ANCIENT ART OF KUNQU

If you've studied Chinese culture at all, you've probably heard of Beijing Opera. (You know what I'm talking about! That thing where the actors paint their faces, put on extremely elaborate headdresses, and sing in REALLY high-pitched voices. Feel free to Google, Bing, or Baidu it, it's pretty interesting).  

Beijing Opera

Beijing Opera is a few hundred years old, making it kind of like a drop in the river that is Chinese history. However, its parent art, Kunqu, is older still. (Brief history at: http://www.kunqusociety.org/kunqu/history/)

Kunqu actress Hu Zhifeng

Kunqu actor Yu Zhenfei


Kunqu is native to Jiangsu Province, where I'm living right now. 

From Wikipedia: Jiangsu Province
 The name comes from jiang, (city of Jiangning), and su, (city of Suzhou)

Last week, we had a culture class on Kunqu, taught by a professional actress.

She let me try on a piece of her headdress! 

It's shaped like a phoenix, which is kind of a traditional feminine symbol (the way dragons are masculine). 

Funny story: I was at a restaurant with my host family, and my host sister told me that the building we were in was roughly 250 years old. I laughed, and told her that all of America was roughly 250 years old. Situations like these are pretty common when one is in a country with one of the longest recorded histories!

CHINESE CHICKLET CHOP COOKIES

We baked cookies!!!!! This is a story. This is going to be broken into two parts, the buying stuff and the baking stuff parts.

BUYING:

By "we", I mean myself along with six other NSLI-Y kids. On Saturday, several of us (Vanessa, Elliot, Margaret, and Ida) met up outside the school and then took the bus to buy things like vanilla extract from the western grocery where I bought my bread-making things (speaking of which, I need to make more bread). 

But this is easier said then done. We got horrendously lost, and ended up hanging out by The Pants. We called another student (David) who lives by The Pants, and he and his host brother came and helped us out. We wandered around the SIP [Suzhou Industrial Park] for a little bit, before stumbling on the grocery.

I thought we were miles away from where we were. I was actually trying to get to an entirely different (and not as good) market because I had given up all hope of finding the grocery and the other market seemed closer. I practically had a spiritual moment when I decided to go another block down to see if any of the stores sold something cold to drink, and found THE store. 

Seriously, this store might as well have been the holy grail. I had literally given up.

Anyways, we bought stuff (BASIL!!!!! I HAVE BEEN TO SO MANY CHINESE GROCERY STORES, SO MANY SPICE STORES, SO MANY DIFFERENT PLACES, AND ONLY TWO PEOPLE HAD EVEN HEARD OF BASIL. I WAS CONVINCED THAT BASIL DOES NOT EXIST IN CHINA. BUT IT DOES!!!!!! :) :) :) ), and made our way back to my house. Amy joined up with us, making seven. 

BAKING:

One important thing to know about Ida is that when it comes to cooking, she is in charge. I am pretty much convinced that if you left her alone in a classroom for a few hours, she'd find a way to bake the desks in to an edible, scale model of the Great Wall or something. 

There was plenty of unit conversions and guesstimating (ha! Gmail agrees with me, "guesstimating" is a real word!), but it was all fun. We made the first batch using Hershey's chocolate chips (THAT I COULD EAT. I CHECKED IT ABOUT SEVEN TIMES, AND ALL SEVEN TIMES THE LABEL SAID IT WAS OKAY:) :) It was really tasty too, I've been missing chocolate) on an improvised cookie sheet.  

I took one of the many aluminum bread pans (they only sold them in packs of six, and I only need one), and cut lengthwise down the corners. Then I flattened out the sides. It was basically the same as a cookie sheet without corners. 

Then David, Ida, and Elliot had to go, so four of us made the second batch using the Skippers I'd brought from the States [nut-free M&Ms].

