yeti speak...

bad idea

Kids with skewers...

This was taken at a favorite Xining restaurant...

FYI

Just so everyone knows, the earthquake down in Chengdu today did not affect us this far north. 

The Johnsons are back in Xining packing and re-packing and tying down the fort (or whatever strange metaphor you'd like to use for such things).  We were all so exhausted today I doubt we would have EVEN noticed any residual shakes in the terra firma.

Let's be in prayer for those who were closer to the epicenter.  With that, we'll see (some of) you VERY soon...

photos from a pro

In lieu of having my own professional photos to post, here are some photos from the Great Wall, Jianzha, and the family home.  Check out the mad skills of my friend, Jeremy. 

P.S. I took the awesome kung fu shot!  It's amazing what a good camera can do.

home for the holidays - visit recap

After twenty-four hours on the train I arrived back in Xining with just enough time to get showered up and have a nice Thanksgiving meal with my family and other fellow expats in our community.  It was perfect timing.  The irony is that my friends, J & J, left for America on a plane a few hours before I left Beijing on a train.  They beat me getting back home.

It was really nice having friends out for a visit before the holiday.  Their entire time here (other than an unfortunate incident with a KFC spicy chicken sandwich) couldn't have been more perfect.  Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures from their visit (my camera battery died after taking just one photo of the Great Wall) but thankfully Jer took a few thousand photos and has promised to send me some for posting.

Some of the visit highlights which I am THANKFUL for:

• Climbing some small mountain-like hills behind our house in Jianzha
• Rat-hunting and making a "kill" with J & J
• Making the movie "Jianzha Cribs"
• Visiting Lobsang's monastery and eating tsampa with him at his home
• Watching Hot Fuzz with the boys in Xining, "By the power of Grayskull..."
• Ticket to Ride with Christa, J & J.  Christa is still undefeated!
• Cereal time with Eugene-Jack in Jianzha
• Basketball time with local Tibetans
• Visiting the Great Wall (Simatai) in Beijing.  Five miles of unrestored brick ramparts and wall to hike.  We only saw about 20 or 30 people.  The "kung fu" shots were amazing.  You'll see what I mean soon enough
• Eating at Li Qun's Beijing Duck restaurant in a "hutong" district--with a freezer full of dead ducks hanging just over my right shoulder
• Visiting a local restaurant owned by a Chinese photographer and "translating" from Chinese to English and back between Jer and said photographer.  And no I don't really know the words for aperture or exposure in Chinese.  We stumbled through
• Rory's-esque time spent with J & J at the Japanese restaurant and the hostel's cafe
• The red lever

I guess in some ways you had to be there.  But if you are in the Seattle/Tacoma area, I'm sure J & J would be willing to share some of the tales with you.

In any case, I hope you all have a wonderful turkey-filled Thanksgiving!  We are so thankful for each of you...

We'll be back in J-town later today.  Peace, out.

christa and sarah's outing to datong

A few weeks ago (pre-Jianzha move) Christa and Sarah took an overnight trip to a village outside of Datong.  Datong is about 45 minutes to an hour north of Xining whereas we live a few hours south of Xining now.  Christa's language partner from last semester, Maria, invited her to visit her home.  Maria and her family are Hui (a Chinese Muslim nationality living here in Qinghai and throughout China.)  She is studying at the Minorities College that we attended in Xining.

Here's the photo album with Christa's commentary on the trip.

moving day

I took a load of our belongings (mostly little girl toys) out to Jianzha this morning.  The roads were wet and muddy, but since I was in my friend's jeep we had no problem getting through.  Tomorrow the whole family will be heading there with the last of the belongings we will need (for the time being--till it gets cold.)  We received our "letters of invitation" from the local government for us to work at the library so that's good news in terms of getting our labor permit.  Once we have the labor permit then we can go and get our visas for this next year for our family.  Thanks for keeping all of this in mind. Continue to do so as we still have a few more steps to go in this process...

The next time I blog we will be living in the Qinghai countryside in our new "home" away from home.  Let the new adventure begin!

This is a shot of Jianzha from above and a picture of the library building where we will be working (on the right).

getting physical - choose your own adventure

When I was a kid I enjoyed Choose Your Own Adventure books.  In these books you read a narrative in which you become the main character and usually at the end of each chapter you have a decision to make.   Much like in real life as you make each new decision your "story" follows a certain course.  You meet your destiny!

