Recipe from the east
Here's the recipe for making expatriate homeschooler's hard tack:
* 1/2 cup flour
* 3/8 teaspoon salt
* Enough water to make thick dough
Mix ingredients in a small bowl. Coat one small plate with a bit of vegetable oil. Form dough into two small cakes on the plate. Put plate into microwave oven. Set the temperature to high and the timer for ten minutes to attempt to mimic the results of slow baking in a conventional oven. Go into the next room and start another lesson. Come running back into the kitchen after 7-8 minutes when you notice the clouds of smoke pouring from the microwave. Open the windows, turn on the vent fan and remove plate from the microwave.
Serves 2. (If they don't mind eating the few bits around the edges that haven't been turned to charcoal.)
Recovering from the cure
We went to bed Sunday night with a water heater that was spewing propane fumes into the bathroom and was tapping into the supply line of our toilet tank. If you kept the water on to fill the tank, you were also running the shower. Turn off the shower, and you have a one flush toilet. So we had some repair work to get done.Monday morning saw us up bright and early. We had invited some friends over for dinner (before we knew we'd be having bathroom woes) and we wanted to get our grocery shopping done early. Yau Neih had to give a piano lesson after lunch and I had our regular school load to do. We had left the bathroom door open and had the fan running all night. The air in the bathroom seemed breathable, so I shut off the fan and shut the door. After breakfast, I went back into the bathroom and smelled the propane again. Sigh. I once again wished we had stuck with sponge baths in the wash basin. But we hadn't, so I had to make a decision. Do we risk throwing a dinner party while workmen are clanking about in the bathroom? Or do we hold off on the repairs and subject our guests to a half repaired, potentially dangerous bathroom? If this were America, I would without hesitation opt for the former. But we were in China, entertaining folks who do development work in villages where
everyone uses a potentially dangerous bathroom. Flushing with a bucket wouldn't have phased them in the least. Of course, neither would the workmen. It would have just been another anecdote to tell the folks back home.
By the time we returned from our grocery shopping, I had the foolish notion that perhaps we could get the ductwork done today and call the plumbers in tomorrow. It might have made sense were I able to make the arrangements myself, but of course, I don't have the language for that. And Suburban Service doesn't make service calls this far out. But I wasn't really thinking. So I called Gordon, a teacher who was dubbed our deputy
wai bon since Thad was going to be out of town for the week. He was busy and couldn't come over right away, but he said he would drop by when he could. He eventually arrived about noon, and with the unit as a visual aid, I was able to explain the exhaust problem. In the process, however, I had another one of those guilty rich foreigner moments. Such moments are when it's revealed that you are used to a much higher standard of living than your neighbor. In this case, Gordon was a bit surprised by the whole concept of a water heater. I explained how it heated the water on demand and that we "needed" it because the regular hot water wasn't flowing. Gordon agreed that getting hot water was a problem during the holidays. Of course, he also pointed out that he and others occasionally go somewhere off campus to have a hot shower.
Anyway, all the bad feelings were mine. Gordon didn't seem to be jealous or anything. He made a call to the repair dude, but the dude wasn't answering his cell phone. We waited for a couple of minutes, hoping he would call back. It was a bit awkward just standing around, so in an attempt to make small talk, I mentioned the problem with the water connection. I tried to tell Gordon that we had dinner guests coming and would rather have the water fixed on Tuesday, but all Gordon heard was the water problem. He eventually called a different handyman and they agreed to come over to the flat after rest time, around 2:00 pm.
Gordon and the repair dude did show up after rest time, and as I feared, they started looking at both the vent and the water valve. I figured I'd just accept my fate and let the expert do his job. I once again went back to my schooling duties while the handyman went clunking in my bathroom. It was a minor source of anxiety as the day wore on and he had to run out for this part or that. Our guests had been invited to arrive at 4:30 and as that appointed time neared, I started wondering if it would be good manners to invite the handyman to join our dinner party. But my worries and wonderings were unfounded. Our handyman left, work completed, at 4:30, and our guests were fashionably late enough to allow us the chance to wipe the dirty footprints off the bathroom floor with a damp mop. Our guests need never know what had occurred in our apartment in the hours before their arrival.
