Owendennis.com Blog

First off I want to give a shout out to Diana Chao: 1) She introduced me to the new Kid Cudi album which I’m having a good time with (repetitious food choices and lack of new music makes Owen a dull boy) and 2) She warned me ahead of time about a great many things (not that I remembered any of them, but the thought was nice).

The past couple weeks have had freakish weather. One day it will be 80 degrees, the next day it will be 45 (the amount of wind and the fact that everything is made of tile made that pretty brisk feeling). My students and the teachers were saying I was crazy because it was so cold. How could I not be cold in 60 degree weather? What’s wrong with me?

One week was pretty consistently 40 degrees however. This prompted me to finally put on my jacket and cap:

Now personally I figured this would stop people walking up and asking how I wasn’t cold. I thought it would put an end to the stares and questioning because I was finally acting “normal.”

I was wrong.

I walked into the school to something brand new. People were walking past me and doing double takes. Constantly. Constant double takes. Then they would lean to their friends and whisper. The teachers had the strongest double takes. It was quite funny because I remember some of them looking at me as I walked past with about the same level of shock as if I was naked. When I walked into my first class I said: “Hi!”
“Whoooaaaaaa…”
“… k… well anyway…”

It was like this all day until lunch. I sat down with my teacher friends and they looked like they had a secret to tell me. So after some conversation they finally pointed at my hat and said: “Do you know what this means?”
“What what means?”
“A green hat?”
“A green hat means something?”
“Yes, on a man.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means your wife is cheating on you.”

That’s right. A man wearing a green hat means his spouse or significant other is cheating on him. Just to make sure we’re clear:

Normal:

Normal:

Normal:

Cheating girlfriend:

They asked “Well do you have a girlfriend?”
Me: “Nope.”
“Well then there’s nothing really to worry about.”

However the comments wouldn’t stop. I remembered that Diana Chao told me about this happening if I wore a green hat. A number of superstitions I think have a “valid” reason behind them for existing. Black cats: black is the color of night, night is scary because humans can’t see in the dark. Witches are bad, black cats are witch’s cats, etc etc, thus they’re bad luck. This was a big deal when people thought witchcraft was a real threat. Others are more practical. For instance breaking a mirror and seven years bad luck. I assume this superstition came about when mirrors were super super expensive pre a hundred years ago. “Don’t break the mirror you little monster, it’s expensive! If you break it it’s bad luck!” Bad luck to walk under ladders? It’s just a simple safety precaution. If someone is using a ladder then they’re doing construction of some kind. If you walk under the ladder something could fall on you. However, if you wear a green hat your girlfriend/wife is cheating on you? I fail to find the practical use of this. No one could explain it to me either. Is it to shame the wife? I would feel that it’s more shameful for the husband. I guess if you’re in a small town everyone would know who your wife was so it might not matter so much. Dunno. I can’t really find the reason here. Especially since in other cultures it’s always very much the woman who got the brunt of the cheating shame, always the woman’s fault and not the man’s, so why would they give a man a green hat?

At one point I had a kid walk past, do a big double take, and I said “What?”
“You look like a panda!”

At another point I had I had a group of kids surround me during passing time (if two kids stop to talk to you then 3 minutes later you have about 10 kids standing around you in a circle). The boy who was most talkative said:
“Where did you get this hat? Did you get it in China?”
“No I got it in Scotland.”
“Our teachers told us to ask if you know what your hat means.”
“Yeah I do but I don’t have a girlfriend so it’s not a big deal. It’s just a hat.”
“*giggle*”
“It does mean something about a cheating girlfriend or wife right?”
“*giggle* yes! They do not sell green hats for boys in China.”
“Okay, well, it’s just a hat.”
“Ah. Actually, we’re not like the teachers…” *gets closer to speak more softly* “… we think it’s really cool!”
“Thanks.”

I had two girls (twins, you have no idea how long that little detail has been bugging me) introduce themselves to me in my office and ask if I knew about my hat
“Yep.”
“Ah… then… why do you wear it?”
“Cause I like this hat.”
“Ah!”
“Is that okay?”
“Yes! We like it!”

So I’ve basically gathered that wearing a green hat is really edgy and cool. I feel complimented by the attention, but it seems rather funny to me. I can count the number of times people have thought I’ve had cool clothes on one finger. It makes me laugh.

