Friday, July 18, 2008
A Typical Day
So a lot has happened since my last post. So today was the last day of a week of teaching at a Migrant Workers' kids school in a district in Shanghai. Here is some basic background information about migrant workers in China:
China's explosive economy is only reaching a small minority of the population. Much of the rural areas remain undeveloped, so people hungry for opportunity flock to the big cities to work. However, Shanghai and Beijing operate under 户口 systems. Without a 户口,basically legal documentation proving that you are a Shanghai or Beijing resident, you can't get any of the higher paying jobs in the city. Moreover, your kids don't get discounted education at schools in the city, so migrant workers have to pay extremely high fees to send their children to schools in the city.
As a response, migrant worker communities sometimes build their own schools for their own children. Needless to say, the conditions of these schools are much worse than for other Shanghainese kids. Further, these kids after they finish elementary school have no guarantee of even making it to middle school since middle school enrollment is by lottery, and these migrant kids do not get priority. Migrant workers are treated as second class citizens in their own country. Some people have even compared it to the apartheid system in South Africa since the discrimination is more or less institutionalized.
So it's to one of these schools that we went with a bunch of Fudan students to teach English and run a summer camp for a week. Here is a typical day
6am wakeup for DT...way too early, but this week we had no choice. Here is our hotel room that we're staying in for 6 weeks.
Breakfast: waking up early is worth it because of the breakfast here. Every morning we're greeted with hot fresh steamed buns right next to our hotel at this bun shop. There's everything from veggie buns to spicy meat buns to daikon buns. We usually get two or three and an iced soy milk. I don't know if you can read it but each bun is about 0.7元,which is about 10 cents USD. So basically we get breakfast for like a quarter every morning!!
We get to the bus station, a 20 min. walk from our hotel at 8am sharp every morning.
we run class every day for the kids. Class starts at 9am with a lunch break at 11, and it ends at 4. Every day felt like a very long and crazy springfest. Today was a short day so we prepared some t-shirts for them to decorate with acrylic paint. Some of them are very artistic.
It was really sad to say goodbye to them. In many ways they are the forgotten and disregarded of this society, but to God they are as every bit as precious as anyone else. Our DT through Isaiah 1 was very timely-- to encourage the oppressed and to give a voice and plead the case for those who have no voice or power in society.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Midnight Mountaineering
One thing we noticed about China was that there are little vendor stands everywhere. You would think that on this crazy mountain they wouldn’t bother building little shops and lugging stuff the mountain. However…
The hike was not nearly as dangerous as people here make it out to be. “It’s very dangerous!” 非常险!!they would constantly tell us. But when we arrived and started hiking, we noticed that there were hand rails accompanying every steep part of the trail, and the entire trail was comprised of stairs. So in fact it would be very hard to slip and fall.
However, difficulty was another category altogether. This was probably the most arduous hike I’ve ever gone on. It felt like a hike that was twice as long as Nevada falls, but instead of all the switch-backs it’s as if the park staff decided to build a trail straight up the side of the mountain with stairs. Some parts were basically like climbing a stone ladder.
Roundtrip was basically a 13-hour hike with some breaks in between. At the top the views were beautiful though. Here is the sunrise we saw at 5:00 AM
Some parts of these mountains looked like El Capitan’s Chinese cousin.
Notice that little line up the mountain, those are stairs
The scenery was nice
No explanation necessary.
One of the stone staircasesIt was an awesome trip but by the end we felt like our knees and joints were all about to give way. We were sad to leave Xian and say goodbye to George and all of our friends we met there. Now we’re off to Shanghai where much awaits us.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Night of Adventure
Although it looks close, it's basically on the other side of the city. As we got off of the right subway stop, we took a taxi to the train station since it's a bit of a walk from the subway station. We then proceeded to sprint around the entire train station trying to find where we were supposed to go. One we found out and got to the gate, it was like chariots of fire to the train gate. The train left at 6:58. We got there at 6:55 for the ticket officer to tell us that we were too late.
Uh oh, not good. The next morning we had an important appointment with George Hu in Xian, and he was coming to pick us up. So we needed to contact him. At the same time my family in Shanghai is worried about us, trying to contact us.
Then...Jasper realizes that he's lost his phone. He left it in the taxi on the way there. hurting! okay, at least we have my phone, i thought. I then realize that my phone is out of battery. Hurting! So we go around trying to find an outlet, none to be found. We finally find one and we plug in our phone, just long enough for a one of the worker ladies to come and shoo us away. Apparently, you can't use the outlets for free in China. But after some haggling (begging) she let us use the outlet. Eventually we contacted George, bought tickets for the next train, and was on our way. I feel like I burned three days' worth of calories in that two hour period.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Below is the Great Hall of the People, where every few years 2000+ communist leaders come together to discuss plans for future development. You can just feel the power of this place when you're in front of the building...very imposing. Actually the theme of Beijing, especially Tiananmen square was...Big and Imposing.
Below is 天坛,temple of heaven it's called. It's where the emperors went to worship the gods for good harvests since ancient days ~2500BC. Ancient cultures have a very consistent theme when it came to worship. They sacrificed animals there as well at a facility called "the animal killing facility" and were cooked at a place called "the divine kitchen," someplace I would have wanted to visit in its contemporary.
This mural was part of the exhibition at the temple of heaven. The images are of people doing grain worship. Interestingly, they had a conception of 上帝,the highest deity.
This was at the center of the temple, a really intense deity, apparently god of grain and harvest. People were still there praying to it, a bronze statue whose shiny surface was half worn and destroyed. I was reminded of John 6 and the bread of life.
In our next days we will be going to Xian!
Thursday, June 19, 2008
The Great wall and culinary adventures
Then we went finding a place to do DT. We stumbled upon a familiar sight. So it seems that the prices at Starbucks is the same as the US, ¥20 for a grande Americano, which is about $2.85. Only foreigners (who go to starbucks in their home country anyway...like us) visiting China can afford to get Starbucks casually. After that we took public transit to the Great Wall.
Pretty amazing sight, but it would've been better if the sky hadn't been thick with....smog/fog. We couldn't figure out what it was, but as you can see in the pictures the sky is one giant cloud...(of China's growing prosperity!)
The climb up the Great Wall is actually quite arduous. I don't know what the elevation change was, but the climb reminded me of upper Yosemite falls.
Finally, we ended the day with a meal from 全聚德, apparently the OG of Peking Duck places. It was actually pretty expensive, but oh was it good.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Beijing
We rode public transit from our hotel across the city to the Summer Palace, the place where the Empress Dowager went to hang out during the summer. Jasper decided to show off his skills at the Palace.
going to the great wall tomorrow, stay tuned!