Well, except for the fact that we
told them everything that happened. I mean, we foreigners love swapping anecdotes for the folks back home....
Less than perfect
Last time we left John, he was riding home in a pickup with two installers, who were going to install the newly purchased water heater in his bathroom.The installer dudes and I arrived at my building and we headed up the stairs. I ushered them into the apartment and let them get to work. As a precaution, I rang up Thad, who came over and touched base with the men. He also called the gas company, to order the canister of propane we needed to run the water heater. The gas dude said he was busy and couldn't show up for an hour, but that was just fine because there was as yet no place to which he might hook up the gas. In his final act of assistance, Thad gave me my reimbursement for what I paid for the heater not an hour before. Thad is a wonderful human being. I'd name my first born after him, but she's already told me that she doesn't want to be renamed like that.
So Thad left and the workmen worked. The gas dude came and went and came again. Nobody told him that it was a new installation, so he had to go out and fetch some piping to connect things up. While this was going on, I returned to my postponed school lessons. I occasionally peeked in on the workers, but they seemed to be doing just fine without my supervision. After more than an hour, they finished. They tried to explain the intricacies of the mechanism, but, of course, they were up against the wall of ignorance. They did manage to show me how the water and gas turned on and off. So they left, leaving behind a grateful family. Ga Dai was especially grateful since she had to go to the bathroom the worst. It was soon after that that we discovered that we weren't finished yet.
The workmen did a fine job of installing the water heater, but apparently their responsibility ended about six feet off the floor. On the top of the unit is a nice little exhaust opening. The idea, of course, is to add a duct to carry the exhaust fumes outside. For whatever reason, they didn't attach one. We turned on our bathroom fan in hopes that it would clear the smell and planned to get a duct in the next day or so. It turned out that it really needed to be a higher priority, since our bathroom fan is not up to the task of clearing the air. The other problem was less dire. The unit was set up so that once you turn on the water, the heater kicks in and you have a hot shower. Unfortunately, the workers connected the unit to the nearest water supply--the pipe that runs into our toilet tank. So we were forced to choose between letting the shower run while we refill the toilet tank or turning the shower off and finding another way to flush. For the time being, we chose the latter, keeping a bucket of water on hand for our flushing needs. It had been a long weekend and we were content to live with the shortcomings for a night or two.
In search of...
To recap the previous post: Our natural source of hot water was no longer available, so I was sent on a quest to purchase a hot water heater. Some neighbors, "the Jodies", had provided me with some vague directions and some information regarding the item for which I was shopping. So I bravely--or is that foolishly?--set off with my wallet and my phrase book to buy a heater.I hopped a bus downtown and got off near the Tien Shun department store. As I surmised, the only place that fit the guys' description of the appliance store was next to the supermarket we call the Well Market. I entered the appliance store, a grand place filled with TVs, washers and refrigerators. They had mentioned something about "upstairs", so I walked up the flight of stairs and started poking around. Just like in the States, an appliance store is home to some of the most aggressive sales clerks. A young man quickly approached me and asked me... well, I don't know what he asked me. I'm assuming it was something along the lines of, "Can I help you?" Anyway, I exhausted my language ability by explaining that I didn't understand Chinese and I was looking for hot water. By using the phrase book, I was able to explain that I wanted it for a shower, not drinking. The helpful sales dude ushered me back downstairs and handed me off to the appropriate sales person. She showed me a nice selection of heaters, all priced way above what the Jodies told me they had paid. I would have been willing to bite the bullet, of course, but I also noticed that all the heaters were electric. I had seen how a gas set-up would have worked, but I didn't know how feasible it would have been to run wiring into our bathroom. I managed to ask if they had a gas heater, but they didn't. So I decided to leave. They called in a couple of extra sales people to try to talk to me, but since none of them spoke English, they were unable to solve my dilemma. There was a smaller appliance store next door, so I thought I'd try my luck there. If that failed, I would have to decide whether to wander about town on a quest for hot water or just swallow my pride and call Thad.
