Flying Around Town!

I had been in a bike-less mode for almost 5 months, about the longest I’ve gone without wheels and it really sucked! But the bike drought has finally been broken. I decided to get a folding bike that will be easy to drag back to the US when the time comes. Folding bikes have been much improved over the last few years and this little one, called Fly, is no exception.

Actually the Fly is really a Dahon MU-8 in disguise, though it is not marketed as such here in China. The “8″ stands for 8 speeds and in case there are any gear heads out there it has a 11-12-14-15-17-19-20-22 rear cluster and a 52 front chain ring. Dahon is a leader in the folding bike arena and has kind of an interesting background, the following history I stole off the Dahon website;

The Dahon story begins in 1975. At the time, Dr. David Hon, our founder, was a physicist at Hughes Aircraft Corporation, in California, working on highly classified government research projects. Considered a leading expert in solid-state laser technology, Dr. Hon had already been awarded numerous U.S. patents (Patent 4,344,042, Patent 4,178,561, Patent 4,019,159 and Patent 4,010,397) for advancements in laser technology. Breakthrough laser technology that he and his team developed would later be used on NASA space shuttles, US missile guidance systems, and laser-guided anti-aircraft guns.
Yet despite his success, Dr. Hon eventually found the work at Hughes Aircraft unfulfilling, because his energies were devoted to instruments of war, rather than for the betterment of society. Then, in 1975 came the oil and gas crisis and the seed for Dahon was sown.
One afternoon, in his third week of waiting in hour-long lines to buy gasoline for his car, Dr. Hon was struck by the magnitude of the world’s dependence on oil, a non-renewable resource that would likely be depleted within the lifetime of his grandchildren..
Brain-storming for solutions to weaken the world’s dependence on oil, Dr. Hon ended up going back to his primary mode of transportation in college – the bicycle. Totally clean, and just as important, cheap enough for people around the world to access, Dr. Hon considered the bicycle to be a good candidate as a solution. However, the bicycle as it existed at that time was not without shortcomings. While the bicycle was perfect for short trips, it was not practical for longer trips, for example, if you lived 30 miles from work. The bicycle needed to be improved, transformed, to make it more broadly functional. It needed to integrate more readily with other forms of more environmentally sustainable transport, like trains and subways. Dr. Hon’s solution – a portable folding bicycle. Next came the hard part: turning his ideas into reality. Working evenings and weekends in his garage over the next seven years, Dr. Hon built dozens and dozens of prototypes, trying to perfect a folding bicycle that would maintain the riding performance of a regular bicycle but would fold quickly and to a compact size.
Finally, in 1982, Dr. Hon introduced the first Dahon folding bicycle to worldwide acclaim. At design competitions around the world, the first Dahon folding bicycle proceeded to win award after award. Full of optimism, Dr. Hon visited major bicycle manufacturers around the world, hoping to find a company to either license his design or build the bike for him. But not surprisingly, none of big companies were interested in his revolutionary new idea.
Undaunted and committed to his vision of environmentally-sustainable transportation, Dr. Hon decided to risk everything and build the bike himself. He quit his job, gathered $3 million dollars in venture funding, re-located to Taiwan, and built a factory. By 1983, Dahon folding bicycles were rolling off the assembly line.
Today, over two million bicycles later, we can proudly say that Dahon has made a difference. From San Francisco to Amsterdam to Rio de Janeiro to Tokyo, people are using our bicycles to get from point A to point B. Governments are integrating portable folding bicycles into their plans for mass transportation. And every one of those big bicycle companies that Dr. Hon visited 25 years ago have now jumped on the folding bike bandwagon.

This bike would retail in the US somewhere between $500-$600 depending on components and I picked it up here for a cool 1600 Yuan or about $235 bucks.

Thanks Dr. Hon!

Lou in Yiwu

I just got back early yesterday morning from Yiwu (pronounced ee-oo) China where I spent 7 days teaching English to kids in grade school and middle school, though all my classes were for the older middle school kids as well as a handful of adults. It took about 12 hours by bus to get down to Yiwu from Linyi. I would have taken the train but during Spring Fesitval, which finally ended this last Sunday, it is nearly impossible to get a ticket on the train.

During the winter and summer breaks Li Yang Crazy English company conducts English camps for kids that I got hooked up with through one of the other teachers here at Linyi Normal University. It was pretty interesting as the method is very different and somewhat controversial, but from my perspective the level of the kid’s English was quite high for their age and whether this was due to the Crazy English process I can’t be sure. At any rate they all were pretty fun and it was a part of China I haven’t seen yet. Here are a few pictures of the 80 plus kids that were at the camp.

