Dude, that Teal Brings Out Your Eyes 2 of 2

After we crossed the border, Bryan led me straight into the Lo Wu megamall complex which is the destination for most of my friends any time they go over the border: cheap massages, cheap custom-made clothes, cheap everything. Bryan was all business. He knew exactly where we were going. Out of the dozens and dozens of tailors, he led us right to his tailor. She greeted him by name. Her shop measured six by ten feet. Bryan and I squatted on little plastic stools and proceeded to flip through books of fabric swatches. Surprisingly, Bryan was honing in on a nice, subtle pin stripe in dark navy. I flipped through the sample books several times, but didn’t see anything that caught my eye.

The tailor proposed that the three of us go into the mall among all the fabric sellers and see if we could find something to my liking. Off we went in the maze of fabric sellers with their wares stacked well above my head. It was overwhelming. I didn’t know where to begin. But Bryan’s tailor gently led me to a booth with a nice selection. I saw some a nice mid-tone brown herringbone. I saw a very nice summer-weight wool in dark grey.

And then I saw it. Tuck behind some paisleys. A bolt of a large-pattern, burgundy, navy, and tan plaid. When I first laid eyes on it, the clouds parted and shaft of heavenly light illuminated it. I heard harp music. It was love at first sight.

I pulled out the bolt and handed it to the sales lady. Our tailor look at the sales lady, shrugged, and said “2.3 meters.”

It cost all of US$8.00.

Back in her tailor shop, I pulled out from my backpack the pair of pants I had brought from home. I handed them over to the tailor. “Same-same,” I instructed her; which is Shenzhen speak for “I want the new pair to match this pair exactly.”

I flipped through her fabric books and found some material for a shirt to match. I handed her the shirt I had brought from home, “Same-same.”

Up here in Shenzhen, it is strictly pay up front –in full. I handed her the equivalent of just over US$40 for the pants and the shirt.

They’ll be ready in ten days.

I will wear them with pride when I am back in Chicago. They will be my-custom-made-in-China pants. A nice keepsake.

I haven’t decided if I will wear them here at my school. If I do, I should probably have a t-shirt made up that I can wear with the pants that says “I went to Shenzhen with Bryan Thompson.” But then again, once my colleagues get a look at my pants, that might go without saying.

Jack

Tuesday, I shared this little story with some Irish acquaintances of mine. Halfway through the story, the husband turned to the wife and asked "plaid?"

She explained "tartan."

Dude, that Teal Brings Out Your Eyes 1 of 2

For some reason China makes it incredibly cost prohibitive for Americans to get visas to their lovely country. While my Aussie and Kiwi friends can get a visa for twenty or thirty dollars, we Americans have to pay US$125 for a sixth month, multiple entry visa. So despite the fact that we live fifteen miles from the Chinese border, all four of us have been without China visas for the last six months.

That is, until last Thursday.

In anticipation of our last few months in Asia, we all got China visas. On Friday, my principal Bryan told me that he was running up to Shenzhen on Saturday and wanted to know if I would like to join him. Well, with a fresh hot visa burning a hole in my pocket, how could I say no?

The first three or four months that I was in my new teaching position here, I didn’t quite know what to make of Bryan. He is highly effective and extremely professional educator. He takes his work very seriously, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He is one of the most dedicated educators I have ever worked with. He raises the game of everybody around him. But he also has a wickedly quick sense of humor.

So the first time I saw him wearing a pair of his one-of-a-kind plaid pants, I didn’t know quite what to make of them. When people made good natured comments about his bold plaid pants, he just smiled and seemed to take it in stride. He didn’t really make any self-deprecating remarks, so maybe he meant for them to be taken at face value. True, they were quite stylish; but man, that red plaid was loud.

Have You Left this Bag Unattended? 2 of 2

“What’s this?”

“Why that’s . . . an empty fizzy drink bottle with a marble in it.”

