Chapter 2: Hel-lo Hai-kou

Ok, well you know how I said I'd post the next chapter "soon"?  Yeah... well it's been a long time... Actually, I was hoping to post this one just a few days after posting the last one, but this just took me an especially long time to write (which doesn't necessarily mean it's good). Since I started this chapter: over a month has passed, I've walked on the Great Wall, I've braced for four typhoons (nothing serious), and I've begun attending a Chinese school. None of the above I even touch in this chapter, so while it's long, it hardly even scratches the surface of what I have seen and what I have done and what I have learned. Anyway, here it is:

Chapter 2: Hel-lo Hai-kou

Wow, this is difficult. Where do I even begin... I've been in Haikou for 3 weeks now, and it's finally beginning to feel pretty uncomfortable. Yay! Ok, well, I don't mean uncomfortable in the obvious sense like with the food, and the weather, and my wooden plank of a bed; that all I've pretty much gotten used to by now... not completely, but enough so that I don't feel physically uncomfortable. I think it's starting to set-in how long I'm going to be here for, because lately I've been feeling a little trapped, and everything that makes China NOT a first world country has been becoming largely apparent. China really is bizarre, or at least Haikou is, and right now I've been having bouts of not being able to decide whether or not I like it. Haikou is not really what I expected when I imagined going to China, looking back, and I'm not sure why but I think it has to do with a few things: 

• Hainan isn't very old: Hainan is the newest province in China (if you don't count Chongqing, which became a municipality in 1997) becoming separate from Guangdong province in 1988; and while people lived here long before that happened, there's nothing really in the city that can be considered "ancient." There's the "old street," which is a preserved section of Haikou from around the mid 19th century to the early 20th century, and it's beautiful, but none of the buildings there can really be considered "ancient." Also, my host mother moved here the first year Hainan became its own province, and she told me that the city has changed a lot since she first came, and now most of the buildings built 20 or 30 years ago are all being torn down to make way for new high-rises, so there's not been much in the way of physical "ancient" history that I've seen so far here, and I guess that was something I was expecting to find more of in China.
• Its tropical: It is very warm and humid here, staying pretty much in the 80s and 90s throughout the day and night. My host mother told me that pretty much everything looks the same year round, and that many of the flowers do not stop blooming... not once during the year. Yeah, it is beautiful here, and I'm sure to many people that sounds like a dream, but then I hear about it being in the 60s and rainy back home, and I realize how I'm going to miss out on fall, winter (which I can survive without), and spring; and when I thought of China I guess I really didn't imagine it to be tropical.
• It is more third-worldly than I was expecting: I guess this one I could chalk-up to naivety, but I really was convinced that China was a little more developed in terms of infrastructure than it actually is. Well, not exactly, but it's very different from the US. Before I left, my brother warned me that I'd miss the "first-worldliness" of the US, and I kind of disregarded it saying something like "I think China's a bit more developed now, I don't think it will feel like a third-world country," which I suppose to some extent, in some places in China, may be true, but he was right; I miss the US. I think this largely has to do with where I am located in China, because even in Foshan there were some parts of the city that felt very comfortable and clean and organized in a way that does not really exist in Haikou. While overall I'd say it's more comfortable than Foshan because it is smaller and the nature within the city is beautiful, it is still very apparent that China is not yet a developed country.
• I guess I just had too many expectations: Before coming I knew I could not have any expectations, and even though I felt pretty open-minded, I knew they were still there because, well, how couldn't they be? I had been dreaming of going to "China" for years, and even though I had talked to many people who had been there/who were from there, I had seen many pictures and watched many videos and movies, and had even gone to Hong Kong (which everybody who had been to both HK and the mainland said was "not the same") I felt fairly confident in my image of what China would be like. I still believe a lot of what I had expected does exist, just... somewhere else in China. After all, China's big, and I know I didn't have Hainan or even Guangdong in mind when I thought of "China." Now that I'm actually in China, I still don't exactly feel like I'm in "China," but while I think it does have to do with the fact that I had been building this place up in my head for so long, I think it's really just because China feels so normal, in China.

