Brrr. It's F'in cold in here.

I'm currently sitting in my living room on my amazingly cozy new couch (thank you Ikea for coming to Dalian).  One bad thing, I'm freezing cold.  My  best friends in the winter are my "thermo-electric water bags" (that's what the box called it anyway).  It's basically a hot water bottle that you plug into the wall and it boils the water inside.  It's covered in fabric so you don't burn yourself like with a typical hot water bottle.  Anyway, they are amazing.  I sit on the couch with a blanket on me and one bag in my lap and one on my feet.  After that, I'm usually somewhat comfortable.  And that is while wearing flannel pants and a fleece jacket.  Oh!  And I have a radiator right behind me.

Now after all that, you might ask why I'm still so cold.  Well, the government controls the heat.  This usually isn't so bad since the school installed some extra doors in the kitchen and the balcony, but this year something is different.  When the radiators first turned on it was so hot in our apartment, probably about 80 degrees.  I don't know what happened but every week, it gets colder and colder in here.  I don't know if someone complained that it was too warm or what, but I swear it's colder than two weeks ago in the apartment.  Oh and the heat is only turned on a few hours a day.  I think it turns on at about 6 am for a few hours and again at about 5 pm for a few hours.  On really cold days, it's on longer.  Today it's been on for about 5 hours so far this evening, but it is by no means warm.

This is the same at work.  In the past, the school where I work didn't pay the outrageous fee to have the radiators turned on at the school during the winter.  I thought that made quite a bit of sense since most of our classes are during the weekend and during the day (mostly when the radiators aren't turned on anyway).  It worked out fairly well as every classroom and office had an electric heater in it that was used when needed.  This year, however, the school has opted to pay for the radiators.  So when I arrive at 7:30 am, my office is nice and toasty, but towards noon it gets quite chilly.  The classrooms are a different story.  Those might be warm if the doors and windows were kept closed (the students feel the need to wear 5 layers and a coat then complain about being too warm so they open the windows during break time when the teachers aren't in the room).  The school might be warm if the front doors were kept closed too.  One terrible habit that the Chinese have is that they keep doors open constantly.  Even I have come to the point that if I see that the front door to a store isn't open then I won't even try to go in.  Now, this could all be solved if we could use the heaters that we have used in the past.  However, they have all been unplugged and the socket is located in the ceiling.  This is inaccessible without a ladder (which is kept locked up).  Even if one were able to climb up and plug in the heater, you need a remote to operate it.  Those are kept locked up at the front desk.  One has to ask a receptionist for it.  The worst part is that I have a class in a classroom that is located in the center of the school between two hallways; radiators only run along exterior walls.  No heat whatsoever in that classroom.

Notice all the coats and layer upon layer of clothes underneath.  And I guarantee they are all wearing at least 2 layers of long underwear.

I do have it better than a lot of people.  I have heard that it is illegal to occupy a home that hasn't paid the radiator fee, but some still do it.  Their apartments have to be freezing cold.  Even some offices and other places of work don't use heat.  Howie had a job in the past like that.  He wore his coat and hat all day while sitting at a computer working.

It's the same in the summer.  While it doesn't get too hot here in the summer most days, the humidity is at least 90% and we do hit 100 degrees for a about a week or so.  There is a law that if the temperature is more than 40 degrees Celsius then people don't have to go to work.  Magically, it never gets above 39 degrees.

Last summer our school had to relocate because the original building was being resurfaced.  We moved to a large building across the street where we occupied about half the space as our original school.  At first, no air conditioners were installed except the large stand alone unit that went into the lobby.  Eventually, management realized that our classrooms were going to get really hot with up to 20 kids in each tiny classroom and installed one wall unit in each classroom.  This was great until the really hot days came (sweating at 9:00 am is not my favorite thing).  The classrooms were so close together and only separated by one thin sheet of dry wall.  There was one window in each classroom.  Because the classrooms were so close together, we had to keep the doors closed so as not to interrupt each others classes.  This caused another problem, no circulation.  No breeze will come through an open window if it has nowhere to go.  Because of this, we turned on the air conditioning units.  Great idea until we realized one very hot morning that every light and A/C unit was connected to the same circuit breaker.  Every classroom went dark and got really hot every time we tried to turn on the A/C.  Teachers were constantly taking turns to get shocked by the breaker box in order to have light again.  I eventually gave up on using the A/C and just opened my door.  Others did this as well and we were pretty much yelling over each other in order to "teach".

