Amanda Roberts's Blog, page 21

Throwback Thursday – Learning to Cook

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog and in my book, moving to China (especially to a rural area) meant having to relearn how to cook. At our first school, Lanjiang Zhizhong, three of our best students, Zoe, Arlene, and Jack, came over one night to help give me a crash course. Even 4 years later, fried potatoes, egg and tomato soup, and sliced carrots are staples around our house. I’ve come a long way since then, but they helped give me the foundations to start cooking again. 

What about you? What struggles with cooking overseas have you had to deal with? How did you cope?

Top 10 Posts of 2014

Well, I for one am happy to see the back of 2014. As much as I love living in Shenzhen, it is so much better than living in Changsha, 2014 was one nightmare of a  year.

But the blog and my writing career are doing much better, which is awesome. So, in case you missed them, here are the top 10 posts from 2014.

1) Be aware of the boob massage.

This is a post I actually wrote almost two years ago, in Jan 2013, but it consistently drives traffic. It didn’t have the most hits in a single day, but over time it has received more hits than any other post. I guess I should write more posts about boobs.

2) The Housekeeper From Hell – Beware of Annie Law.

This post was my highest hitting for a single day ever, at 995 posts (my OCD freaked out at seeing that number). My goal was to warn other people about the dangers of being too trusting when hiring ayis and to warn expats in Shenzhen about Annie specifically. The hits on the blog were nice though. Guess I need more traumatic events to happen more often.

3) It’s Not OK to let your kids poop in public. 

Seeing kids poop and pee in public is all too common in China. And far too many people try to dismiss such behavior as cultural. It isn’t. It’s disgusting, rude, and unsanitary. It needs to stop.

4) Penny Dreadful is Pretty Dreadful – Part One and Part Two

I love the Victorian era, so Penny Dreadful raised a lot of hopes for fans of the genre that it would be an awesome show. Alas, it was pretty terrible, especially since it aired at the same time as Ripper Street and Copper, two shows that were excellent representations of the genre that were cancelled too soon.  In fact, I think it’s pretty terrible that the show that showed women and minorities in the worst light was renewed while Ripper Street and Copper, which both elevated the roles of women and minorities, were cancelled. It says a lot about our society, and nothing good.

5) Book Review: Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity in Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost.

This really old post (from 2012), and I’m glad to see it still getting so much traffic because this is possibly the worst book written about China. I still get mad just thinking about. The book is just so wrong on so many levels, I can’t stand it.

6) Erotic, Antique Chinese Art (NSFW)

Ok, ok, this article is a bit of clickbait since you can find so many more examples of erotica around the web, but I just had to share this artwork I found in Macau. I should have bought the damn thing.

7) Why China Needs Feminism – So All People Can be Held Responsible for Their Actions.

I’ve done a few posts on why China needs feminism, but this one was the most popular, and one that had me fuming. Not only was a 16-year-old girl raped and the man not charged, the girl gave birth to twins and the rapist is not legally responsible for the children! Read this one to get your blood boiling.

8) A Visit to a Karen Hilltribe Village.

This post was part of my Two Americans in China in Thailand series from almost two years ago (I can’t believe our Thailand trip was two years ago!). The trip was amazing and I highly recommend people interested in traveling abroad to go to Thailand. Beautiful country, fascinating history and culture, and delicious food! Out of all my posts about Thailand, though, I think this one is the most popular because of the amazing pictures. When we visited the Karen people, I felt like I worked for National Geographic. The people are beautiful and the “giraffe neck women” are something I never thought I would see in my life. Really amazing trip.

9) China’s New Two-Child Policy Leading to More Sex-Selective Abortions?

This was one of the most depression posts of the year. China recently relaxed some rules regarding the one-child policy to allow more families to have two children. While this is far more of a pittance than many people think it is, it quickly starting some very disturbing trends, including more abortions of female fetuses.

10) Why Guangzhou Closing Its Baby Hatch Changes Nothing.

