The Foods that Save Us

It never appealed to me to have to write about bodily functions before. However, since coming in China, it has become daily conversation and now I find it necessary to address said issue. One thing to note: I have IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). It is not a friendly condition to live with, but I’ve managed to regulate my diet to a point of satisfaction. In Wyoming it was easy to find foods that were digestible and easy on my stomach.

Here in China, it is a far different story. For two months now, I’ve picked through the food, set aside certain items, completely avoided many dishes altogether, but have still had to deal with minor upsets and sudden trips to the washroom. This past week has been no exception. In fact, I’ve had such problems that I’ve not had in well over three years. On Friday it hit its peak and I had made a record-setting number of bouts in one day.

For those of you who have never experienced the lovely excruciation of IBS, let me tell you that when it’s bad, it is nearly unbearable. The feeling is such that you believe your intestines are literally digesting liquid fire. It burns through your entire digestive tract and every inch is like razor blades. I imagine the feeling to be comparable to kidney stones. A cold sweat breaks out and the only thing that gets me through it is the relief of the porcelain bowl… when one is available.

My solution for the weekend? Yesterday I took a trip to a large supermarket in Hangzhou and raided the international section. I spent 300 yuan on foods like chick peas, three loaves of French bread, one baguette, Granny Smith apples, brie, olive oil, muesli and Nature Valley granola bars. Today I sat with my cousin in front of the computer while we watched Gone with the Wind and shared a picnic of western delights. The searing pain has ceased and I’m convinced a few days sans Chinese food will bring me back to regularity. The question is, what then? Ten more months of brie and baguette? I could live with that.

Two Dawns in China

The excitement today was the total solar eclipse. This morning, instead of heading to their usual morning classes, our students and teachers gathered on the roof of the school to watch today’s second dawn.

We each grabbed our sunglasses and some of the kids had made a makeshift camera-obscura out of cereal boxes and tinfoil. The shadow of the moon made a tiny crescent of the sun’s light on the bottom of the boxes, so they could watch without blinding themselves.

We piled on to the roof around 9:00 in the morning and waited patiently for thirty minutes before the eclipse was visible. For the duration of the event, China was locked in darkness for a full six minutes. Then, the sun came out for the second time this morning. The solar system is an incredible thing. For the rest of the day I had “Total Eclipse of the Heart” stuck in my head.

Dancing (and Peeing) in the Streets

The weather has held steady around or above the 100 degree mark, my stomach can stand increasingly less and less food, and China continues to block major internet sites. I am now banned from using Twitter or Facebook and therefore cut off from communicating with many friends and half of my family. But I’m sure China has good intentions, right?

With nearly two months under my belt, I can truly say China has been an interesting rollercoaster jungle. The language is not an easy one to learn, but it is relatively easy to get by on a minimal number of phrases. The first one I picked up (and very invaluable): “Bu yao” – don’t want. Another one I cling to: “Ting bu dong” – don’t understand. Some phrases get worn out pretty easily. “Ni hao” is said often enough, and I often wish there were another way to say thank you besides “xie xie.”

But the faces are kind and the people make it their day’s ambition to have a good time. They love to eat and dance. Many evenings after supper, while walking down around People’s Square in Xiaoshan, a large congregation of women gather together outdoors to do Chinese line-dancing. Men are not allowed on the dance floor with these groove shakers, but many husbands will watch along the sidelines, their toddlers in tow. The music is a mixture of American pop and traditional Chinese with a modern twist. The dancing is a little more difficult than the familiar American hustle, but with a few nights’ practice I started to get the hang of it. The trick is to squeeze yourself into the middle of the crowd, so that when you turn, you're always following someone else's lead.

Not only do the Chinese feel free to dance in the streets like Richard Simmons on a holiday, but they also feel free enough to pee in the streets, as well. Grown men and women will suddenly cop a squat in the middle of the sidewalk. As you step around them and wonder how they can perform such a private act in public, they will look up at you when you walk by and meet your stare to say, “Ni hao.”