I haven't really missed home yet, which I think is a good thing, but I have missed listening to conversations in English, real pizza, and my soft bed (that's a metaphor, but also not). However, rather than dwelling on what China is not, I'm going to talk about what China is.

The Food.

Ok here we go, let's talk about the food in China Hainan (food varies a lot throughout the country so I think it's best not to assume any generalizations yet). I bet many of you would like to know how the food has been here. Well, as I said before, I was greeted with an amazing plate of homemade 水饺 shuǐ jiǎo (not to be confused with 睡觉!) with a side of Sichuan-style 麻辣 má là sauce, followed by a little cake all to myself. That was amazing, and I felt so full afterwards as my host mother made me finish the entire bowl of dumplings as well as the entire cake! She had already eaten, and 弟弟 dì di (my host brother) is allergic to eggs so the cake was pretty much up to me to finish. I figured she had made so much food for just two of us as a sort of welcome gesture, but, once again, I was wrong. Eating here is a lot of work! Back home, for me being "full" means I am no longer hungry and I have finished my plate of food; here, however, you are not done eating until you are FULL, like, never have I been asked if I was "done" eating, but instead I'm always asked if I'm "full," or more often, if the food "won't go down" anymore. EVERY. SINGLE. MEAL. This is especially challenging in the mornings before school* (*which I will not cover in this post, sorry everybody) because I'm used to only eating a bowl of cereal, or a bagel, or even just an energy bar, so I usually don't feel hungry when I wake up. On top of that, I wake up at 6:45am (and my host mother said I shouldn't get up earlier so I can get enough sleep) and I have to be out of the house around 7:00am to catch the bus to school, which is hardly enough time to scarf down a whole 馒头 mán tou (Chinese bun), a hard-boiled egg, and a bowl of 糖水 táng shuǐ (sweet soup), only to be sent on my way with grapes and a thing of milk— 

Hold on, I need to take a moment to explain this milk. So I don't know if this is how all milk is here, but my host mother buys a big box of it, filled with individual bags that you drink like a Capri Sun juice pouch, and they are all labeled "Pure Milk"... whatever that means. The weirdest part of this milk? It's not refrigerated. I asked my host mother and she said that it stays good for a month, but if I wanted, I can put mine in the refrigerator if I liked the way it tasted better! It tastes really creamy, and it doesn't say what percentage it is from fat on the individual packets, and I'm used to drinking 2%, so this milk must be at least as much as whole milk because it tastes creamy. 

Anyway, for pretty much the first week or so, I ate all my meals at home, so I wasn't really sure what else was out there... welp, I learned. I can't exactly remember if this was the first time I ate outside of home, but it doesn’t really matter; it was quite the experience. The Saturday after I arrived here, I went with my host mother and host brother to the volcano (yes, volcano, it was cool) and afterwards we decided to eat lunch at a local village restaurant to have good local Hainanese food. The restaurant was pretty much like any other local place if you've ever been to the rural tropics (except for maybe Florida): family-owned, kind of shed-like, very open, plastic chairs, surrounded by nature, it's actually a really relaxed setting... usually. So to those of you who know some Chinese, I'll get straight to the point: I watched 杀鸡shā jī. DISCLAIMER: this part may be a little graphic if my writing is good enough, so, fair warning. Pretty much the first thing my brother did when we got to the restaurant was ask me if I wanted to watch them 杀鸡. Intrigued, I agreed and followed him, figuring that it would be a really interesting and important cultural thing to witness. It took place out in the open, just off to the side, and a stone slab with a gutter cut in near the edges. Basically what happened was some guy came out with two chickens and a knife (you see where I'm going with this, right?), he grabbed the first one, pulled it by its neck, and since they serve it whole, with the head and all, he slit the chicken's throat and let it bleed out into the gutter, still flailing and shrieking! Then when most of the blood was out, he threw it to the side and grabbed the next one, which must've been very aware of what was happening because then it began to shriek bloody murder (I mean, that's sort of what it was)— By this point I was still feeling ok. Sure, it was pretty sad, but this is where food comes from, and it's how the local people did it so I still found it interesting and not entirely gruesome— Once both of them had mostly bled out, they brought out this this bucket of near boiling hot water which the chickens were both thrown into and stirred around. I don't know what this was for exactly, but I just remember seeing their mangled bodies being forced down into the water with a stick, and their heads would occasionally show up at the surface, and their eyes had fogged up, but there was still the occasional kick or flair— I'm not sure why, exactly, but at this point I was beginning to feel sick and dizzy. I suddenly couldn't watch anymore, but I figured that if I just walked away, I would begin feeling better... Nope. Before we had gone to the restaurant, my host family was talking to me about eating this thing called 鹅 é, and I didn't know what it was, so they said they'd show me at the restaurant, which was something I completely forgot about after watching 杀鸡 shā jī (lit. "kill chicken"). Nonetheless, right as I was drifting away to the bathroom sink to wash my face and refresh, my host brother ran up to show me all the 鹅 é, geese, along the way, which were all locked up in cages in a row. The cages were tiny, and there were so many of them, and they were all making the most awful, piercing, frightening quacking sound, and each quack they made made me think of how each of them was just waiting to be slaughtered and cooked, and kept thinking of the chickens nudged around and pushed deeper into the water, and how that was going to happen to these geese too...