In China, often the most helpless receive the least amount of help. Child abandonment is rampant here. In the past, babies were usually abandoned because they were girls. While this still happens, the largest number of babies that are abandoned have health issues. Some of the health issues are simple and can be easily corrected while others are life-threatening. China’s one-child policy and the country’s worthless health care system both contribute to this sad state of affairs.

Thanks so much for reading! Be sure to keep up with all the news and posts here at Two Americans in China through our mailing list, Facebook, and Twitter. Here’s to a great 2015!

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The Housekeeper from Hell – Beware of Annie Law

This has been an extremely traumatic week, and I never thought such terrors would come from my housekeeper.

In China, it is common practice for anyone middle-class or higher to have a housekeeper (or “ayi” as they are known here). Many ayis also work as nannies, even in expat homes. Usually, you will give a set of keys to the ayi so she can clean when you aren’t home and she will clean once or twice a week.

The ayi I had until this week worked for me for nearly a year. She spoke limited English (which is rare for a housekeeper) and was well-known in the expat community. I don’t know what her Chinese name is, but in English she goes by Annie Law. Annie and I have never had any issues. She did a good job for a reasonable price. She always gave me a hug when she saw me and I was always nice to her. We even talked about her Chinese New Year bonus and I was planning on giving her more than the double rate she said was standard. So what happened this week was a total shock.

On Tuesday, I received a WeChat message from a friend of mine. WeChat is kind of like Facebook and a text-chat program in one. I don’t usually use the Facebook aspect of it, but it is the main messaging app used in China now, so I use it for chatting. Anyway, she messaged me with “OMG, your housekeeper is crazy. I hope you called the police on her.” I was like “Uhh…what are you talking about?” So I moved over the “moments” (the Facebook area) and started looking through the entries. My head started spinning when I saw nude photos of myself posted by Annie.

The last time I was in America, I had some boudoir photos taken as an anniversary gift for my husband. I also took them for myself to boost my self-esteem. They worked, haha. I love the photos and am very proud of them. But they are private, something I don’t plan on sharing with the rest of the world. I had the photos in a black photo album, under a box, on my dressing table. No one would know they were there unless they were looking for them. She didn’t even need to move them to clean because the table is small and doesn’t need to be cleaned. Even if she did move them to clean, the album was inconspicuous and she had no reason to open it.

Not only did she open it, she looked through the whole book and took pics with her cell phone of some of the raciest photos in the book, ones in the very back. She then posted the photos to her WeChat moments with the caption “Take down Amanda.”

As I said, she and I have never had issues – I’m not a bad employer, so I have no idea why she would want to ‘take me down.’ I’m not even sure that was what she meant, though. She has always spoken limited English, but anything more complicated than “I will come on Wednesday” isn’t always very clear.

As I said, I don’t use WeChat moments very much, so I started panicking as I realized that the photos had been up for at least three days by the time I saw them. And, as I said, Annie works for several expat families, many of whom I know. It was a friend of mine who alerted me in the first place. So I have no idea how many expats in the community saw the photos.

As I sat at my desk in shock, I had no idea what to do, but I finally managed to ask my boss for help. She told me to take screen shots of everything and then tell her to take the photos down. I took screen shots of her posts that had to do with me (though I wish I had screen shots of everything) and then messaged her and told her to take the photos down.

This was where things started getting very weird. Everything she posted after this point makes no sense. I asked her several times to write in Chinese, but she refused. This is how she responded when I started messaging her in Chinese:

She also didn’t take the photos down immediately, but instead posted them again.

Yeah, I blocked out my photos, too bad for you, haha, but you get the gist.

I looked through her other moments and started noticing other weird things. She had posted pictures of items from other people’s apartments, knickknacks, pics of photos of children, pics of pets, and wads of cash along with captions stating who she was cleaning for that day. She also was posting lots of gibberish that made no sense in any language.

Even though the things she posted about other expat families was nothing near as horrible as what she did to me, they were certainly a breach of trust and was even a safety issue. Posting pics of money and saying where she was working was just inviting thieves.

When I realized that other families were possibly in danger, I started asking around to find out if she was acting weird around other people. Not only had she been acting weird, I quickly came in contact with half a dozen other families who had fired her in the last three months.