Of course, we can’t leave all the fun to the adults. Customary infant and toddler garb consists of light-weight pants with absolutely no bottom. The parents split the crotch of the pants so that their children’s bums hang free in the breeze. Or, if they’re exceptionally proud of the fruit of their loins: no pants at all. This, I’ve noticed, only holds true for the male variety. One man at West Lake held his stark-naked son out in front of him like a ring bearer’s pillow, holding each leg behind the knees as the child leaned his back against the proud papa, feet stuck straight up in the air and the family jewels pointing the way. I guess if you got it, flaunt it.

I pride myself on having, so far, altogether avoided public restrooms. Why? Because they are nothing more than glorified holes in the ground. Some of them are ringed with porcelain. Why bother? If you’re going to have a porcelain toilet, why not install one you can actually sit on? These squatters are the only option in practically all of China. Each time I venture out, I pray I can make it through the afternoon without having to stop. Luckily, even though I keep well hydrated with bottle after bottle of water, the heat and humidity suck all liquids out of me and I can hold it until I get back to my western haven. My goal: to live in China an entire year without once having squatted.

The Demotion of Poetry

It was my understanding that I had several jobs here in China. One, to act as the ESL coordinator of the school. Check. Two, to teach a summer acting camp. Right – I’ve made a curriculum and now I’m just waiting for the enrollment list. My other job was to teach creative writing and Shakespeare. Ok. That’s simple: two things I love most in the academic world.

For the past month I’ve been getting my students to write poetry and identify more words of expression. They read Pablo Neruda and wrote one of their own Odes. They read W.H. Auden and wrote rhyming quatrains. I was getting lines like “All I have is a desperate heart,” or “All things stay still like ice.” So, I decided it was time for them to move on to bigger things. They could handle it.

In the past couple of weeks I have been teaching them scansion through Shakespeare’s sonnets. They were doing tough lessons, even for a native English speaker, and they were actually keeping up with it all. I was so proud of them. And yet, today, I was told I am no longer allowed to teach them poetry in my creative writing classes. Their parents want to see them write. So, folks, it is official: poetry is no longer considered creative writing. I have a master’s degree in something that doesn’t exist anymore – if it ever did.

My plan was to originally get my students to the point where they were really comfortable with the sonnet form, then assign them to write a sonnet of their own – maybe even rewrite one of Shakespeare’s in their own way. They would be writing sonnets! They’d have a deeper understanding of iambic pentameter. Most people their age (hell, most people in general) couldn’t tell you what iambic pentameter was, let alone write in it. I was so excited.

We were only two days of scansion practice away until I would give them the writing assignment. (You’ve got to know how to read it first before you can write it). And then, today at lunch, sitting at the table with my usual bowl of rice and watermelon, leaving the other, more-strange items on the plate, untouched, I was told to drop the poetry and focus on “writing.”

“But poetry IS writing,” I said.

“Not to Korean parents,” came the reply.

They want volume. They want quantity, not quality. I could only assume they wanted prose, and lots of it, that poetry meant nothing to them.

So, this afternoon, when my students turned in their scansion homework from yesterday, I didn’t spend much time with it. I shortly put it aside and then gave them a photograph to look at. I asked them to tell a story about the photo, to ask questions, look at what they saw, ask how it made them feel. And then I quietly sat at my desk at the front of the classroom while they wrote in silence. This isn’t teaching, I thought. Anyone can sit behind a teacher’s desk and give a kid a prompt. What new information am I giving them? I felt like a failure, like we had just taken a major step backwards. It felt insulting, not just to me, but to them. They were beyond this. I could see the disappointed look on their faces. Then again, I could have imagined it.

It is difficult to not get snarky when someone tells you your area of concentration and interest is worthless. If this were happening to me in the United States, I would immediately retaliate, put up a fight and channel my inner Robin Williams to “Bring Poetry Back!” I’ve got such a hankering to rock the boat. But, there was a reason that the Dead Poets Society was supposed to be kept a secret… Somebody needs to tell me why.