I had never felt the way I felt then before in my life. You know how sometimes after you've been lying or sitting down for a long time, and then you stand up really quickly, and you're vision is compromised and you feel very dizzy and lightheaded and feel like you're not even in your body, but then it usually passes after a few seconds? Well, that's exactly what happened to me, excepted it lasted for at least a solid minute. I almost fainted, and I remember just stumbling over to some steps, and sitting down there for a second while my vision turned upside-down. I remember thinking to myself at that moment, "This year is not going to be easy," and while I suppose that may still be true, that was really one of only two moments where I was feeling uncomfortable enough to really doubt my decision to come to China. 

I made my way back down to our table, where my host mother could see right away that something was wrong, and as soon as I said 杀鸡 shā jī, she knew exactly what to do. First she ordered me a cold coconut to drink out of, which was amazing— near the apartment, we can get them for around ¥8, just over $1, which I think is awesome— then she started massaging my hands. You know that softer part of your hand between the index finger and thumb, which I've heard at home been called a "pressure point"? Well, anyway, she massaged that part, and it hurt like crazy! I made it really obvious that I found it extremely painful, and that I thought she was doing it too hard, but she then told me that when you're stressed, that part of the hand gets really stiff and is painful when you pinch it. By massaging that part of the hand, it apparently helps to relieve stress. So I learned many things from this experience.

So anyway, back to food. The chicken came out, and it was prepared in a traditional Hainan style where it is white and somewhat stiff, with a little bit of blood around the bone. As soon as I noticed red, I suddenly became very alarmed and asked my host mother if they prepared it wrong. Her response? "Oh! That’s how it should be. That's how you make it taste good." Apparently in China, it's ok to eat bloody chicken, but it's very dangerous to eat beef that hasn't been thoroughly cooked through, which I guess might have to do with the different bacteria that live here, but I just found it funny to be eating bloody chicken while my host mother said she wouldn't dare cook a bloody steak. Along with the chicken, they brought out a bunch of different sauces and spices that we could mix together to make a dipping sauce. I had no idea what the sauces were, nor do I know how to prepare anything that tastes good unless given clear instructions on what to do, so my host mother whipped up a sauce for me. I think it was something simple like soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, and some chili oil to add a little spice. We also got a boiled vegetable on the side that was really good... but I forgot the name of it 😕. I thought the chicken was delicious, but afterwards my host mother told me it was only "ok," so I just took her word for it.

