Thursday, February 28, 2008

Travel Agents in Korea

BAD BAD Hantour BAD BAD

I've learned that when traveling into China from South Korea is is extremely useful to use a travel agent to handle the visa party, but fair warning, I have had good luck and bad luck.

I recently came back from China. Kansan travel (051-747-0031) game me great help in getting my visa. They got me a double entry, though foreigners are suppose to be able to get multi-entry. They would not help me in this.
They also got me a pretty good rate on a ticket to China, better than I could get anywhere else.

On the way back in country I stopped off at Hana Travel in Kangnam (Cental City) and walked in to start the process for a new visa. I thought I could avoid having to mail my visa to Kangsan. The people in Hanatour were really helpful and very friendly. Someone even walked me to a place where I could get a photo made. Then I was very surprised when they quote me 290,000 won for the visa. The Chinese embassy charges 105,000 won for non-Koreans. I showed them the Korean Embassy website and despite seeing this refused to do the visa for any less than 290,000 won. I had just three months before paid 110,000 at Kansan for a double entry which I thought was too low.

I also called Hanatour on a quote for an air ticket to China a couple months ago and they were at least 100,000 won higher than other tickets I'd found. It really seems like they have some serious profits worked into their pricing.

Needless to day, I will go to someone else. Maybe back to Kansan even though they only seem to be able to get me a double entry.

Worthy Chinese Movies

This is an incomplete list of some Chinese movies worth watching.

  • A World Without Thieves (2004) Tian Xia Wu Zei 《天下无贼》
    • This one is really unbelievable in some ways, and a little frustrating at times, but is well worth watching. It has a very un-American style ending.
  • Crazy Stone (2006) Fengkuang de Shitou 《疯狂的石头》
    • Similar in style to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, this film is worth watching but cannot be taken too seriously. It is fun to watch. It has a sequence that makes me think of "The God's Must Be Crazy" dealing with fate and chance.
  • Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) Yin shi nan nu 《饮食男女》
    • This one is a great one for getting a look at family relationships. I enjoyed it because it has some serious parts but is has it's light parts as well.
  • Perhaps Love (2005) Ruguo Ai 《如果·爱》
    • This one will leave your head spinning if you are not careful. The sequence at the beginning is nothing short of confusing.
  • Kung Fu (aka: Kung Fu Hustle) (2004) GongFu 《功夫》
    • This is fun to watch and the visuals are crazy! I didn't like the way the candy sucker love scene was handled, but I guess that is cultural.
  • The Road Home (1999) Wode Fuqin Muqin 《我的父亲母亲》
    • This is a sad one. I get teary eyed every time I watch it. It really is a nice story about a couple and their struggle to be together. It is simple and well made like a painting.
I recently saw Lust, Caution (Se, Jie). While it was well made, I don't think I liked it overall. They were certainly trying hard to make a good film, and you could feel them trying hard.

Dinner in Linfen

Happy 22 Daisy!

I recently took a trip back to Linfen, was there for about a week. Most of the students had not come back from holiday, however on my last night there I got to see some students and we went to ' Sam's Brother's Restaurant?' next to the Second Idiot for dinner.

As it turned out it coincidentally was Daisy's (Zhang Wei) birthday. They brought her a special bowl of soup with one long giant noodle. Some of you might recognize this as a tradition in China. She was challenged to eat the whole noodle in one try. Sorry to say that it took two tries. I don't know what the traditional symbolic implication of that is.

All of the girls were really stressed about their coming Band-8 exam on March 9. It is hard to study during the holiday and so all of them felt under prepared.

It seems in 6 months little has changed about them. They were all a little more sure of themselves, I felt. A little more confident-perhaps a little more grown up.
However, I asked them what their plans were and all I got a very confident sounding 'maybe someone will do something sometime.' Sounds like they will be philosophy majors in graduate school! Being too specific about plans for the future is over rated anyhow.

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Friday, February 15, 2008

Medical Treatment in Asia


About a year and a half ago I developed heal spurs on my right heel. It was so bad that after about an hour walk I was in excruciating pain, same for just standing. Read all the web sites. With the help of my good friend, Arnold, went to see doctors (I was in China at the time).

They were talking heel cups, surgery and such. I tried the heel cup, didn't wo
rk because of where the spur was. Being that I was a westerner, there was not a doctor for a thousand miles that was going to be willing to cut into my foot.

