Looking forward to Spring in Xi'an

Spring may not officially arrive for another week but it sneaked in early yesterday and surprised us with sunshine, warm temperatures, blossoms just ready to pop out, and a breath of what is ahead. We are told to enjoy spring fully—it soon converts to a hot and muggy summer. For now we are grateful to see a warm day and hope others follow since our indoor heat is being turned off—by official decree—on March 15, no matter what the temperature is outside.

School this week was a delight as my oral students “Toured the Teacher” with their presentations, acting as travel agents, in an attempt to sell me on traveling to their hometowns. Their enthusiasm was great fun to watch. The worst part was having to grade their efforts, but that, as I explained to them, is the “dirty diaper” of my job as a teacher. (That by the way is an expression that had to be explained.)

By Saturday we decided that we had had our noses to the proverbial grindstone far too long this week and really had to get out of our apartment and do something fun. To waste such a day would surely be a sin of some type. After lunch we left with no jackets on and soon wished we’d have worn sandals and shorts instead.

Walking past the building just in front of ours, we laughed at the usual Chinese construction zone, complete with its heap of sledge-hammered debris piled below, as someone was having a new kitchen built.

The view improved as we turned the corner, walked around the block to JiaoDa’s north gate, and crossed the road to Xingqing Gong (Park) where we joined throngs of Chinese who had the same idea we had—to enjoy the day in the sunshine.

Without the gates of the park we found street vendors taking advantage of the crowds by setting up shop with everything from a man making handmade grasshoppers;

to a motley assortment of puppies in cages, guinea pigs, and florescent colored chicks for sale;

mixed in with balloons and festive kites; side by side carts of a variety of Xi’an treats—hot baked yams,

fried quail eggs on a stick, Chinese crepes, cotton candy, and ice cream bars.

We passed by most of their offering, stopping to buy an “oatmeal” ice cream bar and headed in through the gates to wander the paths along the lakes, enjoy the fun of seeing families caught up in being together on such a lovely day.

Once more we were the only foreigners in a sea of Chinese faces, and once more we were photographed and greeted with “Hello, how are you”—the first line every Chinese child learns in their English classes. Each was delighted in turn with our willing responses to return their greeting and give them the chance to practice their limited English, others wanted our autographs or have their pictures taken with us.

As we strolled along we listened to a young man singing Shanxi opera (something one can’t quite describe—you just gotta hear it!) to the accompaniment of a grandfather’s two-stringed erhu; we watched children climb and slide on lovely carved approaches to ancient structures;

we laughed at the children’s play ground areas with their brightly colored toys, the kiddie-bungy jump, I’d have loved to try myself, to the plastic barrels in the water than looked as if made out of substantial bubble wrap.

The lake was full of people having fun in paddle boats and even one old codger in an old row boat using a shovel for his oar.


The trees were showing the start of tiny new leaves, the blossoms were just beginning, and the forsythia was showing its yellow blooms. Best of all were the children with their cheery little round faces and Chinese charm.


Feeling renewed in spirit we returned home through our campus to get ready for Sunday. Leaving John at the apartment I headed to our little market street to get fresh ground beef, a few veggies and fruits.

I also made a stop to pick up John’s pants that had been left to have shortened. We have returned repeatedly for her sewing skills. Her treadle sits just off the street in an outdoor alcove. Despite our best efforts we have been unable to get her to accept extra pay for her services. So we give her the few yuan she charged with my hearty thanks. Yesterday I asked to take her picture and she was shyly pleased to have me do so.

Home again I put our veggies to soak and started cooking, tomorrow was to be our monthly potluck following our Church meetings so I had things to do while President Laing attended to his reports and plans. It had been a memorable day.

Sunday dawned bright again, though slightly cooler than yesterday. We hopped our usual taxi to Church—it saves John’s jostling two ways on a crowded bus—and were grateful to join once more with our branch members for meetings, food, and visits. Xiaoyu Belnap was one of our speakers. She is Chinese, originally from Xi’an who joined the Church in Hong Kong, married Patrick Belnap from Salt Lake City who served a Hmong mission in Minnesota. Now they are back in Xi’an where Xiaoyu’s mother lives, conveniently just a block away. Patrick is John’s second counselor and was to conduct this Sunday for Dave Monson who was in Hong Kong with his wife who was attending the Asian area women’s conference. Xiaoyu began her talk by telling of an experience that testified to all of us that the Spirit is brooding over this land with its millions and billions of people. Saturday night John had mentioned to Patrick to remember to bring the bread for the Sacrament Meeting. He didn’t know that they had no bread in their house. Xiaoyu felt awful, thinking they would have to buy some on Sunday morning. Early that morning Xiaoyu heard a knock on their front door. Opening it she found her non-member mom standing there holding two loaves of bread. She explained that she had had a dream in the night that they needed bread (something Chinese don’t really use) so she had brought this for them. Yes, the Spirit is at work in China. These are baby steps but hearts are softening and opening to the influences of the spirit. What a wonderful thing this is.

Back to Work in Xi'an

Our semester is once more underway and despite the sense of being generally overwhelmed at facing those first days of class, they came and went successfully. John came home from his Tuesday and then Friday classes beaming. Everything had gone off for him like clockwork and for whatever reason I felt more relaxed and settled with my kids than I did last term. I have made a lot of changes in what I am doing that actually is making my job easier and the students' work more demanding. They not only have to talk a lot more but also have to volunteer to do so. That doesn't sound terribly alarming for American kids but it is pretty daunting for Chinese students--who don't volunteer for anything, though they respond well when called on. To my view, becoming fluent in oral English demands a willingness to speak up! I began with putting all their names on the board and then as one or another timidly made a comment, I erased that student's name. It wasn't long before they figured it out. No one wanted his/her name left on the board at the end of class.

