Frequently Asked Questions

RE: OUR TRIP

Q: Where are you going?
A: Beijing, China.

Q: When do you leave?
A: Tuesday morning, very early. We have a layover in Vancouver and will be arriving in Beijing on Wednesday afternoon.

Q: How long are you going to be there?
A: However long we feel like. No, really, we have one way tickets. (And no, we won't be home for Christmas.)

Q: Do you have a job lined up yet?
A: We have a job offer from the North China Electric Power University that is looking pretty nice. We'll be making a very good salary and the fringe benefits include an apartment, health care, round trip international plane tickets, and bonuses - and we'll only be working 20 hours a week. So, we're going to check it out in person next week and see what we think - and if we like it, we'll sign the contract. Otherwise, we're back to looking.

Q: How about a place to live?
A: Well, if we take the job with the university, they'll provide apartments for us. Otherwise... no. But we'll find one. (So you can sleep at night, parents and other concerned adults, we do have plans to stay with a friend when we first arrive - we just don't have our own apartments yet.)

Q: Are you fluent in Chinese?
A: Heck no. But we're working on it. Ask us again in 20 years.

Q: How can we contact you?
A: This website is one good way. We both have Gmail accounts - if you need our addresses, let us know. We both also have Skype, so if you want to schedule a phone call we could do that as well. We'll have cell phones, but unless you'll be in China, that will be an impractical method.

Q: Are you doing missionary work?
A: No.

Q: Can we crash on your couch when we come to visit?
A: Um, probably? Just run the details by us when you have them.

Q: Will you write a post about ____?
A: Sure. Send us your ideas, people!

A FEW VARIOUS QUESTIONS RE: CHINA

Q: What is the time difference between here to China?
A: It all depends on where "here" is. China - yes, the whole country is one time zone - is nine hours ahead of the West Coast and twelve hours ahead of Michigan. (But they don't do the Daylight Savings Time thing, so it will all change in a few months.)

Q: How big is China?
A: Landmass-wise, about the size of the U.S. Population-wise, enormous. The current official number is 1.3 billion, but some scholars estimate they might be up to 1.5 billion.

Q: Is the language really just a bunch of little pictures?
A: Well, no. Each syllable has a meaning and is represented by a character. (Words can be one character or a combination of them.) Some of the characters are highly stylized pictures of their meaning, but most characters are made up of a radical, which usually indicates a category into which the character fits (for example: food, water, fire, weather, grass, speech, tree, etc.), and a phonetic, which gives a clue (and little more) as to how the character's pronounced.

Q: Are you allowed to be a Christian in China?
A: Yes. In fact, the government supports Christianity (as well as Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, and Daoism - Confucianism isn't really considered a religion). There is a government-run church that anybody can attend, and there are also so-called "underground" churches. As I understand it, these would probably be better called house churches, as you can register them with the government, and as long as they stay within a "reasonable" size, the government doesn't really mind - generally speaking. However, throughout Chinese history, religion has been a vehicle for political uprising, which is why the government is paranoid about large unofficial religious gatherings. There is also a Bible printing press that makes Bibles widely available for about $1 (so don't bother smuggling in Bibles!). It is true that some Christians are persecuted to some degree in China, but not nearly as much as some people (with ulterior motives perhaps?) would like you to believe.

Q: What do you know about the one-child-policy?
A: I wrote my honors thesis on it. Here's the summary: girl babies are still abandoned, aborted, or killed, but it's becoming rarer and rarer. There are a lot of doomsday warnings about China's demise due to the policy, but they'll most likely work themselves out. And, in my opinion, a population growth policy is necessary for a country as big as China is. As you probably wouldn't guess, it's kind of a touchy subject for me personally, but I can give you many more details if you're interested. Just ask.