get special help navigating the system like say, an elevator or a handicap stall. Shanghai is in the process of building this beautiful and very extensive metro system. There are many stations where you cannot get up or down to the platform if you are in a wheel chair, because there is no elevator or it is broken. My favorite was Jinshajia Metro station. If you are in a wheelchair it is impossible to get from the above ground line 3/4 to the below ground line 11 unless you get out and walk down the stairs or your friends carry you like a king (which I saw happen twice in one year.) Occassionally you'll find a bathroom with a handicap stall. My favourite sign in China might be this one, technically correct:

At this point you must be thinking with 1.5billion people we must see a lot of blind people. We've seen a few blind beggars (a person maimed so they can beg, ala that scene in Slumdog Millionaire where the little boy gets acid thrown in his eyes to make him blind. If you come to China don't give money to these people, it just propagates the system.) But a non-beggar blind person...Once, maybe!!

So where are all these blind people that the government has so generously catered for?

Vietnam

So, it has been FAR too long since a post has been made to this our blog from China. As it stands, I am writing this from an internet cafe in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Vietnam. We are here for the lunar New Year. 2011 is the year of the Rabbit (兔子) and we have been lucky to see the New Years festivities here in Vietnam. Here, they call it "Tet", but for all intents and purposes, it's the same. It's a time for lion dances, praying to the god of luck, spending time with family, and setting off fireworks. Vietnam is a beautiful country, which we have seen on both a long-range bus trip (from Saigon to Nah Trang) and on the train (from Nah Trang back to Saigon). We spent most of our leisure time on the beach, enjoying the....infrequent sun, and reading. All in all, your basic beach vacation, except all in Vietnamese. Our Chinese language skills are ZERO help here, as Vietnamese resembles Chinese in no way shape or form.

Saigon is an interesting city; lots of mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles. We saw a museum that commemorates the Vietnamese struggle first against the French and later against the Americans. This museum has replicas of the tunnel system used by the VietCong, as well as photos of the buddhist monk who burned himself to death to protest the war (Thích Quảng Đức). The photo is disturbing, so only go to the wikipedia page at your peril.

We ate Pho many many times, and I tried the all-in-one Pho, tonight which has all the good stuff in it (tripe, tendon, well-braised brisket, top round, and meat balls)

DELICIOUS!!! Something about fish sauce and lime juice that makes my mouth water.....

Aside from the mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles, the other vehicle we see a lot is the cyclo, which is a kind of rickshaw. It looks like this.

We saw foreigners and Vietnamese alike riding in these, but never took one ourselves. They're really only built for one person to sit in.

We did a basic walking tour around Saigon which included the museum I mentioned, a Catholic church (it's nice to see religion being practiced. The Vietnamese are also Buddhist and Muslim), an old colonial French Post Office, and a flower market. Kristy and I have been debating if the flower market is a weekly thing, or something set up just for Tet. We ended up at the rooftop bar of a hotel to watch the sun set over the city. Saigon is polluted, but nowhere near as polluted as Shanghai, so we were able to watch the sun set in the nearly blue sky. SO nice!

As I write this it is roughly 26 degrees Celsius here in Saigon, while back at our apartment in Shanghai, the temperature is 3 degrees. We are not excited to be returning. Kristy still has two weeks left of her break from school before her spring term begins again. We are already thinking about where to go for Easter.... Japan, Cambodia, Thailand...?

Train Tickets

We arrived in Shanghai on August 6th, a week earlier than necessary in order to go to Beijing for a week before school started. We anticipated we would be unable to get tickets because China’s rail system is such that you can only buy tickets a week before the date of departure. As a result they sell out very quickly. Despite this we decided to try anyway. Sunday morning we arrived at one of the many ticket offices in Shanghai to buy tickets for Monday night. After standing in line for 30 minutes we finally arrived at the front of the line and gave the woman at the counter our hand scribbled note with the potential train numbers and times we wanted to leave. She typed a few things into her computer then without even looking at us said “may yo” (don’t have) and waved us off. We stepped to the side, looked up to the electronic seat availability board and confirmed that it did say “15 seats left.” ???? So we conferred for a few minutes and re-joined another line to try again. Clearly that woman didn’t check properly.

Another 30 minutes later.

We handed the guy our note. This time I could see his computer screen and double checked to make sure he entered all 8 of the possible train numbers, which leave 5 minutes after each other. He did. Then he said “yo.” Aaron and I look at each other and thought “Yes! That woman clearly wasn’t doing her job properly.” We started counting out 1300RMB ($191) for the second class soft sleeper, except the amount on the screen popped up with 2770RMB ($408). Immediately the Chinese surrounding us went nuts. “What!!! Where are they going? Why is it so expensive?? This is absurd.” Then I heard someone say “soft sleeper” and they calmed down and I heard a collective “aaahh” with a few head nods. I thought, well I guess this price is accurate and the one we found online was not. Ugh. We forked over the money and left.