This last one is of Bella and I. We were the two foreign teachers at the camp. Bella is a University student from South Africa who is studying medicine at a University a few hours away from Yiwu. The the caption “Wall-Eye-Knee” refers to a joke the kids played on me where they first pointed to a wall and asked “what is this?” and then to their eyes and knees and had me say those body parts as well, then all together fast, which in Chinese sounds like “I love you”, pretty funny. Now Bella speaks pretty good Chinese, in fact she speaks 5 languages, making me feel a bit like the typical language challenged American.

The city of Yiwu is also very interesting, several years ago they built a massive complex where international buyers can come and see just about any small commodity that China produces. A quote from the Yiwu China Commodity Market website says this about it;

Crowned as “a sea of commodities and a paradise for shoppers”, Yiwu of china boasts an aggregate market floor area of 2.6 million square meters (29 million square feet) with 53,000 booths and 160,000 persons engaging in business. The market gathers 320,000 varieties of goods of 1,502 categories from 34 trades (note: there are 500,000 varieties of goods in the world as released by the UN).

It truly was quite amazing place, as an example the first floor (3 floors) of building #1 (3 buildings) has hundreds and hundreds of booths each approximately 20′x20′ in size that have on display just about every toy that China produces. Talk about a kids paradise, I wish I was 6 years old again, and that was just one category of the 1,502 categories. In fact I broke down and bought a cool electric RC Helicopter as shown here;

This is a high quality helicopter that is pretty much indestructible that came with a 3 channel remote control, which I paid 220 Yuan or approximately $32.00. I don’t know how much this would retail for in the USA but I’m pretty sure it would be a whole lot more than 32 bucks.

Yiwu also has a fairly sizable Arabic/Muslim community, with many middle eastern restaurants and coffee shops. The following pictures are of wall mural that was just outside the big market complex along the busy street that was hand painted illustrating the old China that is giving way to the new economy.

Yiwu is quite different from Linyi, where I am now, as there were very few people riding bikes with most people driving cars or using mass transit system, which definitely reflects a much higher standard of living. They are also quite use to having many foreigners around as most never paid me much mind as I was walking around town as opposed to here where I always get people giving me the double take and a few saying hello after I pass by.

What’s your name?

I read somewhere that there are only about 500 total surnames in China and of those around 100 are commonly used, such as the top three common names Lee, Wang & Chang. Many Chinese also adopt a western first name, such as the two girls, Mary & Hannah, who here on campus help the foreign teachers out with day to day things that we may need. Kathy, is a primary school teacher that I coordinate with for teaching one day a week at Qinghau Bilingual School here in Linyi and I have been corresponding with Sharon the school coordinator down in Yiwu, where I will be going to teach for a week long “English Boot-camp” school next week.

Now I’m sure these are not their real first names in Chinese. Actually the first names for Chinese is given by the grandparents and is something that is not done right away as they need time to get a feeling for the babies character before giving them a name. This adoption of a western first name was never the case in Japan, where the American influence has been around for a while and one would think it could happen there as well, but it hasn’t.

This got me to thinking about my own name & nicknames over the years. On my passport my official name is, Louis Lester Hayes. My middle name has been passed down on my dad’s side for at least a couple of generations as his middle name and his father’s was also Lester. When my older brother was born my mom and dad named him Gregory, or Greg. My dad though use to call him Louie as a nickname and when I came along three years later they decide to name me Louie because my dad liked the name and made it officially Louis, which no one ever uses.

Now if I was from France Louis would be pronounced “Louie”, as my mom would always call me and a hand full of my family members still do, but Americans pronounce it Lou-ess by pronouncing the “s”. When I was younger my older brother would tease me and call me Woody, pronounced “woo-dee”. Tom Enloe, who I grew up with and one of the more popular kids in high school, would give nicknames to everyone and he use to call me “Lucky Lou”, which was pretty accurate.

I always introduce myself as Lou and that’s what most people know me by, short & simple. Lou Hayes is what’s on my Oregon drivers license, but I also have given myself a few a.k.a’s over the years. From my time teaching English in Japan the Japanese have a hard time with the “L” sound, which comes out sounding like “R”, so I occasionally sign-off on correspondence to close friends with “Rou-san”. Here lately I’ve been using my own Chinese version of Lou, “Wu”. And sometimes I even do a hybrid of both Chinese and Japanese for Louie with “Wu-wii”. That last one is actually one of my favorites, because I guess it reminds of when my older brother would call me Woody.