I bought the most expensive shoes I could. Nothing. The x-ray showed the bottom heel spur was probably a a centimeter or more long...scary to look at.

Well, a ran across this website that said they were cause by
immobility of the calf muscle, or some such thing. These people were selling all these ankle braces that maintain a healthy angle of your foot when you are sleeping. At first I tried to build one my self. That was a big laughable failure. :)

Click here to see a much larger scan of the x-ray. X-Ray or right foot

Being in China and having a hard time getting anything shipped there I found as good solution. I always sleep on my stomach, have all my life. This stretches my foot out, toe pointed. I also have this bad habit of locking my feet together under my chair at work. It was a combination of these that I believe cause the spur.

What did I do? I slept on the bed (on my stomach) with my foot hanking off the right edge, or of the end of the bed, laying as gravity pulled it. The calf muscles was apparently relaxed. I also force myself to stop locking my feet under the chair, but changing to a chair that did not allow for that. Lastly, I bought a kind of a stool to sit on when I was in front of the class. My students at SXNU must have thought I was pathetic! Not being that old, they just could not understand how I could be having such a serious problem.

Within 2-3 months all the pain was gone, except on very long walks. By 5 months I was back at the gym on the tread mill. Today I walk 9 kilometers per day on the tread mill, some days as much as 12. I experience zero pain (except my knees-but that is just old age). I have not had another x-ray done, but I am sure the spur has been completely absorbed.

Being in Asia has forced me to learn a valuable lesson. Not medical problems necessarily need to be solved by running to the doctor. If it is not life threatening, being in a situation where you have to find a solution can be beneficial.

Friday, February 8, 2008



What does the Chinese New Year
mean to you?

Please tell me!


What year is this? Most people in the world might tell you that it is 2008, and then wonder why you are asking such a silly question.

The traditional Chinese calendar did not use continuously numbered years, but experts consider the new year starting in 2008 to be the year 4705 (more on this later).

So, Happy New Year!

For Chinese people (yesterday!) New Year is a bit like Christmas in some of its characteristicsyou go home to be with family, everyone says happy new year to each other and they get a general warm feeling from this activity, not unlike when we wish someone Merry Christmas. It is a good time to give gifts. Additionally it is a good time to start something big...a family, a business. A friend of mine confirmed that the general good feeling might be connected to the idea that all people are bound by time, all sit under the same moon...and so wishing happy new year to someone is bearing witness to humanities connectedness. Whether this is accurate, it is certainly is a nice idea to recognized humanities connectedness.

Warning:
It is important to keep in mind, that while this is the year of the rat, cultural linguistics is a touchy area. The words or connotations often associated with certain animals are not universal between eastern and western cultures. So if you are from the west, whatever your ideas are about rats (the bad one's that is), do not apply in Asia. And further, because Chinese have a traditional connection to certain zodiacal animals, criticizing a certain animal might be indirectly or subconsciously felt, as a criticism of a person who was born under that animal.

The warning goes two ways. If a Chinese person hears a westerner cringe to hear they are "a pig" or "a rat" and then say these animals are bad, you must understand they negativities that go with these animals in western culture.

Skipping the next 3-4 paragraphs will not cause you great suffering or loss of very relevant information. :)
So, now giving a little more on the real answer to the questions of what year it is, is much more complicated than I've already explained. The year is called wuzi 戊子 (zi meaning rat. The wu is a celestial term that does not translate directly into English.) We are in the 22nd year of the current 60 year cycle. For a detailed explanation of the 60 year cycles (each with their unique names, that are repeated endlessly until the end of time, and started at the calendar's inception in 2637 B.C.--4705 years ago), you can read more.

The current 60-year cycle started on Feb 2, 1984. That date bears the name bing-yin in the 60-day cycle, and the first month of that first year bears the name gui-chou in the 60-month cycle. We are starting the third 12 year cycle of the current 60 year cycle.

I am told that Chinese New Year (农历新年 Nónglì xīnnián) means "Agrarian Calendar New Year" or Spring Festival (春节 Chūnjié).

It is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays, but is not limited to just China. For reasons that might already seem obvious to you, it is sometimes called the Lunar New Year, especially by people outside China.

