2008: A Recap

January 1, 2008 began as it should, sober in my pickup, parked behind Glen’s market with Casey and Eric. We wanted to watch the bell drop from one of Gaylord’s three bars, but because Eric had yet to turn 21, we instead saw the digits on the dash flick to 12:00 and nothing happened.

Two months later, I made up my mind to teach at a university in Qingdao. I was impressed with my visit to Beijing during the prior December, and Qingdao seemed to have an ideal location on the sea between Beijing and Korea. I set off on February 22.

What the job amounted to was disappointment and extortion. It was not at all what I was promised by my online recruiter (they didn't mention extortion at all): the campus was falling apart and my apartment was filthy. Worse yet, the location was a two-hour trip to Qingdao proper. At first, I tried to lie my way out, but as I wasn’t the first teacher to do this to them, they saw through it. When a deal couldn’t be reached and complaints turned to arguments, the foreign director demanded I pay 500 USD to offset recruiter costs. I refused but when I saw that guards were prepared to bar me exit at the gate, I reluctantly agreed.

The director was paid off and made my way into Qingdao where I met an American who put me up for a few days until I starting teaching at Korean International School of Qingdao. I’m finishing my contract with now.

Work at KISQ started out rough, as the director was hesitant to offer me a contract after hearing of my troubles with the university. For the first three weeks I worked not knowing if I would have a job the next day. Each afternoon I returned to a two-star hotel supplied by the school, and each morning I awoke to an ocean-sunrise just 50 meters away. Upon getting officially hired, I procured an apartment with the help of the school’s translator. It’s a ten minute walk to the school, it overlooks the ocean and is the largest place I’ve ever lived in.

Classes were manageable. I was assigned 11th and 10th grade writing classes, a 9th grade reading class and middle school journalism. The writing classes went along well enough, and I discovered my penchant for teaching grammar. Journalism was sort of an experimental course that wasn’t expected to produce much other than a passable student newspaper at the semester’s end. I was pleased with the results: a colorful, relatively well-written magazine. The students in 9th grade had a reputation as being some of the most ill-behaved in the department, i.e. “the dirty dozen.” I quickly realized that this was a far-cry from the angelic students I taught in Korea. I applied strict disciplinary measures, and slowly, very slowly, gained the upper-hand, just as the first semester drew to a close in early July. I continued to be strict into the second semester, and now, I am proud to say that they are my best. Students with behavioral issues and slumping grades have changed to students with behavioral issues and decent grades, raising the class average by some twenty percent.

The biggest selling point of KISQ is my coworkers. From every corner of the English-speaking world, they are without a doubt, the most interesting, diverse bunch of people I’ve worked with. In the face of the soaring ineptitude of KISQ’s administrators, they are indispensable. KISQ has poor direction and a crippling bureaucracy, but its staff does its best to be frank and tenacious with their superiors.

Beyond the occasional mountain-hike or basketball match, my coworkers aren’t worth much for outside socializing. In March, I looked for company in a slue of Chinese and Korean girls I met through one of them at a concert. They introduced me to the local cuisine, shopping and the surrounding mountainside. As their company grew tiresome, I came to fancy one in particular. Her name is Yoon Hwa Young, an absurdly cute, likeable 26-year-old Korean. We were immediate friends, and an impulse meeting in Shanghai, a pair. Hwa young is a real delight and she remains a highlight of this year.

Qingdao is a great city and after having visited many cities in China, I’m relieved I did my homework. The climate is breezy and mild, and I’m convinced it placates the normally nervous fury of the Chinese. It’s a huge city by our standards, around 6 million, nearly the size of Detroit, but a second tier-city by the Chinese. Qingdao doesn’t see the apocalyptic traffic other cities do, nor is congested with pollution. I attribute this to the strong foreign presence, particularly the Koreans, Qingdao being their largest expatriate population anywhere, some 300,000 I’ve heard. A small portion of the city retains its German heritage. Yes, German. They inhabited the city some hundred years back, building German style residences, churches, and a brewery, as well as carving huge caves into the mountains behind my apartment. My friends and I theorize that the Germans used these caves to peer out over the ocean, guarding against Japanese invaders. They’re perilous and labyrinth-like, but simply amazing.

The food is phenomenal here. Qingdao boasts an array of seafood as well as my favorite specialty: fried dumplings. Street food is simple and cheap; a whole buffet can be found in lineups of carts offering noodles, dumplings, fruit and roasted yams. Foreign food is here to be had, from burgers to Turkish tacos, Mexican quesadillas to six Starbucks. I love it all, except Starbucks, and find myself eating out more than I eat in.

I’ve made an effort to study the local languages. I attended a local academy three times a week to study both Mandarin and Korean with tutors. It was easier than I thought, and the skills I gained proved essential in the lonely places I wound up in in my subsequent travels.

