Yes, you read the title right. I am coming home. I will take my original planned flight out of Asia on May 16th. I couldn't be more excited. I have no regrets with my decision. The idea of a summer in China is a completely romantic to me. Bartending, meeting people, learning mandarin and having random exciting adventures. In fact, everything the past couple of weeks has led me to believe that I can't fight fate - that everything has worked out so perfectly and all the signs are leading me to stay here. However, despite everything the one thing that has deterred me and made me second guess my decision was my heart. Everyone knows that quote. "Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart". Yes, part of my heart is in China. But where my heart really is is back home, in the good old United States of America.
I have had so many great times here. So many adventures with travelling, as I have documented a couple of them in my blog. But most of all I have learned and grown as a person. I believe that I will have left China quite a bit different than when I entered, and it is all for the best.
They say that China is the New Wild West. I believe that. This is an amazing country that has so much potential for greatness and power. The future for the time being looks optimistic for China and the opportunities endless. I believe I share that with China. I think my future is pretty optimistic too, and I don't have to stay here for the summer to have crazy adventures and new opportunities. In fact, I have somfe pretty crazy adventures with my best friends back home!
So here I am. In my dorm room at the old SWUFE campus. It is way nicer than the one I came into, and I just got back from having nice long chats with some people I met in the lobby. Most are from the University of Florida, here on an exchange. They are very wide eyed and excited as they have only been here for a week. All dreaming of what China will bring them. I am sure it will bring them great times, just as I am sure that I would have fun with them, showing them around and venturing around Chengdu. Learning Chinese by day, bartending at Shamrock by night.
But I have already done this whole scene, and I have more than my fair share of stories. So with that, my feet are following my heart back to Seattle and I couldn't be more excited. I am about to turn 21, which is quite possibly the best age to be in America. I want to celebrate it with my best friends who I can't wait to see. I look forward to those late nights at the Burrow, staying up until sunrise talking about nothing and absolutely everything. Being able to text Taylor any innappropriate phrase I want and having her respond with quite possibly a more inappropriate one. I'm going to look forward to having Jessi drive Maggie, I and whoever else around all summer and causing a raucous. Having Alissa come over from Spokane, Shiree leaving the Tulip frields and visiting. And Paula - oh Paula. I look forward to whatever crazy story she will have to tell me. Lunch dates with Cyril, listening to him talk passionately about Orison. Seeing Matt in odd moments - rolling my eyes at his horribly bad jokes. But most of all I am excited to see my family. My mom (who I know was just here but who I miss already), my stepdad (because who else is going to slam the cupboards at 4 AM and wake him up?) my Dad (because who else will entertain him like I do?) my stepmom (who else is going to leave a mess everywhere?) and all my siblings - all five of my beautiful, wonderful, crazy siblings. I can't wait for my little sister's First Communion and can't wait to see my whole wacky, fun extended family of cousins, my little second cousins, my aunt and uncle, and most especially the man that made this all possible - My Grandfather.
So here's to you China. We had our ups, we had our downs. Mainly it was ups and I will never forget the time I spent here. I have learned so much and made so many amazing (albeit interesting) friends and had one too many crazy counters. Thanks for the late nights and the insane taxi rides. The strengthening of my quads with the squatty potties, and giving me the force of the hulk to now be able to navigate through crowds of thousands of people. Xie, Xie and Bye-bye!
Side note: My mom put her foot down and completely refused to pay for another flight for me (as she should..I am quite the money sucker!) so I have to take the train. My internet isn't working at the Tex-Mex grill that I am at right now so I have tried to explain frantically to the Chinese people my situation and they have been the most accommodating. Since I couldn't book online a man left this place to go a half hour away to find and book the tickets for me. He got me a luxurious first class cabin on the train for a fraction of the price that most people pay! That's the thing with China - you never really know what you're going to get. They can't figure out that drinks and appetizers come before the meals but sometimes they will quite eating their meal and run to the train station to help you out.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
A word on the Chinese people
I typically got the same response from people when I told them that I was going to China. It was essentially a mixture of "wow that's really exciting...but why the eff would you do that?" Yes. It's true, for our standards the Chinese are incredibly rude. They stare. They hack and spit. They are so ridiculously loud. They walk around with their shirts up and bellies exposed when they get hot. They piss everywhere. They push, they shove, and don't seem to care about anyone but themselves. (This isn't true for all Chinese..mainly for the older crowds). But to understand why the way they are you need to understand their history. Well, at least when Mao came into the picture.
These people have been straight up abused by their government since 1949. They say that Mao did 70 percent good and 30 percent bad for China. It's all how you look at it and what you believe, but I know for certain the 30 percent that was bad was really, really bad. I mean, he did get the whole country off of their opium addiction, and he did turn it more into a land of opportunity. But my God the other stuff he did was just ridiculous. Like killing all the sparrows in china, which caused an increase of locusts eating crops and starting a giant famine that killed some 30 million Chinese people? That was one of the many strengths on his resume. He decided that China needed to be a superpower and to achieve that he needed to destroy basically their whole culture. He knocked down all the of the ancient temples and monuments. All the ancient city walls. In their place he put up factories. Hence the smog and pollution levels, and the hacking and spitting. Hence the sad, cheap immitation knock offs of old temples.
