Monday, April 25, 2016
Some more photos from our mountain trip with the children
These days my internet has been terrible, so my blog making has been super slow. Right now I'm working on a really long blog about Christmas in China, so look forward to that. While you are waiting, I will show some pictures that were taken by Hui's cousin during our trip to 覆卮山. Enjoy! If you were wondering, Labor Day is next week, and we are planning to possibly go to 武夷山, but we aren't totally sure about it yet.
Friday, April 22, 2016
Just sharing another random photo
I thought I should share this photo with you all. Its the first picture I ever took in China, and its of food. I remember that I ate this after getting my blood drawn and passing out. I never posted this anywhere, because I seriously didn't take any photos at all when I first got here, because I was all business, and trying to get everything done while not really stopping to enjoy the scenery.
hahahahaha
I found this place in Xiamen. Hui didn't get it. It goes without saying, when people see this restaurant they all yell out, Holy Crab!
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Random rambling about life, Chinese culture, and other things
Last week my students had spring break, so I decided that I would go to Nanjing to hang out with one of my college buddies. I was soooo happy that I decided to do that. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing really. I just found out on the Wednesday before that we were having a break, and the two of us just threw a whole big plan together suddenly where we would meet in Shanghai for a day and then go to Nanjing. It was all good fun, but I think the thing I enjoyed the most was being able to have some great intellectual conversations, especially about one of my favorite topics these days, psychology. It was really a breath of fresh air for me, because recently with most of the people I am around in Haining or Hangzhou, we mostly talk about really basic things such as how great my Chinese is, how my guinea pig is doing, shopping, my boyfriend, and what I am doing to prepare for marriage. Now, these topics are good and all, but I really miss having intellectual conversations with my friends!
One of the topics we talked about that really peaked my interest was life after 高考. Gaokao is a notorious Chinese exam that students take at the end of high school. This test is said to make or break a student's future, and so they spend all their time to study hard and get good grades in school. In some ways, this is true, but in others I have found it isn't totally true. Of course, I wouldn't dare tell my students about this, but I haven't actually talked to a single person who said they did really well on the gaokao. However, these friends are having a lot of success in their lives now, and they are really incredibly intelligent. I don't want to mention specific examples, because I don't want to compromise anybody's face (which is another really important part of Chinese culture).
I think based on these friends' stories, I can apply something I learned from the field of positive psychology. These days Hui and I are watching free online Harvard lectures on positive psychology, and one thing we learned about was levels of happiness. The professor used the example of professors hoping to make tenure. Before they found out, they said they would be devastated if they didn't get it, but after they didn't get it, they found they were okay with it and went on with their lives. If something happens in your life, you might be completely devastated for a while, or you could be completely over the moon for a while, but you will almost always go right back to your base level of happiness. Just remember this if you are feeling pressure over any type of situation.
I have also recently subscribed to the youtube page of the National Committee for US China Relations, which is a page that every once in a while posts really great and informative videos on different events that they host. Most of them that I have seen have been talks on books that have to do with China. Besides that, they also post videos of events and talks with American government leaders, the latest one of those I saw was with a panel of US defense secretaries, and watching that really opened my eyes about so many different things. For such a long time now, I have had a really negative view on my country's government, but, after watching these videos, I realized that the thing I disliked wasn't the people in the government, but was actually the American media, and the way they approach politics. I think now more than ever I am going to stay away from news channels. I think I will need to start linking these videos on my blog, because they really are so great, and you can learn a lot of things not just about Chinese culture and history, but about how America's government truly views China.
Actually, that last paragraph was completely rambling, because the thing I really wanted to talk about was a certain video I watched, which was a talk about a book written on the topic of the one child policy. Now, I can't stress enough how intriguing all of the books they introduce on that channel are, but this one in particular made me really sit down and think. Specifically, the speaker discussed the personality of a single child in China, saying that they were not all, "little emperors", as people often say they are, but in fact people who give themselves way too much pressure. They feel so much pressure to have success for their family, and this means that it is easy for them to become depressed. I can completely see this kind of characteristic in Hui, and it really scares me, because he has had a few friends who have committed suicide, so we are both extremely careful to keep our well being in check by studying psychology, and having fun as much as we can. I know it doesn't help that he has chosen to work for Alipay, and often working until 11pm every night, but you can't say he doesn't work hard. I think I am going to have to grab that video and stick it in here for all of your to see to finish out this post. Sorry if this was really random, but I just wanted to let all my thoughts out.
