Dalian Days and Dalian Nights
August 21 2011
Three weeks? I thought it was just a few days ago
that I wrote a bit of a blog. It has been such a full-on section
of life with non-stop everything. I look out the window and see (and hear) the
24 hour a day building across the street with eight cranes in one area and
several a block away along with jack hammers, lines of trucks, and just so many
workers and just like life in China it just does not stop. On the way to nearby
Kai Fa Qu, Dalian
I counted 41 cranes working on buildings in the 25 plus story range – apartment
buildings, then I saw as many a few kilometers further. And there is the new
city they are building nearby that will not only host the new China movie
industry but will have a yacht marina and housing for zillions or so people. The
area across the street from us will be million dollar homes (yes this
is China) in a walled-in area called ‘Chateau de Burgundy’ and a block away
what they are building is identical to where we were touring a year ago in
southern France. It is even being built to look old.
As I
sit here trying to get caught up from the past three weeks I hear the
fireworks. It is 6.30 AM Sunday. This is China – fireworks and more fireworks.
They love their fireworks. Anytime of the day or night there will suddenly be a
barrage of them. Whether here in the countryside, or in downtown Kai Fa Qu or along Pebble Beach, downtown
Dalian, or where we shop locally in Jinshitan (which
is also Pebble Beach – go figure) there will be smoke and ashes and noise of
the fireworks.
The
water to Pebble Beach (Dalian Golden Pebble Beach National Resort is the
first National Resort approved by the State Council of P.R China, the main
function of which is for hosting foreign guests) was turned off for a couple of
days. We filled our bath tub and every bucket we could find but since it was
Friday we decided to go into Dalian City (about an hour away) for the weekend
when school let out. Two other couples went with us. We took a car in (our
driver we call Jack, not that we know who Jack actually is, we just all have Jack’s phone
number on our phone and we ring Jack wherever we are and a car soon arrives and
we are taken where we want to go. It is often a different driver each time. We
just go up to the car and say Jack? and they nod and
off we go. We try not to look out the window when in a car. It is the scariest
thing you could imagine. Where there are three lanes marked, ‘Jack’, or the
shopping bus, or whatever we are in, often makes a fourth lane. Drivers rarely
signal and everyone goes really fast, beeping horns and coming so close to
constant disaster. I had to go into Dalian for some medial stuff last week and
my driver was easily doing close to a hundred coming back – it was a van. We
came to a blocked area of the freeway so instead of patiently (there is no patience
in our neck of the woods) he made a sudden turn off the freeway up a dirt
construction road around a hill and got back on the freeway further up where
there was no traffic jam. It was absolutely terrifying. Oh, and he was on his
cell phone most of the time. I suppose he felt he had to have me back at school
as quick as possible so I won’t miss any work. And of course there are no seat
belts.
So
this past Friday, with no water into our building or the whole area we went
into downtown Dalian. Outside of too many dealings with government officials to
get my working visa finally through we had not been in Dalian, except for one
night we had a school trip to Brooklyn, the expat pub and pizza diner in
downtown Dalian. Once our driver fought his way through the heavy traffic going
into the city (we went in two cars for eight of us, four couples, and six of us
ended up at the same hotel) and dumped our bag in our rooms we went out in
search of a meal. Our Chinese lessons begin next week so for now we depend on
our electronic translator. We went into a restaurant that covered several
stories. When we made enough gestures to prove without any doubt that we were
starving we were sent up to about the fifth or sixth floor. After being herded
into a small room the food started coming out and we cooked it in boiling somethings on our table. I have a video (and photos) that I
will post soon on my Dalian Page http://dalian.neuage.us/ that shows what would be too
difficult to explain. Needless to say the food was really good and we had some
of the best laughter up to that time.
So
after dinner everyone seemed to be in the mood for a drink (it is difficult to
keep people over 55 from partying) and we went off into the night. Near our
hotel was a 30+ story hotel with a name very similar to ours (so we initially
thought we had booked into the wrong place) and we were riding up and down the
elevator looking for a pub type of area and on the fourth floor saw a sign that
seemed to mean a place to have a drink. We barged into a room that had a bar
and lots of alcoholic bottles on the shelf only to instantly be met by about a
dozen women with tight red dresses. Realizing that we must be in the wrong area
we looked into another room with the same response. (I have a video of this too
but I think we were laughing so hard – damn rude Westerners,
that it may be a bit shaky – it will soon be on my Dalian page in the
video section). The third room seemed better as no women in red tight dresses
greeted us. We sat down at a long table on comfy sofas and hoped that someone
would soon be in with the drinks menu. Instead two people came in and started
handing out microphones and put on the large TV screen, we realized then that
this was actually a karaoke bar/room and Shawn, one of our traveling
mates/teachers/new found friend, said that we had a friend downstairs waiting
for us and off we went into the night again. We never did find a place to
drink. Like pirated DVDs prostitution is illegal in
China and like pirated DVD’s they are everywhere. We saw girls with flashing
neon badges dressed to the nines and signs that read ‘sex’ with large arrows.
The next day,
Saturday we headed to Zhonshan Square and had lots of
fun shopping, hopped on a falling apart bus because we were so tired to go to
the Ike store outside of downtown Dalian. We showed the driver an Ike shopping
bag and he held up three fingers so we paid the three yuan (47 cents USD, 45
cents Australian) and as all drivers he made his own lane which in our case was
the opposition direction lane. Somehow he squeezed back into the lane that was
our direction as cars came racing toward us and next we knew there was Ikea. I
wanted to go see the aircraft carrier that China is building which is only a
few blocks in back of Ikea but with all the bags of stuff we had purchased and
five tired old people trailing behind me it was not going to happen. We ended
up just buying lots of Swedish food because we need a change from Chinese food
and then Narda and I went to the Decathlon sports
store next to Ikea and bought really good bikes and helmets and locks and etc.
which will be delivered in a couple of days. Hopefully we won’t get killed
riding our bikes on these incredibly dangerous road ways. We plan on doing lots
of riding. Then we took the light rail, so crowded that we barely got in – New
York City subway you hold nothing on a crowded Chinese tram.
