China Research » Gabrial Workman

Buddhist Beauty

Gabrial Workman — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 04:59:30 +0000

Week 6 in Xiamen started off with an adventure, as it usually does. I decided to take my roommate from Eckerd’s advice and get lost in China. Explore without reason, and discover things you otherwise wouldn’t have. This being the first trip I have taken by myself to a completely different area, I only took her advice to an extent. I got on the bus, paid my 1yuan, and headed into the vast unknown—although on the other side of that unknown, I knew was the SM Mall. I did not know how far it was, what it was close to, or how I would know when to get off the bus, but I was determined to find it. It turns out that the SM Mall is quite unmistakable and just so happens to be the last stop on bus 20. So, sorry Taylor, I kind of cheated. But there will be other times where I truly get on the bus and get off somewhere I have never been. I just figured for the first time, I wouldn’t get too carried away. I feel very comfortable with the bus system now and have realized that no matter where you go, there are bus stops every 200 feet. So, the chances of actually getting lost probably are not as high as I first thought. So, the SM Mall. When we first pulled up, the first thing I noticed besides the biggest sign I have ever seen that said SM was another sign that said Wal-Mart! AHH!!! There is a Wal-Mart in China! Xiamen no less! Yesssss I will indeed check that out I said to myself with a smile. I pulled out my camera and started snapping photos. The first place I went was the bottom floor to the Wal-Mart. I thought it was very interesting that a store that sells so many products made in China would have a store in China. I wonder if they sold products from the United States…wouldn’t that be outlandish?! Sure enough, I did see quite a few products from the US in the Chinese Wal-Mart. I was hoping it would be similar to home, but of course not. The rest of the mall was not too exciting. If you were going there to purchase a new wardrobe, then you would be in heaven, but I was not interested in clothing, so I did not find the rest of the mall too thrilling.

I found a STARBUCKS on Tuesday! Max and I were talking about how we were both craving iced coffee, so I decided to search for one. My lab told me there were 4 in Xiamen. My reply way: “How did I not know about this 5 weeks ago?” ha! When we got off the bus and saw the sign glowing like a halo of beauty, I almost shed a tear of utter happiness. Needless to say, the caramel frappuccino was incredibly satisfying.

My lab’s weekly meeting was held in the coffee shop this week. I ordered a macchiato since I have never had one before, so why not try it. It was as tiny as a child’s tea set! I had to control my laughter as I drank it. I felt like I was having tea with the characters of Alice in Wonderland. The coffee itself was horrid.

Later that day, I went with Yuan to get her hair cut. I ended up getting bangs and having my hair layered as well. I am quite protective over my hair, so getting it cut from someone who did not speak English and trying to explain the side-sweep bang was challenging. I was terrified he would cut it short. I did not want any length cut off, so every snip was hard. I survived, and my hair looks very nice. I even gave the man (who was 26, but looked like he was 15—making me even more nervous) a tip – which is unheard of in China. He was shocked, so I just smiled and said xia xia (thank you).

After getting stylish and “high fashion” as Yuan says, we went to have dinner. As we were eating our food outside under a large umbrella, it started POURING! We started laughing, and continued to eat our food. The lights went out shortly after that, so not only were we eating in the rain, we were eating in the dark. It was very funny. In one of the previous blogs, I mentioned a dessert made of pineapple, ice, and milk…well at this dinner in the dark and rain; we ate the same dessert with watermelon instead of pineapple. It wasn’t as good, but still very delicious. After dinner, Yuan got a call from her friend who is a very prominent monk at the Nan Putuo temple just outside campus. He asked her if we wanted to see the temple at night when it is closed to the public, and of course we both said yes! We met him at the entrance and he handed me a gift. It was a bracelet made of wood from a rare tree. I was very happy, the bracelet is gorgeous. Yuan explained to me that he thought it was fate that I came to China, met him, and was introduced to the Buddhist religion, and therefore, a gift was an appropriate measure. He showed us around the temple which I had been to during the day, but it was nothing compared to its serenity after dark. Without the 10,000 people surrounding you trying to take photos, the temple is quiet, soothing, and unbelievably beautiful. The amount of detail put into each carving was like nothing I have ever seen. He even brought us up a winding stair case to see the sacred bell marked with Chinese characters they use to wake the monks in the morning and tell them it is time to rest at night. This area was strictly prohibited to the public, so being there was very special. We performed a prayer where we bow with our hands in prayer, kneel down to the bench, touch with our right hand first, put our head to our knees, and relax your hands with your palms facing upward. I felt honored to experience such a personal place for the monks. Her friend also showed us their housing, and a classroom equipped with thousands of books, some teaching English, a chalkboard, and even a projector. As we were leaving, Yuan gasped. The monk master walked out of temple and bowed to us. Seeing him, she said, is very rare. “He is very busy, this is a good night of experiences for you.” Certainly, it was.