It made me think. What would China be like if the communist party hadn't won? Would China have blue skies and be cleaner? Would the people be less pushy because it wasn't survival of the fittest? Or would they be worse off. Because now China is really like the wild west. Full of opportunity to make some money, to get out of poverty. It's pretty interesting to think about. I mean I go back in forth with this a lot in my head, but nothing seems to explain the staring...except for the borders being opened up only thirty years ago.
These people have been straight up abused by their government since 1949. They say that Mao did 70 percent good and 30 percent bad for China. It's all how you look at it and what you believe, but I know for certain the 30 percent that was bad was really, really bad. I mean, he did get the whole country off of their opium addiction, and he did turn it more into a land of opportunity. But my God the other stuff he did was just ridiculous. Like killing all the sparrows in china, which caused an increase of locusts eating crops and starting a giant famine that killed some 30 million Chinese people? That was one of the many strengths on his resume. He decided that China needed to be a superpower and to achieve that he needed to destroy basically their whole culture. He knocked down all the of the ancient temples and monuments. All the ancient city walls. In their place he put up factories. Hence the smog and pollution levels, and the hacking and spitting. Hence the sad, cheap immitation knock offs of old temples.
It made me think. What would China be like if the communist party hadn't won? Would China have blue skies and be cleaner? Would the people be less pushy because it wasn't survival of the fittest? Or would they be worse off. Because now China is really like the wild west. Full of opportunity to make some money, to get out of poverty. It's pretty interesting to think about. I mean I go back in forth with this a lot in my head, but nothing seems to explain the staring...except for the borders being opened up only thirty years ago.
Mom's week in China
It was insane seeing my mom bound toward me in the Beijing airport. It was like, Nance, what are you doing in China? Of course I was happy to see her but it was quite a shock. I was stoked (bro) to fly her out to Chengdu with me to see the place that I had called home for the past three months.
Unfortunately, our drive into Chengdu was pretty uneventful. I was expecting a full on Chengdu taxi ride. Complete with horns, speeding, people driving on the sidewalk. You know the works. I was really upset because I wanted my mom to experience and feel the full on insanity that I had most weekends. Oh well. I think she enjoyed Chengdu in the sense that she got to experience the real China. Other than that there wasn't that much to do. She kept asking me what she would do and see. It was then I realized that I hadn't ever actually done anything in Chengdu but eat American food, shop at Shunxi Lu and rage.
It was also completely humid and sweltering hot. And smelly. All in all a beautiful day. So I took her to the People's park and showed her where I blew bubbles for all the Children and started a gathering of all the Chinese. She watched the old women and men dance in the park. Watched them perform songs and dances for audiences. Watched the old men play checkers, chess, and mahh-jong. We both came to the conclusion that retired old people really do live the life in China. Naturally we got stares everywhere we went, especially since my mom was platinum blond. She loved it. Next we went to some Temple that was probably cool at one point but now it was just a cheap copy of what Mao so brilliantly destroyed sixty years ago.
I think my mom's favorite part of Chengdu was being able to talk to Chinese people about China. She absolutely drilled my friends. It's my moms favorite past time so naturally she was in heaven. Both nights we went out to dinner with Eamon, Winnie, Joannah and Lisa and she asked them all their opinions on what they thought about the safety of China to the one Child policy. Conclusion? This country is completely insane. I learned things that I had never even thought to ask. I figured China was a pretty safe place but Joannah told me that all crime goes unreported until they find the murderer or rapist. If the felony is over 20 years old they just sort of pardon the person and let it go. Nice...
We said goodbye to Chengdu after two days and headed East to the amazing city of Shanghai. I could live in Shanghai it's so cool. On a scale of one to China it is definitely closer to a one but it still is very China in the sense that "OMG what is going to happen next?!". Oh and they walk around in their pajamas. All of them. Isn't that strange? I have never encountered it in any other city and here, in the most westernized China city there it is. People in their pajamas on the back of motorbikes, walking down the street, buying vegetables, doing Tai Chi...just going about their daily lives in their nice striped cotton suits. Some expat told me that last year for the expo they police used to ride around and make the people in their pajamas go home and change to look more civilized to all the foreigners. Also, there are so many lights in Shanghai. It made me think. China really only cares about two cities in the whole country and really play it up so foreigners are all impressed. They spend so much energy on light in Shanghai but they won't pay a dime on anywhere else. Take SWUFE for example. They never turned on the lights in the building, the escalators they implemented in the meat locker were only turned on at random times. And heat? Ha! Yeahhh...well we all know about that situation.
Mom and I had a pretty good time walking around and exploring Shanghai. The city is dripping with all kinds of history and since I am pretty into that subject I was all about it. I mean, it was taken over by so many different people. Namely the Eurpopeans, which is why the architecture and buildings around the bund look so pretty. Oh the Bund. I could walk up and down that forever. It's a long stretch of path overlooking the Shanghai river on the Puxi side. It gives you a breath-taking view of Pudong. The boats coming and going. It made me pretty home sick, like watching the ferries come and go from Seattle to Bremerton, Bainbridge, etc.
