Rice planting

planting the rice

Lisa planting rice

Libby (Wang Ying and Duan's daughter

)

Well, the seasons are changing and this year, Mark and I got to partake in some different sorts of spring activities.  Recently, we had the opportunity to help our friend Duan's family in planting their rice crops for the season.  Duan's father, who has been farming his whole life, showed us how to uproot the young rice plants from the place where they had been sprouted.  Then we separated the plants into small clumps and planted them in rows pushing the roots into the mud.  It was fun squishing around barefoot in the mud with water almost up to my knees.  Duan and his family put us to shame by the speed and quality of their work.  Between me, Mark and the two Nates, we figured the total of our work equaled about the same as one of our Chinese friends.  They were thankful for our help, in spite of our slowness and we appreciated the chance to experience such an important part of Chinese culture.  Rice planting has been done this way for thousands of years and I'm sure it will continue for many more.  I'm sure I'll never look at a grain of rice the same way again.  I'm reminded of a famous Tang Dynasty poem we learned in our Mandarin class.  The English translation goes something like this...

Mark, Nate and Duan uprooting the baby rice

The peasants are weeding at noon,
Sweat falls down to the earth.
Who knew rice,
Doesn't come easily. 


- Lisa

moving day

Our wonderful host family.

Our street at night.

Well, it's been a busy week for us. Mark and I recently decided that we would like to move out of our host family and try living on our own in China for our last few months here.  Mr. Zhang (the head of the foreign affairs office at the college where we teach) offered us an apartment near campus that they reserve for teachers.  Free of charge I might add.  It was not in use this year.  We took his offer, and yesterday, we moved in.  The apartment is a little old and and musty as it hasn't been used in quite a while.  Mark and I spent a few days cleaning mold patches off the walls (with the humidity in Nanchong, everything gets mildewy very quickly) and throwing away junk from the previous occupants.  I think we now have it in livable condition and we will be quite comfortable here.  We are in a very good location; close to downtown, the market streets, our school, the bus stop, Sea Turtle, and Holly's Bakery (our western haven when we need one!).  All along our street there are little delightful little hole-in-the-wall restaurants and carts where people sell fried rice, steamed buns, sweet potatoes and various other tasty foods.  All of these things are very cheap, which is excellent as Mark and I have yet to master Sichuan cooking.  Yesterday for supper I had a big plate of fried rice with egg, vegetables and meat in it, and a piece of flat bread all for the cost of six Kuai (less than one dollar) Some of my students are planning on coming over some weekend to teach us how to make some of their favourite dishes.  Also, Mark and Nate S. and I have started going to a restaurant owned by a friend of Nate's host family on Wednesday around lunch time.  We helped them prepare some meat and vegetables and we watched them cook several dishes.  It's difficult to know how to make dishes taste like they do, as no one uses recipes.  Everyone has just grown up here knowing which spices go together with which foods. Hopefully we will pick up some Sichuan cooking techniques by the time we leave.

 Lisa

Our winter travels

So, as second semester gets underway, it dawns on me that I haven't updated the blog in well, forever and as I wonder if anyone even checks this thing any more I realize wow time has truly been flying!  I can hardly believe that my year in China is over half done.  It seems like I'm only scratching the surface of understanding anything here from cultural and linguistics to daily life.  I made a comment about my struggles with the Chinese language to a friend who has been living in China much longer than I who reaffirmed there is no way easy way to learn the language.  As she put it "you'll sweat blood and tears for every word you learn."  The language and world here is just that different.  I was pondering this and couldn't help but feel for the millions and millions of Chinese who are currently struggling to learn English so they can have a foot up in this world.  I never realized how big a blessing my language was until I started traveling and found out, you can travel all over the world with English and only with English.  Even international business is most often done in English even if there isn't a native English speaker around.  It makes me thankful for the blessing I've been given and inspires me to do my best while I'm here to share the blessing with others.  Actually, I feel rather inadequate as a teacher.  I may speak the language well but teaching that to someone else isn't exactly easy.  So you can pray that Lisa and I will have God's grace and wisdom as we teach.

