Wow, in just eight weeks Ross and I will be flying home to Canada to visit during the school Spring break. Then we'll come back to finish the school year and do some travelling around the country.  I've been here in China for nine months and the time has gone by quickly. I'm still very much behind-hand in the things I wanted to share.

Another day trip we took last summer was to the neighboring city center of Zhoucun (pronounced -- oh, never mind). Thanks to the complete flatness of the landscape, Ross and I can travel quite a distance on our old bikes. We went along the highway, past a number of factories and businesses (such as that one with the unexpected mansard roof on the lower right). Zhoucun was about 40 minutes' ride away. It is an older area of Zibo. Zibo is called a city but it's actually a collection of seven districts with seven different city centers.  Like Greater Vancouver, each district has its own personality. Zhoucun is kind of the Burnaby or New Westminster of Zibo, if you know Greater Vancouver.

So we got to explore downtown Zhoucun a little bit and came across a nice park. Unlike some of the newer parks we've visited in Zibo, this one was full of people enjoying various pastimes -- roller skating, playing Chinese checkers or cards, and fishing.

As is usual when we go out to a public place, some people stopped to speak with us. I can't understand what is being said, but we know the four questions we are most commonly asked (in boldface below), so the conversation almost always goes like this:

Them:  (In Chinese) Are you Americans? (If we can pick out the word, měi-guó rén, which means American).
Us:        (In Chinese) No. We're from Canada.
Them:   (In Chinese, with smiles and head nods) Ah!  Canada!  Very beautiful country!
Us:         (In Chinese) Thank you. (xiè-xie)
Them:   (In Chinese)  Why are you here? (Or possibly they just asked, )how old are you?
Us:        (In Chinese).  I'm a teacher. This is my husband.
Them:   (In Chinese) how old are you? (or possibly) why are you here?
Us:        I'm 59.
Them:   (In Chinese) Can you speak Chinese? (Actually, that's been pretty well established).
Us:        No, sorry.

Sometimes children will shyly say "hello" to us, so we exchange "how do you do's" and "nice to meet you's" while the parent or grandparent whispers encouragement. Ross carries a supply of little Canadian flag pins to hand out to the older children. 

Often the locals will cheerfully chat away with us but once they realize we can't understand, they'll slow down a bit and start gesturing, which certainly brings home to me as an English teacher the reality that even if you slow down, speak louder, and wave your arms around a bit, it doesn't mean that someone who can't speak English will understand you. Because it doesn't work for Chinese, either.

Ross has observed that we've really gotten used to communicating with a few words of Chinese, while pointing at things. It's just a way of life, now. And we make not understanding work for us sometimes, too.  Are bicycles allowed in the park? Who knows? Let's play "dumb foreigner" and ride in here anyway. 

Here it is, almost the end of November and there has been no hard frost here. It is glove and muffler weather, but we didn't expect that we'd still be able to ride our bikes this time of year. How lucky we are that we can ride out of the campus and be in a country village in minutes. We can get local vegetables and eggs for dirt cheap, the villagers are always happy (amused?) to see us, and we can see the China that is disappearing quickly.

I think all the headstones we've seen are post-Cultural Revolution. But some people don't have headstones, they have anthill-shaped piles of dirt. (below, center and right) A rock placed on top holds down a piece of paper. And some tombstones are knocked down and scattered around, but that could have been done more recently, as part of the vandalism that our own cemeteries suffer from. 

Sorry so many of these pictures are hazy, by the way. The pollution levels really vary from day to day.


People gather to fish all along the river, but they only seemed to catch (and keep) minnow-sized fish. Ross snapped a picture of this young fisherman. 

On the other side of the river is New China. High-end gated communities are springing up in the fields around the villages. Public parks with winding paths lead to large empty plazas.

Huge amounts of money have been poured into cycle paths, parks and public spaces. There are extensive plantings along the highways as well. All of this costs a lot of money to do and it takes a small army to maintain it, 

We figure it's one way that China keeps everyone employed.

Summer is but a memory and I still haven't written a good explanation of Chinese BBQ and how it differs from Canadian BBQ. For one thing, because only the "1 percent" in China have backyards, people don't BBQ at home in the city. They might have a portable BBQ for picnics, but to eat BBQ they go to a restaurant.  

BBQ restaurants are al fresco affairs. The tables are low to the ground and the patrons sit on teeny-weeny folding stools set up every night and which for months I was afraid to even try sitting on. And I may be able to sit on them now, but that doesn't mean I'm going to show you a picture of me sitting on a little folding stool.  Here instead is Ross with some students, last spring's English speech contest participants, that Ross and I treated to a reunion dinner. 

This is at our favorite BBQ place near the school. We're on a brick patio, under the trees, with ropes of lights strung between the trees (pic below right) Unfortunately we just can't get a photograph at night that does it justice. The tables are made of metal so that the restaurant owner can place a little portable BBQ filled with charcoal on it. We patrons order the meat and veg we want and it's brought to the table partially cooked.

At some restaurants, the BBQ is brought to you fully cooked, but the do-it-yourself ones are more fun. We also sometimes went to a place in downtown Zibo where the cooks preside over a long trough filled with charcoal. A chimney and a fan helps pull the smoke away from street level. Again, because it's night time, the pictures aren't very good.
The meat is seasoned -- in this area, mostly with cumin but I can't speak for other parts of China. You can also get cabbage, mushrooms, squid, chicken wings, variety meats, and tofu. The meat is cut into small pieces and threaded on narrow metal skewers. The tiny pieces cook very quickly.

Then you are brought a bottle of hot sauce, a plate of thin pancake-like things and a plate of spring onions. Once the meat is cooked, you can eat it off the skewer or assemble a little roll-up, like so:

And the perfect accompaniment is a bottle of Tsingtao beer, you betcha. We keep the bottle on the ground so it doesn't get warmed by the portable BBQ.

A great leisurely dinner on a warm summer night!

In addition to being marched around for two weeks in uniform, the freshmen also got an orientation to campus life under an array of colorful tents in the rain. The middle picture is the view from my classroom window.