Last Friday I went to a presentation at my college, given by a student named Victor who speaks very, very good English. He is one of the lucky few Chinese who have had the opportunity to travel abroad. He just returned a few weeks ago from a trip to Thailand and Australia, visiting a former English teacher from this college. It was a fine presentation, given in English, and included plenty of pictures. It was very interesting hearing a Chinese person's take on Western culture, which is just as alien and wild as what I am experiencing here. But I was mostly amazed with his experiences in Thailand.

In the West, we have the tendency to lump Asian cultures all together. My students were shocked when I told them that many, if not most, Americans think that Japan, Korea, and China are all basically the same. Victor showed some pictures of Thai high school students. Each day starts out with a 25-minute meditation session. There is great respect for the teacher in Thailand. When students have a question for their teachers, they kneel on the floor and ask, looking down the entire time, while the teacher sits in a chair. Although most students are very respectful here, I assure you this never happens in China!
On Saturday, I went to my colleague Marietta's birthday party. I was given the task of carrying the birthday cake to the restaurant. As I wrote earlier, cakes are a big deal in China, enough to make men sigh and women swoon. They are not as sweet as in the West, but still delicious, and exquisitely decorated with fine cuts of fruit and cherry tomatoes. The cake comes in a hard plastic box, and there is a ribbon around the box that functions as a handle. We boarded the bus and rode downtown to a restaurant, with this heavy cake suspended from my right hand.

Of course, the bus was very crowded when we boarded, and continued filling up as we got closer to downtown. Kunming buses are not unlike Tokyo subways during rush hour. I was smothered by the back door, and had to dodge the sheer humanity pouring out of the bus at each stop while jostling to make room for an influx of new commuters. All this with a heavy birthday cake dangling from my right hand. The ribbon cut into my hand. My fingers were beginning to go numb.

I was too tall to see out the windows, so I had no idea where we were, and had no idea when we were getting off. Stop after stop after stop. I was hungry. I get irritable when I'm hungry. I'm from rural Iowa, and sometimes feel stress at having to deal with so many people in such a confined place. I mean, come on, China's huge, let's spread out, people! I couldn't transfer the cake to my left hand because an elderly Bai woman had me pinned to the wall. The bus reeled to a stop. People lurched forward. The cake swung forward too, like a heavy pendulum from my purple and blue right hand. At this point, the cake became my sworn enemy.

After about an hour bumps, jerks, sways, and other lessons in momentum, it finally came time to get off this rolling coffin. I quickly shifted the cake over to my left hand. But remember this hand was also tired. This was the trusty hand that was gripping the overhead bar for the past 60 minutes. This was the hand that held both me and the cake in place, rather than careening through the mass of people in front of me, rather than toppling over the hard plastic seats and grandmothers and infant children beside me. So this heavy cake now dangled from my left hand, like a loaf of lead. I wanted to eat this cake, not out of hunger but out of animus.

We walked a block or so down Wenlin St. and met up with the rest of our party. There were three other Americans, a Swiss German, and three Chinese. We stood in a circle and chatted. On the street. I dared not put the cake down on the street due to propriety. I've seen what people and stray dogs do on the street, especially on a Saturday night, especially in this area, a center of Kunming nightlife. Why don't we just continue to the restaurant? Surely it must be near. Surely we could sit down and eat and have a very nice conversation. We could admire this cake, we could carve it up and devour it until it was no more. But the conversation continued, the cake wrenching my hand down to the center of the Earth.

Suddenly there was a moment of relief. It was like the angels had flown down and were supporting me. There was no burden. At this moment I looked down and saw the ribbon snap. The weight of the cake was too much. Marietta's birthday cake plummeted from my left hand and toppled to the ground. It somehow landed upside down, splattering frosting across our shoes and smearing white glaze across the concrete.

No one said anything for a few moments. Finally someone reached down and picked the cake up. It was still edible, however mangled. I was given the task of carrying this cake, this time supporting it from the bottom, into the restaurant. I got many strange looks from the restaurant staff...what's this strange foreigner doing carrying a busted cake? My fingers were sticky. We finally arrived in our private dining room, and the cake got placed on a side table.

Later, as we left the restaurant, the aftermath was still there on the street.

We went to a karaoke bar. In China, karaoke is very popular, almost like a religious experience. Friends will rent a private room with a TV, microphone, jukebox, and a case of beer. I danced with 60 year old women. It was great.

On Halloween, I went out to eat hotpot with Chairman Mao, his son, and my friend Dinh. My volleyball game was rained out. I'm on the Foreign Languages Department volleyball team. So I went down to a Halloween party at the Lao Chang Ji Jiu Ba (The Old Record Player Bar), my local. There were decorations, a few masks, but not many costumes. One girl dressed in a space-age uniform was selling Coors Light for 10 kuai a bottle. It got a little out of hand, though. One guy started smashing glasses and flipping tables. He was trying to fight another guy. I got out of the way and went upstairs. The police came, but I made sure not to be involved.

My English film club got off the ground last week. I had one student working diligently to reserve a room for showing movies. Finally, we got a hold of the person in charge. We needed a room with a DVD player, a sound system, a projector, a big screen, and lots of seats. I thought this would be a very difficult thing to procure. She asked me how many students. I went for the gold. I said all of them...about 150. She asked me how many times I would need it. I told her I needed it every week for the rest of the semester. No problem! This was about two days in advance, so I didn't have a chance to communicate the good news to everyone. However, it was well attended. Keeping with the holiday theme, we showed Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas to about 60 students. I had to leave in the middle of the movie to play a volleyball game. We beat the Landscape Design Dept.! I made it back in time for the final credits, but this was for my students, and they truly enjoyed it. They even brought popcorn, which is popular here. I expect this week to be bigger.

Last weekend was my birthday weekend, and I am working on writing all about that, but I'll save that for next time.