#binchuan

Lunchtime

Introducing songs of Binchuan...during the drive from Jinniu back to Lijiao yesterday, Principal Zhao played us a CD filled them, including a drinking song and another song that basically can be summed up as "Binchuan, I Love You." Since I'll be teaching music in addition to English, despite a mediocre voice and lack of any piano skills, our principal (it still feels weird to call him ex-principal) suggested that I teach the students all the Binchuan songs. So my kids will come away with a repertoire of these, plus random smatterings of English songs (with Hotel California being a must, seeing how China and SE Asia appear to be obsessed with it). First off is the song 醉美宾川 (Intoxicated by Binchuan),  made famous during Principal Week and our dinner with the Lijiao officials. 

For our amended lyrics for 醉美力角 (Intoxicated by Lijiao), every time Binchuan appeared in the lyrics, we swapped it out for Lijiao, and for the lines 这里山高水长，佛光多慈祥 (This is a place of towering mountains and long streams, with the glory and kindness of Buddha) and 这是水果的天堂，寻梦的地方 (This is a fruit paradise, a place to chase dreams) we changed them to 这是力角完小，镇上排第一 (This is Lijiao Elementary, number one in the town) and 这是力角中学，我有五亩地 (This is Lijiao Middle School, I have five plots of farmland). 

[Note: The uploaded music file cuts off the song, but it should play long enough for you to get the gist of it. If not, then listen here.]