We saw one of our Chinese friends later that day and showed him our tickets and he just laughed then showed our tickets to the random Chinese guy next to him who also started laughing. Great! We’ve been duped, clearly.

After a very long sleepless night during which we spent most of it online trying to figure out what on earth happened and how we could be reunited with our money we learned a few things. To start with we could have flown cheaper even if we bought the tickets for the next day. More importantly we discovered that there is ONE English language train ticket counter in Shanghai. We also learned that you can return your tickets for a small penalty.



Are you curious to know what happened? Well the nice gentleman at the counter decided to sell us the super deluxe first class soft sleeper tickets rather than the second class soft sleeper tickets just because he could. Wasn’t that so nice of him!!!! Next time when the woman says “may yo” we’re walking away!

As a little coda to the end of the story, we have subsequently discovered that after arriving in Beijing we would have been unable to buy return train tickets!!! Apparently train tickets into Shanghai are selling out in a matter of minutes, since everyone wants to go to the 2010 World Expo. Instead we’re saving our money and traveling to Tibet in October.

The Turtle

Eating in China is an experience. It’s not how the food is cooked that takes getting use to, it is how it’s served and what part of the animal arrives on the table. If it is a small animal (typically bird or fish) it will be the whole thing: head, tail, legs, skin. This is to create trust between you and the restaurant or store. It proves to the customer that they are serving you what you ordered. In other cases it also allows you to identify the animal. For larger animals, the meat dishes are served with small pieces of meat with the bone still in it, sometimes the "cuts of meat" are just big chunks of fat, other times there is almost no meat and lots of bone. Fish have the skin, head and bones. If it is a fillet of fish, which is very rare, it will have bones in it. Shrimp comes with its head and feet.

Chinese are masterful eaters. They can take an entire shrimp, put it in their mouth, take the meat outside of the shell and then spit the shell back out, which gets spat onto the table. This is the equivalent to trying to tie a cherry stem with your tongue. They can also hold a piece of meat in their chopsticks and manage to clean the entire bone. I am rather savage-like and must hold mine in my fingers.



One of the things I like about the Chinese is that they do not waste any part of an animal. They like the brains, internal organs, skin, fat, feet, muscle and everything in-between. For me it makes the death of the animal more humane, because most of it is not being wasted. What I don’t like about China is that they eat the whole animal! While I know it’s all edible, I have grown up where you eat the meat of an animal and nothing else.

There are stories of people eating dogs and cats. We have not seen that. The “weird” things that we see are frogs, turtles, fish lips, eel, jellyfish, fungus, brains, pigs feet, chicken feet, intestines, heart and many others.

The worst experience we’ve had so far with food was the Friday during Chinese New year at San Mei’s house. If you remember from the last post San Mei is one of the cleaning ladies from the school (and her name means third sister.) San Mei invited the whole staff and those of us in town attended - along with her entire extended family. We were served so many different dishes, but the one that stands out the most was the poor soft-shell turtle. It arrived on the table and we all looked at it. Seated around the table were 2 Canadians, Kelly, Lulu, Vanessa (from Taiwan), her daughters and us. We all looked at this turtle and every single one of us thought “I don’t want to eat that!” Somehow we discovered that none of us wanted to eat it and Aaron and I were so grateful. When San Mei walked back into the room, Kelly said to her in Chinese, “take this back to your family we don’t want to eat it.” San Mei was clearly baffled and maybe offended. In rapid fire Chinese she started saying perhaps the following: “What do you mean you don’t want to eat the turtle? It’s very yummy! What’s wrong with you people? Here I’ll cut it for you with chopsticks and then each of you can have a bite and see how delicious it is. “



San Mei took two chopsticks picked up the turtle that’s probably 8 inches long and flipped it over onto its back. She then used the chopsticks to slice down the middle and cut it into pieces about three inches square. She picked up the first piece and tried to give it to Kelly, who squealed like a little girl and threw herself backwards as far as she could get from it. Vanessa, who has been brought up well, gracefully accepted her piece of turtle. Aaron, myself and one of the Canadians did the same. No one else had any. Aaron was amazing, he ate all of his. I ate the smallest bite possible and I all I can tell you is that turtle is slightly rubbery and I don't need to eat one again. As soon as San Mei left the room we all took our pieces of turtle and managed to disguise them among the other food scraps on the table.