Everyone agrees that Annie used to be wonderful. She had worked for other families for years, had tons of references, and even cooked for some of them. She only started acting weird in the last few months. I’ve been collecting stories from people who have had to let her go. Incidents range from not coming to work without notice, gossiping, hitting someone’s cat, and leaving someone’s house keys at a bar in Shekou. She has been cussing at employers who confront her about her behavior and has been demanding money from people.

She eventually did take down all the posts, the pics, the crazy talk, and blocked me, so I couldn’t see her posts anymore. But many of her friends are my friends, so I still have people checking her posts. She has posted several things about me but has not reposted the pics.

Last night, we changed our locks. Even though she eventually mailed my house keys to a friend of mine, keys are easily copied, so I just didn’t feel safe until we got new locks. More and more people are letting her go and are changing their locks as well, but I want to spread the word as much as possible. Something is wrong with this woman. She has gone crazy and is a danger to the community. If she works for you, you should fire her immediately. If she approaches you and offers you her card for her cleaning services, do not hire her. She has broken the trust of many families in Shenzhen. I believe that what she did to me was criminal and I wish I could press charges, but that would mean showing the police my pictures and what she did with them, which might make things worse for me. The best way to make sure she pays for her crime is by protecting other families and making sure she never makes her way into another expat home again. 

If Annie Law has worked for you, feel free to share your story in the comments.

 

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Throwback Thursday – Our First Christmas

Happy Holidays, Dear Readers! I thought an appropriate Throwback Thursday post would be a picture of our first Christmas in China.

Christmas is not very popular here, and it is even more rare the more rural you get. In Lixian, the Christmas hats we are wearing are about all the Christmas things we could find. But our students and our Foreign Affair Officer (FAO) Cindy made an effort to do something special for us for Christmas.

Our school had a secret upstairs canteen that served teachers and large groups on special occasions, so they rented the room out and had the cooks prepare us a special lunch.

Seth, the balloon animal king, made a Christmas wreath out of balloons his parents mailed to us. Even though it was nothing like an American Christmas and we even had to work Christmas day (like we do almost every year), we still had a lot of fun and it was a very memorable day.

How about you? How do you try to make Christmas special living in China?

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Guest Post by Merry Gu – Student Voices

One of the hardest things about my job is editing the “opinion” page of the paper. We have a lot of freedom on that page and can pretty much publish anything we want, but the same two old Chinese men write almost every week. There is the “China is great at all the things” guy and “America sucks except when Japan sucks more” guy. It has been my personal mission to increase diversity on the opinion page by seeking out more diverse writers and more diverse topics, but it has been an uphill battle.

One of our teen writers, a Chinese-American teenager living near Philly, just wrote one of the best opinion pieces I have seen in months about how the voices of young people are making a difference in protests in America and online. I tried to get it boosted to the opinion page on Monday, but I lost because then there would have been a hole in the teen page. Oh well. Merry was kind enough to let me repost her piece here because I think it just needs way more attention than it would normally get hidden on the teen pages. Enjoy!

Student Voices – Speaking Up

In the undeniably tempestuous world that we live in today, it’s not surprising that certain groups of people are in a state of protest or disapproval of policies, standards, and situations. Historically, in the United States, two significant examples of this are the civil rights movements for women’s suffrage and racial equality. Whether protected legally by the government or not, citizens of many nations have been fighting for causes in which they believe for decades. Relatively recently, however, came the advent of the student protest: that is, young people, particularly those on high school and college campuses, assembling or speaking out on issues that they are passionate about.

Over the past few months, such cases of protest and raising awareness have been especially prevalent with the situations in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, regarding the deaths of two unarmed black men at the hands of white police officers.

Among the thousands of people who have spoken up in the name of freedom and equality, many of them have been young people, concerned about their own future and future generations to come. In response to the recent cases in America, many protestors have stepped into the streets armed with posters and their unwavering beliefs. Braving the cold, the wet and the many potential dangers of rioters, these citizens, many of them young black men and women, have raised their voices and subsequently increased awareness about their cause. Even just outside Philadelphia, not 45 minutes away from where I live, major roadways have been closed up as protestors flooded the streets. Without a doubt, the effects of certain political situations — and the nation’s ensuing anger and disappointment — can be felt everywhere around America.