Here in Korea they also observe the Chinese New Year, however they refer to it as the Lunar New Year. In Korea, the Lunar New Year is second in importance to Chu'sok (추석), another lunar calendar event falling at the Autumn Equinox. (I won't go into the Mid-Autumn festival again. You can read about it in a previous post if you like.)


OK...Come back!
New Year is an important time in all of East Asia, China and Korea included. The festival traditionally begins on the first day of the first lunar month (正月 zhēng yuè) in the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th, the Lantern Festival (元宵节 yuánxiāojié). I personally realy like the Lantern Festival because of the lovely lanterns that are hung all over. Xi'an has a famous lantern festival that is worth a visit if you ever have the opportunity.

This year the mass movement of Chinese people to their hometowns for Spring Festival was terribly and in some cases tragically interrupted by the record bad winter storms. Heavy snow, cold temperatures and ice badly affected the nation's infrastructure including transportation and electric power.

China has had a tremendous influence on its neighbors over the years, in language and many other areas of culture. The Lunar New Year is celebrated wherever large communities of ethnic Chinese live, as well as with many geographic neighbors including Koreans, Mongolians, Nepalese, Bhutanese, Vietnamese, and formerly the Japanese before 1873. In Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and other countries with significant Chinese populations, Chinese New Year is also celebrated, largely by overseas Chinese, but it is not part of the traditional culture of these countries. Canada has a large Chinese immigrant population (1 million+), relative to the total population of the country, and so the Chinese New Year is becoming increasingly important there.

In most of these cases, I suspect the time dedication to the holiday falls well short of the 15-day observance of the Chinese. In China the alloted time off from work has been shrinking, and workers are often asked to work weekends to make up for the weekdays give off.

In Korea there are only 3 days of holiday that are officially observed by the government. This is good for me. I found my gym was closed the last two days and so I was not able to get a work out (something my waistline is calling for). Were I in China the gym might be closed for a full week, or perhaps have limited hours of operation during the holiday.

I remember in China that stores would almost all be closed up by 6 pm during the time of the holiday, particularly for about a week starting at the new moon. For a foreigner residing in China, this can tend to be a boring time, with little to do except watch DVDs. Some people liked to travel because it is too cold to be wanting to go outside much, at least in the north of China.

Ok, some terribly technical jargon about Leap Years...
from someone else!

    Leap years have 13 months. To determine if a year is a leap year, calculate the number of new moons between the 11th month in one year (i.e., the month containing the Winter Solstice) and the 11th month in the following year. If there are 13 new moons from the start of the 11th month in the first year to the start of the 11th month in the second year, a leap month must be inserted.

    In leap years, at least one month does not contain a Principal Term. The first such month is the leap month. It carries the same number as the previous month, with the additional note that it is the leap month.

    The Current 60-Year Cycle

Rat 1984 1996 2008 2020 2032
Ox 1985 1997 2009 2021 2033
Tiger 1986 1998 2010 2022 2034
Rabbit 1987 1999 2011 2023 2035
Dragon 1988 2000 2012 2024 2036
Snake 1989 2001 2013 2025 2037
Horse 1990 2002 2014 2026 2038
Sheep 1991 2003 2015 2027 2039
Monkey 1992 2004 2016 2028 2040
Rooster 1993 2005
2017 2029 2041
Dog 1994 2006 2018 2030 2042
Boar 1995 2007 2019 2031 2043






The New Year Date for the previous 12 years and the coming 12 years is…
Animal Branch Dates

鼠 Rat 子 Zi 19-Feb-96 7-Feb-08 Chinese people will often use as question of someone's zodiac animal to determine their age.

Chinese traditionally believe that the characteristics of the animal sign under which you were born in hides in your heart.
牛 Ox 丑 Chou 7-Feb-97 26-Jan-09
虎 Tiger 寅 Yin 28-Jan-98 14-Feb-10
兔 Rabbit 卯 Mao 16-Feb-99 3-Feb-11
龍 Dragon 辰 Chen 5-Feb-00 23-Jan-12
蛇 Snake 巳 Si 24-Jan-01 10-Feb-13
馬 Horse 午 Wu 12-Feb-02 31-Jan-14
羊 Sheep 未 Wei 1-Feb-03 19-Feb-15
猴 Monkey 申 Shen 22-Jan-04 8-Feb-16
雞 Rooster 酉 You 9-Feb-05 28-Jan-17
狗 Dog 戌 Xu 29-Jan-06 16-Feb-18
豬 Pig 亥 Hai 18-Feb-07 5-Feb-19

