Hong Kong Again (Part 1)

I went back to Hong Kong this weekend. I met up with Ben and John, who was visiting Ben for a week after finishing a 6-week volunteer program in Nepal. I got in touch with them just as they were headed to the Bird Market, which is where you go to buy... birds.

The whole market was filled top to bottom with bird cages, including huge stacks of little yellow plastic ones, eight inch or so cubes, each with a single bird inside. That's how you purchase the smaller ones. There were also a significant number of parrots hanging out in the open, and most were quite sociable. This one seemed a little irritated by me.

This one, though, really appreciated a bit of attention. I'd never seen more than one african grey at the same time, and I hadn't really realized how clearly different each one's personality is. They each moved differently, and just generally seemed like totally individual animals.

There was also this gorgeous macaw.

It was quite friendly and very interested in the camera.

Either that or annoyed by the little red light my camera makes before taking a picture. This one almost looks like a guy wearing a parrot glove. The little yellow cages you buy the smaller birds in are visible behind him.

These little guys were all hanging out. Don't know what kind they are. They look kind of like magoes though.

While I was wandering around, an old lady in charge of one of the stores brought these guys out. I think they had just hatched. Like, right then.

There was also this toucan. That's probably enough pictures of birds. Birds are adorable, and this was a really cool little market - in addition to the birds for sale, the whole place was filled with wild sparrows that fed on the seed spilled from the cages. There was also, as you might expect, a performing parrot, and a lot of background birdsong. I did get hit by some arial attacks (birdshit) but it was still a very cool zone.

For the rest of the evening, we visited a botanical garden and had burgers, and I bought some reasonably priced undergarments, and we went to a dessert place. Sadly, none of these yielded good pictures. 

It rained all through the night and poured in the morning (there was a hong-kong-wide rain warning that would have given Ben a student-free workday, if it hadn't been a weekend) and we had an early lunch at a Dim Sum place. 

Dim Sum is a little bit like asian tapas. Like tapas, the focus is on ordering a lot of small dishes that everyone gets maybe one or two bites of. Dumplings are a big part of it. There's quite a bit more tea involved than tapas, though. It was quite good.

After Dim Sum we took a ferry out to Cheung Chau island, which took about an hour, and  gave us some great views of Hong Kong island, as the rainclouds were clearing.

When we arrived, the harbor was filled with boats. Cheung Chau was a quiet fishing port for most of its history - in a way it still is - and there were many fishing boats. I'm a little bit surprised the whole Hong Kong zone isn't totally fished out, honestly.

The island is shaped like an hourglass. The town is on a the thin part. This is a view of the island we got later in the afternoon, when we climbed to the top.

The day we were there was the final day of the "Bun festival," a week long traditional celebration that the island is famous for. I really just caught the tail end of it - most of the main attractions were over. We did catch the little Taoist idols getting carried out of the temple, though.

There were also some dragon dances, including a dragon who seemed to be about 8 or so, on the right there.

These bun-mountains are part of the festival's main event. They're really just cones covered in buns on the outside, but they represent piles of buns, and people climb them and race to the top, where there is some kind of special bun? The details were not clear to me. Most of the buns were falling off by the time I got there.

The festival's titular buns were readily available for purchase, for about a dollar each.

Here's a pretty amazing picture I took. John (just back from nepal) is there on the right.

After the idols all got sent home, we climbed up to the top of the island in search of a good swimming beach. We passed a graveyard with this delightful sign.

The top had great views of the whole island. This one was taken as we were headed back down, in the evening, so it's a little darker.

From the top of the island we saw our swimming beach. It looked pretty much perfect.

The walk down (as had the walk up) took us through wet, jungle-ish terrain. I was ready to be blown away by this beach. I was really excited about it. I pushed my way through the last palm fronds, and saw that the beach was coated in a thick layer of garbage and broken glass. There were also considerably more wild dogs than I had anticipated.

We swam anyway, on the beach's cleanest corner. The water itself seemed fine. / After swimming, we walked back to town and ate right on the water, looking out over the fleet of boats. Some stray cats came by to say hello, and the sun set as we ate.

It was a pretty great two days. 

Ben had work the next day, but I had it off, and John and I decided to visit Macau, a tiny nation (like hong kong) an hour away by high-speed ferry. It used to be a Portugese colony, and is now more or less China's vegas, though there are very old-fashioned, traditional parts of Macau as well. We'll visit Macau next time, when I get photos of the trip from John, because my camera was out of power at that point.  

