Local Dialect

Last week entailed another long trip to the countryside and many hours of meetings conducted entirely in the local Sichuan dialect--the meetings are particularly brutal for me because I understand about 15-30% of spoken Sichuan dialect, depending on how familiar I am with the subject matter at hand.  However, because DaBa (and, admittedly, just about any Chinese NGO) love the "face" and credibility they gain by having a foreigner working with them, I am unfortunately dragged along to attend every meeting.  I generally sit there absentmindedly thumbing through my pocket Chinese-English dictionary and trying to avoid lung cancer & TB while the locals furiously chain smoke and spit all over the floor as they discuss who in their village should be nominated for the aid grants we are allocating.  When the appropriate time arrives--my boss's mention of the fact that the "foreign friend" will be personally inspecting all the nominated households as an unbiased 3rd-party reviewer--I pull myself together and say that if we find that some households are above average and possess such items as a refrigerator, they will most certainly be eliminated from our list and will not receive the money that is intended for "especially impoverished" farmers.  This statement is usually followed by them telling me my Mandarin is better than theirs, inquiring how much a plane ticket to the US costs, and asking me if I've gotten used to eating Chinese food.  After the meeting finally concludes, we all sit down to a meal together in which copious amounts of warm beer and Chinese rice liquor are consumed, and I am forced to "gan bei" (the Chinese way of saying "cheers," though it literally means "dry your glass," and they really do make you finish all the beer in your mouthwash-cup-sized glass each time) with every Tom, Dick, & Harry Zhang, Li, & Wang in the village.  Fortunately 4 years of college in the US trained my liver to be able to handle about twice what the average Chinese male can, so everyone is always super impressed with the "foreign friend."

Here is a fun countryside game for you: Which person in the below picture doesn't belong?

"Nate! Kasya needs another laxative!"

This post is a special shout out to my Putney Student Travel group this past summer.  My bathroom for the duration of my stay in Tonjiang (note that this space is also my shower and my laundry room):

The Other White Meat

I neglected to mention that, as part of the countryside celebrations of the Chinese National Day holiday, I also had the distinct pleasure of witnessing the slaughter of a live pig. By hand. No big deal. Tastes like chicken?

Step 1: pig is weighed

Step 2: Preparing for slaughter.  Takes four dudes to mount the squealing animal on the bench.

Step 3: I just couldn't bring myself to witness the slitting of the throat, but here's the aftermath. Compare the metal bowl in this photo vs. in the previous one...  Also, note the cigs hanging from everyone's mouth as they wrestle the animal to the ground with blood-covered hands.  Ballers.

Step 4: Soaking the dead pig in a vat of hot water before skinning it

Step 5: Gutting the pig

Step 6: dinner.

Excedrin, anyone?

The director of the NGO where I work had a headache the other day, and was taking what seemed to be a rather large dose (12 pills, 3xday!) of small black gel-caps to alleviate the pain. Fortunately, the indications were written on the package in English, so I don't even have to translate for you:

"Action & Indications:
To dispel wind-evil and releasing stagnated lung energy, clear away heat and toxicity, relieve nasal obstruction to stop pain. Treated for nasal obstruction, sinusitis with purulent discharge, unfree orifices, smell badly, headache and eyebrow bone pain."

A break from Mainland China...followed by a rapid re-indoctrination

Because the number of Chinese tourist visas in my passport always makes me a bit nervous when applying for yet another visa, I generally take whatever the Chinese Embassy will give me; this time around, I am required to leave & re-enter the country every 60 days. I was originally annoyed at the prospect, but it has turned into a blessing in disguise as I now have the perfect excuse to head to Hong Kong every two months. Coming from the countryside and setting foot in a Hong Kong grocery store is probably on par with a freshly-minted-fake-ID-carrying minor setting foot in a liquor store. Peanut butter! Snickers bars! CHEESE!! Heaven. I also conveniently schedule my HK sojourn around an ultimate frisbee tournament, so I joined forces with some friends from Shanghai and got to play ultimate all weekend - and we won!

My return to mainland China and Tongjiang, however, was not as successful. After missing my departing flight on Sunday evening, no thanks to Air China's customer service-oriented miserably unhelpful staff, I spent the night at an airport hotel and was able to get on a flight the following morning. Obviously, this flight was delayed an hour, but my originally scheduled flight the preceding evening was right on time. Spent most of Monday recovering in Chendgu by eating and watching pirated DVDs before my favorite part of the journey on Tuesday: the 8+ hour public bus ride from Chengdu to Tongjiang.