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

The Gridiron Classic

Superbowl

The last three years I watched the Superbowl on a Shang-hai tv station, complete with Chines announcers. I used to think that the announcers were primarily annoying. I really came to miss knowing exactly what was going on. This year I watched the game in Korea, with Korean announcers--no surprise there. Dispite language difficulties, certain things transcend all cultures, like love, family, war and death.

This last Sunday the NFL Superbowl was played in Arizona, USA. I suspect that most people that read this blog are probably not at all interested in American football. You may not like sports; you probably know nothing about the game; to many of you this violent game probably seems very uncivil.

That said, I can tell you that football is as much a part of American culture as is fast food. And the Superbowl (the championship game) transcends all demographics. Football is much more than winning and losing!

Football, at its basest level, is all about strategy, cooperation and competition, teamwork, rules,luck, fate, and struggle in giving everything you have to be successful, and sometimes swallowing defeat.

Sunday the game was about perfection and just how hard perfection is to come by. The New England Patriots went through their schedule and the playoff (tournament) with a perfect 18-0 record. The heavy favorite to defeat the Giants in the championship game, the Patriots were one game away from a phenomial accomplishment.

The New York Giants played a strong game in defeating the New England Patriots 17-14 in an upset, in the end showing the world just how hard it is to be perfect. This game will long be remembered as one of the great contests.

If you want to understand American culture on a deeper level, taking the time to learn something about football will go along way to helping you understand just who American's are.

Friday, February 1, 2008

An Update on Me


An Update on Me

So, with winter more than half over I am looking forward to spring time and warmer temperatures. I will be really excited for the day I can take a nice trip to the beach and go for a swim. I am guessing that will be sometime in mid-March. I have a short break before I have a little work to do in mid-February. Personally I've been doing better lately. I think part of that has been the break from my job. The job is fine but the work environment is not the greatest.

On break from my regular job, this month I did some camps, teaching mostly little children. The elementary kids were great. I liked them much better than the middle school kids. The camps were really well run and I had a great time. That was a welcome change from my normal job. I came out of there feeling pretty good! There are a couple of pictures of the last groups of students to go through the camp.

Students likened me to Shrek. I guess this is a form a flattery!? Haha. I remember once in China a student said I looked like a cartoon character. What is it about me that gives of this cartoonish persona?

Also, I've started going to the gym to do some exercise. Everybody knows I could stand to shed a few pounds. That has really helped me to feel better lately. I really love my gym because it lies to me. The elevator doors have a mirror-surface. And it distorts the truth. It makes people look thinner than they really are. This picture is not the real me, sadly. The elevator door has made me thinner, where the gym has fallen short. Haha!

There is a little mountain near the place where the camps were held. I would have loved the experience, but that was about the time my cold hit which was really a bummer for me.

This month I acquired some transportation, just in time for the snow and cold. I don't do well with public transportation so it is nice to be driving again. It is nice not to have to catch a bus, not to have to wait in the cold, not to have to deal with the crowds early in the morning. The other day, on a whim, I was able to get in the car and drive to a neighboring city and see a movie that was showing there. On the way there I was able to do some shopping, buying some juice I can't get in my small town. It really gave me an emotional boost. I suspect when I start work again things will be a lot better. We'll see!

Because of the break in work and a bad cold I had last week, this week I've been doing a lot of sitting around in front of the TV-certainly too much of that. Today I will right what is wrong and try to do more than just sit around. I am going to watch the Democratic Party's National Presidential Primary Debate on CNN (nice to have CNN and BBC World News to watch in ENGLISH), and then go pay some bills and go to the gym. I want try to shed a pound or two before the middle of February hits.

I'm going to take a little trip to China in a couple of weeks. Hopefully the snow will be cleared out by then and travel will be back to normal. I'm looking forward to coming to Shanxi again. I remember that the end of winter is usually a nice time for air-cleanliness there. Let's hope so!

As I sit down to write about me I realize that I am a little bit of a boring person. Drat!

Korean Flash Cards