Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, this church had a special service with speaking, singing, and dancing (little girls in costumes). Imagine my surprise though, when the person who greeted me outside the church was no other than...

...uh, Santa Claus. I never saw a curly mustache like this before. It curled like a ringlet. Odder still, Santa was female. At least she padded the costume, because there is no way that in real life she is as puffy as she looks in the photo. She passed out candy, welcomed visitors, and said "Merry Christmas." Odd, yes, but in a country that has no idea of what Christmas is all about (except Christians like her), we do not criticize any attempts at yuletide merriment.

Inside, the true meaning of the season took front and center stage. (They were just having fun with Santa. Despite how it might look to you, there is no confusion among these people about Christ being the center of Christmas.)

Unlike the choir in Taiwan, this choir would not be asked to sing in a shopping mall. That pretty much would not happen here. Nope, not in this country.

There were dozens of policemen around outside. Christmas Eve draws big crowds at churches, so presumably they were there for crowd control. That, and to scare away anyone who might lose their jobs if discovered in a church.

The good news is that some of the policemen, young men, were inside the church listening to other young people sing Christmas carols and tell the story of Jesus. Policemen around here don't often get to go to church, so I think it is great a few of them got to hear the story last night!

The Lovely Meems

I bought Mimi a soft pink cubicle last year, a plush dog house. She totally ignored it for at least 14 months. I was thinking about giving it away. But recently Mimi rediscovered it and is now inseparable from it. Except when she's outside, which brings us to the next photo.

Mimi wears her bright, cheerful sweater on Christmas Day. She also sleeps in sweaters at night when it is below freezing.

Mimi: "Hey Master, I think there's something in this bamboo grove. A cat probably. Can we go check it out? C'mon, pulleeeeze?!"

Me: Will you please turn around Meems so I can get a picture of your face?

Mimi: No. Cat! Let's go!

Christmas Trip

Not everyone in the world is required to make a work trip to another country the week before Christmas. Most people get to stay home, bake cookies, wrap gifts. But not me. I had to iron clothes, get motion sickness, and get a backache from strange accommodations to get me in the Christmas mood (sarcasm). I even had to sweat in a tropical climate. Sweating doesn't say "Christmas" to me.

I was in Taiwan. I'm all better now though. I got back to my own place prior to Christmas.

All in all, I like Taiwan. It's quite an interesting place. It doesn't have four seasons, but that would be its biggest drawback.

While in Taiwan, I went to the Taipei 101 building. It used to be the tallest building in the world. Now it is probably just the tallest building in East Asia (not sure). The bottom floors of the building are a shopping mall. I went there the Saturday before Christmas.

I don't know if you can see in the photo, but the mall is dripping with Christmas lights and other decorations. In the top photo, Omega watch makers decked out a pretty tree.

Shopping malls in the country where I live also look like this at Christmas time, so I feel like the above photos are representative of where I live. Yes, the majority of people in the country where I live have no religious belief, and the government officially promotes atheism, yet signs of Christmas abound.

Christmas is not a holiday in East Asia. People go to work just like they do every other day. Well, this year Christmas is on a Saturday, so not as many people will go to work on Christmas this year.

The choir above is in Taiwan, singing Christmas carols on a Saturday afternoon at the Taipei 101 building. If I didn't know better, I would have said this was a professional choir (they sang like angels), but I found out that they are the choir from a Baptist Church in Taipei, the choir of the church's English-speaking congregation.

60s Memory

It is Christmas Eve here already. Sometime back in the 1960's, my brothers and I were playing basketball on the driveway on the afternoon of Christmas Eve with my dad. My dad told us that in Japan it was already Christmas Day. The children in Japan had already been visited by Santa Claus. I remember being upset at the thought of some little kids already having received gifts from Santa while I was forced to wait a few more hours.

Now I know Japanese don't celebrate Christmas and don't get gifts at all. Ha-ha! I love this childhood memory.

How stairs make for an interesting day

Village walls

The policeman walks into the small coffee shop.

Police: Whose electric scooter is that out front?

ME: That would be mine.

Police: (he looks a little surprised, but he is polite): You need to move it somewhere else.

ME: OK. (I go outside to move my scooter, that is the size and weight of a motorcycle.)

Police: Move it over there. (He points up some stairs.)

ME: Uh….

Police: There. (He points again, like maybe I didn’t see him the first time.)

ME (surprised he doesn’t see a problem in what he has asked me to do): My scooter isn’t made to ascend stairs.

Police: Oh, that. (He thinks for awhile and tries to look cool in front of all the onlookers. I don’t think police actually help most people move bikes, but then again most people he’s ever dealt with did not have blonde hair and green eyes. I have totally confused him with my logic, people are watching, and he’s embarrassed.) OK, I’ll help you.