Now, this is not horrible when compared to the working conditions of others in this country.  I don't know many people who are blue collar workers so I don't know much about this.  However, my father-in-law recently retired from butchering pigs but became a bit stir crazy just staying at home every day.  Because of this he decided to take seasonal jobs in different cities.  At his last position, he was a sort of on-site accountant for a construction company.  His job was to wake up at about 4:00 am every morning and wait for material delivery.  He then had to go through every crate or box to make sure that everything was in order.  While he was not doing much manual labor like his coworkers were, he was still housed with them.  As I mentioned in a previous post, most laborers who work on sites like these are unskilled workers from rural areas.  Therefore, the workers live together on site.  No matter the season, the first thing the workers do when they arrive is to build their living quarters.  These are small one story buildings made of what looks to me like corrugated steel.  The walls are white and the roofs are blue.  Inside there are bunk beds and maybe a couple of small tables or chairs to play cards and have meals.  It is a shelter, and that is all.  Most of the ones that I've seen (only from the outside, I've never been in one) have a couple of bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling.  I have never seen a place where a bathroom might be since there are windows all around the building (unless there is a window in the bathroom, but I always just see bunk beds in front of every window).  I'm assuming they use a sort of outhouse but most wouldn't consider this so bad since most of the laborers use outhouses at their own houses.

Anyway, some of these men work 12 hours a day with little or no safety equipment.  The city is building a subway here and there is a construction site right next to our school.  The subway has collapsed numerous times so far.  It's scheduled to open in two years, but I don't see that happening.  When it does open, I think I'll wait a while to use it since it just keeps collapsing.  I'm not sure if anyone has been trapped in the tunnels, but that wouldn't be reported since most of the fall-ins aren't reported anyway.

The fruit stands near my home are funny to see in the winter.  In the past, the vendors would just suffer the cold while wearing what looked like coats made out of comforters.  This year they all banded together and built little huts made of spare wood and plastic sheets.  They also jimmied together a small wood stove of sorts.  On one end of their hut, they have a place to burn whatever it is they are using which feeds into a metal pipe. The pipe is run across the top of the hut to a hole in the opposite wall.  It can get nearly comfortable in the fruit huts now.

The mechanics shop that we bring our car to charges extra in the winter to wash a car.  This is because they have to heat the water so it doesn't freeze while hand washing the car.  (It costs about $5 to get your car washed by hand here.)  I feel sorry for the guy that works there.  The garage doors are always wide open and he's constantly getting splashed by water.

Howie's best friend, Allan, works in the law department of some huge corporation.  He arrives at work at about 7:00 am and usually doesn't leave until 10:00.  He works 7 days a week usually.  Occasionally, he'll have a Sunday off.  He spent numerous nights sleeping in his office because there just wasn't enough time to go home, sleep, and come back.  He makes roughly $600 a month.

One job that I would never want is to be a street sweeper.  One reason that littering is so common here is because there are people who walk around on every street and sweep up everything (also there aren't many trashcans on the streets).  The past few weeks, one of the jobs that these people have had is to wash the dividers in the middle of the streets.  Only once have I seen a road block to make drivers pull into a different lane so as to avoid hitting those who are washing the barricades in the middle of the road.

There are many times that I've had to walk under a man welding a sign to the front of a store.  No welding visor or gloves on a rickety ladder in the middle of a busy sidewalk.  I watched a man using a skill saw (the rotary power saw) the other day.  He placed the wood to be cut on two saw horses.  Lifted one of his legs to hold the wood in place then cut the wood towards himself!  I kept waiting for him to hit a knot in the wood or something and cut into his leg.  He must have had a lot of practice doing this because he was fine when he was done.

