Just like Home-The Qingdao Weekend

The title of our blog post this week, "Just like home-The Qingdao Weekend" is a reference to the climate on the Oregon coast.  When it gets hot inland, Portlanders head West. It was just like that for us Friday, Saturday and Sunday as we traveled East to the coast.  The weather was cool and it rained and rained and rained.  Given that the temperatures in Jinan were in the mid 90's, it was a pleasant relief from the heat.

Before we talk about our experience in Qingdao, we update you on a few other things.

 This was taken last Sunday during Priesthood Meeting at church in Jinan.  We meet in a hotel room where a BYU couple lives.  After our worship service together, the men and women met separately for a meeting.  There is very little sitting space, other than the main living room, so the men "relaxed" as they listened to the lesson over Skype!  David Cox is in the back and Wayne Clarke in the front!

 Tuesday evening most of the BYU teachers had dinner in a private room at the Central Campus Faculty "Restaurant".  We used our "meal credits" which we receive from SDU for each day we teach.   This was to honor some of our "helpers" that make life easier for us in Jinan.  Eva is in the blue outfit in the front.  She is Zina Cox's co-teacher but has been so willing to haul everyone in her car, buy train tickets, interpret Chinese signs, etc.  Lily, our young adult friend, is in the back next to Kathy (our Chinese Canadian church member). 

 

 Nancy recalled her college days in the broadcast booth when she and Stan were asked to record English dialogue for a junior high English test.  We did a similar recording in January.  This one was much easier as there were no Chinese cities to pronounce.  It was all English!

 

 All the BYU teachers in Jinan, plus Kathy and her son from church, decided to go on a weekend excursion to Qingdao.  It is a seaport on the eastern part of Shandong Province and includes a China naval base and is home to the Tsingtao Brewery.  We were hoping to enjoy the beach and "cooler" temperatures, as Jinan has been in the 90's the last week.  We definitely had our wish along with a lot of rain!.  We did enjoy meeting with the other BYU teachers in Qingdao and they were so kind to host us.  This is a view of greenhouses along the way.  Shandong Province is a major producer of food for China.  Upon our arrival we were able to hire a van to haul all 8 of us to the hotel, which was much cheaper than going by taxi.

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Nancy made use of her time on the high speed train to "correct" autobiographical writing assignments.  Wayne and Libby Clarke are in the background.  We love traveling by high speed train.

 

 Hansen, Kathy's son, enjoyed his huge hamburger at Koronas, a western style restaurant which the BYU teachers enjoyed taking us to Friday night.  Pat and Harold Rust from Lake Oswego, Oregon are behind Hansen talking to Stan.  (We did not know the Rusts prior to coming with the BYU CTP).

 

Early Saturday morning we met the bus at the entrance to Qingdao University.  All of the BYU teachers in Shandong Province and a number of staff and families from the two universities in Qingdao boarded and traveled about 45 minutes to the International Horticulture Exposition.  We had no idea how big this Expo was...many acres!!  The city dedicated a huge area for the exhibition and built many buildings just for the event.  It was the former site of a mining operation.  The entire Expo was a little like the Olympics and represents a significant investment in the economy of Qingdao.  This coastal city was selected as the "most livable city" in China in 2009.  We have to agree.  It is much nicer than Jinan.

 

Below are a number of pictures we took at the Exposition.

 

 This was a building in the Thailand exhibit.

There was no Chinese holiday this weekend, but it was still very crowded.  The greenery reminded us of Oregon.

This was the Holland display and exhibit.

This gal was offering samples of pears from Holland.  One of the BYU teachers from Qingdao found her student working at this booth!

 Notice the sculptured frogs and water lilies. 

Indoor botanical gardens.  Since it was raining, we liked this part of the Exposition.

 

Some of the gardens inside.

 

After spending about 5 hours walking the property, we returned to the bus and went back to our hotel.  Most of us chose to tour downtown Qingdao with the local BYU teachers even though it was raining heavily.  We didn't think we would ever have the chance to be there again, so we braved the elements.  We're glad we did though it took quite some time to dry out our clothes and shoes!!

