I leave tomorrow to go home for the holidays. I've missed Thanksgiving the last two years, so I'm going back for that this year too, as well as Christmas.

I will be in the USA from this Tuesday, November 23 until December 31.

I commented on this last time, but I still think it's pretty cool: my flight from Shanghai to Chicago arrives before it lands. (Departs at 6:00 PM, arrives at 5:15 PM the same day.)

Going back, of course, it's the opposite problem. The time change put together with some long layovers means I'll be leaving on the afternoon of December 31 and arriving back here on the afternoon of January 3.

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It's been raining like crazy here all week. Hainan (province) is seeing its worst flooding in decades; hundreds of thousands of people evacuated from their homes. Real flooding, like where people lose their houses. According to the latest news, there's one person dead and three missing. Here in Haikou (city) it's not nearly as bad as in some of those other towns and rural areas, but it's definitely the worst flooding I've ever personally seen.

Here is a link to a picture slideshow from the Chinese news (Xinhua) if you want to see some pictures from here in Haikou. They're not incredible flood pictures, but it's pretty much what it's really like here now. (It's in English.) Below the link I'll continue describing my experiences.


http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/photo/2010-10/08/c_13547255.htm

Walking to class today the roads were mostly flooded about 6 inches deep or so. People were still driving, riding bikes, walking. I only saw one car stalled out in the road.

In the places where there are sidewalks to walk on, I walked much of the way to school in ankle-deep water. In the places where there aren't sidewalks, like the alley between my building and the main road, it was mid-calf; walking down the street felt a lot like wading in creeks as a kid. There was even something of a current sometimes, as a car would drive down the main street up ahead and would create actual waves in the water that would flow down this alley. The deepest I had to walk through on the way to class was almost up to my knees; it was at an intersection where it was necessary to come down off the sidewalk (cause it ended) and walk at street level to cross the street, so it was like that all up and down the streets in every direction; no way around it.

I was wearing my sandals (flip-flops), in order to avoid my shoes getting wet. (With the water that high, there was no avoiding my pants getting wet.) I saw some people carrying their shoes in their hands and walking barefoot. But what was really strange was seeing a couple of girls walking, carrying their cheap plastic flip-flops in their hands. Isn't wearing them in the water one of the very things that plastic flip-flops are good for? Although I admit, at one point after I got a piece of branch or something stuck between my foot and my sandal, I had to take my sandal off to get the pointy annoyance out, and when I did so, the sandal started to float away. So maybe those girls were right in some way...? (I did grab my sandal back before it got too far.)

After I got on campus, because of the flooding, the campus "buses" (actually little electric golf-cart-like vehicles) weren't running so I had to walk all the way to class. But so did everybody else, including the teachers, so everybody was late except for the students who actually live in the building (like I did last year).

Today was our first day back after a week off for National Day, and apparently one of the teachers of one of the other classes is stranded in Sanya (city on the other side of the island) and couldn't get back because the roads are closed.

I wonder how much this is going to ruin crops and how much that's going to affect food prices. (Not to mention the well being of those who depend on their farming for their living.)

On a lighter note... on the way back home after class, I saw a fish swimming down the street.

Update: According to this article, Vietnam and Indonesia are feeling the effects too, and with higher death tolls than China (in part due to landslides caused by the downpour). As for Hainan, this article says, "Meteorologists were reported as saying this week's rains were the most sustained autumn downpour Hainan had received since 1961."
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I checked this book out from the university library called "The Way We Think: Chinese View of Life Philosophy". It's supposed to be a guide for foreigners to understanding Chinese culture. Of course, I don't know how much we can rely on the statements of one person in such matters, but it's written by a Chinese person, printed bilingually in Chinese and English, and published by Sinolingua in Beijing (2009). So even if all Chinese people wouldn't agree with the statements this author makes (and maybe they would, I don't know), we can at least be comfortable that it is an actual Chinese point of view, not an explanation of Chinese culture by a foreigner, looking through foreign-colored glasses. In other words, so when the culture comes off sounding bad in some respects, it's not because some ignorant foreigner is misunderstanding it.

