|
| Arrived!  We made it to Ohio late last night after 36 hours of travel. Today I went with the girls for a mani/pedi and everybody is running everywhere doing last minute wedding things. The flowers have not arrived yet, and they were ordered from the internet, so much freaking out. Hopefully they will arrive soon or we just may have to send out raiding parties to all the local florists! Batchelorette party tonight! We shall see how awake I will be by then. | | |
|  Well, we fly to the US tomorrow for Erik's sister Brecka's wedding. Theoretically we fly to the US tomorrow. See, we purchased tickets to Shanghai on China Southern, and then from Shanghai we are supposed to have buddy passes on some Delta flights to get to Atlanta and finally Ohio. Flying on buddy passes means that we might not fly, if all the seats are sold we will have to wait for another flight with some empty seats, and that's always made me a little nervous, especially because if we miss too many flights we could miss the wedding entirely. Then this afternoon the phone rang and someone was telling us something in Chinese about our flight to Shanghai, the one with the purchased tickets, the only one I was thinking would for sure happen...turns out it is cancelled. So they wanted us to agree to take a flight later in the afternoon, but then we would miss the connection to Atlanta for sure. So we convinced them to put us on an earlier flight, with a different airline. They are delivering the new tickets to us at school tonight. (That's right, we still use paper tickets over here, and we had to pay in cash, the delivery guy doesn't accept credit.) Wheee! Cross your fingers and keep us in your thoughts! Here's hoping we make it, Brecka! | | |
| A little bit greenEnvironmentalism is usually something that I'm aware is a good thing, but to be honest, it doesn't really come into play in my daily life so much. Since I've lived in China for the last three years, I've had to do without things like owning a car or using a dryer for my laundry. Yeah, I walk, ride my bike, or take a bus 95% of the time, but it's necessity. Yeah, I line dry my clothes, but if dryers were for sale in China...well I would get one if I could afford it. Two things happened this week though, to bring the whole envirnmentalism idea up front and center for me.
The first was meeting a girl who we had been "text-message friends" with for several months now. She got our number from the vet where we took Baozi to get all his shots, to be neutered, and where he boards when we are out of town. So originally this girl texted us and said she worked at the vet place, but later we found out it was her friend who worked at the vet place and she pretty much was texting us to improve her English. Meeting people who want to use us as English practice partners is so common that usually we don't pursue the relationship, but for some reason we have kept this one up, and it's been good for us too, since usually she can't figure out how to text us in English. It's good Chinese reading practice for us. So anyway we had our first face to face meeting last night, and she decided to bring us random gifts. Most of it was "Hainan local products" which means it is produced from coconuts. We got coconut flavored wafers (a sort of thin cookie) coconut flavored candy, coconut powder (which apparently you mix with hot water to make a beverage) and some other coconut snack which was sort of a cross between a cookie and candy. All nice, I guess, if you like coconut flavoring! The thing that really got to me though, was the bag of dried shark fin.
 It's used to make shark's fin soup, and it's an expensive delicacy. The thing is, I'm morally opposed to sharks' fin soup. Here's a little background on why:
"While shark fin has no flavor and very little nutritional value, it does provide texture to soup, not to mention handsome profits to an industry estimated to be worth $500 million per year. Fins are dried, de-skinned, boiled and sometimes bleached, and then made into soup by the addition of chicken or fish stock, which provides the flavor. The fins of certain species are considered more valuable because of the length and thickness of the "fin needles" that they contain.
Until the 1980s, the consumption of shark fin soup was discouraged in China. However, the Chinese government relaxed its attitude towards what had been seen as an elitist dish, and consumption soared. Mainland China is now the world's biggest end-market for shark fin: the effect on shark populations has been disastrous.
A bowl of shark fin soup can sell for as much as $100. Because of its perceived value, serving shark fin soup at private functions is a way of honoring one's guests and signaling one's wealth and status. Chinese people frequently express the view that no self-respecting host would ever leave shark fin soup off the menu, particularly at weddings and other important social functions, for fear of losing face.