醉美宾川

好花处处开

hao3hua1chu4chu4kai1 好景处处在

hao3jing3chu4chu4zai4 因为你我有缘才到宾川来

yin1wei4ni3wo3you3yuan2cai2dao4bin1chuan1lai2 好花处处开

hao3hua1chu4chu4kai1 好景处处在

hao3jing3chu4chu4zai4 因为宾川太美丽我们来相遇

yin1wei3bin1chuan1tai4mei3li4wo3men2lai2xiang1yu4 葡萄熟的时候，我在宾川等着你

pu2tao2shu2deshi2hou4, wo3zai4bin1chuan1deng3zheni3 橘子红的时候，我们相约在这里

ju2zi3hong2deshi2hou4, wo3men2xiang1yue4zai1zhe4li3 相约宾川，醉美宾川

xiang1yue4bin1chuan1, zui4mei3bin1chuan1 这里山高水长，佛光多慈祥

zhe4shi4shan1gao1shui3chang2, fo2guang1duo1ci3xiang2 相约宾川，醉美宾川

xiang1yue4bin1chuan1, zui4mei3bin1chuan1 这是水果的天堂，寻梦的地方

zhe4shi4shui3guo3detian1tang2, xun2meng4dedi4fang1 相约宾川，醉美宾川

xiang1yue4bin1chuan1, zui4mei3bin1chuan1 这里山高水长，佛光多慈祥

zhe4shi4shan1gao1shui3chang2, fo2guang1duo1ci3xiang2 相约宾川，醉美宾川

xiang1yue4bin1chuan1, zui4mei3bin1chuan1

这是水果的天堂，寻梦的地方

zhe4shi4shui3guo3detian1tang2, xun2meng4dedi4fang1

  好花处处开

hao3hua1chu4chu4kai1 好景处处在

hao3jing3chu4chu4zai4 因为你我有缘才到宾川来

yin1wei4ni3wo3you3yuan2cai2dao4bin1chuan1lai2 好花处处开

hao3hua1chu4chu4kai1 好景处处在

hao3jing3chu4chu4zai4 因为宾川太美丽我们来相遇

yin1wei3bin1chuan1tai4mei3li4wo3men2lai2xiang1yu4 葡萄熟的时候，我在宾川等着你

pu2tao2shu2deshi2hou4, wo3zai4bin1chuan1deng3zheni3 橘子红的时候，我们相约在这里

ju2zi3hong2deshi2hou4, wo3men2xiang1yue4zai1zhe4li3 相约宾川，醉美宾川

xiang1yue4bin1chuan1, zui4mei3bin1chuan1 这里山高水长，佛光多慈祥

zhe4shi4shan1gao1shui3chang2, fo2guang1duo1ci3xiang2 相约宾川，醉美宾川

xiang1yue4bin1chuan1, zui4mei3bin1chuan1 这是水果的天堂，寻梦的地方

zhe4shi4shui3guo3detian1tang2, xun2meng4dedi4fang1 相约宾川，醉美宾川

xiang1yue4bin1chuan1, zui4mei3bin1chuan1 这里山高水长，佛光多慈祥

zhe4shi4shan1gao1shui3chang2, fo2guang1duo1ci3xiang2 相约宾川，醉美宾川

xiang1yue4bin1chuan1, zui4mei3bin1chuan1 这是水果的天堂，寻梦的地方

zhe4shi4shui3guo3detian1tang2, xun2meng4dedi4fang1 这是水果的天堂，寻梦的地方

zhe4shi4shui3guo3detian1tang2, xun2meng4dedi4fang1 这是水果的天堂，寻梦的地方

zhe4shi4shui3guo3detian1tang2, xun2meng4dedi4fang1

  Intoxicated by [the Beauty of] Binchuan

Beautiful flowers blooming everywhere,

Beautiful scenery lies everywhere,

Because you and I share a destiny, in Binchuan we arrive

Beautiful flowers blooming everywhere,

Beautiful scenery lies everywhere,

Because Binchuan is too beautiful, in Binchuan we meet

When the grapes ripen, in Binchuan I will wait for you

When the tangerines ripen, in Binchuan we will meet

An appointment [date] in Binchuan, intoxicated by Binchuan

This is a place of towering mountains and long streams, with the glory and kindness of Buddha

An appointment [date] in Binchuan, intoxicated by Binchuan

This is a fruit paradise, a place to chase dreams.

Today, the Binchuan education bureau arranged for all the foreign fellows to go to Xiaguan for a visa run. Which ended successfully for everyone, except yours truly since I only had my residency registration booklet and not the voucher slip that ended up being the crucial part of the application. My slip got lost amid the first-week rush to get our local bank accounts settled. I handed all my paperwork to the bank teller to make copies, and somewhere along the way that slip got lost. So...bad news, I now have to miss my first day of classes in order to redo the visa run. Time to kick myself for not settling this issue sooner.

The good news is, today was not a complete waste of time. After the visa run, our principals, upon request, all took us to Walmart for a two-hour shopping binge, which may not seem all that exciting when you're in the U.S., but when you're living in rural China, Walmart becomes a temple of exotic treasures like yoga mats--which we practically cleaned the store out of--and waffles. My most important purchase of the day, though, was decidedly much more run-of-the-mill. After living out of my suitcase for over a month, I'm happy to finally have a cloth closet to put my clothes in. That, plus the mosquito net I installed yesterday (bought during a mentally-draining trip to the Chinese chain 美丽家园 aka "Homart," I kid you not, made stressful and exhausting thanks to the well-meaning but clueless workers who kept on pulling out, repackaging, and then pulling out again mosquito net after mosquito net to check for size--not to mention confirming, denying, and then reconfirming exactly how many nets they had in stock), makes my room feel a little bit cozier.

Today also delivered some pretty earth-shattering news. And of course it would be delivered in the most nonchalant way possible. As we made our early morning drive to Xiaguan, Principal Zhao casually mentioned that he had just resigned from his post to look after his health. Vice Principal Ai is now our new principal. This sudden news threw me for a loop, and I had to take most of the drive to process it. I had really looked forward to working with Principal Zhao and was just starting to build rapport with him. The bout of principal changes seems to be affecting multiple Binchuan placement schools and comes on the heel of a meeting they all had last week, so it looks to be part of routine promotions and reshuffling of personnel. Our (ex)principal did mention he's still carrying out remaining responsibilities in terms of taking care of us TFC fellows, so I guess he's not out of the picture yet, and hopefully today won't be the last I'll see of him.

Today is the Ghost Festival (鬼节), which occurs on the 14th and 15th of the seventh lunar month. Per custom, people gather with their extended families for dinner and honor their ancestors by burning offerings of paper money and paper goods like shoes, refrigerators, etc. For dinner, Principal Zhao invited the three Lijiao foreign fellows to his wife's parents' house, where we also ran into Principal Ai since his parents' house is right across the street. As it turns out, Principal Ai and Principal Zhao's wife are cousins. Considering the fact that she's also a middle school teacher, teaching seems to run in the family.

