When I left China, I was pretty sure my flight to Changsha was just a few hours after my arrival in Pudong Airport. No shuttle bus trips, no worries. But I had no idea what flight I would take, since my foreign affairs officer had worked out the details.

So, as soon as I disembarked from United 835, I connected to China Mobile and sent him a message: “When is my flight?” His reply: “Bad news, it’s been canceled” Turns out I had to go to Shanghai Hongqiao Airport after all to catch a different flight. No biggie, I thought, Another 30 RMB bus fare with plenty of time to catch the domestic flight.

Puh-lenty of time.

Due to stormy weather around Changsha, my flight was delayed not one, not two, but five freaking hours! My 9 pm flight from Hongqiao Airport eventually left at 3 am!

At one point, I fell completely asleep across four chairs, only to wake scared shitless I had missed my flight. I hadn’t. There were still two hours to go.

I had booked a hotel in Changsha and told my friend F. to expect me around dinnertime. Instead, I sent her a message to say I had no idea when I would arrive. She (bless her heart) paid the hotel in advance so I would have definitely have place to sleep once I arrived.

Which I did, finally. At 5 am in the effing morning. I arrived at the hotel at the same time as a couple who may or may not have known each other previous to that night, if you catch my meaning. (They had no luggage.)

Soon I had that nice bed I had wanted to sleep on for the past 38 hours. I managed I wake up in time for lunch and shopping at Carrefour, then went to dinner that evening. With only a day left to my already short Changsha sojourn, I really didn’t want to waste time by sleeping too much.

Here was my plan. Arrive in Changsha Feb. 9, hang out with friends, go shopping, etc., then leave Feb. 12 to return to Jishou to spend New Year’s Eve with a friend’s family. Instead, I arrived in Changsha early the morning of Feb. 10, so I had only a day and half there.

Anyways, on the 11th, I had lunch with the family I was going to Sanya with. We ate at Houcaller (豪客来 Hao Ke Lai), a chain steakhouse, which is near my hotel. A few hours later, I ate there again with F. and her sister (they really wanted to go), but this time I had the chicken.

The next morning, I took the motorcoach to Jishou, to finally arrive at what I now consider my home.

As I have mentioned before, Jishou is not particularly beautiful or noteworthy. Situated midway between two tourist attractions — Zhangjiajie and Fenghuang — it’s more of a whistlestop for travelers than a destination. For a small city, it’s traffic is horrible, especially downtown, and for Westerners there is a paucity of edible Western food. For a college town, the nightlife is pretty limited to karaoke clubs and a few night clubs (which few college students frequent anyway).

So, when I tell people I like it here, they don’t believe me. If I moved to a larger city, I could make much more money teaching, have more access to Western goods and other native English speakers, have more things to do in my free time, and (as I realized this holiday) have an easier time getting to places outside China.

But, having lived in small cities and huge cities, I can tell you that folks in small cities are for the most part friendlier and more open, especially if you are a Westerner in China. I feel very welcome and appreciated here, since I am not one of the dime-a-dozen Americans strolling the streets of Beijing (for example). I am usually welcomed as an honored guest. I admit that, after 18 months, the adulation has kind of gone to my head. Besides, I’ve made many good friends here. My students are wonderful (though not all are excellent academically). I get paid on time, and my working hours are fewer than I have ever had in my life, even with my tutoring gigs on the side.

So, what’s not to love?

When I arrived at my apartment, I entered a pig sty. When I left the month before, I was pressed for time and did not leave my apartment in the best shape. Yes, I did power off everything but the fridge and shut off the LP tank, but the floor was filthy, the kitchen was a mess, and I discovered with some dismay that I had left a meat dish to fester in the fridge. A person is supposed to have a clean house for the New Year. Mine was nowhere close.

And the fridge stank.

So, I didn’t really have time to relax. I unpacked, washed clothes, cleaned house as best I could, and got some basic food items (But not fresh baked bread. The bakers at Jun Hua Supermarket had the holiday week off.) My hostess, N., was going to meet me around 12 pm on the 13th (New Year’s Eve), and take me to her family’s home near JiDa. Her dad, a businessman, lives there with his second wife, their young daughter and his parents.

[China has a growing number of blended and single-parent families, as the stigma against divorce is waning. Divorced women, however, have a hard time finding new husbands, since there is a cultural double-standard. Chinese men prefer previously unmarried women as brides.]