The shopping bus leaves Campus Village (where we live) on Tuesday and
Thursday evenings and Saturday morning. It stops in Kai Fa Qu
on the way into Dalian. We use to go in during the week but after a day at work
we just go in on Saturday to Kai Fa Qu. Two weeks ago
we walked the hour hike to the light rail that starts in Jinshitan
(there is a planned station for our school but it may be another year or two
before it happens) and took the 4 yuan half hour ride
and fortunately got a seat in and after buying way too much stuff we took the
shopping bus in the afternoon back home. Home is great. It is like living at a
four star (five star for China) resort/hotel. We are
sparsely furnished but it is OK– our heap of junk we shipped from NYC won’t be
here until October. We have a two bedroom apartment with a balcony (there is or
will be a video in our video area of my Dalian site) for some photos see http://dalian.neuage.us/photos/Aug%2012%202011/ (sorry
about the URL will fix it sometime). We have a gym on the first floor, it is
not the New York Sports Club which I took a liking to for the past five years
but there are some machines and heaps of free weights so I get to stretch and
groan every day. Then there are the guards. Not sure why. It is safer here than
most places we have lived. The whole property, Campus Village and the school
have a large fence all around and there are guards at every entrance and every
building. Twenty-four hours a day. They are not the doorman they are guards
usually dressed in army uniforms. Whether they are protecting us or being sure
we do not suddenly move out I am not sure but they are friendly and we have
learned to say ni hao (hello) but I said hee haw
for the first couple of weeks – probably means something not nice.
Narda and I found a small shopping area twenty minutes
walking away. It is so local, and so cheap. We both got haircuts for 15 yuan – about $2.50 both haircuts look quite Asian.
School so far is
great. After teaching at the NYC Charter school, Ross
Global Academy (the Courtney Sale Ross, widow of Steve Ross, the former C.E.O.
of Time Warner, experiment in education which was closed down by the city of NYC
for its momentous failure) this is such a contrast. The kids are behaved, want to learn and we are having a great time. I
make big mistakes such as asking if anyone could speak Korean as my student was
not following me at all only to be told by a Korean student that ‘he is Chinese’.
And names? Forget it. Most of the Asians
have taken on names like Tony and Oscar. Our life-saving secretaries, Snow and
Sunshine keep things rolling. I still have not had time to set up a VPN so I
can get on Twitter and Facebook and post my new lots of video on youtube but I have an eighth grade student who has found a
Japanese VPN that he is setting up on my machine. I have several students whose
parents work for Intel nearby. Campus Village not only houses the teachers for
DAIS but for the big overseas companies that are
moving into this area which is kind of a Silicon Valley of China. They live in
townhouses and we live in apartments so there is a difference but we are not
complaining. Narda likes having a maid and getting
our house cleaned and clothes washed and ironed but I am not sure – though it
is cheap, it seems a bit unnatural to me.
The building
around our area makes me dizzy but in the midst of it all, across the road,
five minutes away, is the Blueberry Farm. A very large area with a pub, tea
rooms, lake, streams and a great restaurant. Nine of us trekked up to the
restaurant a couple of Fridays ago. Nothing was in English, fair enough, this
is China. I managed to get across I was a vegetarian and the first eight or
nine dishes that came out were so amazing, some of the best food I have ever
have had. There was so much food, and beer, and soda and at the end it came out
to about eight dollars USD each. I have a couple of photos http://dalian.neuage.us/photos/BlueberryFarmDAIS/ and will put a video soonish in
the video area of my Dalian page.
We rarely watch the news. There is just too much going on here. We get
about 35 channels, mostly Chinese but we do get HBO, BBC, CNN and an Australian
channel so I have gathered some of the males over to watch Aussie Rules Footy.
It looks pretty grim in the States. I know we have lost about 15% on
investments in less than a month and we have no intentions of selling houses.
We are becoming quite removed from the rest of the world and we are happy with
that. We have a two year contract which we may or may not renew or maybe they
won’t want us. It does not matter now. We feel like we are on a holiday and
life is just great. We have begun planning our trip to Hanoi for our October
week break. Everyone here, being from the States, or in our case,
Australia-States, the talk of travel is the number one conversation (after the
academics of course – hey we are working) and where everyone is going is
compared and shared. We are off to Australia for Christmas than to the ice
festival in Harbin in January and maybe India for spring break then the States
for a couple of weeks for summer than on to Australia then back here. I am so
happy I managed to stay alive this long. There were some very rough years and
for now life is great.
Well Narda is off with some ‘girls’ to get a
foot massage in Jinshitan. They have rung ‘Jack’ and several cars are on the way to
collect them. Me? I am finally having a bit of time to myself, think I will
work on so many dozens of videos I have started and perhaps do some lesson
planning for next week and edit some photos, go to the gym, take a walk, take a
nap – it has been such a full-on three weeks, make tofu burgers for din din and try to figure out how to use my soy milk maker that
Narda bought for my 64th birthday eleven
days ago.
Next
weekend we have been invited to a Chinese wedding so that will be fun.
Apparently it is a good thing to invite or have westerners at a Chinese wedding
and these are big events here.
Narda has a great
blog – well she has posted some and more is waiting to be posted after her foot
massage today. blog.narda.us
Today working on picture poem links starting around "better" (). Picture poems are the digital format of work I did as a street artist in New Orleans in the 1970s, as well as New York City, Honolulu, San Francisco and Adelaide South Australia.