The English Corner

Something big is going on at the English Corner on Friday nights! It was such a treat to be able to meet some Chinese students and communicate in English. The corner is less than 5 minutes walk from our apartment -- an unexpected blessing! There were about 90 there, a majority of them university students, and all levels of English. We were surprised by how serious they were at working on their English, and how respectful they were of each other and of us "foreigners." They all seemed so happy to be there.

The evening started with singing -- songs with simple words, like I've Got Peace Like a River. We started singing a capella because there were no musicians, and then this  professor of music at the university who happened to be there went to the piano and was definitely a concert pianist, so that was fun. 

Next there was an English pronunciation exercise. Everyone got into pairs to practice, and we foreigners walked around and sat with a few pairs to coach them. I sat with a group of about six, and we had fun with sentences like "I carried a load down the road," and word pairs like wash / watch, mash / match... They were frustrated with the difficulty of the sounds, but so cute and loved practicing:)

Then an English speaker gave a talk about peer pressure. He got the students involved by lining 10 of them up in the middle of the room, then reading statements where they had to make a choice. One of the most interesting... Would you rather be president of Lenovo or Premier of China? Don't know if it was a question of peer pressure or not, but all 10 lined up under Lenovo. 

He ended his talk with two verses from Proverbs about being wise, and everyone read them and listened carefully.

The evening ended with discussion groups. There were 9 foreigners there, so we each lead a group of about 10. My group was all university students. One of them spoke quite well, but the others still need a lot of speaking practice. We had five or six discussion questions about peer pressure, and I couldn't believe how they all participated, even the ones with very little English. All kinds of discussion about topics like living with roommates,  smoking, and being an example. They were all so sweet to me. They wanted to know all about what I'm  doing here and whether I like it here. When we finished, they wanted a group picture. They grabbed a guy from another group, and he took pictures of our group with just about everyone's phone. Can't wait to see these faces again next Friday:)

More on Fish and Poultry!

Haven't had any chicken since we've been here, and so today I asked one of the girls in the office to ask the cooker where would be a good place to buy chicken. They discussed a bit in Chinese between themselves, and then told me that I should go to the second floor of the market where I had seen the cooker buy fish. They informed me that it' a good place to buy a live chicken, and the vendor could help me kill it. What???? I was thinking boneless skinless!

Even though I have no intention of buying a chicken and getting help killing it, my curiosity and my camera lead me to the second floor of the market. Do you see a chicken here that you'd choose for dinner? Tonight  I informed Christine and Kynza that we will be sticking with pork, which has become our staple.

There is a small seafood restaurant next to the building where Christine works, and I walk by there every day and smile at the folks. Since I'm one of the very few non-Asians they see, they definitely notice me. Today I couldn't resist stopping with my camera, and they were very kind to me, and enjoyed watching the videos I took. The grandma sits out on the sidewalk cutting up greens for hours on end every day.

The young men kill, clean, and cook the fish... The kitchen opens onto the street, so I took all of these pictures just standing on the sidewalk.  The floor seems to be the proper place to kill a fish in this country! They first give him a bang of the head, then watch how they remove the scales while his tail's still flapping! 

And I love how they cook in these giant woks... 

I feel like I should have lunch at their restaurant some day if I'm going to continue to walk by and be friendly with them. sizzling in that giant wok should kill anything the fish might have picked up on the floor, shouldn't it? Will keep you posted.

Sunday in Xiamen - Church!

All week we looked forward to Sunday, when we could go to Xiamen International Christian Fellowship and get connected with some English-speaking Christians. Sweet Gina, from Christine's work called the church and helped us get directions on how to get there. She said she would like to come with us, and even though Chinese are not allowed to attend, she thought she could if she came with us. Between walking and taking the BRT (fast bus), it took us over an hour to get there. We counted bus stops to make sure we got off at the right one! Gina met is at the bus stop, and had already cased out exactly where the church was, and we did the 10 minute walk together. When we got there, we had to show our passports, and sadly, Gina was not allowed in. The church is registered with the local authorities, who require participants to be foreign passport holders or married to one. So Gina waited for us outside -- made me sad!