According to people I've talked to, China has seen huge improvements on worker safety and the like.  And for the most part, it's not the government who is ignoring this problem, but the employers.  There are ways of getting around the laws (like guanxi) and there are other employers who just don't care.

Here is a photo I took at a construction site for a house that Howie and I were thinking of buying.  We just walked right in, no security, no one asked us to leave, and many of the employees were not wearing hard hats.

Kardashians to Child Labor

I am completely addicted of gossip magazines and read through the Us Weekly app on my iPod every morning and evening.  Admittedly, the comments made by the catty women following each article are what really tickle my fancy.  They routinely rip apart every celebrity and each other.

Naturally, one of the celebrities, or group of celebrities, that they tear into are the Kardashians.  I had no idea who these women were as I came to China before they became (in)famous.  As far as I know, they are trust fund "ladies", who have a show (had a show?), and have an affinity for marrying NBA players.

One of the recent articles about this family included allegations that they knowingly employed children working in sweat shops in China to produce whatever product it is that they make.  Following suit, the regular group of women started ripping apart the K's.  One woman defended the family by saying they probably didn't even know that was going on and that woman was then attacked.  But this is not about the vicious women who read gossip rags, nor is it about the Kardashians, it's about child labor and working conditions in China.

While we can all probably agree that child labor is bad, we would probably agree that starving families is worse.  For the most part, that is why children are forced to work in the first place.  "But why aren't the children going to school?  Doesn't the government try to step in?"  Well, no.  In China, going to school is an option; an expensive option at that.  Many children of blue collar workers will usually only finish primary school.  In a country where there are so many people, competition is cut throat, even for children a mere 7 years old.  In order to go to middle school, students must pass an "entrance examination".  Their entire primary school education leads up to this one test that will determine if they can go to middle school and which middle school they can attend.  If your grade is high enough, you can usually have your pick of school (assuming your family can afford it).  If you either can't afford the better school or your grade wasn't high enough, you can go to one of the other schools.  But even the "not so good" schools cost money.  And that's money that some families just don't have.

Children here are put into different "private academies" from the time they are able to speak.  The youngest student I've had in one of my classes was 3 years old.  The price of these extra classes can range anywhere from 500 RMB per semester to thousands of RMB per semester.  (The school I work for is neither the cheapest nor the most expensive and runs about 1,500 RMB per semester.)

Let's look at how a child of a blue collar family would fare among his classmate whose parents work in offices.  Let's assume that child A's family earns about 4,000 RMB per month.  If they don't own their own apartment, we can automatically deduct 1,000 to 2,000 for rent.  Let's take the average and say 1500.  They are down to 2,500 per month of income.  Subtract utilities, cell phone charges (everyone and their dog has a cell phone here), random repairs to the house, insurances and fees.  That's about 2,000 per month.  Feeding a family of three (remember the one child policy and assuming the retired grandparents don't live with them) brings it it about 1,000 per month.  Then we've got school supplies, bus fare, random things that people need to stay healthy (maybe medicine once in a while, toiletries, etc).  We're down to about 750 RMB per month.  If one English class costs 1000 per semester (we'll assume this child is going to an English school with only Chinese teachers teaching, no foreign teachers) that's about 150 RMB per month.  That family has 600 RMB per month now.  Then we have to add in that the kid needs to take supplementary classes in art, science, math, geography, history, and Chinese in order to keep up with his classmates.  That family has nothing left and we haven't even counted in the tuition for the primary school, the books for the classes, and the uniforms.

