Story and photos by Megan Eaves

Teaching English in East Asia can be a bizarre experience for many reasons, but a teacher finds that China’s unheated classrooms expose the gap between rich and poor, East and West in a raw fashion.

I’m not sure how I could’ve mistaken them for anything else. The winter blisters I that started appearing on my students’ hands around late November were an anomaly at first. It was stupid of me not to know, but I chalked them up to the weird phenomena you see in China, kind of like the “summer bruises” I kept seeing between May and August, described to me later as the result of self-pinching which is supposed to cool the body. How could I have known the winter blisters were actually frostbite with all these other weird health problems on the loose? Besides, isn’t frostbite something people get when they are climbing Mount Everest and one of their gloves ices over and gets a hole in it and then their finger blackens up and falls off?

Frostbite is for the depths of Siberia. It is for documentarians lost at the South Pole without proper gear. Frostbite is not something I should be seeing on my Chinese students while I stand at my teacher’s podium and hope for a call from my family in America who can afford to ring me long distance on the amount of money these kids could use to buy gloves to protect their poor fingers. But the kids just smile and joke and say, “Very painful teacher!” and smile again, telling me I’ll be able to get the frostbite next year, if I’m lucky. Not this year. Next year.

I begin to see what a great divide there is between us, although I love them as my own and we laugh and joke, and we live in the same world of rickshaw cabs and chicken feet and Jay Chou pop songs ringing loudly from the speakers of clothing shops on grimy street corners. We live in the same world of Anji Vocational Education Center School, day in and day out, marble floors wet and the stench of the toilets wafting into the classrooms at the end of the hall. The dust from cheap chalk and scary head teachers walking down the corridor while I tell them about the names of different musical instruments in English.

I begin to see how irrelevant my class must be to them after sitting 7 to 9 in cold classrooms on back-less benches. They meekly ask for a chance to “go WC” or “hot water” and return later to heater-less dorm rooms, after trudging down the school lane with the big blue and red thermos bottles filled with boiled water—the one thing that has a hope of keeping them warm in a wood slat beds with no heaters.

We make a game of it, trying to describe the weather in winter versus summer, and all they can muster is, “Very cold, teacher! Very cold.” And I agree, pulling the collar up on my chalk-smeared wool peacoat as a bitter breeze blows through the open classroom windows, bringing with it the smell of coal from the factory down the street.

Later, will I look back on this winter, remembering only how I drank Ovaltine laced with cheap brandy to keep warm at night and how no one in central China has good heaters. And I will remember the smiling faces and the disregard for the cold, and how everyone was always in a good mood, despite the constant shivers and numb toes.

Fay comes in to the teacher’s training class. She and Kevin are the only two that come with regularity and Kevin’s got a new haircut I comment on. Fay asks how people in western countries reconcile science and religion and I’m astounded at this profound question. She rubs the swollen bit of frostbitten lobe on her left ear and takes my haughty, eye-rolling answer that we don’t reconcile it. She asks if there are any religious scientists, and I tell her no, there aren’t, even though I know it’s not true, but I can’t figure the answer to that question out myself and I don’t want her to know I’m just a fraud. Just a stupid twenty-something who studied a little language and jumped ship for better pay, adventure, and a chance to bitch about the lack of good heating in this country.

Knowing the answer before she’s given it, I ask her about her ear, and she looks down with meek eyes. It’s nothing, she says, struggling then for the word to describe the condition. I tell her its “frostbite” and she launches into three more questions about the word and its pronunciation and origins. So I answer her questions, trying to forget that my friend stands before me with frostbite on her ear and knowing there is nothing I can do about it.

I begin to see how frivolous I am, whiling away my New Year’s Eve in some foreigner bar in the richest city in China, grumbling with other teachers—my kindreds. Grumbling about the hours and the changes in schedule and the terrible heaters and how it’s like pulling teeth to get them to just say the “th” sound or just quiet down. I don’t care if you listen to your mp3 player, just quit talking.