The service was delightful, and so fun to be with such an international mix of God's people! Quite a variety of music with just one guy at the piano and everyone very into singing and clapping. A few little medleys of songs that go way back! Good preaching (we think the preacher is Indian, but that's just a guess), and very friendly people. A couple people who recognized Kynza from school came and talked to us, and the people sitting around us were most welcoming. The actual church is on the third floor of this building.

We had lunch with Gina afterwards at a Chinese noodle restaurant. Was fun to be on Xiamen Island and see a different part of the city. And was fun to visit with Gina.

The church has what is called an English Corner on Friday night, and we are hoping to go to that, since it is very close to where we live. It's a place for Chinese people to practice their English. I actually met a man walking down the street who came up and started speaking to me because he wanted to practice his English, and found out he goes to this English Corner on Friday nights! His name is Steel. Should be fun.

Day 7 in Xiamen - The Beach

Finally it's Saturday! We are all so ready to kick back and have a restful day. A bit of retreat from everything Chinese... Pancakes for dinner was a hilight! Was a little tricky because the gas stove has a very hot flame that is suitable for a wok, but you can't really turn it down to the temp you'd want for pancakes! The very uneven cooking didn't stop us from enjoying them!

Just to get out a bit, Christine and I went for a walk to the beach. It's about a five minute walk from our apartment, and has a really lovely walkway and rocky coast. 

The main activity at this beach is searching for tiny crabs. I don't know if they eat them, or if they just do it for fun, since in my opinion the crabs are way too small for eating! People of all ages are enjoying Saturday at the beach!

 
 

There were a  group of about 4 older ladies sitting on the rocks, and they signaled me to come sit with them (at least I think that's what they were signalling!). They talked on and on to me, and I answered back, but actually understood absolutely nothing. This is the very friendly lady who sat next to me. I'm sure she has so many stories to tell. It's harder than I thought to be unable to get to know these people and share in their stories.

  This lovely 5-star hotel looks out onto the beach. It's a stark contrast to a lot of what we see, but also a beautiful oasis!




From the beach you can see both ends of this bridge that goes from Jimei, where we live, to Xiamen Island. It's beautiful and modern. If you take a closer look at the boats in front of the bridge, they  look like some type of rafts that people swim off of. Looks like fun!

Day 6 in Xiamen - The Cooker

When we first started talking about coming to China, Christine asked me what I might like to do with my days while she and Kynza were at work and at school. Thinking that it would be helpful if I could at least cook dinner for the three of us, I replied, "learn Chinese cooking." Well, Christine took that to heart, and arranged for me to come to her work and observe the woman who cooks lunch for all of the office workers (about 15 in all). She comes in every morning at 10:00, laden with groceries, and by 12 she has a first-class meal on the table. The office has a lovely kitchen for her to work in.

So today I started my three-month stint of observing "the cooker." I can't believe that I get to do this for three months. She's as sweet as can be, a bit shy, and speaks not one word of English. For some reason, everyone calls her the cooker, not the cook. The other gals in the office have all adopted Western names, and we address them by their western names. But the cooker only has a Chinese name, and so far no one has told me what it is. I'm sure they think it is beyond my Chinese skills to learn her name!

Every day she makes a big pot of soup (broth with some kind of vegetables),  a big rice cooker full of sticky rice, and four other meat, vegetable, fish, or tofu dishes. For my first day, it was pork with mushrooms, cucumber salad, squid with celery, and tofu with ground pork. Pork is big here!

The whole process is amazing. The cooker makes most everything with just a cutting board, a Chinese chefs knife, running water and a few plastic colanders used to rinse and clean continuously, a metal spatula, and a wok. The flame under the wok is gigantic.

 


This squid was first thrown in boiling water in the wok, and then drained, chopped, and back in hot oil in the wok with numerous cloves of chopped garlic.  Then out comes the squid and in goes a whole head of chopped celery, a bit of chopped carrot, and salt. Then the squid goes back in for the finishing touch.

The pork with mushrooms actually has more mushrooms than pork! A bit of sliced carrot, a couple hot red peppers, several cloves of garlic, and soy sauce. Delicious.