My mom wanted to buy shitty souveneirs for people back home so I spent the better part of four days being drug around to random market places finding cheap goods to bring back (that honestly probably wouldn't even make it back without breaking). We were so go, go go the whole time I had to tell her we needed to slow it down. I mean, I had spend the past two weeks on my own waking up when I wanted and eating when I wanted. Not to mention I have had no sort of parental guidance in three months so that was a bit rough to say the least! But it was really fun. It was beautiful and unlike cloudy Sichuan province you could actually see blue skies and sunshine!
At night we went to swanky bars on the bund. It was beautiful. Everyone looked really fabulous. It was where all the wealthy expat men went to find some pretty Chinese mistresses or foreign girls. Where pretty Chinese girls would go to try and find a man to take care of them. Where rich Chinese men would go to try and their luck with pretty foreign girls (good luck with that..absolutely not going to happen!). Then there was my mom and I just hanging out being super Chinese and just straight up surveying the scene and staring at people. No respect. We also went up to the tallest bar in the world in the World Financial Center in Pudong. Drinking champagne in a swanky bar 97 stories up in the air in a foreign country is pretty cool. Especially when you're with your mom.
Unfortunately, our drive into Chengdu was pretty uneventful. I was expecting a full on Chengdu taxi ride. Complete with horns, speeding, people driving on the sidewalk. You know the works. I was really upset because I wanted my mom to experience and feel the full on insanity that I had most weekends. Oh well. I think she enjoyed Chengdu in the sense that she got to experience the real China. Other than that there wasn't that much to do. She kept asking me what she would do and see. It was then I realized that I hadn't ever actually done anything in Chengdu but eat American food, shop at Shunxi Lu and rage.
It was also completely humid and sweltering hot. And smelly. All in all a beautiful day. So I took her to the People's park and showed her where I blew bubbles for all the Children and started a gathering of all the Chinese. She watched the old women and men dance in the park. Watched them perform songs and dances for audiences. Watched the old men play checkers, chess, and mahh-jong. We both came to the conclusion that retired old people really do live the life in China. Naturally we got stares everywhere we went, especially since my mom was platinum blond. She loved it. Next we went to some Temple that was probably cool at one point but now it was just a cheap copy of what Mao so brilliantly destroyed sixty years ago.
I think my mom's favorite part of Chengdu was being able to talk to Chinese people about China. She absolutely drilled my friends. It's my moms favorite past time so naturally she was in heaven. Both nights we went out to dinner with Eamon, Winnie, Joannah and Lisa and she asked them all their opinions on what they thought about the safety of China to the one Child policy. Conclusion? This country is completely insane. I learned things that I had never even thought to ask. I figured China was a pretty safe place but Joannah told me that all crime goes unreported until they find the murderer or rapist. If the felony is over 20 years old they just sort of pardon the person and let it go. Nice...
We said goodbye to Chengdu after two days and headed East to the amazing city of Shanghai. I could live in Shanghai it's so cool. On a scale of one to China it is definitely closer to a one but it still is very China in the sense that "OMG what is going to happen next?!". Oh and they walk around in their pajamas. All of them. Isn't that strange? I have never encountered it in any other city and here, in the most westernized China city there it is. People in their pajamas on the back of motorbikes, walking down the street, buying vegetables, doing Tai Chi...just going about their daily lives in their nice striped cotton suits. Some expat told me that last year for the expo they police used to ride around and make the people in their pajamas go home and change to look more civilized to all the foreigners. Also, there are so many lights in Shanghai. It made me think. China really only cares about two cities in the whole country and really play it up so foreigners are all impressed. They spend so much energy on light in Shanghai but they won't pay a dime on anywhere else. Take SWUFE for example. They never turned on the lights in the building, the escalators they implemented in the meat locker were only turned on at random times. And heat? Ha! Yeahhh...well we all know about that situation.
Mom and I had a pretty good time walking around and exploring Shanghai. The city is dripping with all kinds of history and since I am pretty into that subject I was all about it. I mean, it was taken over by so many different people. Namely the Eurpopeans, which is why the architecture and buildings around the bund look so pretty. Oh the Bund. I could walk up and down that forever. It's a long stretch of path overlooking the Shanghai river on the Puxi side. It gives you a breath-taking view of Pudong. The boats coming and going. It made me pretty home sick, like watching the ferries come and go from Seattle to Bremerton, Bainbridge, etc.
My mom wanted to buy shitty souveneirs for people back home so I spent the better part of four days being drug around to random market places finding cheap goods to bring back (that honestly probably wouldn't even make it back without breaking). We were so go, go go the whole time I had to tell her we needed to slow it down. I mean, I had spend the past two weeks on my own waking up when I wanted and eating when I wanted. Not to mention I have had no sort of parental guidance in three months so that was a bit rough to say the least! But it was really fun. It was beautiful and unlike cloudy Sichuan province you could actually see blue skies and sunshine!
At night we went to swanky bars on the bund. It was beautiful. Everyone looked really fabulous. It was where all the wealthy expat men went to find some pretty Chinese mistresses or foreign girls. Where pretty Chinese girls would go to try and find a man to take care of them. Where rich Chinese men would go to try and their luck with pretty foreign girls (good luck with that..absolutely not going to happen!). Then there was my mom and I just hanging out being super Chinese and just straight up surveying the scene and staring at people. No respect. We also went up to the tallest bar in the world in the World Financial Center in Pudong. Drinking champagne in a swanky bar 97 stories up in the air in a foreign country is pretty cool. Especially when you're with your mom.
