Sometimes Things Don't Go as Planned

It has been said the only certain thing in life is change. Unfortunately, the type of change that will happen is also part of the big unknown. For me, this saying has always been something that sounds wise, most surely is true and is something great to say in a talk. But as life has it, lessons that ought to be learned cannot go unlearned forever and thus Jenn and I were about to experience change. I am referring to the unexpected kind, the kind that makes things turn out very differently than planned.

It started off small. Embracing the wonderful local cuisine, we decided to make our own steamed bread. Don't misunderstand here, by "make" I mean steam frozen bread. Simple enough right? We even had been instructed how to do it and the instructions could not have been simpler. Bread on the steaming rack, water in the rice cooker, and voilá! Well, it turns out that the amount of water really matters and our first batch of steamed (read: drenched) bread  looked like the bread version of raisins and tasted like shriveled rocks. It is easy to see here that this did not turn out the way we had pictured. But this ordeal was just an overture to the grand fiasco that was about to unfold.

Jenn was a happy English teacher, helping Chinese children learn the language of international trade, business and culture. She had a nice schedule and we were happy with it. But alas, where is the fun in a reliable schedule? No, we don't need the petty bourgeois life of timetables! So, in accordance with that the schedule was changed. Drastically. Work times were all over the place, if there at all, and time changes were usually forwarded to us at the last minute, with no additional needed information.
Because this schedule change opened up a lot of time for different ventures, Jenn found another job opportunity: teaching dance! This seemed very exciting! Jenn has loved dancing all her life and we both figured that she would really enjoy teaching an introductory ballet class.
The gig seemed safe and sure. The organization was a chain of schools and it seemed much more organized than what we had seen before. Oh, if only....
This was a real business venture! There was no dance class in existence so far and we were informed that we would have to recruit students on our own and design the curriculum. But, rest assured, the school would provide us with help for music, recruiting and other things as needed.
So we got to work. Jenn went ahead and designed a flyer to be used in recruiting students. We did not know what one should write on a flyer for a dance class to make it attractive and easy to understand for Chinese parents, so we designed it in English and asked out Chinese contact to help us with the translation. Well, here was the first sign that things would not turn out as we had hoped. Besides blowing up the picture of Jenn to about 4 times its original size, they did not add much. Except adding "Kids Modeling & Fashion Class" to the classes name. To this day we still do not know what they were trying to do with that. Since the flyer contained all important contact info in Chinese, we felt safe that we had the blessing of Susan, the Chinese boss of the school and moved forward.
After the flyers were printed en masse, we were tasked with passing them out to lucky children who would have the chance to learn the sublime art of ballet from a real foreign dancer! It really sounded good! So Jenn and I (I accompanied her as much as I could) took the 30 minute bus ride to the English school to pass out the flyers to elementary school kids and their parents as they got out of school.

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Here I would like to interject an anecdote that goes with some of the pictures in this post. Walking to the bus stop, we walked through the park that is next to our building. Every morning and night you can see groups of mostly elderly Chinese ladies happily dancing, which consisted mostly of walking around and moving their arms and hands rhythmically to loud Chinese songs. It is a joy to behold. Well, we noticed that a lot of people had congregated in the rather small park and some people were building something that looked like the backdrop to a stage. And walking to the bus to be on our way to hand out flyers we saw them: throngs of people in all kinds of dancing costumes practicing and getting themselves ready for a performance. Unfortunately we were not able to stay and watch, but we later saw picture and videos from the performance and it was wonderful! Just a bunch of people really happy to dance and to share the fun, people of all ages with no embarrassment or hesitation.