Sayonara,
Mr. Wu-wii

Happy New Year!

I know I have been pretty quiet and haven’t been posting much, I spent the better part of January feeling pretty rotten. First I caught a cold/flu type bug that was going around and just as I was feeling better I ate something bad and spent another week purging my system and then about another week just to get my strength back as I ate very little for almost two weeks. But I’m doing fine now and looking forward to the new year and will try to post more often.

Today (Feb 13th, day ahead here) is Chinese New Year, which is also the beginning of what they call the “Spring Festival”. Yes that’s right, I said Spring, even though it doesn’t feel much like Spring here. In fact two days ago we had our first snowfall, which resulted in New Year snowmen popping up like above. The locals say there hasn’t been snow in Linyi for a couple of years so it is not a common thing. It pretty much paralyzed the city even though it was only a couple of inches.

I think it is wishful thinking on their part calling it the Spring Festival since they pretty much have to manufacture the feeling of Spring as like here;

or here;

One thing is for sure everyone gets into the spirit of New Year’s by shopping for all the required New Year’s paraphernalia, which creates organized chaos on the busy shopping streets.

That’s right, just park that e-bike anywhere you can find room;

Pretty much everything will shut down here for a few days as everyone returns home for family reunions. Like most festivals a lot of things revolve around food, and the street food carts get a lot of business.

And don’t forget to stop by the roadside sheep/goat butcher that just set up shop right on a busy corner of Tong Da Lu, the “Main Street” of Linyi, what’s a festival without a little mutton.

So there you go, little flavor of Chinese New Years here in Linyi!

Merry Christmas From China

So I made it to China safe and sound and have pretty much shed my jet-lag, which always takes about 4 or 5 days to completely adjust.  All of China interestingly enough is all on one time zone and they are 15 hours ahead of the Pacific Coast time.

So Christmas in China is a bit like Christmas in Japan, it’s a bit weak.. so to speak, and mostly just an excuse for stores to have sales and Santa pictures in the windows as shown below.  Hey! I guess they understand the principle of Christmas after all. In fact I think this Window Santa must be the official government issue as every store that displays any  kind of Christmas motif has the exact same Santa picture.

Christmas In China

So what is China like?  That probably is like asking what is USA like, it depends where you are at.  Linyi is both, on the map and culturally, half way between the new (Beijing, Shanghai) and the old poor agricultural based China.  Here in Linyi there is a considerable amount of new construction of high rise apartments or condo’s, being built along side very old shanty type neighborhoods.  On the streets you see the latest cars from all the top makers, but a majority of the traffic is still by bicycle, ebikes (see Flickr pictures) and small electric or gas powered three wheeled put-put’s as they are called in Thailand, not sure what they call them here.

Yesterday while I was out I saw 4 teams of mule drawn carts carrying very heavy loads of freshely milled ”green” 2×12, 20′ long lumber being pulled down one of the very busy main roadways heading who knows where. Wow!

I’ve added a Flickr widget on the right side bar and I will be posting my pictures there if you are interested.  The ones up right now are from this last Sunday as I went out for walk down to Peoples’ Square, which is about 2 miles from the University.

Signed, Sealed and Almost Delivered

I finally will be making my way to China as have in hand a passport with a Peoples Republic of China (P.R.C.) work visa inside and a plane ticket from Portland, OR to Beijing China on Air Canada that departs PDX on Dec. 7 @ 10:15 AM!

If you’ve never seen an official P.R.C. approved Visa form, here is what mine looks like.

With a lot of help from Ms. Lea Walker of the Chinese Cultural Center, which is located in Columbia South Carolina, it took about 45 days altogether from the time I started to collect the necessary documents until it arrived on my door step. Here’s what I had to submit to be approved;

• Resume.
• Current Passport
• digital scan of my Oregon State University Diploma.
• A digital scan of a doctor signed physical exam form in both English & Chinese, that showed I was negative for every possible known disease to man (and a few I think only animals can get).
• Processing fee.
• Signed contract from Linyi Normal University.

There is also an official stamp that is placed in my passport that looks like this;

“OK Class, can I have your attention please?

From “The Mother Tongue”;

“The quintessential Americanism without any doubt is O.K. Arguably America’s single greatest gift to international discourse, O.K. is the most grammatically versatile of words, able to serve as an adjective (“lunch was OK”), verb (“can you Okay this for me?”), noun (“I need your OK on this”), interjection (“O.K., I hear you”), and adverb (“we did OK”).

