I M Pei's Suzhou Museum

I.M. Pei’s Suzhou Museum is an incredible edifice filled with equally incredible art work from the last 2 centuries.  This was Pritzker Prize winner Pei’s last architectural monument, and this museum blends “Chinese style with innovation, Suzhou style with creativity “ and the idea of “not too high, not too large, and not too abrupt.”  He succeeded on all counts and we were treated to perhaps the most beautiful museum I’ve seen to date.  I need to read more about him and this museum to know if he was like Frank Lloyd Wright in his attention to every aspect of the building, because it seemed his aesthetic was infused into all details of the museum, from the gorgeous café window to the stunning garden in the middle of the museum.  The palate of gray granite and stainless steel against whitewashed walls created a bold yet warm effect that was a perfect setting for the multi-medium exhibits showcased in the museum.  As an added bonus, it was connected to Prince Zhong Wang Fu's mansion, which has recently been renovated and restored.

We woke early to a light sprinkle, so we decided this was our day to brave the line outside the museum.  We were indeed lucky, waiting only 10 minutes, and were treated with the delightful quandary of not knowing which way to turn to be captured by the beautiful images.  I heard via a sister in the Heartland there is perhaps a documentary on I.M. Pei and his work with this museum, so check it out and let me know if you find it!  In the meantime enjoy some photos.  We’ll be back there as many times as our weekend schedule allows, and I’m sure we’ll be treated with new discoveries and old friends when we do visit.  PICS:  https://flic.kr/s/aHsk2Vgrq6

Adjustments big and small

A move to another place inevitably requires adjustments and I've been making lots.  Here are a few.

1.     Trying to understand what the heck the Aussies and Kiwis are saying, especially when they are talking to each other.  One third grade teacher answers every question I ask him with “mate” and I can’t tell if he thinks I’m a man or if he’s trying to be friendly, or just asserting his Australianness… It leaves me speechless.

2.     The checkout place at the elementary library is where my return place used to be, and for the life of me I can’t seem to remember that.  The receptionist is nice, but she does look at me with a little alarm when she keeps reminding me if I want to check the books out, I need to take them out of the return box.

3.     Learning how to interact with my IKEA alarm clock:  The Swedes are smart people, no one denies that.  Sometimes too smart, maybe?  I bought an alarm clock at IKEA recently, and since the directions always come in those funny figures, they are no help, but I figured out how to set the alarm.  When you put it on one of its four sides, it serves as a clock.  Fine, got that.  Turn it 90 degrees and it’s an alarm clock, another 90 and it’s a stop watch, and the finally turn is the temperature. HOWEVER, I keep freaking myself out in the morning when I wake before the alarm goes off, because (1) I can’t remember if the alarm went off and I blew it off, or (2) it’s too early to get up.  The logical way to resolve this dilemma would seem to be to look at the clock, which conveniently lights up when you touch it, a different color for each of the four functions.  You try remembering which color is which function at 4:30 a.m. and tell me how it goes.] However, when I look at the clock, it always says 6:30, so I think I just heard the alarm but don’t remember that I heard it, so I get up.  I get as far as the shower before I remember to check my watch, and sure enough, it’s usually only 5:15 or 5:45 or something that is NOT yet 6:30.  Yep, I’m looking at the alarm and thinking it’s the clock function, morning after morning, a la Groundhog Day.  This week I finally spent some time trying to figure out how to overcome this looniness when I decided I would move the clock around the four corners and check out everything, and I would be able to tell which was the time function, right?  Not so fast. The problem with that idea is the way to turn off the alarm (I think) is to turn it a quarter turn, so if I check to see if I’m looking at the alarm or the clock, I would be turning off the alarm.  You see why I’m thinking of investing in another, much less-cool, much more basic clock.

4.     The BTUs on my 2 gas burners threaten to singe my eyebrows every time I turn them on.  The Chinese are NOT afraid of flame, and since their method of stir fry requires a lot of heat, these burners are perfectly appointed for this country.  However, because I don’t always stir fry, I spend a lot of time taking my pans off the heat so as to not burn every thing I try to cook.  There is no simmer in the culinary vocabulary of Chinese cooking, I guess, nor medium heat.  It’s all high, all the time, so I need to keep my wits about me, and my hand at the ready to pull off a pan for some heat relief.