One more food-related thing happened that day that has stuck with me since then. On the drive home, I remember passing by this one restaurant that said clearly, in large writing, "Dog Meat Restaurant"! And it wasn't even to be ironic or gimmicky in any way; it was a restaurant that served dog meat! While  I had heard about this in the US, I always figured it was just another "this is what China's like" rumor, and figured that if it did actually happen, it was extremely isolated and/or only really occurred in very rural areas, but this was right in the city, so I was just shocked. I've since asked many people about this, including my host mother, and everyone I've talked to has unanimously agreed that is a "horrible" and "cruel" practice, so I think it's fair to say that the majority of Chinese look at dog-eating unfavorably. Apparently it comes from 云南 Yún nán, a province just north west of Hainan bordering Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar, (does anyone remember a few years back when a movement to stop the "Yunnan Dog Eating Festival" went viral?) and it happens to be the most diverse province in the country with its numerous Chinese ethnic minority groups. I think it is pretty much isolated to a few people in the southern corner of the country, and actually when I saw this restaurant that was selling dog, it wasn't that I was immediately horrified or disturbed, just surprised. After all, it seems to be cultural piece of this small part of China, so I'm not really in a position to condemn it or judge, unless they steal dogs from people's homes, (which I've heard of happening, but not since I've been in China, so I don't really have any evidence supporting it) but I hope that doesn't make me a terrible person. 

Ok, back to the regular food. There are few differences between each of the meals, as there isn't really the distinction between "breakfast foods" and "lunch/dinner foods." Aside from the food, which can all pretty much be eaten at any meal without it feeling like "breakfast for dinner," pretty much every meal includes meat (usually more than one kind, and usually at least one is pork), at least one type of vegetable, 米饭 mǐ fàn steamed or boiled rice, and a type of soup (which can be as simple as the water used to cook the vegetables or boil noodles). As for table manners and things that aren't acceptable, there really aren't any. Especially at home, my host mother is really lax about how I eat food, so long as I am eating it (that's really all that's important, I've learned). At home, I have really only figured out two set rules: don't play with your food (EAT IT), and don't drink water when it's time to eat. Yep, that's right, my host mother does not let us drink water during meals. Why? She says because when you drink water, your stomach gets filled really quickly, so you eat less food, and then after the meal your stomach gets empty a lot quicker, so by drinking water, you get less nutrition. That's why every meal she prepares some sort of soup, to satisfy the need for something to drink, while also providing the nutrition of food. In the US, I always heard that in China, when you're not using your chopsticks you should leave them placed on the bowl or to the side of it on the table, because if you leave them in the bowl, it reminds people of death, as when someone dies, you leave a bowl of rice with the chopsticks in it for their spirit to eat. When I noticed at home my host mother would sometimes leave chopsticks sitting in the bowls, and I asked her if that was ok. She said that at home it doesn't really matter unless you stick the chopsticks straight up in a bowl of rice, but that I don't really need to worry about leaving them out of the bowl unless I'm in public. Other than those few things, it's up to you how you eat. You can use chopsticks, a spoon, your hands, pick up the bowl, bring the bowl up to your mouth to drink out of it or scoop food into your mouth with chopsticks... just about anything. Pretty much everything is eaten out of a bowl, and when you go to a restaurant, there's usually a bowl on a plate with a spoon and chopsticks, but the bowl is what you put food into and eat out of, and the plate is just for scraps like bones and pits and stems. Napkins aren't really a given anywhere, so pretty much everyone carries around packets of tissues (also used in the restroom). and when they are provided by the restaurant, they are paper and small like tissues. One more thing about food: meat is a really important part in pretty much every meal here (well, so are vegetables, but not to the same extent), so when you're eating meat, if it's not bone, it's edible, and you eat it. At home, if it doesn't come off with a bit of tearing, or come apart with a bit of chewing, it's not meant to be eaten; here, however, you eat whatever can be chewed. I learned this by eating 猪脚 zhū jiǎo pig foot, something that's pretty popular here, and that is very fatty and chewy, and whenever I would give up on a piece and spit it out figuring I got everything that I could out of it, I would be reminded that "you can eat that part too, it's meat." 

Well now that I've gone over some general things, you probably want to know what I eat on a daily basis. Let's go by meal:

Breakfast— usually consists of 面包 miàn bāo, bread, that my host mother makes herself, and is usually made of flour and sometimes has raisins in it. Then there's usually something usually something liquid, which could be yogurt (which you "drink" not "eat"), a 糖水 táng shuǐ (sweetened bean soup), or a 粥 zhōu (porridge that can be made out of corn, white rice, etc.). My host mother usually also boils or cries an egg for me and sends me on my way with a thing of that milk and whatever I didn't finish (usually the bread).