 It was wonderful to get a long, interrupted chance to talk to these people, about all kinds of things. I really do hope I'll do a better job of staying in contact with these people than I did last year when this all is over (SCARY THOUGHT, I AM AVOIDING IT)

My host grandmother tastes her first chocolate chip cookie!

SUZHOU ZOO

Entrance to Suzhou Zoo

I went to the zoo!!!!!!!! 


Unfortunately, the earliest time school ever ends is 2 pm, it is an hour long trip from the school to the zoo (assuming that you don't get lost as thoroughly as Elliot and I did), and the zoo kicks everybody out at 5 pm, so I only got to thoroughly see about a third of it before I had to leave. 

Suzhou Zoo May 2012, Photo by Hang Xinwei, Xinhuanet

Long story short: :(  (sadface). 


Not as badly as I was warned that it would suck, but it is rather terrible. I was really, really close to spitting a hunk of phlem in one man's face, and the bears were particularly sad. 

Bear at Suzhou Zoo, April 2012,
Photo courtesy of McLain Family Blog at http://mclainsabroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/suzhou-zoo.html

But I got pictures! And I'm trying to see all the terrible things as potential.

1984

Reading "1984" is my latest timesuck. 


A really cool thing about being with a bunch of intellectually-minded high schoolers is that you can actually have conversations about literature without people going "wait, remind me what a book is again?" 


I'm getting lots of great recommendations. The general consensus is that I should read everything Steinbeck ever wrote (except all the guys hated "Grapes of Wrath"), but everybody hates Dickens because of adjectives. 


Vanessa calls "1984" her "comfort book". I'm half way through, and I have no idea how this book can possibly be comforting. I also can't see any possible positive ending.

ACADEMIC UPDATE

正在取得進展

I passed the Midterm. I feel that I got a far better grade than I deserve. The teacher left the grade sheet lying out on the desk, with the list of all the grades we've gotten in the past week. No one got lower than an -A on anything, it seems that the only three grades they ever give is an A+, A, or -A. So we students have decided that A+ is actually good work, A is average work, and -A is bad work. I got an A on the midterm.

The rough draft of the final project's essay is due on Friday. I'm kicking myself for picking such a hard topic. I have to have 750 characters. 300 is easy. 500 is a stretch. 750 is a nightmare. The final draft is 1000. I still have to do interviews and the survey, but progress is being made!

RETURN TO SHANGHAI

View of Shanghai from Oriental Pearl Tower, Photo by David Nielson

I went to Shanghai! 


> Best part: getting to go up in the Oriental Pearl TV Tower http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/shanghai/oriental_pearl.htm . 

Blue skies in Shanghai! Photo by Claire Balani

> Worst part: spending hours walking around the Waitan and NanjingLv in 44C (111F) heat. I have a sunburn. 

Tired on the Shanghai tour

>Middle-ish part: getting to walk around the vast, maze-like history museum under the Tower that I didn't even know existed. I really had to rush through it, but it was very cool.


[Smithsonian Magazine has a 360 degree view of the Shanghai skyline, including the landmark Oriental Pearl.  http://microsite.smithsonianmag.com/content/Shanghai-Panorama/shanghai-1.html
~Posted by Pam]

CAMERON AT CHINESE SCHOOL

Cameron's program director sent us a newsletter emphasizing the rigor of the Mandarin program. The students begin classes at 8 AM and spend five hours per day at school. Four hours are for language study and one hour is for cultural explorations, like tai chi, calligraphy and touring historical sites. (Photos courtesy of NSLI-Y Suzhou Newsletter #1)

That's Cameron in the center, learning what is described as "the iconic and tranquil movements of this ancient exercise".

(Cameron is 4th from left)

Poet Zhang Li made this Suzhou bridge famous in the 8th century.

Moon falls, crow caws, frost fills the sky;

Under Maple Bridge, fishermen's flares confront my weary eyes. 

Outside the city walls lies Hanshan Temple; 

Late at night the sound of its bell reaches a traveler's boat.

~Posted by Pam Hughes