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This is how we would go about passing out our flyers. We would each take a great stack of 'em and lurk around the school like a cheetah ready to pounce on an unassuming gazelle. Around 3 pm, parents (actually mostly grandparents; the parents are often times both at work) start to congregate to pick up their children. This particular school had a lot of children and thus a lot of parents.
Soon the frenzy began and the streets and sidewalks filled with children. I set my eyes to be particularly sensitive to the color pink, as pink was (mostly) a sure-fire indicator of a girl, the target group for our class. In a little way I felt like a missionary again, approaching strangers and trying to convince them to try out something new in their lives. Of course, the social interactions here were much reduced as we just did not have the time to talk to people, we had to hand out as many flyers as possible. Every once in awhile a question arose, and I did my best to answer. But often times the questions were about things I did not know. "How much is the class?" (the price was still being discussed), "How do I pay?" (I don't know, call the number on the back), "This is all in English, no one can read your flyer!" (I had a feeling that it wasn't the best idea to leave the whole flyer in English). Generally I referred everyone to the back of the flyer and did my best to explain what we were offering. It seemed to go fairly well, some mothers even approached me to get some flyers (Jenn and I were also approached by a couple who were looking for foreigners to sing and dance for them in some way. We politely declined). After the school, we were sent to stake out a preschool which got out at 4pm, which we faithfully did. There were not as many kids there, so I am pretty sure that we got to every little girl going to that kindergarten. Thus we finished our first successful day of recruiting.
The business of passing flyers continued for a couple of weeks. Jenn kept going there and I joined here for a total of three times, as my schedule permitted. We got feedback a couple of times that the class was too expensive (the price had been set at 150 RMB/hour). Apparently, a few people had called and inquired about the class, but had declined after hearing the price. Of the employees of the school confided in me that she thought the price was way too steep, dance classes normally go for 80-100 RMB per class period, which is 1.5 hours. Again, this was something we had hoped to get help with from the experts at the school, but things don't always turn out the way you'd like them to.

After a Friday afternoon of giving out flyers, we went back to the school and asked about the price problem. A solution was not presented, but the teacher said: "Since you came back, we set up a demo class for you to teach tomorrow morning for some children. Alright, see you tomorrow morning, bright an early!" A question came to my mind: When would they have told us if we did not go back to the school and decide to pull the teacher out of the classroom to ask her about the dance class? My guess: Saturday at 8:15 we would have gotten a call, asking why were we not there yet...
On the way home we carried with us a little speaker box that was to serve as our speaker for the dance class. Jenn threw together a plan for a intro ballet class. We found some music online that we chose to play from my computer and a lesson plan was drafted.

The class itself was actually fun. Two girls came, two successes from our flyer campaign. Two more girls were brought from teachers to beef up our class attendance numbers. Jenn did a great job warming up with the girls and going over the basics of ballet, to the wonderful tunes of modern songs transformed into classical piano pieces. The girls were really cute and the class was a joy to watch. We felt pretty good afterwards. Then the fun began. We had a discussion with the parents of the girls and the boss of the school about what was to be done with the class. One of the mothers wanted the class to be on Tuesday, one of them preferred Saturday. Jenn voiced her opinion, but the customer is king. Susan, the boss, would not condescend and speak Chinese to me, even though her English left us utterly confused at times and we had no way of knowing that she understood us. At the end of the day, the decision seemed to have fallen on Saturday morning. Not our favorite, but we were willing!

After this day, we handed out flyers two more times, at different schools this time. We felt that throwing out a wide net would help us in finding as many students as possible. During the week, Jenn prepared some vocabulary cards for the girls to learn ballet terms. We were all set to finally begin classes on Saturday and be paid for our work!
And here comes the finale: On Friday night, I get a call. One of the teachers who helped us pass out flyers is on the phone. She asked me if I still have the speaker from the school. Yes, I say, I will bring it back tomorrow morning. Actually, she says, its too cold for classes right now; spring is really a better time. What does she mean by that, I ask. Well, classes won't start until Spring, she replies. You will tell Jenn, won't you? She will understand.
There it is. The class was cancelled, last minute. I must say that I am glad they did not tell us Saturday morning, after arriving there for the class. Things did really not turn out as planned and everything changed without prior notice. I am not complaining, that is how life is. Now that our old plans have changed again, we are excited to find out what they have changed into.

