I should preface this post by warning readers that there is a potentially disturbing image posted at the bottom of this article. As I am sure you have guessed by now from the title, it is of a dead cow. Why are there dead cows in the middle of a mid-sized bustling city in China you might ask? I was just as surprised as you were. We were walking from our university offices to the Korean restaurant where we westerners usually go for lunch when we saw the gut wrenching image of a cow's head and part of it's carcass (mostly it's rib cage) hanging outside a shop that was brightly decorated with red paper and flowers. A coworker explained to me that this was probably a new restaurant that had just opened and was attracting customers with the eye-catching display in front of it's doors. From the direction in which we were approaching, I thought it very possible that the cow might have been fake, except then I saw the bucket placed carefully beneath it with blood dripping into it. The cow's tongue looked sadly limp as it hung from the mouth of the creature. On the other side you could see all kinds of insides of the creature's head. I was surprised there were no flies or there was no smell. Maybe they just put it out for a few hours before disposing of the thing. Don't worry, you will be warned as you scroll down to prevent an unwanted view of the image and I took the photo from the least disgusting angle possible before scurrying away in fright.
As you may remember, I started working at a different training school about 5 weeks ago. I made friends with a really nice coworker who spent five years in Canada (Victoria) so she speaks fluent English. Sometimes she takes me on little outings between classes. For example, one time we went to an imported food store nearby I did not know existed and I bought Ritz crackers. She also took me to a proper bookstore (something I had not found yet) a few days ago and I bought a proper Chinese-English dictionary with Pinyin (English transliteration of the characters), a rare finding. I even found a Chinese-English phrasebook with pinyin and a guide on grammar in the same book What a find! I also bought a nice large sized poster of a map of China to hang in the apartment. Lastly, I FINALLY found a book on Chinese calligraphy with the exact same font I am learning (there are so many fonts one can learn) so this was really nice. The following photos are of a little excursion we went on to a place she described as the Chinese version of Ikea. There were things like beds and laundry baskets and decorative items for the house at this place. Pricing ranged from the ultra cheap to expensive there.
Me being a goof.
I really liked this sculpture. The Chinese love playing basketball.
This is the poem I am learning to draw in my calligraphy classes. According to Guo Wei, my teacher, the poem is very famous and beautiful in it's simplicity. You can tell that each line contains ten characters. In fact, when you draw it on calligraphy paper, you need to draw the first five characters in a vertical line and then the next five parallel to the first and so on. I am able to draw the second line you see in the picture (which is really two lines, five characters each) without much difficulty. Now I am learning the first line so I should be able to bring home a poem of twenty characters on nice calligraphy paper. So excited to finish my little project. Maybe I can learn the last twenty characters too before I leave.
The poem roughly translated to English means (assuming my memory is correct), "After the rain has finished, the mountain is empty. The air is cool and there are no animals or people to be seen (line one). The moonlight shines in the spaces between pine trees and the streams gush with water over the stones (line two). The mountain is covered with a forest of pines and even though there is no one in sight, the sound of girl's laughter can be heard (line three). The stream flows into the lake where the lotus plants grow high above the water, hiding the fishing boat from view except for a fishing line (line four).
Getting my grade 4 students to channel all their wild abundant energy into learning English was hard until I found a system that worked at least for me. I divided them into teams of two and then each team would get a point if they could answer a question correctly. Pairing the shy students with fast ones allow everyone to get a chance to be recognized. Making up a creative team identity also helped as well (see the little drawings I made for each team.) Finally, getting them to memorize English dialogues became a snap if I gave them prompts. The team with the highest points at the end of class gets a sticker each and ten stickers gets you a prize from Canada (usually a Canadian key chain).
Okay, we have reached the end of the post. Scroll below to see the picture of the dead cow. Can't say I didn't warn you!
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