Okay, okay, on special occasions, we let Annika and Elise order this Japanese carbonated drink that comes in a glass bottle with a marble in it. I tried to throw the bottle out, but Elise really wanted to keep one as a souvenir.

“Ma’am, you have three copies of Inherit the Wind”

“Why of course I do . . . I am bringing them home . . . to give as gifts . . . to friends.”

“Ma,am, what’s in this shoe box?”

“Well shoes of course . . . um, well I mean Christmas ornaments as you can plainly see.” Oops.

After hemming and hawing her way through the VanNoord’s bag of random stuff, they finally let her zip it up and be on her way.

I didn’t quite get everything into the suitcase that I had originally set aside. When I was in Indonesia, I found several large discarded pottery shards on the side of the road. I of course, picked them up and brought them back to Hong Kong. I am just glad that I hadn’t packed those. Thinking quick on your feet to explain away an empty glass bottle with a marble in it is one thing; explaining away large chunks of sharp pottery would be something different altogether.

-Jack

Over the last eighteen months –all of our visitors to Hong Kong have asked if there were anything they could bring us from The States. But if you come to Hong Kong in the next four months, you should really ask if there is anything you can bring back to The States for us. I will probably send you home with a full suitcase. But I promise to divulge in detail the contents of the suitcase. No surprises; I promise.

Have You Left this Bag Unattended? 1 of 2

“Has anyone approach you in the airport asking you to carry anything onto the plane for him?”

“No”

“Did you pack all of your bags yourself?”

“Um . . . . yes.”

Our friend and colleague Renata was in the airport customs. She was on her way to Chicago for an orchestra teachers’ convention. Knowing that we were moving back to Chicago in four months- she had graciously asked if she could take a bag back to Chicago for us.

Not surprisingly, we have accumulated just a bit of stuff over the last two years. We arrived with eight suitcases and four carry-ons. But we have significantly more than that now: clothing, some home décor items, and a just a few souvenir items for my classroom back in Chicago. Shipping is expensive, so we were very thankful when Renata made her offer.

I tried to think of everything to make sure that her delivery went without a hitch. I weighed our suitcase twice to make sure it was well under the fifty-pound weight limit. I labeled the suitcase with our name and Chicago address. I even drew a map on a big sheet of paper for the courier who would be driving the suitcase out to the suburbs.

What I didn’t think to do was tell Renata what exactly was inside the suitcase.

The immigration officer explained to Renata that they randomly stopped every twentieth passenger. And she was number twenty. After asking her a few basic questions, they asked her if these were her suitcases. “Why, yes, they are.”

“Would you mind opening this one?” They started rummaging through her . . . ur, my stuff.

Going Down

This winter I read a Detective Dee book. Detective Dee stories are about a Chinese magistrate who uses wisdom, cunning, and logic to solve mysteries. They got their start over 500 years ago and are based on an actual Detective Dee.

In the book, one of the murders took place in an apartment that the narrator kept explaining was next to a godown. I had no idea what a godown was. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer and looked it up on the internet.

A godown is simply a warehouse.

The cool thing about this Hong Kong word is that it is not simply a British English word that has stuck around like “lift” for elevator or “flat” for apartment. Godown came into Hong Kong English from the Malay word godong. The word godown is shared among Hong Kong, Malaysia, India and other Southeast Asia countries.

If you are taking the 682 bus back from Hong Kong Island, just after you come out of the East Harbor Tunnel and you are on the Kwon Tung Bypass, you will pass a big warehouse next to the old abandon Kai Tak Airport that has “Kowloon Godown” painted on the side in large letters.

Godown joins shroff (payment office) and nullah (river) as one of those cool Hong Kong English words that did not originate from the English language.

Let the word hunting continue.

Untold Stories part 2 of 2

But alas, that seems to be the trend.

If we are fortunate, non-Holocaust genocides get one movie. Cambodia: The Killing Fields; Rwanda: Hotel Rwanda; Sierra Leone Civil War: Blood Diamond.