Here on the 19th floor the neon lights make me numb...
Hong Kong...wow this place is absolutely amazingly hauntingly beautiful. I have that Gorillaz Song "Hong Kong" stuck in my head and it is completely fitting with the city (naturally). Taking the bus from one Island to the next was awesome. The scenery - I can't even describe it. I regret that I didn't take more pictures while being here. I hadn't had enough time to book a hostel in Thailand (oops) so I got off at a random stop to see what I could do. I stopped outside of the the Chungking Mansions (please google this place...please) and was immediately hustled by and Indian man asking me if I needed a place to stay. I said yes so I followed him up to this dirty, nasty building. There were Indian people everywhere crying out trying to sell things and staring. I was immediately put off. We waited in line of an elevator and rode up to 17th floor. This place was so gross. Dust everywhere as they were doing reconstruction on the building. Really small, really cramped. I was feeling claustrophobic, which is saying something since I had been living in China for the past three months. I got in my room. I actually couldn't breath. I looked out my "window" which was actually just a square whole in the wall that looked onto some pipes. "Oh god", I thought. I have to get out of here.
So I left. I left to explore the city of beautiful neon lights. Along the way I got attacked by three different men. Not really attacked, but stopped and asked if I would talk to them and be friends with them. One was kenyan, two were Indian. I was getting really seriously annoyed. I made excuses to all of them and I am pretty sure I had a permanent "fuck off" look stuck to my face for the next three days. I found an Irish pub and went in there to seek refuge from all the street hustlers. I sat at the bar and chatted with the nice Philipino bartender for a while. Soon after I was joined by a nice American man named Derrick. Derrick hailed from the Big Apple, and hadn't been to he states for four years. He had been in Korea teaching English for the past two years and then in a small town in China teaching English for the past two. We bonded and swapped stories of the complete ridiculousness that is China. That's what expats seem to do around here - laugh about this Country. Because hey, we are all in this together. We cheers and had a drink together over the news of Osama. It was nice to be with an American again, but in general it's great meeting the random people you do while travelling. Really it is.
I spent the next two days exploring all that Hong Kong had to offer me. I moved out of the nasty hostel and into a nicer hotel where I could actually breath. Also less nasty hustlers in the area which is also a complete plus. Hong Kong is technically part of China - but not really. The British signed something with them when they took it over saying that they would give it back over to them in 100 years after they were done with the place - in 1999. That they did, much to the displeasure of the Chinese. I would be worried if I were them too, it would be hard to go from a commonwealth to communism. But the Chinese didn't implement the same rules that it did in mainland China, mainly because Hong Kong is so profitable. Many Chinese escaped to here when the CPC party took over in 1949. As a result, the Chinese living her are very...non-chinese. They actually mainly speak in English to each other. Everyone is dressed up wearing a business suit, and there are more Starbucks than I have ever seen in my life. Oh, and you don't need a proxy to log into Facebook!
I could honestly see myself living in Hong Kong. It got a little claustrophobic at times but there was nothing more breathtaking than riding the Star Ferry back and forth across islands, looking at all the neon lights and the wonders of the modern world. And listening to the distinguished Brittish men chat over their business lunches. The clashing of Chinese and English culture made a unique place and even more unique people. I took a hot yoga class which was in a high rise, and trying to find peace with one's body and mind while overlooking the beauty of Hong Kong was ug...well you get the point.
Despite the creepy guys (they exist all over the world ladies...watch out!) It seemed to be like a pretty romantic place. Walking through Kolwoon park and looking out across the pier there were couples everywhere. I witnessed some pretty adorable intimate moments. It almost seemed slightly cheesy - one man picked up his lover and swung her around and another carried his bride style towards a bench and sat her down. I tried to take pictures but I didn't want to be that creepy. And someone like Jess would be way better at that then me..I am just good about writing it. Of course as all things I prefer Hong Kong at night. It was much more beautiful that way.
As usual, I got to thinking (wow Carrie Bradshaw much?) about the Chinese in Hong Kong. They seem happy and they seem to love it. Of course this is all they know, but still they seem to have no issues living in a completely westernized place. It made me wonder how long it would take mainland China to get this. If i was a betting woman I would say not too much longer. Change is coming to China at a rapid pace and it has already taken over Shanghai and Beijing. If they want to be the established superpower that they strive to be then they must make the change to all the cities, not just those two. Of course it will be difficult, but honestly they Chinese have gone through so much culture change in the past hundred or so years they should be used to all the change by now.
I was pretty sad to leave Hong Kong. Part of me wanted to buy a nice high rise apartment and search for a nice posh 9-5 business job with all the other locals. It had been two weeks since I had been in mainland china and I had gotten used to the normal toilets and the lack of hacking and coughing. And staring. And dirt. But I was excited to press on because in a few hours in the Beijing airport I was going to see my mom for the first time in three months! Ahhh!