Annie is sitting in the second row of my first year English class, rubbing one gloved hand against one bare hand. Jamie behind her does the same, and I ask them why are they sharing gloves. Annie tells me that her parents live in Jiangsu Province—a five-hour bus ride away—and she never sees them. So much for gloves, I think, offering mine.

I begin to see how this great divide between still doesn’t stop my students from loving me and wanting to know more about me, just one more chance to talk to me. To rest a frostbitten palm on the gray teacher’s podium for a few seconds of time with the foreign laoshi; a smile, a hug. Please teacher, hug hug hug. And here, I can’t tell if it is a grand canyon between us or a common bed we share. Still, they are the ones with frostbite on their fingers and I’m left to search frostbite on the internet because I’m worried one of them, not me, will lose a finger.

Travel writer and wanderluster, Megan Eaves is the author of This Is China: A Guidebook for Teachers, Backpackers and Other Lunatics and Insiders’ Guide to El Paso, and runs the Irish travel website www.Irishjaunt.com. Having traveled to 25 countries and lived in four, she is an expert on Ireland, China and the American Southwest, where she grew up, and also often writes about her adventures around Europe, especially Prague, where she is currently living. More about Megan and her writing is on her website, www.meganeaveswriting.com.

If you were going to pick two writers to bring the roller coaster of the world’s economic situation these recent years into song, you might come up with Canadian James Keelaghan and Scottish songwriter Karine Polwart.

Keelaghan has a background in studying history, and his songs often tell the stories of historical events with color and immediacy. Polwart was a social worker before she turned full time to music, and writes songs which give depth and voice to social issues with perspectives which are pointed yet not at all preachy. They team up those skills for the title track of Keelaghan’s album House of Cards. Complicated and very human ideas of the situations financial disruption can involve, including fear, anger, guilt, and responsibility, play their parts as the two come up with a song that leaves room for both feeling and thinking. The melody, almost a march, adds a bit of a hopeful quality to the story they tell, as well.

It is a song which opens the door to a group of songs which follow that thread of hope down many paths.
In addition to his songs about history, of late Keelaghan has also been exploring the more personal side of things in his work. This album balances both aspects, with a thread of hope and people’s thoughts on that fragile and strong emotion running through the words and music. His resonant baritone and melodic singing style give depth to the stories he tells.

As most musicians are, the Winnipeg based songwriter is a traveler, so it fits that the first cut on the album is a road song, Safe Home, and that there is a love song framed in a road song, Next to You. There’s inspiration and wisdom wrapped in laughter in Since You Asked, a theme that’s echoed in another co write with Polwart, What’s For You Won’t Go by You. In the song McConnville’s, Keelaghan shows his skill with making a tale set in a specific place and time feel timeless. Circle of Stones suggests ideas through leaving things unsaid, not an easy path for a songwriter to negotiate well, and he does. There are ten cuts in all on House of Cards. Though the stories and melodies are not directly related, they weave well with each other, connected by that idea of hope, and in both subject and sound they resonate with and illuminate each other, suggesting a bracing wind from the Canadian prairies.

As day turns to night, and the small army of food vendors lining Soi Chidlom between Petchaburi and Sukhumvit during the morning and afternoon pack it up, follow the sound of a sizzling wok to a small, pop-up outdoor restaurant sandwiched in between 7-11 and Charoen Optical on the corner of a sub soi: the area’s premier pad thai chef is just getting started, and you absolutely need to sink into a plate or two of his masterful ooey-gooey handiwork.

Grab a cold Chang beer from 7-11, pull up a plastic stool at one of the fold-out aluminum tables, and join the crowd of loyal regulars who have the man behind the wok whipping up one batch after another of his addictive, disgustingly delicious noodles and mussel omelets. Plates cost just 30 baht, or 35 with shrimp.

