Shopping Malls and Sugary Tea
When I'm away from my routine and comfort zone, my identity is much more slippery. Over this past week in Wuhan, I've found myself doing several things that are extremely out of character and that you'd never find me doing at home. This makes me wonder: what is it about living abroad that creates cracks in our seemingly stable identities? What is usually so at stake in terms of maintaining these identities? Also, isn't there something refreshing about doing something bizarre or acting out of character once in a while?
So, here are some things I've found myself doing recently that don't fit into my schema:
Shopping: Today I arrived to a shopping mall before it opened. Actually, I sat outside and waited for it to open. I'll let that sink in for a few minutes...
Pictured below: People waiting tranquilly for the shopping mall to open, 9:30am.
Outside a mall (but about to enter one)...this is where the world's longest pedestrian street begins!
The great thing about walking in Wuhan is that unless you are happily walking in a mall, you have a right to be PISSED, since if you aren't in a mall, chances are you are walking on a freeway or through a construction site or in an otherwise strange and frustrating urban obstacle course, and so although you have no real right of way as a pedestrian, you maintain a full and incontestable right to be surly AF. In the picture above, the woman walking in front of me on the freeway exercised her right by randomly yelling at every car that passed and kicking the blue construction wall several times.
I digress.
Nesting: I've never been much of a nester, or a person who puts a lot of time and energy and money into making their space cozy, comfortable, or appealing. Well, apparently I do here in China. Most of my shopping has actually been to make my apartment into nothing less than a goddamn paradise. I have plants, wall hangings, stuffed foxes, fluffy towels, and little bottles of scented stuff that somehow diffuses through straw thingies and makes my air smell like FLOWERS. Yes, I did say "My" air. That's kind of weird; I've never been possessive about air before, but that's probably because I've never before owned AIR PURIFIERS. I will only inhale the most purified and flowery air!
But yeah, I really don't know what got into me.
Fixing Shit: I'm 'right brained' which means I get to pretend that enjoying literature and art exempts me from coordinating my hands and brain to use tools. In China-life, I can't play that card, so I found myself looking up the translation for 'wrench,' 'hammer,' and 'nails' today in a store, and later strutted home to hammer, wrench, and nail some shit. So, I'm sort of allergic to DIY and will usually avoid buying anything with those three letters in the title, but I put together my own DIY AIR PURIFIER and am now sucking in the sweet air that I created with my own two hands.
Living in China: And finally, as a catch-all category, I'd also like to remind myself that living and working in China is another thing that is still out of character for me.
So, in other news, I found a canteen that serves vegetarian food! Here's some of the food I've been eating, including spicy lotus root, tofu, and bamboo noodles (I think):
And, here's some of the students I've been teaching:
I had three classes last week, all sophomore 'intermediate writing,' which is just about as vague as it sounds. My job now is to turn it into a class that is about something more specific than 'intermediate writing', which in my mind, could mean anything from 4th grade essays on llamas to college-level Shakespearean analysis. I'm aiming to hit a spot somewhere in-between those two extremes. I've been asking a lot of questions of a lot of people to try to figure out more about what I should be teaching, and also what the students have already learned in past terms. Actually, my first round of classes included a needs analysis from my students so that I can gather information about their experiences, needs, and writing levels. I felt a little bad doing this since it probably felt like a quiz, but I needed to get the information.
One of the questions was, "What should I know about you, or your college, or your major, or your life, that will help me be a better teacher for you?" For this question, I received quite a diverse range of answers, such as suggestions for vegetarian delivery apps, requests for high grades, and really thoughtful responses that helped me reflect on my teaching style:
I was told that teaching students in China is delightful and this was not a lie. My students are interesting, curious, and friendly. I did a dorky icebreaker in class where students have to answer a fun or silly question about themselves. Instead of being done at, "Dogs are my favorite animals," students provided details and said stuff like, "Dogs are my favorite animal because they are cute, genuine to a fault, and loyal." One student reported his favorite English word as being "Debonair" and another said her favorite was, "double" because of the beautiful way someone sang that word in a song. To a question asking about skills/talents, one student reported that they were 'sensitive to numbers' and could memorize anyone's phone number after hearing it once. Another reported, "day dreaming."
