Faculty dinner party

Hi all!

It's been a great week. We've finally gotten over the fatigue and physical ailments stemming from our initial adjustment and are feeling more at home here. Our apartment is coming together and we'll actually have time tomorrow (Sunday 9/9) to get out and do some shopping in town.

Our Chinese is coming along - albeit slowly. The phonemes are so different from American English that it's sometimes difficult to understand words without seeing them written down. Not only that, but even seeing them written can be confusing, as Pinyin - the system of writing Chinese in our Roman alphabet - features more consonants and vowels than English.

So, a quick lesson for our linguist friends:

Our school is Zhangjiagang Foreign Language School. Translated into Pinyin, this would be written out Zhāngjiāgǎng Wàiguóyǔ Xuéxiào. This is pronounced roughly like "John jyeah gong why gwoah you shway show" (“show” rhymes with “cow”). The symbols above the vowels represent the four Mandarin tones – the rising or falling of your voice with each vowel – and the shape looks exactly like what the pitch of your voice does on each tone.

It’s hard to even write an English phonetic pronunciation without using the IPA, as the vowels are voiced differently. The  -u vowel is closer to the front of the mouth like a French –eu vowel, and the –ue combination isn’t quite voiced like “way,” but is closer to the sound of the two different vowels in “you will” formed together as one vowel.

Furthermore, Pinyin consonants are different than one would expect. Z sounds like “ds,” q=“ch,” c sounds like “ts,” x=“sh,” and “zh”=“g” in “gem.” Note that we haven’t even begun to discuss tones. For now, it’s more important to learn the basic pronunciation and just spit words out quickly. As language is so context-based, people can understand us even if –make that when - our tones are wrong.

It’s a fascinating language, and quite beautiful once one’s ears become attuned. We're feeling out some tutors right now to help us.

At any rate, allow us to take our elbow patches off and get back to our daily goings on. Last night we had a fun time out on the town with Jesse and Ashley, the other foreign teachers here. They're both American and close to our ages, so it's been great to have them as guides, translators, and most importantly friends. The nightlife here might seem tame compared to Shanghai, but it's lively and bars do not close until the patrons leave.

At Malone's, a popular bar for expats

Malone's is as close to a German pub as you'll find anywhere near Zhangjiagang

A cruel mistress

Tonight (Saturday 9/8) we had a teacher’s banquet. Monday is Teacher’s Day in China, so the school threw a dinner party for the faculty. It was terrific. 

Faculty dinner party

One of our vice-principals giving a speech about the 15th anniversary of our school

A large Chinese meal was served with probably 30 dishes, karaoke was sung, and many, many toasts were made. Wine and báijiǔ were served, and some of the faculty had drinking contests. We got to meet the principal and vice-principals, and even won two boxes of chocolates in one of the many raffles. We left feeling quite welcome and honored to be at such a generous school; we think we will very much enjoy teaching here.

Liz being brave and singing karaoke

A generous gift. Chocolate is expensive here. This should last us all year.

The meal was exquisite; we had some appetizers that were new to us: crab claws, some pickled sea vegetables (no clue what they are), bamboo in sesame oil, almonds, tiny fried fish, and shredded white carrots.

Crab claws. You eat the whole thing and spit out the shell as you go.

For the main course, we dined on a few roasted and steamed whole fishes, jellyfish with purple cabbage, roasted and steamed vegetables, three different soups (vegetable and egg, one with duck blood pudding in it, and hot and sour), braised pork belly (delicious!), Peking duck, several different dumplings, goose quarters, fruit, and rice. While that sounds like a lot of food, and it was, family-style dining and the number of dishes encourages very small portions.

Steamed fish with ginger

Peking duck. Superb. 

Chinese meals are a real treat. It’s interesting to observe how a more communal culture like China’s manifests itself in every aspect of daily life. America is completely individualistic; in restaurants, this is reflected in how we all order our individual meals and eat them entirely by ourselves with little sharing. Here in China, all dishes are shared and each diner only takes a tiny portion at a time. It’s a very social way of eating, and we’ve enjoyed each meal more than the last (except when Brett had a chopstick malfunction tonight and dropped a piece of duck into his tea in front of our vice-principal).

The dishes kept coming...

and coming...

(L-R in foreground: jellyfish with cabbage, Peking duck, sea vegetables, dumplings)

still coming...

(L-R: pears with red beans (blue bowl), steamed fish, shrimp, veggies, pork belly, roasted fish)

An amazing meal. Under the fruit are chicken feet.

We’ll keep posting a few times a week. We have a weeklong holiday coming up in the next month and we’ll hopefully get to travel. Suzhou (“sue joe”) is only an hour away by bus, so there’s a good chance we’ll go there.

If you’re reading this, it means you’re one of the people we miss dearly. We can’t wait to start sending some packages your way. Please keep us posted of your lives back stateside!

- Liz and Brett