My Least Favorite Textbook

So, this post is a poor workman blaming his tools. I'm aware. Still, these are some shitty tools. I've made references to my extreme dislike of one of my textbooks and my mixed but generally positive feelings about the other. Today, I've brought in some pages for show and tell. 

We'll start with the bad. I think most of them speak for themselves. If you can't read the text on the thumbnails, click to zoom in. I'll offer most of them without comment, but all of them have hover-over text. 

Each page is paired with a "virtue" knowing these words will bestow on the children. I want to strangle the person who wrote this. Which is theoretically possible, because the reason we're forced to use this textbook is that the son of our company's owner created it. Presumably, in some kind of dark ritual in which an animal was sacrificed and nefarious spells recited. 

Remember, I have to get kids to memorize all of this. I have to spend about an hour total on each page, and the flash cards I use are the pictures in the book. 

I've saved my least favorite tidbits for last.

For contrast, here's the other textbook, the "rainbow book." It's still somewhat asinine, but it's like a breath of fresh air after New Beat, which is the name of the textbook excerpted above.

Here's a page with one of the alphabet rhymes I was talking about earlier. Like some of the stuff from new beat, I don't think it's really very useful to teach to children. But there's something more cheerful and substantive about it.

That's enough kvetching (even if it was silent, indignant kvetching for the most part) for one blog post. Tomorrow I'll be back with more Hong Kong. In the second-to last picture you can see my pre-departure checklist, which mostly consists of charging devices.

Cute Pictures of Blurry Kindergarteners

Here are some blurry pictures of cute children. There's one of kids building a five-piece puzzle, a few of a throw/dodge game, and a few of kids wearing some cheap shirts I bought that didn't fit me, which was part of game where they raced to put them on while the rest of the class shouted "shirt! shirt! shirt!". Guess what word they were learning!

 

Bonus pic! This guy is a Mcdonalds delivery dude, complete with motorcycle and heated backpack.

Vanity in the Orient

I managed to pull off what I thought was impossible.  I've gained weight in China.

Last time I was here, in Wuhan, my body never... how you say... "adjusted" to the diet.  I'll spare you any detail, but suffice to say it was easy to keep the weight off because nothing really stuck.

This time, it was a much different phenomenon.  My first few months, I still lost some weight, possibly owing to lack of appetite or having not yet found my favorite stuff.  Then, sometime during the winter, the combination of being cooped up inside, the discovery of Papa John's delivery service, and the development of some favorite foods nearby all combined to start the slow process of acquiring a spare tire and the discovery that "beer belly" translates directly from Chinese to English, when someone used it to describe me.

It was sneaky, too.  But one day I looked in the mirror and there it was.  I was beset by indescribable shame. 

Ok, I'm being melodramatic.  So, what am I doing about it? Well, the pool just opened, but I haven't tried it yet. I've heard tell that they may require male swimmers to wear a speedo instead of our western-style trunks.  If so, that's not really an option.  I'll make allowances for some cultural differences, but speedo is not on that list.

Riding my bike everywhere is somewhat helpful, and yesterday that took on a new dimension altogether, as I tried my hand at something very typical for Chinese people, but something I'd never done before: Carrying someone on the back of my bike. 

I was apprehensive when girlfriend sat on the little seat over the back wheel of my mountainbike... Images of her falling off dramatically and bleeding all over the pavement and being callously run over by oblivious folks on scooters ran through my head.  So, not screwing up was of paramount importance. 

And then we were off, and it was surprisingly easy.  The added weight wasn't much of a problem, and balancing also wasn't too tough to do.  I felt like one of those pedal-rickshaw drivers.

We managed to go halfway across (our fortunately flat) town this way, it was great exercise for me, she loved the free ride, AND it was actually useful.  It's tough for me to go for a run or something if it has no real purpose, so getting such a workout out of plain old transportation is great for me.  I've found the killer combination of factors to get rid of this 啤酒肚 (beer belly.)  I've already decided that this is how we'll get around this summer.

So, that's my own vanity over here, but what about other folks?

Since the sun has returned to grace our presence, the perplexing phenomenon of umbrellas-as-parasols has begun again.  Girls here are deathly afraid of having dark skin.  Whereas Americans will pay money to sit in an easy-bake oven and turn orange, Chinese girls will do whatever they can to avoid darkening.  I've seen people go as far as holding notebooks in front of their faces to protect them from the menace of ultraviolet light.