Chinese New Year

On Monday of Chinese New Year we were invited by one of the student’s families to join them for lunch. At this point we had done the playing mahjong and visiting friends. Now we got to go with friends to visit more friends. The parents are Chinese, but Matthew is an American. The husband was transferred to the US a few years ago and they lived in Atlanta for about 3 years, during which time Matthew was born. Their daughter is now at Princeton and hates coming to visit her parents in China. Matthew, a 6 year-old is the most American student at the school. I felt confused growing up regarding my nationality, I can’t begin to imagine what these kids think.

So the Monday was Aaron’s birthday. The Ma’s had originally invited us out for lunch or dinner because they like us, but specifically on Monday because of Aaron’s birthday. After they had invited us, the Ma’s were invited to Chinese New Year lunch by their closest and oldest friends. When the Ma’s said they were unable to come, the friends invited us out to lunch too! We were very honoured to be included.



I think there were 20 of us at lunch. Including us there were 4 families. 3 Mas, 2 Milburns, 3 friends #1, 7 friends #2, and 4 grandparents. I don’t remember and didn’t really get anyone's name except for the children of family #2, which are: first child, second child, third child, fourth child and fifth child!!! Who names their children one, two, three, four, five???? The Chinese do!!! This is apparently fairly common. According to our Chinese friends the parents do this so they can remember their children's names. What??? One of the cleaning lady's at the school is named "San Mei." That means third daughter. Her sisters names are: Yi Mei, Er Mei and Si Mei, which mean first daughter, second daughter and third daughter! Don't you have to remember that too?

Aaron and I are also a little confused about how many children the Chinese can have, because friends #2 had 5 children, 3 girls and 2 boys. Friends #1 only had one child, a girl. For both families all the children ranged from late teens to late 20s, so they clearly fall under the “1 child policy.” One of the Chinese teachers at school, Lulu, is the oldest of 3 children. I do know her parents had to pay a fine because they had too many kids. Kelly on the other hand is an only child. But we have not met nearly as many only children as we expected.



We had a pleasant lunch. Most of the tables at restaurants are round. They seat anywhere from 8 people to 20. They all have a lazy susan on them, made out of glass, so it makes it easy to get to all the dishes, but can take awhile, because as you’re turning the lazy susan everyone starts helping themselves. Most of the food tasted very good. We did have to eat some weird, clear, slimy, slightly hard, but also soft thing that I think comes from the water. The other food I didn't enjoy too much was a small little fish that gets baked and you eat everything - head, tail, bones, eyes, skin - mmm, crunchy! Aside from those few dishes, the soups, vegetables and fish dishes were good.



Our lunch not only consisted of eating, but also included toasts and singing and kung fu performances. Now these performances were by those of us sitting around the table. Since we don’t know Chinese, we’re not quite sure why this started, because Mrs. Ma assured us many times that you do not normally have to sing for your supper. It was interesting to see what people chose. Children 2 and 4 chose to sing the pop song “Nobody but You” and danced some of the moves from the music video.



After we finished the lunch feast, we went to a Buddhist temple with family #1. It’s very common for Chinese to go to the temple at the New Year to ask for blessings for the coming year. People travel from far away. They bring gifts of money and food. Groups of women will prepare dances which they perform in front of the Buddhas and other idols. It was neat to be there on this day in particular, because normally when we go to a temple we’re there with a lot of other tourists, but this time it was people here practicing their faith.

Chinese New Year's Eve

I’ve heard about the Chinese New Year before, but have never really understood the importance of it until this year. The most important day for the start of the New Year celebration is New Year’s Eve. This year it happened to be Februrary 13th. So February 13th is the equivalent to our December 31st. New Year’s Day was the 14th. They do not celebrate Valentine’s Day here so that was not an issue. Chinese New Year is celebrated by eating, playing mahjong and visiting family and friends. It is not just a one night event either. It is one week to two weeks long event. Think Thanksgiving and Christmas combined. From what we understand the Chinese do not get public holidays plus two weeks of vacation they can take anytime, they just get the public holidays and there are 2 of them, Chinese New Year and one in October. The vacation at Chinese New Year can be anywhere from 1-2 weeks long, so EVERYTHING shuts down. Also, EVERYONE travels. Tickets for airlines and trains are booked solid. Hotel prices skyrocket because you either go home to your family or your family goes sightseeing - the Great Wall, the Terra Cotta warriors, etc. So with this information in mind and 1.3 billion people traveling, we stayed put.