To a certain extent, of course, we should respect cultural differences. Most cultural differences are not only harmless but interesting, and learning about them can make us rethink our own ingrained prejudices. Make us realize that the way we are used to doing things isn't necessarily the only way out there of doing things, and may not be the best way. On the other hand, taking this philosophy to an extreme can be dangerous. Some "cultural practices", like wife-beating or female genital mutilation, are horrendous, period, and shouldn't be given the cover of "but that's just their culture." And in between these two poles are some practices that might actually be bad or stupid or illogical in some way, but maybe aren't that big of a deal, so it doesn't really matter that much. Every culture has their prejudices and inconsistencies.

As an example, one silly (but inconsequential) aspect of Chinese culture is the way people often greet each other. Instead of just saying "hi," people often ask more personal questions. "Have you eaten?" or "Where are you going?" etc. So far, no problem; just harmless cultural difference. But sometimes these questions are rather inane. When we discussed this in class, our textbook and our teacher literally advised us, "see what they're doing, and ask that." For example, if you see they're doing laundry, ask, "Doing laundry?" If you see they're headed out, ask, "Headed out?" And so forth. Like I said, inane, but inconsequential. But some of us foreign students, in class, were like, "isn't that stupid? obviously you can see they're already doing that, so why do you ask?" and furthermore, "how are you supposed to answer?" (If someone asked me something like that in English, I'd have half a mind to sarcastically say "no", just because obviously I am, you already know the answer. Answering sarcastically is a way to point out that you didn't need me to answer in the first place, so why did you ask?) But the teacher, and a subsequent Chinese student some of us talked to about this, seemed to not understand our complaint. Again, not a big deal, but it's silly. But both the teacher and the Chinese student just became defensive about "but that's our culture; you should just learn to talk that way too." ... But it's dumb! Are we incapable of seeing (or admitting) the things about our own culture which are dumb? I've certainly never shied away from pointing out the idiotic aspects of American culture, as I see them. I understand that, from a learning-language point of view, you should understand the language as it's spoken by the people. But we (foreign students) understood the concept; we just disagreed with it. Our teacher kept thinking we weren't understanding it. She, and the other guy, were unable to admit that something about their culture might be silly. Not even something that trivial. (And I think that's true fairly often; see for example my last post about Chinese medicine.)

But back to this book. I haven't read much of it yet: only the first section, about mianzi, which is to say "face." (In the figurative sense, of like "losing face.") I found this section interesting, though, and thought I'd share some stuff with you. If future sections of the book have things I find noteworthy, I may continue to comment on them to you, and if not, not.

So the idea is, as the chapter title makes plain, "Mianzi Outweighs All Else". This author says that this concept of 'mianzi', "face", dignity, is the most important thing to understand about Chinese culture (which I guess is why it's chapter 1.) As he puts it, "Chinese people always take to heart their dignity and superiority, which they hope will earn them due respect." Of course, the idea of people wanting to be respected by others is something that is universal, in all cultures. But maybe it really is more important in Chinese culture than Western culture. In the US, we may be more likely to value independence or something, in situations where the two values come into conflict. I don't know. I thought the addition of the word "superiority" to that sentence was telling, though. A lot of Chinese people, mostly men, and people who fancy themselves in positions of authority, do seem really concerned about making sure they get their respect, making sure they retain their "superiority." And of course, I have no problem with respecting others as a moral value. Giving others their due respect is important. But I do find it selfish and grating when people (in any culture - and it happens in all of them) insist on their own respect. (Insisting on respecting other people is a positive moral value; insisting that other people respect me I just find egocentric and narcissistic -- especially because most people think they deserve more respect than other people think they do.) Again, in the US, I would say these people are mostly men, mostly older. And mostly who vote Republican. (In my experience.) (Not to get sidetracked, but I really do think there's an important correlation there: people who are more concerned that they themselves are getting the short end of the stick are more likely to vote Republican; people who are more concerned that others are getting the short end of the stick are more likely to vote Democratic.)