The cultural rationale is as follows: dark skin indicates that you spend all your day working outside.  If you're pale, you're higher-class. 

So, that all makes sense.  It's understandable why they do it.  There are a few phenomena of vanity that are a bit tougher to understand, though.

There's somewhat of an inordinate obsession with things foreign, here.  People (girls especially) are really interested in anything that can set them apart, or make them look less Chinese, for a lack of a better way of putting it.  Girls will tape their eyelids to simulate a dual-fold (uncommon for your typical Chinese person,) and high nose bridges, big noses, and wavy or curly hair are all seen as attractive.  At first blush, to me it appeared to be a disturbing lack of national self-esteem, but I think it's more just a desire to set themselves apart, not look so 一般般 (normal, boring, unremarkable.)

Clothing is also a pretty big deal here, though maybe not in the ways you'd think.  Picture your typical American college student.  What are they wearing? A hoodie and sweatpants, probably.  Maybe jeans and a t-shirt.  The guys here are mostly jeans-and-t-shirt types, but the girls come to class dressed as if they're going out clubbing or something.  Now, clothes are relatively cheap here, and buying particularly expensive stuff doesn't seem to be the name of the game, but the variety of different styles of clothing available is pretty wide.  Some do a really good job, and some just come off as really tacky or bizarre, but surely they're all working hard to be "very fashion," as they would say.  BUT one big difference: They don't change them every day.  It's considered to be overly narcissistic to change your clothes on a daily basis.  I can deal with that!  Just means I don't have to do so much laundry.

One of the more confusing-to-a-westerner things is the big fake glasses that seem to be all the rage with the girls. 

Very fashion indeed.

Now, let me make it clear: I'm definitely not here to judge anyone.  In fact, sometimes the more bizarre fashion ideas work out pretty well.  And even when they don't, it's part of the experience and sometimes good fodder for a clandestine photo. Like this guy.

 

I'm back!

Yesterday, I got surprise digital cable.

 

I was out all day.  Out of town for most of it.  And the last thing I expected to find upon my return to my apartment was an empty box and bits of coaxial TV cable littering the floor.  But when I saw the little box sitting on top of my TV and realized it meant I could get English language news, I didn't even bother being annoyed that they didn't tell me anyone was going to come into my place while I wasn't there.  It was like a little Christmas day at the end of April!

 

I hope I don't get a surprise digital cable bill next week.  I still haven't asked any of the other foreign teachers if they've also received surprise digital cable.

 

So, I haven't posted in a long time.  There was sort of a period after a while where everything got normal and I felt like there really wasn't much for me to say.  No matter where you are or what you're doing, eventually things get a bit mundane.  Of course, China mundane isn't quite garden-variety mundane, but it still felt pretty normal for me.

 

So, what has happened since then?

 

Jiaxing winter passed.  It wasn't awfully long, just from December through about the first week of April.  But it was pretty cold.  Classrooms don't have heat here.  The dorms don't either.  Our apartments do, though!

 

But winter's pretty well forgotten now.  Today was around 80°F.  It's like someone just flipped the "Summer" switch and the heater kicked in and everything got nice again.  These days have been absolutely gorgeous.  Blue skies, sunshine, and students resurrected with the newfound energy of spring.  That makes my job a lot easier.

 

I've also reached another milestone since I last wrote: I now have a six-figure income.  That's six figures of renminbi, unfortunately.  BUT it was because our university offered me a position teaching a business class twice-weekly, for 300 per class.  In US dollars that translates to over $30 per hour.  Come to China, get paid more than twice what you made in the states (hourly, that is.)  Good deal!

 

Jiaxing has increasingly been feeling like home.  I've been here for more than two-thirds of a year now, and everything feels really, well, normal.  I look back on my initial impressions and how little I really knew when I arrived here and it's really amusing.  I remember getting on a bus and worrying about what happens if I get lost and can't find my way back.  Now, you could airdrop me into a town I've never been to before and so long as there was access to public transit I don't even think I'd worry about getting back for a second.  I'd just hope I could get a seat on the bus.

 

My Chinese has also improved by leaps and bounds, compared to where it was before I got here.  Conversation, argument, explanation, all are within my capabilities now, to a certain extent.  Pretty cool.  It also really helps with the teaching thing.  And the students always react with such amazement when I speak Chinese.