 

 In downtown Qingdao you will find the Olympic Sailing center. 

During the summer Olympics in 2008 some of the water events were held here.  It was the only other location outside of Beijing that awarded Olympic medals.

 There are miles of "promenade" along the beaches.  Behind us you can see the Yellow Sea.  That red structure is quite important  to the region.  , According to the treaty of Versailles after WWI ended, apparently China lost territory and Japan was granted some land in Shandong Province.  The red structure memorializes when a large number of students protested the treatment of the Chinese.  This all happened in 1919. 

 We took a walk on a pier out to a pagoda .  You can see that the rain just did not let up.
 

 Pagoda on the pier

 

 After looking around on the beach, we went looking for German architecture in the old town.  We found some, including this Catholic Church.  The Germans occupied this area from 1897 -1914. 

 

One of the BYU teachers in Qingdao arranged for us to have dinner at a German Restaurant called the Rats Keller.  Rat Keller means the basement of the City Hall.  The restaurant was actually housed in the old German Mayor's residence which is partially under renovation. 

 

 Wayne and Libby Clarke at the Ratskeller.  Most of us had Schnitzel.  Stan thought it was GREAT!

Sunday, we attended church with the other BYU teachers at the Qingdao LDS Branch.  There were 38 in attendance including President Weaver, our District President, who was visiting that day.  His sister is married to our nephew!!  It was another international gathering of foreign passport holders.  We had Koreans, a Japanese couple, our Chinese Canadian and all of us from the US.  (The gal in the green is from West Linn, Oregon and we knew her on our Portland LDS Temple shift prior to coming to China.)  We thought it was unusual that one of the Korean young adults, who will be leaving soon on an LDS mission to Boston, was interpreting for the Japanese couple as we held church in China!!

 Jim and Wendy Purnell, BYU teachers in Jinan from Canada, are seated in the forefront of the picture.

The apartment rented by the church for services is near the beach in a very nice condo neighborhood with beautiful landscaping and flowers.  You can almost see a portion of the golf course to the left beyond the tall tree. 

Nancy is finishing her dinner on the high speed train from Qingdao to Jinan. You are right, that is a McDonalds chicken burger.  When you travel, you sometimes grab what you can!  We thought we had plenty of time to go to the train station from the church location.   The Qingdao BYU teachers said it should take about 50 minutes on the bus.  Due to slow traffic, it took us 1 hour and 25 minutes.  Once we did arrive, we had only about 10 minutes before they had us start boarding the train.  We were in first class and the very first car.  We walked about 1/4 mile just on the train platform to reach our seats!  However, the accommodations are quite comfortable and the seats have plenty of leg room.  Plus we received complimentary snacks and drinks!  Life in China is tough!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Qufu-Confucius' Hometown

 

About 2 hours south of Jinan is the community of Qufu.  It is the birthplace of one of the most important philosopher "types" in Chinese history; Confucius.  He lived around 551-479 BC so his life predates the Savior by quite a period.  Confucius was born to a very poor family and he never enjoyed an easy life.  He was a teacher, but his ideas were different.  He had some faithful students who later taught his ideas and gained favor with the leaders of the Dynasties.  His family became quite prosperous and even today they have substantial holdings in Qufu.  In fact, our guide, was a descendent of the Kong family line.

The trip to Qufu was sponsored by Shandong University and is one of two they offered foreign teachers this school year.  There were only 10 of us on this trip, 6 of whom were from BYU.   It was a nice outing and we did not have to fight the crowds.  There was no holiday this weekend so the number of tourists was quite reasonable.  We didn't feel that we would be trampled if we stopped to look at something of interest.   We liked that.  See the pictures below.

 Entrance to the Temple of Confucius.  The town of Qufu, with about 60,000 residents, "survives" on tourism.

 

 Entering the gate for the first university in China!!
 

 Once Confucius was respected as a teacher, many emperors came to Qufu to honor him.  Each would erect a "temple" and there are many stone tablets indicating the teachings of Confucius, edicts granting him special titles and notes about renovations.  Many of these tablets were severely damaged during the Cultural Revolution.
 

