Journal Entry - December 23, 2006
When opportunity knocks, it’s best to answer. When it lands on you like a ton of bricks, everything else gets put aside. It has been almost seven weeks since I last put up a journal entry, and needless to say, a lot has happened.
About the time of my last blog entry, Chen Qiong in the Foreign Affairs Office told me that Lin Ping, my erhu teacher, wanted me to travel to Beijing to play some music. All communication here is likely to be miscommunication, and this idea sounded particularly unlikely, so I didn’t give it much thought. But my teacher was busy making plans. When I went to my lesson a few weeks ago, I was met by a reporter from the local newspaper. This isn’t unusual for foreigners in China, especially in an out-of-the-way place like Ya’an. The interview consisted of the usual questions, (“What do you think of Ya’an?” “Do you like Chinese food?rdquo;) but the reporter also asked me a number of questions about music, and in particular about why I wanted to study the erhu. I did my best to give honest and interesting answers, but I wasn’t sure what got through the linguistic and cultural communication gap. The next week a couple of people showed me the article. I can read just enough to tell that the story leads with the fact that I have a Chinese name.
A couple of days after that, Gina and I were just settling in to read a bit before going to bed when the phone rang. It was, Diana, a student that had come to one of our music sessions. In a typical example of Chinese advance planning, it was 9:30 and she was asking if I could come down to the student union building right away to rehearse with her and Lin Ping. Also, it turned out that the instrument they were interested in was the gamba, not the erhu. I quickly packed up the gamba and ran downstairs to meet her.
We went to a room in the student union where my teacher was waiting. There were a few traditional instruments scattered around, including a guzheng, the traditional Chinese zither with movable bridges that Diana plays. They handed me a piece sheet music written in Chinese musical notation and said, “Let’s begin!” The piece had two parts, one for erhu and the other for guzheng. I asked them what they wanted me to play and in typical Chinese fashion they said, “It’s up to you. Play whatever you like.” I suggested that since it might be difficult for me to improvise a third part to a duet composed in a musical style that I was completely unfamiliar with, written in notation that I had never seen until a few weeks before, maybe they could play through the piece once or twice and I would listen. They were happy to do it, and proceeded to fill the room with beautiful, enchanting music. When they finished I was speechless, and I began to appreciate the magnitude of the task they were asking me to engage in and the confidence my teacher had in my musical abilities.
I was able to convince them that relying on improvisation wasn’t such a good idea, so instead I was to compose a third part suitable for the gamba. I was given a week to figure out how my western instrument and style of playing could be fitted into traditional Eastern music. It was an interesting and stimulating challenge, and the result has gotten positive reviews. Since then I have been practicing my part or rehearsing with Diana and Lin Ping almost every day. He speaks no English, but Diana’s English is quite good, and we all three of us “speak” music. The goal of our work is still a little unclear to me. There’s something about a competition, a television appearance, and a series of concerts. The process has a number of intermediate steps, and the only ones I know about for sure is more recent one, playing for a university vice president so that he would approve funding for something we need, and the next one, making a video recording of the piece dressed in traditional costume by the end of this week. I’ll keep you posted.
In more mundane news, the weather has turned cold. The daytime high temperatures have been in the 50’s. That may not sound very cold, but very few indoor spaces are heated. In fact, very few indoor spaces are actually indoors. Most buildings are open to the outside, and even when they’re not, the Chinese like to keep the windows open for fresh air. Everyone lives in long underwear, coats, and hats. Students and teachers stay bundled up in class. Retaurants are open to the outside as if it’s summer and depend on the cook stoves to keep the cooks warm enough to move. Our apartment has some heat, but most don’t, including student dormitories. The stores sell all kinds of gadgets to help stay warm. There are electric hot water bottles and slippers with hot water bottles in the soles that are made just for when you plan to sit in one place for a while. Now I understand why I saw what seemed like a third of the population knitting during the summer. Everyone’s fingers are too stiff to do it in the winter.
In addition to teaching and music, we’ve been busy entertaining. There have been a few foreign visitors staying in the Foreign Guest House, a Chinese-american visiting professor and two Nepalese businessmen taking a short course on tea. We've had everyone at our apartment at least once. We’ve also had some Chinese friends over for dinner on two different occasions to give them a taste of western food. We invited our friend Hongxia and a date to have quiche. This was quite a challenge for them, since the closest the Chinese come to cheese is saying “Chee-dze!” when they take a snapshot. We did the best we could for a green salad, which was peeled cucumbers with vinegar, and pumpkin pie for dessert.
About two weeks later we invited Yang Chunhua, a Chinese professor friend, with her husband and six year old son. Yang Chunhua’s English was the best of the three of them, followed by her son and husband in that order. They were great guests We gave them old fashioned vegetable soup with lots of tomatoes, potatoes, and anything else we could find in the market, along with corn bread. We thought it would be a poor feast by Chinese standards, where every meal consists of a long succession of different dishes, but they seemed to really enjoy it. The husband said, during his third or fourth bowlful, that we should open a restaurant. In retrospect, I can see why it would appeal to the Sichuan taste, with its preference for clear soups, sharp flavors, and contrasting textures. It helps that you can make it as spicy as you want by adding hot oil.