It is a curious fact that the most successful and widespread of all English words, naturalized as an affirmation into almost every language in the world, from Serbo-Croation to Tagalog, is one that has no correct agreed spelling (O.K., Okay or OK) and one whose origins are so obscure that it has been a matter of heated dispute almost from when it first appeared.”

“According to Allen Walker Read of Columbia University, who spent years tracking down the derivation of O.K., a fashion developed among young wits of Boston and New York in 1838 of writing abbreviations based on intentional illiteracies. They thought it highly comical to write O.W. for “oll wright”, O.K. for “oll korrect”, K.Y. for “know yuse” and so on. O.K. first appeared in print on March 23, 1839, in the Boston Morning Post. Had that been it, the expression would no doubt have died an early death, but conicidentally in 1840 Martin Van Buren, known as Ol Kinderhook from his hometown in upstate New York, was running for reelection as president, and an organization founded to help his campaign was given the name the Democratic O.K. club. O.K. became a rallying cry throughout the campaign and with great haste established itself as a word thoughout the country. This may have been small comfort to Van Buren, who lost the election to William Henry Harrison, who had the no-less-snappy slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too”.”

Okay, so now you know all there is to know about OK, and it’s O.K. if you don’t completely get it!

Mother Tongue

I have been reading Bill Bryson’s “The Mother Tongue (English & How it Got That Way)”, which is a very interesting book about the origins of this thing called English.

Here is an interesting passage from the book;

“One final cataclysm awaited the English language: the Norman conqeuest of 1066.  The Normans were Vikings who had settled in northern France 200 years before.  Like the Celtic Britons before them, they had given their name to a French province, Normandy.  But unlike the Celts, they had abondoned their language and much of their culture and become French in manner and speech.  So totally had they given up their language, in fact, that not a single Norse word has survived in Normandy, apart from the place-names.  That is quite remarkable when you consider that the Normans bequeathed 10,000 words to English.”

In England during the 300 year period when the kings and politicians exclusively spoke French while the commoners spoke English,  there use to be distinction between animals in the field whose names came from English vs. when they were brought to the table, which were then generally given French names. This difference was also reflected in the language spoken by those with skilled jobs (masons, painters) speaking French while the every day laborer would speak English.

Presentation – Part 2

The presentation I will give at the University, which I talked about in my earlier post, will have an underlying theme of complimentary opposites.

In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin yang is used to describe how seemingly disjunct or opposing forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, giving rise to each other in turn.

I pointed this out with the phrase, “The Art of Engineering”. There are the obvious opposites such as, East/West, Night/Day and Wet/Dry. But the yin-yang philosophy goes on further to say that;

Everything has both yin and yang aspects, which constantly interact, never existing in absolute stasis.

To illustrate this in my presentation I will draw the maps of the USA and China on a black/white board using two items that we normally think of as a tool and a toy; a phone and a yo-yo. But I will show that there is really a little bit of toy/tool in each of these items.

So here are my drafting tools: iphone, Duncan yo-yo and some suction cups that I got at the dollar store, which were all made in China.

The yo-yo and suction cups are my tools I use as a guide to draw plumb vertical lines, circles about a point and find distances that are pre-marked along the string.

And my iphone with it’s level app lets me find accurate angles between lines. And I can play Mahjong on after I get done drawing the maps.

You see most things in life are just concepts that someone else has defined for us and are not necessarily absolute if one takes some time to look at it from the other side of the world.

Japanese vs. Chinese

So I have been struggling to learn Japanese for some time now and while I know more than the average Joe I am still a long way from being very skillfull.  And now I am starting all over from zero again to learn Mandrin Chinese, which is the version of Chinese that is spoken in the Shandong province where I will be going.

Around 600AD the Japanese adopted the Chinese form of writing that uses ideographic characters that the Chinese call “Hanzi” and the Japanese call “Kanji”. For the most part, the meaning of many of the characters is the same between the two but the Japanese used their own pronunciation that is very different from Chinese. Also Japanese sentence structure is generally Subject-Object-Verb, where Chinese is Subject-Verb-Object, similar to English.

As an example, the sentence:   I climb a mountain.

In Japanese it is written: 私は 山 に 登る.

That is pronounced as: “Watashi-wa yama-ni noboru”, and literally translated as, “I mountain climb”

In Chinese it is written: 老子 爬 山.

That is pronounced with pinyin:  ”lǎozǐ pá shān“, and literally translated as, “I climb mountain”

For both Japanese and Chinese the character for mountain is written as, 山, but the pronunciation is different for each as is the sentence structure.