Principal Ai also seems friendly and receptive, so I hope we'll manage to build a solid working relationship with him as well. Since his background is as an English teacher, I would definitely love to see his teaching practices and see what I can learn from them. I'm also looking forward to meeting all the other local teachers, who'll be arriving to school this weekend on Sept. 1 for beginning-of-the-year meetings. Weekly meetings are held every Tuesday and conducted mostly in the local dialect. Which means Brittney, Limin, and I will be on a fairly-level playing field in terms of trying to figure out what's going on. 

I have A LOT of catching up to do on this blog. I can see my drafts count on Tumblr pile up while the number of posts plateaus. Highlight reels of SI and Dali Principal Week, not to mention reflections on my 35 Ban students and home visits, are in the works. But before the time lag stretches out even more, I’d like to take the time to talk about some more recent events. Namely, my arrival on August 19 in Lijiao Middle School, home sweet home for the next two years.

Early on during SI, TFC held a placement ceremony to reveal to Yunnan fellows their placement schools and teammates (Guangdong fellows’ placement news was sadly pushed back to give the local governments more time to confirm placements, as well as to handle paperwork mix-ups). Last year, the grand reveal was decidedly less grand, as fellows simply received an Excel spreadsheet and had to scour through it to find their names. This year, we all gathered in Room 236 of the Shizhuan classroom building for the moment of truth. Each fellow, including second-year fellows present, was given an envelope and told to wait for TFC’s signal before opening it. Inside contained slips of paper with the names of our teammates. The air filled with anticipation. By the time the speeches ran their course and the signal was given, I’m sure we were all ready to rip open our envelopes like a pack of starving hounds. I discovered that I was paired with two fellows, one American and one Chinese fellow—Brittney and Limin （丽敏, English name: Tiffany). The room at that point erupted into chaos, as people began milling around--with many rushing to the front--holding up the slips of paper in order to find their teammates. Brittney and I found each other relatively quickly. At that point, I didn’t know her too well, but we had managed to meet at Salvador’s (the cafe and bar in Lincang that’s pretty much taken over by TFC during SI) one time while lesson planning and knew that we both had much love for Baltimore and Maryland in general (Brittney graduated from Loyola University). 

Finding Limin took decidedly longer, since neither one of us could match the name to a face. Passing by us, Colin (part of the first-ever TFC teaching fellow cohort, executive director of TFC operations in Yunnan, and my SI reflection group leader) gave me the hint that Limin is in my reflection group and is the one who wears glasses. Which would have been helpful….if it were not for the tiny fact that multiple female Chinese fellows in my reflection group wore glasses. But finally, we found each other, and I realized Limin (who actually tends to walk around without glasses on) was my 老乡, a fellow Fujianese (from 莆田 Putian) who delivered an emotionally powerful talk during our “life map” session on what brought her to TFC. Growing up in rural China in a family with two daughters, she and her family were looked down upon by others because of this terrible “misfortune.” So she always pushed herself to work hard and succeed, to prove the naysayers wrong and prove that girls could be equally capable. 

After finding each other, teams could get envelopes containing packets with introductory information about their school. The three of us are teaching at Lijiao Middle School （力角中学）in Lijiao, Binchuan district, Dali prefecture. Just 200 meters down the road were two other TFC fellows, Susannah and  Xinzi （辛子）at Lijiao Elementary School （力角完小）.

Up next, Colin, using (not-to-scale) maps lovingly hand-drawn by our SI interns, introduced all the teams and placement sites. He coined the five of us “the Ladies of Lijiao.” Little did I know that more nicknames were in store.

After Principal Week wrapped up in Xiaguan, we arrived at our schools after a scenic, roughly hour-and-a-half drive to Jinniu, the main city/town of Binchuan, where all 24 Binchuan TFC fellows were treated to a welcome speech and safety notices by the Binchuan police chief and education bureau head, followed by lunch. This would also be where I got roped into simultaneously translating the speeches. I was also filmed, as Brittney kindly reminded me, and may or may not have wound up on Chinese TV.  