We know Yang Chunhua because of a connection through the visiting Chinese-american professor, Hou Liming. Her department had invited him to visit Shangli, an “ancient town” near Ya’an. He asked us to come along, and it turned out to be very interesting day. Shangli is a bit of a tourist trap. It’s a genuinely old town, but most of it has been rebuilt to cater to the tourist trade. There are lots of souvenir shops and junk food places. It’s the only place I’ve seen in China with more or less organized parking, probably because it’s far enough from anything else that most people drive to get there, and because it’s in a narrow valley without a lot of extra space for impromptu parking lots. Even so, it was a fascinating place. There is a fair amount of old stone work, some of which has carved inscriptions made by the Red Army when it passed through on the Long March. We wandered around the town for a while and took a few pictures. Then we ended up in a genuinely old and mostly untouched compound of a formerly wealthy family. We were given a tour by a man who claimed to be a thirteenth generation descendant of the founder of the family. He was full of details about the construction of the buildings, the meanings of the carvings in stone and wood, and the history of the family as detailed in written and painted scrolls. I tended to believe most of what he said because the artifacts had clearly seen better days. We ended up in true style, relaxing at an outdoor tea house for about an hour.
We left Shangli and came back to Ya’an to a hot pot restaurant. This was our first experience with this quintessential Sichuan meal. Unfortunately, although they made a sizeable compromise in their preferences to accomodate our vegetarianism, the main element, the very spicy and boiling broth in which everything is cooked was beef, and they piled all of the various kinds of meat and fish into it. I was willing to have the second kind of broth which they made vegetarian and kept the meat out of for us, but I have yet to really have hot pot.
Instead, I had a lot of beer. As one of the guests of honor, I was asked at the outset what we should drink. The choices were beer, red wine, or baijiu, the Chinese equivalent of Southern Comfort. Having some idea of what was ahead, I chose the least alcoholic option. Then, as Chinese custom dictates, dinner was basically a succession of toasts. Everybody gave at least one toast, and many were followed by a shout of Gambei! a signal for everyone to drain his or her glass. Yang Chunhua’s husband was quite an expert. At one point he challenged me. Either he and Hou Liming would fill their glasses from a partially emptied bottle and I would have to drink the rest, or I would fill my glass and they would split the rest. For me the trick was to end up drinking less beer than them. It looked like there was a lot of beer in the bottle, so I chose to fill my glass. But I had been set up. When they filled their glasses after me, it turned out that there was exactly three glasses of beer in the bottle. It hadn’t mattered what I decided. In the end I somehow managed to have my glass only half full for most of the gambei’s and came away with only several trips to the bathroom, but no morning regrets.
After hotpot we did one more thing which the Chinese do often but which was a first for us: karaoke. Chinese karaoke was completely unexpected. First, they don't have karaoke bars. Instead, we went to a private room with a big plush sofa that went the length of one side of the room, a huge TV screen in the center of the opposite wall, and a low table in between. There was a computer in one corner that was used to select the music and a couple of microphones on long cables. The person who showed us into the room took orders for tea, and we sat down. Yang Chunhua and one other person took charge of choosing the music. We spent the next couple of hours mostly listening to the Chinese singing love songs and folk songs. All but a couple of them sang very well. Yang Chunhua in particular has a beautiful voice. The husband of a friend of hers had a gentle high tenor voice. They all knew the songs and sometimes everyone would join in. They had us pick a couple of songs from the English selections, of which there were about thirty. They were mostly Beatles tunes or folk tunes, although some were completely mysterious to us. Unfortunately, they were all set in a good range for Chinese singers, which is quite high. It was easy for Gina to sing in the man’s range, but I was really straining. Even so, we had a good time.
We had a very nice Thanksgiving. Chandra and John, the other two teachers from the U.S. hosted a pot luck. Chandra provided all essentials, mashed potatoes, vegetables, even some packaged stuffing from Chengdu. The closest she could come to turkey was a chicken from the marketplace. Cranberries were out of the question. There were a few Chinese friends as well as all the foreign teachers. The Nepalese were still here so they came as well. English Corner is on Thursday night, so Lawrence and I left early. The Chinese know about American holidays so they were surprised to see us there. When we got back at 9:00 the party was still going.
We have been spending more and more time with students. We hold office hours once a week. At first few to no students showed up, but both Gina and I have gradually accumulated regular groups that come every week. Gina's students general meet us for lunch just before office hours, which is Tuesday at 1:00. She takes her students to our apartment and plays games or does domestic chores with them, such as laundry or cooking. I meet with my students in the Foreign Guest House dining room, where we hold an informal writing seminar. I look at one short paper every week and correct it right there. They want to know how their writing compares to American students, in terms of the age at which an American student will produce writing of equal competence. “How old am I?” “I’d say you’re about twelve this week.”
