Holiday is almost over.

Well, at least I think it's almost over. This being the Wuhan University International Software School nobody's actually bothered to tell me when my classes begin again. I'm guessing they'll begin on Monday, but undoubtedly I won't be told for sure until Sunday night or something. I think in the three years I've been here the longest lead time for information like this that I've ever received (without digging for it on my own) was three days (and that was for a 2-week intensive course with the same class every day for eight hours! – four semesters of English in two weeks).

I also decided to take a break from the blog over the official holiday, so I have a bit of catching up to do.

One of the first things of interest that happened during the holiday was a student of mine (Li Zefeng) who is one of two people at the Sweathogs Campus that has any worth as a student (and maybe one of six who have worth as human beings)—I am not exaggerating here!—dropped by for a visit. We talked a little about his future plans and goals (something I'll likely bring up in a future blog entry if I run out of family material) and he, naturally, brought gifts: a package with two tins of nice 西湖龙井茶 (West Lake Dragon Well tea—an internationally famed tea), a bag of coconut candies which Joan promptly hid from me and now doles out in small doses and a box of dried black wood ears (a kind of edible fungus, and a tasty kind to boot, but I think they're also considered medicinal). In return for this I gave him some software that will assist him in building the skills that he's not getting at his phony school.

The family did a few visits during this time, but as it's always awkward when I go visit because of the intrinsic clash of the communication barrier vs. the natural Chinese desire to be a good host, I stayed behind most days. Sadly this included a day when Joan and her mother were supposed to be buying a house-warming present for her uncle but she instead went to visit a park with Lucas for most of the day. I have pictures from this that I will be sorting through and uploading for Sunday's returned regular update so hold on for a bit. (Hint: Lucas does his incredibly cute routine again.)

Ah, what the Hell! I'll do that right now!

OK, I'm back. Here are some selected photos of Lucas at the park:

From Lucas

The last interesting thing to happen to me over this holiday was hearing from my half-sister Anne again. "Half-sister?" the two of you who don't already know the story are asking. "What are you talking about?" Let's get into the wayback machine to give some context.

Back when I was 30 years old and living in Ottawa writing software for Pronexus, I got the most surreal telephone call of my life. My mother called up and started saying things that I thought, at first, were a joke. There were only two problems with this theory: this kind of joke is something more that my father would have done (my mother has no discernible sense of humour!), and there was no punchline. The basic story was that six years before I was born my mother had a baby daughter out of wedlock and had immediately put her up for adoption. I won't get into the gory details of all this, but the practical upshot of it all was that I was told at 30 that I had a half-sister six years older than me.

As it so happens, I was the closest person to my newly-(re)surfaced half-sister. I got in touch with her by telephone and then drove my way from Ottawa to Barrie (which reminds me that there's an awful lot of odd synchronicity between me and Barrie) to meet her as the first representative of the family. The meeting went OK, she then went on to visit my mother, the two corresponded for a while.

Then she dropped off the planet.

Now, many years later, my mother asks me if it's OK for "Anne" to get in touch with me. I had by this time almost completely forgotten about this Anne and thought it was weird for her to ask me if my cousin Anne could get in touch with me. (Thought running through my head was "well, duh!") So I told her that there are only two people in the family I didn't want to ever hear from and one of them wasn't even in the family anymore. The rest were more than welcome. Then I found out it was half-sister Anne my mother was speaking about. (Not that this changes anything. There is still only one current family member I don't want to hear from.)

It was interesting to hear that Anne had contacted the rest of the family once again, so I of course looked forward to her email. I almost missed it, however, because changes in Anne's life involved a change in her name. I was looking for an email from Anne Crannie and instead got an email with a subject that looked like it came straight out of a spam artist's from an Anne Howat. For days it sat in my inbox because I was taking it easy for the holidays and didn't really want to wrestle with spam settings and the like, so it took me a while to find out that this was half-sister Anne. Once I did read it, however, of course I rattled off a reply (largely incoherent) and a pointer to this blog.