Lunch— on weekdays, I almost always eat lunch at school, but when I'm at home it's pretty much the same as dinner. At school it's around ¥14 per meal, which is around $2, so, not bad. Every tray gets a huge scoop of rice (which I never seem to be able to finish), and you walk up to a long array of different dishes of all different kinds, and they're actually not bad! Actually, there have been a lot that I thought tasted really good at school. I usually get a meat and a vegetable, and it's a good opportunity to try foods I'm not really familiar with. I think the only thing I've had that I wasn't a big fan of was 猪肝 zhū gān, pork liver, but I think it's just because I'm not used to it. After lunch, us exchange students didn't get dorms for napping (don't ask me why), but they let us leave campus during lunchtime, which goes from 12:00n-2:40pm (all of which is referred to as "中午 zhōng wǔ," "noon," in Chinese). When we do go out, we usually go get bubble tea, which happens probably more often than it should. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Dinner can be a lot of things. It can be 红烧肉 hóng shāo ròu red braised pork, and 丝瓜 sī guā (a very watery, refreshing green vegetable), some fish (which my host mother says makes you smart because when you eat it you really have to focus and watch out for the bones), 米饭 mǐ fàn or 稀饭 xī fàn (a 粥 zhōu made with white rice), some sort of soup; or instead of all that, sometimes she makes noodles, which mixes all these elements together into one dish. A lot of times my host mother likes to make what she calls "中西结合 zhōng xī jié hé," or in other words, "Chinese-Western fusion." This could be something as simple as making a Chinese noodle dish with Italian pasta, or something as involved as making pizza out of 馒头 màn tóu (Chinese bun), ketchup, cheese slices, and some other toppings (Chinese people can't seem to believe that a lot of the time we pizza without any toppings), cooked in a rice cooker since they don't really have ovens here. 

One thing I'm fairly certain of is that food is a very important social tool. I think it's really how people show affection here. My host mother makes sure I'm full every meal, piles up my brother's bowl even when he downright refuses any more food, and every time I meet someone new outside of school, there's always food! My host mother taught me the meaning of a phrase that I remember seeing all the time at Chinese camp: 民以食为天 mín yǐ shí weì tiān, which roughly translates to "food is heaven." It describes how Chinese people regard food as the most important thing in life, since without food, we die, so without food, everything else becomes meaningless, no matter how practical it may be in ordinary circumstances. 

I could still say so much about the food, but I think this is enough for now, so I'll add more later.

The People.

It's very interesting being a foreigner in China. And by "foreigner," I mean someone who is not ethnically Chinese. In Chinese, there isn't really a difference in the way you describe someone's ethnicity and their nationality. People of Chinese ethnicity are still "Chinese," and if your Chinese is good enough, a lot of people will just think you're from China. This happened to a friend of mine who goes to my school. She's from Indonesia, but her family comes from China, and her Chinese is really good. So one time after lunch a group of us exchange students went out and bought some coconuts, and my friend from Indonesia and I ordered in Chinese. The guy selling the coconuts was so surprised that we were a group foreign teenagers speaking in Chinese to him! Then he asked me a few questions, the usual: 

"Wow! You're Chinese is very good!" This is pretty much something that can be said about anyone who can say at least one sentence in Mandarin without a mistake. "Where are you from?"

"The U.S."

"Ah, the U.S. And how long have you been here?"

"We've only been here for about a month, and we're here for the school year. But I've been studying Chinese for four years now."

"Oh, four years, I see. Well you speak very cleanly."

"Well, I have a lot to learn, but thank you."