Over the past 3.5 years in Asia, I have developed a personal theory that Asians in general--and Chinese in particular--are more prone to suffer from motion sickness than Caucasians. Countless flights in which people around me have made use of the "barf bags" was the seed that started my theory, and the trips I have made back and forth along the windy roads between Tongjiang and Chengdu have only given me further evidence. Little did I understand the ironic foreshadowing of the following day's bus ride when I hopped on my favorite online Chinese dictionary and Monday's example said "Try 'carsickness,' 'yunche,' or ‘晕车.' "

The first 3 hours of the trip were relatively puke-free. Furthermore, because I had learned my lesson the hard way on my first Tongjiang-->Chengdu trip, I had my trusty iPod in tow and could throw on the headphones and blast the music in the event that I wanted to mask the sounds of proximate booting. After our mid-day lunch stop, however, the regurgitation of instant noodles began...right next to me. The sweet middle-aged woman next me grabbed the black plastic bag that is apparently standard issue on every bus ride and started going at it. I cranked up the volume, looked out the window at the scenery, and managed to take my mind elsewhere until she was better. An hour later, however, she was at it again with barf bag #2. This time however, rather than leaning into the aisle of the bus, she decided that my leg looked like a comfortable arm rest and used it to prop herself up as she doubled over and vomited into the bag. All I could do was cringe, hold my breath, and question my decision to wear flip flops as I prayed the flimsy bag didn't break. Several hours and three more plastic bags later (total: 5 bags of puke), we were nearly to Tongjiang; the bus stopped for a bathroom break and my neighbor got off to get some fresh air.

At this point, I figured I had seen the worst of it and went back to reading while waiting for everyone to re-board for the last hour of the trip. No such luck, however. I glanced up from my book to see the grandmother across the aisle from me readying her grandson's traditional split-seam pants for him to actually urinate IN THE AISLE OF THE BUS. Right at her feet. WHILE THE BUS WAS STOPPED FOR A BATHROOM BREAK. And she was in the third row, approximately 10 feet from the door. And the trashcan was about 2 feet from her, if she really couldn't be bothered to take him outside to go on the ground. Unreal.

Fieldwork

The field project I've been most involved with since I've been here is one in which we're giving aid grants to "especially impoverished" farmers who are struggling to make ends meet at home while their family members have left to seek work in China's major cities. Those living in China's rural areas are nearly all subsistence farmers, so there are extremely few opportunities to earn actual cash in the countryside, and many farmers head to China's industrial zones to seek work in manufacturing plants, construction projects, or coal mining. This project is essentially an aid project, in which 300 households that meet the parameters Daba and the CFPA have set out for the project will each receive RMB3,000 (about USD 280).

While I personally don't find the project to be very sustainable because of its one-off nature, there is still a desperate need in many cases for a lump sum of cash, and the hope is that this aid grant will be used towards pressing medical fees, home improvements (especially those that suffered earthquake damage last year but did not qualify for government aid) or other critical expenses. The process by which we decide who is to receive the grants has been particularly interesting to me. We are doling out the cash to households in 8 different village communities, and we start by meeting with the local, government-appointed communist party officials in the villages. After we explain the parameters of the project, these officials then nominate households within their jurisdiction whom they think qualify for the funds. Obviously, this brings up some concerns--most notably the fact the the party officials would be inclined to nominate friends of family members while neglecting to nominate anyone who had done something in the past to upset the village government. We do, however, follow up and inspect every house and interview every villager nominated to ensure that the funds go to those most in need. While I still think there is a chance that some villagers who deserved the money could have been neglected, we managed to eliminate some gratuitous nominations on our first inspection trip--a few nominees with sturdy, 2-story houses, new bathrooms with running water, and refrigerators & large new TVs (something I don't even have in the city!) were quickly knocked off our list. Not surprisingly, these were often the homes of either family members of local officials or, in some cases, the officials themselves!

We will return next week to give out the cash to the first 120 households (in 3 out of the 8 village communities) that have been nominated, gone through our inspection, and qualify for the grant. We have another 180 households in the remaining 5 village communities with whom we have yet to go through the whole process with.

60th Anniversary? Or 20th?