“This is SERIOUS! We’re at a buffet! Come on!”

Gabrial Workman — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 12:34:33 +0000

Oh China, you never cease to amaze me. This past week began with Yuan and I making a trip downtown for dinner. She took me to a restaurant that is “super famous” according to the locals. The menu was in Chinese, so I just simply pointed to the lady sitting across from me and said I’ll have what she’s having. We literally sat down at a table across from two people who were already eating—it was that crowded. That’s something you would NEVER see in America. What I ordered turned out to be pineapple fried rice which was served with this dried meat that looked like the consistency of brown sugar (to best describe it—it was super dry and in somewhat of a powder sugar grain form or flossy—I have no idea). It was pretty good. Yuan surprised me with the most amazing dessert I’ve had here. It is very special to the locals. We had pineapple ice cream—China style. It was ice that was super fine (finer than a snow cone, to the point where it didn’t stick together…like shavings) mixed with milk (ice cream) and then topped with fresh cut pineapple and a pineapple glaze. Talk about incredible. It was quite delicious to say the least. After dinner, we decided to hit the main shopping street-Chong Shan Lu. Man was it packed! There had to be 50,000 people there! We were there just as the sun was going down, so the flashy lights were all on, thousands of people were out, and everyone was happy and laughing-until they saw me…then it was like they had seen an alien. Do I have green skin? Giant eyes? Am I wearing a highlighter orange jumpsuit? No, I am just a foreigner. But the way they stare me down head to toe the entire time I pass by, even turning to watch me until I am gulped up by the crowds and no longer visible, says otherwise.
It is so much cooler at night. The relentless sun is down, the air is a little less moist, and there always seems to be more of a breeze after say 6 o’clock. Night in Xiamen is beautiful. During the day? Not so much. Like I said, the sun is relentless, the humidity is like nothing I have ever experienced-and yes, it is worse than last summer in the Florida heat-much worse. I swear it is as if you are walking through mist, the air is that moist.
Tu and Yuan (the grad students I do the most with) took me to a buffet on Tuesday. What an experience. What was there you ask? Let me list it for you: the first thing that pops into my head is cow tongue–yes, tongue…in the shape of a tongue, like they literally cut it out of the mouth of a cow and cooked it. Pork, shrimp-with the head, tail, and shell still intact, balls of fish meat, the tiniest chicken wings I have ever seen (I am from just outside Buffalo, NY, so I have seen many a chicken wing), turkey off the leg, pig thigh, and that was just the meat. There was corn on the cob, pineapple, dragon fruit, and the most popular-watermelon. The layout was interesting. There were servers who would walk around to each table and offer you the meat (that I just listed off) which they had on a huge stick and if you wanted it, they would shave a few slices off for you. Everything that wasn’t meat was served as a typical buffet style. Chinese people must really love their watermelon. It was the first dish to be emptied by the guests, and when you saw the lady bringing more, it was like a flock of geese heading south for the winter. Swarms of people running, yes, RUNNING for the watermelon—hopping over the sardines and miscellaneous foods that were dropped on the floor. It was gone in less than a minute. But the most memorable thing that happened was Yuan. Yuan is a girl in her mid-20s. She is decently tall, and on the smaller build. This tiny Chinese girl ate at least 12 plates of food! “Where are you putting it!” I asked, “In your legs!!?” She is so small, the food must have been up to her esophagus! So as the night goes on, she says “I’m going to have a rest.” So I’m thinking, wow, after 12 plates, I think she is full. Wrong. As she sits back in her chair, she grabs her bowl of ice cream in one hand and a piece of watermelon in the other (we were some of the lucky ones to have gotten some watermelon in the 60 seconds that there was any) and continues to eat. I was DYING laughing. I was laughing so hard that Tu took out his camera and was taking pictures of us and I had tears running down my face. That’s when she yelled: “This is SERIOUS! We’re at a buffet! Come on!” That made me almost fall out of my chair I was laughing so hard.
We went ice skating this week! I am from one of the coldest states in the Continental United States, that is known for large quantities of snow and ice, and yes, I have never gone ice skating before. Tu and I tagged along with Max’s lab and went to an open air ice rink. 50 feet away from the ice, it was about 95 degrees. When I think about ice skating, I think about people in the middle of winter with gloves, hats, scarves, and mittens wrapped up in their coats and heavy pants skating around an oval and later getting some hot cocoa. Here, I was sweating like I was in a sauna and soaked on my right side from the death grip I had with the wall. It was a miracle that I didn’t fall, but I wish I had the balance to skate around instead of slowly crouching along with such a tight grasp. All in all, besides the scab on my leg from the skate rubbing against it, it was a really fun trip.
The last of my news for the week is that I have seen quite an abundance of foreigners lately. I talked to a girl from Sweden in the elevator on the way to lab yesterday—in English—made my day. And on that topic, I had a Chinese girl about my age stop me on the street the other day as I’m jammin along to Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” on my way to lab. She said hello and asked if she could take a photo with me—all in English. I was so excited to hear someone speak a language I understood that I totally ignored the fact that I had no idea who this girl was and it was a little awkward taking a photo with a complete stranger, and just smiled for the camera. How nice 

