Indochina Expedition 2010: Eve of Departure
My first semester in China as an English teacher was over. I would leave at dawn for Vietnam on Monday, January 25, 2010. Now it was time to go and see if I had what it takes to travel for real. This would be the first time traveling alone in the developing world without a gun or a posse. I not only didn’t speak the languages, but lacked any mathematical ability whatsoever. I knew that I was poor by American standards, but in Laos, I was a millionaire. Trouble lurked ahead when I would try to calculate the cost of a soda or a room. If I was a dollar off, the entire economy would go of whack and incite the Lord of Misrule to make a cameo appearance. Furthermore, I knew this... Read more
Happiness is a Vampire
Every day I discover other worlds so unlike the one I once called home. The possibilities seem boundless. I even fantasize about coming to America to become a Wal Mart door greeter or an assistant manager at McDonald’s. If I work hard for a couple years and save money, then I could return to paradise and buy a home and still have enough left over to start a business. Sometimes when I hang out with other expats we cannot stop saying, “I can’t believe this,” and we pinch ourselves to see if we are in a dream. It is as if we all had met Morpheus in our pre-expat lives and took the red pill. We tell ourselves this cannot really be happening. We have it too good... Read more
Perspectives on China
November was nearly over here in the heartland of China. The days alternated between short manic bursts of sunny, blue skies and longer periods of sunless, chilly days full of drizzle and melancholy. It was weather most conducive to studying Mandarin, writing for my own site, and reading other people’s blogs. One of my favorite China blogs was Matt Schiavenza’s A China Journal. The Kunming-based blogger brought my attention to the Folger Shakespeare Library’s podcast on Perspectives on China in which two correspondants and an author discuss their “boots-on-ground” perspective on the rise of New China in an informal panel. The moderator asked them to... Read more
Bear Fighting in Cyberspace
Some have wondered if I will one day practice medicine in China. During an interview at Rocky Mountain College, home of the Battlin’ Bears, the director had even suggested that I could do a clinical rotation here. The thought had occurred to me many times. Many friends and fellow Bull Dogs from Yale University’s PA program completed international rotations in Latin America, South East Asia, and the Middle East. Yale even has a tropical medicine rotation in Kampala, Uganda. This feature was one of the major draws that lured me into their program back in 2007. In any case, I believe my international experience – of which my time in China is the backbone — will be an... Read more
A Journey to Hengshan Mountain
We took the midnight express back to Chenzhou from Hengshan late Saturday night. This meant getting dirty. I once spent four years as a grunt. Digging foxholes and wading through marshes was dirty work too. I look back at this previous incarnation with nostalgia as I board a crowded train in which tickets were sold beyond seating capacity for people to stand or sit in the aisles. The windows were sealed shut. There was the sound of people hawking up snotty yellow mucous. Chewed up sunflower seeds and cigarette butts scattered upon the floor. Old men with rotten, nicotine stained teeth smoked in the thresholds between cars. They came back to their seats smelling like death ... Read more
36 Hours in Billings, MT
While all of China took to the road and celebrated its 60th anniversary with a week long celebration I ducked out of the country for a quick trip to Billings, Montana. The Rocky Mountain College Physician Assistant program had invited me for interview. Though I was already missing teaching English literature and drama to my Chinese students at Xiangnan University in southern Hunan province, I was eager to purify myself with a sojourn to Big Sky Country. That meant exploring the city and its environs, re-supplying, and doing things I couldn’t ordinarily do Chenzhou, Hunan: like enjoy some fine wine and American microbrew. Chenzhou was a sprawling city that sprang out of the rice terraces... Read more
Dinner with the Yu Family
One late summer evening before the sun went down, I was at dinner and had what appeared to be a glass of Chinese wine at an open air restaurant from across the campus. Children surrounded me. It was cooler now and all the neighborhood children were playing. One by one they came by my table pretending to ignore me. Once they realized that I didn’t bite, they made eye contact with me and squealed in surprise. A university student saw that congress had formed at my table and we were all chatting amiably. I was trying to teach the children English and the children were trying to teach me Chinese. The student introduced herself and offered to translate for the children. Her name was... Read more
A Shopper’s Paradise
China has meant so much to my imagination that the reality shocked me. I still cannot get the images of Shaolin warrior monks out of my mind. Or workers in Mao suits brandishing Little Red Books. Or even just old folk practicing tai chi in a public square. I half expected to find them all going about their daily lives. I remembered growing up hearing that I should eat everything on my plate because there are starving children in China. I remembered Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan,” and James Clavell’s novel Tai Pan. The truth is that China is dirty, cruddy, and trying oh so hard to fit in with her modern siblings. Its beauty is found in the way a family values... Read more
Being a Highly Respectable Foreigner with Chinese Characteristics
You like spicy food? You know how use chopsticks? You know Chinese President Hu Jintao? Of course I do. Chinese people are so easy to impress. Either their expectations are very low, or I just don’t fit the mold of a stereotypical American. A college mathematics student at a party told me that while hanging out in Beijing and Shanghai she was amazed at the ignorance of foreigners pouring into the country without knowing the current president or the role Deng Xiaoping (kind of pronounced like “Dung show—rhymes with plow—ping”) played in the Reform and Opening of China. Of course everybody knows Chairman Mao Zedong. But to know that under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership the... Read more
Street Life
There was a dirty two lane street just outside the gates. Construction vehicles threw up plumes of exhaust and dust as they tore up the pavement and surrounding countryside. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes sped to and fro. People rode motorcycles, cars, trucks, and tricycle-like cars. Some people seemed to have engineered their own personal motorized vehicle from remnants found in a junkyard. Meanwhile, students filtering in from summer vacation weaved their way across the street to the bus stop and the market area just opposite of the university. This “market area” resembled a two-block section of a city that just sprouted out of the stony ground. There were shops, restaurants,... Read more