Our weekly music session, which we call “Musical English Corner,” has also acquired a regular group. It’s not exactly a normal fiddling session, but we always teach them something. Gina picks a couple of tunes and makes copies of the sheet music. She and I play the song on fiddle and guitar at full speed. Then we go through it very slowly, taking breaks for noodling. Eventually, they get to where they can get through the tune more or less intact, although not so far up to speed. Only at the end do we hand out the sheet music. One of our regulars is the guzheng player that my erhu teacher and I are working with. She had never played a violin before three weeks ago, but she has a short lesson with Gina every week and is making amazing progress.
A few weeks ago we spent a whole afternoon with one of Gina’s students named Chen Xi, who also comes to Musical English Corner. We were looking for a Chinese style jacket for Gina. After going through everything on the clothing market street, we went to the fabric market. Gina found some fabric that she liked, and the fabric seller called a tailor. He came, took some measurements, asked some questions, and gave us a price. After a few more questions and a little bargaining, he told us to come back a few days later. The jacket was ready when it was promised and Gina has been wearing it ever since. She gets lots of comments about it.
Of course the biggest news of the past month and a half is that Becky has come for a visit. She arrived in Chengdu on Friday, December 1st just before midnight. We spent the weekend in Chengdu seeing some of the sites and introducing her to a couple of our friends. The place where we stayed was near our favorite temple restaurant, and the area around has been rebuilt in an old style to attract tourists. One of the attractions is apparently live music and dancing. While we were wandering around we happened on a stage that was set up for a musical performance. Just as we were going by, a group of musicians wearing traditional costumes and carrying traditional instruments walked up. As they were tuning and getting set, one of them grabbed us from out of the crowd. We were handed instruments and someone took some pictures of us in front of the stage. By chance, I was given an erhu, so I was actually able to play a few notes. Unfortunately we didn’t have the presence of mind to have someone take pictures with our cameras, but we got a few pictures of the musicians and dancers.
We spent a couple of weeks showing Becky around our little piece of China, plus a weekend tourist trip for all of us. We got to re-experience our first ride in a taxi watching Becky’s face as the driver narrowly missed yet another looming truck and zipped around yet another police car. Mostly we have been doing all the things we normally do, eating in noodle shops, going to the market, interacting with students. Becky has been joining us in all of it. We spent a fair amount of time hanging around with the other foreign teachers so they can share their points of view on China. We also took Becky around Ya’an to see some of the sights. One of the most interesting is a temple just outside of the town which is run by nuns. The temple has a large statue, about fifty feet long, of Buddha lying on his side. It’s on a mountainside, so there are amazing views, and it’s in the countryside, so everything is very green and beautiful.
The biggest thing we did with Becky was a weekend trip to Yangshuo, a town in the south. You have probably seen the traditional Chinese landscapes on vertical scrolls with the improbable mountains rising straight up, festooned with trees and bushes, with a lazy river flowing around their feet and a fisherman on a raft. That is the countryside around Yangshuo. It’s a tourist town that caters to the young western backpacker crowd, so it has a tourist district full of shops selling “authentic” Chinese kitch, restaurants with western food, and cheap hotels. Actually, everything is very expensive there by Chinese standards, sometimes as much as ten times what we would pay in Ya’an. But no one goes there to see the town of Yangshuo. The countryside is idyllic. The town is at the confluence of the Yulong and Li rivers. The land between the vertical hills is very flat and level, so the rivers are lazy and the land is fertile. We spent one day riding up the Yulong river to an ancient bridge, and another in a small village by the Li river. We’ll describe our trip to Yangshuo in more detail in a separate blog entry.
For Becky’s last weekend here we went back to Chengdu. We spent some time with friends and did a little shopping. Becky and Gina went to the panda research institute with a friend. When Gina and I went in the summer, we were too late in the day and the pandas were all sleeping. This time, they went earlier in the day and saw the pandas doing all of the stuff that makes them so popular, eating, playing, and running around in general. That afternoon we went to the bus station and said goodbye. Gina and I went back to Ya’an in order to teach early the next morning, and Becky spent the night at the hostel. Unfortunately, her passport ended up going to Ya’an with us, so I had to skip my Monday class and go back to Chengdu early the next day. After that Becky’s return trip just got worse. There was a mix up at the Chengdu airport, so she didn’t make her flight to Beijing. Then, because of the first problem, there was more confusion at the Beijing airport and she missed her flight to Toronto. They finally put her on a plane to Vancouver, but there they hadn’t gotten word of the change in her flight plan, so she missed yet another plane. We spent a few hours on the phone with various North American airlines (thank goodness for Skype) and managed to get things sorted out. Becky is now back at home, but by my calculation, it took her about 50 hours to get there.
Everything is more or less back to normal here. The semester is winding down, so we’re busy preparing and administering final exams. Lawrence, Pierre, and Dai Ou will be in Europe for the Christmas holiday, and John and Chandra will be leaving Ya’an right after New Year’s for new jobs in Shanghai. We’re busy trying to figure out what we’ll be doing during our two month break. We don’t know where we’ll go, but where ever it is I’m sure it will be interesting.