And then with the help of three people (two policemen and me), up the stairs my scooter went. I am almost certain the police won’t be around when it’s time to get the bike down the stairs.

Only in China are people asked to park their motorbikes upstairs!

The rest of the story

I leave the coffee shop, walk up the stairs, and unlock my motorbike. The police are, of course, no where to be found. I do not want to damage my bike or my body by trying to get the bike down the stairs.

I look the other direction to see if there are other options, but it appears to be a dead end. I get there, see something that resembles a doorway. I'm not totally sure, but I think if I can go out that opening with my bike, I don't have to negotiate stairs. I ask two guys sitting around if it is a dead end, and they tell me it is not. I ask if I can get to the main street from there. They use their hands to indicate that various twists and turns will get me back out on the main road.

So I go that way. I end up in a village with narrow passageways not quite big enough for both me and the children running and playing in them. The villages charm and fascinate me. But the villages are a maze. I turn left, then right, then weave in and out of alleyways. The sun is on my left, then on my right, then straight ahead. Soon, I have no idea where I am. I have been in the village maze of alleyways now for 45 minutes, which is only scary because it should only take me 20 minutes to get home from the coffee shop.

I am lost.

I think it is great fun getting lost, actually, except I'm afraid my electric bike will run out of battery power before I get home.

I ride and ride and ride. I hit a main road, but I don't know where I am. I turn the direction I think leads towards my apartment complex. I am wrong and go far the opposite direction.

My electric scooter ran out of battery power at the gate of my apartment building.

There is never a dull day in this country.

Pretty robe, but....

In the Taoist temple in Shanghai, I saw many of these Taoist robed priests chanting. It looks real, but they do it the same time every day so tourists can see it. Kind of seems like a "show" to me. Also, you have to pay to enter the temple. Can you imagine having to pay to go into a church to pray?

This is a female at a Buddhist nunnery in Shanghai, near Yu Gardens. Apparently she had lots of friends outside the nunnery (note that she is talking on a cell phone). She's about to put on those robes she is holding for a Buddhist chanting ceremony, not totally unlike the Taoist ceremony mentioned above.

In a country that is officially atheist, people have found a spiritual void. They are trying to fill it with things that will not satisfy. To them, it is like choosing a name brand cell phone. Will they choose Iphone, Samsung, Motorola? Will they choose Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity? That's the mindset, although we know Truth is not based on personal preference.

Comments anyone?

I thought I had my blog's "comments" disabled. But the other day, I got a comment. It was sent to my e-mail inbox for my approval.

I was so excited! To my surprise, I decided I like comments.

But in my excitement, I accidentally deleted the comment instead of posting it. (Sorry Catherine M., please try again sometime soon. I was so happy to hear from you. How's everything in Tassie?)

Friends and family, feel free to post comments. However, your comments won't appear until I have time to read and pre-approve them (and make sure they don't use inappropriate wording, if you know what I mean). If I am traveling, the posting of comments may be slightly delayed.

One fine morning

at Shanghai's Zhongshan Park

Normal behavior. Learn to appreciate it.

This normal guy and his wife were trying to learn

the sword martial arts from a master.

They were not very good at it, but were having a

good time laughing at themselves.

I enjoyed watching them have a good time.

A sweet little girl was in the park with her mom.

In a sharp departure from normal, this lady and a dozen others were doing contortionist moves to slow, eerie Chinese music. One of the contortionists is a retired professor of journalism from a major university in China. One kind man came over and told me they combined aspects of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism to come up with a new brand of religion. Making up your own religion seems to be a fad in these parts.

But most people in the park just want to dance,

dance partner or not.

Ballroom dancing, men not required.

(It's meant for exercise, after all.)

This lady was meant to be a stage performer.

The Cultural Revolution probably interrupted her dreams.

She was by far the most amusing act of the day.

Businessman. Normal.

Ballroom dancing, men and women. Normal.

The lonely guy. He is rubbing wooden balls together in right hand for exercise.

Not mainstream, but fairly normal.

Singing Chinese revolutionary songs.

Normal if it is 1949.

Not very normal in 2010.

FYI, "zh" is pronounced like "j," so Zhongshan Park is pronounced Jongshan Park.

Walking in the City

Bright, lovely, colorful Shanghai

Autumn in the Park

A walk in the park brought me lovely views of fall leaves...

...and scads of older people keeping fit!

Conveyor of Misery

I am all for security. I don’t want farmers bringing dynamite on the train. I’ve seen the big gory photos in the Beijing train station of what happens to people who tried that in the past. In case there were illiterate, dynamite-carrying farmers in the train station, those photos said what the written word could not.

Baggage x-ray machines are fine. As long as they don’t go looking for trouble in the form of bottled water and fingernail clippers, like they do in airports, I’m fine. Really.