Moving on. This is me studying Chinese in my office:

Here’s a picture of my hands while I was learning directions. I specifically remember when I was four or five, driving in the car, and my dad showed me that to remember directions you just stick your hands out in front of you with your palms forward. Left starts with “L”, so whichever hand makes an L is the one that’s on the left. I think my grandfather was there as well. Either way you can’t do that in Chinese:

I love walking into class and not knowing what the hell just happened:

They lost their hacky-sack on top of the air conditioner. It’s not a hack-sack though, they have their own (apparently ancient?) form of hacky-sack. It’s basically a bunch of rings of recycled metal with a rubber core. Stuck in the core is a bunch of big colorful feathers (to keep the tension up in the center so the rings don’t fly off the core). It’s a shuttlecock really. Then they hit them around like a hacky-sack. The problem is that because of the feathers you can’t roll the shuttlecock off your body onto your foot or anything, you have to hit it. The other problem is that the feathers make the thing flip around all wobbly in the air so you can’t really predict right where the heavy part is going to land so you can kick it properly. This isn’t my picture but this is what they look like:

I play the game pretty often with my Chinese friends. I’m not as good as Quentin because he used to play soccer. I’m really good at catching it (a no-no) and hitting it with my hand because most of my schoolyard time was spent playing four-square. Clearly I need to teach them how to play four-square. I think I can use a basketball instead of a dodgeball/four-square ball. I’m also probably going to pick up playing badminton with them now that they have some brand new nets set up to use. I love badminton.

The space heater my school provided us with. Quentin and I were happy about it, I saw the other foreign teacher’s left in the secretary’s office. He must not be into it.

Saturday afternoon as all the Senior 3 kids take the bus or get picked up by their parents:

Lol, is he the first lesson? What is the lesson you learn from this guy, don’t take lessons from people who advertise on their jackets?:

Inspection day at KFC:

I felt bad for the people at KFC because on the day that the inspection person came, a tile randomly fell off the wall. No one bumped it or pushed it. I watched it happen. The inspection person was standing near the wall, then right next to them *POP* off popped a tile. The manager came out and tried to put it back in place. Then it sat there for a second and popped out again. Ouch.

At Everybody Happy Mart there is always this children’s video playing. It features a cute little girl (maybe seven years old?) lip synching to some song that an older woman is clearly singing. She’s doing all sorts of perfect little things like playing on a swing set, dancing, doing arm motions while wearing traditional clothes, etc etc. This girl is singing and dancing along to the video:

A student gave me this. She said it was a specialty of her hometown. It’s spicy rabbit. It’s kind of like jerky but with more oils involved. She thought it was hilarious to watch me eat it because I was doing it wrong:

Parent Teacher Conferences

So one day I woke up to find out it was parent teacher conference week. I don’t have to do anything because I’m not a home room teacher. Basically I got the brunt of parents sitting in my classroom because I teach Senior 1. This is their first year at this school so the parents want to see what exactly their kids are learning. Quentin teaches Senior 2 and he says he didn’t have any parents in any of his classes:

The kid second from the left on the side of this picture is a total smartass, I love calling on him:

Parents waiting for their turn to talk to the teachers. I saw some of them waiting there for hours. The one child policy makes a lot of things ride upon their one child, so the parents are quite protective and care a lot about every aspect of their kid’s lives. Not that parents in the US don’t care, they do, it’s just that the care here is quite over the top. Too much I would say. It was kind of neat to finally see some of the parents that I know are pushing their kids super super hard:

I asked the kids how they felt about their parents being in class with them (in one of the classes where there was no parent). They grumbled. I laughed and told them about how in one of my schools I had to sit in a circle with my teacher and my parents and tell my parents my grade and why it was so bad. They agreed that that was worse (Yes! Finally something where US schools sound scarier than Chinese schools!)

So I was super nervous in front of the parents. In my first class on Monday I had four parents sitting in. I was teaching the kids how to argue (something they get practically no formal teaching of in their regular classes). In one of the segments of the lesson I’m teaching them what a circular argument is (an argument based off of an assumption). First example: “Chocolate ice cream is my favorite because it’s the best.” That part was fine. But I suddenly got nervous when the second example popped up and I quickly smudged it to not be potentially insulting:

“The charges of abuse are not true because [due to my website being blocked I have edited some words, however one of the great things about English is that I can change to countless other words to mean that same thing!] the constabu[i][/i]laries would never do something like that.”
*sudden moment of panic*
“… Umm.. which is… is something that I’ve heard said in America before!”
*whew*

Then the kids were doing their talking exercises like they’re supposed to and I wandered back to try and talk to them. I said: “Hello, is my class good or not?” in Chinese. They didn’t understand me. It was another moment of “You’re white, so you’re speaking English to me.” Also yes, I did ask someone later as to whether I was saying it right and I was. So they all sat and looked at eachother confused, and then back at me, shrugging and not understanding. This let me know that 1) Yes I am speaking correctly, but the assumption is that I don’t and 2) they didn’t speak English so I didn’t have to worry about any misinterpretations of my intentions.

