As Christmastime nears, it continues to get colder and
drearier in Wuhan, though no prospects of snow I’m afraid. The humidity has
stuck around so the cold is the kind that goes straight to your bones and
sticks around until you can place yourself directly under the airflow of a
heater, an appliance which until this year, I have never been quite grateful
enough for. I may or may not have mentioned this already, but none of the
buildings here have central heating. We huddle in our coats and hats and gloves
during class and at restaurants and stores and pretty much anywhere. Well, not
anywhere. The Starbucks and KFC have heating, but I suppose that’s all a part
of their charm. We, as foreigners, have been spoiled with three wall heaters in
our apartments, but, as my students have informed me, the dormitories have no
such luxuries. The students have to buy hot water bottles to warm their hands
while they study and pile on the sweaters and blankets as they sleep at night.
I was talking with one of my students, Crazyman (yes that is his chosen English name), about this this morning and my
heart sunk thinking about trying to study and write papers while freezing in
tiny, cramped dorm rooms.
Last week was an interesting week to say the least. On
Tuesday both Nathan and I came down with the flu. Thankfully it was only a 24
hour bug, but it was still terrible. I haven’t had the flu for 4 or 5 years and
had forgotten just how bad it makes you feel. To make matters worse, China does
not have the usual comforts I am used to having when sick, such as Gatorade and
plain food, and I have not yet gotten around to making some veggie broth.
Everything here is spicy and saucy, or over processed and infused with weird
flavors, such as chicken feet flavored crackers. Yuck. Thankfully I had some
oatmeal in the apartment, so by late that night, when my stomach was finally
settled, I was able to have some of that. And Nathan got creative when he
gathered enough strength to make a juice run and bought us some pomegranate
juice which we mixed with sprite which was quite good. The next day we were
both tons better, but still felt fatigued and a bit off through Saturday.
The day before, Monday, one of my students had asked me
after class if I would be willing to judge a singing contest they were holding
that Friday. I said sure, feeling like this was going to be a Chinese
opportunity I wasn’t going to want to miss. It definitely lived up to my
expectations. The Chinese are really into KTV, which is basically a glorified karaoke
bar where you have your own private room and drinks and snacks and all this
professional karaoke equipment. I personally don’t care for it—we went with a
group of both Americans and Chinese earlier in the year—but I do enjoy watching
the spectacle. This competition was held on campus and the room was unlike any
of the other classrooms in the building. It was like a mini-movie theatre with
stadium seating and cushioned seats and nice lighting and, of all things,
heating! I immediately saw a bunch of my students and they giggled and waved
excitedly at me. I was to judge the contest with another American student,
Luke, and Nathan had come along for moral support. We got front and center
seats and were given two packets full of song lyrics. There were four groups of
four students each participating in the event. For the first round, the student
up would pick a letter (A-D) and a number (1-6) and then the karaoke version of
a song that corresponded to that letter and number in our lyrics packet would
start playing. Lyrics to the song appeared on the big screen with a few lines
and words left out. The student then had to recognize the song and sing all the
correct words. We were to circle any mistakes in our packet and then the hosts
would tally up the scores. After this first round two teams were eliminated. Then
there was a kind of lightening round in the middle where I think the team in
third had the chance to fight to be one of the final two, but it was really
confusing and Luke and I really had no idea what was going on. We would just
raise our hand whenever someone made a mistake and they were eliminated. Kind
of a haphazard competition, but what are you going to do? All the Chinese
explanations of the rules went right over my head.
The second round was mildly frightening. They brought out a
small table and one of those little bells that you hit the top of to make ring
and a contestant from each team would stand a few feet away from it on either
side and if they recognized the song that started playing (again the karaoke
version) they jumped forward to ring said bell. Each time I feared someone’s
hand was going to start bleeding from being pierced by the bell as they would
smash their hands down onto the bell and on top of each other’s hands, but
fortunately, this didn’t happen. It was actually quite a painful round because
they hardly knew any of the songs. This made me start to wonder how this
competition was organized. You would think that the contestants would get a
packet with the possible songs listed and they would work to memorize the lyrics,
but it seems as though only one or two people actually put in the effort to do
this. It made for some pretty easy judging though. On one occasion, a girl got
up to sing and the song that came up was some Katy Perry song. The girl stared
at the hosts for a second and then said, “I’m going to take myself out now… I’ve
never heard this song in my life.” Alrighty then.
The third and final round consisted of one of the hosts
singing the first few lines of a song and then the contestant having to jump in
and finish out the verse or chorus or whatever part of the song was sung to
them. This was equally as painful as the previous rounds, though there were a
few highlights from this part. First, one of the hosts had a great, and very
Chinese-y, outfit on. She had a big sweater with a picture of a rabbit ala the
Velveteen Rabbit also wearing a sweater, a skirt and tights, and then, the best
part, some high top sneakers with large, stuffed animal Hello Kitty heads where
the laces should be. This was certainly not the first time I had seen shoes as
obnoxious as this, but it definitely added to my enjoyment of the event.
Second, one of the songs played was that Baby
song by Justin Bieber, and after the contestant took away the singing from the
host (she actually knew this one! Ugh) the host began dancing in the style of
Michael Jackson and completely stole the show. I wished she had accompanied
each of the songs, but I guess Baby
just inspired her in a unique and moving way. Anyway, after that the contest was
over and we presented the awards to the winners. Luke then sang a popular
Chinese song which the students absolutely died
over. They giggled and cheered and sang along and two girls even ran up to him
in the middle and adorned him with two strands of tinsel. All my students
wanted pictures with me afterward and proceeded to gawk at Nathan’s height.
They gave me a beautiful Shanxi shadow puppet as a prize. It is a small—maybe the
size of your average novel—flat, plastic figure, with intricately cut-out
designs in the traditional Chinese clothing style. It is a traditional form of
drama originating in the Han Dynasty. Here’s a YouTube video of the art form: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX71KJhbFiQ
Later that night we went out to dinner with a few professors
from an organization we have been editing essays for the past few weeks. They
pay us to edit the essays of Chinese students applying to American
universities, which is both easy money and incredibly interesting to hear the
stories the students tell. Perhaps after the next batch I’ll share some of
these insights in a blog entry. Shaun, one of the heads of the company, took us
all out for dinner as a thank you, which was very fun. We went to an incredibly
fancy restaurant with all sorts of fancy dishes (not many for a vegetarian
though unfortunately). I did, however, get to try a new kind of fruit which was
really cool. In English it is called a “dragon eye”, in Chinese it is called “long
yan,” which directly translates to “dragon eye.” And it seriously looks like an
eyeball. It has a light brown shell, but once you peel this, the inside has the
color and consistency of one of those Halloween squishy eyeballs you can throw
at a window and it’ll stick to. As unappetizing as this sounds, they were
actually really good! Very sweet, with a peachy kind of consistency. There is a
small pit in the middle that is easy to chew around and spit out. I will
definitely be picking some up at the market this week.
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| And in case you were interested, Nathan and I made a makeshift Christmas tree out of all the books we brought along with us :) |
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