Protesting in streets and neighborhoods is not the only way younger citizens are becoming more involved in social and political issues nowadays. Many have taken to the Internet as a means of reaching out and informing others. Even emerging stories and important correlations and findings that are given very little media attention spread like wildfire throughout Internet communities, a community comprised mainly of young adults.

Tumblr users have continually posted photos, videos, and text regarding assembly, protest, and rioting, even including advice on treating victims of tear gas and providing backstories about viral pictures. Others have shared posters that can be printed out and posted around communities. Countless celebrities, too, have made their opinions clear regarding certain issues via social networks such as Twitter and Instagram.

It has been said that the freedoms of speech and assembly are keys to a smoothly operating government. Whether or not this is true, the method of unconventional political participation has undoubtedly drawn attention to the issues they are concerned with. Citizens across the globe have participated in discussing and protesting issues plaguing the country. These topics rarely go unacknowledged in social studies classes. Most of all, the young people who care about problems in their countries will not let them go unnoticed. Clearly, the adolescent community is a force to be reckoned with in the face of apparent injustices and political unrest.

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Netflix’s Marco Polo – Review

My husband and I spent the last week binge watching Marco Polo, Netflix’s answer to HBO’s Game of Thrones and Starz’ Outlander. Marco Polo is about the son of an Italian merchant, trader, and explorer who was left at the court of Kublai Khan (the Emperor of the Mongols) around 1273. Marco Polo was the most expensive TV show to date, at a cost of around $90 million for one season (GoT runs about $60 million per season). Was it worth the money? My husband gave it a “meh” review, but I’m much more talkative than he is, so here is my painstakingly detailed review.

Here is a list of what I like about the show:


The opening credits.

I love the erhu and ink and wash paintings, so the opening is nice.

Lots of female characters.

Racial diversity of the characters

The show has Chinese, Arabic, and Caucasian actors, and the Caucasians are in the minority.

The show emphasizes the differences between various types of Asians.

It is impossible to walk away from this show thinking all Asians, or even all Chinese, are the same. The main conflict in the show is how the Mongol Emperor, Kublai Khan, is trying to overthrow the last of the Song Dynasty rulers so he can rule all of China. Even though the Mongols eventually succeed and the Yuan Dynasty is considered a Chinese dynasty, the Mongols are not Chinese.  This is played out most significantly in the character of Kublai Khan’s son, Prince Jingim. Jingim is a Mongol, but he was educated in the ways of the Chinese, which makes him an outcast among his own people and brings his right to inherit the throne of the Khan into question.

 

 

 

Foot binding.

For the first two episodes, I was wondering “why don’t any of these women have bound feet?” By the end of the Song Dynasty, foot binding was in full vogue in China. I realize the actresses wouldn’t really have bound feet, but with costumes, prosthetics, and CGI, I couldn’t believe that none of the women had bound feet. In episode 3, the feet of the Song princess Ling Ling are bound by her sadistic uncle. The show does a decent job of showing the horror of this practice, but it ends up being only a minor plot point and no other women in the show have bound feet, even though most upper class Chinese women would have had bound feet during this time.

What I don’t like or find questionable:


A show that is set entirely in Asia and centers on two Chinese dynasties STILL stars a white guy.

Sure, I get that Marco Polo is an interesting and fantastical character. He is almost Disney-esque with his “stranger in a strange land” story. But, come on, don’t we have enough of those? There is nothing original about setting a white guy in a brown culture ans then ooh-ing and ahh-ing over how different and exotic everything is.

It isn’t as if there aren’t epic and exciting tales about Chinese explorers and warriors out there. Many people have compared Marco Polo to Game of Thrones since both involve a fight for the throne. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of China’s most epic works of literature, does this also. The life of China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang Di also centered around uniting a huge territory under one banner. As does the story of Kublai Khan’s grandfather Ghengis.