One of the challenges for Chinese students is that they do not choose their majors--they are assigned and they may or may not be happy with that assignment. Because of that circumstance and because they could well end up with jobs that they do not necessarily like either, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the value of avocations--finding things they love to do to infuse life with joy even when they don't always work in a profession they love. We talked about all kinds of hobbies and then they presented to the class their own hobbies.

It was fun to learn about each student's interests--from the expected love of reading and music, art and Chinese culture, to the collectors of little boxes, cute shopping bags, and event entrance tickets. Some had brought a visual aid and demonstrated their skills in badminton and some kind of marshal art, the name of which I have already forgotten, but which was pretty impressive!

Next week they will all become travel agents who have the task of "Touring the Teacher" to their home towns. They will be competing against one another to see who can sell their areas for a visit. (Chinese students may not like to volunteer but they are highly competitive! I look forward to their powerpoints and enthusiasm.

My research writing classes began with an assignment to select some kind of family artifact to write about after having interviewed a parent or grandparent about that item to define its significance in their family. The assignment gave them a chance to do a tiny bit of "primary research" and brought me a batch of absolutely wonderful papers to enjoy reading. The grammar and the spelling in them are far from perfect but the things they wrote about and the feeling with which they told the stories were priceless. I read of a crib a great-grandfather had carved and in which four generations of sons had been cradled, a sewing machine a grandmother had used to provide for her family during hard times when they had no other resource, a tin box where tiny coins were saved carefully to buy a beloved grandchild her wish--though there was never enough money to do so. One young man choose a wall as his artifact--a wall in his home marked with each year of his height as he grew to manhood; a girl chose her grandfather's medal earned during the "war to resist U.S. Aggression" (the one we call the Korean War--it's all a matter of perspective). These papers are a testament to how little they have in material ways--most of my kids come from peasant villages and are the hope of the future to their families--and how much they have in the things that matter.

They will now go on to write research papers that have to link in some way to their family as well as draw on scholarly sources. I will read research on how the barbaric custom of foot binding ended as one student tries to understand how one of her grandmothers had tiny crippled feet and her other one did not; another student is determined to understand the causes behind his family's having had to move to a small village a long way from their ancestral province; another, knowing of two relatives who suffer from the same serious mental illness seeks to find answers about the cause and treatment of that illness and if it could be a potential heartache in her own future child. Well enough about our school experiences. We find them to demand hard work, but they are also richly rewarding.

One of the challenges unrelated to the classroom but very much part of our teaching is our offices and equipment. I keep meaning to mention a couple of things along that line. Since coming to China we have bought two printers. The first printer was an HP and very cheap but over the next few months we paid for it over and over again in buying ink cartridges. We finally said "no more!" and gave it to a Chinese friend who would likely not use it nearly so heavily. We invested in a Canon, also very cheap, but we had it converted to use bulk liquid ink--no cartridges. We are not always impressed with Chinese quality. As one of our friends says--he won't be impressed with the Chinese until they develop a sewer system into which you can flush toilet paper without backing up! I couldn't agree more. BUT that said, this liquid ink set-up is just plain awesome. The big bottle of black ink cost me $7.50 American dollars--50 RMB and at the rate I am going with all the printing we do, I suspect it will be here for the next three years for the BYU teachers who follow after us. I wish we could bring our adapted Canon home with us! No more cartridges! I wish. Somebody needs to market this idea in the USA.

I spend a lot of time at the computer designing powerpoints for class and as a result have developed very painful neck and shoulder muscles--I think my age is catching up with me. John has just installed for me a new keyboard and drawer so that I don't have to lift my arms up so high. Hopefully that will make a big difference.

Because I was suffering with my stressed muscles and John was still feeling the effects of his fall on his shoulder and elbow, Mr. Chen took us, with our medical cards to JiaoDa's campus hospital--we thought we should experience what they had to offer in the way of Chinese medical treatment. They actually took x-rays of John's elbow and gave him some interesting smelling herbal patches to put on his hurts and then took me to a treatment room for "therapy." There I experienced electronic shock massage treatment. After 20 minutes of feeling like I had been rhythmically electrocuted while simultaneously being run over by a truck, I was told I got to come back for four more treatments. Oh goody. Despite the initial experience I actually felt considerably better the next day and since then have returned for two more and will go back next week for the other two. With our pink medical cards and Chinese foreign expert passports our medical experience cost us 53 RMB. Some $7.00. I've paid a lot more than that with fewer results in the good ole USA. Hey! its a Chinese adventure.

This week our neighborhood trees got butchered. John and I kept thinking that this had to be the worst case of pruning we'd ever seen. Just another funny Chinese thing.

Friday morning I dashed home from my morning class in time to call in on SKYPE to our condo's annual homeowners meeting. I am still the secretary on the board so attend our monthly board meetings in the same fashion. It is pretty amazing to be at home in Xi'an viewing the meeting in Salt Lake while I took the minutes. This medium allows us to talk with John's folks, our siblings, and even our kids occasionally. How blessed we feel to be able to do so. It makes it much easier to be away from home.

Today we had our district conference, also by means of SKYPE. From our hotel Church location, 14 of our branch members gathered around John's little ACER hooked up with our huawei air card to call into Beijing along with the rest of the members of the International district of the Church in China, where we could listen to inspired men and women who lead us. President Rogers, 1st counselor in the district presidency flawlessly conducted the adult session last night from his hotel room in Washington DC (where it was the middle of the night), President Tan joined from Singapore, where he was away on business, and President Toronto was, for once, in Beijing (not in LA at the All Stars game; he is an executive with the Chinese NBA). The Spirit was there in abundance. What a great experience this is in our lives.