But here's the silliest part; the thing that really made me want to share this with you, o readers. The author tells this story of a military general from the 200s BC who was defeated in battle, and instead of returning to his hometown and facing the people, he committed suicide. As the author puts it, "His death saved his dignity and made him revered in history. This shows that to the Chinese, face weighs far more than life." Okay. Now that's absolutely ridiculous. After a humiliating defeat, the desire to kill oneself would be universal, not culture-specific. But the reaction is just crazy. This guy lost; he went down in defeat. If he had returned home, he would have been shamed and forgotten. But because he didn't want to own up to his mistake, because he was too embarrassed, too cowardly to face the people and admit his failure, he killed himself. And for that supreme act of cowardice, that "made him revered in history." Why? What possible good does such a cultural value entail? The idea that he would "lose face" by going home would be true anywhere; it's not China-specific. And that's probably right: people get glory when they succeed and shame when they fail. But the idea that you can avoid the shame and go straight for the glory by killing yourself? What kind of messed up system is that? And doesn't it rather encourage people to kill themselves, instead of, say, try try again? Or at least retire and live a quiet life doing something else? If there is some value in this cultural perspective, I don't know what it is. Most of all, I guess, I don't understand how killing himself "saved his dignity". I understand how he would have lost face in front of his townsfolk if he had returned. But the shame wasn't in the returning and facing them, the shame was in the losing the battle to begin with. Whether he returns to face them or not, the battle is still lost. The shame is still there. Avoiding acknowledging the shameful circumstances doesn't actually cause the shameful circumstances not to exist. By refusing to go home, he only refuses to admit his failure and to face the consequences. He takes the easy way out. How does refusing to take that stand enhance his standing in the community? If anything, from my perspective, it would weaken it. But either way, it certainly wouldn't erase the failure that he was ashamed of in the first place, and make him "revered in history." What the heck is up with that?

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I've been sick the last two weeks or so. Missed a week and a half of school, and one weekend of work. (I started to get sick on Friday, and went ahead and worked through it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But by the next weekend I was even worse, and couldn't do it.) Actually, with all the times I've been sick here, that was the first time I've called in sick to work. But I was pretty sick, and for a long time I just kept getting worse, not better. My symptoms would change, but not improve. For three or four days I literally ate almost nothing; a few bites of rice or something. Probably not eating didn't help me get better faster, but I went to the hospital (when you're sick here, you go to the hospital; I'm not sure if there are smaller clinics or "doctor's offices" or not) and they gave me IV nutrients (fructose, vitamin C, maybe more) along with my drugs.

I'm not normally given to taking medicines or visiting doctors, but that first Saturday my girlfriend told me I was really warm and went and bought a thermometer. I decided if my temperature really was so high then I would let her take me to the hospital like she wanted. It turns out I was 39.1 (102.4) in the mouth so we went. They wanted to give me some injections, but thinking that (a) I didn't want the shots, (b) I didn't want to spend the money, and (c) I would probably get better on my own like always, I didn't let them give me the shots. I was satisfied that they didn't freak out and say it was something super serious, and went home and took some leftover prescription antiviral pills as well as ibuprofen and figured I'd be better soon.