But sadly, Hollywood you have inexplicably chosen to ignore critical chapters in history. Twenty million dead during Stalin’s communist reign of terror: nothing. Communist oppression of democratic yearnings in Tiananmen Square: nothing.

Now please, please, please don’t get me wrong. Hollywood, I’m not saying that you don’t need to make any more Holocaust movies. To the contrary, in the spirit of Never Forget, Never Again, you need to keep making them.

But you also need to diversify. Why is it Hollywood, that you seem so committed to chronicling the fascist horrors of mid-century Europe in ever-greater detail, yet you are willing to let the longer-lasting and arguably more-devastating tragedies under communism slip into the realm of the forgotten?

There are important lesson here that I would like to help my students and my daughters learn. Thank you for the movies you have given us. They are invaluable tools that teach important lessons.

But they are not enough.

It’s time to broaden your scope.

-Jack

Earlier this year I read a phenomenal page-turner called “Mao’s Last Dancer” about a boy who grows up in abject poverty in rural China, is plucked from obscurity, and rises to become one of the top ballet dancers in the world. He defects from China to the US and eventually settles in Australia. It is a story of hope, determination, and a mother’s love. And of course, it is set against the larger political backdrop of turmoil that was the Cultural Revolution.

The whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking: this would make an awesome movie, this would make an awesome movie. This fall, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that “Mao’s Last Dancer” has -in fact- been made into a movie . . . but not by Hollywood. It was made by an Australian movie company. It had a limited release in the U.S.

Untold Stories part 1 of 2

-Defiance
-The Reader
-The Hiding Place
-Sophie’s Choice
-Music Box
-Europa, Europa
-Schindler’s List
-Devil’s Arithmetic
-Jakob, the Liar
-The Pianist
-Enemies, a Love Story
-Triumph of the Spirit
-Judgment at Nuremberg
-Everything is Illuminated
-Adam Resurrected
-The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

As part of my students’ education, we have been studying World War II and the Holocaust. If I wanted to show a movie clip depicting the Holocaust, I would certainly have no shortage of English-language movies to pick from. The Anne Frank story alone has been turned into a movie no less than five times.

Likewise, I consider our time in Asia to be part of my daughters on-going education. Our time here has been filled with travel, books, and lots of dinner-table discussions about China past and present. China has been home to some of the Twentieth Century’s most seminal events such as the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square.

The books and discussions have been great, but what I would really like to do is show my daughters some English-language movies that dramatize these key moments in Chinese history. The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was a period every bit as horrific and devastating as the German Holocaust -20 million dead in one year. The Cultural Revolution was a time of acute political oppression and fear. Neighbor turned against neighbor; children against parents; teacher against student. Individuals were forced to decide whether or not to betray the ones they loved in the name of self-preservation. It was a cruel era filled with the most regretful acts of human despicability. But it was also a time filled with individual acts of defiance, courage, and self-sacrifice. The era had political turmoil, human drama, and personal conflict.

Ditto for Tiananmen Square: revolution, man-versus-the-state, courage, resistance, violence, hope, tragedy.

In other words, these events have all of the ingredients necessary for a successful Hollywood Oscar winner. But, when I look for these English-language movies about the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square, I walk away empty-handed. They are nowhere to be found because they don’t exist. Hollywood hasn’t made them.

Okay, that’s not completely true. They made “The Last Emperor” half of which is about the communist purges. A decade of political chaos, tens of millions dead, and we get half a movie.

On second though, don't answer that

I love the school I teach in. It’s awesome. I love my students. They’re great.

A while back my students and I wrapped up our unit on the 1920s and the Jazz Age. As a culminating project they worked in small groups to design a CD case. They had to write liner notes, include pictures, and do the design work. The idea was to make it look like a modern-day CD of greatest hits from the 1920s.