At this point I realize I have been rambling without actually letting anyone know what I've been up to in the weeks even months since I last updated the old blog.  For all those of you who have been wondering "but Mark, what did you do during your break between semesters?"  I will now enlighten.  Lisa and I finished our last teaching assignment for the semester in mid January.  We were scheduled to attend PIC (a professional improvement conference with Mennonite Partners in China) for a week in mid February.  This took place in Thailand.  So we had about three weeks to travel before ending up in Thailand for our conference.  And here's what we did...

Hong Kong Skyline.

Lisa and I began our journey by heading off to Hong Kong.  There we met up with our friends (and teammates) Nate and Nate who traveled with us for the rest of our vacation.  Wow! What a difference just over thousand kilometers can make.  I went from being one of the few foreigners around to seeing foreigners and even hearing English everywhere.  I can now understand a little bit better why people stare at us in Nanchong.  At first I found myself staring at every white person I saw and thinking "they look so familiar" only to realize they didn't actually resemble any one I had ever met.  Honk Kong is a beautiful city and we very much enjoyed taking in the sites and eating the North American style food it had to offer.

I bungee jumped of this!

Next we moved on to Macau.  Macau I found out is  "the Las Vegas of the Orient".  Actually, the amount of people who visit Casinos daily in Macau puts Las Vegas to shame.  Turns out that the billions of people who live in this part of the world like to gamble too.  While Macau is also a beautiful city our main purpose in visiting Macau was to visit some friends from home, George and Tobia.  They have lived in Macau, working with Mennonite Church Canada, for many years now and Lisa and I got to know them through a small group at our Church during a time when they were on furlough and living in Winnipeg.  It was real nice to connect with them again and really neat to visit with someone we had met on our side of the world.  My highlight in Macau which I must mention was bungee jumping.  I jumped from the AJ Hackett Macau Tower on my birthday.  Turns out it's the worlds highest bungee jump.  What a rush!

Lisa on the beach in Singapore.

Our next stop was Singapore.  We were drawn to Singapore for it's beautiful views, warm weather and the beach.  After shivering for several months in our home, which was generally around 4 degrees Celsius in the winter, the beach was a wonderfully warm and relaxing break.  We saw lots of neat sites including wild monkey's, palm trees and aquariums where we got to pet stingrays and feed a variety of tropical fish.

We got to pet tigers.

Next on our tour, we went to Thailand where we had a few days of free time before our PIC conference with Mennonite Partners in China.  Thailand is also filled with beautiful sights, warm weather, and lot's of things to see and do.  We met up with some other friends from Mennonite Partners in China and stayed with them for a few days near a beautiful beach.  We rode Elephants, zip-lined in the rain forest, petted tigers, relaxed on the beach, ate excellent food and more.  I also really appreciated the PIC conference.  It was really nice to have fellowship with other believers as well as the informative presentations on teaching.  It was a good balance between learning and relaxing during our time off.  We are really glad to be a part of Mennonite Partners in China.  We love the people involved, as well as what they stand for!

After that we were back to Nanchong.  We spent our first week preparing for another semester of classes.  And we are now getting back into the full swing of teaching.  The teaching load this semester isn't quite as heavy as last and I'm hoping this will leave more time for studying Chinese and continuing to develop relationships with the people we know here.  We appreciate all your prayers very much.  I hope you have enjoyed this rather brief overview of our holiday!

God Bless
Mark

Emei Shan

The view from the top of Emei Shan

Lisa at the top of Emei Shan

We saw monkeys

Back at the van after a long hike.

