Journal Entry - October 21, 2006
Once again, I’m having bicycle issues. I’ve been extremely careful about keeping my new bike locked up, so it hasn’t been stolen. The problem is that the brakes have started squealing. How bad could that be, you might ask. It’s not just a quiet little squeek. It’s louder than a car horn and sounds like an elephant trumpeting. The vibration is so bad that it travels through the frame from the back brakes to the handle bars, up my arms, and makes my elbows hurt. The vibration coming through the padded seat is so painful that I stand up when I apply the brakes. It has gotten to the point where I ask myself, “Hmm, run into that telephone pole or put on the brakes, which will hurt worse?”
I went to our local bike mechanics, who put grease on the brake pads. That worked for about ten minutes. I tried fiddling with the brakes myself, but made no progress, so I took the bike back to the mechanics. They spent an hour on the brakes and couldn’t fix the problem. Finally I went on line and found a web page devoted to fixing noisy center pull brakes. I got a couple of suggestions, but when I went to implement them, I found that my brakes don’t have the necessary adjustments. I was able to reduce the squealing, but not eliminate it, and since then it has been gradually increasing. I said about a month ago that I thought I had resolved my bicycle issues in China, but I now know that I will never be done.
In looking over the last journal entry, I notice that I left poor Gina still sick in bed. I’m happy to report that she is completely recovered. Unfortunately, our friend Dai Ou came down with the same thing. What made Gina sick apparently isn’t something that only foreigners get.
Although we’re getting better at communicating all the time, we still have little misunderstandings. I got a call yesterday morning about ten minutes before leaving to teach my class. “George” Feng, the head of the English department wanted to “tell me something that my students wanted me to know.” My immediate thought was that the students in that class were dissatisfied with my teaching but were too shy to tell me themselves. I rushed over to the teaching building as fast as I could and met George and two students in the hallway. Instead of telling me that my pedagogical methods were unacceptable and that I was being replaced, George told me that these two students were actually faculty members and asked me to be a little more lenient with them regarding the attendance rules. The university has a strict policy that a student that misses more than two classes without an official excuse fails the class. I often receive hand written notes from students asking to be excused and I have to tell them that they need something more formal. These two students had presented me with formal requests for leave, signed by department heads and stamped with the university seal, all very official and acceptable. I had shown these notes to the class as examples of acceptable absence excuses, but apparently these two had thought that I was saying just the opposite, that their notes were unacceptable. I don’t know how many of the other students thought the same.
Another example is the Foreign Guest House, the building we live in, which is staffed entirely by people who don’t speak English. The other day our television stopped working. We’re not supposed to deal directly with our landlady, Mrs. Huang, so we called the Foreign Affairs Office and told an English speaking person there. The next day, the Mrs. Huang showed up at our door with a person who repairs telephones. I was able to correct the misunderstanding, and she came back in an hour with two TV technicians. These two took the TV apart and went at the main integrated circuit board inside of it with a soldering iron. In about ten minutes, they had it reassembled and working. However, like so many other repair jobs done here in China, it didn’t last. By the next day, the TV was back to its non-working state. This time I went directly to the Mrs. Huang. She was admirably direct and immediately exchanged our TV for one of the ones in an unoccupied room.
We go on-line to get our weather forecasts, but I don’t know why we bother. The forecast is approximately the same every day: mid-70’s and cloudy with a chance of rain, and it has very little relationship with what actually happens. Some days are cool, some hot, although never too much in either direction. Most days it doesn’t rain, and some days it rains on and off all day. Every two weeks or so we get a day or two of gorgeous sunny weather. When that happens, we try to do something outside. A week ago last Thursday was one of those perfect days, and that afternoon five of us went to a tea house with a patio that overlooks the river to play mahjong. The teahouse is on the second floor of a covered bridge over a large creek at the point where it empties into the main river. It was very pleasant to sit in the sun and sip our lemon tea.
Two days later we had another nice day with just a little haze. We went with Pierre, Dai Ou, and Lawrence to a temple just outside of town. We crossed a narrow suspension bridge, too small for even Chinese cars, and left our bicycles at a small hotel. From there we walked up into the hills, through a village and past several farm houses. Soon the pavement stopped and we were on a dirt track. We passed a charming little tea house perched on the side of the hill. After about a mile, we came around a bend and found ourselves facing a statue of Buddha lying on his side, about fifty feet long. It was an impressive sight. Behind it was a new building, and behind that was the old temple. It was a nunnery, and seemed quite old and a little run down. Since it was high up on the side of the hill the views were fantastic. On the way back, we stopped at the tea house for mahjong and dinner. (There will be more details and pictures of this outing in a regular blog entry.)
For three days last week we had a funeral next door to the Foreign Guest House. One day we came home to find an open tent set up against the wall around the apartment buildings next door. At the back of the tent was a large photograph of the deceased person on a small alter with flowers and candles. A number of large funeral wreaths were arranged around the tent and against the wall of the closest apartment building. There were a number of tables and chairs under the tent, and a pair of large speakers. The day after the tent appeared, people started to come. I didn’t watch too closely out of a concern for decorum, but the people under the tent seemed to be different every time I passed by. They mostly stood around talking, playing cards or mahjong,or eating and drinking. No one seemed to be consumed with grief, or even very solemn. The funeral went on for three days, twenty four hours a day, with doleful music playing the whole time, usually at a moderately high volume. The number of funeral wreaths increased every day. Finally, on the morning of the fourth day, a large number of cars and trucks and a big bus lined up in front of the Foreign Guest House and everyone left in long a procession. By lunch time, the whole thing was cleaned up and gone and you couldn’t tell it had ever been there.
On the music front, we have finally started our music sessions. Before we left the U.S. we had planned to start a weekly or biweekly music session in the traditional style. A bunch of musicians sit around, someone starts playing a tune, and the others gradually join in as they pick up the tune. This is the way that traditional music has been taught for centuries, and we wanted to expose the local people to this quintessential western tradition, as well as enjoy playing ourselves. In addition, it would be another opportunity to speak English with native speakers, something for which there is a great and unmet demand.
It has been a little difficult to get the sessions going. Finding a space to do it was the first hurdle, but we finally got permission to do it in a very nice room right in the Foreign Guest House. Getting the word out has also been difficult. We don’t know how or where to post notices for this sort of thing, and we’re a little uncertain about how to word the posters so that they are understandable. We had our first session and only two people showed up, neither of whom played an instrument. However, we have put some of our students to work putting up posters, and from the feedback we’re getting, we expect a much bigger crowd for the next session.
The other big music news is that I have contacted an erhu teacher and bought an instrument. The erhu is a sort of Chinese fiddle. My teacher, who selected it for me, says that it’s a good beginner’s instrument, better than what a child would use to start, but not professional quality. It cost 500 yuan with the case, about $62. The good news is that the bowing is very similar to the viola da gamba. The bad news is that the bow hair goes between the two strings. You push down to play one string and pull up to play the other. This will take some getting used to.