So I left. I left to explore the city of beautiful neon lights. Along the way I got attacked by three different men. Not really attacked, but stopped and asked if I would talk to them and be friends with them. One was kenyan, two were Indian. I was getting really seriously annoyed. I made excuses to all of them and I am pretty sure I had a permanent "fuck off" look stuck to my face for the next three days. I found an Irish pub and went in there to seek refuge from all the street hustlers. I sat at the bar and chatted with the nice Philipino bartender for a while. Soon after I was joined by a nice American man named Derrick. Derrick hailed from the Big Apple, and hadn't been to he states for four years. He had been in Korea teaching English for the past two years and then in a small town in China teaching English for the past two. We bonded and swapped stories of the complete ridiculousness that is China. That's what expats seem to do around here - laugh about this Country. Because hey, we are all in this together. We cheers and had a drink together over the news of Osama. It was nice to be with an American again, but in general it's great meeting the random people you do while travelling. Really it is.
I spent the next two days exploring all that Hong Kong had to offer me. I moved out of the nasty hostel and into a nicer hotel where I could actually breath. Also less nasty hustlers in the area which is also a complete plus. Hong Kong is technically part of China - but not really. The British signed something with them when they took it over saying that they would give it back over to them in 100 years after they were done with the place - in 1999. That they did, much to the displeasure of the Chinese. I would be worried if I were them too, it would be hard to go from a commonwealth to communism. But the Chinese didn't implement the same rules that it did in mainland China, mainly because Hong Kong is so profitable. Many Chinese escaped to here when the CPC party took over in 1949. As a result, the Chinese living her are very...non-chinese. They actually mainly speak in English to each other. Everyone is dressed up wearing a business suit, and there are more Starbucks than I have ever seen in my life. Oh, and you don't need a proxy to log into Facebook!
I could honestly see myself living in Hong Kong. It got a little claustrophobic at times but there was nothing more breathtaking than riding the Star Ferry back and forth across islands, looking at all the neon lights and the wonders of the modern world. And listening to the distinguished Brittish men chat over their business lunches. The clashing of Chinese and English culture made a unique place and even more unique people. I took a hot yoga class which was in a high rise, and trying to find peace with one's body and mind while overlooking the beauty of Hong Kong was ug...well you get the point.
Despite the creepy guys (they exist all over the world ladies...watch out!) It seemed to be like a pretty romantic place. Walking through Kolwoon park and looking out across the pier there were couples everywhere. I witnessed some pretty adorable intimate moments. It almost seemed slightly cheesy - one man picked up his lover and swung her around and another carried his bride style towards a bench and sat her down. I tried to take pictures but I didn't want to be that creepy. And someone like Jess would be way better at that then me..I am just good about writing it. Of course as all things I prefer Hong Kong at night. It was much more beautiful that way.
As usual, I got to thinking (wow Carrie Bradshaw much?) about the Chinese in Hong Kong. They seem happy and they seem to love it. Of course this is all they know, but still they seem to have no issues living in a completely westernized place. It made me wonder how long it would take mainland China to get this. If i was a betting woman I would say not too much longer. Change is coming to China at a rapid pace and it has already taken over Shanghai and Beijing. If they want to be the established superpower that they strive to be then they must make the change to all the cities, not just those two. Of course it will be difficult, but honestly they Chinese have gone through so much culture change in the past hundred or so years they should be used to all the change by now.
I was pretty sad to leave Hong Kong. Part of me wanted to buy a nice high rise apartment and search for a nice posh 9-5 business job with all the other locals. It had been two weeks since I had been in mainland china and I had gotten used to the normal toilets and the lack of hacking and coughing. And staring. And dirt. But I was excited to press on because in a few hours in the Beijing airport I was going to see my mom for the first time in three months! Ahhh!
A little bit of Thailand. But not too much because I don't want to frighten my parents
Despite the creepy, large, pedophile looking Ronald Mcdonald I quite enjoy watching the McDonald's employees at the Bangkok Airport. I understand why they call it the land of smiles, because that is literally the only facial expression that I have seen the Thai people make so far! I'm not even that far away from Chengdu yet but I feel worlds away from China. It's almost a little like being in Japan as the Thai people do this bowing thing when they greet you and when they say goodbye. I can already tell that this will be a deeply religious country, which will be nice since China is completely lacking in that department.
My voyage from Wenjiang to Bangkok was eventful to say the least. I was incredibly sad this morning when everyone in the group left at 5 AM for Shanghai/Hong Kong. I cannot get over how fast the past week went, and in general that the trip is over! I miss my classmates already. We definitely became a sort of family over the past eight weeks and I am really sad that I am not ending the trip with Dan, Brett, Craig, and Shoji. It seems like just yesterday we were checking into our Tokyo Hostel! Honestly, I really don't know how my life hasn't completely fallen apart without Shoji in it! I miss that little ninja! Like I said I almost wish I was in Shanghai with them - but the excitement of being solo for the next two weeks is a bit more alluring. I have the whole summer to see the rest of China so I am glad I am seeing other parts of the world! But this morning was miserable watching everyone leave. I got about three minutes of sleep because me, Ana, Emon and Colette decided it was absolutely necessary to go out clubbing last night so we got in about 4 AM. The Chinese students saw them off since they won't be seeing them again and it was a pretty sad scene. I am thankful that this trip is WSU students so I don't have to say goodbye permanently! My leaving of SWUFE was pretty anticlimatic since I will be back in two weeks with my mom (so she can see the living conditions I endured) but what I have learned in being in Beijing and Hainan is that Chengdu it home, so I felt a little sad leaving it for the while!