One of the topics we talked about that really peaked my interest was life after 高考. Gaokao is a notorious Chinese exam that students take at the end of high school. This test is said to make or break a student's future, and so they spend all their time to study hard and get good grades in school. In some ways, this is true, but in others I have found it isn't totally true. Of course, I wouldn't dare tell my students about this, but I haven't actually talked to a single person who said they did really well on the gaokao. However, these friends are having a lot of success in their lives now, and they are really incredibly intelligent. I don't want to mention specific examples, because I don't want to compromise anybody's face (which is another really important part of Chinese culture).
I think based on these friends' stories, I can apply something I learned from the field of positive psychology. These days Hui and I are watching free online Harvard lectures on positive psychology, and one thing we learned about was levels of happiness. The professor used the example of professors hoping to make tenure. Before they found out, they said they would be devastated if they didn't get it, but after they didn't get it, they found they were okay with it and went on with their lives. If something happens in your life, you might be completely devastated for a while, or you could be completely over the moon for a while, but you will almost always go right back to your base level of happiness. Just remember this if you are feeling pressure over any type of situation.
I have also recently subscribed to the youtube page of the National Committee for US China Relations, which is a page that every once in a while posts really great and informative videos on different events that they host. Most of them that I have seen have been talks on books that have to do with China. Besides that, they also post videos of events and talks with American government leaders, the latest one of those I saw was with a panel of US defense secretaries, and watching that really opened my eyes about so many different things. For such a long time now, I have had a really negative view on my country's government, but, after watching these videos, I realized that the thing I disliked wasn't the people in the government, but was actually the American media, and the way they approach politics. I think now more than ever I am going to stay away from news channels. I think I will need to start linking these videos on my blog, because they really are so great, and you can learn a lot of things not just about Chinese culture and history, but about how America's government truly views China.
Actually, that last paragraph was completely rambling, because the thing I really wanted to talk about was a certain video I watched, which was a talk about a book written on the topic of the one child policy. Now, I can't stress enough how intriguing all of the books they introduce on that channel are, but this one in particular made me really sit down and think. Specifically, the speaker discussed the personality of a single child in China, saying that they were not all, "little emperors", as people often say they are, but in fact people who give themselves way too much pressure. They feel so much pressure to have success for their family, and this means that it is easy for them to become depressed. I can completely see this kind of characteristic in Hui, and it really scares me, because he has had a few friends who have committed suicide, so we are both extremely careful to keep our well being in check by studying psychology, and having fun as much as we can. I know it doesn't help that he has chosen to work for Alipay, and often working until 11pm every night, but you can't say he doesn't work hard. I think I am going to have to grab that video and stick it in here for all of your to see to finish out this post. Sorry if this was really random, but I just wanted to let all my thoughts out.
My friend gave me a guinea pig
I thought it was time for me to post this blog. It has been quite a while now, so here it is. Last year around November my friend bought me a guinea pig. His name is 皮卡丘(pikachu), though I don't actually like Pokemon, and he can only understand Chinese. When I got him he was just a little baby, and he was super cute. Now he is big, fat, and still super cute. When he was a baby, he had some skin problems, and he scratched off a big patch of skin on his head. Hui and I took him to the doctor, and they gave us some medicine to make it better. The poor guy hated me for putting all that medicine on him, but he finally got better.
Oh, Pikachu, why are you so cute?! I really love to take pictures of him. <3
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| he was so cute and small!!!!! |
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| all bundled up |
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| he loves to watch youtube videos (and Christmas) |
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| when he was sick, his poor little ear |
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| when he got older, watching some horror video games |
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| what he looks like now |
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| showing off his huge rear end |
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| being captain america pig |
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| his little monster costume |
Oh, Pikachu, why are you so cute?! I really love to take pictures of him. <3
Good times!
Seems like things just keep coming up! I think I mentioned this before, but I have been traveling again, but before that an amazing new phone game came out. I can see I have a lot of viewers who already know me and get to this blog from facebook, but in case you don't, I really like video games! My favorite video game series of all time is Kingdom Hearts, and the game that just came out was a Kingdom Hearts phone game that seriously has better game mechanics than Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. I spent the two days before I traveled playing that game, and I mean the whole day. I am already almost to the point where I have finished all the missions and need to wait for the update to continue. It is just marvelously wonderful. By the way, the name of the game is Kingdom Hearts Unchained X, but is in the app stores as KHUX. I just love playing this game so much, but I probably said that already. I just love my little character, and the fact that she looks like me, and the fact that I have a keyblade. I FREAKING HAVE A KEYBLADE! I am just so thrilled about it. You can all just totally ignore the fact that this game is only available in Japan and North America, but I can play it in China. I am magic (and I used an apk link off the internet to download it outside of the app store, which is really easy if you have something other than an iphone), so the rest of you non American or Japanese people will just have to wait for a worldwide release, which might not ever even happen.
