Teaching in Hubei!!!: Thanksgiving!!!!

So the other foreign teachers and I all decided to celebrate Thanksgiving together, and our American boss suggested we have it at the Crowne Plaza, where they usually celebrated Thanksgiving each year. So that’s what we did.

Now let me give you a little background as to how all of us teachers were feeling at the time of Thanksgiving’s arrival. Xiangyang is beginning to get quite cold and dismal, and because of the lack of insulation in the walls of our apartments, our apartments are in fact COLDER inside than outside actually is. I’ll be there sitting in my apartment, wearing a couple layers and shivering, but then as soon as I put on a coat and go outside I feel a blast of a soft cool breeze, which was way more endurable than the harsh cold of my apartment. This has been happening since maybe the beginning or middle of October, even when the weather hadn’t turned cold yet. So, cold house = being cold all the time.

Now also we are living in deep almost rural China, and so food choices here are pretty limited and they will almost always be Chinese. I don’t know about the other teachers, but my diet has been mostly noodles, and every occasionally some hot pot. Here in Xiangyang, I’m finding meat less easily accessible than America…a lot of times when there’s a meat dish served at a restaurant, there’ll be a lot of bones and you have to really search around to get every part of the meat that’s clinging to the bone. So I’m also not eating a ton of meat. I’ve been trying to add some eggs to the noodles I get so that I’m maintaining some protein. Probably the most accessible thing here in Xiangyang is fruits and vegetables, though. But you better believe I’ve never been skinnier in my life! It’s pretty nice, but at the same time it doesn’t feel like a healthy and strong skinny, by Thanksgiving it was a thin/unhealthy skinny…and later on by end of December it was feeling like a life-hanging-by-a-thread skinny.

So…that’s the background for our coming into Thanksgiving Day.

That evening we all hopped a public bus and booked it to the Crowne Plaza, which was offering a special buffet and discount for Thanksgiving. Alongside their normal dishes, they’d be serving a whole bunch of Western style food often served at Thanksgiving. I didn’t know what to expect but I knew it would be loads better than what I’d been eating for the past three months.

When we got there, it was amazing. First of all, they had set up Christmas decorations outside and in the lobby. There was a giant gingerbread house, and a big tree with presents (couldn’t tell if they were real or fake) all laid out at the bottom of it. And the thing that got me most: HEAT. PROPER HEAT.

And the whole area just smelled good. The bathrooms were warm and also smelled wonderful. I didn’t have to watch my step on the ground so as to avoid spit or pee or poo or trash, I really think that the Crowne Plaza hotel is the cleanest place in Xiangyang, or at least one of them. Either way, after being cold for so long, the whole ambiance of the environment just made me feel so much better.

So then we walked into the restaurant where the buffet was being served. Man they had pretty much everything you could think of and more. They had their Chinese dishes: hot pot, noodles, etc. They had sushi, sashimi, oysters, shrimps, scallops, all this seafood! And then they had the Western dishes, which weren’t all American or traditional Thanksgiving items: they had curry duck, they had German sausage with mustard (I mean, as good as you’re gonna get in Xiangyang), spaghetti, mashed potatoes, ALL KINDS OF BREADS (they don’t really serve proper bread in China), butter (they don’t have that really either), real thick slices of ham, roasted beef, steak, and of course TURKEY, cranberry sauce, salad with all kinds of condiments and dressings, different types of soups, sauteed vegetables, and more that I can’t think of. They served all you can drink wine along the way too. And as we were eating, waitresses walked around trying to get us to eat their lobster, as if they were trying to get rid of it (and it was part of the buffet too, so it didn’t cost extra). So I thought, “Who am I to say no to some LOBSTER??” And of course, I took that too. Man, they had so much stuff it was amazing. The only thing I didn’t see was stuffing.

Then they had desserts too. They had cheesecake, chocolate mousse cake, different kinds of ice cream, little slices of these petit four-looking things, custard, and more cakes that I can’t remember anymore. And at the end, they served us coffee to those who wanted to have any, and of course I had some. It was amazing, and we ate until we couldn’t eat anymore. I ate as much as I possibly could, and I didn’t really feel guilty at all because I knew that it was one of the rare times I’d have so much in front of me to eat…and if I gained any weight from it, I was just gonna lose it within a week. So no guilty feelings at all. It was amazing. It was the best I had felt in a long time, and we were all just so happy to have that kind of brief moment away from the harshness of life here in Xiangyang.

I can’t imagine this is as interesting to read as it was for me to experience, but hey, this was a HUGE highlight of the first half of my time in Xiangyang. It’s amazing just thinking about it still. There’s something really special about having food (or anything for that matter) when it’s not so easily attainable. Food never tastes better, heat never feels warmer, scents never smell sweeter, and it’s more than just what they are…what they do to you is more than if they were easily attainable because what happens when they’re rare is that they really sink down into your soul and make you feel good inside and out. I think I’ve had that experience in America a few times, but not nearly so often and so strong as I’ve felt it here in Xiangyang. As harsh as life has been here, food has never tasted so good, and any kind of comfort has never been more welcome. Even something like warm water from a faucet to wash your face in the morning just feels good deep down to my soul now, rather than in America when I just say oh hey look it’s warm water, whatever.

I think this has all given me a taste of what it’s like to have such limited things, yet at the same time I believe it’s easier to endure if you’ve never had certain other things, if you’ve never been used to “higher living”, because you don’t know what you don’t have…this is life for you and so it’s as good as you know it can be in your mind. If you’ve seen a cushier lifestyle, like all the teachers here (some far more than others), then you’re likely to maybe have a harder time with all this. But nonetheless, I still feel like I’ve been enlightened in a way from all of this, and I think the BIGGEST thing I’m taking from all of this is that I can most certainly appreciate so many of even the smallest things that are so easily attainable in America and not so in China. I can walk out the door of my house and buy a fresh sandwich. Not so in China. I wake up and can take a hot shower without having to wait any more than 1 minute for the water to heat up. Not so in Xiangyang. I can drink tap water. I have heat in every building I enter when the weather gets cold. I can walk outside at night and not worry about tripping and falling because the streets are properly lighted. I don’t fear for my life all the time when I’m in a car because driving rules are strictly enforced. You don’t think about certain little things you have in your life (not just material things…things in your culture, how you use language, anything really) until you go somewhere that has something different. I’m glad I’m having that experience right now.