6 Months in China: Figuring Out The Rules

Each day of my kindergarten class I begin with a routine. The routine starts with a song, reviews easy kindergarten vocabulary like the ABCs and the weather, and ends with the rules. Rules matter.

English class rules are:

1. I will sit properly.
2. I will raise my hand.
3. I will listen carefully.
4. I will be kind.
5. I will do my best.
6. I will speak English.

Future versions will eliminate the adverbs. These rules govern the class each day. Students and myself are expected to follow these rules. They are written down in a concise sort of simplified mission statement that we cover each day. China, and the real world, is not quite simple. There are many unwritten rules we follow.

Some examples of unwritten rules and etiquette in America: 

• Not talking on the phone during a performance at the Theatre.
• Using your inside voice inside
• Parking your car with more than 1inch of space between your car and the car in front of you
• Covering your mouth when you sneeze or cough
• Saying bless you when someone sneezes
• Avoiding extended periods of eye contact with strangers

Now, occasionally, people violate these rules.

In China, many of these rules do not exist. The consequences:

• People answering their phone during theatre performances, talking loudly to their friends, which results in the venue cranking the volume to the max to be heard over people talking.
• Yelling inside. I listened to two woman talk at the bank the other day about what kind of clothes they had just bought. If I did not know what they were saying I would have thought they were fighting.
• You can park wherever you want. Sidewalks, in the middle of the road or intersection, grass patches, wherever.
• People not do not cover their mouth. Instead they, without shame, urinate, defecate, spit, snot-rocket, and cough.
• Theres is no word for bless you. Or excuse me. Or sorry, what was that you just said? or No.
• People stare here. I enjoy a staredown on a regular basis, where I get into a staring fight with a stranger, assert my dominance, and make them look away before I do. It makes me feel uncomfortable, but is kind of a unique challenge.

Figuring out what rules don’t exist in China that exist back in America is easy. The bigger challenge is figuring out what rules DO exist. Some of these are written down in guidebooks, others I have had to ask people to explain to me, and there are MANY that I still have no idea exist, and even if I know exist, cannot figure out the implications. There are too many to know or remember for this post. I’m sure books have been written on this subject. Trying to figure out the answer for reasons here can be an impossible challenge, but I am constantly trying to ask Chinese people “为什么？” or “Why?” So I try to just have the rules here, not the basis behind them.

So. Here’s some rules that DO exist in China.

In Chinese, rules are called “规则” or “Guize” (pronounced “Gwadezeh”).

• Don’t Call People Out: Don’t call anyone out on anything ever. Someone is blowing smoke right in your face in a train station right in front of a sign apathetically posted saying “NO SMOKING” in English & Chinese? Don’t call them out.
• Cutting in line: If there is any space between two people waiting in line at all, like, if there is a 6 inch gap between two people, it is OK to get between these two people in line. If they call you out on it, either argue with them endlessly, or go to the back of the line. Just remember the first rule.
• Pushing with minimal force: It’s okay to push and shove people when getting on or off a bus or train, but only with a small amount of force. If you push people too hard they think you are rude and violent. If you push them too soft, they will not move.
• Smoking: You can talk on your phone on the bus, but do not smoke or eat anything smelly. Inside the bus station or underground train station it is OK to smoke or eat, just not on the actual vehicle.
• Always answer your phone: Answer your phone anytime anyone calls, no matter where you are. In the shower? Answer it. On the John? Answer it. In a meeting negotiating with your boss not to fire you? Answer it. Driving a bus with 100 people on it? Answer it. Teaching class with parents observing you? Answer it. If not, people will be very upset and bewildered as to why you did not answer their phone on the second ring.
• Chopsticks sideways, not up: As a foreigner you can get away with this. But you should keep your chopsticks horizontal in your bowl if you are setting them down. Vertical chopsticks remind people of death or something.
• Hand over cards/cash/receipts: When giving or receiving anything, use both hands, and bow a little as a way to say thank you. If you are holding stuff with your other hand, like your phone, then it’s not expected.
• Shaking hands. Many Chinese give you the worst dead fish handshake you’ve ever felt. Mostly, they just don’t do it here. It’s a sanitation thing, and to be honest, might be a good idea for us germophobes in America.
• Walk, bike, and drive slow. The slower the better. Don’t let your car go above 25 MPH, too dangerous. Bike at a walking speed. Walk slower than you thought was possible.
• Don’t say no to people higher up on the power distance chain. This really throws our boss off at school, since she is not used to people saying no to her ever. This one is tricky, since we have to say no to not be exploited.
• It’s OK to lie. Since there are no set in stone ethics of right and wrong, lying is normal here. It drives me insane.
• Taking a nap at work is OK. Just make sure it is between 12:30-2:30 pm, and you aren’t missing any important meetings. I don’t partake in this, but most Chinese staff do.
• Prices can be incorrect. If something you are buying rings up for the wrong amount, which it almost always does, there is no convincing the person running the cash register to give you the product for the advertised price. Again, Lying is OK. 
• Keep the windows open: Gotta let that fresh 300 PMI polluted air in each day, otherwise you may get sick from the lack of fresh air. I can’t even.
• Bring multiple gifts: When visiting someone at their home, with one of the gifts being some sort of fresh fruit. The more, the better.
• Shoes off, booties/slippers on: This also applies to visiting people’s homes.
• Get more food than you can eat: At restaurants or at home, make many dishes, and way more than people can eat. Don’t finish off a dish, or the host will think you are hungry and buy/make more dishes.

