Blog Post #5

Wed., March 26, 2014

We were at the dining room at the seminary this morning at 7:30 for breakfast: a corn based (at least it tasted like that) soup and a couple of types of bread, on like a pizza crust with some herbs in it and the other a round ball covered with sesame seeds and the dough inside made of some type of flour not based on wheat, more of a cornstarch-type sweet dough, probably steamed or boiled, then rolled in sesame seeds.  Then I went with Jim to his class where he had a busy morning, lecturing from 8 to noon, a long time! I sent a photo of his class, but should say that there seem to be about an equal number of young men and women in his class, and they sit in assigned seats in the classroom, probably by alphabetical order.

About an hour in, someone came looking for me to meet with the president. He wanted help putting together answers in English to questions posed to him by a Swedish woman teaching English in Wuhan who is working on an advanced degree in Sweden and writing a paper about the development of the church in China since Socialism took over the government. So we spent an hour going through his answers and then I worked with the pastor I was teaching English to yesterday putting his answers down on paper. I really learned a lot about his childhood during the Cultural Revolution and how freedom to practice religion has expanded since that time.

I also got invited to go to one of the street corner dances one of these next evenings. People gather after supper with a boombox and dance. Tonight we saw about 40 people dancing in five rows, perfectly lined up and having a ball. Jim isn’t sure he is up for it! A young woman seminarian who loves to dance has taken up the project of starting one of these dances each night on a specific street corner and playing Christian music, then handing out brochures inviting people to her church. It’ll be interesting to see that.

We had another beautiful lunch, with many of the same dishes as I showed you yesterday, at the seminary today, and met two visiting professors from Korea and one from Hong Kong, as well as an interesting Chinese missionary who has lived in Taiwan, Belguim for 10 years, Japan and now Hong Kong, all working among Chinese Christians working in those countries. He livened up the lunch because he spoke good English!

After lunch Jim and I took a long walk, sat in a park for awhile and watched Chinese grandmas with their little grandchild. People here jokingly call tots “little emperors” and “little empresses”. Apparently a byproduct of the one-child policy is spoiled kids!  We saw the typical child with a slit in his pants replacing diapers being held over the curb to pee.  Lots of these little kids are dressed in quilted suits. It seems as if the fatter the better for babies. Also baby boys’ hair is often shaved except for a Mohawk-like topknot. They are cute!

We found a coffee shop and had a great expresso, big improvement over our morning instant Nescafe. Then we decided to change some money and pay our hotel for the rest of our stay ( It costs us $20 per night!) so tried one bank, which sent us to Bank of China, the only one, they said, that changes money.  We walked about 45 minutes to get there, so saw more of the city. A large number of stores have either a tape recorder or live mike just outside the front door hawking the wares or playing loud music, so as you walk down the street, the sound is overwhelming, all these sounds competing with each other. We heard the delightful sound of elementary school kids at play in their playground, just before they got out. Across the street, at least a hundred parents and grandparents were waiting to pick their kids up.

We ate supper on the Yangtze riverbank and saw a beautiful sunset over the wide river. Highlight dish was goose with plum sauce, or “e”, pronounced “oui” in Chinese. I also learned mandarin orange in “juit seh” or pronounced like that, and the color orange is “juit wah seh.”

People enjoy teaching us words and trying to get us to pronounce them correctly, which is almost impossible for our tongues and mouth muscles. Chinese has four tones and the same word can mbe pronounced four different ways and mean four different things! Now there’s a trap for the unwary, or those who can’t get the tones!

Tomorrow we are going with the students Jim is teaching on a BBQ. They get a day off to party and have invited us. Should be interesting!