But there is something WRONG in this country, because quite a few people here do not at all understand the basic idea of the x-ray conveyor belt.

I mean, it is bad enough that someone asks them to stand in line to have their bags x-rayed. Stand in line? Only a few people here know how to do that.

Push. Shove. Slap me around. Surrounded on all sides, I don’t know if those pushy hands are in my backpack or where. I can’t feel a thing but claustrophobia.

Finally, I get to the conveyor belt. I calmly put down my bags, go through the metal detector, get quickly wanded by the magic beeping security wand, and wait for my bags to come out.

Except the lady who is behind me in what eventually became a line, the lady who put her bags on the conveyor belt AFTER I did, thinks her bags are going to come out before mine do. She acts like a linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys and tries to knock me over sideways to get out of her way. Luckily she is shorter than me, and probably five-to-ten years older. I pretend not to notice. I have my eyes on my backpack, because I don’t know if her ruckus is a ruse to divert me from a thief. My computer is in the backpack too, and I don’t want it to fly off the conveyor belt and get damaged.

She then pushes me with her arms. I still don’t budge and I don’t say a thing.

Then she puts her hands on my hips and shoves me. I don’t budge.

I reach down for my bags, which MIRACULOUSLY came out on the conveyor belt before her stuff did! But she is mad now, and so she starts yelling and flailing her arms and trying to climb on the conveyor belt and reach inside the machine for her bags.

Next thing you know, bananas and apples begin rolling down the conveyor belt. Hers. She’s yelling trying to make everyone think I, the big bad blonde foreigner, sent her fruit flying to show my foreign dominance. I don’t think she convinced too many people though. The people closest to us saw what happened, and none of them were feeling very sorry for her.

I kind of felt sorry for her though. Mostly annoyed, but a little sorry. Maybe she’s never been to a train station before. Maybe she doesn’t understand the basic laws of the conveyor belt…first baggage in will be the first baggage out. Maybe her ma didn’t teach her any manners. I know for sure that no one taught her to wait her turn…really and truly, only a few people here know that rule.

You wake up in the morning hoping to be a good witness that day, but the forces of the world somehow still conspire against you. I did things the orderly way, and still, somehow I was made to look like the bad guy.

A Chinese, someone who gets the whole manners thing, told me it will take another fifty years for polite public manners to take root in this society. Really? Fifty years? I may not be around then. Sigh. I would really like to stick around long enough to see that.

Awesome, fun China!

Go ahead, have your drive-up windows, we have KFC delivery!

And Starbucks!

and cool city parks that are super safe!

Cuz

I borrowed Mimi's Facebook account the other day so I could anonymously stalk people, and ran across this photo on one of my cousin's Facebook pages.

These are my cousins on my mom's side of the family, the ones that were born at the time, that is. It was taken at Christmas on the bayou in Texas where my grandparents were living at the time.

I'm the blonde in the middle wearing the blue jumper.

Facebook and even Blogspot are blocked by the Great Firewall of China, so I have to get on a VPN to view them. The VPN is usually super-slow, which is why I haven't updated this blog in such a long time (and is why I don't do Facebook...that and the fact that I don't have time for one more thing.)

Speaking of yawning gaps...

Mimi loungeth under a chair.

She would be so embarrassed if she knew I posted these pics! :-)

(Dear people who think I think Mimi would really be embarrassed, I'm KIDDING!)

The yawning gap between rich and poor

Louis Vuitton suitcase, an ostentatious monstrosity on Nanjing Road West in Shanghai.

Pathetic suburbs on the outskirts of Shanghai where the poor migrants can afford to live.

Welcome to Shanghai, the real Shanghai. For all I knew, the real Shanghai was all glitz and glamour. But today I took a subway out to the "suburbs," and saw the other real Shanghai. Both extremes exist. Seems like everyone here is really rich or really poor.

Faster than a speeding bullet

The first time I saw one of these trains swoosh past a few feet from where I was standing, I couldn't breathe. I stood frozen on the steps of the train platform as one of these trains sped by on its way to another city. These trains are airplane fast. I love 'em.

The Plane Ride

Been traveling in Thailand....

I’m getting dirty looks but it’s not my fault.

There are two empty seats on the plane, and they are between the window and me. Everyone else is crammed in like sardines. I am no fool; I stretch out across three seats to take a nap. I pull the blanket over my head hoping it will deflect the glares of fellow passengers (who are probably wishing about now that they had prayed about this plane trip as much as I did).

A Chinese lady up ahead is throwing up. So many Chinese get motion sickness, as do I. I take her husband some Dramamine and quietly explain in Chinese what it is. He is so trusting – and desperate – that he takes this foreign medicine from me. The lady takes the medicine and sleeps like a baby for the rest of the trip. (In case you are wondering, they don’t want my seats because they have bulkhead seats where they can stretch their legs out.)