That was a choice that I didn't have to make. I entered the second store and again began browsing. Again, a sales person was quick to inquire after my intentions. I again deftly explained my language handicap and demonstrated my ability to say "hot water". The sales clerk showed me their selection and I was able to tell her that I wanted a gas heater. This store had one! I was quite pleased, though I was troubled that, unlike the other store, the heaters weren't adorned with price tags. "Duo shou chien?"--"How much money?"--is one of my best spoken phrases, however. She went off to ask and quickly returned with a figure of 920
yuan, a price towards the high end of the expected range. I am nigh incapable of bargaining, so I took it. She took me over to the payment desk where another clerk wrote out my receipt and took my money.
He wrote down 900
yuan. Why the price dropped 20
kuai in the space of a couple minutes, I don't know. He probably just didn't want to make change. Anyway, they took my cash, handed me the receipt and then produced a chair which made an impromptu waiting room in the middle of the sales floor. I felt like a buffoon, but in this town folks like you to sit when you cool your heels, so I sat. They were kind enough to seat me facing their display of TCL high definition televisions. Unfortunately, all they were playing was a demonstration vid, which was just a series of slow shots featuring glass and models and colorful, exotic birds. It was beautiful imagery, but boring as all get out. I tried to peer around the corner at a wide-screen TV that was showing a movie, but I couldn't follow it very well. Probably because it was at its end, as the credits started rolling a minute or so after I sat down.
About ten minutes and one cup of tea later, (I should have said that folks like you to sit
and drink tea) a lady walked past carrying a box with the same brand name as my heater. I had wondered what was taking them so long. I suspected that they had searched the warehouse for the model I had purchased and now were reduced to taking the sale model. I started making plans for getting the box home and making my phone calls. A minute later, my sales clerk came to fetch me. She took me to the front of the store where my box was handed to a young man. He started walking out of the store and I followed, beginning to wonder if maybe the delay was in rounding up a delivery man. We walked to the curb, where he put the box in the back of a pickup. He said something to another man, who headed around to the driver's side of the vehicle, and then grabbed a handful of tools. I guess the delay was in rounding up a delivery man
and and installation service. Sweet. So we all piled into the truck and headed back to the flat. Our problems were solved... or were they? Tune in tomorrow: same bat time, same bat channel.
A chilling tale
Ah, how can I describe yesterday? After months of predictable routine, we had an adventure! You know what an adventure is, don't you? It's a really bad day that you manage to survive. And since it's the next day and I'm still here, it must have been an adventure.
The day didn't start out as adventurous, just annoying. We've been living under two burdens this past weekend. The first is that, due to our upcoming trip to Dali and Jinghong, we need to squeeze in an extra week of school into our weekends. The second is that we have no hot water. The situation here on campus is kind of interesting. Our hot water, so I'm told, is piped directly from a hot spring. For some reason, however, it doesn't seem to arrive here until the evening. I mean, the water gets here all right, but if it's been sitting in the pipe for a while, it cools down. So the water doesn't get truly hot until evening, when a lot of people on campus start taking showers and stuff. (Someday I'd like to meet the folks who habitually use the water first--I'd like to express my gratitude.) Well, the winter break is here and for the last few weeks people have been leaving campus. So, our hot water has been arriving later and later. Finally this past week we reached the point where we started the water running at 10:00 pm and let it run for two hours before giving up and going to bed. It never got that bad last year, but that was last year and who knows what might have changed since then?
Anyway, yesterday afternoon we called the ever helpful Thad and told him our woes. We hated to bother him, of course, especially since we've heard that he's rather busy these days. But since it's part of his job to deal with whiny foreigners, we called him anyway. He confirmed our worst fears--it was nothing that a plumber could come and fix. It was simply a matter of not enough people using the hot water. I suppose we could have tried to use as much water as the hundreds of students who are here during the term, but Thad had a better idea. An American family who is here this year to study Chinese had purchased and installed their own water heaters, so Thad told me to ask them where they got their heater, go and buy one for our flat and he would reimburse us the cost. I was in the middle of the lessons for "Tuesday", but this was important enough that I could juggle the schedule a bit and make an appliance run.