First business upon arriving in Lijiao was settling into our rooms. The three of us live in singles on the third floor of a student dormitory and share a bathroom down the hall with newly-installed showers (with hot, albeit sometimes scalding, water…something to never take for granted after SI) and Western-style toilets (that quickly got clogged, so I kind of wish we just had squat toilets, but it’s incredibly sweet of our principal to go above and beyond and install these for us). Of course, surrounded by farmland—including some owned by the school that we’re allowed to farm on should we wish (plans to plant asparagus, sunflowers, mint, etc. are already in the works)—there are BUGS, BUGS, BUGS everywhere, including some of the most hyper moths I’ve ever met and gigantic beetles that have a penchant for getting themselves stuck upside-down all over our hall and stairway. But I can live with that. And we quickly learned the students that’ll be living in the bottom two floors are going to be male. So….despite our principal and Limin’s assurances that these boys will be too young for us to worry about their raging hormones…Brittney and I have heard stories and are going to make sure there are shades for every window, including the super-high ones reachable only by ladder or Spidey skills. 

The more we got to learn about our living situation, the more I realized how lucky we are. Even as a part of me wishes for more “rural” living conditions to test myself, I’m also incredibly thankful for what we have. But more importantly, I am thankful that our principal so far has been super supportive of TFC and encourages us to inject youthful energy into the school, where teachers tend to be in their 40s, and bring in innovative teaching techniques. He’s also a total goofball when the occasion calls for it. See the Principal Week photo, after each school was presented with its official TFC plaque, as proof:

From our school, we headed to the local police station or 派出所 to get our residency permits. The plan was to follow that up with securing our bank accounts at the local rural credit union. Except, of course, this being the life of a TFC fellow, plans have a tendency to not work out. The police station’s internet system was down, so scratch that. Since we were the first foreigners to open bank accounts at the Lijiao branch of the rural credit, we needed to wait until they acquired the necessary documentation to allow them to handle foreign clients. So, scratch that as well. What we did accomplish, however, was getting acquainted with our local police chief Gao Shan and being offered apples from the mountains. And this would be the moment when we were crowned the Pandas of Lijiao. In the words of Police Chief Gao, we—like pandas—are national treasures demanding special protection. And, as Brittney would say, Susannah and she are the obvious pandas to spot. I, however, am a panda in disguise. First, the Lijiao inhabitant spies the obvious waiguoren (外国人) pandas and flocks to us in curiosity. Then, upon discovering that I’m American despite looking Chinese, her mind is boggled by the sheer illogicality of this and I become the panda. 

In the following days, we did manage to get our residency permits and bank accounts (which involved two trips to the bank and being those waiguorens who cut in line and take forever to finish, since the first time the bank teller entered our Chinese rather than English names). We also met up with local CCP officials, including Party Secretary Wang, who along with others coined the five Lijiao Ladies the “Five Golden Flowers” （五朵金花）after a classic Chinese romantic movie set in Dali. Dali women are known as golden flowers, while men are known as ah peng ge (阿彭哥). But the downsides of being such “golden flowers” and “beauties” (美女) were…the minute Party Secretary Wang heard that we wanted to buy bikes, she vociferously shot down the idea, insisting that we were “too beautiful” and would run into danger riding around, what with the speeding motorists, lack of adherence to traffic laws, and bevy of young men on said motorcycles who’d want to ride close and stare at us. Should we bike around town, we’d need police escort to ensure our safety. We, which mainly meant Limin and Xinzi, had to negotiate and fight for our right to bike. 

The local officials invited us to lunch in a restaurant with a huge backyard filled with fruit trees. We saw persimmons, tamarinds, pomegranates, and pears free for the picking. I am going to miss this easy access to fruits upon fruits once I leave Binchuan. During lunch, we also had to participate in Chinese drinking culture, though one of the few benefits of being a golden flower was that the officials were more forgiving about our insistences to drink only beer versus the infamous baijiu (白酒) and did not try to get us wasted. And no drinking session would be complete without rounds and rounds of toasts and insisting that the various hosts and guests perform in song. The Chinese fellows sang Jasmine Flower(茉莉花) while the three of us sang Teresa Teng’s famous Tian Mi Mi (甜蜜蜜). All five of us also sang 醉美力角 (Intoxicated by Lijiao), a spin on 醉美宾川 (Intoxicated by Binchuan). During Principal Week, every school team had to perform during the final banquet, and we had the extra-special privilege of going first. So Xinzi slightly modified the lyrics of "Intoxicated by Binchuan" and, needless to say, we'll going to have more opportunities in the future to bust this out.

After being chaperoned to death, we were all thankful to have alone time, finishing the end of an exhausting day with an evening stroll around the town. It still doesn’t quite feel like home yet, but it feels like a place that’s sure to grow on me.