There are many more rules that could be on this list, but this is a good start. Each day I learn a little bit more about some of the rules in China. Many things I do not expect to ever understand.

What are some other rules? Either in the USA or China? I think each nation, region, city, neighborhood, family, and workplace has it’s own unique cultural rules. Sometimes they’re written. Sometimes they’re not. I like to talk about them. What rules do you have in your life?

Thanks for reading.

First time? My wife Valerie and I are living and teaching Kindergarten English in Wuhan, China this year. You can visit her blog here. I also post updates each day on Instagram.

October Update: Highs and Lows

Things in China are going pretty well for the most part. I haven’t updated in a while besides lots of pictures on Instagram / Facebook, but I figured it was high due a new blog post. I would like to write about our first Taobao order, which was a whole blog post worth of experience in itself. So, without hesitation, here’s some current highs and lows of our experience in China.

---

 

HIGHS

• We got paid! Our first payday came October 10th, and it is nice to have some cash in our pocket here. While we have plenty of cash saved in our emergency fund to fly home at any point, we had not been paid since the end of July in Milwaukee, essentially going all of August and September without any income.

RMB, Yuan, Kuai, Money, complete with our Dave Ramsey style Envelope system. Budgeting gone global!

• Figuring out how Taobao works. Thanks to a very helpful post on Reddit we figured out how to order things on Taobao, which is basically like Ebay for Everything in China. We got lots of American food including BBQ sauce, spices in little baggies that look suspiciously like drugs, CHEESE!, butter, whole wheat flour, all sorts of stuff like this.

Oregano, Thyme, Rosemary, yummy Italian seasonings! Definitely not drugs!

• We finally got a vacuum & an air purifier! While our apartment was relatively clean compared to many Chinese apartments, it had not been vacuumed since we arrived. Being able to vacuum gave us a bit of our sanity back as there was hair and other dusty particles on our couch from whoever lived here before us. The air purifier, I’m not really sure how much it does, but it takes out some of the pollution and dust from the air. Since we are trying to treat our apartment like its own contained International Space Station with plants and an air filter, this is nice to have. Makes our air more pure in our apartment.

Our air purifier. The blue light at the top means the air is relatively clean right now. This was about $110, but compared to lung cancer is quite cheap.