But the twist was, the song titles they included were not supposed to be actual songs. Students were to make up ten titles that reflect the era. “Just Monkeying Around” by J. Scopes and the Courtroom Rascals. That sort of thing.

After working for a few minutes, one group of three boys came up to me to see what I thought of their song titles so far. The way the four boys were huddle together and jostling one another, I should have known something was up.

They showed me the first title: “Triple K.” Okay. Good. I see what you got going there.

Next: “Beautiful Booz.” Prohibition. I get it. But I’m a little uncomfortable with that. We’ll come back to it. What else have you got?

“Jazz in My Pants”

What!? “Jazz in . . . ” What does that even mean . . .? Never mind, don’t answer that. No! No. No, you can’t include a song called “Jazz in my Pants.” Now go sit down and come up with some more song titles.

Oh man, oh man.

Jazz in my pants.

What were they thinking?

Sometimes I think that my students come to school every morning and ask themselves “What can we do today to yank Mr. VanNoord’s chain?”

Oh, the joys of teaching eighth-grade boys.

The Family that Hypothesizes together...

"Dear Grandma:

I finally got my science project up and running late last night with a little help from mom and dad. I think it’s going to work out really well. I’m pretty sure I’ll earn a blue ribbon. I might even win first prize.

The bad news is, I’m not sure my mom and dad’s marriage will ever recover. It’s like the Christmas tree incident of 2003 all over again.

Love,

Your granddaughter.”

Just kidding.

But isn’t it crazy how elementary school science projects end up being family endeavors?

Elise has a really cool topic. There is a myth out there that when set on an open shelf, a McDonalds hamburger will last a freakishly long time before it starts to mold or rot. The assumption is that this is because of additives and preservatives that McDonalds puts in its burgers.

Elise is trying to bust or confirm that myth.

Living in the MTR

The MTR stations in Hong Kong are never just an MTR station. Often, they are part of a much larger mega-mall complex. Or they might have a 40-story housing complex built above them. In the very least, every MTR station has several shops inside.

Our Shek Mun station is just such an MTR station. No mega-mall. No high-rise. Just a 7-Eleven (of course), a couple of ATMs, and a mom-and-pop gift engraving store. Etch your name and anniversary date on a silver plate -that type of thing.

I know it’s a mom-and-pop shop because every time we walk past, we see the mom or the pop or both in the store. We have also deduced that they have one middle-school-aged daughter. How do we know? Because just about every time we walk through the station she is sitting at a computer on the opposite side of the table from her dad. Weekday. Weekend. Afternoon. Evening. It doesn’t seem to matter.

One day, I pointed out to my daughters that this girl is always sitting at her desk in the shop in the MTR. With an eleven-year-old’s penchant for logic and exactitude, Elise called me out and protested “Dad, she isn’t always there.”

I, of course, don’t like being challenged or proven wrong –in particular by eleven-year-olds I’ve spawned.

So now every time we walk through the Shek Mun MTR, I walk a few paces ahead of my family, turn to face them, and as we round the corner I declare slightly louder than necessary “Aaaaaaand, there she is.” I of course can’t actually see whether or not she is there until the moment I announce it, but I have yet to be wrong. She is always there.

I’ve been doing this about once a week for two months now and it's getting pretty obnoxious even by my standards. But no matter how many times my daughters say “Okay, okay, Dad, you are right. She is always there. We should have never contradicted you. Now please stop.” I can’t.

Your mother gets to be right all the time. I get to be right so infrequently. On the rare occasion that I do get to be right, I have to milk it for all its worth.

Girl at the Desk in the Engraving Store: We only have four months left in Hong Kong. Don’t fail me now. If one day, you are not at your little desk and I am proven wrong, I don’t think that I could eat that much crow. Is four more months so much to ask? Could you just stay put until we leave? Thanks.

-Jack

P.S. After all this endless studying, I hope you make valedictorian of your class.