My first step was to consult with the "Jodies". Jody wasn't home, but his two sons were. They showed me their heater and sort of explained where they got it. (Remind me to muse sometime on the subject of giving directions out here.) The heater was a little wall unit, powered by a propane tank. It was obvious that once I bought a heater (assuming I'd find one) I would be making more phone calls. I had this vision of campus handymen tromping in and out of my flat for the next couple of days, trying to get everything installed and operational. Ah, well, what can you do? The boys offered to go with me to the store when they had some free time, but I wanted to get the ball rolling sooner, so I figured I'd risk it on my own. I thanked the boys and ran home to get some money and my phrase book.
More tomorrow...
Low tech
Technology doesn't like me today. Not only is the internet
still sluggish, but today when we went hiking I forgot to bring my digital camera. Through a strange coincidence, however, I did bring along my other camera--a completely manual 35mm Retina. It was a gift from my father, a replacement for the first Retina he gave me which was ripped off a few years back. (The previous camera was one he had bought back in the 50s. Of all the things we lost in that burglary, the Retina was the one I missed the most.) So I was able to snap a few shots as we walked along the irrigation ditch south of town. It was kind of weird. The old camera is heavier and I had to remember to adjust my F-stops for each shot. Fortunately I was snapping landscapes, so I didn't have to set the focus. I think it's been over five years since I switched my primary camera over to a point and shoot model. (Of course, being here across the seas and taking more than pictures of my kids, I've been longing for my old Nikon.) Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how the shots I took today compare to the digital shots I snapped along this route last year. (Such as today's featured photo.) Of course, first I have to finish the roll and get the film processed. Sigh. I've gotten so spoiled....
Ho ho ho
We had a chance to play Santa Claus a bit before Christmas. We tagged along on another trip to
the school at Nanxin. There we delivered to all the kids some hard boiled eggs, cookies and little gift packages including stocking hats and toothbrushes. Before that we gathered the kids outside and sang some Christmas carols. The big finale was when we taught them the chorus of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". Funny thing was, our song leader used the same technique that our Chinese teacher uses when teaching us sentences: We say each word individually, then start joining words together until we make the entire sentence. Hopefully the kids learned the song better than I've been learning
puotonghua. (Oh, and you see that basket of eggs in the picture? I had to hold that thing on my lap all the way up the winding, bumpy road. All together I had about a dozen eggs roll out of the basket. Thankfully I caught all but two of them.)
Paperwork?
Well, it appears we acclimated to China better than we thought. We've been hoping to travel to the orphanage from where we got our younger daughter, Siu Wan. We had planned to go there over the winter break, during the first full week of February. We had contacted our old adoption agency,
Americans Adopting Orphans, to aid us in the process. They started the process in their usual helpful manner, but then we got concerned when we didn't hear from them for a while. They finally e-mailed us back the other day, to let us know that they had run into a roadblock. The orphanage wanted our visit to be all official and such--no showing up on the doorstep one day and asking if we could peek around. That was fine with us, of course, and we were letting AAO handle the details. Well, it turned out that the orphanage director insisted that we use a China based agency,
Bridge of Love, to handle the details of our visit. Again, no problem. AAO sent us the contact information and we sent off an e-mail request to get the ball rolling. The response was prompt, but what they told us was simply shocking. We needed to contact them three months before our planned visit. Three months! For the past year and a half we've been living in a land where things happen at the last minute. A place where you buy your plane tickets a week in advance (to get the lower fare), where you
can't buy bus tickets more than three days in advance, and where you send out the invitations to your wedding two days in advance. We had to pinch ourselves to make sure we weren't dreaming. But then we started to recall, vaguely, a former life in a distant land, where people actually had to plan so far in advance. Slowly we were able to recall those old skills and adjusted our plans. So now we'll try to visit at the end of April, during our May Day holiday week. Oh, well. I guess those folks in Beijing do things a bit different than us folks in Yunnan.
