The Fair Green City

I would love to include pictures in this post, or at the very least a link to a photo website, but I recently realized that I either forgot or lost my camera cord which would allow my to transfer my pictures to my computer. So, until I figure out how to rectify this situation, you will have to use your imagination.

I will help attempt to help a bit. Zhengzhou (more or less phonetically pronounced: jung-joe) is a city of about 7 million people. This is roughly the size of New York City. It is, umm, rather large, and there are a lot of people in it. Conesquently, I won't lie, it doesn't smell to great. I live in downtown Zhengzhou, about a 15 min walk away from the central square called The Green Square. "The Green City" is Zhengzhou's nickname, and while I would not exactly call it 'green' there are a fair number of trees and flowers in the medians and quite a few beautifully manicured parks, ringed with oh so picturesque skyscrapers (the parks really are pretty, the buildings, not so much.) As far as litter, the sidewalks and streets are pretty clean. The air, however, is not. I have been here for about two weeks now, and in those two weeks I have seen blue sky on just two occasions. One night I even saw roughly three stars, it was exhilarating. In this city, everything, everywhere, is under construction. Between every 20 story building there is a rubble heap of what once was a 15 story building in the process of being replaced by another even larger building. Everywhere, chunks of sidewalk and street are missing, in the process of being replaced by, I'm not sure...nicer sidewalk, I guess.

It feels very safe here. I never feel nervous walking around, and I really enjoy how many people are out on the streets at all hours of the day. If you go for a walk in the morning, you are bound to see the parks full of people doing tai chi, in the afternoons, it's old men squatting in circles on every street corner playing cards or a type of Chinese dominoes. Underneath the cover of an elevated roadway, lines of pool tables and card tables can be found. It's not unusual to see some fancy glossy looking car parked next to a bicycles vendor selling live chickens from crates. In the evening, dancing classes occur in every large plaza or park. It's really quite odd, as often times you'll happen upon 15 couples practicing ballroom dancing in the open space in front of the super market. It was at one such similar class that one of the other foreign teachers from the U.S. met a very friendly police woman, who, along with her 15 year old nephew and translator, took us to the local museum and then the Chinese Youth Palace for a rousing game of ping pong. They love their ping pong here, this is no lie.

I was quit amused by "Homeland" our 15 year old translator. I especially liked his name. I'm guessing it was probably a translation of his actual Chinese name, but any way, it was at least unique. Many people here will adopt an English name, and will introduce themselves with only their English name to foreigners. The names they choose are sometimes pretty funny. I've met a number of young girls name Avril (she's huge in China) as well as Avril Two ("because my best friend is named Avril") along with Little Bear and Tiger and a number of Harry Potters. Homeland had about a million questions for us, mostly about New York. He watches a lot of Friends to improve his English, and is consequently bound and determined to move to, and live in, New York City for the rest of his life. I think he thought I was pretty lame because I'd never been there, and because he'd never heard of Colorado before.

I am also very amused by Chinglish. Many park signs, clothing and food packaging has English labeling on them, which usually makes no sense, but are often entertaining. Some of my favorite examples include a package of drinking straws I saw at a grocery store that were labeled as "hygienic drink suckers", or a park sign asking us to "plead treasure the flowers and the plants and safeguard environmental sanitation" (misspellings and all). I guess I just find it so funny because it's rare for me to actually be capable of reading anything in this country, and when I do happen across English, I'm amused that it also makes no sense.

I'm tired now and can't think of many more interesting things to say. I didn't teach again this week (reason=unknown) but have been told I will be actually working next week. We'll see I guess. I've learned not to worry about it, that's just the way things work in China.