For the first time since I left the states in 2006, running has taken a back seat. I had been enjoying seaside runs 5 times a week for the first three months of my stay. By May, my knee condition came to the point that it was impeding my ability to do a 5k or even play basketball more than twice a week. So, I visited a Chinese doctor, two Korean doctors and a 90-year-old Korean acupuncturist—who knew that the medicine involved burning roots into your body leaving wretched scars? None of them had any effect. Stubborn I was and continued to run, eyeing the Beijing Marathon that fall. This would eventually make the pain so great as to prevent me from walking and sitting correctly. I gave it a rest, and decided to return to Korea for surgery during my summer vacation. This would turn out to be a horribly expensive and regrettable error.

In mid-July, three weeks before that rueful departure, I left Qingdao for mainland China on an 18-day vacation. In that time I covered a remarkable amount of terrain and saw an array of places. There were the precipitous cliffs and jungles of Guoliangcun, Zhangjiajie and Dehang, where the scenery was so picture-perfect that I felt like I was strolling through a Chinese painting. The silence was deafening, soul-shaking, and I must say I’ve never been in such awe of the natural world as I was then. There were also small cities like Pingyao and Luoyang with areas set apart from modern China, quite well preserved. There was Xi’an and its gigantic city walls and Army of Terracotta Warriors, which were surprisingly disappointing. And then there were the nightmarish, crowded metropolises that I arrived in on my way to somewhere else. I took very few photos then, but now I wish I would have, because I’ve never beheld such misery on such a scale.

On August 6 I returned to Qingdao to fly to Seoul for my operation I was sure to take place. Korean and expat friends from 2007 helped out, some with disastrous and awkward results. Details must be spared here; suffice to say, Korea has been twisted into a country wrought with political unrest and weekly demonstrations, many of which are violent. These events have taken an effect on my Korean friends, and made them to think less favorably of foreigners, even one as friendly as I. The operation I sought never took place, Korean physical therapists opting for expensive, irrelevant therapy instead. I managed to fit in some solo sightseeing in the southern coast before leaving Korea, possibly for good.

With all the commotion and travel, I forgot that the Olympics were happening 300 miles from my apartment. I watched them live on television before making an impulse decision to meet some friends in Beijing for the final weekend of the games. I arrived on a Friday morning and found tickets to be in great supply, but at exorbitant prices, ranging from 80 to $1,000. I bit the bullet and got tickets for a chum and I to see to Tae Kwon Do for 80. There, we miraculously met a man trying to sell tickets to the National Stadium for a mere $30, an offer virtually unheard of. We crapped our pants and set off on my buddy’s bicycle, him pedaling like mad and me functioning as a bell on the handlebars, yelling at crowds of people to get the heck out of the way.

We went through security and up the stairs to the top of the National Stadium and promptly recrapped. We watched events and drank beer that was much too cheap, made a lot of noise, and enjoyed every last moment of our Olympic experience. In a stadium of around 100,000 we were the last to leave. We pranced about the arena, taking photos and chatting with security guards who were rather neighborly, a Chinese first. We met Sean, a Chinese buddy of mine at a barstreet and I woke up on a bus on my way to see kayaking events. They were really boring but the tickets were cheap.

The end of August saw my return to work and on the wrong side of a shuffle of classes; an administrator who apparently didn’t like me stuck me with two helpings of two grades most teachers try to avoid, the 10th and 9th grades I taught before. It’s been a difficult semester, particularly with the 10th grade. They’ve emerged as an insolent, unrewarding lot, so much so that now I seriously question teaching as a career.

Following my therapist’s advice, I began my own rehab at a gym down the street. The high membership fee motivated me to be there five times a week for two months, but without seeing any improvement in my leg, I left the same gangling fella that came in.



Last week was Christmas and I hosted my first party. Tomorrow is New Year’s and I have no plans. Next week marks the last at KISQ, and the week after the beginning of most anticipated travel yet. This has been my life in 2008. I’ve left much out, details that I’ll get to this week when I have extra time.

In extortion, repeated sicknesses, travel woes, run-ins with Chinese military and a host of day-to-day annoyances, China has reamed me. It’s reamed me even as I confided in a Korean school in a Korean neighborhood and courted a Korean girly. Aside from Sean, the Chinese guy I met on my first trip to Beijing in December 2007, I have no Chinese friends. Sean and I have met on several occasions this year, and I see as a dear chum. In a way I regret that; in hindsight it hardly seems surprising.

Life under the red star certainly hasn’t been easy. The end of 2008 marks the end of a long struggle with the Middle Kingdom, much like a relationship with an inconsiderate roommate. What next? If life in China has taught me something—other than to always bring toilet paper wherever you go—it’s to keep moving. That’s a lousy sentiment I know. It’s something I’ve said for a while; it’s also the slogan of a canned sea-slug company in China. Mark me. Patience is a virtue of sorts and humility has its use. Perseverance is everything. That, a camera and a notebook serves me well.

So here’s to 2008. May the Lord keep you until we meet again, and thereafter too if He can handle it.

Yours,

Kevin