 I wish you could see how she pounded these cucumbers! They are the long, English cucumbers. She peeled them in one swoop from end to end, then pounded them with the chefs knife, presumably to knock the seeds loose. (A bit tricky when I can't ask what she's doing because of the language barrier!) It breaks them in half lengthwise, then she takes out a long strip of seeds that kind of just fall out, does a bit of cutting lengthwise so they are about in fourths, then chops them diagonally. The dressing is Chinese vinegar, sesame seed oil, several cloves of garlic and hot peppers that are first fried in the wok, a bit of chicken bouillon powder, and salt. Delicious! I think the sesame oil makes it!

Yes, garlic is in every dish. The stores all have packages with cloves ready for chopping like this. We used at least half this package in one meal!

Here's a little video of the cooker and her wok. She is so concentrated on what she's doing. Two very intense hours of chopping and woking! 

Day 5 in Xiamen - buying poultry, eggs, and fish

Whoo hoo -- It's Kynza's first day of school! Both Christine and I walk her to the bus stop -- a good 15 minute walk from the house. It's a school bus, with a bus monitor and assigned seats. It stops just where we thought it would stop, and she's off to a new world at Xiamen International Academy!

From the bus stop, I go off to the mall to see what I can uncover in the grocery store! Chicken legs, of course! Just over $1 a pound.... Or, for the same price, you can get chicken feet.

 

Buying eggs is a whole new experience. You get to choose! But apparently not all eggs are good eggs. Like this young woman, everyone shakes them, and then decides whether to put the egg in their bag or put it back in the pile. Most get put back in the pile. Some people hold them up to their ear when they shake them to listen for I don't know what. We're a bit afraid to buy eggs because we don't know what makes one good. We did buy some, made an omelet, and lived to tell the tale. But who knows...

The fish section was definitely my favorite. I was innocently standing in the aisle looking at these piles of fish. Watch this video to see what happened! It was most hilarious. He was killing the fish, who were flopping all over the floor, and then he went and gathered them all in a bag.

Days 3 and 4 in Xiamen - casing the neighborhood

Christine has been lovely about getting up early and making us each a little bowl of fresh fruit salad for breakfast. Love having a special time of eating breakfast together and praying for our day. When your days have as many unknowns as ours do, you don't forget that you're totally trusting in God's tender loving care! 

Tuesday was Christine's first day of work, so she was off to her office, which is about a 20 minute walk from home. Kynza had appointments both Tuesday and Wednesday to get enrolled in Xiamen International Academy and get placed in her classes. We got pretty good at taking taxis to and from the school, but we always have to have a Chinese speaker (someone from Christine's work or someone from the school) call the taxi for us, and we have to give the taxi driver the address written in Chinese. I have a copy of my Chinese address in my purse, my back pack, my wallet, my pocket -- just in case! It is very, very rare to meet anyone who speaks even few words of English, and highly unlikely for a taxi driver. 

On her last free afternoon before starting school, Kynza and I took our cameras out to do some exploring of the neighborhood. Here's what we found...

A view from out our kitchen window shows shops across the street. I'm still not sure exactly what they sell. Notice the circles of barbed wire along the top of the fence! We live in a gated residence, and there is always someone at the gate to let cars through. Jumping that fence could be pretty nasty!

Yale Nursery School is the view out of our living room window. It is part of our gated residence. I don't know a lot about the school yet, except that it seems to be open 7 days a week, and long days. 

The electronic billboard on the front of the building runs Chinese messages that I don't understand, but it also has this in English: Yale students today, international leaders tomorrow. Some day soon I'll go down and see if I can talk to someone there!

 When Kynza and I got outside of our gate, we hooked up with these three darling school girls who were having so much fun laughing and giggling at us. I don't think they have many chances to walk down this street with non-Asians, so just looking at us evokes all kinds of laughter. So hard not to be able to talk to them! They did say hello and bye bye, which is better than my Chinese.

 Seems like every other shop is a tea shop -- so fun! As you walk by there is someone sitting at the tea table, and  they invite you in to sample (or at least I think that's what was happening!). I nervously urged Kynza into this first one, and we sampled but didn't buy, because I didn't really know what or how to buy! They went through a very ornate pouring ceremony -- just for us. Oh my!