Then usually the conversation ends right there, or we might exchange WeChats, or occasionally they'll ask for a picture with you. Afterwards he asked my friend if she was from Haikou, to which she simply responded, "no," and then he asked us for a picture. I guess he still figured she was Chinese, because he handed his phone to her, and stood by us Italian, German, Australian, and American students, waiting for her to take the picture. It was kind of funny. Either he actually thought she was from China, or he didn't think it was important to get a picture taken with another ethnically Chinese person. Either way, that's sort of how Chinese people see foreigners. Unless you are black, white, Japanese, Indian, Thai, etc... anything but Chinese, you will probably not be considered a foreigner the way, let's say, white people are foreigners (black people, meanwhile, are almost always specified as "black"). 

If you are a "foreigner" of any kind, you will probably get a lot of stares, so long as you are not in a city with many other foreigners like 北京 Beǐ jīng，上海 Shàng hǎi, or 广州 Guǎng zhōu. I guess I found it amusing at first, especially when they'd take pictures, but sometimes if I'm not having the best day, or if I'm tired and just want to get home from school, I just get so sick of it all. One day I was feeling a little bit less than excited to be in China, and I was tired and just wanted to be at home. I remember sitting on the bus, and another bus pulled up next to ours, and on it was this woman and her son, and their eyes came across me, and they started staring. I don't know why but this time I suddenly couldn't stand it. I sort of covered my face with my hand to make it clear I didn't want to be looked at, and after awhile I put it back down only to find that they were still staring! I tried giving them a "stop looking at me" look and turned my head away, and luckily at that point the bus started moving again. I think it had to do with the fact that I couldn't even sit on a bus without people from not only the street, but from other busses staring at me, mixed with the fact that I had just found out that one of the international students who had also been here last year was extremely unhappy (saying something along the lines of "you might like it now, but eventually you'll realize that China is terrible."), but I felt uncomfortable the whole trip home. I suddenly got so annoyed by everything around me; I got annoyed by the people, the weather, the streets— China in its entirety; that was the second time I really questioned why I ever wanted to come to China.

I'm not quite confidant I can say much about what a Chinese person "is," but I can say a little bit about what I've observed so far. Generally speaking, in public, on the outside it may seem like the people here are not interested in having anything to do with you, and that there's little regard for respect or courtesy. Well, sometimes this may be true. For example, the unspoken rule (or spoken, depending where you live) when driving in the US is that if someone walks in the way of a moving car, the driver must slow down or stop; here that's not the case. My host mother even said so: "Here, the cars don't stop for you, you must stop for the cars." Similarly with mopeds.There are tons of mopeds here; so many, in fact, that on most streets, there is a section of the road separated by an island that's pretty much reserved for mopeds and bikes (notice I said "pretty much"). When I first got here, this was a problem for me, because usually the bus stop is on one of those islands, so to get to it you have to cross the treacherously never-ending flow of mopeds that seem impossible to cross. They do not stop or slow down for people, but they are courteous enough to veer around you when you do cross, so you don't usually need to wait for a complete opening when crossing them, and that was something I had to learn. However, aside from all that, I've noticed that courtesy and respect really do exist on the streets. For example, on the bus, when a seat opens up (and my busses are usually full, so an open seat is a huge up-for-grabs) the seat remains empty for awhile, people offer it to each other, men are usually chivalrous towards women, and the seat is almost always yielded to the elderly. Yes, sometimes people here can be pushy (I mean that literally), but that's only because that's the only way to deal with so many people. I live in a "small" city of 2 million, and living in this type of environment forces you to learn how to deal with crowds.

 If you ever do end up actually talking to somebody on the street for whatever reason, they really are open and genuinely kind; I myself have not encountered anyone I've interpreted as not genuine or "fake." 