The lunar New Year’s Eve in China is a big, big family thing. We set off firecrackers before sitting down for a big dinner. (The firecracker’s noise scares away the Nian 年, which might otherwise steal food, livestock and children to eat.) We watched the annual New Year’s gala on CCTV, the national TV network. They taught me to play xiangqi 象棋, or Chinese chess. Three of us played against N.’s grandpa, who beat us handily three times. After we watched the city’s fireworks display at midnight, we had another meal before calling it a night at 2 am. (Some families stay up until dawn, but it’s not a universal custom.)

In the days following, I puttered around the house, visited with Jishou friends, and basically just chilled out. The last part of my holiday was approaching: a week in sunny Sanya, China’s Hawai’i.

There were three stages: USA for family reunioning, Changsha/Jishou for Chinese New Year, and Sanya for sunny (actually partly cloudy) beaches.

Universities in China typically knock off for at least four weeks for the Winter Holiday, I suspect to encompass the times when Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) falls in the Western calendar. Traditional holidays follow the lunar calendar, while civil holidays and university skeds follow the Western calendar. I still get confused which calendar to use when people refer to their birthdays.

I was looking forward to my holiday for a variety of reasons. The main one was getting back to the US after 17 months’ absence to see my kids and relations. The other was to enjoy a week in a tropical climate during the winter for the first time in my life. (Yeah, I lived a deprived life.) It may surprise you to learn that I wasn’t all that excited about being in the USA. Since I’m essentially rootless, coming back was more like visiting a foreign country, but one where people spoke English.

Here’s a not-so-original observation. Life in a place where everyone speaks your language is a lot easier than in a place where they mostly don’t speak English and you mostly don’t speak theirs. I didn’t need to think hard about what to say to shop people, or taxi drivers. That aspect of the trip was relaxing, but I still found myself looking at the US as a visitor, not as a native.

[Cue the age-old line about "you can never go home again."]

Getting to the USA required four legs: a 4.5 hour coach ride to Changsha, where I stayed overnight, a 3-hour flight from Changsha to Shanghai-Hongqiao Airport, a 45-minute shuttle bus ride to Shanghai-Pudong Airport, and finally a 13-hour non-stop to O’Hare Airport. My Shanghai connections were pretty close, just a few hours’ wait, so my outbound trip was not so bad.

United flight 836 disgorged me at O’Hare in the late afternoon local time. Surprisingly I didn’t feel too jetlagged. My son and his girlfriend picked me up and took me to their alma mater, Purdue, where I chilled for the Martin Luther King Jr holiday. He has a single room in his fraternity house (Phi Kappa Theta, if you must know), which was pretty comfortable considering the circumstances. (I mean, a frat house is kinda noisy and busy late at night. But on the bright side, there’s always lots of beer.)

Purdue’s dining halls are palatial compared to the ones at Jishou U. And the food is pretty good. On the other hand, when we went out to Panda Express for “Chinese” food, I realized that what I normally get at the Jishou U dining hall is far better than what Panda Express serves its customers.

Fortunately, 7 Irish Brothers redeemed West Lafayette’s restaurants. It serves a terrific shepherd’s pie with brown bread. And my son and his GF made some really fine pizza, which we ate while we watched Pi in her apartment. I had never seen Pi before. Now I wish I hadn’t. It was actually pretty disturbing.

My weekend at Purdue also marked the start of my shopping for gifts to take back to China. We visited Von’s, a second-hand bookstore that also sells what-nots. A couple of students had requested books from the USA, since foreign books are hideously expensive in China. So I took care of those requests pretty easily. Von’s also has Native American crafts, which I considered buying, but didn’t for largely stupid reasons. I didn’t find similar crafts at such a good price for the rest of my American sojourn.

Here was my gift-shopping challenge: to give people on either side of the Pacific Ocean gifts that they could not normally get in their local shops. The Americans got crafts and other things made in Jishou or western Hunan (Xiangxi) — a bottle of jiugui, for example. The Chinese-bound gifts presented a greater challenge. Nearly every gift-y type thing in the USA (that I can afford!) is made in China, or Taiwan (which mainlanders call “Taiwan province”). Books are a great intercontinental gift, but are heavy and bulky. So I only bought a few books and concentrated on picking up small and light objects. Quite a challenge, believe me.

On MLK Jr Monday, my junior stepson picked me to take me back to his house in Louisville, where I stayed the rest of January. Since he had to work practically every day I was there, I was pretty much housebound, except for outings with him and my other stepson, and my birthday dinner at a Mexican place in Elizabethtown (otherwise known as E-town).

