5.12

All around campus are signs commemorating the Sichuan earthquake.

It's a far away place from here (about as far as Maine is from Texas), but the effects of it are still felt. I got to talk to some my students about it when they came into the office today. They told me about how they were in school at the time, studying for the college entrance exam, and didn't know it had happened or how serious it was until they got home that evening. When they did finally see the TV reports they said they couldn't stop crying.

A few weeks ago someone forwarded me this slideshow:
NPR Coverage of the Sichuan Earthquake
I'd encourage you to watch it, but you may need some tissues. The poem "Elegy" by He Xiaozhu at the end of it made me cry.

NPR has also done a series about one year after the quake. And so has China Daily. If you have time, they're both worth perusing.

SUNDAY SNAPSHOT

Recently, Erika, Lindsay, Becky and I realized that we've been living
in the new apartments for more than 2 months now, but we haven't had
much of a chance to get to know our neighbors. We decided it'd be a
good idea to try to have a pot-luck picnic with our neighbors now
that the weather is warm. We put together little invitations and
tried to personally invite all the foreign students and their
families who live in our building. There's about 15 apartments total.
We had to explain what a pot-luck was, but I think they got the idea.

So, for dinner this evening we had a few meat, rice, and vegetable
dishes cooked Sudan-style (they said it wasn't exactly Sudanese food
since they couldn't get all the same vegetables here in China),
Sudanese bread, authentic Vietnamese fried spring rolls (they called
them something else, but that's the best way to describe them),
Vietnamese candy, American potato salad, pasta salad, fruit salad,
cookies, and Italian herb bread. We all introduced ourselves in
Chinese and English or in which ever language we could speak, and
then introduced our dishes.
I'm probably spelling these names wrong, but I'll give it a try.
From the left: Afra and her baby, Hannai, M..(something), Mohammed and his
son (all from Sudan), Huang and I forgot his name (from Vietnam), me
(from USA), Tong Yiyuan (from Japan), forgot his name too (from
Veitnam), Moatsim (from Sudan), Deng (from Vietnam who lives across
the hall from me. His wife and child were here earlier this year but
went back home for a visit), and Erika (from USA). Most of the men
are engineering Ph.D. or Masters students. The women from Sudan are
here with their husbands. We also have Korean neighbors, but none of
them came.

We ate and we talked (in Chinese, English, Arabic, and Vietnamese)
for a good two hours, until it got dark. All and all, a lot of fun!
Now I know my neighbors a lot better and you do too! I look forward
to learning their names better (its hard for me to remember names I've never heard before) and of course, getting to know them
better.

Also, Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers!

SUNDAY SNAPSHOT

You know it's spring when you see ...

Can you tell that I'm really excited that it's finally spring?

INCONVENIENCE & ADVENTURE - photo

Here we are waiting in the train station. Most of us still look happy.

小朋友！Little friends!

INCONVENIENCE & ADVENTURE - part III

The next hour it's more of the same. I get to talk to the girl in the pink hat a bit more. She also gets questions from those around her. "Are you their guide?" "Are you their translator?" "No, I'm just on the same train." "What do American babies eat?" "I don't know." "Why don't you ask them?" She's very patient, but I can also tell she feels tired. I'm tired, too.

The crowd does become more educated about how Americans care for their children: they get to see some diapers changed! Most Chinese babies don't wear diapers. Instead, their pants have a hole in the back, leaving their tush out in the open. I'm not sure how the parents manage it, but one things for sure, the Chinese aren't filling their landfills with diapers!

When I get back from the run to KFC, I get a text message from my teammates. They're on their way to the train station for their 7 PM train and they want to know if they should bring us some dinner. So much for me trying to take the earlier train! We don't need dinner, but one of them comes to find us and offers encouragement.

It gets to be 6:15 and the hour of our boarding is fast approaching. We gather our things together, but since we're near the gate, we don't bother to stand up. We figure the crowd will tell us when to move. Another announcement over the loud speaker is made (they've been making them the whole time, but because of the din, they're utterly undecipherable) and the girl (I wish I'd asked her name!) tells us it's another 10 minutes later now.

Our two friends on the 5:20 train call and tell us that their train is boarding soon, but that our train number is being displayed with theirs over their platform on the other side of the station. Our train has joined theirs. Are we in the wrong place again? We look at our platforms sign and see that our is still displayed, but so is theirs. Strange! But at least we're in the right place.

The crowd in the aisle still has not moved an inch yet and it's 6:50. The girl has realized this too, and tells us we need to be in one more aisle over. I ask a random person standing in front of my seat what train they're on. A woman shows me her ticket ... it's a different train!! We are in the wrong place! I grab my backpack, purse, one of the mother's suitcases and follow this girl with the pink hat. Weaving in and out and over, balancing and bumping, squeezing and pushing, and finally we're there. Me, the girl in the pink hat, and one mother and one baby. But where are the other three? We can't even see the crowd swaying as they make it through. It's another minute or so until they make it out, but we can't wait, this is only a quick stop for the train.

The ticket check lets me and the girl and the mother through the gate, we stand there on the other side and make sure the others are going to make it through. As soon as we see them through, we, the girl and I turn and hurry to get to the platform. She grabs one of the handles on the suitcase and helps me carry it down a long flight of stairs. At the bottom, there's a number of people waiting for the train. How did they all make it here so fast! I look back up the stairs, and the figures of the 5 others are small.

This platform has two sides, there's a train boarding on the left side, it's not ours though, it's the 5:20 train. There isn't a train to the right yet. By the time the others make it to the bottom of the stairs I've seen which way we need to walk to reach our car. A sign above points right to car 1 and left to car 18. Our car is number 3. I say goodbye to the pink hat girl and offer profuse thanks. Her car is number 6.

The train starts to pull in and we start booking it. I try to watch the numbers on the cars as the wizz by from behind us. Number 13 passes us. I realize we're practically at the other end of the train. Usually you can only board at your car - will we have time enough to get to number 3? I try to say back to the other women that I'm going to go ahead and so I can explain to the conductors to wait for the women with babies. Who knows how long they'll stop. They're already 4 hours behind!

As I speed away, I hear a thud and some gasps. I turn and see that the older woman has tripped and is lying forward on the platform. She quickly picks herself up and continues. At this point we're at number 7 car. I turn and ask the young woman conductor(in some sort of Chinese), "Can we get on here, because we have babies?" Without a second thought, she lets us on. So instead of rushing our way down the platform, we squeeze are way through the narrow aisles of 4 hard-sleeper cars. The aisle is about 3 feet wide when no one is sitting in the fold out chairs, and 1.5 feet wide, when someone is. Sorry to all those people we bumped.

Finally, we make it to our seats, which are actually the bottom bunks of a hard-sleeper that have already been slept in. We each have one, but we crowd into two so we can sit together. The train still hasn't started yet, so I guess we didn't have to jump on so early or rush so fast ... but better safe than sorry. 2 minutes later it starts up and we were finally on our way back to Ha'erbin.




"Did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train? No; for him to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a place of poetical pleasures." (G. K. Chesterton)

I don't think that G.K.C. ever experienced the Changchun train station. I wonder what he'd say about it if he had. If he'd have been there yesterday, maybe he'd have seen the wonders of the cavern that were the foreign babies and the poetical pleasures that were distinctly Chinese. Good thing I enjoy Chinese poetry.