I hopped in the taxi and enjoyed the crazy tumultuous ride. I took in all the sights of Wenjiang and played some John Mayer. I started to get this awesome feeling that I like to describe as travellers high. It's like you get super elated and excited because you have no idea what could possibly come next, but you know it's going to be good. Besides, what could possibly go wrong in a land full of beaches? I soon found out: disgustingly, creepy guys. There I was in the Chengdu airport minding my own business when some Indian guy decides I look like I want to talk with him. I didn't, I wanted to eat my sandwich and think about how tired I was from lack of sleep. I was nice at first and he yammered on about how he was a pro golfer. I told him I hated golf. He laughed. I glared. Then he started talking about his money or something and how it was nice everything went on his tab. Then he told me I should think about being in golf management. I once again repeated that I hated golf. So I got up to grab the plane. He followed me and asked where I was sitting so I showed him my ticket. He said he would try and upgrade me to first class. WTF?! Fortunately it didn't work so I had a nice three hour flight where I passed out. When I got off the plane he was waiting for me. I had told him I was going to Phuket and he was trying to convince me that Bangkok was way better. He carried my bags for me and told me to accompany him to Bangkok. I said that I couldn't because I made plans. He told me he would pay for everything all week, and we could even sleep in different rooms. Ew, ew, ew, ew. I grabbed my bags and excused myself to the bathroom and waited till he left. Unfortunately this was only the first of many creepy older men encounters in Thailand. I mean, just because I am 20 does not mean I am interested in older men and their money. I mean I am financially dependent on my parents...I always travel all expenses paid! And they aren't creepy. And I get my own room.
I got picked up from the airport from a nice Thai lady and the owner of my hostel. We travelled across some bumpy backroads and I was shocked at how uneventful the ride was. As in, there was no u-turns in the middle of the streets or driving up on the sidewalks. Niiiiiiice. The only thing was that there were animals. Everywhere. We constantly had to stop because there would be a pack of stray dogs roaming around. We finally got to the hostel and was a little apprehensive, since i didn't quite know what to expect. When I got to the lobby there was a group of people. One said "Ey, you miss? You alone?" I replied yes and they all replied with a smile and they told me to hurry up and come and enjoy the hedonistic pleasures of patong beach with them. That's the thing with travelling: you're never really alone even if you think you start out that way! Other backpackers/travellers seems to be the friendliest and most open-minded out there. They also never seem to be American, as the crew I met were all kiwis, aussies, canucks, or brits.
Patong was nuts. I couldn't help but notice that there were gorgeous Thai girls walking around everywhere...then I noticed again most of them weren't girls but ladyboys! I took a picture of one and she got pissed and said "100 baht!!" I said no snapped another pic and she chased me down the walk a ways. There were people every two feet that wanted you to buy something, purse, watch, tuk-tuk, massage, prostitute, drinks, etc. There were also beggars, lots and lots of beggars. In China this is an incredibly rare site so I was kind of taken aback. It was worse than Mexico. That night I took shots of snake blood with my new friends and watched a ping pong show. I won't go into detail, but if you are curious google it. Everyone else seemed entertained but it made me feel really sad. But I drowned that out with boozing until 5 am.
The next few days were awesome! I think I gained ten pounds eating Thai food this past week. So delicious! Actually I know I gained ten pounds this past week. I couldn't help it! Not only is Thai food delicious but there was such a variety everywhere else! And everyone speaks English. Being in Thailand was such a luxury. Sitting on the beach, munching on phad thai and french fries and being surrounded by cats. Lots and lots of cats. Heaven. Unfortunately I didn't get to know any real Thai culture this past week, so I know I need to go back. I was too busy not doing anything but being a tourist. One thing that really stuck out to me was what this woman (named Porn) said to me as she was giving me a manicure. The conversation started off as all conversations started off in Thailand. "You come here alone!??! Why you travel alone!? Where you boyfrined? What?! You no have boyfriend? American girls always have boyfriend! You too pretty to no have boyfriend you find nice boyfriend here!" and then I told her I enjoyed the country, but a lot of it had made me sad. Like the children attacking me for money and the sex trade. She looked at me for a couple of seconds and said "Don't think about it too much honey. You just have fun, okay?". Hmmm.
After two days in Phuket (which is an Island by the way..did anyone else not know that cause I felt like an idiot when I found out) me, and four other people decided to venture on to Koh Phi Phi. A canuck couple, Em and Craig, and two Aussies, Wyatt and Jared. I miss my companions quite a bit and though I had just met them two days before I thought I had known them for much longer!
We had a couple crazy nights. The most memorable was watching the wedding with a pub full of Britts. We had taken turns painting the Union Jack over each other and were belting English songs at the top of our lungs. There were still cats everywhere. There were so many fun people to meet, and I enjoyed the whole trip! This is where I am going to stop writing about Thailand...for multiple reasons but the main ones being the week I believe was a bit too insane to publicly blog about. And I don't want to give my parents heart attacks. But I did wake up with a few more piercings, lots of body paint, and cats. Yes. This being said I will tell anyone who will listen (and that don't want to listen) about my adventures of this past week. Trust me though, you will want to hear them.