An Itch Only Hamburgers Can Scratch

When you live in the US of A, you start taking some parts of its great cultural heritage for granted. I am talking about the Burger Joints, in all there varieties, from In-N-Out to Five Guys and many, many more. A good burger is not hard to find, and one gets complacent.
Here in the middle Kingdom, the matter is an entirely different one. While wonton soup and fried rice are everywhere you look, burgers are not. There are McDonalds and KFCs at at least every street corner, but they just can satisfy the craving. We had a fever, and the only cure was a juicy, delicious hamburger.
But even the smog clouds that fill the streets and sky have a silver lining. We indeed found a restaurant, with the late-night-jazz-club sounding name "Blue Frog", that acts as a bar and hamburger joint. As if things could not get any better, we learned that on Mondays, a wonderful thing was happening in the hallowed halls of the Blue Frog. The deal on Mondays was, "buy one hamburger and a drink, get another hamburger free!" This included fries for each. I know! That is a great deal!
I will cut to the chase here. The burgers were absolutely delicious. The chocolate shake we shared was wonderful. The Blue Frog is an amazing place to gather together with other friends and enjoy the finest of American cuisine, which we have done a couple of times by now.

That's all folks! Thanks for sharing our joy with us!

Dressing Up the Red Chamber

It should be obvious to even the casual observer that Nanjing is in fact a city of great historic importance in the large casserole of historic facts that is Chinese history. As a Flagship group we got to visit some of these sights already and today, on a bright and relatively warm early November day, we went on yet another trip. This time our destination was twofold: A museum dedicated to clothes and novels, and a the presidential palace in Nanjing.

Let me elaborate on our two destinations. First the clothes museum. Here I must admit that I did not quite follow the historical significance of it, only that it was important. The museum was dedicated to the Cheongsam, the Chinese Gown or Qipao, as it is known in Cantonese, English and Mandarin, respectively. The museum chronicled the development of the dress and how it function as a symbol of Chinese culture in Shanghai initially and now all over the world. The exhibit was nice and very well set up, one felt like one was walking through the streets of 1920's Shanghai. Besides that there was not too much to it, you can only be impressed by fancy Chinese dresses so many times.

But there was a highlight to the visit: A qipao fashion show! Yes, the museum puts on fashion shows, displaying all the pomp and beauty of classic Chinese sartorial history. It was very enjoyable and the number of dresses displayed was impressive, especially since they only had about 4-5 models. These girls must have been able to change at a neck-breaking speed.

After that fun little interlude, we spent some time in a museum dedicated to the novel "Dream of the Red Chamber". This novel is a whole story in itself (pun intended), it is one of the four classical Chinese novels, it is considered the pinnacle of Chinese fiction and an entire field of study is dedicated to the study of this Novel, called Redology. The novels boasts 40 main characters and about 500 supporting characters; it's a beast of a novel. The novel is closely connected to Nanjing, although I am not sure how. The exhibit featured a lot of editions of the book and background information on the characters and history of this epic literary journey.

For our second destination we went to the presidential palace. As the name implies, it was the palace of the ruler of China at certain times. Twice during the Ming dynasty, once during the Qing dynasty and then again in the 1850's during the Taiping revolution, during which the palace reached its peak of beauty and general impressiveness. The palace was important again during the rule of the nationalist party in China, as it was the main office for Sun Yat-sen. Beautiful gardens adorn the palace grounds, especially in the residential area. The actual rooms where Sun Yat-sen and family lived were fairly humble by today's standards, but set in a beautiful serene environment. The last building in the complex was a tall yellowish building set between two trees and served as the office building for Chinese officials. It is a large and impressive complex.

Valentine's Day themed water drain

But, as in all places the Flagship group visits, the main attraction was Peter, Clara and Marshall, the three babies of the Flagship group. As we were waiting to be picked up by the bus, hordes of baby loving Chinese people gathered around, wielding cameras and iPads and trying to get a good look at, and maybe even a picture with, the foreign babies.

