Adventures in fabric

The illustrious Xiamen fabric market--two levels of glorified stalls containing floor-to-ceiling bolts of fabric, row upon row of ribbon and many millions of sewing "notions" (that means buttons, zippers, clasps, etc for you non-sewers). One day I was waiting for my Danish friend to meet me here so we could have some pants (me) and some shirts (her husband) made by a tailor she has used previously. There is another tailor in town, the Shanghai Tailor as he is known by all the many expats who keep him in business, but it is more of a hassle for me to get there. It would involve taking a taxi to the fabric market (cannot figure the bus route to this place and it's too far to walk), finding fabric on my own, taking another taxi to his place and then taking a third taxi home again. So we decided to give this guy a try. I had some pants I wanted to have copied so I showed them to him and he went with me to find appropriate fabric from one of the stalls--I can say the colors in Chinese but not "I want a bit of stretch in the fabric" and other vital information. He was very good at understanding my needs! Then my friend noticed a fitted, wool coat (the kind we call "church coats") on display and asked him if he could make one like it for her. She noticed that it had a fur collar but wasn't sure she wanted it for every occasion. Enter my mad Mandarin skills...I was so proud that I was able to convey the meaning of "removable collar" to the tailor! Okay, what I actually said was "jin tian, wo yao; ming tian, bu yao" which means "today I want, tomorrow I don't want" while pointing at the collar. But we understood each other--victory!! I also had asked my teacher how to say "more narrow" so that he could make the new pants a bit more narrow in the legs...jump ahead to the picking-up day: the pants were not more narrow! He had me try them on in a back room in which a person (woman, I hoped) was sleeping not three feet from the changing area! Not comfortable. Anyway, I asked him to alter them into a better fit, even though that required returning another day to pick them up. My friend's church-coat-with-removable-collar, by the way, turned out fabulous!
Now for the sad and disturbing part of the story...While I was standing outside the market, waiting for my friend, I heard some very loud, very annoying music. When I looked around, I saw a mysterious figure coming toward me exceedingly slowly along the far side of the street.
I didn't want to be rude, but I just had to get some photos of this guy. Notice that this is the actual road, not the sidewalk, and it is quite busy. This guy was paddling himself along on a cart-type thing with a speaker tied to the top, blasting music to gain attention to his plight. He was wearing gloves to protect his hands but was also expending much energy to drag along a metal mixing bowl, in which he sought to collect donations.
While he struggled along, taxis, private cars and even large city busses swerved around him. I was amazed that the drivers could see him in time to avoid hitting him. It took him quite a long time to progress down the road and he paused to look up and get his bearings every few meters (trying to learn the metric system, along with Mandarin...)
When he had passed me, I could see that he was missing his left leg. I wished I'd had a spare wheelchair to give the guy...but I think part of his set-up was intended to draw the most sympathy. Not that I blame him, I know precious little about the social welfare/social security for the disabled situation here in China, but this was a pathetic situation. Anyone care to discuss the current health care goings-on in the US...just kidding I don't care to debate it!

Gymnasium murals

Liz's 7th grade art class worked on large painted murals to spruce up their school gym. They plan to host a volleyball tournament with other international school in attendance in March so they wanted to liven up the place. The younger students and parents were invited to the unveiling ceremony. Not very many parents made the trip but I was glad that I was there to see it and support the kids.
Liz and her fellow designers and painters (Freddy, Matt and, oops-I-forgot-her-name). They went with water sports as their theme. I was impressed with the variation of theme and design between the groups.
A closer shot of their work.
There were seven murals, all told, including Olympic-themed and martial arts-inspired depictions.
Liz's friends AJ and Candy with their school sports inspired work. Thanks, Ms. Ogle, for leading your students in this project!

CNY @ XIS

How's that for a cryptic title? Reminds me of my Army-kid days...in case you couldn't figure it out, it means Chinese New Year at Xiamen International School. I'm behind again on my postings as this event was held in early February. Chinese New Year landed on February 14 this year and the school had a two week break (lucky us, we got two weeks off at Christmas and another two weeks for CNY, but the school year is longer, so don't be too jealous). This celebration was held on the last day of school before the break. The school had hired special performers to put on the lion dance (at least I think that's what it is called) in the gym. This first picture isn't too great, but it shows the legs of the two dancers in the white lion outfit. There was much drumming and running around as a story of some sort was portrayed. As usual, I know nothing of the history of this spectacle, but enjoyed watching it anyway.


The lions caught up with the guy-in-yellow and pounced on his back...
Oh, no, don't eat me, lion!
Victory at last...man tames the lions. Or something like that.
The inner courtyard of the school had some traditional CNY decorations. It is difficult to see in the picture, but the rope knot hanging was probably three or four feet long, including the tassel. The end of the two-week-long CNY holiday is capped with the Lantern Festival, so lanterns are displayed for about a month. They were all over town and became quite dusty and dirty by the end! Most of the decorations featured red and gold as these are auspicious colors that depict good luck and good fortune.
Amanda's teacher and his cool, gold Chinese jacket. We were encouraged to send our children to school in their traditional Chinese outfits, but we do not own any.
Traditional craftspeople were on hand to create special treats for the children. This is spun sugar (not unlike that which Laura and Mary made back on the prairie, minus the snow!) expertly dripped and swirled into the shapes of the Chinese zodiac animals. This rooster represents the year of my birth, by the way.
Our fellow American was thrilled with his dragon candy-on-a-stick. Not sure what he had to do to get such a complicated and "lucky" animal, but it sure turned out nice!
Amanda welcomed the year of the tiger with a pin-the-tail-on game. Long live the Tiger!

