Yearly roundup
Here’s the update I sent recently:
Hi everyone!
I’m sure most of you know that there are twelve animals in the Chinese zodiac, each one corresponding to a year. This year (from February 9 onwards) is the year of the rooster. According to Chinese folklore, the year you were born in will be an unlucky one, and each time it rolls around, it’s prudent to invest in lots of red underwear that will protect you from harm. I was born in the year of the rooster, so this is my year. Looking back over the events of 2004, it’s easy to see why I viewed the upcoming year with some trepidation. First there was the kidney infection that wouldn’t go away for six weeks, then there was the neck injury, and after my move to Shanghai, there was the worst thing yet.
I’d moved to Shanghai for a change of scene, to work at a better school, and to hopefully get out more and meet more people. When I got to ECNU I found the campus attractive, with plenty of streams and willows, and a three story tall statue of Chairman Mao. My stuff, which I had mailed from Shenzhen, got there ahead of schedule with no problem at all.?
Then things seemed to take a turn for the worse, with an unfortunate Japanese teacher getting squashed by a city bus right outside the school gate. A week or so afterward, I tripped over a curb and went crashing to the sidewalk. I was completely ignored by a foreign student standing nearby, and got up myself and limped slowly home. I put my foot on ice, hoping it was a sprain, but when it turned purple and swelled up, I went to the hospital for an X-ray and found out it was broken. I ended up in a cast for the next six weeks. Since my apartment is on the third floor of my building, getting around was a big problem. My students solved the dilemma by sending a classmate up to my dormitory every day to carry me down the stairs, take me to the classroom building in a wheelchair, then carry me into the building. I was very grateful to my students, but really frustrated at the same time, because part of the reason I’d come to Shanghai was to get out more. I’d intended to make friends through some sort of Democrats Abroad-type group, but that proved impossible. The first time I was able to go out, other than just to wheel to the store for groceries, was to attend an election party on November 2nd, after I got my cast off. Of course, that was a disappointment.
Continuing the run of unfortunate events, a woman who lived in the apartment building in front of my dorm hanged herself, after which her father-in-law screamed for two hours, and wouldn’t let the paramedics take the body away. Another student of mine had to go home for two weeks because his wife had suffered some sort of psychologically-caused attack of facial paralysis. Two students leapt from windows, and another man was run over by a bus by the school gate.
Despite my broken foot, I still managed to vote, but only after a lot of frustration and expense. In the beginning of September I paid 40 RMB to my absentee ballot by seven-day priority mail, only to find that due to some weird regulation, Indiana “can’t” send out absentee ballots until the beginning of October. This means it would be impossible to receive and send back my ballot by using normal air mail.?When my ballot didn’t show up by mid-October, I downloaded one off the Web, and mailed it express, for 180 RMB. Then the government released a new emergency absentee ballot form, which meant the one I’d sent was no longer valid, so I had to download the new one and vote again. I was able to send it for free through Fex Ex, but had to take an expensive taxi ride to their Shanghai headquarters to hand it in personally. With all the fooling around, I ended up spending about $33 US dollars to send in my ballot, which could have bought me 92 fried noodle dinners, 34 plates of dumplings, 46 cafeteria lunches, 13 boxes of copy paper, 138 cans of Coke, 345 domestic stamps, 1,380 fill-ups at the local bicycle pump, 2,760 pieces of gum, one extremely nice bicycle (or three mediocre ones), or about six weeks worth of groceries. My real absentee ballot still hasn’t arrived.
Rounding out my first semester, the foreign affairs office took all the teachers on a free trip to Hainan Island on January 20th. It was balmy (almost 80 degrees Fahrenheit) and reminded me of Shenzhen — there were lots of palm trees, mangoes, cocoanuts and stuff, which made me homesick. I swam in the sea a few times, ate lots of crab, stayed in a five-star hotel, and visited Monkey Island, where, putting the lie to what a crotchety co-worker had claimed would happen, none of the monkeys attacked, bit us, stole our glasses or tore off our hats.
So far the second semester’s gone a lot more smoothly. I’m teaching a new crop of doctoral students. I’ve moved into an apartment off campus. The city has redone the intersection outside of the school gate, which will hopefully prevent any more people from getting run over. I just took a brief trip to a town in Zhejiang Province called Shoxing, where I was the only Caucasian, and at least fifty people yelled, “Hello! OK!” at me, as they rode by in cars, on bicycles, in pedicabs, etc. I also visited the former homes of Zhou En-Lai and Lu Xun while I was there.
As for movies, I’ve mostly been enjoying Japanese ones lately, my favorite being Kiriya’s CASSHERN, which seems to be either loved or hated by the people who see it. The film is really over-the-top, jam-packed with ideas and filmic references, yet sincere and moving at the same time. The film is like what you get if you mixed some IVAN THE TERRIBLE, some APOCALYPSE NOW, some animae and some video games all together and then poured it all out. It also featured an excellent performance by Karasawa Toshiaki as a baleful mutant king. I finally saw WILD ZERO, which I found sweet and enjoyable for a zombie movie, and the sleazy-sounding but tame and thought-provoking STRAY CAT ROCK: SEX HUNTER.
To be honest, I don’t like Shanghai too much, and sometimes I rue coming here. The food is better, everything is cheaper, and the salaries are higher in Shenzhen. I have to remember, though, that there aren’t many opportunities for tertiary school teaching there, plus the nonstop blazing heat from March to November was having a big impact on my health. We don’t have poisonous snakes, huge spiders, bugs with audible footfalls or Dengue fever in Shanghai either, which is a relief.
Socially, things haven’t panned out as I’d hoped. I’d thought in Shanghai I could make a lot more friends than in Shenzhen, but I was wrong. I’d really counted on meeting people through AmDems in Shanghai during the run up to the election, but since I was stuck in with my broken foot that didn’t work.?I tried hard to make friends with other foreign teachers, but with little initial success. The trainee teachers from St. Olaf’s College even quizzed me pointedly about why I wasn’t married.?I initially was buddies with an Israeli teacher, but found he had a habit of going berserk suddenly, and made friends with a Japanese teacher, who unfortunately had to go back to Japan at the end of the first semester. Lately I’ve been hanging around a little with an American teacher, and chatting with a Russian teacher and his wife, and we’ll just have to see where that goes.I do have a couple Chinese friends, who are often busy because they’re writing papers and going to conferences and stuff.
I’m planning to go to my first ever academic conference soon, as a listener rather than a presenter. It’s the ACSS conference, about Asian film, and will be held jointly in Beijing and Shanghai. I’m going to go to the local portion, where Professor Zhang, who used to be one of my professors at IU, and Neepa Majumdar, who was my teacher for Introduction to Film in like 1993 will be presenting a paper.
Well, that’s all for me.?Stupidly, I didn’t watch my finances and didn’t save money this year, so I probably won’t be coming home in the summertime. I may just stay here and work to put something away. So, I can only send a long-distance hello to all of my friends and family. My computer is a little gimpy lately, but I’m able to go to a nearby net bar to read mail, so just e-mail me back if you want to make contact!