The interesting thing about Koh Phi Phi was there were so many foreigners working there. Many had been backpacking with friends and just decided they loved it so much that they would stay there. They are club promoters, and essentially get paid 10 bucks a day and free alcohol. They get no days off and make just enough to live....but they love it! I almost wanted to stay there and join them! And I almost got my wish as I accidentally missed my first flight to Hong Kong...oops!
My voyage from Wenjiang to Bangkok was eventful to say the least. I was incredibly sad this morning when everyone in the group left at 5 AM for Shanghai/Hong Kong. I cannot get over how fast the past week went, and in general that the trip is over! I miss my classmates already. We definitely became a sort of family over the past eight weeks and I am really sad that I am not ending the trip with Dan, Brett, Craig, and Shoji. It seems like just yesterday we were checking into our Tokyo Hostel! Honestly, I really don't know how my life hasn't completely fallen apart without Shoji in it! I miss that little ninja! Like I said I almost wish I was in Shanghai with them - but the excitement of being solo for the next two weeks is a bit more alluring. I have the whole summer to see the rest of China so I am glad I am seeing other parts of the world! But this morning was miserable watching everyone leave. I got about three minutes of sleep because me, Ana, Emon and Colette decided it was absolutely necessary to go out clubbing last night so we got in about 4 AM. The Chinese students saw them off since they won't be seeing them again and it was a pretty sad scene. I am thankful that this trip is WSU students so I don't have to say goodbye permanently! My leaving of SWUFE was pretty anticlimatic since I will be back in two weeks with my mom (so she can see the living conditions I endured) but what I have learned in being in Beijing and Hainan is that Chengdu it home, so I felt a little sad leaving it for the while!
I hopped in the taxi and enjoyed the crazy tumultuous ride. I took in all the sights of Wenjiang and played some John Mayer. I started to get this awesome feeling that I like to describe as travellers high. It's like you get super elated and excited because you have no idea what could possibly come next, but you know it's going to be good. Besides, what could possibly go wrong in a land full of beaches? I soon found out: disgustingly, creepy guys. There I was in the Chengdu airport minding my own business when some Indian guy decides I look like I want to talk with him. I didn't, I wanted to eat my sandwich and think about how tired I was from lack of sleep. I was nice at first and he yammered on about how he was a pro golfer. I told him I hated golf. He laughed. I glared. Then he started talking about his money or something and how it was nice everything went on his tab. Then he told me I should think about being in golf management. I once again repeated that I hated golf. So I got up to grab the plane. He followed me and asked where I was sitting so I showed him my ticket. He said he would try and upgrade me to first class. WTF?! Fortunately it didn't work so I had a nice three hour flight where I passed out. When I got off the plane he was waiting for me. I had told him I was going to Phuket and he was trying to convince me that Bangkok was way better. He carried my bags for me and told me to accompany him to Bangkok. I said that I couldn't because I made plans. He told me he would pay for everything all week, and we could even sleep in different rooms. Ew, ew, ew, ew. I grabbed my bags and excused myself to the bathroom and waited till he left. Unfortunately this was only the first of many creepy older men encounters in Thailand. I mean, just because I am 20 does not mean I am interested in older men and their money. I mean I am financially dependent on my parents...I always travel all expenses paid! And they aren't creepy. And I get my own room.
I got picked up from the airport from a nice Thai lady and the owner of my hostel. We travelled across some bumpy backroads and I was shocked at how uneventful the ride was. As in, there was no u-turns in the middle of the streets or driving up on the sidewalks. Niiiiiiice. The only thing was that there were animals. Everywhere. We constantly had to stop because there would be a pack of stray dogs roaming around. We finally got to the hostel and was a little apprehensive, since i didn't quite know what to expect. When I got to the lobby there was a group of people. One said "Ey, you miss? You alone?" I replied yes and they all replied with a smile and they told me to hurry up and come and enjoy the hedonistic pleasures of patong beach with them. That's the thing with travelling: you're never really alone even if you think you start out that way! Other backpackers/travellers seems to be the friendliest and most open-minded out there. They also never seem to be American, as the crew I met were all kiwis, aussies, canucks, or brits.
Patong was nuts. I couldn't help but notice that there were gorgeous Thai girls walking around everywhere...then I noticed again most of them weren't girls but ladyboys! I took a picture of one and she got pissed and said "100 baht!!" I said no snapped another pic and she chased me down the walk a ways. There were people every two feet that wanted you to buy something, purse, watch, tuk-tuk, massage, prostitute, drinks, etc. There were also beggars, lots and lots of beggars. In China this is an incredibly rare site so I was kind of taken aback. It was worse than Mexico. That night I took shots of snake blood with my new friends and watched a ping pong show. I won't go into detail, but if you are curious google it. Everyone else seemed entertained but it made me feel really sad. But I drowned that out with boozing until 5 am.