To enter the dark cave go to Page 12.
To return to the castle go to Page 15.

I can't count the number of times my "character" died because of the fearless (foolhardy?) decisions I would make in these books.  Sorry, you were just mauled by a bear in the cave you stepped in!  Stop reading or start over.

But besides pointing out to every English teacher you ever had from elementary school on that there is such a thing as writing in the 2nd person, what is the greatest thing about Choose Your Own Adventure books anyway?  I think it's getting to take the big risks.

My big risk lately was going by myself to get a physical done so that I can get a work permit and visa for this next year.  But that's my story.  You can choose your own adventure below:

1. You have been living in central China and studying Mandarin for the past two years.  You now have a great opportunity to do something a bit more interesting in a Tibetan village not too far away.  But in order to do this you will have to apply for a new visa which will involve passing a Chinese physical.

• If you can't be bothered to get the physical at all, STOP now.  You are a disgrace to adventurers everywhere.  "Surfing" the net is probably as extreme as it gets for you.  Be careful not to overexert yourself with your next cross-stitching project.
• If you (are a yellah-bellied coward) think it would be better to take a Chinese friend to the clinic with you for translation, proceed to #10
• If you are an independent person of courage who is not afraid to take on a little personal humiliation to get the job done, proceed to #2.

2. Well done, adventurer.  At the appropriate time you hop on the #102 bus and head directly to the hospital with the English name that includes the words "Foreigner" and "Quarantine" in the title.  This does not dissuade you in the least.   Your quest awaits you.  As you approach the entrance to the Foreigner Quarantine hospital, a Chinese man in a uniform approaches you.

• If you wish to run and hide in the nearest alley, proceed to #10
• If you wish to attempt communication with the uniformed man, proceed to #3

3. The uniformed man informs you that you are entering through the wrong door.  He kindly redirects you to the appropriate entrance saving you a half hour you would have otherwise wasted in the wrong room.  In the lobby you see many Chinese people lined up outside of various doorways.  You decide to enter the first door on the right that is marked "Consultation".  Inside the room a Chinese woman in a lab coat asks how she can help you.  You have done your homework and know how to say "physical checkup" in Chinese.  She hands you paperwork to fill in.

• If you remembered to bring multiple passport photos and 368 RMB proceed to #4.
• If you forgot to bring the passport and/or the money with you, proceed to #11

4. Well played, adventurer.  Having filled in your paperwork (with your photo pasted to it) and paid your fee, you are now ready to have your physical.  The lady in the lab coat guides you to the first door with a crowd of Chinese people gathered around it.  She brings you to the front of the line to have blood drawn.

• If you are not comfortable skipping to the front of the line and wish to "wait your turn", proceed to #10
• If you have no qualms about getting the VIP treatment, proceed to #5.

5. Having filled a vial with your own blood (without passing out!), you take your paperwork out into the hall.  The lab coated lady guides you to the next room for a chest X-ray.  A white-haired X-ray technician takes your form and makes small talk with you in heavily accented Chinese.  He asks you to press your chest against a scanner (of some sort) where the X-ray will be taken.  Using Chinese and a subtle form of charades he asks you to take a deep breath when taking the X-ray.  You ask him when to take this deep breath and he points to a speaker sitting on the floor.  He then asks you if you understand.

• If you wish to pretend like you understand (even though you are NOT totally clear) and just hope for the best, proceed to #6.
• If you wish to admit to this man that you don't totally understand and would like a clearer explanation, proceed to #10

6. Excellent.  You are a very clever problem-solver.  When the X-ray technician left the room, turned on the static-filled speaker, and spoke with you, you took a deep breath and held it until he came back into the room.  The X-ray was taken and you are free to proceed to the next challenge.  You follow the crowd of patients up to the second floor.  On the way up the stairs, a different woman in a lab coat guides you to a room where your height, weight, and blood pressure are taken.  She hands you a metal object that looks like a ladle and guides you into the hall.  Opening a different door, she tells you to stand in the hall and then shows you a Vision chart (hanging about 15 feet away!) inside the room.  Applying the metal ladle to one eye, you proceed to take the vision test.  After the vision test, you then are subjected to a color blindness test.

• If you are color blind, proceed to #12
• If you are not color blind, proceed to #7.

