Dong zhi

That is the name given to today, the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. The Chinese legend is that on this day, you must eat a dumpling or your ear will freeze. Thankfully, the school cafeteria serves dumplings on Mondays so that will be easy to do. During the flag raising ceremony this morning (mandatory every Monday), I did think my ears were going to fall off (16 degrees out this morning).

On Saturday morning was the Christmas program put on by the Grade 10 classes (called Foundation classes here). It started at 9 am and went until 12:30. A bit long! The parts I enjoyed the most were the traditional Chinese entertainment, but unfortunately there was little of that. Many of them tried to emulate the rap songs and dances, with varying degrees of success. A pic of a student who does ballet:

In the bottom photo, the student is playing an ancient Chinese instrument called a GuQin.

The program also auctioned off student works for charity. I bid on a couple watercolor pictures, yelling out "1000 RMB". It created quite a stir when they realized a foreign teacher had put in a bid.  It was quickly surpassed and ended up going for almost 4000 RMB, but a nice turn at the end was that the person who put in the winning bid presented me with the pictures as a gift. I got all choked up and had a hard time expressing my thanks.

Later that night, we had the Christmas dinner for our staff at a restaurant called China Roast. No hot pot this time, but lots of duck. It was a good dinner with plenty of food to go around.

Christmas falls on a Thursday, but we decided it would be nice to get Friday off and make it a 3-day weekend. The Chinese relented (they don't get the day off and will be covering our classes for us) so we lucked out...

I decided to share some US culture with my classes this week so I'm going to show A Christmas Story. They seem excited about it so we'll see how it goes.

I've got some more pics of the Xmas show but I'll have to post them later as they're on my laptop back at the apartment (where the water went off Friday but thankfully right after I took my shower - it seems to be a regular occurrence).

Stay warm and Merry Christmas everyone!!!

1000 and counting!

I've now hit over 1000 views of this blog! I will have to look into sprucing it up and selling some ad space on the side...

The word that comes to mind this past week is COLD. It's just cold - not wet or snowy or icy, but cold. In the morning it's in the upper teens or low twenties, and then gets up to the thirties or low forties in the afternoon. There is no frost or anything on the car windows - it's a dry cold. Some snow or something would be nice, but I guess that doesn't happen very often.  The temperature in my apartment is pretty comfortable now, but one has no control over the heat - you get what you get...

Yesterday a small group of students invited us foreign teachers to a hot pot dinner at a well-known restaurant near the Blue Goose Pagoda. It was one of the better hot pots I've had, but getting there was not easy. One thing we've found is that there is definitely a shortage of cabs in Xián - sometimes you can't find one for the life of you. So we ended up going on a bus... and then transferring to another bus... and they are almost always crowded. So it takes an hour... Part of Xián does have a subway system - which is very nice - and they are expanding it - but I imagine it will be quite a while before it gets down to the southern part of the city here.

So what are the Xmas holidays like here? Kind of like any other day. There are some ritzy stores that will have up a tree (fake) or a Merry Christmas banner but no strings of lights or anything. Haven't seen a Santa either (that would probably cause quite a stir). The students are putting on a Xmas presentation but it is on Saturday morning and goes on for about 4 hours according to those in the know. Hence not many of us plan on attending. Our staff is having a hot pot on Saturday night to celebrate but I imagine it will be fairly low-key. On Xmas weekend, some of the staff is going to a local mountain for a couple days to go skiing, but seeing as how I didn't really bring the winter gear for it, plus it isn't much of a mountain and the snow is all fake, I'm taking a pass. I've downloaded the movie A Christmas Story so maybe I'll watch that with the hangers-on. It is not a holiday here in China so all schools and businesses are open as usual.

Our main source of obtaining movies and shows here has been shut down. It was a website called The Pirate Bay. It's not what you'd call legal but it's the only way to get western entertainment here. I finished reading And the Mountains Echoed and am figuring out what to start next...

Sheng dan kuai le (Merry Christmas)

You will have no discipline problems...

Well, China is growing up. Ben said something to Frank that he didn't like. Frank hit Ben with his fist. I asked Frank to step outside the class so we could talk, and on the way out of the classroom, Frank picked a bottle up off of Ben's desk and struck him in the head with it. Result: lots of blood and 3 stitches in the head for Ben. I told the principal that Frank should be removed from school, but they both received a one week suspension and returned to class. They are both seniors, and will be going to the US next year at a university or community college (for them, probably a community college as their command of English is poor). The principal asked Frank to write an apology letter, responding to the phrase, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." Here is his essay, unedited:

Firstly of all .all the problems could be solved through the civilized function. It means any contradictions can be addressed by the words which are the greatest invention during the development of human. There is old saying in Chinese that the most stupid people will use violence to solve problem. As to me I was the stupid gay .because I used the violence to deal the simple problem .originally is a very simple classmate contradiction. But I did the worst business. To hurt the people around me. Even so serious.Sometimes our words may not hurt the others .But the way we interview might cause great harm to the people.here is a storyAn ancient king dreamed all his teeth had faled out.He sent for a wise man to explain his dream to him:the dream means that all your relatives will die and you will be left alone.the king was very angry and threw the interpreter into prison.He then sent for another interpreter who said,”Congratulations!king!You will live many more years.In fact you will survivi all your relatives Long live the King”These two interpreters gave the same mean.But there are also differences between them some words will make people angry,some are not.Which would you prefer?So words have power we do need use them carefully.

Security. Really Ben's words didn't listen to me and damage myself esteem. to made me can not stand for it .but it didn't hurt  my bones .that is true .I should not give him such a serious injury in order to my self-respect .As a high school student, the responsibility is love the collective ,solidarity students, help each other and relations to other. In stand of doing the harm things to brothers. I do make mistake and I will say it to. To protect the brothers is my responsibility. And I will focus on it.

Finally. I do believe the sticks and stones will hurt people and the words do not give a people hurt so deep.so am i.i am not hurt deeper than Ben.i apologize for the mistake‍ 

Frank wrote a second essay as well but this one makes more sense.

And so for some reason I thought when I came over here that I would not run into this type of stuff. In fact, in 24 years of teaching I have never had violence of this nature in my classroom. The principal never had either - it was the first time he had encountered something like this in China, and he was not sure how to handle it. He praised me on my handling of it...

So they are back now. Learned a lesson? Perhaps. Ben has been working harder (why he was also suspended for saying some words I don't know). Frank has been nonproductive. They are a challenging class - all of the worst students have been tracked together. It's hard to imagine them being successful in the US. But it's the land of opportunity, right?