Well, classes are done for the semester, grades are handed in, and Mark and I are enjoying the winter break.  Last week, Wang Ying and Duan took us and the Nates and our friend Dong Bo (he works at Sea Turtle and Nate Kelly lives with his family) on a trip for a few days.  We went to Emei Shan which is a very famous mountain and very important to Buddhists.  It's about 4000 meters high.  The first day, we drove about half way up the mountain in Duan's van.  We stayed the night in a hotel on the mountain that was very near some hot springs, so we enjoyed the evening soaking in the warmth with snow all around us.  In the morning, Mark was unfortunately ill (he always has such bad timing) so he stayed at the hotel with Wang Ying while the rest of us took a van and then a cable car up the rest of the mountain.  It was so beautiful!  We were above the clouds so there was no snow on the very top and it was quite warm and sunny.  It was a sea of clouds with other mountain tops and cliffs poking out in the distance.  I wish we had a better camera.  Ours really didn't do the scenery justice.  At about 11:00am we started hiking down the mountain.  The plan was to hike a portion of the way down the mountain where Mark and Wang Ying would meet us with the van and drive us to the hotel.  We were told that it would be a 44 kilometer hike!  After some discussion Nate and Nate and I had convinced ourselves that there must be some mistake.  Perhaps it was only 4 kilometers and something got lost in translation.  But no, after about 4 hours going up and down stone steps we realized it was actually 44 kilometers.  And once you've committed to the steps, there's no alternate way down.  It was definitely the most physically demanding day I've ever had, but it was some extremely beautiful scenery.The first portion was very difficult as the stone steps were covered in snow and ice.  It probably would have been a lot easier if I had a crazy carpet or something.  Then once we got lower, the snow melted into some soft rain, the forest was lovely and green and we saw waterfalls.  We even ran into a vicious looking family of monkeys who stole our food (fortunately we had eaten most of it already).  I heard that some people train the monkeys to pick travelers pockets, so we were glad they were just after our food.  Finally when I didn't think I could make it any further (Dong Bo had been telling us "Oh, it will only be about one more hour" for about 3 hours) we rounded the corner and saw Mark and Wang Ying.  They had gotten tired of waiting for us at the bottom and Mark was feeling much better, so they started hiking up to meet us.  It gave us all a well-needed burst of motivation to see them!  We walked back down with them and in about an hour and a half, reached the bottom.  It was dark by that point.  The whole hike down took us about 8 hours.  What a beautiful and exhausting day!  God's creation really is wonderful!

Lisa

Mark's busy weekend

I had a busy weekend last week.  Turns out Lisa and I have been finding lots to do whether it's teaching, other college activities or just hanging out with friends.  The weekend began on Friday night with me giving a lecture on Canadian culture for Western appreciation night at College.  It was actually quite a lot of fun.  I talked about some of the general facts of the country, you know 10 provinces 3 territories, how big it is but how few people there are etc.  They seemed to enjoy the fact that our entire population is about equal to the size of one of their average districts!  I also talked a bit about hockey, such an odd sport to those who never see snow!  Then one of the American teachers at the school talked about American holidays once I was done.  All in all I thought it as neat evening it was cool to see a night devoted to appreciating foreign cultures.  After that I stayed up late to finish preparing a lecture on American culture for my English cultures class the next morning.  Turns out I still procrastinate even on the other side of the world.

Lisa and I at the party.

I taught my 2 and a half hour class on Saturday morning and immediately after, left for Chengdu with our host family.  Lisa and I didn't really know what to expect all we knew was that we had been invited to join our host father Zhang Jian and his 6 year old daughter Nancy to go and meet some friends from a class he attends there.  So we made the 2 and a half hour trek to Chengdu.  We hung out at one of his friend's home, had tea and visited for a bit before going out to eat hotpot.

Hop...hop....hop, hop, hop

Hotpot is a very popular meal in the Sichuan province.  You all sit down at a table and they fire up a burner in the middle under a pot of a very spicy oily mixture.  Then the bring out various raw meats, animal organs, vegetables, whole fish/eels etc. and you cook your food in the bubbling hot and spicy pot of oil in the middle of the table.  I think the flavor of the hot pot is quite good but I'm not the biggest fan of all the things we put in it.  Over all I quite enjoy the meal though it did a number on my guts the first time I ate it!  After that we went to what turned out to be a Childrens party!  Everyone dressed up and Lisa and I put on funny glasses with blinking noses.  I'm not sure what the occasion was, or if there even was one but we had a great time playing games with the kids and watching them have fun together.

Lunch with the family.