7.  You're almost there!  Not far to go now.  After checking spine, chest, lungs, and extremities, the doctor takes you across the hall to get an ECG.  The technician asks you to raise your shirt so she can stick suction cup thingies to your chest.

• If you would describe yourself as a hairy mammoth, proceed to #8
• If you are a normal primate, proceed to #9.

8.  When the nurse stares in awe at your furry chest, it's best to just laugh nervously.  She will call in for back-up as you are a unique breed.  As the technician and the doctor try to find a hair-free area to stick the sensors congratulate yourself in your own masculinity (unless you are a woman.)

• If your ego survived this ordeal, proceed to #9
• If your ego was destroyed by being confronted with your own freakishness in this culture, proceed to #10

9. Congratulations!  You have successfully completed your Chinese physical!!!  A nurse tells you that you can find out the results (you guessed it) "mingtian" i.e. tomorrow at 5:30 p.m.  The next day the form you receive shows that you are "In Good Health" and that Cholera, Yellow Fever, Plague, Leprosy, AIDS, and Psychosis are all "NO FOUND".  Maybe you'll be able to survive in a Tibetan village after all (as long as a few rats or scorpions won't bother you.) Mission completed! Stop. 

10.  You seem to have fallen into a cultural pitfall.  Stop and retrace your steps.  Either you asked for help, you had a mental lapse, you played by the rules of your home country, or you just didn't make the gutsy move that you needed to survive and advance to the next round.  Chances are you are not quite ready for life in the Tibetan countryside.  Take another year in Xining then try again...

11.  Mingtian.  You've just lost precious hours or even a whole day in some form of red tape or circular communication.  You can try to correct your mistake, but chances are you won't get finished with this physical today.  Wait...

12.  Sorry, you are being immediately deported!  Color blind people have no business being in the People's Republic of China. (Since I passed my color blind test I have no idea whether this is really true, but I imagine I'm not too far off.  Yeah.)  Stop!

progressive literacy

This is the beautiful landscape that can be seen out our back window of our apartment in Xining.  Breathtaking, eh?

On many evenings over the past two years, from the comfort of my couch, I have stared out at this gray brick building.  The other day as I stared at it it dawned on me that I could actually read the Chinese characters on top of the building.

When I first started learning Chinese, I could only make out the word "大" (da) which is a very common and simple character in Chinese.  It means "big", "large", or "most".

Over time I learned the word for world which is "世界" (shijie).  I think I learned this one during the World Cup last summer.

And only recently I picked up the word for carpet "地毯" (dita).

So I was pretty happy that I could make out all the characters on the sign: Big Carpet World.  This is what you call two years of progressive literacy.  Granted there is some English on the sign, and I've known that this building used to be a carpet factory, but that's beside the point.

I can read, people!  I can read.  Just don't hand me a Qinghai newspaper.

second time's a charm

After that first "sacrificial trip" to the train station, I was able to purchase our tickets to Chengdu on ONLY my second attempt.  Yeah, pretty amazing.  Next Friday we'll be taking the 24-hour train trip to the south.  The train will head east from Xining to Lanzhou in the Gansu province and then south through Gansu into the Sichuan province to Chengdu.  This is a route I haven't taken yet so I'm excited to see some new scenery.  Hopefully the weather will be good.

Speaking of routes, Christa and I have been playing a fun board game lately which involves building train routes across a country.  It's called, Ticket to Ride.  We've been playing the version that takes place in the U.S./Canada.  I'd like to see a Chinese version of this game come out.  Maybe we could make our own...

Sweaty panda bears, here we come!

train station wisdom: "mingtian" 明天

I went to the train station yesterday to check on ticket prices to Chengdu (成都).  If you are not familiar with China's geography Chengdu is the capitol city of the Sichuan province to the southeast of us.  We have friends from the U.S. who are moving to Chengdu for work in the near future.  We told them that Chengdu is a place we folks from Xining like to go on vacation.  This isn't precisely true.  Some of our friends here in Xining don't like Chengdu at all.  It's very hot in the summer and often very overcast (with its fair share of pollution) and rainy in the winter.