• We have found food that we like! We typically eat cookies for breakfast, but there is also sometimes 包子（BaoZi), which are a hot steamed bun stuffed with meat and sauce on the inside. There are also 热干面 (ReGanMian), which are a kind of hot noodle slathered in sesame butter. The Ramen noodles here are surprisingly good and there are about 100 varieties of them at the store. We also enjoy some street wraps, which are called 卷并, which literally translates to Rolled Tortilla Frybread, or something like that. We told the school that we didn’t really like the food they were serving us for lunch and they have succeeded in fixing it by making it hot, having more, and making it taste better, honestly. So now we eat at the Kindergarten for lunch most days. The food here is SUPER SUPER cheap. We can go out to eat at a restaurant for anywhere from 园10-25 RMB, or $2-4 USD. This is, for the most part, cheaper than it costs for us to cook within our own home, so we end up eating out probably about 1/2 of the days and eating in the other half.
• We are learning some Mandarin, so can now sort of kind of communicate with people. Valerie and I meet with a teacher from the school on Tuesday nights for about 2 hours to study mandarin. We are focusing on questions, basic grammar, food vocabulary, pinyin spelling, character and stroke order, and pronunciation. All very helpful. While I typically do not understand hardly anything they say back to me, we now have learned some of the basic ways to form and pronounce questions.
• We really enjoy our jobs. Working with 3-5 year olds is very rewarding. Kids are able to love and appreciate you as a teacher in a way that I did not even know possible. Several of my students run up and give me a hug spontaneously each day. We really connect with our students and the work is rewarding most of the time. Obviously, with any job, it has its challenges, but we really enjoy working at the school.

Chinese Fire Drill at school! A real live Chinese fire drill!

• Our internet is good so we are able to Skype and call people in the USA pretty easily and consistently. We try to call someone almost every day despite the 12 hour time zone difference. This is really awesome, and I have started videoing with people on a very regular basis. This has been really nice, as we were skeptical about how good this would be before we came. China + Internet do not always get along very well, but thankfully Skype and calling over wifi works most of the time.
• Badminton. We have been playing 2-3 times a week, and we both really enjoy it. There is a pretty OK gym at the school that we go to and play at, often with Wesley and Marissa, our friends/coworkers, and sometimes withsome of the Chinese teachers and other ESL teachers as well. They take this very seriously here and I really enjoy the sport.
  

  A badminton tournemant at a local university. Unfortunately they had the entire rock climbing wall closed for some reason in the other room due to this event. We asked the people at the front desk if they have a schedule of events for the gym so that we could check if it was going to be closed before travelling 1 hour across the city to go to the gym, and they said no. We asked them if it was on their website somewhere, and they said no. We asked them how we were supposed to know when the gym is open and she said the only way to know is by asking the rock climbing professor.

 

---

LOWS

• Air Quality. The air quality is really unbelievably bad. It is overwhelming at times. Last weekend we wanted to go out and do something instead of staying inside our apartment all day but as soon as I stepped outside I got a headache. I am very health conscious and so rather paranoid of things like lung cancer and other issues. It sometimes burns by eyes, and throat, and will leave me with a sore throat and cough for days. This is incredibly discouraging and we are trying to figure out ways to cope with it, but in my opinion, this really affects the quality of life for everyone in a city in China. The best way I can describe it would be to be walking next to a person grinding concrete with dust flying in the air, except that it tastes like dirt and chemicals. It’s really the worst. We are even considering getting a Wii so that we can do more physical activities within our apartment without exposure to the polluted air.
  

  Nice day with blue skies our second week in China. It was like this for about two weeks straight at the beginning of October.

  

  More average day with pollution outside. I swear it is not natural clouds, just smog. Notice the lack of sunshine.

• Mandarin is really really hard and can be quite discouraging at times. Sometimes when I try and talk to someone in Chinese they will just not talk to me at all and go find someone who speaks English. And I don’t mean try and talk to me, I mean, they will completely stop talking and go find someone else. Very discouraging. Anyways, we have learned some food, but conversation is difficult. Just today I took this picture below to memorize what is on this menu at the Baozi (steamed bun with meat inside) restaurant/tienda.
  

  Baozi menu. I will learn all of these characters so that I can try all the different kinds!

