When I first arrived in Changsha, a fast developing provincial capital of Hunan province,\u00a0it was\u00a0a little over two years ago.\u00a0I stepped of a long flight with\u00a0my fellow teacher named Josh, we\u00a0unloaded\u00a0our baggage into a dirty little airport in the middle of some rice fields somewhere outside of the city of Changsha, which we were pronouncing entirely incorrectly.\u00a0 Our flight was delayed and there was no-one to pick us\u00a0up from the airport, we had no contact information for the school other than through the internet, which the airport didn’t have, and even if we would have had a phone number we no idea how to use a Chinese pay phone.\u00a0Our best plan was to sleep there, that was until we were kicked out into the street at 1 am.\u00a0 Shoving us into the last taxi cab\u00a0we tried desperately to communicate with our\u00a0driver\u00a0who\u00a0I’m sure took us for a\u00a0much longer ride than what was necessary to some yuppie hotel in the middle of Changsha.\u00a0 Josh had luckily taken out some Chinese money before we left,\u00a0and I was quickly finding out that credit\/debit cards are unheard of in China unless you are at the icky Walmart.\u00a0 After finally using internet at the hotel and getting a hold of our contact we arrived the next day at our school, were put into our rooms, and told we were to teach English in 3 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here I was, a fresh graduate of college, no experience teaching, no idea how the Chinese education works, or China for that matter, couldn’t speak a word of Chinese, I had\u00a0no idea what the level of students I was teaching were, no book to work out of, hosting about 50 students for my first class, and my only instructions were to teach English.\u00a0 Asking my students later about their first impressions\u00a0of me I was described as shy and a little nervous.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
My first impressions of Changsha were that it was absolutely insane.\u00a0 I saw families of 4 on one motorcycle racing down the road with a\u00a0basket full of chickens\u00a0somehow attached to the back at the same time.\u00a0 I saw people crossing the road where they shouldn’t be.\u00a0 I heard noises\u00a0I had never heard before.\u00a0\u00a0It was\u00a0difficult to eat on my own,\u00a0buy things on my own, talk on the phone, ask\u00a0where I could go to the bathroom,\u00a0or get on a bus to go anywhere.\u00a0 All these things I had previously taken for granted,\u00a0I was now feeling\u00a0very lost.\u00a0 Not only because I had never been to China before, but because I had not done much traveling before and was put in this situation for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Arriving\u00a0in Changsha for the second time was a completely different experience, and it has so far been nothing but rewarding.\u00a0I didn’t realize the fact that this is a very unique city\u00a0when I\u00a0first started living\u00a0here\u00a0because it was the only Chinese city I knew.\u00a0 Biking west through Jiangxi province last week though I started to notice things change.\u00a0 Things that are defining characteristics of this Hunan region were coming into view, things that make this place unique, that\u00a0people are proud of.\u00a0 First\u00a0as we headed south from Shanghai into\u00a0Anhui and Jiangxi provinces rice became\u00a0more available.\u00a0 Instead of being able to order one bowl per person\u00a0or not having rice at all in the northern regions of China we were starting to see huge wooden barrels full of rice, we simply scoop out what we need to go with our meals free of\u00a0charge, something I had\u00a0grown familiar with living in the\u00a0South.\u00a0 Next\u00a0as we headed through Jiangxi the food started getting spicier. Hunan people are extremely proud of their spicy food, and will tell you so.\u00a0 About 30 k from the border is where I saw my first\u00a0signs of beetle nut.\u00a0\u00a0I was talking with a man who was gnawing on the sticky brown nut between\u00a0gum and cheek and I felt a sense of\u00a0nostalgia for every bus driver, shop worker, and local of Changsha.\u00a0\u00a0Remnants of the left over nut can be seen spat\u00a0all over the streets and beside\u00a0market stalls amongst the rouge peppers and ubiquitous plastic bags.\u00a0 Like\u00a0the carcass of a large insect left to shrivel and dry.\u00a0 Jim and I looked at each-other with a smile, “oh yeah baby, Hunan.”<\/p>\n
Walking through a market right on the Hunan-Jiangxi border I\u00a0came across\u00a0a number of sellers of dog meat, another specialty of\u00a0Hunan province.\u00a0\u00a0The animal was cut up much like any pig or cow that would be sold at market,\u00a0you can buy it by the\u00a0quarter, you\u00a0can by the skull, you can by the paws.\u00a0 I asked for a price “20 kuai per Jin, not too expensive.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Riding into Changsha\u00a0was a much different than\u00a0when I landed two years ago.\u00a0 My impressions were much different.\u00a0 After spending\u00a0two months being in unfamiliar towns, villages, cities and lands it was comforting to be somewhere familiar.\u00a0 I saw restaurants I had eaten in, streets I\u00a0was familiar with.\u00a0 And comparing it to\u00a0where we were coming from perhaps most strikingly I saw order.\u00a0 It was a completely different city than when I had arrived in 2005.\u00a0Where I saw chaos 2 years ago I now saw order.\u00a0 People honked their horns less, the roads were new\u00a0and paved.\u00a0\u00a0People didn’t stare at me quite as much, and there was development through new buildings, fast food\u00a0chains,\u00a0coffee shops, and traffic police.\u00a0\u00a0I feel a sense of culture shock being in a city with so much convenience and development, whereas when I first arrived from America\u00a0I felt\u00a0the complete opposite.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We met with old students of mine for dinner last night and will continue to meet with friends for the next few days.\u00a0 It was spectacular.\u00a0 We ate hot\u00a0pot, roamed the “hot street” behind our school, and talked about both the past\u00a0and the future.\u00a0\u00a0After being on the road for so long and meeting zero people that I had previously known it\u00a0is a great feeling to be able to find people you have history with.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This afternoon we have an interview with\u00a0a Changsha newspaper, tomorrow we will play a concert in the main square outside the library for\u00a0friends and students.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I know being comfortable here is only a false sense of security and soon I will have to get back out on the road\u00a0with only\u00a0my Chinese map, a compass,\u00a0street signs, and local people to ask for directions.\u00a0 But I’m willing to enjoy this sense of being\u00a0home as long as I can.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I first arrived in Changsha, a fast developing provincial capital of Hunan province,\u00a0it was\u00a0a little over two years ago.\u00a0I stepped of a long flight with\u00a0my fellow teacher named Josh, we\u00a0unloaded\u00a0our baggage into a dirty little airport in the middle of some rice fields somewhere outside of the city of Changsha, which we were pronouncing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adams-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}