This time I brought with me the hopes of many little American children. A hope to be friends with Chinese kids, particularly those living in poverty. So I brought with me school supplies, picture books and a fierce desire to find some schools willing to begin lasting relationships with schools in the US. This is more than just a little donation; it’s about kids forming relationships in this globalized world, we adults just facilitate that. This is the idea of Kids to Kids international www.ktki.org.

Coincidentally the email came on the same that I attended John Wood’s talk in my company. For those of you don’t know John Wood, you can read about him on here and here, or watch a video here. I very much admire his motivate and his believe to make the world a better place through education and help to our next generation that really needs help. Although I wouldn’t consider Shantou is a city in poverty, there are still some areas that are lack of basic education. Thanks Amy for bringing the books to Shantou and also let me know about this project. I agree that it’s “more than just a little donation; it’s about kids forming relationships in this globalized world”. I left Shantou when I was 18 to see the world, and I know exactly what she mean by this.

So here is my part of contribution in this blog. I will also write a post in Ezeem forum in Chinese to see if there are some local schools or charity bodies that are willing to help with this project.

Shantou didn’t change much since I was here in late 2006. But I must admit that I didn’t go out a lot this time, because the theme of this trip is ‘family’. I spent a lot of time with my families, sometimes even just a casual chat with couple of Kung Fu tea with parents at home can make my day. I met up with a few friends too. I’m happy to see most of them are having an enjoyable life in Shantou, somehow made me jealous! Still, if you are talking about food and living, personally opinion, Shantou is the best!

Since I started my work a year ago, I had to scarify my blogging time. You can see the last post was in May this year, which was four months ago. I do apologize the lateness of the updates here, but I’ve only got 24 hours a day and there are more important things I needed to take care of. However this blog is still important to me. If you check out the news site News.MyShantou.net, there are quite a lot of excellent articles posted by the news team from the Journalism school in Shantou University. Actually I will have a meeting with the team tomorrow to discuss the goal of next year. It’s my first meet up with the team and I’m looking forward to it.

Sorry for the poor content of this post, but just want to say hi and let you know this blog is still in my agenda. If you are want to contribute, please let me know.

Hope you are all well. I love Shantou!

Henry, me, Ella. Congratulations! And they’re going to have a baby, too!

Mai was injured in his lower back at the age of sixteen. The injury affected the nerves in his legs. He was not able to run or jump again. He fell in love with cycling in 2004 and found hopes in his life in it. He started planning his journey early in 2008.

“My dream is to cycle around China to promote the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games,” Mai said to the Shantou Daily five years after he was injured.

He found two sponsors who provided him a bike and a tent. He also sought help through the Internet.

On December 3rd 2007, Mai started from Shantou on his bicycle. He arrived in Guangzhou recently. According to his plan here, he will go to Sichuan through Hainan, Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, Chongqing and come back to Shantou in the first 130 days. Then he would head north through Fujian, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong and Hebei and Beijing. The whole journey is about 17000 kilometers long.

Mai’s blog here
TV report of Mai here

Yi loves poetry and earns his living by writing spring couplets for other people. In order to provide a reference to people who want to know about Chaoshan, he started to draw this map in 1989. Over the next 17 years, he bought many books about the culture of Chaoshan to study and went to more than 70 places to confirm that information he collected for this map. He reviewed the map five times and finally finished it in 2005. The map is about 2 square meters, including all the villages, hills, rivers, roads and bridges in Shantou, Chaozhou and Jieyang. There are also 10000 words of introduction of these cities’ histories in addition to the map. [according to an article from Shantou Special Zone Evening here]

According to Shantou Daily, about 2,500 overseas TeoChew people from Chaozhou and Shantou gathered in Sydney on November 3rd 2007, to attend the 14th TeoChew International Convention. China Radio International said that the three-day convention also included a calligraphy exhibition, an academic seminar, economic and trade exchanges and tourism promotion activities. It is estimated that 6.5 million TeoChew people live overseas.

Related report on Shantou Daily:
http://www.dahuawang.com/localnews/showlocal.asp?no=95311

Related report on China Radio Internetional:
http://english.cri.cn/4026/2007/11/04/1241@290894.htm

Home page of the convention:
http://www.chaonet.net/chaoren/

I lived in Shantou for 3 years, from 2003 until 2006. Last year, I lived in Beijing. After a year there, I moved back to Shantou. As a foreigner, Beijing seemed a lot easier to comprehend — at least people speak Putonghua. But I never felt quite at ease there, the way I feel at ease in Shantou.

I came to teach at Shantou University four years ago. In those four years, much has changed and much has stayed the same. Shantou traffic still seems to exist in a state of utter abandonment from order — motorbikes still scurry after pedestrians, even on the sidewalks. The dialect remains as nasal and impenetrable to me as it ever was. The summer sun and languid air are still hot enough to melt your skin and clothes into a soupy mass.

People havent changed much either. I see many of the old faces within a week or so of being back. There is my friend, local business titan and tiny, all of five feet tall in spike heel shoes, still taking over the city with her business ventures — and broken-hearted over the latest foreign boyfriend. There is the restaurant boss, fat and jolly and cooking up exquisite dishes for a dollar or two. There is the guy on his bike who scours the campus for plastic bottles and old shoes, working from morning to night.

Interactions with people are still full of emotional ups and downs; high ones when they are successful and low ones when they are bad.