With a lot of time on my hands, I got to read three books, studied Chinese, chatted with my Chinese friends on QQ, shopped online, and created a web page on Jishou’s local website. This last activity had an interesting result — no one could believe a foreigner was on the site. Apparently, I was the first ever. Some people thought it was a hoax. Others suggested I was there to capture a Chinese girl as a girlfriend or wife (not too farfetched actually), or that I was Mr Moneybags (that part is farfetched, my friend Xiao Pan’s accusations notwithstanding). Then people who know me better came to my defense. Since the dust has settled, I’ve made a few new friends in town, who are quite excited to find a native English speaker to hang out with.

I bought a few more books at Half Price Books, and I took some photos of the store for a bookstore manager in Jishou. [Note: Half Price Books off Westport Road allowed me to take photos. Barnes & Noble in Cedar Rapids did not. Use this information as you wish.]

By this time, more two weeks had passed and 20+ years of conditioning kicked in. My finely honed schoolteacher instincts said school would resume in a few days, but my cerebral cortex said, no, reptile brain, you’ve still three weeks to go. I also started to miss my Chinese friends and especially Hunan food. I’ve become so accustomed to la jiao 辣椒 (hot pepper) that food without it tastes too bland. Or maybe the chilis have burned off some of my taste buds.

But I got over my unease. After all, I could have pizza, American junk food and cold cereal (a real letdown there, except for Cheez-Its), and beer that isn’t bland and watery. (Yay for Samuel Adams!) For my 54th birthday we went to a Mexican restaurant in E-town, where I had la jiao again, a huge mug of Dos Equis and (while I wore a huge sombrero) a birthday shot of tequila, the Mexican equivalent of baijiu.

While in Louisville, I saw two movies at Tinseltown, Avatar (pretty good, but pretty overrated, too) and The Spy Next Door,a simply horrible Jackie Chan (Cheng Long 成龙) vehicle. Seriously, even if you love Jackie Chan, skip this one. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but it’s not remotely funny. It co-stars Billy Ray Cyrus, which should have tipped us off to its overall suckiness. I could go on with more details, but I need some mental floss now to forget I ever saw it.

Next stop was Cedar Rapids, where my daughter now lives. I opted to fly there, since renting a car is almost as expensive as flying and since I had not driven a car for a year and a half. She had almost a week off work and her BF had a few days off, too, so we could hang out for a while together. We went shopping and bowling, played Dance Dance Revolution on the Wii, played with Billy the (killer) cat, and ate some great food, some even made by ourselves.

I nearly finished my shopping for China-bound gifts. I added two bottles of Jack D and Makers Mark to my baggage, among many smaller items that (I hope) were not made in China. Since I was trying to manage with one carry-on and one checked bag, packing was pretty tricky. Not only did I have the books and other gifts, and my traveling clothes, but I was also toting stuff back I had left behind way back in August 2008.

So I had to prioritize. Non-urgent items went into USPS flat-rate boxes (about $43 to China for a medium box) and the rest into my perilously overpacked bags. (The Li-Ning backpack is fine, but the supermarket rolling suitcase is now toast. Its pull handle didn’t survive United’s baggage handling, and the locking zippers did not survive TSA inspection — I forgot TSA regs and locked the bag in Changsha.)

Since the weather across the US was dodgy, I booked an early morning flight to O’Hare in case of weather delays. I didn’t want to miss my international flight which left at 10 am. Of course, there were no snow delays; I could have taken a later flight and my daughter and I could have gotten more sleep. (And the IROC-Z might have started, saving us both costly early morning taxi rides.) So, I, Mr Worry Wart, had the dubious luxury of spending four hours half awake in the terminal. But that was nothing compared to my later ordeals in Shanghai and Changsha, which I will relate in the next post.

Spring Festival is rich in traditions. One of my freshmen, Wu Chengjun (Smile), is from the countryside of Huayuan County west of Jishou.