 This was a group of Confucius "scholars" from Korea who wore clothing from the Ming Dynasty to honor him
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This temple was built in 1018.  The foundation is stone, but the rest of the building is wood.

 

  The rock was a sign of good fortune for the home.  It has wrinkles, as do we, for a human quality, holes for the water to run through and it is tall and slim to be noticed.

This is a pomegranate tree in bloom the garden of the Kong Family Mansion.  Confucius only had a cottage nearby, but his wealthy descendants had a 400 room complex.

 

This lady performed a selection from an opera, accompanied by Chinese instrumentalists.  We are still not used to the "shrill" of the music.

 

In the Confucius family cemetery there are about 100,000 tombs of his descendants.  About 20,000 have actual tombstones.  Many are just mounds of dirt.  Our guide said the snakes and crows do not disturb the area because of the "smell" of the trees in the area.  The area is like a forest and very peaceful.

 

There are two guards at the entrance to the tomb of Confucius.  This one is a civil officer.  The one on the opposite side is a military officer since he has a sword.

 

The tomb of Confucius.  The back is towards a small hill (mountain) and the front faces a river...several meters away.  This is supposed to be excellent feng shui.  His son is buried nearby as well as a grandson.  It is said that Confucius is seeking his son and hugging his grandson. 

Wayne and Libby Clarke enjoying the shade of the "cart" and the forest setting.  It was a one of the first days of "summer" in our area. 

 

On the bus ride back to Jinan we had a TIC (This is China) experience.  We were on the freeway traveling the speed limit and the cars ahead of us started slamming on their brakes, as did our driver.  There was a larger truck directly in front of us so it was difficult to see what was happening.  As the traffic slowly started to flow, we saw there was a stopped passenger car perpendicular to the freeway in the far left lane.  This driver was making her way across three lanes of freeway traffic to make the freeway exit that she almost missed!!!  It was truly a miracle that no one rear ended each another and that she did not get hurt!!  None of us had our cameras ready, but it truly was a Kodak moment!!

 

Monday night we were invited to a special Foreign Culture Finale Performance on Central Campus.  A number of both Nancy's and Stan's students were involved.  It was OK, but some of the singing numbers should have been cut.

 



 These are the mc's for the evening.  At every cultural event there are mc's dressed to the hilt!

This is Kelly, one of Stan's students.  She is considered to be one of the top 10 most talented students at the university.

 

Friday evening we attended a senior trombone recital at the Shandong Arts University.  The trombonist wasn't very good, but a "featured" brass ensemble and the orchestra were great.  It was free.  There was one American in the ensemble.  His name is Greg and we assume that he is a teacher at the university.  We greeted him but did not get any details about his life in China.

 

 

The other major event for the week is that we now have water pressure in our apartment!!!  Last week our water was off and we assumed it was a street repair issue as has happened in the past.  After almost 24 hours without water, we started asking questions about the availability of water to several students, foreign teachers in our building  and an international office employee who lives in our complex.  All had water! After some phone calls, we discovered a valve for the water supply to only our apartment had failed.  Once it was replaced we had Niagara Falls! A load of laundry had started to take 4++ hours and now it is done in 40 minutes! Now that Stan can truly take a shower he said he might even consider staying an additional year teaching in China!

 

 

 

 

This video was produced by a student in Stan's Friday writing class in about 60 seconds on her phone.  He is not wearing his shirt and tie for the first time this year.  It was a very warm day.

 

Warming up, slowing down and hoping for replacement teachers!

This is been quite an unusual week.  We weren't traveling anywhere!!  We did have a notice posted on our apartment complex that the water could be off for almost two days, so we filled some buckets, etc.  Fortunately, that did not happen.  We just spent our time planning lessons and taking care of odds and ends.  We have noticed that our students are now thinking more about the summer break than on their studies.  We decided to "up the ante" and announced that we will have an idiom quiz this Monday and Tuesday for our oral students.  We will see if it jarred them from the "spring fever".