A day or two later I was not better but worse - my right tonsil had swollen to grandiose proportions, bigger than I would have thought possible. I was seriously afraid it was going to burst or something (can tonsils do that?) and so anyway we went back to the hospital. When the doctor looked into my mouth, she literally said "no way!" or "impossible!" or "it can't be!" or however you would translate that into English. In any case, this time I consented to the injections. It turns out the default way of doing injections here is via IV drip, and intramuscular shots are comparatively rare. This time, they prescribed me three bottles of stuff (I'm not sure what all, anti-inflammatories among others probably) each day for two days. After having finished that, I still wasn't better; my tonsil had shrunk back to a more normal inflamed size, but by this point my throat and mouth hurt so much I couldn't speak or eat or barely drink. My biggest concern of course was the not eating, so we went back to the doctor. This guy set me for three more days of IV, this time including the fructose and everything. Actually, I was glad that the medicine and everything was done by these IV drip bags, because getting jabbed with a needle was actually a less painful way to get fluids into me than to drink them. I wonder if that's why they do it that way: to make sure you get fluids. If so, maybe it's smart. Of course, if you have no problem drinking water or juice yourself then maybe you'd rather just get the regular shot and be done with it, and drink your fluids on your own time, in your own place.

Either way, for five days in a row I went to the hospital and sat there for several hours while getting my fluids and meds. The upside is I got a whole bunch of reading done. Most of the rest of the time, I was too tired to do anything. At times walking was hard. At times sitting up was hard. A couple days ago I finally started getting better. I'm still getting better. Today, tomorrow, and Friday we're off school for a national holiday (mid-Autumn festival), which means we have to go to school on the weekends to make up for the missed time. (Yeah, I know.) Since kids go to school on the weekends, that means that they can't take their weekend English classes on the weekends, so we teach those on the weekdays when they're off school.

Anyway I started writing this not so much to talk about my own illness (or the peculiarities of the holiday calendar) but rather about what the health care system is like, from my experience. I've been to a couple different hospitals here, several times, either for myself or accompanying a friend (or girlfriend) for their sake. In all cases -- with the exception of sitting and waiting for the 15 bottles of IV stuff they put in me -- I was actually very impressed by the speed, efficiency, and cheapness of the whole procedure. No appointments (maybe you can make them, but I never saw anybody), just walk-in, wait times are quite short (compared to my experience in the US, even when you have an appointment, doctors are on hand to check you out pretty quickly, they prescribe something and you just walk over to the pay counter and pay for it, then take your receipt across the hall to the pharmacy counter and pick it up. And if it's just a regular drug, you're on your way. If it's something that needs injecting, you go to the injections department and they do it for you there. It's all actually fairly streamlined and efficient, and like I said, cheap, even the drugs. And no obviously more or less effective than medical care in the US, to me. No insurance (again, maybe some people have it, but not that I've seen). Being examined by a doctor costs about one US dollar per visit. (I don't think that'd exceed the deductible on my policy back home.) Last year I had to get an x-ray for something and I think that set me back like 8 or 9 USD.

This is of course in contrast to everything-fricking-else in China (e.g., my visa/residence permit, which I finally successfully picked up yesterday btw, on my fourth trip to the Public Security Bureau) which is incredibly bureaucratic and paperworky and complicated and nonsensical and, most of all, inefficient. (Even when I got internet installed in my new apartment, the company had to send representatives out 3 different times to the apartment. First for me to choose what plan I wanted and sign the papers and them to get a copy of my ID, then for the technician to come out and do the installation, then for the sales rep guy to come back again to pick up the money. Not a huge hassle for me that time, since they came to where I lived, but surely unnecessarily complicated for them!) But credit where credit is due, the healthcare delivery system seems to be pretty efficient. At least they move you in and out quickly. Presumably the results are comparably accurate/effective.

The hospitals themselves, though, are not exactly up to US standards. The floors are dirty, there are crawling and flying bugs (in the past eight months I don't think I've been bitten by mosquitos anywhere more consistently than at that hospital), the common exam rooms are shared and open so there's little privacy (visually or audially), lots of sick people surrounding you (I do wonder if part of why I didn't get better quickly was because of contracting an opportunistic infection or two sitting in that massive IV room for so many hours with other sick people filling the other hundred or so chairs). Toddlers pee on the floor and men spit on it, but that happens everywhere; if somebody throws up that gets wiped up pretty soon. People are moaning and babies crying all around you, which may be true in all hospitals (I don't really have much experience with hospitals in the US) but surely more here since there are more people in a smaller space. I assume the actual instruments they use on you are well sanitized (right?) but I did see a nurse just rinse off a handful of thermometers in the sink and that's all (but they put those under your arm, not in your mouth). One doctor who opened me up to look in my mouth actually lit a little paraffin (or something) lamp on her desk and sanitized the instrument in that before putting it in me.