There are also many women in Chinese history, other than Mulan, who fought to either secure or overthrow dynasties. Princess Pingyan helped overthrow the Sui Dynasty and placer her father on the throne as the founder of the Tang dynasty.  Li Xiu helped defeat rebels and secure the Jin dynasty. There are dozens more.

The Silk Road also went both ways. As much as people like to imagine that all of Europe was all white all the time, it just isn’t true. Europe has had Asian and Arabic merchants, diplomats, and explorers coming through just as long as there have been white people going to Asia. They could have told the story about a Chinese merchant family who had to leave their son at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor or something. Believe it or not, writers and producers can create their own story. Hell, Game of Thrones isn’t set in any real universe.

The sexualization and fetishization of every woman on the show.

On the one hand, there is going to be sex in the show. Since the show stars only Chinese women, of course Chinese women are going to have sex. That is not the problem. Sex is a good thing, and female expressions of pleasure are a good thing. The problem is that every single woman on the show is sexualized in some way. Most of them have very graphic sex scenes . The ones who don’t are still involved in a sex scene in some way. It’s implied that Empress Chabli and one of the concubines have a private tryst. Chabli is also involved in an orgy with the harem and Kublai. There are also several scenes with large groups of completely naked women.

Even little Ling Ling, who is about 8, is sexualized by her creepy uncle. Foot binding was inextricably linked to fetishizing and infantalizing women.

The only woman who isn’t sexualized is the elderly Song Empress, mostly likely because she is the only woman on the show who looks older than 40.

Even the open credits features a sexualized murder of a woman. Did you catch it?

On the other hand, lots of male characters on the show are not sexualized. They are allowed to exist and have plots that are separate from their sexuality.

Lack of diversity in female roles.

While the show has lots of women, and they have various roles spanning the gamut of Empress, princess, whore, assassin, warrior, child, adviser, etc., they still all fall into two basic categories: Lady or Whore. All of the women are either nobility (Empress or princess) or whore (concubine/consort). This is a huge problem in genre fiction in general, which I’ve written about before, that seriously needs to stop. Even in traditionally patriarchal societies, women had more roles and existed in more spheres than Lady and Whore.

Final thoughts.

I read an article today that called Marco Polo a flop for Netflix. I hope this isn’t true. I don’t think that just because a show is hugely problematic it should automatically be cancelled. The show is entertaining enough. Episodes 2 and 8 were especially exciting and I would encourage everyone to watch the whole series. However, I hope that if the show is renewed that Netfix will seriously consider all of the criticism and improve. Even though the show stars a white guy, no other show on TV has the racial diversity of Marco Polo, and that needs to be encouraged and supported. Studios are not going to pour money into racial diverse projects if the projects don’t turn a profit.

Have you watched the show? What do you think?

 

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Throwback Thursday – Deadly Snowflakes

When my husband and I first came to China in 2010, the plan was to stay two years. Well, we are now going on our fifth year, and we don’t have any plans to leave. It’s hard to believe that we have been here long enough to start doing Throwback Thursday posts, but we have. My goal is to go back through my files and find old pictures that never made it onto the blog and tell the story behind them. This is for a couple of reasons, including blogging more regularly and taking part in something fun, but also because I stopped blogging about daily life in China a long time ago. After about a year, life in China just became…life. It stopped feeling interesting, novel, or noteworthy. We were just two people going to work, having dinner, watching TV just like everyone else, or so we felt. But it isn’t that simple. Life here is different than it is in America, and many days it’s really hard. And our life is interesting to most of our readers, people who still live in the West., so this series is for our readers and for ourselves. So, here is our first TBT post!

Finding a learning activity for over 60 teenagers is really hard, and one of the reasons I started hating teaching. But after the first light snowfall we experienced when our first winter in Hunan, I had the bright idea of teaching the kids to make paper snowflakes. They really enjoyed the activity and came up with some amazing designs. The problem came when I tried to stick the snowflakes on the doors and windows. The kids completely freaked out. In China, white is the color most associated with death, so putting anything white on windows and doors invites death. I tried to overcome this by getting them to understand that in Western culture, that isn’t a superstition, so they should put them up anyway. But they were having none of it. I was at least able to get one picture before they took them all back down.

