After a six-month hiatus, we’ll try this again…

In May, I was still struggling with my decision to return to China. During the summer, I was struggling with my decision to return to China. I’m now back in China and it’s good to be back. 🙂

I’ve been spending my first week moving into my new apartment (pictures will come when it’s clean and settled) and attending Chinese class. I have two roommates this year and I’m excited to be much closer to both the school where I teach and the school where I study.

This past weekend we had a joint wrshp service with our Chinese friends. Pstr Bare preached in English and Chinese which is very fun to see/hear/try to understand. He’s much easier to understand than a Chinese person! We recieved some of our new teachers from the airport (complete with signs!) and had a couple of good days helping them get acquainted with the smoggy city.

On Sunday afternoon, there was a get-together for some of the kids who went to America with Hannah this summer.  One of the homeschool boys hosted the party at his “house”.  Here are some things I observed while at the party:

1) The further you get from the city center, the larger the dwellings become. (This is probably not true, but I’m trying to use my Chinese logic so bear with me). This “house” (which was 6 floors) was huge and beautiful inside. They had a very small ‘backyard’ which was used for their garden, currently holding only pumpkin plants. They must really love pumpkin!

2) If it rains really hard for 24 hours straight, you will end up with a 1-2 inch wide crack along your support wall in your basement. I decided to ignore this one and just hope there would be no accidents. 🙂

3) If you finish your cup of tea, another one will promptly be given to you, until you stop finishing your cups of tea. (Thankfully the house had 4? bathrooms to choose from).

4) If you mix 8 middle school boys, a large remote-controlled/wifi-controlled helicopter, and glass chandeliers, something/somebody will be broken.  Thankfully, it was only the helicopter.  (Side note: this was probably the coolest toy helicopter I’ve ever seen…I kind of want one)

5) If you are a man, in China, and at any kind of party, you will be asked to drink baijiu. (白酒) This literally means “white alcohol” and it is very potent. My favorite use for it is cleaning the kitchen and I try to never drink it. I have been to many dinners with former (adult) students where the men would get out of hand with their drinking. (see previous post on alcohol culture in China) This dinner was nothing like those. The men at this party were able to control themselves just fine. Perhaps it was because the baijiu they were drinking was 1600元 per liter bottle (that’s roughly $250) and they wanted to savor it.  I tried some. The brand is Maotai and it’s apparently one of the best baijiu brands in China (and 53% alcohol). The dad of one of our students told us the cost of the bottle. Later we found out that his company gave him the bottle of Maotai…which is interesting because he is the owner of the company. Another dad told us that he has a bottle of 1963 Maotai worth half a million CNY. Hehehe….  Below is a picture of the shot glass I used:

6) There are in fact class divisions among the people at any given party in China.  Two of the other foreign teachers and I were observing this phenomenon.  If you are a parent in China and you have any sort of wealth, you WILL have an Aiyi (pronounced “eye-ee”).  This is basically a nanny-type person who a household will hire to do various jobs around the house. She’ll really do whatever you need her to do. Cook. Clean. Raise your children for you.  There were no less than 5 (yes, 5) Aiyis at this party…and I’m pretty sure 3 of them belonged to the house hosting.  (There are actually at least 2 live-in aiyis because we saw their bedrooms.)  The aiyis do not get to eat until everyone else has eaten (and had enough to eat), they play with the small children and basically raise them for the parents.  Any amount of children over one and it becomes way too much to handle for the mother! 🙂  I know you’re probably laughing right now (possibly my mother who had 4 kids in just under 6 years)… I laugh every time I think of this.  It’s just part of their culture. Almost all of our students have aiyis at home. Even the families who have only one child….and the child is in school.  It’s best to not ask.

7) Our students’ fathers are way more influential than we had originally thought. Two are lawyers (one of which was a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School and is now at one of the top three universities in China), one is an IT guy for the government…maybe I can convince him to remove the block on facebook…one is an executive for Rolls Royce Jet Engine division. They still like drinking their baijiu.

Welcome back to the craziness of China!