 

The weather has been generally warmer and spring like with highs around 80.  We did have an Oregon rainstorm this weekend and got caught outside without umbrellas.  Drainage is an issue so in addition to getting soaked, our shoes found all the puddles!  Jinan has been quite dry so we hope the rain washes away some of the dust and provides some clean unpolluted air!  We have not had any health issues, but for some, with sensitive lungs, it can

be a problem.

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We pause in our blog for a public service announcement!!

 



Do you want a once in a lifetime experience in China?

There was a couple from the BYU program who was to replace us here at SDU this fall.  They are no longer able to come and we understand that other couples have had to drop out that were originally coming to China in September. SDU, as well as the BYU China Teachers Program, are encouraging us to invite our friends to consider coming to China to teach English.  Since the government imposed a 65 year age limit a few years ago, it is more difficult to recruit couples since they are often not retired and cannot leave their employment.  (Actually, generally one spouse just has to be 65 or under.)  There are other oversees programs that sponsor native English speakers, but here are the basics from BYU CTP...and you can look up further information.  If you know someone who might be interested, please refer them directly to BYU.  BYU does provide two weeks of training the first part of August before you go to China and you do not need to know the Mandarin language or have professional teaching experience.

....one spouse 65 or younger

....good health

....no dependents who would need to live with you

....both spouses have a bachelors or advanced college degree

....available for essentially a year from August- mid July 

....free from heavy financial burdens (there is a modest living stipend paid by the university)

....flexible and patient (yes, that is needed)

....willing to accept placement for any China university that is BYU affiliated

....active LDS member

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One thing that we did not include in our last post was a performance we were invited to attend just prior to our trip to Hangzhou and Suzhou.  Nancy's class invited us, but Stan had two students who were in the performance.  (Didn't know it until we arrived).  It was interesting because it was a French play, Moliere's Tartuffe, acted by Chinese students, in English!!  We were not familiar with the story and the acoustics were a challenge, making it nearly impossible for us to hear even with a front row seat.  It is sometimes hard to understand these students in regular conversation, but on a stage and with other sounds, etc.,  it was difficult to stay focused.  Afterward, they requested that Nancy say something to those in attendance.  What do you say when you know nothing about the play and heard very little of the production?  She did a nice job "lying."

 

 This is one of the scenes with most of the major players on the stage.

 This picture is with Anny, (Left) and Gabby (Right), both Stan's students.

 This picture is with Kelly, one of Stan's freshman students.  Her school advisor told us that Kelly is one of the top 10 most talented students at the university.

Some of these are Nancy's students.  They were more involved with the "behind the scenes" aspects of the production, including the director. She is Carolyn, the girl seated on the steps behind the guy with the white shirt.

One interesting thing we did this week was to go out to lunch with June and her boyfriend, Arthur.  You might remember that June is our young adult Law School instructor who acts as the go-between for the two girls we tutor.  She has been to dinner at our apartment before and has confided in us about dating and relationships, etc.  Her father died when she was a little girl and her mother lives a good distance away.  Perhaps she sees us surrogate parents.  She has been dating Arthur for about 4 months and recently was introduced to his parents and grandparents.  She felt the meeting went well and felt Arthur had a "warm family".  She even had the thought that she might again be able to call someone, "Daddy".  Since Arthur is 31 years old and June is 29, their approach to dating is more 'businesslike" than some of the young couples we see on campus.  It took June a few weeks for her to agree to be Arthur's girlfriend.  (Remember she has a PHD and he has a BA which sometimes can be a huge obstacle in Chinese culture - money is very important.  Our tour guide said mother-in-laws are concerned that you have 4 C's before marriage:  career, condo, car and cash/credit card!) Arthur is a Christian, which is very important to June.  Previously she had a non-Christian boyfriend, but she was concerned about handling their differences in family values.  Arthur and June enjoy cooking and hiking together and have done some traveling for short distances.  We will see what the future brings for this relationship. 