Here’s the parents getting a presentation by the head teacher of their student’s class. The kids were out eating or they were standing in the hall really nervously. I specifically remember one class where I asked them how their weekend was the next week and they said they were all punished because they were the worst class. I wasn’t sure exactly what punishment meant (I mean they already have no free time to do anything so it’s not like you can ground them) but some of them said they were hit and the others were quiet. I assume it was really bad:

Sports week is next week so I found this kid out making a big sign for her class:

Kids practicing for sports week:

I’ve seen a couple kids with this backpack in various parts of the city. I love it. It’s a sweet backpack, it comes in black as well:

Paper shipment to the school:

In my the building where my Chinese class is there’s like some kind of seminar on… something… every other week or so. This past Friday was the same thing. I think they’re teaching English. I think also that this is the sign to go their class. I like this picture. I don’t know what it is about apathetic straight line mouths that attracts me so much, I just think they’re the funniest thing in the world. Especially when you use it in a logo to advertise yourself:

Here’s the class. Once again, I catch them doing something that I thought was reserved for kids. Notice at the end how I have to suddenly hurry away:

CLICK HERE FOR DANCING

I quickly pretended that I was walking to the bathroom and not standing and recording them through the windows like a creeper. While I was in the bathroom I found some burning incense. Bathrooms here smell really really bad. I assume that if the workers decided it was time to ignite the fumes in the air then it must have been something fierce:

I returned to find them acting completely normal and back to business:

More and more mounting evidence makes me the think that the entire country of China is actually a big musical. People erupt into song and dance whenever you’re not looking, and then as soon as they see a foreigner they just fake like they’re not having a good time.

After class I went to War-Mart to pick up some pistachios. I found them doing Christmas kind of! They have a very very small section now at the top of the escalator for Christmas. They even play Muzak and Christmas songs sung by accented Chinese people. I was going to make the word “Christmas” Chinafied by adding “Ch” on the front, but it doesn’t really work… :-/

Anyway this was my surprise at the top of the stairs:

There was even some over to the right! Wow!

Listening to Christmas Muzak while riding down an escalator ramp in a Chinese Wal-Mart is truly a surreal experience:

SURREAL CLICK

Here’s a wide shot of the Christmas section:

When I left Wal-Mart I walked to where the bus was going to pick me up. I found this little shop turning all Christmasy as well. This actually confuses me a little more than Wal-Mart doing it. Wal-Mart is an American company. I assumed they did Christmas in China as some sort of vestigial thing leftover from being located in the US. Chinese people don’t really do Christmas. However if you want people to buy things, what better way to do it than to convince them that there’s a holiday where you have to give things to other people? Western holidays are slowly gaining traction here, not because of religion, but just because they’re kinda fun and cool. Another reason I’m interested in what this country will be like in another generation or two:

Also I thought I would point out, whenever I ask my students to turn something in to me, I would say that at least half of the time is looks like this:

Investigating the Library

So on Chanksgiving (the Thanksgiving party we had in China on Saturday) I had some time to kill before catching the bus. One of my teacher friends told me that what I thought was just a bunch of empty rooms and more classrooms was actually the school library! I was excited. I know it seems like something I should have figured out this far into the school year, but I honestly thought it was just a bunch of empty rooms viewing it from the ground. I decided to go check out the building.

It was completely abandoned. Not even Senior 3 kids were in there:

See why I thought all the rooms were just abandoned?

I was able to pry open this door a little bit even though it was painted over. It’s just a hole. It’s a shaft that falls straight down for like 8 floors:

Always good to leave fire extinguishers as far away from a library as possible:

I wanted to get to the top floor, but this door was in the way:

I tried the other side of the half circle but it was closed off too. LAME:

A view out the window of the stairwell to the roof

I found this random door that lead out onto the roof I guess? I don’t understand what this place is supposed to be, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be a roof with a bunch of piles of dirt on it:

An open door? Clearly a sign that I must explore further.

About 3 flights down I found out where the maintenance people live. This was much darker and creepier than the photo makes it look:

I decided to go down even further and I found where the janitors live I think:

I found a door that led out of the building:

I sort of just ended up back behind the library after I was done wandering around. This was when my Myst experience started. I don’t remember if I’ve posted this building or not but this is the observatory behind the library. It really really reminds me of Myst and it’s subsequent sequels. I don’t think it’s actually an observatory like people have told me however. There’s no telescope and we’re in the middle of the city. You can’t see the stars. I think maybe it’s a planetarium. Either way it’s completely abandoned. I’ve never seen anyone go in there. My better evidence of its abandonment is the fact that it’s overgrown with weeds:

I thought after looking at the observatory I would walk back to my apartment, but I found something else of interest that I had never noticed before:

There’s a set of stairs built into the side of the mountain! Cool! Except they decided to continue the Myst theme by adding a locked door. First there is the fake lock, and then there is a special lock above it that requires a W shaped key:

Now if this were Myst, what I would have to do is go back into the abandoned library and find Atrus’s journal that explained the workings of the planetarium. It would then give me coordinates of constellations to look at. Now if I took my map and put it over the the constellations, they would point me to where something is hidden. I would go to that spot on the map and be surprised to find myself back within the library! Turns out that one of the tables has a drawer with a combination lock on it… But what’s the combination? Hmm. Wait I know! Atrus’s journal only had 6 journal entries in it. Each journal entry was labeled with a different number instead of dates like previous journals. I didn’t even realize at the time that that might be important, I thought they were just numbers! So combine each number from each consecutive journal entry… 7, 6, 6, 8, 4, 2… It opened! Inside the drawer I find some unused papers and what’s this? A W shaped key! I rush to the gate to find a new area to explore with new logic puzzles and a continuation of the story about the kidnapping of Atrus’s daughter!

However, this isn’t Myst so I just climbed over it.

This is the path up to who knows what:

Where does this pipe lead?

There’s a building up there!

Under the building:

I found a ladder on the outside of the building!

Now how to use it? The bottom rung is about 4 and a half feet above my head. If this were Myst I would figure out that this is a water tower. The best way to get the ladder down is to reroute where the water is going by turning the control wheels on each of the pipes. Turn off the two near the base and turn on the one near the ladder. Water would then stop flowing out of the tower and would instead flow to power the ladder so it would fall down into place and I could use it to get to the top of the building.

However this isn’t Myst so I just grabbed the chair and climbed up:

This is the cover for the hole down into the water:

After I was done looking around I put the chair back to where I found it. I also saw this gross thing:

It’s a calcium deposit from a dripping part of the water tower. I’ve noticed a lot of man-made stalagmites around China. The water is gross so if it drips in the same spot for a while all the minerals and stuff in it just kind of builds up in that same spot. There are a bunch in my apartment building on the stairs where the water constantly drips (both stalagmites and stalactites).

I then took some more photos and walked back down the mountain. I’m pretty confident that your character in Myst has to be pretty tired from all that hiking he/she does:

So then I took a shower and headed out to Chanksgiving. It was a big thing on Saturday. The school’s bus took me there and was too early so I wandered around a little more. I also saw this awesome buddha hanging out on an electric box:

I’ve seen a lot of these sticker things placed on various objects. I don’t know what they say or what they’re for. I remember a couple of weeks ago there was something that led me to believe that some of them were for “escort services” but I don’t remember what it was. Maybe I saw a prostitute-like person put one up but I honestly don’t remember. All I have to do is ask a Chinese friend to read it for me, but I keep forgetting and when I do remember I always have trouble describing it to them. If you’re Chinese and you’re reading this, please tell me what these say!

This is actually the first time I’ve seen what I would call an egg roll in China. The inside of it was a little bit of pork I think, but mostly sweet potato and ginger. It was very good. The thing on the right had some kind of green vegetable and noodles inside of it:

The street vendors were all packing up at the same time. I assume that someone tipped them off about the cops coming to shoo them away. I’ve been told by a couple teacher friends that the people that come to clear away street vendors are pretty much the most looked down upon government worker in China. I just went and re-asked about them. They’re called Zhi Fa Dui which means something like people who carry out the laws. They’re not technically police I guess. In the US they would be the same person so this confuses me a little. I cannot tell the difference between a policeman, a guard, a trafic cop, an army guy, etc etc. They all look the same to me. I guess army guys not so much cause they’re wearing fatigues? Anyway, here’s a vendor packing up:

Are you sure?

I saw this woman decorating this car as I walked to Chanksgiving:

This was my Thanksgiving contribution. I think I’ve eaten more of this in my few months in China than I’ve eaten in the almost 22 years previous to me living in China:

Inside of the Junior campus, cool looking as usual:

Happy Chanksgiving!

It was very nice. There was all kinds of good stuff. Oddly it’s technically more like the first Thanksgiving than modern traditions. Everyone just brings what they can. There was turkey, Kraft Mac and Cheese, homemade fried chicken, meatballs in stir fry, corn chips, guacamole, a duck, breads and cheeses, jello, cream corn, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce from a can, ice cream, cheesecake, sushi, and deviled eggs. I was a happy camper.

The school’s bus was supposed to take me home, but it didn’t. So I grabbed a public bus.

Runrunrunrunrunrunrun!

Also, here’s another good shirt that I don’t understand:

Stay tuned for my next post: “Hotpot on the Pot.” I’ll be covering two firsts at the same time: my first Chinese hotpot experience and the first time I’ve ever eaten something from a toilet.

China lol.