I feel challenged to create a writing course that'll be relevant and interesting for all of the students. A bit of background: in Chinese colleges, you stay with the same group of 20-30 students for your four years. Each of these classes is composed of students who share the same major. I have English majors, International Business/English dual majors, and Translation/Interpretation majors. From my initial observations, the IB/E students seem the busiest (because they have two majors), the English majors seem the most...like English majors (some mentioned loving books, etc), and the Translation/Interpretation seem the least excited about writing. I'm excited to get to know them more although it seems like a daunting task since I have almost 90 students (!) and will be adding 60 more once I start teaching freshman pronunciation in a few weeks.
...the freshman are currently doing military training for their first month at school. They are all dressed in blue uniforms and doing marching drills all day, poor things. What a way to enter college! Here they are waiting for dismissal for dinner:
Besides furiously lesson-planning and course-planning, I've had the opportunity to do some things that are entirely within my character and schema. For example, I've been drinking enough red-bean milk tea to solve climate change and am valiantly pretending that adding sugary red-bean pulp to sweetened tea leads to excellent health benefits. Also, I've been gifted enough quiet alone time to have pickled and preserved dozens of jars of vegetables, become a skilled taxidermist, and learned fluent Mandarin. I've done none of those things, but in theory, I probably could have. Regardless, it has been nice to just bumble around and do my thing. I love people-really I do-but I'm also quiet happy being a lone wolf for stretches of time. Actually, I gave my students this prompt for their writing sample: "Argue whether it's better to be an introvert or extrovert" and I got some really interesting tidbits & fasinating perspectives, like:
-"An introvert's energy sources are very stable and free to choose. People around you cannot be chosen, but things you read, information you got can be chosen. What's more, introverts have much more time for themselves to think deeper rather than hanging out with friends."
-"Above all, I have to admit a lot of benefits to be an introvert. First, being alone can be very efficient, because you can get rid of the cost of time for communication and some unnecessary conflicts with others. Second, being alone can be beneficial for digging something deeper and coming out an extremely personal idea. Third, being alone can be such a comfortable situation for those who are afraid to communicate with people."
-"I think an introvert can not easily be bothered by other things and people. He just wants what he really wants no matter what other people says"
-"In this quick-fix society, we need sometime to be alone and to read books quietly. During the alone time, we can get into our deep heart and do some penetrative thinking which is helpful for our decisions."
-"Loneliness makes a person better."
-"I am an introvert. I'm quieter as well as energetic. Do you know why introverts seem quieter than others? The answer is they spend much time thinking about themselves and the world."
-"An introvert has to be alone. If he is strong mentally and believe in himself, he can find many truths around him. He has his own time to think about himself, to think about the surroundings. However, if he is fragile, he is eager to find friendships but afraid of being hurt. He will be desperate in the end. As to the extrovert, if he is good at gathering information around himself, he will benefit from being extrovert. In the contrary, if he just simply enjoys the happiness and follows his friends, he will get lost. His own purpose will turn into following others' steps."
Fascinating stuff. Most of the 90 students reported extroversion as desirable, so I paid special attention to those that had something else to say.
I'm going to leave with some more images of walking around my campus and admiring buildings, trees, people, and tranquil little spots I've found:
One of the buildings I teach in:
A lovely lotus pond:
My view walking back from class at night when the streets are quiet:
Love you all!
Ilse
So, here are some things I've found myself doing recently that don't fit into my schema:
Shopping: Today I arrived to a shopping mall before it opened. Actually, I sat outside and waited for it to open. I'll let that sink in for a few minutes...