• Making friends is difficult. I would really like to make some Chinese guy friends to be able to play badminton or soccer or something with, but there are not very many opportunities to do so. There is literally one male teacher at our school who is Chinese, the rest of us guys are English teachers. We have connected well with the group that we meet with on Sunday mornings for church, but I am having a hard time meeting new people and making friends. My plan for this is to just be really outgoing at the gym and join some people in basketball or badminton, as well as starting to play Xiangqi, a funky and very popular Chinese chess.
• Traveling anywhere in any mode of transportation can be really frustrating. Biking is dangerous as people, scooters, buses, taxis, and vans will come out of nowheresville and cut us off. It is constant conflict management and it really stresses us Americans out. People walk out without looking to see if traffic is coming. It takes FOREVER to take the bus anywhere. Taxis are the best way to get around as they only cost about $3-5 USD depending on how far we are going, but in certain parts of the city it is just basically impossible to get a cab so we end up taking the bus which can take literally like 1.5 hours to go something like 6 miles.
  

  This was a car accident on a very major road. They were completely stopping traffic, and traffic was backed up for, literally, like 3 miles on this road. When people get into an accident, which happens very frequently, they stay in the exact spot until the police arrive. On this day it delayed our bus for about 40 minutes. Ugh.

• Backwards China. Many things are done very inefficiently. Banking is a nightmare. Websites are buggy. Sanitation is a complete joke. Children are undisciplined. Bikes are super slow. People avoid saying no, instead of communicating directly. This list is long, but a lot of this is just culture shock, not right or wrong. Just challenging to adapt to.
• Missing America, especially friends and family. 

 

---

That’s all. I am still posting consistently on Instagram, although I am considering switching to wordpress as a platform for the photos instead of Instagram for all of the people who are interested but not on Facebook or Instagram.

Questions? Want pictures of something in particular? Let me know!

Backwards China

Before coming to China I was told many things are done differently here. Some would say backwards. These have many reactions varying from disgust, surprise, disappointment, excitement, and remembering all cross cultural training from college to recognize that things here are not necessarily wrong, just different. So different.

Before I get to that, here are most of my students in the Deer Classroom:

Most of the students in the Deer Classroom.

Some noteable differences include:

---

 

– People Park Their Car Anywhere and Everywhere. Literally wherever they want. This includes in the middle of the road, on the sidewalk, in front of the gate to your apartment complex, on the sidewalk in front of a restaurant. You name it. If you think your car can fit somewhere, you can park there. From a driving perspective it is awesome. From an everything else perspective, it is just ridiculous.

– The heat is turned on in the summer. It is like 90 degrees or so outside during the afternoon here when the children should be napping at school. Since my office is also the children’s napping area, I get to see this every day. I typically set the air conditioning to a nice 25 C, or 77 F. When they nap they turn my air conditioning off and change the temperature up from 25C (77F) to 29C (84F), which is quite toasty. So I guess technically this is still cooler than outside, but sometimes they will just straight up turn the AC off during naptime which will lead my room to become in the 90s during naptime, in the heat of the afternoon.

– They often have air conditioning on with the window wide open next to it. ‘Nuff said.

– Lights are turned off more than they are on. At our apartment complex there are these awesome lights along the walkway that light up the sidewalks. They are only lit until like 8 or 9pm, after that they are turned off. Even better than this is that at the school’s gymnasium, instead of lighting the hallways to the rooms, the pool, and the gym, the staff uses flashlights to walk around and lead people to the room. When we went to play Ping Pong, they only turned the lights on over the table we were playing on instead of the same room. Not that electricity is expensive here – as far as I can understand it is much cheaper than the states.

Funky eyeball computer speakers to replace the ones I fried!

– The electronics are different. Electronics have two prongs, not 3, and they are not polarized, which means that they do not have 2 different sized prongs. I have so far fried my computer speakers and my hot water heater trying to use their electricity. And that’s with a voltage converter and proper adapters.

Cathy, our supervisor, and her husband Roy and their child at a restaurant about 1 block from our house! Yum!

– Hot soup or noodles are served 3 meals a day. Most notably including breakfast. While I enjoy hot soup and noodles for dinner, I find that eating hot soup for breakfast during the summer to be just, well, different.

– They do not drink ice water. Chinese people do not really drink ice water at all. They have hot water instead, often unflavored hot water. We got drinks and popcorn at the movie theater and they gave us a warm lemon tea water instead of ice water or something. This makes the ice bucket challenge much more of a challenge, really. It is hard to find ice!