 By the second shop Kynza was all smiles as we tasted this woman's tea. Another ornate pouring ceremony. Absolutely no English. Not a word. I was having trouble saying I would like to buy some tea, but I didn't want a big fancy gift box and I just wanted a few dollars worth of tea. Finally another guy came in - maybe a family member --and sold me 50 RMB worth of tea -- about $8. It's delicious! I will be back there.


The shop owners all live in back of or over their shops, so all of the normal things people do in their homes take place in front of the shops... Like drying laundry right out on the main street. 

 Or cooking fish on a table in front of an art shop like this. It's sometimes a bit of a trick figuring out if people are okay with having their picture taken... Never quite sure if the sign language means yes or no. There are SO MANY incredible pictures to be taken, and of course I miss most of them because I'm not very quick. But so far so fun.

Day 2 in Xiamen - Chinese cart ride

Cleaning, unpacking, and exploring were the order of the day. We got all of our lovely bread, nutella, and cereal out for breakfast, and then it occurred to us that we didn't know how to eat those things with chopsticks! Not a piece of silverware to be found in this house. While cleaning we quickly realized we needed cleaning supplies, so decided to venture out to a mall that's about a 20 minute walk to have lunch and see what we could find. The mall is very modern, built just a few years ago, and has lots of stores that you would recognize like, Esprit and H&M.

We opted for lunch in a Chinese restaurant. We had green beans with pork which was delicious, rice, which is always good, and then this chicken dish -- or at least we thought we ordered a chicken dish... 

When it came, we thought maybe it was rabbit, but then we realized there were wings! Pretty much it was skin and bones. We never really found anything to eat on it. Kynza declared that she was becoming a vegetarian. To quell her strange-food anxiety, we swooshed her a few doors down the mall to Dairy Queen for an Oreo blizzard. Sanity restored! 

We worked our way down to the grocery store on the bottom floor of the mall. It was very crowded and very noisy! We found a mop, dust clothes, a scrub brush, hangers, soap, and dozens of other little necessities. When we got out of the mall, we were loaded with way more than we could carry home in sweltering humid heat. So we paid this guy who has a moped connected to a cart to take us! 
Kynza and Christine are riding in the cart here (I'm sitting across from them), and then they're paying the driver when we got out in the road where our apartment is.

Day 1 in Xiamen! September 7, 2014

The flight from Hong Kong to Xiamen on Dragon Air was uneventful… That's good news! We were served pork buns, and although we weren’t really hungry, we all ate them because we weren’t really clear on where our next meal was coming from. Tasted kind of like Thanksgiving stuffing in a bun—not bad!

We arrived in Xiamen, collected our 7 bags between us, and had no problems getting through immigration control. Christine said the lady smiled at her and seemed pleased that she was coming to stay.

The next venture was to get a taxi to our apartment. Having no notions of Chinese makes it a bit dicey… The taxis were clearly not big enough to take us and all of our luggage, so we wanted to get two, and have one follow the other. Christine who knows her way around here a bit and could show the taxi where to go, and Kynza and I would go in the taxi that followed. So the first taxi driver wanted to put all of our luggage in his taxi—it was clearly half hanging out of the trunk, and there was no place for us to sit! He wanted to bargain for the price with Christine, using hand signals. The police who monitors the taxi line saw that and gave him a bit of a slap, since negotiating taxi prices is illegal. Christine kept saying, ‘Two taxis!’ All this happening while the people behind us in line were also trying to get around us and into taxis – feeling a bit conspicuous, like we were holding up progress. I believe we will be getting used to this feeling. Finally the taxi driver relented, and let another taxi take Kynza and me and part of our luggage. We told him multiple times to follow the first taxi. I had the address of our apartment printed out in Chinese characters, and I gave that to him so he would have some notion of where he was going. As he studied it, sweet Kynza kept repeating, ‘Follow, follow, follow,” as she saw her mom veering in and out of sight. I think our taxi driver had every intention of following, and I think perhaps he understood that English word, but I’m guessing he didn’t really want to be told what to do. So at one point he acted like he was following a different taxi, at one point he got ahead of the one he was following, but he did follow, and we arrived at our destination unscathed, with our 7 bags, and not really the worse for wear!