When we compare this to child B's family, we can see that there is not really any competition here.  Even middle class families have a huge advantage in this area.  We'll assume that the parents make about 8,000 RMB.  2,000 for an apartment (although most of them own because it is customary for the groom's family to buy a house for the new couple for their wedding).  These children will probably eat better food, attend better schools, have nicer clothes, and probably have private tutors.  Even if these two families might end up with the same amount of savings after each month, child B's education is much greater than that of child A's. In many situations, middle class families have what is referred to as guanxi (or relationships), this will also influence the price of things.  A past private student of mine lived in what I would consider to be a high-middle-class family.  His mother was a professor at a university and his father either owned his own company or was high up in this company.  Because the wife worked for a university which has a primary, middle, and high school affiliated to it, her son is guaranteed acceptance to the schools throughout his school career.  They also don't have to pay for it.  (I might mention this is one of the best schools in the city.)  The wife makes about 5,000 or 6,000 RMB per month and her entire salary goes towards classes for her son.  They live solely on the husband's income.

Now imagine something happens where one of child A's parents is unable to work any more.  (We've all heard about the safety regulations here, or lack of them.)  That family's income is significantly reduced.  Unless that child is the first ranking child in the school, he will probably have to drop out of school.  Not only because of the lack of funds for tuition, but the lack of funds to pay for the medical bills, food, and rent.  Now, we have a family who has only one income.  Depending on the guanxi that this family has as well as any familial relation that is willing or able to help, this child may end up having to go to work to help support his family.  This might mean begging on the street, becoming a pickpocket, or working in a factory.  This child doesn't have any marketable skills, usually.  Occasionally, children will be sent to different cities to find work in a "bathhouse".  These bathhouses are just that, a large bathroom where you can take a hot shower and get massages and exfoliating rubs.  It is common for Chinese people to visit these establishments.  Some are respectable while others are just an excuse for a whore house.  Many of the young ladies who are forced to drop out of school to earn money for their family resort to prostitution in the bathhouses.

Therefore, we, finally, get to child labor.  Of course, depending on the company that one works for, there can be deplorable working conditions.  However, to say that children should not be working is not an acceptable answer to child labor.  Many if not most children who hold jobs in China did not wake up one morning and think, "To hell with school.  I can make a ton of money by starting to work now.  Who cares if I am only 12?"  Instead, it is usually a long thought out and decision after numerous hours of discussion with loved ones.  "Yes, sorry little Jimmy, you can't go to school anymore.  We can't afford it and we need help to buy food.  You need to find a job."

Again, here many people would jump in and say, "But don't they have insurance?  Aren't doctors required to  treat sick people even if they don't have insurance?  Doesn't the government have welfare systems for these occasions?  What about the Red Cross?"  Let's answer these one by one...

Insurance:  While many people do have insurance through their employer, many others do not.  If there is a law requiring all companies to provide health insurance to full time workers, I am not aware of it (nor do I claim to be all knowing in any area, especially Chinese law).  If there is a law, many companies can get by with not providing insurance due to the aforementioned guanxi.

Doctors:  Hospitals are not required to help in any case.  If a patient comes in to the ER bleeding out, the hospital isn't required to do anything to help unless that person pays the estimated bill before any procedure is done.  And no, showing an insurance card doesn't work.  You pay then insurance reimburses you later.  Don't have the $5,000 required to reattach your severed leg right now?  Oh.  Tough luck.  Looks like you have just enough to afford the doctors to stop the bleeding and stitch it up.

Welfare:  Not a clue.  I've never heard of anyone receiving financial aid from the government in cases of poverty.  Again, not sure, but never heard even the tiniest suggestion of it.

Red Cross:  I believe it was about a year ago, the president of the Chinese Red Cross was thrown in jail and possibly executed because he was stealing donations.  Many people had donated to a child who couldn't afford a necessary surgery.  The child died before the money got to the family because the president of the organization used the money instead of passing it on.

I hope I have clearly laid out why one should not jump the gun on banning all child labor.  Of course, there are horrible jobs out there.  There is child trafficking.  There is slavery.  There are terrible things being done in some places.  But for some of these families, that is, sadly, the only way they can continue to survive.

I hope to explore this further in the weeks to come.

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I have not written this to say that child labor is good or that everyone should condone it.  It's just to help open some eyes as to why some parents send their children to work instead of to school.

