JISHOU, HUNAN — So, here I was back in China, after three weeks in the USA, and it seemed like I was stranded in Shanghai. (Or shanghaied.)

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.

March 8th, 2010 | Tags: air travel, China, jishou, New Year's, Spring Festival, travel | Category: China | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — It’s been a while since I posted anything here, since I’ve been basically living out of a suitcase for the last five weeks. Now it’s time to relate the story of my journeys.

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.

March 4th, 2010 | Tags: China, movies, shopping, Spring Festival, travel, USA, Winter Holiday | Category: China | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — Well, really, I’m heading east to the West — the USA, specifically — in two days. My feelings are, strangely, mixed.

On the one hand, I will be able to see my kids and my relatives again, after 17 months’ separation. On the other, I’ll be apart from my friends here in Jishou, who themselves will scatter to the four winds after exams end on the 20th.

Then, there’s the prospect of flying, which I used to enjoy and now regard as a necessary evil to get from one place to another. (Would someone please invent transfer booths**? Soon?)

My itinerary is as follows. Leave Jishou’s Xiangxi Minzu Hotel at 9:30 am Wednesday by motorcoach to Changsha. Stay overnight in Changsha. Leave the next morning by air to Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport, then transfer by shuttle bus to Pudong Airport for an afternoon flight to Chicago. From there, I’ll go to Indiana or Kentucky, depending on which child picks me up.

I’ll be in the USA for just three weeks. It seems a bit short, after 17 months’ absence, but my travel plans after I return to China dictated a curtailed US visit. My Ukrainian neighbors (two piano teachers plus their son) invited me to join them on a trip to Hainan, China’s version of Hawai’i, during the last week of February. The Chinese New Year is Feb. 13-14 this year, and the days before and after strain China’s transportation network, as people travel home to celebrate with their families.

January 11th, 2010 | Tags: changsha, China, Hainan, home, Shanghai, travel | Category: China, Commentary | Leave a comment

[Cross-posted at The Daily Kos.]

JISHOU, HUNAN — The fall term is coming to a close here. I gave my exams this week, and will spend the next two weeks reading and marking them, so I can return home to see my offspring with a clear conscience.

Before exams, I decided to give my students — and me — a break, and show them a movie. Of course, it had to have some educational value.

Believe it or not, Christmas, at least among our students, is a big thing here in China. They learn about the holiday as part of their English lessons in middle school, but still have only a hazy idea of what it is all about. Chinese textbook authors condense Christmas traditions from the USA, Europe and the UK into a mishmosh of ideas that serve only to confuse, not inform.

Students ask me about how we celebrate Christmas in the USA, and I give them a pretty generic description, based on my own memories of 50-odd previous Christmases. But descriptions, particularly for ESL students, do not really convey the spirit of the holiday. So, I chose A Christmas Carol as the movie I would show all my classes.

Though I did not tell my students, reading or watching A Christmas Carol is one of my own personal Christmas traditions. Frankly, I am a sap for this story. No matter how many times I read the novella or see a movie version, I never tire of it.

January 2nd, 2010 | Tags: China, Christmas, Dickens, ESL, Teaching, travel | Category: China, Teaching English | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — My webhost just upgraded many of its customers to a new superduper server over the weekend. Somehow, my site got lost in the shuffle, but now we’re back!

Predictably, the outage happened while I was out of town and for the most part away from the World Wide Web. So, I had no idea anything was wrong until my buddy notified me by email. I sent a message to Planet Earth Hosting, and 24 hours later, the site was up, good as new.

The occasion for my trip out of town was the big car show in Changsha. Two of my former students were going — one to shop and one to wish — and asked me to join them.

So, Saturday morning I took the coach to Changsha. Also on board was a postgrad friend of mine and her friend. They were going to Changsha to shop and (for one of them) to sit for a qualifications exam. To my delight, the bus company has changed its normal stop — next to a swanky hotel — to a place practically next door to my usual — non-swanky — hotel. It makes catching the return bus a breeze now.

That Saturday, I shopping for some wee Christmas gifties with Tina, one of my former students from Jishou U. Her boyfriend was busy at work, and she was bored, so she squired me around the shopping district to find what I wanted. Meanwhile, she bought some stuff, too.

December 13th, 2009 | Tags: bling, car show, changsha, China, Christmas, shopping, tourism, travel | Category: China, Commentary | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — This weekend’s trip to Shaoshan was great during the daytime, but interesting (in the alleged Chinese proverbial sense*) during the night.

Shaoshan (韶山), a county near Xiangtan, south of the provincial capital of Changsha (长沙), is the ancestral home of Mao Zedong’s family. Mao (毛泽东) was born and raised there, and spent his final decade there in a specially constructed compound for the founder and first Chairman of the People’s Republic of China. As you can probably guess, there are all kinds of touristy places to visit.

The area also lays claim to Mao’s successor, Liu Shaoqi (刘少奇), who hailed from Ningxiang county, near Changsha. Liu was at one point a darling of the great leader, then he fell out of favor during the Cultural Revolution, only to be posthumously rehabilitated as a national hero in the 1980s.

So, we visited museums dedicated to Liu and to Mao, the statue of Mao and a mountaintop garden dedicated to Mao. It was an “all Mao, all the time” weekend, with some unexpected features.

(It was a lot like any version of Windows.)

On Saturday night, our hotel lost power — for the entire night — just after we finished dinner. I am still not clear whether the entire neighborhood went dark, or if it was just our place. (Blue screen of death)

November 27th, 2009 | Tags: changsha, China, Liu Shaoqi, Mao Zedong, Shaoshan, travel, Xiangtan | Category: China, Commentary | Comments (2)