Thus stands the state of the family. And now that I've had my Spring Festival hiatus, I'll be posting every Sunday(ish) again.

The Cow Arrived

Lucas slept through it without so much as a whimper. Despite it getting so loud it was impossible to hear people speaking.

Happy 牛 Year!

The title, for those who can't see Chinese characters (and those who can't read them even if they can see them) says "Happy Niu Year" where "niu" means "cow" (we're entering the year of the cow) and it's vaguely pronounced like "New" (in reality like KNEE-OWE done as a single syllable).

As I start typing this it's 9PM on the eve of Spring Festival (a.k.a. Chinese New Year). As is traditional, the family has had a delicious lunch (stuffed lotus root, lotus root and spare rib soup, Wuxi-style spare ribs, a local green with no English name, cold sliced beef with green chilis and a meatball/mushroom dish) followed later on by a delicious dinner of the traditional dumplings (consider them to be Chinese pierogies and you're about right) that you're supposed to eat for the holiday. And, of course, I'm reporting to you live from ... well, Baghdad is quieter now, so let's say I'm reporting to you live from the Gaza Strip. Firecrackers are going off all around me (it's traditional to set off a string of them before eating) and in preparation for the actual new year people are already letting off fireworks.

This is going to get louder, much louder, in three hours when midnight hits. It's an experience that can't be described to anybody who hasn't been through it (or through something similar like a really vicious firefight). The individual pops and explosions of fireworks will not be distinguishable when the real show starts. It will instead be an insanely loud roar that even closing all the windows and doors will do little to alleviate.

It's glorious!

This will be Lucas' second Spring Festival, but this time he might actually be awake to watch the fireworks in the sky. (Last year he was far too young to see anything, really.) I'm looking forward to his reaction to the fires in the sky.

I'll say something tomorrow about all this assuming: a) I survive the experience again, and b) I remember.

Hello From Downtown Baghdad

Did I mention that today was Lantern Festival? That this means it's the last day of Spring Festival? And that this is the last day that fireworks are legally allowed to be sold or lit? That as a result I'm living in a damned close approximation of downtown Baghdad? You know why I haven't mentioned it?

Because there's no damned way you'd be able to hear me over the racket!

All in good fun, though.

Aren't They Just The Cutest Thing?!

So, on Monday I begin the daily grind again. It's about time. I really don't enjoy holidays like this very much, you see. Travel is basically impossible unless you want to travel out of country or by plane. (Every expat needs to experience travelling over Spring Festival once while they're here. But only once.) Most places that would be of interest to me are one of:

• closed;
• overcrowded;
• overpriced;
• both overcrowded and overpriced.

So Spring Festival is, instead, a time of high stress family visits interspersed among long periods of intense boredom. You can't even do any decent shopping for geek toys or the like over much of that period.

So, needless to say, I'm looking forward to going back to work.

In traditional Chinese fashion I got sent my teaching schedule just shortly before the break began, too late for me to point out to them that the document they sent me couldn't be read. (It's a) in Chinese and b) garbled.) So I didn't even know which classes/subjects I'd be teaching until just this Thursday, not to mention small, unimportant details like where I'd be teaching them or when. I did finally get that information (with only one small question outstanding, but not requiring resolution until next week Wednesday -- so I expect to have an answer Tuesday night) just in time to plan lessons and arrange notes.

And today the monitor of one of my classes sends me an SMS message asking "will you be teaching us this term?". My answer is the typically Chinese one: "Maybe". Of course in context that means "yes". The monitor's response was a single word that makes me glad for my time spent in China. "Great!"

I didn't stay in China because of my employers. I didn't stay in China because of my coworkers (although I always found one or two at each place I liked -- Hello Nick, Wendy & Xiaoling!). I did stay in China to pursue the girl who later became my wife, but there was two years before that to account for.