5.     The forward-to-blunt nature of Chinese if they want to interact with you.  I just got seated on the subway yesterday when a young woman sitting beside me looked me up and down, and promptly asked, “Do you want to teach English?”  When I explained I already did, she persisted with a question she was sure would hook me, “Do you want to teach children?”  Again, I had to pop her bubble, but she didn’t skip a beat and told me all about her new after-school English center, which I understood her to say was named RICE.  Interesting name, I told her.  She wrote it down later in the conversation and I saw it was really RISE, which makes more sense, really I should have been able to make that adjustment.  Anyway she asked for my email, my phone # (I declined), and said we’d be in touch.  Maybe, or maybe not, but she was quite eager and it’s always good to be friendly.

There are lots more adjustments but in order to list them, I should be along the continuum a bit further, like learning more Mandarin, but I’m doing what I can in the hours I have left after work and a workout.  It doesn’t leave a gal much, but the upside is I should save plenty of money this year because there isn’t time to buy anything in the week-day schedule.

This week's garden was one of the many on the UNESCO list:  Lion Grove's Garden:  It's quite beautiful but there were hundreds of human bodies that were NOT in the original garden plan that I got to view....I keep vowing to get up early and leave for the gardens before the onslaught of other visitors, but so far that hasn't happened.  Perhaps when it gets cold the crowds will thin?  Some pictures of the beautiful Lion's Grove Garden:   https://flic.kr/s/aHsk367xr9

School Daze

Yes, I’ve been in a little bit of a fog going back to the elementary classroom, to be honest. Actually more like I got smacked in the face and didn’t know what hit me. After two weeks I can say it’s more manageable, and that it’s getting easier to think about going to work, but the beginning was plain ugly.  I was very spoiled by working in a school where there were common agreements about things like walking in the hallway, etc. And I’m never going to learn to love the 6:30 wake up call, or the long contract day, but I believe I’ll be able to do another 180 days, unless things start going downhill.

One of my many challenges was trying to walk beginning level English speakers of the first grade variety from one wing of a very large school to another just to start class each day.  These are students whose teachers don’t practice having them walk in the hallway quietly and in a line, so guess what, they don’t!  That was just where the challenges began, not ended. Today I hit the apex of loopy with my fourth grade group:  The boy with severe behavior issues likes to break into song with the opening bars of the Hallelujah Chorus several times during our 90 minutes together, and he competes for audio time with a sweet girl who has a serious nervous tick of snorting like a pig if she’s asked anything, and whenever she’s writing. 

In my first grade class, I rarely had the same students two days in a row, even though I was supposed to have the same 13 students for every day.  Why?  Confusion arose when the Koreans decide to change their name to an English name and two in the same room choose Frank and two choose Julia, and when you try to take roll to see if you have everyone for the marathon non-walk to my classroom, they won’t answer to their Korean names, and they won’t tell you their English one, so I had to go with whomever was left standing in my line after the other two ESL teachers took their students.  There was usually a kid or two who didn’t belong in my group and a few that had gone with another teacher, or stayed in class.  WHEW! Enough of school….you have to be a teacher to understand how chaotic it can get when students are left to their own devices.

On another note, sometimes I get a big kick out how the Chinese roll.  They have a “I don’t care if it’s not cool, I’m doing it anyway” attitude that I find refreshing most of the time.  Like when you go to IKEA here, it’s common to see people trying out the beds, actually taking naps or relaxing while their spouse shops.  Or if it’s hot, men routinely pull up their shirts over their bellies, and walk around with exposed midriffs, or take them off all together.  The other day at a sports store I was trying to choose some free weights, when a man walking by stopped and picked up a couple and did some reps. In the next aisle there was a group of women getting their exercise with hula hoops, and the kids in the bike section riding the bikes around the aisles, and a ball game was in session in the middle aisles. Then there are the grandparents who bring their freshly bathed grandchildren to the common playground in our compound in the early evening, wearing their own pajamas as well.  You gotta love that level of honey badgering.

Finally, we went to another beautiful garden this weekend, the Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty.  It was drizzling, so we almost had the place to ourselves, and we wanted to move it, it was so serene and beautiful.  Enjoy the pics here:  https://flic.kr/s/aHsk29ZG39

Master of the Nets Garden

Guo Xi, a well-known landscape painter of the Northern Song Dynasty, describes his sentiment in The Realm of Rest and Springs:  “Always prefer a garden to cultivate the mind and to live in, lofty mountains and waters to inspire the heart, seek the pleasure and comforts of the fisherman and woodcutter, and stay away from the moil of hectic city life that imprison the mind!” Yesterday we visited The Master of Nets Garden, and we had to moil to get there, and did some serious moiling trying to find our way to another location after our exquisitely calming stroll through the splendid gardens.  I can tell you from first-hand observation, cultivating the mind is much preferable to moiling, as the moiling left us both with quite sore feet, clothing clinging to us from sweat, and a pledge to moil less and observe gardens more.