Several important anniversaries took place in China this year, depending on who you talk to.  The second of these, on October 1st, was the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.  While the fanfare in Beijing nearly rivaled that of last year's Olympics (my favorite part is this clip is the smiling ethnic minority children enthusiastically waving), I had the distinct pleasure of spending the days leading up to the holiday in the countryside.  Since a picture (or, in this case, a video) is worth a thousand words, I'll give you a little taste of my experience.  I honestly felt like I had stepped in a time machine and traveled back to 1969 to celebrate the 20th anniversary, complete with several renditions of the most popular of Chinese Communist anthems, 东方红。

大巴山生态与贫困问题研究会

A bit of background on why I am out here in the middle nowheresville, Sichuan province.  I came through PlaNet Finance China's internship program to work as a volunteer at an organization called DaBa Mountain Ecology and Poverty Research Center, a grassroots Chinese NGO that does poverty alleviation and community development projects ranging from clean water projects to public health education to earthquake rebuilding to microfinance.  I live and work at the organization's office in the small city of Tongjiang, and spend about 1/3 of the time out in the surrounding countryside doing field work and implementing projects.  While in the countryside, we stay at the family home of the NGO director, where his parents, brother, and sister-in-law still live.  From the nearest (very) small town to the house, it's about a 30 minute walk over a dirt road impassable to all vehicles other than motorcycles, through various terraced vegetable gardens, and along footpaths carved out from generations of local farmers' daily treks to and from the fields.   From three to six days at a time, the house serves as our base while we work to implement projects in the surrounding villages.

The majority of our projects are funded by larger domestic and international NGOs such as Heifer International, Partnerships for Community Development, and China's largest domestic poverty alleviation non-profit non-governmental organization, the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA).  Sometimes we act to run and oversee the local implementation of projects, as is the case with Heifer International's animal husbandry projects; other times we design and run our own projects with funding that we have applied for through CFPA or private foundations.

Jenn: 1, CCP: 0

The Chinese government's "Great Firewall" foiled my amitious blogging plans, however I am finally back to free internet access thanks to Witopia.  $60: a small price to pay for access to Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and just about every other pro-procrastination website out there.  I will try to recount the past month+ in a flurry of blog posts!

Third time's a charm?

Ok, I am giving this blog one final go, after two failed attempts.  I have always liked the idea of keeping a blog, but just never found the time while I was taking advantage of Beijing's nightlife or gallivanting around SE Asia as a tour leader.  Now I have LOTS of time on my hands, because I live in the small, rural city of Tonjiang in Sichuan province, China, hundreds of miles from any other foreigners or English speakers.

The journey to get out here was a long one: 30 hours by train from Beijing to the provincial capital of Chengdu, followed by a 7-hour car ride to Tongjiang.  Or so I was expecting.  Obviously there were delays, starting with the SEVEN AND A HALF HOURS I spent sitting in the Beijing train station waiting for my 11:20am train to depart at 7pm.  I split the time poring over GMAT test-prep books, inducing a neck cramp through awkward sleeping positions, thinking about the fact that this delay was going to cause me to arrive in Chengdu at 1am, and trying to alleviate the lingering effects of the previous night's shenanigans with some McDonalds.  Have you ever been to that website "F My Life?"  Well, I felt like a potential candidate for it. 

The inside of the station in the morning and a bit of the sunset as we were boarding:

Once on the train, things improved drastically: I had my bed and my dinner, and the one other foreigner on the whole train was in the same car as me.  Because I certainly didn't come to China to talk to Chinese peple.  As it turned out, I had a couple hilarious local characters sharing the same berth as me--my favorite being this dude who, at 60 years old, told me the secret to staying healthy into old age was to drink beer every day.  He looked pretty sprightly for 60, plus he shared some of his homemade food with me.  Bonus points for awesomeness.

Fortunately (unfortunately?) the train ended up taking 35 hours instead of 30, which means I rolled into Chengdu at the slightly more sane hour of 6am.  Desperate for a shower before beginning the long car ride out to Tongjiang, I scooted over to the nearest hotel where you can rent rooms by the hour.  "Do you have your Chinese state-issued ID card?" the attendant asked me.  "What??  I have a passport," I told them, "How can I have Chinese ID card?  I'm (umm, obviously) not Chinese."  Of course this meant they were not authorized to let foreigners stay at their hotel, so I went around the corner in search of another option.  Same deal at the next one.  And four more after that.  Thank you, Chinese Communist Party.  I had been really concerned about being so sedentary for 35 hours on the train, so the hour I spent lugging all my belongings for the next 5 months around in the rain to every hotel within a quarter-mile radius of the train station was really a welcome bit of exercise.  Particularly at 6am.  I finally gave up, had some breakfast, and called to meet up with my fellow carpoolers for the drive to Tonjiang.  And just because I hadn't suffered enough that morning, I was made to ride bitch the whole way.  AWEsome.