News
 

In China, a reckless ride to culture

By Amanda Zirgulis
The Daily Cougar

Daily Cougar reporter Amanda Zirgulis is spending seven weeks this summer in a volunteer program in Xi'an, China. Every other week, Zirgulis will share her observations about life and work abroad. This is her first report.

XI'AN, China -- Xi'an's highways are dangerous -- or, more specifically, its drivers are. After 26 hours of travel, I was terrified to find my driver swerving to avoid head-on collisions on the way to the Cross-Cultural Solutions apartments, where I'll spend the next seven weeks.

CCS is a nonprofit volunteer organization that sponsors a variety of programs all over the world, from teaching English to monks in Thailand to assisting in AIDS education in Brazil. I decided in January to teach English in Xi'an, one of China's four ancient capitals.

Not only was the program safe -- which reduced my mother's worries about my being kidnapped -- but CCS representatives appeared on Today, a program for which Mom has a borderline obsession. It sounded like a life-changing opportunity to do good in the world while exposing myself to an entirely different culture.

Xi'an, with a population of about 6 million, is located in the oil- and coal-rich Shaanxi province. The city has a large Muslim population, which gives it an exotic flair rarely found in cities farther east. Xi'an's main attraction is the terra cotta warriors, a vigilant force of clay soldiers standing guard over the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China, who died in 210 B.C.

Xi'an is a bustling metropolis in a state of organized chaos. Compared with cosmopolitan Beijing, Xi'an has more of a "country" feel, but you can't tell it at first glance. People are everywhere. They walk, bicycle or ride buses, trains or taxis -- including the popular three-wheeled bicycle taxi, which chauffeurs you around the city for roughly 40 cents.

The automobile taxi is reliable and, starting at 50 cents, not much more expensive. When we volunteers travel by taxi, our program coordinator writes the destination in Chinese on a card; the driver then reads the card and proceeds at a dangerous speed to get where we need to go.

Away from the congested streets and suicidal drivers, people seem to be cooking constantly. Food stands sell meat on a stick, rice triangles wrapped in leaves, fruit and some other products Westerners might find questionable. (One volunteer recently ate a pig's ear and heart of some sort.)

I have been given a few helpful hints to succeed in this society:

--Avoid giving clocks as gifts. The Chinese phrase "giving out a clock" sounds similar to the word "funeral."

--On public streets, spitting and blowing one's nose without a tissue is normal, but the government is trying to stop that.

--Don't stick chopsticks upright in your rice. Superstitious Chinese view doing so as bad luck and an omen to the dead.

 Send comments to dcnews@mail.uh.edu