We made the trip back home and I stayed up talking with Zhang Jian as he drove. It was a pleasant ride.  We slept in the next morning before going out for lunch with the family and hanging out with Nancy at a park in the afternoon here in Nanchong.  In the evening we bussed back to the college where we were judges of what we thought was an English competition.  It turned out to be an English/talent competition including English speeches yes, but also short skits, music and other performances we couldn't understand because they were in Chinese.  It made judging a little difficult but we did our best anyways.  After that it was back home to stay up late preparing a lesson for Monday morning!

Mark

Sweet potatoes

This weekend Mark and Nate S. and I went out to Duan's family's farm to help his parents pick sweet potatoes.  It's always amazes me how many people there are everywhere in China, even in the country.  The farms are just small plots of land, one next to another all throughout the countryside.  So different than massive Manitoba farms!  Everything is done by hand.  Duan's parents have a beautiful plot of land in a little valley.  They have several gardens on different layers cut out of the hillside as well as some rice fields in the lowest part of their land.  They keep most of their produce for themselves and their animals for the year.  We spent the afternoon, digging, pulling and hauling baskets of sweet potatoes (or "Hong Shu" in Chinese!).  It was neat to think that people have probably been farming that land in the same way for thousands of years! For supper, among many other colourful and tasty dishes, we had some of the sweet potatoes we picked.  They were an unusual variety which were very bright purple.  They even dyed the rice purple.  They were such a deep shade of indigo that it was hard to believe it was naturally occurring.  It was a fun and delicious day.


 Lisa

China has been keeping us busy!  Much of our time here is filled by teaching classes, and trying to learn as much Chinese as we can.  I think that our teaching has been going fairly well so far and our students seem quite eager to learn.  Our efforts to learn Chinese on the other hand don't seem to be yielding results all to quickly.  I'm getting better at numbers, hello's, good-byes and a few other basic words and expressions, but other then the few extra words I learn every week my speaking and listening skills aren't going anywhere fast.

Me Helping Out at Firm Foundations

A side from working with language, Lisa and I have been looking for other ways to serve the Lord while were here.  One place that we are hoping to get more involved with while we are here is called Firm Foundations.  They are an organization that helps people with disabilities learn skills needed for everyday life.  Skills from cooking and cleaning to finding and keeping jobs.  It is extremely rare for people with disabilities in China to get support like this.  There is no government funding for such people here and so this organization is completely run from the support and generosity of people who care.  We heard about this organization because one of the ladies in Nate's host family works for this organization and asked us if we could help them with moving some of their furniture and equipment from an old building they were no longer using. (Nate is another member of our team in China) We got to meet a few of the people who are currently enrolled in the program and saw pictures of a few who had graduated from it.  There was one guy we saw pictures of, he had no arms but he had learned to do just about anything with his feet: chopping vegetables, writing, even playing the piano!  It was quite amazing!

Lisa and I have also started leading a weekly Bible study for several of the other foreigners (westerners) here.  I think can be hard for foreigners here to really connect with the Chinese Church due to a combination of cultural barriers and language barriers.  We do quite like the Church here but it's nice to study the Bible in our own language too!  I am quite excited for this opportunity and I pray it will be a meaningful and encouraging time for everyone involved.  Who would have thought I would come all the way to China and end up leading a Bible study for Westerners!

The Farm!

Another interesting experience was a visit we had out to a farm about 20 minutes outside our city.  We went to celebrate the birthday of Wang Ying's husband, Duan.  Wang Ying and Duan have been some of the main organizers for our stay here in Nanchong.  The farm was absolutely beautiful!  Sichuan country side is rugged, very green and speckled with little fields and farm houses everywhere.  We had a great time visiting and for the center piece of our meal we had a goat cooked over and open fire and basted in a delicious and spicy sauce.  It was a great opportunity to meet and visit with people, Chinese and foreigners alike.  We had a great time!

MMM Goat!

So, it seems the Lord has been giving us lots of opportunities.  We would appreciate your prayers that he would continue to present opportunities to serve and also that we would be good servants with the opportunities he has granted us!  Thanks!

Mark