But, you know, this whole not-super-clean, not-super-perfect thing is pretty much true of the whole city, and probably much of the world, compared to the suburban US environment that I was formerly used to, and is a function of population density and not necessarily poverty, but non-rich-itude. I'm used to things being that way now; I got used to it in Lima. (When I first arrived in Lima, in the taxi from the airport, all alone, seeing the run-down-edness of things, I was like, "ooookay, this is the city I chose to live in?" but by the end, or sometime in the middle, of my time there, sights like that just seemed normal. And they still do. The place I live now has rats and cockroaches and I'm glad, for example, that my mom can't see what the hallways look like, and the exterior of the building looks no different from all those other dirty Chinese apartment buildings you always see in pictures. So that kind of thing just doesn't really bother me too much anymore; this is how people in the world live.

What does bother me, probably my biggest complaint about the Chinese medical system, is that Chinese herbal medicines and Western chemical medicines are all mixed up together and not necessarily well labeled on the front (although you can, and I do, read the ingredients to see what's in the pills, and if all it is is chrysanthemum and cinnamon or whatever). I think that's important because - as much as, like I said, I don't really like to use drugs, and don't actually think them incredibly useful - Western medicine has been proven effective through scientific experiments and double-blind trials and FDA approval and what have you; this herbal stuff just hasn't. (I've tried to look for the studies - if anybody knows of studies that have been done on the effectivness of Chinese medicine, I'd love to know.) So folk wisdom, tradition, is mixed up with the science. Surely that happens somewhat in the US too; I'm sure that some advice doctors give to treat, say, a common cold, is sometimes just what they heard from their mom and not from actual scientific studies. (Stress causing ulcers might be an example, right?) But it's rampant here. It seems like literally everybody believes and accepts that Chinese medicine (and ancient Chinese ideas about hot and cold humours, yin and yang, etc., making you sick) is just as good as Western medicine (and Western ideas). And protesting it is almost unpatriotic or something. For my girlfriend too, her culture outweighs her education (which was in chemistry) on this. Every time I don't want to take, or don't want to buy, the herbal stuff, she takes it almost as an offense toward her whole culture, like I have an irrational preference for the medicines of my home country just because it's my home country. I don't, of course. I have a rational preference for things that are, to put it succinctly, FDA approved.

Anyway, happy Mid-Autumn Day. Go to your local Chinese grocery store and pick up some moon cakes to share with your family. If you actually read this far.

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Yesterday was the first day of classes of the new year.

(Actually, let me stop myself there for an interesting but unimportant sidenote: they don't really think about it that way in the same way we do, in terms of years. Whenever I say "this year", "last year", "next year", etc., people always think I mean "calendar year" when a lot of times in English it would have been obvious that I meant "academic year". For example, in the spring just before the school year ends and you want to talk about the fall, I would say "next year". People here say "next semester.")

Aside from classes, I am still teaching (three days a week now: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). The magazine that I was working for seems to have folded, so I don't have that job anymore. It was supposed to be a monthly magazine and I worked there for four months, but somehow during that time we only produced two issues. (Due to financial constraints they combined two issues into one, my second and third months there, and then my fourth month, they still paid me, but I actually did nothing at all. There were no articles to edit, and no magazine was produced. And then after that they went under. I guess.)

I still don't have my new visa yet because there were some problems with the paperwork that the school filled out. My previous visa expired on the 30th or 31st of last month. So I'm kind of in limbo now. But the school says there's no problem now and we're just waiting for the Public Security Bureau to finish processing it. (Of course, that's what I thought before.)