Im out with my girlfriend and we find a second-hand store. The boss is in his mid-thirties, friendly, kind. He has a scar seemingly designed by Hollywood, running from his temple down the length of his jaw and neck, and continuing into his shirt collar. His toddler son is toddling about, intrigued by us. We manage to get a table and chairs for 70 kuai, which is probably too much, but seems dirt cheap to me after a summer in the States.

The boss has a bicycle with a small engine and trailer hitched to it, and offers to take our goods up to school for 20 kuai.

“Id do it for free but that seat really hurts my ass,” he says with a grin.

When things get bad they get bad though. On another day, after walking around for hours not finding what were looking for, Ive had my fill of ‘hello’ and ‘laowai.’ When a group of tricycle drivers scream at me, I walk up to them and start going on in rapid-fire English.

“I dont understand, I dont understand,” says the main culprit.

“Oh you dont understand?” I say in Chinese. “But you just said ‘hello’ If you dont speak English, why say hello? Oh, I know –youre making fun of me.”

With that I smile broadly, give the guy the finger, and walk away.

This succeeds at nothing, of course, except for upsetting my girlfriend, who is Chinese. I get a lecture on how theyre not really intending me harm, theyre just well aughing at me. I say that I understand that: I dont think they are bad people, but what they are doing is wrong. When in Rome, take what the Romans do to you until you cant anymore.

“One question,” I say. “Do you think those people, the ones who shout ‘hello’ to make fun of you, the ones who shout ‘laowai,’ ever think about how the person they are shouting at feels when they do that?”

A pause. “No,” she says quietly.

“Okay,” I say.

These are the worst moments, the ones where you feel the gap unbridgeable. I wouldnt need to explain that in at least half the world, its totally unacceptable and fairly uncommon to publicly mock people for being different. She wouldnt need to feel she had to justify and defend peoples actions.

Long before you notice all the things that have stayed the same in Shantou though, you see all that has changed. If theres one thing thats true, its that the local economy seems to be booming. Luxurious high rise apartments seem to be going up everywhere. There are at least three stores I come across selling imported wine; a few years ago, there were exactly none. The city — much like Beijing on a smaller scale — seems to be under construction and open for business.

But actually, Ive never spent all that much time in the city of Shantou. Its really the university that feels like home. Despite the complaints of teachers and students alike, to me, Shantou U is one of the best places in China. It is quiet. There is space. The trees make caves of shade from the sun, and on clear days, the reservoir behind the school is filled with light. The whole place is ringed with small mountains that look like they are straight out of a traditional shan shui painting.

Its the beginning of another year, and the campus has started to fill with first year students. You see them trekking in, parents in tow, faces lit up. I can imagine how nervous theyre going to be when they sit in my class for the first time. It makes me smile. At the beginning of this past summer, I said goodbye to the first freshmen I had, from back in 2003. They graduated in July. Watching them go from petrified children to confident, educated adults was about as good as it gets.

Its what makes it worth it to be here, in this place that will always and not quite ever feel like home.

(Note: Ive deliberately done away with the apostrophe in this story, because the spacing issues are driving me nuts!)

The flight to Shantou was a short one, and from the airplane window I looked down and saw all of the farmland and green fields, and my heart started beating really hard because I realized that somewhere down on the ground were my daughter’s birthparents.   How I wish I could know who they were so I could tell them she is the most beautiful and amazing little girl.

Coming through the security gate in Shantou when we landed, I couldn’t stop laughing and smiling thinking I was FINALLY there, and I am sure the guard thought I had real problems since I was laughing out loud to myself.  And then I was actually standing outside, and I tried to memorize every detail so that I could tell my daughter, “I have been to your city and this is what it was like”.

I fell in love with Shantou on that first trip.  I loved the busy streets and the interesting lights in Time Square.  I loved all the red flowers by the park at the China Sea.   I loved the embroidery shops, and all of the street markets selling fruits and vegetables.   I especially loved hot pot and those famous Shantou beefballs!   I really enjoyed all of the Kung Fu tea I was served.  No matter which shop or store I went to, the tiny cups would be brought out and I would be invited to drink.  I loved watching the steps to make this tea and was glad I bought a teaset for my daughter so she could try this special tea as well.

I was so blessed to be able to visit the orphanage to meet the staff who had cared for my daughter, and I was also invited to visit a Shantou kindergarten.   We took a day trip to Queshi, and climbed all the way to the top and then watched in wonder as people strapped themselves to the cable line to head down the mountain. (we decided to walk down!)    Everywhere I looked there were red poinsettia plants, which in America only grow in pots during the Christmas holidays.   One of the most peaceful views we had was when we visited Shantou University and sat looking out at the lake.

It was so difficult to say goodbye to the new friends I made in Shantou on that trip, but I returned home to my daughter with photos and gifts and lots and lots of stories about her birth city.  Anna is now SO PROUD to tell people she is from Shantou.   She can look at any map of China and immediately point to Shantou and say “that’s my hometown”.     I told her that I am so happy she is half American and half Shantouren, and she looked at me one day and said, “mom, I think you are half American and half Shantouren, too, since we are now family”.     I agree with her.   Shantou is forever in my heart, and I love meeting new people and discovering new things each time I return.

Unfortunately they are either about issues that we can’t talk about here, or stories that I shouldn’t, because the people are still around, and Shantou is small. Two of each! Leave you to guess which is which.