And thus passes another day in the life of us China travelers. And as a little reprise: On the bus ride back home we happened to see a cafe called "Rock Hard", with the same font and label as the well known "Hard Rock Cafe". No one strained any muscles coming up with that name.

Classical Shenanigans in a Chinese Concert Hall

Going to classical concerts was always a tradition in my family. From as early as I can remember, we had season tickets to "Die Alter Oper", an old opera building in Frankfurt where we got to see performances of classical music. Orchestras, soloists and conductors of great fame and fortune came through those hallowed halls and great performances were enjoyed by us. The events were always very formal, as proper German concerts should be, honoring the rich tradition of the old masters. Formal attire must be worn and the concert hall was very quiet during the performance (apart from the coughs between movements), the air filled with an elegant reverence. Many a story I could tell from those nights and about the sparkling apple juice we drank, but that is off topic. Suffice it to say that these were formal reverent events, and nothing else was tolerated. Keep this in mind as I recount the following event.
We received an invitation to attend a classical concert here in Nanjing, for which we were very excited. Liu Le, a young, but very talented and famous Chinese Guzheng player (the Guzheng is also called the Chinese Zither, please refer to the pictures), was to play in Nanjing. His manager happened to know some of the Flagship students and invited a bunch of us to attend the concert, free of charge. This was a grand opportunity and were were happy to seize it!

Our group made its way to the concert hall and there we were let in by the manager himself; we felt like real VIPs! We got our tickets and had to find out that our seats were not arranged together. No problem, we were assured by one students, who had attended many Chinese concerts before, nobody sits in the assigned seats anyways, we can sit together! Hearing this I already knew that this was going to be a different experience from what I was used to. 

Walking into the actual concert hall confirmed my initial feeling. The hall was very nice, but the atmosphere inside was one of chaos, albeit very civilized. People were sitting in the seats our tickets told us, so we chose a row of seats together. Most people had brought their little kids, some older and some younger, with the youngest probably being around 1 year old. This was an unusual sight, I was not expecting so many young, and loud, children. 

We were eventually removed from our seats by the rightful owners of the tickets, which left us no other choice but to separate ourselves from the group and fend for ourselves. We found some seats closer to the front that seemed unoccupied. 

The concert began and an announcer came up on stage, reading from the program to introduce the artist. After a few flowery words or praise, young Liu Le came on stage, dressed in very modern looking attire, to take his seat behind the big Guzheng that was placed in the middle of the stage for him. Thus it began.

Here I need to point out another difference in concert going. The rule of "no recording of any kind during the performance" is really more of a guideline in China, than an actual rule. As soon as Liu Le began to masterfully pluck his instrument, what seemed like the entire audience raised their smartphones, tablets and professional camera equipment and recorded every last note of the performance. I have to admit that I did not want to miss out and also recorded a few parts of the performance. When in Rome...

The concert was wonderful! The sound of the instrument is unmistakably Chinese, but it was played with a good amount of modern "spunk". Liu Le was very energetic and charismatic and his performance was captivating. Though the songs all sounded somewhat similar due to the instrument, they were never boring and very enjoyable. Jenn and I both loved the show and were very impressed. If any of you are ever in China and have the opportunity to see a Guzheng performance by Liu Le, don't miss out!

In stark contrast to the elegance and power of the performance was the behavior of the audience, especially those of 6 years of age and younger. During the concert, children, undoubtably energized by the performance, were dancing in the isles and up on the balcony, gleefully imitating the performer. During the intermission the children could not hold themselves back and climbed up on the stage and all over anything on it. One concert hall employee tried his best to keep the kids off the back parts of the stage, but with little success. 

One final thing that seemed to be unusual to me was the presentation of flowers to the performer. Multiple times during and after the performance, women with VERY large bouquets of flowers came on stage to give said flowers to Liu Le. That night, he walked home with at least 4 super-sized bouquets of luscious and colorful flowers.

There you have it. The concert was a great experience, but certainly different from what we were used to. But at the end of the day, we truly enjoyed hearing an ancient Chinese instrument played with so much new energy and returned home with yet another great memory from our time in China.