As I’m sure you know, China has a law that prohibits families from having more than one child. It has been very interesting to live and teach with this law in places, and also come to notice it’s exemptions. The law has now been in effect for 30 years. Originally, at the end of 30 years the government was going to get rid of it, but they have apparently decided to continue it for at least 10 more years.

“I have 3 brothers and 2 sisters”
This is a common answer that I get (with some variation of the numbers) when I ask students about their siblings. Does this mean they secretly have a multitude of family members? Nope. Chinese people call their cousins and friends their “brothers and sisters”. This makes it pretty difficult to teach family members. Here is a basic convo…
Me: How many brothers or sisters do you have?
Student: I have 3 brothers.
Chinese assistant: *translates that cousins are not your brothers, and neither are friends*
Student: I have 3 brothers.
Chinese assistant: *translates that a brother or sister is someone who came from your mother’s loins (in a way appropriate for kids of course)*
Student: Oh. I have 0 brothers.
See how this can be a little difficult?

Exceptions
Some people are allowed to have more than one child (which usually just means they have two). If a husband and wife are each themselves only children, they may have another child. If you have twins, you can keep both (we have a set of 3 year old twins that come to the school, and every time James, one of the teachers, sees them he says to one “How does it feel to be an insurance policy?!”). If you are rich, you can have another (Yes, China is quite corrupt.. I can write a whole other post about that.) And lastly, if you live out in the country (and not too many people do anymore) you can have more. One of my friends has 3 sisters!! The fact is though, that it is quite expensive to raise a child in China in a way that gives them any hopes for a good future, and most people only make enough to be able to support one child. While we may find it odd and cruel that the government limits their family size, many Chinese people actually are fine with the decision, and some even agree with it.

So it’s been awhile since I’ve had the time (and also not been so lazy) to write on here. We just finished with our Winter Intensive period, which is a 2 month long timeframe where we work 40 hours a week and are all super stressed. During that time we only have one day off a week= i.e., I never got anything done!

But now I’m back to 2 days off a week, and feeling much more relaxed. Less hours of work means better classes for us since we have more time to plan. I have completed 7 months of my contract, and have less than 5 months to go. And after that? To be honest, as of now I have no idea. I need to be in Florida in February 2012, through April. I had thought about possibility of heading to South America or some similar place, but I can’t start a job there until after April. I am considering two options: coming home and trying to find a short term job, or signing on for 6 more months here. Both options have their pros and cons, and luckily, I still have time to decide. Either way, I will be home sometime this summer, maybe for 2 weeks, maybe for longer!

That's right, ladies and gentleman.. I have been in China for 6 months! As of today, I am halfway through my one year contract. Just wanted to reflect on everything that has happened so far.

I've had this question a couple times, so here's an explanation for all.

A couple weeks ago I was given the honor of attending a Chinese wedding. One of the sales staff at our school, an adorable lady by the name of Apple (because of her apple-like cheeks) was getting married, and she invited us to come. The actual wedding ceremony is more of a performance, partly because of the mix of entertainment with the actual ceremony, and partly because Chinese couples are already married before the actual ceremony. A Chinese marriage is as simple as getting a license from the government (much like our marriage license in America). Couples usually get legally married, and then do not have the ceremony until a year later, due to the high costs of weddings.

This wedding took place in a town that was about a 2-hour bus ride away. A 2-hour, freezing cold, stared at constantly, people yelling on their cell phones, and then practically kicked off the bus, bus ride. The bride sent her brother-in-law (more on that later) to pick us up, and he drove off us out to literally, the middle of nowhere. China is dotted with little brick villages that appear abandoned. On closer inspection though, some people do maintain a very simple, lonely, and low-tech, but low cost, living. Our bride’s family (as well as the groom’s family) was one of such families.

Enter the foreigners into the two-bedroom house that was already packed with about 25 Chinese people. We were eagerly led to a couch and given tea, fruit, and of course (because Chinese men are smokaholics) cigarettes galore (no, I didn’t take em, though I could have probably given the whole of Gainesville lung cancer with the number I was offered!).

The bride begins her day at her parent’s house, where her groom comes to collect her. He tries to come into the house, but her family pushes back and says “No, you can’t marry her!” This goes on for a little while, as is tradition, and finally he is allowed in. The bride first wears a red suit (not like a mans, the collar has the traditional Chinese collar, and the suit is quite bedazzled). After taking loads of pictures, the groom picks up his bride and carries her from the house to the vehicle (literally, her feet don’t touch the ground until they are at the ceremony). We were given the honor of riding along with the bride’s family in the caravan of cars (like 6 black cars in a row, all with red ribbons on them). We went from the bride’s parent’s house to the groom’s parent’s house, a similar brick, simple and rugged structure in the middle of a brick village in the middle of nowhere. Again, he took the bride into his arms, and attempted to carry her into the house, but was pushed back several times. Once inside the house, we were then offered refreshments while the bride changed into her second outfit. We then all went to the location of the ceremony, which was another world all to itself.

The best way I can describe this place is to equate it’s structure to a huge warehouse. Inside, it was divided into different dining areas, but not by walls. Fake waterfalls, rocks, pagodas, and trees make the different dining areas have the appeal a traditional and outdoorsy setting while staying in the modern and indoor world. It reminded me a lot of some theme restaurants I have been to in America, and though it was slightly less realistic looking, it still sticks out as the first of it’s kind I have seen (and probably will ever see) in China.