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P.S. I know the bus doesn't have anything to do with this post. I'm still blogging via Flickr, so I needed to use a photo from my photostream. It kind of fits, I mean, interrupted travel and all.... okay, I'm reaching.
Happy holidays
So onto the late reports: Christmas is over. We had a nice one and hope everyone had the same. There's not much new and exotic to report about ours. My in-laws were in town again and over the weekend we were treated to dinner out, a Christmas show, and caroling students--just like last year. One thing that I did notice however, was the difference between Christmas in the States, where the day is a community holiday as well as a religious one, and Christmas here in China, where it's essentially a foreign holiday.
I have a tendancy to try and catalog the things in my life. When it comes to holidays, I've divided them into major holidays, like Christmas or the Fourth of July, and minor days, like Presidents' Day or Veteran's Day. The main criteria for each is if the malls are closed or not. (at least when I was younger. For all I know, the malls have taken to staying open all year 'round.) If it's a major holiday, most people get a day off of work. If it's a minor one, only the schoolkids, government workers and bankers get the day off. There are also religious holidays, like Epiphany or Yom Kippur, which doesn't get a body off of work, but is a time of celebration/commemoration for those who follow the particular religion. And then there are the foreign holidays. These are those holidays that are of significance to a particular ethnic group but really don't register with the rest of us. Those are holidays like Cinco de Mayo, Oktoberfest, or St. Patrick's Day. One trend I noticed in the past number of years is that these are starting to be advertised as excuses to hit the bars and celebrate with your friends.
Anyway, this year here in Yunnan, I caught a glimpse of Christmas as a foreign holiday. My in-laws were staying at a hotel at the edge of campus and every evening I would escort them "home" from our apartment. Right next to the hotel is a bar. I've never had the opportunity or desire to observe the bar's traffic patterns, but on Christmas Eve, it was really hoppin'. There were a number of folks walking in and out and at least three doormen dressed in Santa Claus suits. It was quite weird. I have nothing against folks going out to a tavern with their friends and having a good time, but Christmas Eve is one of the last nights I would be inclined to do so. I've spent too many years thinking of it as the "Silent Night". Christmas Day also served up a slice of culture shock, but in a different way. For us it was a holy day and we went off to church as is our custom. But for most folks in town, it was just Monday morning. The construction workers were banging away at the new apartments out back and all the kids were trudging off to school. All day was like being in the Twilight Zone. Step into the apartment and it's Christmas, with music and decorations and all the trappings. Step outside and it's just another December day, with everybody going about their business.
When folks talk about holidays and traditions, the discussion ofttimes dwells on the core meaning of the celebrations and how sometimes people lose sight of it in all the trappings. I would agree with those who say that if you lose the original meaning, you've essentially have created a different holiday. (Like Labor Day being more about the last weekend of summer thank about honoring any workers.) But I think that the traditions and customs we build onto our holidays are more than just window dressing. I think they also serve to connect our thoughts and emotions to the day, to the core meaning of the celebration. It's been interesting to spend some holidays out here on the other side of the world. While we may return to our old customs next year, I don't think I'll ever take them for granted again.
Blocked
It may have been a blip in your newspaper, but internet access here in China has been limping along ever since the earthquake in Taiwan severed some undersea cables. Actually, I should clarify that. Accessing sites in China has been no problem. It's getting to the sites located overseas that's been problematic. Of course, that hits this poor, ignorant foreigner right where he lives. For the first few days it was annoying, because it hampered our e-mailing. Ironically enough, we were able to make do with an older e-mail account that is nowhere near as sophisticated as Yahoo. But that's old news. Our access to Yahoo improved after about a week, so e-mailing is back to normal. Other sites, however, such as Blogger, are still misbehaving. Up until now, that's only been a minor nuisance. I really haven't felt like writing much. Now, however, it's getting old. Foolishly, I don't have the address I need to post via e-mail. I had it written down in my calendar, but I lost that on my journey back to China. So my only alternative to waiting is this attempt to post via Flickr, which is working for me. If you're reading this, it means that it works.