On “New Year’s Eve” we went to one of the Chinese teacher’s apartment to celebrate with her. She’s from the Dong Bei province which is in the very north eastern part of China and it takes her 2-3 days by train to get home (think Maine), so she was unable to go home for Chinese New Year. We asked her what time we should arrive and she said anytime after 12pm. Hmm, does that mean 12:15pm or 6pm??? I tried asking for clarification, but she sort of looked at me like I had 2 heads, because this is clearly a very strange question! In the end we asked one of the other Chinese teachers who was also going to Kelly’s house what time she would arrive and she said 2pm. So that’s what we did.

It was the first time we’ve been invited into a Chinese person’s home. As we walked up the unpainted gray concrete stairs to her 6th floor apartment I was wondering what we would find when we opened the door because there was trash, broken furniture, stains and marks all over the stairs and on the walls. Fortunately we were pleasantly surprised when she opened the door. There was a "wood" floor, more furniture than I expected and it was cozy. Chinese apartments are nice, because they are built so that the apartments have windows opening on both sides. If you live in the middle of an apartment building your apartment will face north and south or east and west. Being on the top floor, Kelly’s apartment also had the equivalent of a roof garden without the garden. She uses it to hang clothing to dry.

We played mahjong for several hours, like 3 or 4. One of the most valuable things that I have done since moving to China has been to learn how to play mahjong. Each area of China has its own rules. I have learned to play both Shanghai and Suzhou rules. It was quite amusing, because Aaron and I were teaching Kelly and Lulu, the Chinese teachers, how to play mahjong with the Suzhou rules and we’re the foreigners! We bought a mahjong set and are going to have Kelly teach us the Dong Bei rules and have Lulu teach us the Beijing rules.

After mahjong Kelly cooked us dinner. The food was very good. Simply cooked, oil, water, salt or sugar but with a nice flavor. There were a couple of dishes with meat, pork and chicken, and then there were quite a few dishes that were just vegetables. Eating in China is a bit like eating tapas. You order many plates, but of a good size, and then eat a bit of everything. You order a chicken and it will come with a few vegetables. The broccoli will just be broccoli, etc. No, we didn’t eat anything “scary,” that would come on Friday, which I will write about soon!

We had a really fun day with Kelly and Lulu. We ended up leaving around 9pm and then went home in anticipation of watching and hearing a lot of fireworks. We've spent quite a bit more time with Kelly and Lulu since then and it's been really nice to make some good Chinese friends. Once we move to Shanghai we will continue to visit them in Suzhou to spend time with them.

A real, warm house!

A few weeks ago we were invited by a Slovenian family, whose children go to the school, for after dinner drinks and desert. They live in a house!!!! A house is a rarity in China. Everyone lives in an apartment or duplex. She made mulled wine. It was amazing. Then she wouldn’t stop feeding us. She brought out chips, nuts, a chocolate cake, fresh made whipped cream (yum) and a variety of other deserts. I think the thing we enjoyed the most was that their house is warm. A very close second was the mulled wine and whipped cream. Their house has insulation, carpeting and siding. Aaron and I are so tired of always being cold. We turn on the heat and it takes the chill out of the room, but it is still cold.

There is some imaginary line in China between the North and the South. The northern part has central heating and the southern part does not. So while the Beijing temperatures reach -20 degrees Centigrade, they have central heating and it doesn’t feel as cold (this is what I’ve been told.) The southern part of China does not have central heating. We have space heaters, blankets and you wear your down jacket, hat and scarf in doors. Aaron and I are not the kind of people who think you should wear shorts and a t-shirt inside during the winter, we like our sweaters, but we do not like to be constantly cold. Just to give you an idea, I am currently wearing thick fleece pants, short and long sleeved shirts, a fleece, down slippers and am wrapped in a fleece blanket. I am about to put on socks and long underwear pants because although I have the heat on, it is still cold inside because it is a very cold day outside, -4C.

The winter temperatures in Suzhou are around freezing. November here was windy and cold. December and January were just plain cold. February has been wet and cold. A week or two ago it was rainy and overcast for 10 days straight. When it doesn’t rain you can’t see the sun or blue skies. It’s not overcast, but there’s cloud cover or pollution cover.

Now some of you might be thinking any or all of the following: “we’ve been dealing with snow all winter long, rain no big deal” or “I live/d in London, I live/d in Seattle” or “I live in South Africa and we don’t have central heating.” We don’t get to just walk the 30 seconds to our cars, but rather have to walk home carrying the bags of groceries along with the umbrella. Let me tell you, I had never appreciated before how heavy groceries are! In South Africa, you walk outside and it’s warmer because of the sun (We haven’t seen it since October.) It’s taken us some getting used to and we’ve survived. Would I rather have a car on those rainy days? Absolutely, but we clearly don’t hate it enough to leave, because we’ve signed on for another 2 years of this weather. Not in Suzhou, but Shanghai.