In others' news, my girlfriend Molin just finished reading her first English-language book ever, which was "Matilda" by Roald Dahl.

But enough about not me. Aside from work and school, we are trying to re-form the basketball team. We lost most of our players, so we'll have to scope out the new students and see if there's anyone who meets up to our high standards of basically ever having touched a ball of any kind ever before in their life. Right now we only have five people, which is enough to play if we're all available, and we've played one game. We lost horribly, but I played well (for me), so I'm okay with it. Anyway, in the interest of doing things a little more officially this year (this "semester"?), we decided to make a roster and stuff, list our names, ages, heights, weights, make up positions for ourselves, etc. And I discovered that despite being the second-tallest person on the team, I'm also lighter than anyone else on the team by 9 kg (20 lbs).

I like being skinny and even though I know it might make me more "attractive", I really have very little interest in gaining weight. But one thing I don't like about it is when people find out I'm vegetarian and say, "oh, no wonder you're so skinny." Because (a) I've always been this skinny, including before I was vegetarian, and (b) not all vegetarians are skinny. I really like having Leo here so when people say "oh, you're vegetarian, no wonder you're so skinny," I can say, "Leo's vegetarian too."

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At my girlfriend's family's home in semi-rural, mid-latitude China -- not quite in the mountains but mountains are visible in the distance -- there is no heating or air conditioning or hot running water. Dishwashing and laundry and basically everything else are done by hand. In the kitchen there's a wood-burning stove, as well as a gas burner hooked up to a propane tank on the floor. The pans are cast iron. There is electricity and indoor plumbing, but the pipes and wires are on the outside of the walls, visible. The light switches dangle on the end of the cord that leads up to the light. The walls themselves are either undecorated cement or exposed brick and mortar. The floors are cement, and shoes or sandals are worn inside at all times. (Unlike my impression of most Asian homes, you don't take your shoes off at the door.)

My girlfriend's mom is in the habit of cooking three meals a day, including a hot breakfast of rice porridge or noodles or something else. (In China, I've found, people don't skip breakfast as wantonly as we do back home.) There's no microwave or dishwasher or garbage disposal. There is a fridge, but in the winter you can just put leftovers in the cabinet because the temperature in the house is not much above freezing. Eating and drinking are done out of bowls. There are no cups or glasses. No plates. No forks; only chopsticks. No need for knives at the table because everything is already prepared bite-size. I can't remember if I ever saw spoons or not; I think soup might just be drunk out of the bowl.

The family has a dog, but although he's very friendly and happy-go-lucky, he's not a "pet," my girlfriend says, he's just to watch the house. Nobody plays with him, and he doesn't have any toys or balls or anything; not even any sticks of his own. (But then again, one time my girlfriend told me that even she, when she was little, didn't have any toys. She later corrected that statement and she had a doll.) Speaking of animals, seeing rats in the house is a fairly common occurrence. (They're mostly smaller than the ones you see all over the place here in Haikou, so that's good.) In fact, if you sleep on the second floor, every night you can hear them running around in the ceiling (which seems to be some wooden beams covered by a tarp) above you.

In the winter it's easy to feel protected from them, though, since you're covered with so many layers of blankets and clothes, due to the cold. In the summer you probably don't want to sleep with a blanket or a quilt of any kind because it's just too hot, but the mosquito net hanging around the bed will do a better job of protecting you from the real nuisances anyway. The beds themselves, though, might give you some problems, since many of them are nothing more than a bamboo mat maybe half a centimeter thick, on top of a wooden board.