Skeptics and True Believers

Gabrial Workman — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:09:30 +0000

Not much has happened this past week. I bartered my way into acquiring an “LV” purse (as the locals refer to it), got a little homesick and went for pizza (Chinese style pizza of course), and discovered that there is a light that is right above the windows in my dorm room. Who knew! This past week has been very productive in terms of my research. We are well on our way to analyzing results! Our fragments have been cultured, weighed, and I even got to play around with a little liquid nitrogen. It turns out, if you leave a glass tube in liquid nitrogen for longer than a minute, it will most definitely shatter. My grad student Adam figured that out on Wednesday and lost all of our samples from the first week and had to start from the beginning. That wasn’t all bad for me though because that meant I got to have a pipettor in my hand ALL day yesterday! :D As I mentioned, I felt a little homesick this week. I asked my lab mates if they wouldn’t mind doing “American” food for dinner and they were nice enough to try it out. At dinner, we had an interesting conversation about the differences between China and the United States. Although the differences are great, there were more similarities than I was expecting. So, for this week’s blog, I thought I would bring to light some of the myths and truths about China and local culture here in Xiamen.

Myth 1: Something that I have heard all through growing up from family, friends, and complete strangers. Chinese people eat dogs and cats. Although two of my lab mates admitted to trying dog meat in the past, they both agreed that it was not tasty and would not eat it again. As for cat meat, they also both agreed that eating cats is absolutely disgusting and that they would never dare try it. Now, they also mentioned that there is some truth to this myth. There are a few small provinces in China where people eat what they can and it that so happens to be these two furry friends, then that’s what’s for dinner. They do not lie and tell you it is chicken. There are some weird foods here, but it is normal for the locals, so if it is duck neck, they will tell you it is duck neck. For instance, tonight for dinner, I ate: fish-served with the head and fins attached, duck, beef, chicken, pork, intestine was served-but I passed on that one, and FROG! Which I did try and was not too bad!