Window washing

Exterior window washing is never fun, in any type of dwelling (unless you're my friend Bonnie who gets a charge out of using her window squeegee and obsessing over, oops, I mean admiring, the results!). One day when I was visiting my recently-departed friend I saw some window washers at her apartment complex. There is a large courtyard between the buildings and this was my view as I approached her entrance. Look carefully for the two guys in the center.

The doorway to her "block" is right underneath the guys dangling from ropes and I couldn't resist getting their pictures. I often see workers using those long platform window-washing devices on a hotel near our place (in fact they seem to be up there pretty much every day. Seems a bit overzealous to me, but I guess the hotel is doing its part to keep some of the billions of people employed!) but this was the first time I'd seen the guys working from such tiny trapeze-type equipment. I was nervous just to walk below them...I don't know how they got up the nerve to actually use them. Notice how they each have a bucket hanging from their seats--it just occurred to me that the water must be beyond filthy given the amount of windows to be cleaned and the air pollution. They must've been just pushing dirty water around by the second story and there are a LOT of stories to cover!

Yikes...this is the looking-way-up view! I'm not sure exactly how many floors there are in this building, but I know it is more than 30. Can you tell that there is just one rope for each guy, extended all the way to the very top of the building (attached to what??) with the rest of it dangling below? Amazing that anyone would risk this type of work...especially for a job that will need to be repeated so often!
Another day, another kuai...

Earthquake and Chinese names

I feel guilty for not having any pictures in this post, but the topic does not lend itself well to photos. This morning at 8:20 am 6.2 magnitude earthquake rocked southern Taiwan (not a very unusual occurrence, I've learned) and, given our proximity to that island nation (or rogue province, depending on who you ask) we were able to share in the joys of tremors. I was hanging around the house, catching up on email and drinking some terrible-tasting instant coffee (won't even go into the sacrifices in beverages I've made this year) when I realized that I should get dressed. Not five minutes later I heard a rhythmic banging sound near our front door. At first I thought someone was dragging something heavy down the stairs that lead to the roof as people often use our elevator and roof-access stairs to dry laundry. When I tried to peer through the peek-hole, I realized the banging was the door itself, rocking back and forth in its frame (it should not do this but the deadbolt is finicky and hadn't fully engaged when the kids left for school this morning). Then I felt the whole building swaying and stood there watching our Chinese New Year/year of the tiger good luck banner sway a good 8 inches in either direction. The realization set in that this was an earthquake so I grabbed the phone and called Gene--he answered with "you feel the earthquake too?" As the swaying was still going on and at least 20 or so seconds had passed, he told me to get out, by way of the stairs, of course! I was very glad that I had put decent clothing on just in time! I made it as far as one flight down when my friend called to see if I was feeling it too--she had run from her building a block away and was pacing the sidewalk. Our stairwells have large pane-less widows to the outside so I was able to watch the many passing pedestrians as we talked and none of them seemed the least bit fazed--seems that being up high really exacerbated the movements. We decided it was safe to stay inside as the shaking had stopped, but, much like the way I feel when I step off an amusement park thrill ride, I felt as though I was still swaying for 20 minutes after it had stopped! Thankfully the only "damage" we suffered was a towel falling from its rack in the bathroom and possibly a few minutes lopped off my life. I was surprised to find out later in the day, after talking to friends and reading facebook responses, that many of them didn't feel it at all. I found a really great website that documents up-to-the-minute earthquake action (earthquake.usgs.gov) and was just dorky enough to register my experience in the allocated section. Chalk up another "first" on our list of firsts for this "adventure" abroad!
Now for the funny part of the week...we finally started back with our Chinese lessons after missing several weeks for CNY, business trips and illness. As is our typical approach to the lessons, we were joking with each other during our xiou xi (don't know the spelling, but it means break) that we should really decide upon Chinese names for ourselves. Since we don't know any proper names, we had to use common words that we have learned (the list isn't terribly long or varied...). We decided that Gene's name should be "fei ji chang" (airport) since he travels so much, I was to be "da dian hua" (make a phone call), Liz gets to have "dian nao mi" (computer-crazy) and Amanda will be called "xi zao" (take a shower, which complements our favorite Mexican expression: te la banaste). Our 20-something teacher was laughing right along with us (or at us) as she usually does when we say ridiculous things to amuse ourselves. Then she says, "Chinese women who have small breasts..." uh, oh, where is this going and where did it come from?! She went on to explain that fei ji chang/airport is slang for a flat-chested woman! We were making a cruel joke without even knowing it...but the label fits my husband a bit better than it fits me. Good thing we were only joking about the names and hadn't actually told anyone to use them.