We ate at a Cantonese restaurant called 56 which is about ten minutes walking distance from our apartment.  It has a nice atmosphere and we enjoyed the food....bamboo shoots; sweet and sour with pineapple, dragon fruit and grape tomatoes; fried rice with sausage and pork; translucent dumplings and a vegetable with celery.  There was even dessert - a pastry filled with Durian fruit (shown below), which smells awful but is quite

 

tasty!  There are 3 pieces of that fruit dessert on the platter between Stan and June.

 

We thought we would share and email and photo from one of Stan's students, who is a junior Oral English Translation Major.  We did not change any of her wording and will let you interpret the information.

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Dear Mr. Pace, I want to share these photos with you.
This is the sixteenth session of the Communist Youth League in Shandong University.  The congress held only every five years, is a sensitive,very important period for the university.  There are 400 elected students, professors altogether as representatives on behalf of 40000 people in this university. And it's my first time to take part in this kind formal congress related to election, feeling somehow appalled by its imposing atmosphere.

Sincerely,
Hermione

 

 

 

 

Hangzhou, Suzhou and Xitang

The highlight of this last week was our trip to Yangtze River delta near Shanghai.  We flew to Hangzhou early Wednesday morning, April 30th.  Thursday, May1st is a national holiday, (Labor Day), and we didn't have classes on Wednesday.  Leaving early helped us beat the crowds and gave us the opportunity to see some of the city before others of our BYU group arrived. It is quite interesting how the Chinese government sets its holidays.  For 2014 May 1st falls on a Thursday.  Therefore, everyone has Thursday off.  In order to make it a 3-day weekend, they also count Friday as part of the holiday.  But, to make up Friday, which is not an "official" holiday, you must work on Sunday.  Since I have one class on Friday, I had to hold that class Sunday morning.   My Thursday classes did not have to be made up.  This wasn't a problem for Nancy because she doesn't have class on Fridays.  And both of her writing classes meet on Thursday, so they are still together as far as the sequence of lessons.

This is the farm land area surrounding Hangzhou.  Our guide said these farmers are considered "rich" as they own their own land and can rent out rooms in their homes to migrants, so they get a sizeable income.

There seemed to be individual homes outside the city and not as many large high rise apartment buildings in the city.
 

At one time there was a canal system in China that went from Beijing to Hangzhou.  Now not all of the canals are connected, but many are in use for water transportation.

 

Hupao Spring Park (Running Tiger Spring) near West Lake

 

This spring, according to "scientific research" is the third best quality spring in China.  (Jinan is rated higher!!).  People were actually carrying water bottles up and down the hill to get clean drinking water.  "Legend has it that a monk named Xingkong lived in Daci Temple. Coincidentally, he dreamed one night that an immortal told him that two mighty tigers would move a fountain there, just after he had made plans to leave the temple, due to lack of water. To his surprise, two mighty tigers came in the following day from Mountain Hengshan and dug a hole in the spot where the spring immediately gushed forth. Hence, the spring was named Running Tiger Spring." (wiki)

 

 

 

Old city gate to Hangzhou.  Hang refers to wooden boat and Zhou means small lake.

After arriving in Hangzhou Wednesday morning, we traveled by bus into town, (Only 21 million population metro area)  It is most well known for West Lake, a manmade freshwater lake with pagodas, temples, gardens, causeways and artificial islands.

This is a pagoda that we climbed to get the view of West Lake.

 

 Even though the air quality is much better in Hangzhou, the atmosphere was still hazy, but West Lake is visible in the background.

 Stan "enjoying" lotus root powder drink which is naturally good for your health!!  It really didn't have a lot of taste and seemed to be thickened with cornstarch.

 These ladies entertained us while we enjoyed our lotus root drink.  Our guide said we were just to relax as Hangzhou residents walk slowly, enjoy the fresh air and landscape and live a long life!

This video may not play, but Nancy had a fun time banging the gong near the pagoda overlooking West Lake.

 The city is well cared for and has lush vegetation.  There are even plantings under the freeways!  These flowers added color along a parking lot adjacent to a public square.

This was part of the Hangzhou old town.  We were excited to find a Dairy Queen in the area and enjoyed blizzards!