Myth 2: All Chinese people wear cheongsams (the fitted dresses with collars). This is completely false although I have seen two women and a small girl wearing them around. On a daily basis, most of the women in China dress very nicely. Almost all of them wear very pretty dresses from just simple sun dresses to high class business dresses. They also sport high heels and carry “sun umbrellas.” Unlike the American use of an umbrella, these are colorful, beautifully designed umbrellas that women carry to keep the sun from hitting their skin. They do nothing in the rain; therefore you must also always carry a small regular umbrella as well. You rarely find anyone here wearing sunglasses. It is common for someone to wear the same outfit multiple days in a row here as well. “When did society decide that we have to change and wash a t-shirt after every individual use? If it’s not dirty, I’m going to wear it.” I have also noticed that Crocs are quite popular here…I see them everywhere, and countless people wear Disney clothes. No matter what age, you can easily find someone wearing anything from Snow White to Donald Duck, although Mickey and Minnie are the most popular.

Myth 3: “You’re going to eat so much rice.” To be honest, I see more noodles and meat than rice. Rice is offered, but it seems like more people eat noodles than rice. Cold noodles, hot noodles, noodles in sauce, noodles in soup, any way you want noodles, you can find it. I was quite surprised when I saw a man making home-made noodles in the cafeteria last night at dinner. My family used to make home-made pasta when I was young, so I was impressed to say the least. He was so fast putting the dough through the machine to flatten it out and then cut it into strips and he stretched them with such ease…nothing stuck together, no clumps. It was neat.

I have been trying to explain the types of foods we eat in America like my favorite snack: peanut butter and bananas. You don’t realize how hard it is to describe what peanut butter is…but I found some in a grocery store down the road and bought some bananas and brought it in to my lab today. I cut the banana up and put a little bit of chunky peanut butter on it for everyone and watched as they ate it and each one of their faces puckered in disgust! I have never met so many people that didn’t like peanut butter! Their faces were priceless. They were nice enough to say that the banana tasted good, the peanut butter, not so much I guess.

A weekend in Beijing and the beginning of Research!

Gabrial Workman — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:44:55 +0000

Last weekend Maxine and I went to Beijing to visit her family. What a difference Beijing and Xiamen are. Xiamen is very local based whereas in Beijing you can have Subway for dinner and Cold Stone for dessert. It was really neat to see the difference in cities. Beijing is more westernized than Xiamen with all of the shops you can find in the United States and its modern architecture. There are more temples and traditional architecture styles in Xiamen. While there I had some delicious sea food including my first taste of lobster, prawn sushi, and raw fish. The food here is incredibly diverse. There are so many options and styles from across the globe.

Saturday was filled with sightseeing including the morning at the Beijing Zoo and Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City in the afternoon. What a day that was! I saw everything from giant pandas to pacific white-sided dolphins to a dinosaur looking bird with a horn similar to a rhino on its blue head, a red gobbler on its neck like a turkey, and a large black body that could be compared to the size of a small ostrich! I have never seen anything like it! I also had a Chinese woman (about 45 if not older) shove me out of the way so she could throw herself over the side of the sea turtle enclosure to reach her hand in the water and touch them. And as the officials were screaming at her, she laughed like a child who just got away with something and walked off. I was speechless. The respect for animal welfare disappointed me at the zoo, especially seeing one tiger (1 of the 5 white tigers they had at the zoo) resting under a tree that had countless plastic bottles thrown at it to get it to move. I have been to many wildlife parks and this was by far the most shocking.

On a lighter note, I climbed the Great Wall while in Beijing! It was incredible! I almost died going down due to how steep the steps were, but it was certainly a site to see. It extends as far as the eye can see, swaying in and out of the mountain tops. Maxine and I took a cable car up the mountain about 100 ft off the ground with an amazing view, and took a toboggan down. What a ride that was! It lasted for a solid 5 minutes twisting and turning all the way down the mountain. Maxine took a video of me screaming the entire way down! It’s quite hilarious.