 Shi Zhengzhi chose to retire and build his “Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes” in Suzhou and oringally named this garden “Fisherman’s Retreat.”  [Some later artiste-type had to fancify the name to “Master of the Nets.] Suzhou has traditionally been a fond destination for Chinese literati-recluses.  Indeed, even I could have set up residence in the study next to the Peony Cottage. The names of these pavilions and viewing pagodas reveal their owner’s poetic leanings:  “Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes” and “Cloud Cave” and “Five Peaks Library”  “Hall of Cloud Stairway”  “Hall of Art Viewing”.

I have been to some beautiful gardens in my day, but I was completely blown away yesterday by the jewel-box of a garden we soaked in.  There were vistas at every turn, and beautifully designed windows for additional framing of the vistas, gorgeously appointed rooms for guests and others for reading, yet others for observing nature, and even the stones in the walking paths were mindfully placed.  Incredible, really.  AND… perhaps the most impressive was the complete blurring of lines between the garden and the residence.  All the pavilions and windows were built to reveal views of the central pond in several aspects.  This is one of the smallest of the UNESCO gardens in Suzhou, but it will be hard to beat as far as overall sumptuousness, although I’m not running a contest.  However, we are enjoying the idea of visiting as many gardens as we can, and in as many seasons as we can.  I’ll be returning soon to this one to see the Japanese Maple on fire for fall, and we have resolved to do far less moiling after such a relaxing outing.   You, too, can enjoy our respite from moiling, and yes, I had to look the word up.  Here are some pics:     https://flic.kr/s/aHsk1JDL97

Motorcycle Mania

I was all set to write a newsy upbeat blog about our new electric motorcycle, “Scootie” aka “Wind Song”, aka “The Orange Crush”, but today we had an adventure that may change the tone of the piece.

We were on an outing to the “wet market” (like a farmer’s market, but with meats, and other stuff…. not sure why it’s called wet except they wash down the floor to keep it fresh) and we noticed the charge meter showed we only had half a “tank” left of charge until we needed to plug in.  No problem, we were only going 20 minutes away.  As we neared the grocery store/mega-mart, we noticed the power diminishing, like we were running out of gas, it ran on gas.  I suggested we take the scooter to the side of the mega-mart where we purchased it and have them charge it while we purchased the iron and ironing board we needed so our new house-helper could start ironing tomorrow, but we didn’t do it.  WOOPS.

On the way home, it started to rain lightly, but no worries, we both had on our rain ponchos and I was laden with a backpack full of heavy stuff like an extension cord, and produce from the wet market, like bananas and nectarines, and eggs.  A full load, oh and also I was holding a full-sized ironing board in my free hand.  We got about ¼ of the way home before we knew we were in trouble, and about half way before I had to get off and start walking/running, as S. snailed down the street.  Of course the rain picked up a bit, I was blinded because it fell on my glasses, and I decided that I better pick up the pace because I wanted to make sure I could see S. so I knew where to turn.  Thus I began the new workout that resembles part boot-camp (heavy pack on the back, infantry-style rain poncho, helmet, and ironing board that weighed as much as a rifle, I’m sure) and part lunacy.  I ran for 90 seconds, and then walked for 60, and that kept me in sight of S. and breathing pretty hard.  S. got every volt of electricity out of the battery and it lasted until we hit our apartment’s front gate.  I got every volt out of my lungs as well, but the good news was I didn’t have to do a workout when I got home.  My poncho was as wet on the inside with sweat as it was on the outside, and I felt a bit like those wrestlers who wear those rubber suits to sweat off pounds to make their weight class.  I’m not sure if I made mine, but I’m very sure we won’t be leaving the apartment again without more than 50% charge on our battery, or next time S. is doing the infantry two-step while I buzz along.  The remarkable thing is only 1 egg was cracked.  I think I earned some kind of badge today, but I’m not sure if it’s a good one or not.  Is this what people mean when they talk about the adventures of expat living?