Students

Our student received the highest award at the speech competition a few weeks ago.  She was thrilled, except for the fact that her classmate also got the highest award.  Her classmate is the headmistress's daughter and apparently quite a bitch.

We have a new student starting soon.  She just finished taking her SATs, TOEFL, and the like.  She wants us to teach her AP Physics and stuff like that.  I figure if she already knows physics, why doesn't she just use a dictionary to translate those words?  While meeting with her about a month ago, she would constantly roll her eyes at me and speak rudely.  But $35/hour is good money and she can roll her eyes at me all she wants for that price.

I am constantly amazed by the amount of kids here that are being forced to learn English beyond what is taught at their schools.  Even more amazing is the price that these parents are willing to pay!  When I first arrived here, I was told that 100 RMB/hour (about $15) is an average price for a one-to-one class with a native speaker.  About a year or two later, the price went up to 150 RMB.  At one point, we had so many students and I had no evening off that I started telling people that classes were 200 RMB/hour.  I did this assuming most would say that was too expensive and I would be able to have some time off.  As of now, I have one evening with no students.  It's nice and it sucks at the same time.

On that note, gotta get ready for another class.  9 year old.  Our first class with him is tonight.

Speech Competition

Howie and I's Monday night student is a 12 year old girl.  She has been to the US and has very good English for her age.  Her teacher chose her to participate in a city wide English speech competition this Sunday.

On Monday night, I proofread her speech and helped her with pronunciation and pacing.  Howie helped her with hand motions and facial expressions (very important during speeches here).  I'd say all this took about 40 minutes.

Wednesday night, her mother calls us to say that the English teacher thought the speech was too pessimistic (the title was "The Older I Grow, the Lonelier I Am" after all).  Her mother asks Howie if we can write a new speech for her...  And can we have it finished in 30 minutes!  "Okay", Howie says, "No problem."  We start writing.

I'm happy to say that we completed a 2 minute long speech in about 20 minutes entitled "The Older I Grow, the More Excited I Become".  Our student's father showed up a little before we finished.  He copied it to his flash drive and took it home for her.

She will come to our house again tonight (even though she has a fever and will be working on the speech all day today at home since her teacher excused her from school for this) and again on Saturday night.

Creeping Back

I randomly started thinking about posting again.  I am horrible at doing this mostly because I would rather be playing video games or watching Netflix.

I logged on after more than a year today to find that so much has changed to the layout of Blogger.  I really like that I can see how many people have viewed my posts and where the traffic is coming from.  I was checking all that out when I noticed that my post about my hospital stay had received nearly 450 views.  I thought, "What the heck is going on?"  I looked to see where all these views were coming from.  A vast majority of them were from an adult forum.

Some guy (who I was able to track down thanks to the Internet; he lives in MA), found my post about the surgery rather appealing.  Therefore, he posted a link to my post on his forum thread on this adult website with a short explanation about my post.  He also included about 10 other blogs.

I was a little surprised to find this information, but even more surprised that someone would find that post at all, ahem, appealing.

It seems to be genetic

My husband has always had a problem with not turning off lights.  When he comes home from work, I follow him around the apartment for about 15 minutes just so I can turn off all the lights that he somehow forgets to turn off despite my constant reminders.

All his friends who come to visit are very good about turning off the lights when they exit a room, which makes me think this is not a Chinese thing.

About two weeks ago Howie's cousin-in-law, aunt, and second cousin came to visit and stayed in our spare room.  The same thing.  Every light in the house was constantly on.  Okay, so maybe it's only some of the family...

Howie's sister and brother-in-law are currently staying with us.  Same problem.  Lights.  On.  Constantly.  I mean, give me a break!

Our electricity bill is outrageous every month.  So much so that we unplug nearly everything when we finish using it (obviously not the refrigerator).  Blankets and coats are used in the winter instead of the heater and the water heater is only turned on about 20 minutes before we take showers.  Howie can remember all these things, but not turning off a light.

I'm beginning to think I am doomed to a life of wasted electricity.