We visited a museum that had many bronze crafts with very delicate details.  This is a replica of Tongyuan bridge designed by Zhu Bingren, a fourth generation Chinese craftsman.  It represents both sides of the Taiwan Strait...they come from the same source and the bridge connects the "hearts" of the two areas.  "Once the soul of the bridge set up, no dead end road between two sides."  In 2011 Mr. Zhu Bingren presented a model of this bridge to a famous poet in Taiwan.

 

View from outside our hotel window in Hangzhou.  This square goes to the canal, which you can see in the background.

The following pictures were taken at West Lake.  It is a freshwater lake surrounded by mountains on three sides and has many springs.
 

There were a lot of Chinese tourists, but we managed to find a quiet spot for pictures.

 

We took a boat ride on West Lake

 

This urn was in the garden.  The guide said it was representative of a vessel from which to drink alcoholic beverages!

 

 

This is the three pools mirroring the moon.  During the mid-autumn festival the moon is bright and full.  People come to this location to observe how the moonlight reflects from the stupas onto the water. Since there are some holes in the stupas, sometimes candles are also placed inside to enhance the reflection quality.  A scene from West Lake is found on the back of the 1 yuan bill. 

 

 

Bob Richards, from our BYU group, was having a great time trying

 to find the end of the noodle.  The gal next to him is his fiancée, Vickie.  Bob lost his wife a few years ago and Vickie's husband has been deceased about 15 years.  The families have been friends for over 30 years and Bob's wife had encouraged him to consider Vickie as a spouse after she passed.  Bob and Vickie have been corresponding since he has been in China and they are being married the end of July.  Bob would like to teach for BYU one more year and this trip was a "test run" for Vickie to see if she could handle the China experience!

You never know what you will see on the freeways of China!

Suzhou is known as the Venice of the East as it has many canals plus classic Chinese style gardens. 

 

Garden of the Humble Administrator, Suzhou.

 

You will notice that this garden is rather crowded.  It is one of the most visited sites by the Chinese and we were there during a national holiday vacation!

We just couldn't get over how many people were there.  Our tour guide said we would get a "free body massage" since you have to elbow your way through the crowds all the time.  Surprisingly the BYU teachers from Tianjin were "discovered" by one of their students as we were waiting in line to visit the garden.  Out of 1.3 billion in China, a student and two teachers meet in a city several hundred miles from their campus!

 

We visited a silk factory and this was an embroidery sample.

We went for a fascinating tour of a silk factory.  Those really are silkworms feeding on Mulberry leaves in the second picture above.  Their life cycle is less than a month.  The last picture shows how the strands of silk are separated from the cocoon.

This pagoda is leaning.  It is part of the 2nd major garden we visited in Suzhou.  Again, it was very crowded. 

This is a sword canyon where a ruler was buried in his tomb.

This site has some special significance.  All the workers that dug the tomb for the ruler...with his 300 swords, were killed after their work was finished and they exited the tomb.  They may be buried beneath this rock.

This picture and next was taken in the 3rd major garden in Suzhou.  It is called the Lingering Garden.  We lingered.  There were fewer people there so we relaxed a little.  That rock is limestone.

 

  We had a few people with us who are not BYU Teachers.  One was a visiting law professor from Florida and her husband and there were three American families who work in Beijing in the oil business or for John Deere.

 

This is an ancient water town called Xitang where we enjoyed a boat ride and just wandering through the small streets observing the wares and smells!

These are some of the food vendors along the canals.

 

We did not eat from the street food vendors.  However, our tour guide said this would be a Chinese lunch and not westernized.  This was not a fancy hotel restaurant and more a "mom and pop" establishment.  We all agreed that the food was some of the best we have had....peanuts, string potatoes, carrots and a pickled white radish, eggplant with oil and garlic, etc.

 

Chinese like to dress up and "pose" for pictures.

 

 This was a Chinese gentleman and his mother who waved to us while we were on the boat ride. 

This is the train station in Shanghai, which is actually connected to the airport.  This was Saturday afternoon and there was not a seat to be found. As soon as a person got up from their seat it was quickly occupied.  Most vacationers were returning home because most had to work on Sunday.