I can't believe I made a whole blog about Kingdom Hearts. Actually, I really can. I am just a huge fan of the game, and this blog is supposed to be about my life, right?
Going off the beaten path- part 2
In the morning we went around to different places, trying different foods that looked interesting to eat for breakfast. One of the most interesting things was a plant which I didn't catch the name of. It looks like a flower, but it isn't. If you eat it raw, its very sour, but they also dry it out to make it into tea. I wanted to buy some of the tea to try, but I didn't get a chance to. While we were eating breakfast we went around taking many photos again.
Before heading out to our next location, we stopped under a huge tree to have some. We learned how to do tea the Chinese way, and we got to sample some of the local kinds of tea. We enjoyed it so much that we actually bought a small tea set after we returned to Haining.
I have just done some research, and I found out based on photo matching and such that the place we went to on the second day was called 河坑土楼群(hekeng tulou cluster). We arrived there by paying a man to drive us there on a motorcycle cart, and, as a local, he also acted as a tour guide and gave us information about the places we were visiting. I have a video of it, but I have yet to figure out how to make my videos small enough to put in this blog. Anyway, I have many pictures of all the tulous in that place, and most of them had a description of how old they were and how they were made. I will try to match them up with the pictures. This so far has been one of the coolest experiences for me in China so far, because the tulous were so old, and most of them still had people living in them for generations.
The man explained to us that some of the tulous did have inhabitants, but the didn't live in Nanjing, and they only came home for holidays. We did see one tulou that was deemed unfit to live in, and it had many chickens playing around inside, so I joked to Hui that it had those chickens' families living there for generations.
This first one I cannot find any outside pictures of, but I think I remember what it looked like inside, because it was the oldest one we saw. It says there it was built during the Ming dynasty, but the ladies living inside told us that it was pre Ming dynasty. There was also a well of super clean water right in the middle of the building that they let us taste. The next picture is what this tulou looked like from the inside.
After we went through all of the tulous, we started climbing up a mountain next to the cluster to get a very special view. It just kept going up and up. There were always more stairs ahead. haha
......and now for that amazing view!
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| the sour plant I mentioned |
Before heading out to our next location, we stopped under a huge tree to have some. We learned how to do tea the Chinese way, and we got to sample some of the local kinds of tea. We enjoyed it so much that we actually bought a small tea set after we returned to Haining.
I have just done some research, and I found out based on photo matching and such that the place we went to on the second day was called 河坑土楼群(hekeng tulou cluster). We arrived there by paying a man to drive us there on a motorcycle cart, and, as a local, he also acted as a tour guide and gave us information about the places we were visiting. I have a video of it, but I have yet to figure out how to make my videos small enough to put in this blog. Anyway, I have many pictures of all the tulous in that place, and most of them had a description of how old they were and how they were made. I will try to match them up with the pictures. This so far has been one of the coolest experiences for me in China so far, because the tulous were so old, and most of them still had people living in them for generations.
The man explained to us that some of the tulous did have inhabitants, but the didn't live in Nanjing, and they only came home for holidays. We did see one tulou that was deemed unfit to live in, and it had many chickens playing around inside, so I joked to Hui that it had those chickens' families living there for generations.
This first one I cannot find any outside pictures of, but I think I remember what it looked like inside, because it was the oldest one we saw. It says there it was built during the Ming dynasty, but the ladies living inside told us that it was pre Ming dynasty. There was also a well of super clean water right in the middle of the building that they let us taste. The next picture is what this tulou looked like from the inside.
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Looking through these pictures, I am realizing that I can't show every tulou with its respective English explanation, because it has been such a long time since my trip now. I think I better just show the pictures. People have told me that they don't take the time to read these blogs anyway. oh well! Enjoy the pictures.
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| geese! |
......and now for that amazing view!
Back in town, the driver of our little motor cart thing recommended a good restaurant for lunch, and lucky me! They had those little fish that I love to eat! Then it was time to go back to the city so we could get on the train back to Hangzhou. While we were waiting ages for the bus out of town, there was a lady across the street from us killing a bunch of chickens one by one, just cutting their necks with a pair of scissors, and putting them into a big barrel to let them bleed out. I don't know why, but I found watching that lady just completely thrilling. I guess things will be left off on an interesting note with that little story. It was the end of our adventure, and time to get back to Hangzhou and back to work! Thus ended our journey to 厦门 the city by the sea, and 南靖, the land of tulous. For our final picture, we have a couple of souvenirs that I bought to remember our time, a big shell from Xiamen, and a cute little embroidered bag from Nanjing.
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