Meghan's Account of the Dalian Dinner

I stole the following from my friend Meghan's blog.

In which I became a cautionary tale of future maid of honors at Chinese wedding dinners

Su-Mai-En! Su-Mai-En!! As the banquet hal full of chinese people chanted my (Chinese) name, I started to sincerely reconsider the wisedom of my choice to be Maid of Honor at a Chinese wedding dinner.

My ordeal started two weeks before, when a friend of mine asked me to be maid of honor at her Chinese wedding dinner.  Knowing as I did that her wedding involved a donkey parade, jumping over a lit oven and ridiculous Qing-era clothing, I decided that, as maid of honor, I would try to do an american style toast, so some part of her wedding would have a familiar element to her.

Chinese wedding dinners are an example of what happens when cultural traditions and etiquette, originally made to make life more pleasant, becomes an odious process that serves to confuse and exasperate everyone involved.

The Chinese wedding dinners involve "red envelopes" in which the people who are invited must come and are obligated to give a certain amount of money to the bride and groom- if they fail to do this, they lose face.  It's a tacky, antiquated tradition that often puts chinese people into a catch-22 postion,  since they have to come to the wedding dinner and they must give a certain amount of money, which is at least 200 rmb, which is, for most chinese people, a substantial percentage of their monthly paycheck. So they can't not go- they would lose face, but at the same time they can't go, because they can't afford the money.

Anyway- because of this catch 22 situation, the chinese teachers in my school were placed in a cultural conundrum, that resulted in two weeks of wavering between all the CTs not going, all the CTs going, and only some of the CTs going.  I decided to organize an american-style gift- in which all of the CTs going would pay a certain amount of money for one large gift.  This seemingly easy idea caused me much stress as we had to get through all of their "face issues" - and resulted in me dragging an enormous, cast iron "hanging arch" lamp through the labyrinth that is the Dalian IKEA, after my friend decided that since he had carried another, much lighter lamp before, since I changed my mind, I would have to carry this lamp myself. The frantic IKEA trip culminated with the two of us getting into a ridiculous, yet heated argument over the importance of wrapping paper and ribbon for a wedding present.

So, cut to the next day: I discovered that, as a Chinese maid of honor, besides giving a speech, I had to follow around the bride, holding a tray full of cigarettes and candies to give to all the men at the dinner.  I thus became the most sullen maid of honor as the sexist symbolism of the entire tradition was far too wretched for me to stomach gracefully.  Luckily, as the bride was an American, wearing four inch heels, a blue ballgown and a fur shawl, she was with me in the opinion that this was awful. 

Finally, I was able to sit down with all of my coworkers, leaving the bride and groom at the mercy of Chinese wedding dinner games and the malevolent guests who enforce them.  Or at least, that is how I'll try to remember the evening.  In reality, The groom announced that he had written a love song for his beautiful bride, and that, " The guests would like the maid of honor, Su-Mai-En, to dance to the song." 

Have you ever thought that you are in the midst of a nightmare? I have before. The difference between this time and the other times is that this time? I didn't wake up.  As the third round of "Su-Mai-En!! Su-Mai-En!" started up, I realized that, short of bolting for freedom , I was going to have to dance. 

As the groom started singing, acapella, a song that went along the lines of, " Alicia, I love you, love you, love you. Alicia, I love you!" I awkwardly hopped, tap danced and twirled around, doing at best, an interpretive dance, and at worst, my impersontion of a chicken, while 100 chinese strangers cheered (or jeered) and laughed.  I was a scene from bad '90s era teen movie.

My only consolation was that at least, besides my coworkers and my friend, no one I knew would ever see this.  Even this small consolation was taken from me when I was finally allowed to leave the stage, and I discovered that my Judas of a friend had filmed the entire, mortifying ordeal- from my attempt to escape, slithering my way under the table at the beginning, to the end, when I attacked the groom, wrenching the microphone out of his hand. 

wicked Chinese wedding dinner guests: 3,000,000,000
Meghan (aka Su-Mai-En): - dignity