Sunni, one of the girls who works in Christine’s officer here, was waiting for us at the apartment. So lovely to see her face! She speaks good English, and has already been such a help to Christine. The apartment is amazingly wonderful, and in such a nice setting, but more on that later.  Just to say especially Kynza was so thrilled that the apartment was way better than what her mom had built her up for.

Sunni took us up and gave us the key and showed us basics like using the interphone. She brought Christine a SIM card for her phone, and they tried to make that work, but  being able to make phone calls is something we still haven’t mastered. 

Sunni left us some mooncakes and a great big pomelo, as today is the autumn festival, and those are the foods they use to celebrate the holiday. Before she left she said she would call a taxi to take us to a Costco-type grocery store (Metro) so we could get food. Aside from the moon cakes and pomelo, the only items of food in the house were some tea, soy sauce vinegar, and something that looks like corn starch. So—a bit of shopping seemed pretty essential.

We all took a short nap, then had a cup of tea to give us some energy. As we were drinking, we made a shopping list, knowing full well that it would be hit and miss as to whether we could find the things we wanted. The challenge was that we had a 30 minute limit. That is how long a taxi who takes you somewhere is allowed to wait for you. It’s hard to get a taxi, especially since we can’t speak Chinese to call a taxi, so we didn’t want to come out of the store and have lost our driver! So this was destined to be a shopping spree like you see on TV where they fill the cart as fast as they can. 

Over our tea and mooncakes, we developed a strategy  -- two copies of a list organized into categories like dairy, pasta and rice, vegetables and fruit, etc. Both Christine and I would have a copy of the list, and we would fan out to different sections of the store and get stuff and bring it back to the cart.  

The taxi came for us as planned, and when we got to the store, the driver pointed to where we should meet him when we came out. And then we were off to the races. My first assignment was vinegar and oil – took me awhile to find vinegar that didn’t have soy sauce in it! Found some corn oil that looked like it would be okay for cooking (our only pan so far is a wok), and then Bingo – a special display of olive oil! We were in such a hurry there was no time to compare costs or consult with each other --- just make split second decisions. When I got back to the cart, Kynza was very proud of the Gold Medal flour she had found – at least good for pancakes and crepes. I went off to look for milk and butter. Found a 10-pack of UHT (boxed) milk from Australia, butter from France, and good looking yogurts – yea! Back at the cart, C and K had found Nutella, Skippy, honey, beans, rice, pasta – we were loading up! Then off to the fruits and vegetables… Cauliflower, red peppers, kiwis, bananas, cucumber, a few onions. When we finally decided we needed to proceed to checkout we had everything we really wanted except bread, which is not big in China. We decided to pass on meat until we figure out what's what. 

We made it through checkout with only a few glitches... Christine thought she had the card number for her company to be able to buy at the store, but the clerk couldn't get it to work. Was fairly comical when Christine didn't understand her Chinese, so she started writing out the words in Chinese characters, thinking that might be easier to understand. Finally she threw up her hands and found a way to check us through. The line was getting very backed up behind us, and since we had already emptied our very full cart onto the checkout counter, it would have been hard for her to send us away! Next issue was that we hadn't weighed the produce in the produce department, and again, we couldn't understand what the problem was. Finally the cashier called for someone to come and get our produce and go weigh it. We were definitely  making a scene. Christine followed him back to the produce department, and Kynza and I stayed with the checker. The guy came back with our weighed produce, but no Christine! I was getting a bit concerned, because she had the money to pay, and we really couldn't hold up this line any longer. I asked Kynza in probably to loud of voice, "Where's your mom?" And someone in the next line over answered in good American English, "She's getting bread." Good find! She's met this guy while weighing the vegetables, and he told her where to get bread. She came rushing up just in time with two loaves of what turned out to be not-so-good bread. We paid, and off we went to find our taxi driver calmly waiting for us. Can't remember how much the taxi ride was, but definitely not much for all the bother!

Home, and unpacked the groceries, and beyond dead tired. Top Ramen soup for dinner -- not sure whether the Chinese eat this or not! Actually tasted good. Crashed on our very, very hard Chinese mattresses... Great way to end a Chinese day!