I hesitate to definitively call any one vendor or restaurant’s version of popular dishes like pad thai or som tum “the best in Bangkok” since it’s so subjective and everybody has their favorite, but this spot has certainly become my favorite in the city and, at a minimum, the best in the area: always fresh, always made to order (my ow goong-hang, in my case), and always served with a warm smile.

Funny sense of humor too: once, before taking a week off, he hung a sign on his cart that, in Thai, likely said he’d be closed the following week, and in English said “Go to France.” To his delight, I took the bait and asked him where he was going in France: “No, hahaha, no. Only go to Nong Khai.”

The always cheerful husband-wife duo–he handles the cooking, she takes care of everything else with additional help from his little brother–moved to Bangkok from Nong Khai and share the same space with an afternoon vendor (who specializes in other Thai dishes). They’re open every day but Sunday from 4pm-ish to 8:30pm-ish, depending on how busy they get–and it’s very busy most nights.

Trust me, it’s worth the wait.

_{Photo credit and copyright Brian Spencer}

This turtle was part of a demonstration about local reptiles at Canyon of the Eagles, a rustic resort on Lake Buchanan in the Texas Hill Country.

We were there to celebrate my Dad’s 80th birthday, which included me setting aside my dislike of the kitchen earlier that day, and baking him a from-scratch Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate Cake complete with a Longhorn motif made from pecans.

My daughter and son both thought that aliens had invaded my head – they’ve never seen me cook much, but I used to love baking and decided I’d tackle a layer cake for Dad because, really, how often does someone turn 80?

Anyway, the turtle….a Canyon of the Eagles staff member who loves reptilian critters brought her own menagerie to do a presentation called “Shake, Rattle and Coil” for about 35 assembled guests. All of the wildlife was representative of that found in the local area, including some pretty lively and harmless snakes, but I was struck by how the assembled kids and families reacted to the turtles.

Big deal, right? Turtles.

I had a turtle named Ralph in first grade – his shell got all mossy and icky so one day I scrubbed it with household cleaner, which led to his unfortunate demise.

A couple of the presentation turtles were pretty big, though, and they set off wandering among the chairs of those gathered around to get a close look at the various creatures.

The kids loved them, the adults laughed, one lady with beautifully manicured toes shrieked in mock horror and lifted her feet as the turtle crawled by….it was a fun moment of appreciation for something that wasn’t terribly exotic or colorful, but was worthy of appreciation as a “local.”

Sometimes we need reminders to recognize and salute Nature’s plodding workhorses, rather than her more outlandish and preening creations.

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I don’t really know how long I waited on line for Seattle’s Space Needle. I didn’t check the time when I got there, and since the line curves around the base of the tower to the elevators, it’s hard to judge what, exactly, you’re in for.

It was long enough to note that one of the group of young men in front of me was wearing a shirt that said “I-Heart-Waterboarding”, and that some of the small children in the family waiting behind me had a lot to learn about personal space.

It was long enough to see a short black and white video of the construction of the Needle for the World’s Fair in 1962, playing on monitors mounted to the ceiling, roughly five times. (You, too, can see snippets of this video, from the comfort of your computer.)

The size of the crowd was owing to the weather: the first truly warm and sunny Saturday that the city had seen this summer. I learned this mostly in the form of complaints about what a rough long spring it had been here– gray, gelid, gloomy.  It had been hard for me to work up much sympathy for this predicament, given that I’d left New York City in the grips of a 100 plus degree heat wave, and had been reacquainting myself with the pleasures of taking deep non-lung scorching breaths, and given that the weather had turned delightful the moment I was wheels down — you’re welcome, people of the Pacific Northwest!

But now I realized that the people taking advantage of the glorious day were greatly contributing to the length of my stay in the line.

The child waiting behind me bumped into my butt again. I found myself reconsidering my anti-waterboarding position.

Needle, schmeedle, I was ready to bail.

Yet there is a certain inertia, or maybe it’s grim determination, or is it resignation, once you’ve put in some time on a line for a tourist attraction. I stuck it out. And, once I finally got to the top and got to take in this view, I was glad I did.