Now the other passengers, some Caucasians, glare at me because I spoke Chinese fairly fluently. Now they really hate me. You know, you get criticized if you don’t learn a language, but then you learn one and people think you are trying to show off.

Well, think what they may, I just couldn’t let that lady throw up the entire trip. I know what it feels like to suffer. I was sick on a 13-hour bus one time and no one should have to suffer through that misery if a cure is handy.

I’ve been to Thailand. Again. I was there in September too. No, not the beach. I sat within the same four walls of the same meeting room for three full weeks of the last seven. I am meetinged out. Being in Thailand only makes me like China more.

When I get back to China Mimi will go berserk and act like she can’t live without me.

This is my life as of late.

Saturday Afternoon in Bamboo Forest

In the span of two days we went from sweat to sweaters. Fall made an abrupt but welcome arrival in Bamboo Forest.

I tutored my little neighbor yesterday in English. He is so quick to learn, and he is able to practically apply his knowledge immediately. For example, I said the word "nose," and he quickly pointed to his nose. And since he was there, he decided to pick his nose! What a smarty.

In the afternoon I rode my e-bike to a tea house, and along the way I saw a young man doing a market survey with a middle-age woman. This is only odd because they were standing in the middle of the road to do the survey. I had to swerve to dodge them.

I also had to swerve to dodge a lady talking on her cell phone. At least in this country it is regarded as a nuisance and is against the law.

But I got to the tea house, sat outside, drank the best latte I've ever had in this country that wasn't made by Starbucks (yes, Chinese tea houses now also serve coffee), and read a John Grisham book for a couple of hours. I seldom have time to do this, so it was a welcome respite, a lovely day in the Middle Kingdom.

The Kingdom of Thailand

I'm in Thailand for two weeks. Here are a few random shots from Bangkok.

Most properties have a little "god" booth like this one in the corner of the land, supposedly to protect the property.

This guy is burning incense and praying at an altar set up at the hospital. This hospital is super posh. Inside it has two Starbucks, two Au Bon Pair bakeries, McDonalds, several fancy Thai restaurants, hotel rooms, interiors that look like a 5-star hotel, and cheap, world-class medical care.

I was in Bangkok for a few days, but now I am in northern Thailand. Not vacation.

Boy oh boy

This boy is my two-year-old across-the-hall neighbor and the girl is his two-year-old friend ... at the boy's house. The girl is sweet and quiet. The boy has ants in his pants.

Somehow against my will I got roped into teaching English to this boy once a week, on Saturday mornings, for 30 minutes each time. While I am trying to teach him words like nose, dog, blue, foot, this is what he is doing:

riding his police car around the house. For the entire 30 minutes the only time he looked at me was when I took his picture. The rest of the time he zoomed down the hall, colored pictures, and acted like a monkey. I was pretty excited about his inattention, because it surely meant the teaching experiment was a total failure, and after a few weeks I would be relieved on my teaching duties.

That doggone kid. At the end of the half-hour session, he knew exactly how to say nose, dog, blue, foot, and all the other words I tried to teach him.

Don't you hate it when that happens?

Do I need one?

Do you have a life verse? Do you need one? What are they? (Don't fret if you don't know.) I read a humorous article about them...it's about culture and religion and fitting in among other believers. Click here to read it.

One Hot Tamale

The heat is killing me. I melt faster than a popsicle the second I step outside. The transportation options are un-air-conditioned buses, bikes, and taxis (you have to walk to the street and wait in the sun to flag one down). It makes me want to go NO WHERE.

All winter long I waited for warmer weather so I could get out more, and now it's so hot I loathe going out the door. But when I do I see how other people beat the heat. Here's how one guy does it.

It looks so quaint, yeah? But in my experience the sweat slides from my forehead into my eyes, burning them so badly I can't read what is on the pages of the book.

My favorite activity these days is checking out the 15-day online weather forecast to see if 15 days from now it is going to be any cooler. Today is the first day that I've noticed cooler temperatures. Just 15 more days until it arrives! Yea!

Too bad for me, I'm going to the tropics 13 days from now.

The Big City

I grew up in a small town. Everyone knew everyone else. That was fun.

Now I live in a big city. Nobody knows everyone else. This is also fun.

I like waking up in the morning knowing I can do whatever I want to do. (I can't milk a cow, but I did say I can do whatever I want to do. I don't want to milk a cow.)

In this city, I can go shopping, drink coffee, buy what I need, walk through a bamboo forest undisturbed by others, climb a mountain, ride a boat, eat Chinese food, eat Mexican food, and even go to Burger King or Dunkin' Donuts if I want (but I don't).

Life in the big city suits me.