Belarus In China

Hello friends.

My weekend has been very eventful, at least it feels like it has because I left the mountain twice. (Woah!! Twice! You all didn't know you were friends with such an adventurer, did ya??) But joking aside, I usually leave the mountain like once every two weeks unless something out of the ordinary is happening- I'm a home-body.

Anyway! This post is not about my agoraphobia. This post is about my Friday night, and the explosion of culture that it was!

Chongqing, being the large city it is, has a lively art scene. Unfortunately all the information about this art scene is written in Chinese, so I am aware of approximately none of it. But, my lovely team leader, Gloria brought a cultural art experience to our attention recently- the Belarus dance troupe coming to the Chongqing Grand Theater!!! Strangely, everyone did not latch onto this experience as immediately or as fervently as I did.

In the end, Gloria and I were the only foreign teachers who went to see this spectacular performance.

We were joined by the graduate student coordinator, Alice, and her family. Just the sheer joy of Alice and her family's company would have been enough for an entire post. Alice is a typical Chongqing lady- very petite (shorter than me), huge welcoming smile, pure joy. And her husband is a bit of a celebrity at our school- he composed the music for our bell. He teaches at a music university on Chengdu (So he is on Chengdu Monday-Thursday, and back to Chongqing Thursday-Sunday. This is moderately common for Chinese couples.) and is incredibly kind. And Alice's daughter is in 6th grade and is super smiley and her favorite food is cabbage (very healthy) and she loves dance. They are just wonderful, and I am super blessed to have gotten to meet them. I hope to see them many more times!

But let's get back to these guys:

Look at them!! They are fabulous!! They bear a shocking resemblance to our costumes for the New Year's performance- a bit less neon than we were.

Quick background info on Belarus. I did not know where it was in the world until after this. Well, here it is. According to Wikipedia, the Republic of Belarus declared independence in 1991, and shares many cultural traditions with Poland and Russia- which came out during the performance.

So coming into this performance, I had literally no idea what was coming. And let me tell you- I was blown away. If you have never seen Belarusian folk dance it bears a strong resemblance to Russian dance. There is a lot of duck walking and kicking by the men. Overall, the men have to do a lot of difficult- almost acrobatic things. Like they do handstands, high jumps, flips, and then all the stuff where they are really close to the ground (I desperately wish I knew the correct names for these things. Please refer to the pictures for reference)

Full disclosure, these pictures are from a Google search of "Russian folk dance," but "Belarus folk dance" didn't give me any good pictures, and it's very similar to Russian dance. The bottom picture looks just like something we saw during the performance, costumes and all.

What I am trying to get at here is, it was super impressive, and Belarus folk dancing is something I would be into. The men have to do all the hard stuff. The women hold scarves and twirl around. That being said, the women were very talented, and I probably couldn't even begin doing what they did. The footwork is really intricate, and they spin super quickly.

If you don't get anything else out of this post, know this- Belarus folk dancing is so fun to watch!! They're flipping around, spinning around, and eventually it just becomes a talent show to see who can jump the highest or spin the fastest or do that sitting kick the longest. If this is any indication of how Belarus is, it's probably like the funnest country ever.

And then there's the unexpected. Because of all of the dancing, and the rest that those dancers need, they had music performances intermittently. And the musician looked like a Belarusian mix of Mr. Bean, Martin Freeman, and Mr. Weasley. Any when I tell you that man is a natural born performer, I am not giving him enough credit. He was getting the audience involved (and if there is one thing that Chinese audiences are good at doing, it's clapping along to music) and hammin' it up. He was just the greatest tambourin/ glockenspiel/ washboard/ probably anything player.

Then there was this one dance where they had a guy in a bear costume and a guy in a goat costume. I'm not 100% what was going on. At first I thought the bear was being captured and they were fighting, but then they seemed to be getting along. Long story short, by the end of the dance all animosity was gone and the goat was disco dancing and the bear was doing "the worm." And that guy in the bear suit was owning the bear suit. It didn't stop him from worming or breaking it down in any way.
You truly have not experienced "overjoyed surprise" until you go to the Grand Theater to see a dance performance and you see a guy in a bear suit doing the worm across the stage. I sincerely that you get to see it at some point in your life. It is the epitome of fun. I'm still in shock a little.