– Traffic does not use turn signals. This can be very confusing. Many times people walking, biking, driving a moto scooter, or driving, will simply drive straight at you. With no turn signals, it makes it hard to get out of their way. Especially if you cannot see the motos because their lights are not on in the middle of the night. That is a thing.

The rugrats themselves doing some sort of group dance thing. These group dance things are very popular here.

– Kindergarten and preschool here is loooooong. The students are here 9-10 hours each day. Compared to most preschools in the States that are only a few hours long, this is quite extensive.

– Meetings, and everything else, are done last minute here. The Chinese work system does not really consider your personal out-of-work life important. So they will often ask you to do things very last minute without considering that you might have personal plans. We have a good understanding at this point with the school about this, that if we are not told at least 1 week in advance, that it probably will not happen if it is outside of work hours. We have a good cultural excuse. The Chinese work long, long hours, like 10-11 hrs a day at the Kindergarten and are typically not paid any more than 8 hours of work per day.

– Most children, before they are potty trained, pee in the street. In fact, they do not even have diapers on. They just wear sort of little pants with giant holes underneath. I would post a photo of this but I feel that it would be inappropriate. So when they need to go, they go, pretty much wherever they want. I have seen kids peeing in the ‘hospital,’ on sidewalks, in the grass, over grates, over trash containers, pretty much wherever. Just today a kid peed right in front of the entrance to the school, right between where the students wash their hands and before they have their temperature checked by the nurse. With no effort by anyone to clean it up. I guess that’s why the new laminate floor in the entrance to the school is yellow!

Air pollution blocking out the sun.

–While Traffic is Scary, Bicycling Is Quite Safe, and Slow Here. We bought the fastest bikes we could find for under $200. They cost about $50 each, and they are low quality Chinese single speeds. My bottom bracket is creaking already. I do not think it will survive. However, we live about 1 mile away from the school so it is about a 9 minute bike ride to school and 9 minute ride back. Very slow, easy, and nice. There are giant bike lanes and sidewalks separated by trees from the main road, which makes cycling feel much safer than the states. Suburban areas in the USA are scary to bike in. Mind you, we bike THROUGH some very polluted air and water, but at least we are not competing with cars going 60 MPH next to us.

– Meat is chopped, not separated. The bones are not removed from the meat here, so eating it can be a bit of a challenge. Instead of having  a section on the lunch tray for milk, there is a section on the lunch tray for spitting out bones and things like this.

---

There is much more that we are missing, but that will have to do for now! Thanks for reading, and feel free to Skype or WeChat us sometime! We’d love to talk!

I should also note that I have been adding a photo each day on Instagram at instagram.com/dshinabarger . Let me know if you want to see pictures of anything in particular! It seems like most people like pictures better than text anyways 🙂

Thanks for reading!

Going to China!

David:

Valerie and I are preparing to move to China for one year to become Kindergarten English teachers. We have our stuff packed, our finances in order, and are pretty much ready to roll. As much as you can be ready for this sort of thing.

Our flight leaves Wednesday morning at 1AM on August the 20th. We should have a VPN when we get to China, so I am hoping and planning to blog every once in a while with pictures and things. This will be our main blog site during our trip, so please, subscribe via e-mail, add us to your feedly, or just check my (David) Facebook, where links to this blog will be showing up.

One thing about moving abroad are the neverending questions. Questions, questions, questions. They never end. Most of these questions were asked directly to Wesley and Marissa. There are many that I have not included as well.

I thought I’d compile all of the questions I have asked of Wesley and Marissa Lawton, or of the school, so far, along with some concise answers.