 

Speaking of earlier impressions that have been overturned, I'm no longer bored with the food.  Since I've become more able to read, a world of possibilities have opened up to me as far as things I can order to eat.  Now, I'm having trouble imagining what life would be like without being able to go to some of the places nearby.  I've even mastered delivery food ordering, for when I'm too busy lesson planning to bother leaving my place.

 

This semester is busy.  Having taken on so much extra work means I don't get as much time to just do whatever anymore.  The upshot is that I'm now banking all of my base pay and living entirely on secondary work.  Before I came here, I was worried that money would be a problem.  It's really not.

 

Other news: During the spring festival, I went to Wuhan to visit an old friend.  That was a pretty excellent time. 

I also took a day trip to a place called Wuxie, in Zhuji, a smallish town a bit south of here.  It was a nice place.

A friend of mine from Japan also came and visited for a few days.  We did Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou.

And she tried the famous (and abhorrent) stinky tofu!

Probably my best excursion yet has been to a place called Qiandaohu, or Thousand Islands Lake.  That was more recent, and it was probably one of the prettiest places I've seen.  Definitely the prettiest place I've seen in China.  Even the ride there was gorgeous.  For a few weeks in the spring, entire fields turn yellow as the flowers on the ubiquitous youcai (vegetable oil plants) bloom. 

There were a few islands we visited while we were there in Qiandaohu, but the best one was definitely the one with the view.  It reminded me of Acadia national park, in Maine.

Aside from travels, not much else is going on.  I've decided to stay on next year.  Many of the other teachers are also going this route, while others are either headed home or seeking employment elsewhere, either in different countries or in schools that pay better.  It'll be interesting to see what next year's batch of teachers is like.  BUT, with any sort of luck I'll update this blog before then, ha.

 

Until next time.

Juice Box Rodeo!

I bought a half-dozen mysterious juice boxes today! The nearest grocery store has like a half-aisle of them. Robots are included in all pictures for scale (and for style).

box #1

Wanglaoji Herbal Tea

This brand is a popular fixture here. I've seen it all over the place - in convenience stores, restaurants, and sold in bottles alongside street food. It's the only one of these beverages that I'd previously tried - Ben's girlfriend ordered some at a restaurant, and I had a sip and then got one myself, mostly because it was cold and the only other thing to drink at that restaurant was scalding hot tea.

It tastes identical to sweet tea you might order from a family-style restaurant in the south, where the waitress has a slow drawl and spills a little on your napkin as she pours it into your glass, along with half-circle ice-machine ice. Except Chinese. It's a very basic flavor - mild tea and a lot of sugar.

Juice Box #1 diagnosis - nonthreatening but boring; you would go on a date with it and have a nice time, but have no desire to pick up its calls afterward. 4/10.

box #2

Imperatae & Cane Juice

The Chinese are crazy about sugar cane. I see this dude peeling it every day at the street market I walk through, street carts juice it for you for 50 cents, and whenever the kindergarten cafeteria serves "sweet kanji" (accent on the "ji") the chinese teachers are a little giddy, even though it's basically just sugar cane soup, and to my palate is just warm, thick sugar water. Anyway. Sugar cane is a big deal here. And apparently "imperatae" is a variety of euphorbia? I had never heard that word before. It is, according to wiktionary, the nominative feminine plural of "to command."

It tastes extremely mild. Even milder than the previous tea, though slightly less sweet. It has the slightly woody taste of sugar cane - whatever imperatae is, it's unnoticeable. This is essentially slightly sweet, slightly thickened water.

Juice Box #2 diagnosis - this juicebox needs to hit the gym, and stop talking to everyone about Ayn Rand. 2/10.

box #3

Chrysanthemun [sic] Tea Drink

The real word is "Chrysanthemum," but I'm going to let this one slide, China. The box is flowery!

It tastes like... equal parts water and juice box#1. Watery, with a faint smack of tea, though the tea flavor has a bit more of an edge to it that #1. The overall flavor, though, it still quite close to water. The flavor has a certain dryness to it.

Diagnosis: let's say you like a band, and love it's back catalog, but the first new album after you become a fan is a big disappointment. This juice box is like the album two albums after that - it has a decent song, but still makes you down. It's like drinking the moment you give up hope that they'll make new good music. 3/10.

box #4

???