Given that there's no water heater of any kinds, cold showers in the summer can help keep you cool. Wear your sandals in the shower, because of the floor. There is no shower stall or bathtub or anything; the nozzle just sprays onto the ground. In the summer, at least, the water that comes out of the tap is not unbearably cold. In the winter, it is. And heating up enough water on the stove for a full-body shower would be a lot of trouble, so feet and face can be washed frequently in this way, while full showers are taken on a less than daily basis by making a trip down to a public shower facility, where you can pay to strip of your million layers of clothes that you've had on for a few days, take a hot shower in their woodfire-heated water (at times nearly scalding to your frozen skin) and then layer yourself up with clean clothes.

Back at home, speaking of plumbing, the house does have a sit-down toilet, but you can't flush the TP, so there's a wastepaper bin next to the comode for that purpose. There's a well outside, and the outdoor tap (as well as some, but not all, of the indoor plumbing) draws from that. (None of the water from any of the indoor faucets is potable, of course, so water is always boiled first before drinking.) One trick when you're washing your clothes by hand outside in the winter is to use the bucket to get well water off the surface, rather than using the faucet, which pumps it up from deeper down, because the water on top is slightly warmer. In the summer, this situation is reversed, and the water coming out of the makeshift faucet over the big cement laundry sink in the yard is actually warmer than what you pull up in the bucket. After you wash your clothes, of course there is no dryer, so you hang them up in the yard on the bamboo rods set up expressly for that purpose.

Some of these characteristics are fairly typical in my experience throughout China or throughout Asia, or throughout the world, and some are not. Most places in Haikou, it seems, you can flush the toilet paper. (But most, maybe all, public facilities don't have sit-down johns, only squatters.) In Peru, on the other hand, I only ever saw one hole-in-the-ground squatter, but almost nowhere in the country could TP be flushed (and public toilets that didn't have seats and/or you wouldn't want to sit down on anyway were pretty much the norm). In both countries, people carry their own paper at all times, because it's very rare to find it when you need it. (Here in Hainan, people always carry tissues, and use them not only as TP when the need arises, but as napkins in restaurants - most restaurants don't provide napkins for free - and (especially for girls) to blot off the sweat that you accumulate just walking around in this climate. In both Lima and Hainan, heating and air conditioning are pretty rare, and the buildings tend to be fairly open to the outside. One problem with that approach is the influx of bugs and (especially here in Haikou) rodents. The tap water not being potable is common everywhere I've been in China as well as South America. The beds in China are all very firm, and I think this is true of Asia generally. (In the US I always thought of myself as a person who prefers firm mattresses, but in the US I don't think we even have mattresses like they have here, and that's when mattresses are used at all; everybody seems to think it's no big deal - even if not an everyday thing - to sleep on the hard floor with nothing more than a thin bamboo mat.) There not being a shower stall, but just showering onto the bathroom floor, seems to be the norm everywhere that I've been in Asia (except the one place I stayed in Hong Kong). Also, I've never seen a bathtub anywhere that I've been here. People that I've occasionally asked about it have never taken a bath, only showers. Laundry seems to be done by hand by most people in China, and hanging up to dry is ubiquitous, even among those who use a washing machine. A lot of these things I've gotten used to, and living in Peru helped me to have less things that feel really strange or shocking or foreign here -- which is good, because the culture here feels a lot more strange and foreign than it did in Peru, so it frees up brain space for adapting to that, rather than first having to adapt to (the lack of) the more immediate physical comforts.

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It's been a long time since I posted. I moved to an apartment outside campus. Right now I'm on vacation both from studying (for the summer) and working (for about three weeks, their short break before fall term). So I'm with my girlfriend visiting her family. I've been here before, but I wasn't a boyfriend at the time, only a friend. Our trip here was:

1. bus from home (on Haidian island) to the bus stop (on Hainan island itself) where we could take the bus to the train station
2. bus to train station
3. train from Haikou (the city we live in) to Hangzhou (the capital of Zhejiang province, and the closest the train gets to where we're going) -- this was the bulk of the trip, over 30 hours.
4. bus from Hangzhou train station to Hangzhou bus station (at 5:30 am)
5. bus from Hangzhou (city) to Tiantai (city)
6. bus from Tiantai bus station to Pingqiao township
7. tuk-tuk (3-wheel motorcycle taxi) from bus stop to her parents' home

In total it took 42 hours, and I managed to sleep about 2 of them, in several 10-20 minute spurts. The only portion of the trip on which we had so much as reclining seats was the 2.5-hour intercity bus leg of the trip (step 5 above). But at least we had seats this time. On the way back from Hangzhou to Guangzhou last time, we had no seats at all for like 19 hours. (And then I subsequently fell asleep on the bus to Zhuhai, causing me to miss my stop.)

