Week-long Visa Trip

My visa trips mark my time in China in three month increments. I can't believe it has only been six months. That feels short, time moves so quickly here. For this visa trip I booked a flight first to Chengdu to visit my friend Becca and go to Chengdu's annual Zebra music festival. Yeah, this trip was a good one.

Then I flew to Guangzhou and hopped on a train directly to Hong Kong. It's amazing that from mainland China you can take a train or a subway ride to Hong Kong, yet Hong Kong is distinctly not China. I only spent two nights and one full day, so I can only give a 40-hr visit impression. The pace and expectations for daily life felt very different. No one seemed interested to engage in the cultural dialogue I meet every day living in China.

When I walk around the streets in Kunming or in other places I have visited in China, I am definitely living abroad. I've become accustomed to a certain portion of the Kunming city routine, but most times I am a waiguoren, a foreigner. This status is tricky business; it's easy to stay wrapped up in a foreign bubble of other expats and cafes. On the other hand, you can learn to be a 中国通, a China hand or someone who knows how to connect with Chinese people and understands the customs and culture. I am somewhere in between, though I strive for the latter. However, Hong Kong seemed disinterested- people were distracted by fancy electronics and endless high-end shopping. Everyone spoke to me in English. Maybe that's how New York City appears to visitors but I missed the inevitable cultural interactions that make life in China a daily learning experience.

Besides the lack of interpersonal bonding, I enjoyed my stay in Hong Kong. In the morning, I took the ferry to Lantau Island. Hong Kong's location is special because of it's proximity to beautiful islands and apparently in the New Territory area of the city, one can escape city life entirely and get lost in nature. Lantau Island, did indeed feel like another world. I rented a bike and explored the beaches and inland forest-like landscape. I ate a snack sitting on the rocks between a waterfall. Then I took a speed ferry back and walked around Kowloon, an area closer to mainland China just north of Hong Kong Island. Finally I ended the day by taking a tram up to a high peak in Central, the downtown area of Hong Kong. Although it was foggy and getting dark out, I looked down on a 360 degree view of this booming bustling city. Fortunately, I had a friend to stay with and although he was busy at work, at night we walked on the longest covered outdoor escalator and ate yummy food.

I left Hong Kong by subway to Shenzhen, then took an hour train ride to Guangzhou. I just had the afternoon, by the time I arrived, so I walked around a local park and neighborhood area. Guangzhou is a more industrial city than Kunming and Chengdu, but it felt nice to be back in China.

Certified

Officially a certified TESOL teacher. I just completed a TESOL training course: three weeks, six hours a day. This course was provided to me for free by the private school that I teach at. Only three teachers at the school took up this incredible offer. The three of us were the only foreigners out of a group of 14 people, mostly professional teachers. The course was great. I learned a lot about conducting a communicative interactive language learning environment. I am excited to continue teaching post this education.

A Recommendation

Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals

I was reading this book while traveling with my family and I couldn't resist the constant urge to share with them. I thought of it as sharing my excitement, they might say otherwise. I realized this book is a personal undertaking that I highly recommend for anyone who wants to further their education on food politics. This book has continued to help me think about eating more responsibly: an important conversation I believe we should continue to discuss.

Eating Animals is an incredible expose on the current state of our disconnected world that allows for factory farming. Factory farming in the U.S. accounts for 99% of our meat, including fish and eggs. Our land, animals, and living environment have become hidden wastelands for unnatural unsustainable grotesque food production. I know it's not just factory farming that jeopardizes the planet's livelihood for profit. There are too many corporations to count without feeling ill. However, this book struck me because I like to think about health. And let me say the over drugged, antibiotic-fed, feces covered animals we eat are not healthy. Not to mention that factory farming accounts for more energy consumption than all the transportation in the world. Just like oil, meat prices are artificially low which perpetuates the exploitive industry. According to Safran Foer, " taking inflation into account animal protein costs less today than at any time in history" (109). I would go on for longer if I still had the book with me but I've passed it on in hopes that it will keep moving.

It's easy to ignore these realities when our food shows up in the supermarket neatly packaged. Maybe we don't want to know, but I don't want ignorance as bliss. As an individual who wants to live mindfully and support politically and environmentally savvy sustainable groups, organizations, and companies, I vote for my friends and family to check out the evils of the factory farming industry.