Every year, millions of sharks suffer painful deaths from the cruel and wasteful shark fin trade. Whether unintended "bycatch" by or caught specifically for their valuable fins, these animals have their fins removed and then—either dead or dying—are immediately cast back into the water. Shark meat is of low commercial value, so fishers save freezer space for highly valued fish and discard the sharks after the animals are "finned."
So anyway, now I don't know what to do. I can't eat the stuff, and I can't regift it either. Since I got it from someone I don't know well and have communication issues with, I couldn't have refused the gift either. She wouldn't have understood why, and it would have been extremely rude of me to do so. Maybe we will donate it to a local homeless shelter, with an explanation of how and why we acquired it.
The other thing that happened yesterday was that China's new ban on ultra-thin shopping bags went into effect. Now factories have stopped producing the ultra thin bags, and shops must use the thicker kind, and charge for them. At our local RT Mart (Da Run Fa) they were charging .3 RMB for large bags and .2 RMB for small ones. That may not seem like much to you, but it actually does make a difference for us here in China, where salaries and cost of living are much lower. There was a massive run on "green" re-usable shopping bags, and Erik and I even decided that after today, we will be bringing our own re-usable bags. This isn't a decision we would have made on our own, but I know it is a good one. I'm sick of seeing plastic bags floating by on the breeze and tangled at the roots of bushes and trees. I'm happy that China has taken this step and even though it's an inconvenience to us and many others, I definitely support it. I hope that it will continue to be enforced.
| | |
| sneakySo I was teaching my British people class, the one where we train people how to be an ESL teacher (most of the students are British, on their gap year) and the coordinator came in at the break to make an announcement. We needed to end class 10 minutes early, because a tv news crew was coming to interview forigners about their donations for the Sichuan quake. Sure enough, after I finished up class and was ducking across the hall to hide in Erik's classroom (I didn't really feel like being on TV today) I saw the crew arriving with their cameras and equipment. They were still conducting interviews in the main lobby area when we left, so we had to walk across the lobby to get out, and we may have been in the background of one of the interviews, but maybe not. It all just feels so self-laudatory to me, to get in front of the camera and say "Oh yes, look at me, mighty laowai, I have donated $XXXX!" Really, should the focus be on us? I don't think so. | | |
| culture and the quakeI've definitely been noticing a few cultural differences in the way China is dealing with this tragedy (the earthquake in Sichuan, in case you REALLY haven't been paying attention). Of course some things are the same, everyone is horrified by it, but what happens next is interesting.
Of course everyone wants to help the survivors, many are homeless and in need of medical attention as well as food and water. Benefits and donation boxes sprung up everywhere, much like in the US after 9/11. But then I heard that at our school's donation box, they were keeping records of names and amounts of donations. Tax writeoff, I wondered? Nope. Next thing I knew we were getting phone calls pointing out that our names weren't on that list. We even got a call from the FAO, the government office that is basically in charge of us foreigners, wanting to know the amount donated from each foreign teacher at our school. People who haven't donated through official channels are being harrassed and publicly shamed. For me, I feel very uncomfortable with such public flaunting of how much each person gives, and I'd much rather help privately, anonomously, but that's a cultural standpoint that just doesn't make sense to people here.
The next thing that caught my attention is the national days of mourning. It makes sense, and helps build a feeling of solidarity with the people affected. What caught my attention though, is that this is enforced mourning. I wouldn't think anyone in China would need to be forced to mourn, it is a natural enough reaction to the fact that 50,000 people were killed, but someone felt it necessary to ensure that all forms of public entertainment would be suspended for the three days. Bars and movie theaters had to close, and there were police patrols to ensure that they had done so. Even online gaming and entertainment sites hosted in China were ordered to suspend activities, with permanent closure a possibility if they didn't comply.
Personally, I've spent most of the last week thinking about one student in particular, Tina. She called me the day after the quake, and said she wouldn't be in class that night. Her family was in Sichuan, and she hadn't been able to reach them. She told me that she planned to travel to the area to look for them. I asked her to please keep me updated about her search, and told her I would be praying she found her family, safe. I haven't heard from Tina since that day. I've sent her text messages, but she hasn't replied. All I can hope is that she is with her family, and that they are safe, but perhaps still in a region where communication is difficult because of cell tower outages. | | |
|