Here they are:

---

 

QUESTIONS

1. What is the time difference? About 12 hours, depending where you live. So 7AM in Wuhan is 7pm in MI, give or take an hour. Wuhan is 12 hours ahead, so 7PM on Friday night is 7AM Saturday in Wuhan, China.
2. What is the weather like? Hot and coldwise, it is like St. Louis. So below freezing in winter, very hot in the summer. However, it is also a tropical monsoon area, so lots of rain during summer, and more sun during winter.
3. What is your apartment / living situation like? It is two bedroom, and supposedly has an American style bathroom and shower, and we will be in a high rise apartment with an elevator. But we will know better once we are there.
4. How much are plane tickets? Well, we got our tickets for around $710 per person, for one way. So round trip would be at LEAST 1500 per person. And that is purchasing them like 2-3 months in advance.
5. Are you certified teacher? To Chinese standards, yes. But in reality, not really. We completed an online TEFL course which took about 40 hours, plus $200 or so per person. It was officially a 140 hour course, but definitely did not take that long. It was really easy, and I learned a little bit about grammar.
6. Did you have to get a Visa? Yes, we got a work “Z” Visa. We used a website called Chinese Visa Express so that we didn’t have to make 2 visits to the Chinese embassy.
7. What is the work like? We will be Kindergarten teachers teaching English. I am really looking forward to it, and I expect it will be a lot of fun.
8. How much stuff can you bring with? For both Valerie and I we get: 4 giant checked bags, 2 carry ons, and 2 personal items/small backpacks.
9. Are there any foods that are impossible to get while there? Cheese is really hard to get. So is Mexican food.  But apparently you can use a website called TaoBao, which is like Amazon, to order cheese and refrigerated American dairy products delivered straight to your door.
10. Are there big spiders or other creepy crawlies? Not really. Or so they say.
11. What is the pay like? We will be getting paid around $18,000 per person for the year, plus healthcare, housing, and meals at the school, as well as flight reimbursements. While not the most amazing pay, it is much better pay than the US Peace Corps or other similar “Volunteer” experiences. We expect to use a good chunk of the payment to pay off our student loans.
12. Do you have access to fresh fruit? Yes.
13. Is Facebook blocked? With a VPN, no.
14. Can you buy coat hangers and umbrellas in China? Yes. They are made there.
15. Do you need to speak Mandarin to survive? No, and yes. Valerie and I are both hoping to study, and take lessons, while in China. At this point in my life I can count to 10, say hello, thank you, and my name is David.
    

    ---

Thanks for reading, everyone! I look forward to continuing to update you on our newest adventure!

-David

 

It’s a Wrap! Ending the Garbage Experiment

I finished my garbage experience last Friday. I know, it can be hard to find time to blog sometime.

I didn’t really end up with any more garbage than I had from my last post, update #2.

The reason is: I was required to collect, then recycle all of my trash for one week for my environmental science class. Kind of ironic, huh?

So, I should have collected more than I have right now. I’m just excited to finally throw this stuff away and not have to look at it anymore.

As part of the experiment I have begun to read No Impact Man by a Mr. Colin Beavan.In this book, a Manhattan local decided to go one year without making any impact by eliminating garbage, transportation, and electricity.

So far, so good!

So, I’ve been trying to figure out how I can eliminate basic wastes. Here are a few that I’ve come up with:

1) Bicycle more. This decreases the need for more stuff, more space, and less fossil fuel.

2) Carry a re-usable mug everywhere. This stops me from taking any tea, coffee, water, that is offered anywhere with an all-to-easy cup to dispose of.

3) Compost. I’ve started a compost bin. This isn’t my first attempt, but I’m hoping to actually get some dirt this time around instead of just nasty rotting sludge.

4) Buy less packaged food. This has been the hardest. Meijer really has nothing that is not packaged, including the vegetables. I think they used to have the bulk bins, but they probably had a problem with too many children eating cookies and chocolate covered raisins… now the nuts and grains come in plastic containers. They’re recyclable, but impossible to buy unpackaged.

5)  Eat IN more. It seems like few people my age know how to cook. This includes me at times. I’m working to rejuvenate the art of eating in more and eating out less. It costs less, is more fun, more rewarding, and probably tastes better than Applebees and McDonalds anyways.

 

I have been following a friend of mine Katie Green, in her experience in Uganda. She went a week living without electricity and running water. What would happen if someone did that here to make a statement?

Photo from Katie Green’s blog. Uganda. Read her blog!

Read her post here. 

I’ve been reading stories of Gandhi, a firm actioner who didn’t wait for someone else to begin changing culture. Let’s figure out what impact we can have as individuals in improving the world, and culture that we live in.

As my African History professor said yesterday, “We are all agents of social change, whether we like it or not.”