We were invited to sit at a table near the stage with the bride’s brothers-in law. The fact that she has one brother-in-law should amaze you, because this means she has a sister, and most families are only permitted one child (I can dedicate a whole other blog to this topic, and will soon). But, she has 3 sisters! I did not to ask how this came to be, and can only think that because of her parent’s lifestyle, the birth of multiple children somehow slipped under the radar. Anyway, we sat with the brothers-in-law. When we asked where the wives were, she told us “They were sitting back at another table. They were not drinking, but she knew we would want to, so she sat us with the men”. What do Chinese men like almost as much as their cigarettes? Getting foreigners drunk. I am not kidding. The amount of times I have gone to a restaurant or a bar and had drinks shoved at me is ridiculous. When we make new friends, say at the gym or the airport, they are most eager to make plans to go out drinking. Such a hard life I lead, huh?

I could go on forever explaining all the food and alcohol and semi-conversations, but I think that if you view my pictures you can get more than what I can describe. There was so much food that plates had to be stacked on other plates. Every time you picked up your drink, the Chinese wanted you to chug it. Barely any English could be understood, so any attempted exchange turned into a massive game/conversation of charades. All the while, the Chinese wedding ceremony was underway. Of course, I have absolutely no idea what happened in the ceremony. Even if I spoke Chinese, the ceremony is done in traditional Chinese, which is much more complicated than what is spoken today. The ceremony was not what we think of as a wedding ceremony though. As the couple walked to the stage, they were silly-stringed! The ceremony was done by a young woman, interspersed with songs performed by a male singer (who was drinking just about as much as we were). There was a request for the foreigners to sing (Chinese people love to make us sing almost as much they love to make us drink), which of course we had to oblige. There was no music for us though, so we had to creative without any. We eventually came up with (instead of you are my sunshine) “You are my Apple, My only Apple. You make us happy, at EF school. You’ll never know dear, How much we love you. Please don’t take our Apple away”. The bride and maybe only 1 other person understood the song, but we were still pretty proud of our creativity!

Another interesting thing about Chinese weddings is the custom of gifts. They do not give toasters or crock-pots or anything, but simply money. The money is placed in a red envelope, for good luck (more about red later). When the bride and groom come to your table, you present the envelope, and then do a shot of Bijou with them. This means that every time someone gives them a present, they take a shot. This leads to a very happy Bride and Groom- get some money, take a shot!

Overall, the Chinese wedding was an amazing experience. What made it so amazing though, was the bride and groom’s generosity towards us. On her wedding day, the bride was calling us, making sure we got onto the bus, and sending family to pick us up from the bus stop. They was constantly checking on us throughout the ceremony, and even offered to let us stay the night with their families in their hometown. If anyone gets the opportunity to go to a traditional Chinese wedding, I very much suggest you do! But, be wary of the Bijou!

The Chinese language is both extremely difficult and very simple to understand. First, the difficult part. The Chinese write in characters, as I am sure you have seen. These characters are very complex and the slightest wrong stroke changes the word all together. Also, there are many different characters for the same word. I have seen four different characters for the same word within one paragraph! The Chinese do have a method of writing using the English alphabet, called Pinyin, but it is not widely used. Most shops and products you come across will have the characters, and will only have the Pinyin about 30% of the time. This is really interesting, because when the Chinese are learning to write and read, they learn both characters and Pinyin.

Something else interesting is how the Chinese read the characters. If you ask a Chinese person what something says, don’t be surprised if it takes a minute for them to be able to rely the information to you. The Chinese must first decode the characters into Pinyin words in their minds, and then translate them to English. It makes me wonder why they characters are used, since the Pinyin is what they really understand, but who knows why the Chinese do anything!

The simple part of the Chinese language is the grammatical structures. I, me, my, and mine are all the same word. The same with you, yours, etc. This makes saying simple sentences very easy to do. How is my Chinese language learning going along? Well, not very well unfortunately. Even though there are only about 50 foreigners in the city, and the majority of Chinese people in Hohhot can only say “Hello” (which they love to do to us on the streets, and then laugh and feel cool), it is easy enough to complete daily tasks with only the knowledge of a few words. Knowing how to say “This” and “That” and give directions to a taxi driver makes everything a lot easier!

The Chinese calendar is interesting because they have a different one than we use in the Western countries, but they use both. If you look a calendar, it will have both the western date and the Chinese date for each day. Technically, to simplify things, it could be said that the Chinese calendar is about a month behind the one we use. However, it is more complicated than that. The Chinese year aligns more with the phases of the moon. The Chinese New Year varies in date every year, but is always around beginning to mid February. This year it is the first week in February. The few western holidays the Chinese do celebrate are mostly celebrated on the same day we have them, with the exception of Valentines Day (theirs is in August!) and possibly a few others. The translation of the words the Chinese use for their days (instead of Monday, Tuesday, etc) are the equivalent of day 1, day 2, etc. The same is for months- month 1, month 2. It is very hard for Chinese children to learn the days and months with their weird names and confusing orders!