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Bryan Stumpf's China Journal |
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Stumpf in Shanghai I have arrived safely in Shanghai. My friend Yaping has been very helpful. She picked me up from the airport and helped get me settled into my apartment. I’m over my jet lag, but still settling in in Shanghai. I was given a Chinese name - Zhuang Zihao - and I feel it is a little too flattering. Zhuang is actually my Chinese last name and it means “stump,” but Zihao, my first name, means, “person with extraordinary powers and endowments.” I can’t wait to announce my name to my students. I’m awaiting a classroom full of hysterical laughter. I’ve been really enjoying the food. There’s a Chinese beer brewed in Shanghai with the creative name “REEB.” I’ve tried it and it tastes OK. Yaping introduced me to a friend of hers that gave himself the English name, Thunder Dragon. He is helping me get my computer set up. Since I have a Mac and he knows PC, he was having trouble with the Internet hook-up. I let him borrow it and Yaping told me he was up all night trying to get on-line. I told him to forget about the Internet access. I’m thinking no Internet access is a good thing – I’ll save money and I won’t be wasting any time surfing the Net in my apartment. And if I need to e-mail, I can just use the computer at the university. But Thunder Dragon is still helping me with the printer hook-up. Yesterday, Yaping and I walked through a nice park right in downtown Shanghai – unsurprisingly, the park is called Central Park. We found a pond full of large goldfish. Next to the pond, a little man sells goldfish food. Yaping and I bought some food and started feeding the fish. First, only a couple of fish were eating the food, then a few more showed up, next thing you know, the our corner of the pond is filled with goldfish fighting for the food. Of course, this made me quite giddy and I even tried to encourage the fighting. Pretty soon, a large crowd of Chinese people surrounded Yaping and me. I am not sure what drew the crowd, the huge school of fish or seeing an American get all giddy about feeding goldfish. Also in the park, there was a group sitting on the sidewalk and dressed in sweats. Each person in the group would take a turn running to marked spot about 30 feet in front of the group, shout Chinese words at the group, then sit back down with the group. On the back of their sweatshirts there were Chinese characters. I asked Yaping if the characters said that the group was in martial arts. She said, “No, it says they are real estate agents.” I found this to be a very odd training for real estate agents. I’ll be teaching my first class on Tuesday. I have a total
of 103 - which is a lot less than what my Highline predecessors had to teach.
Some of my colleagues had to teach between 200-300 students.
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