No, the reason I stayed in China long enough to find the girl who'd later be my wife is simply the students. With the exception of the students attending the ratbag RMIT English Worldwide program at the Wuhan University of Science and Technology's International School (the non-REW students, too, were great!) my experience with students in China has been universally positive. My current school is no exception.

Playing With Words

I like words. I like words in particular that don't exist. One of my favourite episodes of Duckman, for example, involved a running gag surrounding the fictitious word "proxyglossoriasis" (spelling approximated) which is supposedly a disorder in which one replaces the word one intends to use with the next word in the dictionary. The effect is hysterectomy.

I also like using the word "spectabulous" -- coined by Greg Porter of BTRC, if memory serves -- which is defined as "being so good that you have to invent a new word to describe it". (It's a portmanteau of "spectacular" and "fabulous" you see.

In that vein, there is a word I use which I also coined. It is a portmanteau of "China" and "anaphylaxis": chinanaphylaxis. It means "having a psychological allergic reaction to living in China".

Today was a big chinanaphylaxis day.

I knew it was coming. It's Spring Festival time and this is when the Chinese are at their most Chinese. Today, in particular, was visiting the relatives who visited us yesterday (as previously blogged). The day was a disaster from the beginning onward. I'll gloss over the gory details of getting there and just let you imagine an unhappy rant about people who can't seem to communicate what they've got planned for you, where it will be, when it will be and how many places you're going to stop off at in between for indeterminate lengths of time. Because, apparently, actually telling people what is planned for a day is a State Secret whose revelation in advance is punishable by death. Or something.

Anyway, that set the tone for the rest of the evening. Which consisted, basically, of me sitting in the corner of an apartment and playing my Nintendo DS. (Thank GOD -- or at least Misha -- for that thing!) I would get called up to eat or to play the trained monkey for a while every so often, but mostly people around me were having a great time socialising, talking, reading, watching TV, etc. while I was bored out of my skull.

Insert here a long, unhappy rant about a culture for whom the word "no" means "he's just being polite, so let's force him".

And the worst thing about it all? Nobody was doing this to hurt me. Nobody at all was saying "what can I do today to piss Michael off the most". They were just doing what good Chinese hosts and families do. It just unfortunately was badly timed (c.f. above re: the horrific trip there) and badly executed ("culture clash" is the term bandied about most often). So not only was I aggravated most of the day, I had nobody to actually point fingers at as the malevolent source of the aggravation. This actually makes things worse.

The day wasn't a complete write-off. The food was good (although not as good as the food cooked by my mother-in-law). I lost track of all the dishes, but the best one was the tripe with mixed pepper. The stir-fried squid with mixed pepper was a damned close second. And my darling wife accidentally referred to "Andy" as "Candy" and then looked charmingly perplexed when I mentioned that I doubted Andy went to Mexico for that kind of operation....

Spring Festival

So today is the second day of the New Year (Chinese reckoning) and I've had my wife's aunts, uncles and cousins over for dinner. My mother-in-law did her usual excessive cooking routine and made assorted delicacies and specialities. If memory serves there were (in many cases the names are made-up to describe, not translated):

• homemade meatballs and fish balls with wood ears and some kind of mushroom;
• fried chicken drumsticks;
• lotus root and spare rib soup;
• stir-fried green beans with some kind of leafy vegetable I couldn't identify;
• battered lotus root with pork;
  
• some kind of vegetable that has no English name (菜苔 in Chinese, although I may have the characters wrong);
• pork and taro root cracked rice casserole;
• mutton and carrot hot pot;
• wormwood salad;
• stir-fried beef tripe and pepper;
• a mixed cold dish containing marinated beef, beef blood vessels, tripe, coriander and peanuts.

All of this was after the huge breakfast of homemade dumplings (Chinese dumplings are like Polish perogies) and the day full of snacks of various sorts.

And, yet, somehow I'm still losing weight over the holidays.