Students hold up their hand turkey drawings after a presentation about Thanksgiving.
Practicing some kind of slow moving fan dance on the school basketball court. I see this same group of women every Tuesday morning on my way to class, but each week they have a different exercise accessory. Usually they have some kind of pretty fan, but I’ve also seen them with swords and ribbons.
The Yi people are one of China’s ethnic minority groups. There are about 7 million Yi living in Sichuan, other areas in southern China, and Vietnam. There are a handful of Yi students at my university. China is pretty homogeneous with Han Chinese making up 92% of the country. It seems like the Han Chinese students and teachers really like to talk about the ethnic minority groups and how different and interesting their clothes, music and lifestyle are.
One of my students invited me to come visit the elementary school down the road with the group of students who she volunteer teaches with. The school had three classrooms, two teachers and about 100 students. I went with three of the university students to the classroom with the older kids and was asked to teach an English lesson because they had nothing prepared. I also did not have a lesson prepared because I was invited to come about three minutes before we left. The elementary students took turns asking me questions in English that were written in their textbooks, “Does she like to drink milk or coffee?” “What is the boy doing in this picture?” “Where is the telephone?” I was very confused by these questions and the students became very confused if I answered with anything other than what the correct answer was in their textbook. The students didn’t understand what they were actually saying. They were just making the sounds that were written in the textbook.
The view out of my classroom window at the Zigong campus.
Plants in a pond.
The lovely host for the university’s singing competition. Before every big school competition, there is a smaller competition for students who want to host the event. Hosts are chosen based on their height, appearance, and, to some extent, their public speaking ability. Many of my female students don’t try out because they are not tall enough for the height requirement or because they have darker skin or are a little overweight and don’t think they are pretty enough to be chosen.
I was invited to attend an Yi New Year celebration with a big group of Yi students and teachers from the university. Dancing around the fire after lunch. I went into a nearby building and looked out the window to take this photo. Unfortunately I didn’t have the best lens with me for this picture and couldn’t zoom out any more. There were three rings of happy dancers.
Yi college students having a great time celebrating the new year.
Maybe two or so hours after lunch a group of people carried in a live pig to start getting ready for dinner. The pig was really struggling against them – flipping him over and tying him up involved about five eager helpers. One person slit the pig’s throat and then scraped his fur off with a special knife. I stopped watching after that.
Brooms leaning against a wall by the track. Plastic brooms are sold in stores, but the street sweepers all use these stick ones.
A propaganda poster at the busy Yibin bus station. “The army loves the people, the people embrace the army, the army and the people unite together as a family.”
A group of little soccer players learning how to juggle a soccer ball on the Yibin track. It’s rare to see kids participating in organized extracurricular activities that don’t directly relate to their school work. For my final oral English exams I have students choose a topic and come to my office to talk with me about it. Last semester two students wanted to talk about how when they were growing up their parents had forced them to attend extracurricular math classes after their other classes and how sad it had been.
Students walk along the main road on campus.
Students play ping pong below my office window.
A group of about 30 students practice a fan dance on the soccer field. Grandparents and their small grandchildren gathered around the open gates and holes in the fence to watch.
A few of my lovely English students on a class field trip.
The smog AQI level today was close to 250 (0-50 is considered a healthy level, 250 is considered very unhealthy). No one seems to really notice though. A group of people is practicing tai chi on the basketball courts.
Grandparents walk their grandkids home after school lets out. Even though I live in the countryside, there are still people everywhere.
At the Zigong campus in the morning the bakery sets up a stand outside so students can quickly buy breakfast on their way to class. The pastries on the left have meat floss on them – it’s a fluffy, dried meat that is sneakily hidden in a lot of breads. I prefer the normal colored pastries on the right.
A woman unhappily exercising.
I love watching these performances. Students usually wear basic, matching outfits while chanting patriotically about China. This one had inspirational movie scenes playing in the background.
The countryside on the way to Yibin.
The market street in Dengguan is usually pretty quiet, but when the vegetable and meat sellers show up on weekend mornings and weekday evenings, it becomes somewhat more busy. I usually don’t come down here because I can buy most things at the stands by the university. This market does have much better pastry snacks, spices, and pickled veggies though.
A fun paddle boat trip for the whole family.
These boats haul stone down the river that runs through Dengguan. Sometimes the boats stop to dock by the town.
Sichuan peppers.
My first thought was that these kids at the Sichuan University elementary school in Chengdu were just doing routine morning exercises. But so many parents were crowded around outside of the fence watching them that maybe it was a bigger deal.
While I was taking a picture of this hallway restaurant, the man at the table next to mine got so excited and posed for all of the photos.
This guy and his family live in the apartment building behind mine. In the morning and afternoon they cook 15 different dishes in their kitchen and then wheel them out to the street for lunch and dinner. His cart says “fast food.”
Another welcome performance for the freshmen was tonight. I didn’t actually go to it (too many parties!) but I did wander around the track to watch everyone getting ready.
A boy with a goat.
Middle school students wandering around the college campus. Their families live in the same apartment complex as me, but the girls live at their school when it’s in session. These girls were so brave and came over to talk to me which was really nice.
Under construction; a very common sight.
Students performing a traditional Chinese dance (with bubbles) at a welcome performance to start the new school year.
A PE class learning the proper technique for shooting a basket. Their teacher is in black in the middle.
The vegetable market.
One of Tim’s students invited us and her roommates to her house about an hour away from their university. Abby is one of the kindest people and it was really nice seeing her hometown. She told us that when she was growing up the city didn’t exist, but in the past few years a lot of buildings have been built and the government moved her parents from their farm into an apartment. She said that most people were happy about their new lives.
The city of Zigong is known for four things: the annual lantern festival, a spicy rabbit dish, its history of salt mining, and the Zigong Dinosaur Museum. I’ve never had the rabbit, but the lantern festival and salt history are actually really cool. Whenever I talk to a Chinese friend about Zigong though, they always rave about the dinosaur museum first. I was excited to go, but there was really not much dinosaur history. Instead the main attractions seemed to be children’s dinosaur and dragon rides and buying dinosaur-themed toys.
One of the mao cai men.
The people who live in the apartment directly underneath me don’t have an enclosed kitchen. Most of the apartments in the building have indoor kitchens in the same spot, but I think theirs just never had windows installed so they go outside to their kitchen balcony every time they cook. Here’s a view of their kitchen from the stairwell on a day when the food smelled especially good.
A few of the neighborhood girls. Girl in the yellow is the leader.
A lot of the school staff lives on campus in between all of the teaching buildings.
Students chatting outside of the dorms.
Slicing snakes.
A math class at night.
Students decorating the chalkboard for what I think must be the first student Communist party meeting.
This chicken likes eating rice!
The front door of a house behind the university.
Students finish class around 9 p.m. and head back to their dorms for the night.