Smile Wu

I’ve made corrections to Smile’s punctuation and some of her grammar, but everything else is her work. I hope you enjoy reading her diary entries.
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11/2 — the Year of the Ox
The day after tomorrow is the Spring Festival. My folks bought many things today, such as meat, vegetables, fruit, hot food, new clothes, and sweet wine, which you can drink with a kind of bread made of rice. The fruits are not only apples and pears, but … I don’t know its name in English. It looks just like “1.” It tastes sweet. In Chinese it is: zha gan. Though when we talk about fruits, we may remember bananas, we don’t buy it during Spring Festival,I don’t know the reason. Maybe it’s dear. Maybe the children dont like the softness (because every parents think first from their children — I just personally think that). Of course, you can find many red pictures with a good word on them, such as fu (福). The picture means good luck ^_^！

Every festival, parents want their children to wear beautiful clothes and eat delicious food. Though children know little, they are particular about what they wear. When their parents buy them new clothes, and let them put them on, they always jump with joy, with a big smile on their faces. Yes, children are easily content and easily happy! Yes, children love candy. You may let them be quiet, and not cry. Playing is a charming thing for them. They can play the whole day without any rest. I think curiosity makes them like this. They don’t know the real world and what life looks like. They are eager to learn it, so they play with their partners, make a fantastic life which consists of all the things they allow for.

12/2 — the Year of the Ox
I got up early. My mum will buy the pig’s tail and pig’s head. The head and the tail will be special for the Chinese god. My dad will use fire to clean off the hair of the pig. Every festival, there is someone who deals with pigs and makes money, because of the customs. The world has such jobs, but it’s very strange there aren’t many people who do these things, but the village calls for them. For this reason, my dad does it by himself. My dad uses the gas and a tool, which is the mouth of fire. Others look at this, and ask my dad whether he can do it for them or not. Of course he can do it, it’s hard to refuse. No one wants to do it, it’s hard to do and a waste of the gas I think. (I am always so mean to everything ) My dad gets some smoking, just as the present for the festival. The festival of Christmas is an important festival to the foreigner, but it is the fact that the most important Chinese festival is the Spring Festival. Every one knows it’s a festival, not just the head of the year. We look on it as the beginning of the year. Everything will be clean. New clothes will be ready for the children. All the clean clothes are also for the adults. We call for a neat house and clean body. We have baths, and feel comfortable. All the fresh vegetables from the field are washed. You know, the dust is ugly, so we wust clean them. My mum is busy cleaning from the morning to evening. She washes the pork, vegetables,and clothes. My grandma is busy,too. She makes a kind of kucie (cake), which is made of rice and a small plant, (we know it,but I don’t know how to say it in English, poor english!)We use a special tool to let them be fried well.

13/2 — the Year of the Ox
About six o’clock, my grandma called me loudly. I woke up without hesitation. I must get up to go with her. I am afraid she would dare to go by herself. She needs a partner, and only I can follow her, because I am the youngest in their eyes i think. We arrive at the place, which is the tu di miao. She put all the presents to the god, such as meat, which are boiled pig’s head and tail. There are oranges and bread, (not the bread we eat in the school, it’s soft, but the former is hard.) Of course, we leave the special paper and incense stick. The paper is square, it’s name is thje money paper, which all the dead people use it in another world. Maybe they give the money to the surrounding gods, not the only one. My grandma lights the paper, and I follow her to stand the stick. There have many small points with the ashes of the fire. Oh dear, the wine slipped my mind. We bring it to have a toast,to let the gods celebrate the festival. It’s very good, most of the old folks in my hometown can drink wine. We make sure all the things are laid on the gate of the gods. We set fire to more of the money. The old would tell something to the gods when they light the paper. The things are varied from the happy to the sad. Yeah, you can tell all the things you want to. The private is ok, too. Everyone says a different thing,but the aim is the same: we want the god to bless them, or their family. Wishes are allowed for the health, safety and making much money! God, please bless us! Let all the kind people live a comfortable life after their hard work. The Spring Festival has come, let’s enjoy it, and I wish for all the people “everything goes well! And let’s do some little things to make the love go around the world! My friends, classmates and teachers, Happy Tiger Year again!

14/2 — the Year of the Tiger
This is the first day of the Spring Festival. In other words, it is the first day of the second month.(Oh,my god, the right month has slipped my mind! Poor memory.) This morning, we choose to eat noodles, and fried bread which is made of rice and peas. I have told you in another diary why we change to another food as our breakfast. In the folks’ eyes, we can avoid the fly in summer. The rice in summer will catch the attention of the fly. It’s very strange why the fly pays no attention to the noodles and the other food. We needn’t worry whether it’s wrong or right, it’s the custom. We show the honour to the dead people, too. We won’t clean the house. We ignore the rubbish in our home, because people think if you clean house, all the things including all your luck will be lost in the following days in the new year. Likewise, we’d better not clean our hair. If you wash your hair, I am not sure whether you would lost much of your hair. We follow many such customs,but don’t know why. This is the place of mystery. We don’t know it clearly, but we show great interest in them.