Brooks-Salzman clan in China

Photographic overview of a special family trip---

We began in Beijing:

Kunming, Green Lake Park:

Overnight train to Lijiang, Yunnan:

Tiger Leaping Gorge: (Aramie, Dad, and I hike/climb by ladder straight down to the gorge)

Shangrila (Songzanlin Tibetan monastery) :

Back to Lijiang:

Shanghai, one hour boat trip on the Huangpu River:

Shanghai Dim sum:

Hangzhou with Mom: tasting famous Longjing tea

Wuzhen:

Suzhou, I.M. Pei designed Suzhou Museum:
Suzhou garden:

How lucky am I?

I have visitors in China!! At the beginning of the month, Eli came to Kunming to enjoy my life with me and next week my parents and sister are coming to China. We'll travel from Beijing to Yunnan to Shanghai. Then my dad and sister will take off and my mom and I get to explore the region around Shanghai for another week. I know this trip will be well photographically documented. Stay tuned.

Train ride to Dali:

Climbed Cangshan Mountain and spent the night at the top. The view in the morning:

Learning about the Environment in China?

I was asked by a friend if I could help edit a film sponsored by WWF, World Wildlife Fund for Kunming's bi-annual film festival this month. I enthusiastically replied yes without having any clue what she was really talking about. I went to the office of the movie editor, who doesn't speak a word of English and speaks with a heavy dialect. He showed me the thirty minute film with broken English subtitles and requested I fix it. He gave me the movie on a USB and emailed me both the English and Chinese subtitles.

It was only after I went home and started editing and researching that I realized what the movie was about. It's a short informational documentary on the importance of FSC, the Forest Stewardship Council and a successful case study in China. FSC forest certification is an important label for timber production enterprises and consumers who support sustainable forest management. Companies obtain certification only after they meet international standards of forest management. WWF has been working within China to promote FSC certification and as consumers we can help the cause by purchasing FSC certified products.

This was a thrilling experience for me to conduct myself entirely in Chinese. I was able to collaborate with the editor and partake in an environmental education product. Although I used many online resources to help me, I was successful in editing and translating Chinese into English.

Apparently in China I'm learning about important environmental practices. At the World Agro-Forestry Center, I used agro-forestry resources as reading comprehension material for the North Koreans and worked with the students to digest the information. Now after this editing project, I support a label that promotes responsible forest management. (http://www.fscus.org/)

Discussing happiness across cultures

‘It’s only reasons for happiness that we have, but not happiness itself.’ 幸福的理由和幸福本身

Last Wednesday I attended a Chinese symposium. It was under the guise of a gathering of friends come together to practice their English, but really it offered an incredible platform for discussion. I met Nick and Hannah, the Chinese couple that organizes and hosts this English corner at an experimental dance performance the weekend before. I found myself sitting next to Hannah during the performance and when we had to change seats to view the dance from another angle, we stuck together. (This dance performance is another exciting event and potential new community but for another post)

Hannah, shortly after meeting her extended the offer for me to join their English corner. Every Wednesday night, Nick thoughtfully and carefully plans a topic for discussion. I think it is helpful to repeat his principles to get a sense of the expectations for the evening: seek truth by relying and building on each other's perspectives; "use a kindly tongue"; seek unity in diversity, it is through diversity that we can enrich our thinking, and take action, words should bear fruit.

This week's conversation was on happiness: ‘It’s only reasons for happiness that we have, but not happiness itself.’ My initial impression of this topic lead me thinking about our attachment to people and things that make us happy, and those emotions our external world creates in us. We could afford to think about how to make our selves internally stable. For the past couple of years, I've been thinking about what it means and takes to find sustainable happiness. Why for some reason we doubt that possibility or treat the problems and symptoms but don't address a road map to finding joy. I've been trying to develop a lifestyle that seeks daily satisfaction, and here in China I found a group of ten Chinese people trying to communicate the same goals.

I was impressed by the way each individual articulated a positive ideology on life. Everyone spoke candidly and no one harbored a latent desire for material possessions to bring about happiness. Everyone agreed that external belongings were simply not sustainable. Health and movement were decidedly inextricable for happiness. We recognized that life is dynamic and in constant flux so we must be able to adapt and change ourselves and mindsets. I say this often, but we create our own reality and choose to see how changes can be positive. We discussed the power of connections with people and our environment; how we seek to feel bonded and close to our surrounding. There is nothing like feeling trusted, loved, and respected. And the power of giving back- it fills us with so much warmth and satisfaction.

I could continue to summarize but there is no way to succinctly put into words a two hour discussion. I just wanted to share a little of an amazing night and an important conversation that I regularly have with myself.