Have you heard this superstition or anything like it before?

 

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Amazing Expat Spends Last Seeing Days With Students

Teachers in China have a bad rap, and many rightly deserve to be criticized and even looked down on. Far too many unqualified expats come to China to “teach” just to make a buck at the expense of the students, parents, and schools.

But every once in a while, a teacher comes along who completely reaffirms your faith in humankind. Nicholas Pretorius is one of those people. Pretorius was recently profiled by the Shenzhen Daily, but that is so much less than he deserves.

In 2001, Pretorius was diagnosed with Ocular Choroid Nerve Recession, an eye disease so rare there is hardly any information on the Internet about it. The disease has no cure and 90% of patients are blind by the age of 40. What would you do if you knew that eventually you wouldn’t be able to see any more? It’s a scary thought, but Pretorius decided to use his time teaching in China.

Around 2004, Pretorius arrived in China to begin his teaching career, and he has done very well. He teaches students who compete in the Star of Outlook English Talent Competition. In 2013, one of his students won the competition and another one was the runner up.

I was really moved by what he said in his recent interview with the Shenzhen Daily:

“I’m afraid that someday I might wake up and not be able to see,” he said. “I just want to teach more students before that.” He has set a quantitative goal in this regard. “I have taught more than 70,000 students in China. I hope I can teach 100,000 students before I can’t see the sun.”

The whole article is really worth a read because it is very moving. 

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Anything Goes!

I grew up watching the Indiana Jones movies pretty much on a constant loop, and my favorite was The Temple of Doom! I always loved the opening scene where Willie Scott (played by Kate Capshaw) sang Anything Goes in Chinese. My youngest sister always had a ear for picking up songs and could sing this (along with several Disney songs) before she could speak in complete sentences. China is the land of KTVs, and I would love to bust out into a rendition of this one night after enough drinks.

I scoured the internet but was not able to find actual Chinese lyrics to this song, but I did find a very good phonetic translation over at The Raider. If anyone does have (or could write) an actual translation, let me know so I can add it here for future Temple of Doom fans to find.

Yi wang si-i wa ye kan dao

Xin li bian yao la jing bao jin tian zhi dao

Anything goes

Yi wang el lu chu cha ku chom yi how

Chin su shu sha ley fong yen yi dao yi dao

Anything goes

Wang kwong sheh sheh yi den dao dao

Pyen da way ba pyeh weh dao

Mong weh zong zu da doh zu jah quay mee ko sha

Goot zu was wet fay wah long deh lah

Dong ma zeh hong za dao song yi ding way bao

Anything goes

(After the tapdance sequence, faster tempo than rest of the song)

Dong ma zeh hong za dao song yi ding way bao

Anything goes

 

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Check out our new shop!

I’ve been wanting to open an online shop here on the blog for a while, but I imagined it would be a really difficult thing. Apparently, with WordPress, it’s very easy! Check it my new shop here.  Just click on “Crazy Products” at the top of the page, select your items, then click on “checkout” under “Crazy Products” and complete the checkout process. All payments are processed through Paypal, but once you set up a Paypal account you can pay with a credit card or directly through your bank.

The Perfect Christmas Present

The Amazing Dumplinger

My awesome in-laws just finished mailing out all of the rewards from my Crazy Dumplings Kickstarter, and we had a few items leftover. So I made 10 gift sets that include 1 paperback book, 1 dumplinger, and 1 paper-cutting bookmark. For only $21.95, you get all three items! The books are retailing for $20.95 on Amazon, so by buying them directly from me in this package, you are almost getting the dumplinger and bookmark for free. It is such a great deal!

The gift set is only available for shipping in the 48 continental United States. Sorry, but I’m still figuring out how to work the shipping options and I don’t know if any international packages would arrive in time for Christmas.

You can also purchase the eBook version of Crazy Dumplings in a variety of formats.

I want to thank everyone who has helped me get my book published. I am very proud of it and so happy it is now getting into people’s hands! Happy Holidays, everyone, and may your dumplings ever be crazy!

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