My research project officially started this week although progress is a lot slower than I anticipated. There are many restrictions on chemicals that require licenses and paperwork before purchase that has slowed us down. And with so many students graduating this week and the last professors and students alike are scrambling to get last minute things done. I am very excited about my project. Wenbo and I will be comparing melatonin levels added to culturing mudskipper gonad fragments with the amount of sex hormones they secrete over a period of 24 hours to determine if there is a direct correlation. It is very interesting and had potential for a broader environmental purpose since increases in the melatonin hormone, secreted by the pineal gland, has a parallel relationship with light and dark cycles. Pollution could be limiting the light intensity that is used by the mudskippers to synchronize their spawning cycles and could have interesting impacts on their populations. But who knows, that is just me thinking as an environmental biologist J

The lab setting is very different in China. It is much more casual and I don’t sense a hierarchy among the graduate and PhD students I am working beside as I would in the U.S. I am one of them and the fact that I am about six years younger than some of them doesn’t matter. They are more than just lab mates…they are friends. We go to lunch together and even plan shopping trips on the weekends. I introduce them to goldfish snacks, and they introduce me to “Chinese hamburgers.” I help them with English for their 27 page manuscript, and they give me a Chinese name-Jin Guan meaning? Turtle of course! Yuan and Wenbo even taught me how to draw it in characters. When I look like I’m struggling with my chopsticks, they tell me it’s ok to use my hands, which has been happening less often lately. I am getting quite good using chopsticks!

As the youngest in my family and the first to travel abroad, this experience is bittersweet. The places I go and sites I see are marvelous, but I certainly do miss home. Immersing myself in such a different culture has opened my eyes to so many different aspects of life that I cannot wait to share with everyone back home. Challenge the myths, correct the stereotypes, educate those who haven’t been what this remarkable country is like.

A New Adventure!

Gabrial Workman — Tue, 31 May 2011 02:25:51 +0000

Ni hao! Wow! I am in China! The flight was incredibly long, but well worth it. It is beautiful! Xiamen University is nestled into a mountain side and nature is incorporated throughout the city landscape, giving the hustle and bustle a sense of serenity and relaxation. The campus is as big and certainly has the feel of a small town. It is quite a site to see, the reason why hundreds of tourists shower campus daily! Not only are there are several shops, canteens (cafeterias), and green spaces on campus, but, I soon came to find that the large pond in the middle of campus that has become home to a few black swans! As a lover of wildlife, this was an exciting discovery!

As a westerner living in China, I am stared at a lot, but it’s not the negative stare you would think, it is just curiosity and I find it easy to get used to. I just smile and continue on with my day. With all of the things to do here, I do not miss too much from home yet–except washers and dryers. It would definitely be nice to have those in travel size!

The bus system is incredibly helpful in getting places, although it is not too hard to walk the city for the most part. Usually we will walk somewhere and catch a bus for the return trip. The past few days I have been familiarizing myself with the area. I have tried some native fruits like waxberries and guava, eaten meat and bread for breakfast instead of typical cereal, and had a dinner feast that included cooked fish with the fins and head still attached. My first week in China has certainly been interesting! Professor Duncan, Maxine, and I visited Gulangyu Island a few days ago where, of course, my first stop was the aquarium! It was small, but had a good collection of creatures from penguins and tarpon, to woebegone and an albino shark, and also a small resident population of piranha that hung by strings in a gel substance, looking quite sad.

The Mandarin language is quite difficult, therefore, I have not learned that much. Having Maxine (my roommate from Eckerd who is from Singapore) translate for me most of the time is extremely helpful, although hopefully I will learn a lot more in the upcoming weeks. Sometimes there are English descriptions on foods and such, but not often enough to get by.

Yesterday was my first day working in the lab. The graduate and Ph.D. students I am working with are very nice. As I help them with their English, they teach me a lot about Chinese culture. Being a student researcher at a Chinese university is different from Eckerd in a few ways. Of course, most of the equipment and reagents are in Chinese, but the processes are very similar if not the same in some cases. One of the girls in my lab is doing work on DNA using a PCR method which is exactly what I would use as a Genetics teaching assistant, so I felt very happy to recognize what she was doing. Yesterday I was introduced to the specimen that I will be using in my project: the mudskipper fish. On my first day I learned how to recognize the sex and extract the gonad from both male and female fishes to use for our melatonin study. The project I’m working on is something completely new and I am very excited to learn more about it!

China has been quite the experience so far, and I have only been here for a week! I am very grateful for this opportunity. This research experience is more than just petri dishes and chemicals. I am learning new techniques in a new country which has a completely different culture than America. Being able to adapt to these changes and embrace the Chinese way of life is a challenge at times, but absolutely incredible.