Based on the similar packaging, I'm guessing this is a knock-off of the more popular Wanglaoji brand of tea. There is, however, no english on it.

Tastes like... a knock off of the more popular Wanglaoji brand of tea, but slightly wateryer.

Diagnosis: You think you're talking to some acquaintance, and then that acquaintance walks in the door, and you realize: "oh, this is some other person who just looks exactly like that other guy. I had wondered why he was being a little bit more boring today." 3.5/10.

box #5

Carrot & Chesntut Drink

I'm a little bit excited for this one. I love carrot juice, and the combination of carrot and chestnut seemed irresistibly weird. It actually inspired this whole post - I thought, I'll get that one and some others and do a food review bundle pack.

It tastes like... disappointment. Looking at the side, it says it's less than 10% juice. It tastes like 0% juice. It's... still a little bit more interesting than all of the above beverages, because it's flavor is a little bit richer. It doesn't taste like carrot, but it does taste a little bit like chestnut. If I did a blind taste test, I would have thought it was just a more interesting tea juicebox.

Diagnosis: Let's say there's a girl you liked a lot in third grade - you thought she was cute and smart and got teased for liking her. This juice box is like seeing that girl drunk, at a party, after you've graduated college, and she has way too much make up on. She's still decent looking, but it's a sad experience. 4.5/10.

box #6

???

I haven't really liked a juice box yet. A lot of hopes are riding on this beverage.

Tastes like: dashed hopes. The sweetest beverage yet, but completely flavorless. If I was a hummingbird, I would be all over this shit. If I was a diabetic and was in an insulin coma, I would buy this again, except I wouldn't, because I would be in an insulin coma.

Diagnosis: Imagine you brought some mysterious juiceboxes at your local Chinese grocery store, intent on doing a food post because nothing interesting had happened recently, and then all the juiceboxes you bought tasted extremely bland, and you couldn't think of anything smart to say about any of them, and you have them medium-low scores because you're saving truly low scores for food that actually tastes bad, not just bland and disappointing. This juicebox tastes like that experience. 3/10.

So, this happened

So, this happened.

My roommate and I were flipping to see who would clean the kitchen and who would do the living room. He flipped the coin with this thumb.

It spun on its edge, as coins often do. Except instead of going off-kilter and landing on a side, it merely slowed and stopped. On its edge.

The very smooth floor, the fact that Chinese coins are slightly thicker than American coins, and the very still air were probably all factors. Still, incredible. Holy shit. Didn't think it was possible, though wikipedia says it happens approximately in one of six thousand flips.

Humorous Anecdote

I had meant to include this in my post on hanging out with Ben - when we were back in the subway station after exploring Qingping market - where we saw a variety of unusual animals for sale for culinary purposes - Ben's girlfriend Sharman said, pensively, reflecting on the odd edibles there:

"My grandfather used to eat dog all the time so he'd be really good at sex."

Shortly afterward, she remarked:

"He had a son when he was 70."

That is all.

This Post has Scorpions in it

Ben, the friend I previously visited in Hong Kong, made his way to Guangzhou this weekend. He's going to some of the usual tourism suspects here tomorrow, when I have work, but today we saw some interesting parts of the city I hadn't seen yet.

We started out at Shamian Island, which is out of the core of the city, and used to be French / UK concessions, but it now just a quiet spot with tree-lined avenues and gift shops. I did get a really good candid shot of Ben and Sharman, though. It looks like she's doing a "what did you just say?!" face, but in context it was actually an "I know, right?!" face.

 

After that we visited the far more interesting Qingping market. So, Cantonese food is famous for including pretty much anything, and this is where you go to buy anything. Like most of Guangzhou's theme zones (like the shoe market and so on) it's made up of a maze of tight alleys and tiny stalls. Here's one section of it. 

 

We saw a pretty amazing collection of edibles and semi-edibles. Here are some antlers. 

 

We also saw dried caterpillars (these were very popular), dried sea sponge, mushrooms as large as tires, dried sea horses (so many!) cats in cages that Ben's girlfriend though were probably for eating, snakes in wicker cages which were for eating, and a variety of unidentifiables in glass jars, shown below: 

Probably the awesomest few stalls, though, were the ones with live scorpions, which are used for soup stock. They were very lively. Here's a woman sorting through some with chopsticks, looking very bored. 