Pictured below: People waiting tranquilly for the shopping mall to open, 9:30am.
Not only have I been going to shopping malls to purchase things, I've also been using the Chinese version of Amazon Prime to get things delivered to me within 3 days. Before you get too jealous, let me show you what my messages look like from the app:
Yep, it's all in Chinese, like everything else in China. It's a good thing that Chen, my life coach and friend, is so patient. She receives a lot of screen shots and question marks from me.
Back to the shopping mall though...if you are my friend, you probably know that I love to talk about how much I hate shopping malls and how the Mall of America is the worst place in the world. Life is funny and here's why: Wuhan is basically one huge, sweaty, shiny, loud shopping mall filled with 12 million people buying shit. Really! Well, it's actually hundreds of shopping malls next to hundreds of other shopping malls. But, it kind of feels like one since to actually navigate around the city, you often have to walk through one shopping mall in order to get to another. It's like a gigantic, chaotic series of Russian Matryoshka dolls, and before you know it, you are inside all of the malls, and all of the malls are inside of you. You are a shopping mall.
I took some pictures when walking around and inside Wuhan's shopping malls today:
Inside a mall:
Another theme in Wuhan is definitely construction and thus highly creative ways of getting around as a pedestrian:
The dreaded blue construction-site walls that mean "Good luck walking anywhere, human pedestrian!"
The city bird: the crane!
Creative walkways so that people can pass over construction sites:
And my favorite: When all reasonable walking routes have been destroyed due to construction and you have literally one option to get to a place and it requires walking into oncoming traffic on a highway.
I digress.
Nesting: I've never been much of a nester, or a person who puts a lot of time and energy and money into making their space cozy, comfortable, or appealing. Well, apparently I do here in China. Most of my shopping has actually been to make my apartment into nothing less than a goddamn paradise. I have plants, wall hangings, stuffed foxes, fluffy towels, and little bottles of scented stuff that somehow diffuses through straw thingies and makes my air smell like FLOWERS. Yes, I did say "My" air. That's kind of weird; I've never been possessive about air before, but that's probably because I've never before owned AIR PURIFIERS. I will only inhale the most purified and flowery air!
But yeah, I really don't know what got into me.
Fixing Shit: I'm 'right brained' which means I get to pretend that enjoying literature and art exempts me from coordinating my hands and brain to use tools. In China-life, I can't play that card, so I found myself looking up the translation for 'wrench,' 'hammer,' and 'nails' today in a store, and later strutted home to hammer, wrench, and nail some shit. So, I'm sort of allergic to DIY and will usually avoid buying anything with those three letters in the title, but I put together my own DIY AIR PURIFIER and am now sucking in the sweet air that I created with my own two hands.
Living in China: And finally, as a catch-all category, I'd also like to remind myself that living and working in China is another thing that is still out of character for me.
So, in other news, I found a canteen that serves vegetarian food! Here's some of the food I've been eating, including spicy lotus root, tofu, and bamboo noodles (I think):
And, here's some of the students I've been teaching:
I had three classes last week, all sophomore 'intermediate writing,' which is just about as vague as it sounds. My job now is to turn it into a class that is about something more specific than 'intermediate writing', which in my mind, could mean anything from 4th grade essays on llamas to college-level Shakespearean analysis. I'm aiming to hit a spot somewhere in-between those two extremes. I've been asking a lot of questions of a lot of people to try to figure out more about what I should be teaching, and also what the students have already learned in past terms. Actually, my first round of classes included a needs analysis from my students so that I can gather information about their experiences, needs, and writing levels. I felt a little bad doing this since it probably felt like a quiz, but I needed to get the information.