15/2 — the Year of the Tiger
We think this day is right for visiting relatives. If you get along with your relatives, you may chose the morning to start out, and the afternoon to go back. You want to talk much with them, you value the time to get together. But, you may just have lunch or dinner if you are busy, because of the many family members you should visit. The most important I must tell is the big dinner and the following things. The dinner like the one we last one we ate in in the previous year and the first one of the new year. The host is very happy. You should remember to treat him as your friend. He’ll drink with you the wine he thinks tastes good, talk about the changes in the recent year and other interesting things. After the supper, each family gives “lucky money” (hongbao) to the children. They are very happy with much money to spend on toys and candy. It’s very much like a switching money game I think, but we all enjoy it, especially the children and the old. They get the money without any endeavour, so they are pleased during the festival and love it. Why must we visit others in Spring Festival? I think we enjoy the atmosphere, there are many people there. (We describe it as “Re Nao” in Chinese.) It’s what the New Year is. Generally, you can get the lucky money in three ways. The first one is from your parents, they give it to you when you have the first big dinner. The second is your grandparents. They love you very much, too. The third is the relatives in your hometown. If they value the friendship of your parents and earn much money, they may give. Yeah, they are country folks. Do you remember l have told you the first way? All the things in Chinese are known as “Bai Nian”.

Follow Barack Obama (to Learn English)

Seriously, the Chinese regard Obama’s oratory highly. A few of my students listen to his speeches (especially his acceptance speech and the one in Shanghai’s Fudan University) to improve their spoken English. Bookstores also have speeches by other famous Americans in compilations, even a few by George W. Bush. He did make one or two reasonably good ones.

New Year's fireworks as seen from my friends' roof

One of my better shots

Another good one

I’ll write something more substantive later on.

The late Bill Martin Jr. wrote Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, one of the most endearing children’s books of all time. Bill Martin, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago, wrote Ethical Marxism, which oddly has never been popular with schoolchildren.

So, which bright lights on the Texas BoE confused the two authors? For those of us living outside the Lone Star State, their names, Pat Hardy and Terri Leo, are not so important, I suppose. But I will note that they are both Republicans and both dead set on purging the Texas school curriculum of anything that isn’t 100% True Blue Amurrican. Rather than, say, check their facts, these two concluded that (1) Marxism is un-American, (2) political analysts frequently moonlight as children’s book authors (or vice versa) and (3) such authors would undoubtedly conceal their Marxist propaganda in children’s books as part of the worldwide commie conspiracy to overthrow This Great Nation™ through the hearts and minds of its children.

Thanks to the keen minds of Hardy and Leo, Texas schoolkids are now safe from the pernicious influence of Brown Bear, who is probably one of those commie Russky bears anyway.

The karst spire was once known as “South Pillar of the Heaven” (南天一柱), or “Pillar between Heaven and Earth” (乾坤柱). It lies within the National Forest Park, a world heritage site visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists — mostly Chinese, Korean and Japanese so far — each year.

And yes, when I saw the movie I said to myself, “Damn. It looks like Zhangjiajie!” You can see my photos on Picasaweb to see what I mean.

So, Avatar fans here’s the lowdown on the National Forest Park in Zhangjiajie. The quickest way to get there is by air from Beijing — one-way airfares are about 900 RMB (about $130) but sometimes you can get cheaper fares. Entry to the park itself is 248 RMB ($36) for a two-day pass. You will need both days, because the park is both big and worth a leisurely visit. Bring water to drink and food to snack on, but DO NOT carry it in a white plastic grocery bag. The local monkeys will literally try to steal the food from the bags. Use a backpack instead. The monkeys aren’t good with zippers … yet.

You can find accommodations just outside the park for very reasonable prices. There are lower priced hotels in the city, but you have to factor in the hour-long bus or taxi ride between downtown and the park. Being just outside the gate is much more convenient.

Meanwhile, some theaters in China have pulled the 2D version of Avatar to make way for Confucius, starring Chow Yun Fat, prompting allegations that the state media authority is railroading the foreign-made movie out of theaters in favor of the domestic variety. Officials, however, say the 2D version is drawing less at the box office than the 3D flick, which justifies the switch.

Sounds like protectionism to me.