I'm mostly recording this so that I'll remember it, but in case you're interested, here's where I am now (that is, where my girlfriend's family lives) (written in big-to-small order, like they do in Chinese):

China (country), Zhejiang (province), Taizhou (prefecture), Tiantai (county), Pingqiao (township), Dongtangxia (village).

By way of comparison, just because it's interesting: where I live and study in China is:

China (country), Hainan (province), Haikou (city), Meilan (district), Haidian (island)

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Quick update on what I've been doing lately. Got back to China about a week ago. Classes are over; I missed the last few weeks of class (including exams). It doesn't really matter for anything. But anyway I have no class for the next two months or so. This month I'm working double time, which is to say four half-days a week instead of two (plus the magazine job).

But lately I've been most consumed with two things: (1) Trying to get a visa arranged for next year, and (2) Finding a place to live and moving.

My tentative plan is to stay in Hainan for one more year, not more or less, and after that to probably go somewhere else -- that will probably but not definitely be somewhere else in China -- and even if it's not, it will probably not be somewhere in the USA. That's my tentative plan.

So staying here for one more year requires, as I said (1) renewing my student visa for another year. That's a complicated process that I just started after I got back from traveling. Basically I need to be enrolled in school, and have a place to live, and maybe some other things (?) in order to get the visa. Enrolling in school for next semester is itself a multi-step process, naturally, and then certifying my residence and whatever else has turned out to be rather complicated too. Just lost of paperwork, going to different places, waiting. I need a residence certification from the police. In order to get that, I need a letter (with official seal) from my place of residence stating that I live there, and a copy of the landlord's ID, plus my passport (original and a copy), as well as a passport-style photo (they use those for tons of stuff here). Of course, getting the copy of the landlord's ID took a day or two for him to be free, then I had to go to the building management for the letter, and then take all the documents to the police station. (I did that today.) Then when I get that residence certification back (hopefully tomorrow) I have to take that to the school, register for classes (and pay tuition) etc. and who knows what else, then they will give me the documentation that I am enrolled for next semester, and I probably have to take that to some consular office or something to do the visa, along with who knows what other documentation.

(2) Also, I'm moving. Found a place just off campus, and have been cleaning it out for the last three days. It's pretty nice; bigger than the dorm room -- but the number of cockroaches has been, shall we say, slightly off-putting. (I think I can safely say I've seen at least 50-60 living ones.) Hopefully that won't be an ongoing problem, now that the genocide is complete, or nearly so. I'm slowly moving stuff into the new place; I have to be out of the dorm by the 25th. Also been buying some furniture; still have a little left to buy. It's already furnished, but there was no desk or shelving, so those are important enough to go ahead and buy (second-hand or cheap ones). Also got some new curtains. The place has a TV though, so that will be different; I haven't had a TV at home (not counting when I lived at home, when I was between countries) since who knows when. There's also a real fridge, with a real freezer, which has already been really nice. The little mini-fridge thing I have now (and will probably try to sell) is very small, and doesn't really do a great job. There's supposed to be a freezer part at the top, but it doesn't exactly work like it's supposed to. The one thing there isn't, though, is a washing machine. I'm looking at buying one - it looks like I can get a small, used one for less than 400 RMB (=60 USD). Other options would be to either carry my laundry to school and back and do it there, or to become fully Chinese and handwash my clothes. Still undecided on this issue.

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