My First Time Teaching in China: New Year's Eve in China

This was probably the best new year's I've ever experienced. Usually, new year's is spent in Whistler with my family. Not bad, you might say, but most years I was also never old enough to go out and celebrate. I rarely had friends my age around in Whistler so I would often be stuck at home and watch my older siblings go out and party and sit by a fire with my dad (my mom often went to bed early) maybe with a mug of hot chocolate and watch the ball drop in New York on tv. Cozy, yes; nice, yes, but certainly not exciting.

Things would always be fine later though because I'd go skiing and really get to experience what it feels like to be out and about in the deep winter, exploring the mountains sometimes by myself. It felt weird this year to not be skiing at all, especially when all the snow came down in the last two weeks or so. It was even weirder to be in such a flat place and surrounded by all this wonderful snow. It made me miss the drops of Harmony, the long lines off Solar Coaster, and the steeps in Ruby Bowl.

In the last few years, of course, I was able to find parties and places to go to for new year's with friends, but these are the things that New Year's has always meant to me.

So this year, in the days and weeks leading up to new year's, I was growing more and more antsy about everything because I really wanted to grab this opportunity to spend new years eve in a not boring way, especially since I'm living in this really dynamic country that is China this time around. I only found out a few days ago that most of the foreigners I know had already planned to to take the train to Qingdao and booked a hostel there to party for new year's. My roommate and I contemplated rushing to book things up and get there but we decided we wanted something more organic rather than feeling rushed and not knowing what would be going on half the time. We wanted to do things on our own terms. I was more reluctant to miss partying with all those people because I happen to really like them but we decided to enjoy ourselves and relax more since we have been working so hard.

I couldn't be happier with our decision.

During the day, we had worked a fair bit and so I decided to buy all kinds of food to eat at home before going out. In China (at least up in the north where I am) you can find all kinds of delicious food items in little markets around places where merchants know lots of people go to work or school. At the university where I teach, there's an entire market right across the street from one of my offices. After work, I got a delicious kind of wrap I've mentioned on here before, a roasted yam (tastes really sweet!), a few beers, and apples. It only cost me about $2.50 Canadian for all that. Awesome. We had cheese in our fridge at home so that was one of the best meals I've had in a while. I'm doing that kind of thing more often from now on.

My roommie and I chilled at home on the internet, ate, watched some tv on our laptops, listened to music, etc. He took a nap, I drank some beer and beat a few games of spider, woke him up, and then we decided to go out. It was around 10:30 by the time this other guy next door from Russia named Leonid came over and met up with us. We drank more beer and went to a club called Soho.

The place was packed with people and rather big. The music was deafening but actually pretty good for China. All eyes were on us foreigners when we walked in. It was a pretty glitzy place so we just got a round of beers and then left since we couldn't hear each other speak.

The Russians aren't into glitz and glamour like the Chinese are (my roommie is also Russian) and I could tell they were having about as much fun as I was which was slim since you couldn't hear anyone talk. We decided to head to a place called Mbox in the downtown area instead which is a little more laid back. Maeva usually plays there but she was out of town.

We arrived there about 20 mins before midnight. We were shocked to see the lights off and people sitting by candlelight and music playing out of a ghetto blaster that was quite mediocre. We got another round before noticing Adam, an American a little older than us, sitting at a huge table covered with bottles of just about every kind of alcohol of varying levels of emptiness with maybe 10 foreigners in their 30s or 40s we had only seen maybe twice before. We finally learned more about them and where they were from and joined them. Really nice people. They teach in a school about 30 mins south of Weifang and are from Canada or American or England. I ended up having about 6 beers that night and a few shots of tequila. Not a good mix haha.

After the countdown happened we learned that this bar was shutting down because they were getting kicked out of the building. Located in the mall, it seems that whoever runs it wanted the entire establishment to feel more upscale so this smoky bar where all the favourites go was getting the boot.

Too bad.

We stayed a while longer and chatted and then went for McDonald's like westerners do. We (Adam, the Russian neighbour and my roommate) returned to our apartment building back near the university and played a Russian card game similar in style to Asshole until 6 or 7 in the morning with mugs of Gin and coke. I lost twice, won once, and finished not last or first the other 15 times we played. The guy from Russia, Leonid, played loud electronic/dub music in the background and we smoked, chatted, played, and drank until the moon started to fade.

Best night I've had in a long time. Awesome New Year's.

Here are some pictures from New Year's eve and other stuff.

On New Year's day, I was called to one of my offices by my employers to have a meeting, much to my frustration since they wanted me to come during the same period of time that I usually go to my calligraphy class. Of course, work always takes priority so I went and luckily the meeting only took a few minutes so I rushed back to the building all the way on the other side of class where the calligraphy classes take place to make it in time for the second and last hour of the class. I had missed the previous week's class in order to go to the middle school to give Christmas presentations to the students there so I really did not want to miss this week's, especially since at the meeting I was informed I would have to do some teaching next Monday afternoon. I arrived at the room out of breath and saw my peers practicing their calligraphy not on the usual cheap, brown, practice paper that we usually use, but actually writing finalized pieces on the more expensive, thicker, white, nice paper. I soon found out that this was the last class of the semester and I had to make my own final piece as well. I was a little bit surprised to hear this and worried that my piece would not turn out perfectly since I haven't practiced in a long time what with the holidays and exams and work and so on. The first one I made turned out ok, but there was a glaring mistake I made on the top left character (I'll point it out later) so after taking some photos, my instructor agreed to let me try again at making another one. The second one wasn't perfect either, but it certainly had no big errors in writing like the first one. Perhaps some strokes were too thick or a character was slightly out of place but otherwise, it was decent. I'm excited to take it home. We all glued our pieces to the wall in the classroom where previous students' work is also hung. I glued my first one up so I can take the better one home even though people will notice the mistake I made in the future. All well. Considering it took me four months, I'd say it's still pretty good.

Mine is the one on the top right.

These are the two pieces I made. The one on the left is the first one with the mistake on the character at the top and in the middle column. You can see that the vertical line in the middle is extended below the third wavy line, which is an error. The second piece is the correct way to do it.

After work on New Year's eve, I was walking back to my apartment when I noticed the sun setting just in the corner by the administrative building. I decided to take some pretty pictures from the bridge over the frozen lake. Beautiful.

People walking on the lake at sunset.

I took this photo at about 6:30 AM, the morning after new year's eve as I walked back from my neighbour's apartment to mine. The moon looked so bright and frozen above as it shone through ice crystals in the air.

One of my students made a pretty grave error on my exam!

I found this pretty funny because the students try to be so ambiguous with their answers, hoping they'll still get it right but this one was just really bad.