When we visited Chengdu in February 2006 we enjoyed it because it was NOT very hot at all, it was overcast, there was a nice panda bear reserve there, and due to all the western style coffee shops and slight drizzle it felt a bit Seattle-esque to us.  We are starved for western cuisine out here in the Wild West (um..., or center) of China.  Even though the Chinese food is excellent, you can only eat at KFC so many times in any given year for that little taste of "home" before you start looking and feeling like the Colonel.   (He's dead by the way.)

It's funny how your vacation ideas change when living cross-culturally.  Now we travel to cities more for the food options than for the sights, tourist attractions, and entertainment.  Anyway, we're considering spending a few days down south for some good Tex Mex, hamburgers, Starbucks, and cheesecake.  The cheapest way for our family to do this on our budget is to take the train.  So, yesterday, I thought I would check on prices and maybe even buy tickets.  Well, you learn a lot at the train station.  Here are few pearls of wisdom I either discovered or was reminded of yesterday:

1. The Chinese word 明天 "mingtian" or tomorrow, from the Chinese perspective as least, is not actually a curse word.  To the western mind it may feel or be received this way, especially if you would like something done today.  Rest assured, they use this word as freely with locals as they do with foreigners.  Little orphan Annie would love it here, "Tomorrow, tomorrow..."
2. Planning ahead is for pansies.  I have not translated this sentence into Chinese yet but suspect there must be some equivalent.  It seems that buying train tickets 10 days before the desired departure date is actually way too early.  "Mingtian lai" (Come back tomorrow.)  In my country if you want to travel by plane without paying astronomical prices, it's best to buy your tickets at the very least a couple weeks in advance.  In China, if you wait until the day before you wish to depart you can sometimes get tickets up to 60% off.  Sometimes.  Procrastinator's paradise I say.
3. Taking a trial run, expecting nothing, helps preserve sanity.  Though there are some same-day services here in China, most things follow the "mingtian" rule.  If I'm going to the bank, to the registrar's office, or to buy train tickets, I am learning to lower my expectations (to nothing) and expect that I'll have to come back once, twice, or even three times to ultimately complete my task.  The first trip has become what I call the "sacrifice" trip.  I go to the place where I want to withdraw money or pay for a certain service; I leave my libation on the altar (in the form of a question or request), the Clerk God/Oracle consumes the gift offering, gives the revelation (Mingtian!) and then I go about my merry way.  If I have to come back just one more time to complete the cycle, that's a very successful expedition.  Learning to perform this ritual has helped with my cultural adaptation and high blood pressure.
4. There's no free lunches...for Americans.  When I asked the clerk at the train station if I could get a student discount she said, Yes.  She asked me what country I was from.  I said, "America."  She took my student ID into the back room, probably had a good chuckle, and then returned.  She flopped my ID on the counter like a dead fish and said, "Bu xing." (Trans: Not OK.)  Talk about your standard Jekyll and Hyde situation.  I was so flabbergasted I made the mistake of getting out of the line.  Important rule:  If there is a distinguishable line formed in China, never, ever, ever let yourself fall out of it unless you're truly and unquestionably finished with whatever business you were seeing to.  It's kind of like feeding Gremlins after midnight.  Very bad, unalterable consequences.
5. The Help Desk might not be.  Contrary to universal intent, a desk marked with a label that says "help" or "customer service" or "information" may lend itself to those types of things or it might just be a place where a random guy has chosen to sit down because there are no other chairs in the room.  This was the case yesterday.  Oh, he might have been somehow employed by the train station, but whenever anyone asked him a question he seemed irritated and he just pointed to the ticket-selling windows.  I didn't bother him.
6. In the summer don't go to Lhasa.  Granted, Tibet is not nearly as accommodating in the winter, but believe me when I say you don't want to try to buy a train ticket to Lhasa in the summer these days.  The train ticket clerks don't even bother saying "mingtian" when people ask about Lhasa tickets.  They just wave their hand in your face and roll their eyes.  Plus, the way I see it, since all the Europeans seem to be headed to Lhasa during the summer it would be a good time and opportunity to overthrow the EU.  Yeah, Crete.  Take it to 'em.
7. Don't get cynical.  I know all of these messages seem negative, but the situations themselves are actually quite funny once you get used to them.  Some of them anyway.  I try not to stand behind foreigners who are line up at the train station cause that line will move very slow, but generally, we are good-natured, fun-loving folks.  Except when we've been mingtian-ed to death...

Heed these words of wisdom when living in China.