Here is a close up of some scorpions. 

Here are some more scorpions. Scorpions are awesome. 

 

The same stall had this collection of re-used plastic bottles: 

 

Inside each of them is an enormous live centipede. 

 

Here are some scorpions again. I hope I've made my position on scorpions clear. 

 

After the weird food zone, we went to "Bright Filial Piety Temple," which you have to admit has a great name. Here's some incense. 

 

Here's a cat that was hanging out in front of one of the sanctuaries. 

 

Here are mysterious characters carved into some bamboo. If anyone knows what they are, please comment. 

 

After the temple, we went to dinner and then the circus, which had acrobats, divers, flamingos, elephants, motorcycling bears, people flying out of cannons, and this strange contraption.  

 

Let's be totally clear about the relative awesomeness of sorting live scorpions with chopsticks, though. 

By the way, all of the images in my posts have an extra line of text if you hover your mouse over them.

Kindergarten Romance, Gender Roles, and Phrenological Observations

1. Kindergarten romance

A few days ago, during a game, every student in class was focused on me but two. There was this tallish, gangly boy with a missing front tooth who was fending off kisses from the girl in pink next to him, clearly annoyed. But she keeps trying and eventually he warms to the idea and is clearly ready to let her do it, but she chickens out. Adorable. No one saw it but me, and they did not know they were being observed.

During a different class, we were playing a game where each seat had a vocab word card on it, and each round some vocab words had bombs under them, and they couldn't sit on them or they would explode. As the game progressed, there were more and more bombs, and students had to sit on other student's laps. There was one boy who kept grabbing the prettiest girl in class and forcing her to sit on him, every time they had to find a seat. Once she was sitting on him he would squeeze her as tight as he could. She didn't seem to mind.

2. Gender roles

So, a few weeks ago, we were teaching clothing, and "I like to wear-". Whenever a boy said, "I like to wear skirts," which was one of the clothing words we taught, my co-teacher Suki would mock them mercilessly. Coming from a college where self-introductions often had to include a preferred pronoun and some boys frequently wore skirts, this made me uncomfortable.

But this week, we're teaching words for family members, and the way they're depicted is really weird and deeply troubling. So, when we teach words it's always with a picture, and the pictures come with the textbook. The pictures for family are, with the gestures we teach them with:

Mother: with a baby (unobjectionable), gesture: rocking

Father: with a son (fine), gesture: typing (which is a little bit funny, but whatever)

Sister: wide eyed and totally vacant looking, with a hairbrush and a blow dryer, gesture: combing hair while looking at a mirror (pretty bad)

Brother: a very serious looking sailor in a navy uniform doing a salute, gesture: salute (?!?!?! this really upsets me)

Grandma: smiling old woman, gesture: hobbling with a cane

Grandpa: mustachioed old man, gesture: stroking a beard

Auntie: diner cook, gesture: frying pan

Uncle: bus driver, gesture: steering wheel

So, apparently some of the depictions - are based on the Chinese language convention of calling people in certain professions "auntie" or "uncle" or "brother" - they call soldiers "brother" the same way in english it's proper to call monks "brother," and bus drivers are referred to as uncle and cooks, cleaners and some other professions are called "auntie," when you're being familiar.

Still, "sister" as a vacuous, superficial hair-obsessed character is disturbing, as is the idea that the stereotypical "brother" is in the army. Brother and sister, in the pictures, are really a terrible set of stereotypes.

3. Phrenology

Kids have bizarre head shapes here. I have a strong theory that when a baby is being delivered they just grab the baby's head with tongs and yank it out of there. I am pretty certain that this is the preferred method here. Seriously, you can practically see the tong marks on some of these kids' skulls, which are totally unnatural looking.

4. Other observations

On hot days, kids never have less than two long-sleeve layers, including a coat, and they stick a towel down the back of the kids' shirts to wick off the sweat. There are special towels for this with characters on the ends that comes out their shirt.

I have located a picture of Mao in almost every classroom, in both of the schools I attend. Usually he's looking jovial and relaxed, but sometimes it's the full on hagiographic icon. I don't usually go into the sleeping zones of the boarding kindergarten, but in the two I have been in a large charman Mao watches over their slumber.

Dentistry: I have seen kids who look like they're wearing hillbilly teeth from Halloween. Often the teeth are almost totally black. It's disgusting.