One of the questions was, "What should I know about you, or your college, or your major, or your life, that will help me be a better teacher for you?" For this question, I received quite a diverse range of answers, such as suggestions for vegetarian delivery apps, requests for high grades, and really thoughtful responses that helped me reflect on my teaching style:
I was told that teaching students in China is delightful and this was not a lie. My students are interesting, curious, and friendly. I did a dorky icebreaker in class where students have to answer a fun or silly question about themselves. Instead of being done at, "Dogs are my favorite animals," students provided details and said stuff like, "Dogs are my favorite animal because they are cute, genuine to a fault, and loyal." One student reported his favorite English word as being "Debonair" and another said her favorite was, "double" because of the beautiful way someone sang that word in a song. To a question asking about skills/talents, one student reported that they were 'sensitive to numbers' and could memorize anyone's phone number after hearing it once. Another reported, "day dreaming."
I feel challenged to create a writing course that'll be relevant and interesting for all of the students. A bit of background: in Chinese colleges, you stay with the same group of 20-30 students for your four years. Each of these classes is composed of students who share the same major. I have English majors, International Business/English dual majors, and Translation/Interpretation majors. From my initial observations, the IB/E students seem the busiest (because they have two majors), the English majors seem the most...like English majors (some mentioned loving books, etc), and the Translation/Interpretation seem the least excited about writing. I'm excited to get to know them more although it seems like a daunting task since I have almost 90 students (!) and will be adding 60 more once I start teaching freshman pronunciation in a few weeks.
...the freshman are currently doing military training for their first month at school. They are all dressed in blue uniforms and doing marching drills all day, poor things. What a way to enter college! Here they are waiting for dismissal for dinner:
Besides furiously lesson-planning and course-planning, I've had the opportunity to do some things that are entirely within my character and schema. For example, I've been drinking enough red-bean milk tea to solve climate change and am valiantly pretending that adding sugary red-bean pulp to sweetened tea leads to excellent health benefits. Also, I've been gifted enough quiet alone time to have pickled and preserved dozens of jars of vegetables, become a skilled taxidermist, and learned fluent Mandarin. I've done none of those things, but in theory, I probably could have. Regardless, it has been nice to just bumble around and do my thing. I love people-really I do-but I'm also quiet happy being a lone wolf for stretches of time. Actually, I gave my students this prompt for their writing sample: "Argue whether it's better to be an introvert or extrovert" and I got some really interesting tidbits & fasinating perspectives, like:
-"An introvert's energy sources are very stable and free to choose. People around you cannot be chosen, but things you read, information you got can be chosen. What's more, introverts have much more time for themselves to think deeper rather than hanging out with friends."
-"Above all, I have to admit a lot of benefits to be an introvert. First, being alone can be very efficient, because you can get rid of the cost of time for communication and some unnecessary conflicts with others. Second, being alone can be beneficial for digging something deeper and coming out an extremely personal idea. Third, being alone can be such a comfortable situation for those who are afraid to communicate with people."
-"I think an introvert can not easily be bothered by other things and people. He just wants what he really wants no matter what other people says"
-"In this quick-fix society, we need sometime to be alone and to read books quietly. During the alone time, we can get into our deep heart and do some penetrative thinking which is helpful for our decisions."
-"Loneliness makes a person better."
-"I am an introvert. I'm quieter as well as energetic. Do you know why introverts seem quieter than others? The answer is they spend much time thinking about themselves and the world."
-"An introvert has to be alone. If he is strong mentally and believe in himself, he can find many truths around him. He has his own time to think about himself, to think about the surroundings. However, if he is fragile, he is eager to find friendships but afraid of being hurt. He will be desperate in the end. As to the extrovert, if he is good at gathering information around himself, he will benefit from being extrovert. In the contrary, if he just simply enjoys the happiness and follows his friends, he will get lost. His own purpose will turn into following others' steps."
Fascinating stuff. Most of the 90 students reported extroversion as desirable, so I paid special attention to those that had something else to say.
I'm going to leave with some more images of walking around my campus and admiring buildings, trees, people, and tranquil little spots I've found:
One of the buildings I teach in:
Love you all!
Ilse
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