I don't have any pictures of the performance because equally as impressive as the performance is the enforcement of the "no picture" policy of the theater. Lots of people tried to take pictures, but as soon as you saw their screen, one of the ushers would rush over to them and tell them to put it away. It was a full time job for those ushers, and those ladies did a fine job. While it is very inconvenient for me, their diligence was laudable.

Who would have ever thought that I would experience the culture of Belarus in the middle of China. Not this girl! But it was, without a doubt, one of the funnest things, with so much laughter and joy, that I have ever been to. Those dancers deserved a full audience and while the production level wasn't the highest, they more than made up for it in their heart and just the fun level. Off the charts!!

And I walked out to this pretty view. Chongqing is not too shabby a place to live. Not too shabby!

Back At It- Sorry It's Been a Bit

Hello dear friends,

As some of you have pointed out to me, it's been a bit since I wrote on here. You are very very correct. It has been quite a while, but all of those that thought I had given up on yet another blog- jokes on you! I'm back.

Quick recap- The semester ended early in January.
I went to Yunnan (the southwestern province of China). There, I did quite a bit of hiking- Tiger Leaping Gorge- highly highly recommended. It was cold and there was snow on, but it was beautiful! I got sunburned the very first day I was there because my delicate skin is now very much used to the clouds.
After Yunnan, I went to Thailand. It was warm and sunny and beautiful, and I was surrounded by warm, sunny, and beautiful people. It was wonderful. I rode elephants, petted tigers, and was refreshed and renewed in ways that I didn't even know I needed. I got Thai massages. (They hurt. A lot. I am not a massage girl. The Chinese massages hurt- they make me want to cry. And Thai massages also make me want to cry. I'm over trying to like them.) All of the people that I work with were in Thailand, and I have only known these people for 6 months, and to be fair, I haven't even been around them for the past 4 of those months, but I adore them. They are the greatest. If you ever get a chance to meet them- you should.
After Thailand, my mom and my best friend came to China to visit me! It was fabulous. I was exhausted, but we went to Beijing- saw the Great Wall, Tienamen, the Forbidden City, all that jazz. Then we went to Xi'an- saw the Terra-cotta Warriors, the city wall, drum and bell towers, and celebrated Chinese New Year there (mostly by watching people shoot fireworks off in the middle of the sidewalk and light enormous strings of firecrackers on fire in public areas. I have never seen so many open flames along a city street before.)
Then we came back to Chongqing. I was overjoyed to be home after a month of living out a suitcase. We did laundry and grocery shopped and they got to see all the fun things that Chongqing has to offer! Mostly they got to see where I live and work, and that is really what they came for (I imagine).

Some statistics from my Winter Holiday:
countries visited: 2 (including China)
planes ridden on: 7
hotels stayed at: 8
sketchy cab rides: 2
tigers petted: 7
cups of coffee consumed: countless
pictures taken: 400ish
pictures taken while my family was here: 0 <- I'm the worst
book stores visited: 1

Over all it was a splendid holiday. Over all, I was exhausted and a bit excited for school to begin.

Look at that blue sky! When the sun comes out, so do the students!!

And begun it has.

School is back in session in full force. We are approaching the end of week 3 here.
Three of my classes I have had the students before which is really really lovely- I already know them, so we don't have to live in the awkward world of getting to know all their names and them pushing the line to see how strict I am (although some of my boys are really dancing along that line- jokes- they're not behaving well at all- we will have a talk soon).
The other two classes are new to me, but they seem to be the sweetest humans on the planet, just from my initial observations. We are getting to know each other and so far, they are doing well (to be fair, we have only spent 4 hours together total, but I would say it's a fair assessment).

Really and truly, my students are wonderful. They are sweet (for the most part). They laugh at me when I sing to myself in class. They wave at me on the street (most of the time). They're the reason I'm here, and I couldn't love them more if I tried.

I'm missing my students from last semester that I don't have this semester already. I ran into two of them at the grocery the other day. They were so excited to tell me about their exercises that they just did- they have decided to start running. Sometimes when I see students in public, they will do the polite wave then walk away from me as fast as possible (especially if they are with their boyfriend or girlfriend), but these two saw me and came right over to regale to me the horrors and triumphs of their first night of running. I was just the happiest person on the planet.

Anyway- I'm back. The semester is underway. Get pumped for more adventures.