If you are invited to eat dinner or get together with someone, get ready, because Chinese people are rigorous hosts. You, as the guest, are not off the hook until you have been filled to the brim with food, at which point the host might finally stop ordering food. For special occasions or when eating out, often times there is alcohol, which is used to toast sporadically throughout the meal. The alcohol could be something as simple as beer (which is maybe at most 5% alcohol) for more casual meals, to 白酒 bái jiǔ (usually about 52%!) for larger occasions. In addition, if you're invited to a night out, you are not allowed to pay for anything you do or consume together. For example, one day I was invited by a classmate to go see a movie (something people love to do here), and to my surprise, before I had even asked for the movie times, he told me that he had bought my ticket! On top of that, he bought popcorn (kettle corn; they don't have butter popcorn here, much to my dismay) and drinks for us before I even got there. After the movie, we went to an arcade, and in the back where there were a bunch of TVs and video game consoles that you pay by the hour to play on. When I offered to pay this time since he had payed for the movie, he wouldn't let me, saying it was a "cultural thing." After that we took a cab (which he payed for) to another mall that's by our school and has a lot of restaurants, and we went to this crazy frog-themed Sichuanese restaurant for dinner. There, we got barley tea, watermelon juice, frog skewers, some other things, and this huge frog stir-fry dish. HE PAYED FOR EVERYTHING! In addition, a number of his friends had met up with us at different parts of the day, and he was also paying for them too! Finally, after dinner he and some of his friends suggested KTV (Chinese name for karaoke) but I'm not supposed to go to KTV, so...

One thing that surprised me was that my host mother said people here "aren't patriotic." I'm not entirely sure why, but for some reason I suppose I expected people in China to be much more patriotic than most Americans. I found it very interesting when she said to me, "Chinese aren't patriotic like Americans. You see, hardly anyone flies the Chinese flag unless it's a school or a government building; In the U.S., don't many people fly the American flag?" I also found it funny because all over the city there are posters and signs that say 社会主义核心价值观 shè huì zhǔ yì hé xīn jià zhí guān "Socialism's Core Values," followed by a list of 12 words referred to as 双创 shuāng chuàng "double create," which are supposed to encourage the people of Haikou to make the city more "civil and clean." Everyone at our school is required to know all twelve of them in order, including us exchange students, and they are:

富强 fù qiáng— prosperity

民主 mín zhǔ— democracy

文明 wén míng— civility

和谐 hé xié— harmony

自由 zì yóu— freedom

平等 píng děng— equality

公正 gōng zhèng— justice

法治 fǎ zhì— rule of law

爱国 ài guó— patriotism

敬业 jìng yè— dedication

诚信 chéng xìn— integrity

友善 yǒu shàn— friendship

I found these really interesting, because when I first arrived, I figured it had something to do with the Chinese government's notorious use of propaganda, since I noticed they all have the word "socialism" on them, and they're all written on an image of Tiananmen. When I actually learned what it meant, I realized it was not as politically driven as I had thought. Instead, the ideology behind it is, by ingraining these twelve words into the minds of everyone in Haikou, it will encourage them to embody the ideal citizen, therefore making the city a cleaner and happier place to live. While this may sound a little ridiculous to some, especially when the words "democracy" and "freedom" are included in the list (two things that most Westerners believe China lacks), I have to say, it has worked. Apparently not long ago, maybe 10 years or so, Haikou was a much different city: dirty, disorderly, and overall not an ideal place to live. Now it's nothing like it was before, and apparently that's due to 双创 shuāng chuàng. However, most people I've talked to regarding this "double create" have laughed it, calling it "stupid," "ridiculous," or "shouldn't be necessary." One of my classmates told me that, while 双创 shuāng chuàng does help keep the city clean and orderly, he believes it should be an individual's responsibility to be a good person, and that it is a parent's responsibility to teach their children these virtues. Either way, that, and the fact that I need to climb over "the Great Firewall" to even post on blogger, are really the only things I have seen of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) in action since I've been in China.

In general, I feel comfortable discussing most political topics with my host mother. I won't be able to write about them here because I just really need to finish this chapter, but we have talked about North Korea, Donald Trump, Mao Zedong, China under Mao Zedong and China now; and even more sensitive topics like Hong Kong and Taiwan. She's very open to answering my questions. She was quick to agree to letting me write about her and my host brother in my blog; and after reassuring her that it would all be positive, she immediately corrected me by saying, "No. You must write about the good and the bad. Write honestly, and don't shy away from anything." 

The Places.

I've gone to so many places since coming to Hainan, from 火山口 huǒ shān kǒu volcano, to the movie theater four times in one month (which is very little compared to some of the other exchange students here). But instead of describing each of these places, I'll just share pictures... in a seperate post.