The next few days were awesome! I think I gained ten pounds eating Thai food this past week. So delicious! Actually I know I gained ten pounds this past week. I couldn't help it! Not only is Thai food delicious but there was such a variety everywhere else! And everyone speaks English. Being in Thailand was such a luxury. Sitting on the beach, munching on phad thai and french fries and being surrounded by cats. Lots and lots of cats. Heaven. Unfortunately I didn't get to know any real Thai culture this past week, so I know I need to go back. I was too busy not doing anything but being a tourist. One thing that really stuck out to me was what this woman (named Porn) said to me as she was giving me a manicure. The conversation started off as all conversations started off in Thailand. "You come here alone!??! Why you travel alone!? Where you boyfrined? What?! You no have boyfriend? American girls always have boyfriend! You too pretty to no have boyfriend you find nice boyfriend here!" and then I told her I enjoyed the country, but a lot of it had made me sad. Like the children attacking me for money and the sex trade. She looked at me for a couple of seconds and said "Don't think about it too much honey. You just have fun, okay?". Hmmm.
After two days in Phuket (which is an Island by the way..did anyone else not know that cause I felt like an idiot when I found out) me, and four other people decided to venture on to Koh Phi Phi. A canuck couple, Em and Craig, and two Aussies, Wyatt and Jared. I miss my companions quite a bit and though I had just met them two days before I thought I had known them for much longer!
We had a couple crazy nights. The most memorable was watching the wedding with a pub full of Britts. We had taken turns painting the Union Jack over each other and were belting English songs at the top of our lungs. There were still cats everywhere. There were so many fun people to meet, and I enjoyed the whole trip! This is where I am going to stop writing about Thailand...for multiple reasons but the main ones being the week I believe was a bit too insane to publicly blog about. And I don't want to give my parents heart attacks. But I did wake up with a few more piercings, lots of body paint, and cats. Yes. This being said I will tell anyone who will listen (and that don't want to listen) about my adventures of this past week. Trust me though, you will want to hear them.
The interesting thing about Koh Phi Phi was there were so many foreigners working there. Many had been backpacking with friends and just decided they loved it so much that they would stay there. They are club promoters, and essentially get paid 10 bucks a day and free alcohol. They get no days off and make just enough to live....but they love it! I almost wanted to stay there and join them! And I almost got my wish as I accidentally missed my first flight to Hong Kong...oops!
Beijing and Hainan
Last week was a complete blur of finals and packing. I am shocked at how fast the past eight weeks went, but I was really excited to go on our final week long trip together! Our final trip will consist of three nights in Beijing and then two nights in the tropical Hainan. As per usual we woke up at the crack of dawn to make our flight. Also as usual Ana and I sat next to each other and clutched her crucifix and prayed the whole time we were on the flight. Seriously! I swear these are not real pilots. There is just absolutely no way. I am pretty sure I could fly a plane better than these Chinese drivers. I understand turbulence, turbulence happens. But the whole swooping up and down at random and swerving side to side thing just should not happen.
We were so happy to be off that plane and were completely shocked when we looked around and there were....white people. Everywhere. Herds and herds of lowai. Just milling around the airport. And there were normal toilets. No one was staring at us. We weren't exciting. We were just a dime a dozen. We got on our bus to head to the hotel. And then there was the ride there..no one was honking! No crazy drivers, nothing. Oh and the sky was almost blue. What was this place? Surely we were not in China anymore.
We got to the hotel and did the usual waiting game. In China everything takes forever, hotels especially. We milled around. Outside looked clean. We finally got situated and then it was time to head out to Tienanmen and The Forbidden City! It was hot. When I got to China it was absolutely miserably freezing cold out. But the second April rolls around more smog rolls in as does the heat. We were hungry and tried desperately to look for food. For some odd reason there were literally two restaurants around this area. We turned down Bernie's idea of heading to McDonalds. (For some reason Bernie always assumed that we wanted to eat breakfast lunch and dinner at Mcdonalds. I mean, I love my fries and my McChickens, but not that much). We regretted turning him down when all we found was a KFC to eat. We all just stared at each other and picked at our "food" and then ventured on.
Being at Tiennamen was...uneventful I guess? I don't know what I was expecting. It's not like there were going to be a reenactment of the events of 1989 (which the Chinese students don't know about by they way). It was a bunch of Chinese taking pictures of a giant square. People selling Mao memorabilia. "Hello!" they would call out. "Hello! You buy!". Like yeah, I would love a giant stone bust of Mao? It would look great in my apartment next year or better yet my Dad's office. I mean he did so many great things for America? They were also selling these red books that I found out everyone had to carry around as little as 20 years ago. They were all quotations of Mao and his beliefs and what not. I also found out that the Chinese people weren't allowed to see their groceries until a few years ago. Weird? Definitely. We took turn posing in front of Mao and staring at each other until we decided it was time. Time to enter the Forbidden City. Ooooooohhhhhh...
The Forbidden City was cool, I guess. Me, Audra, Colette and Ana decided to buy those giant rice paddy hats to wear around. Instead of actually trying to learn about the history of the City we decided to amuse ourselves by jumping into random Chinese people's pictures. Ha. Give them a taste of their own medicine. Too bad they actually enjoyed it and got really excited when we posed with them. Hurmph.
I am sure that years ago the Forbidden City was amazing. Especially when it was actually, you know, Forbidden. But Mao, in his fit of genius decided it would be best to destroy any part of ancient Chinese culture so we were looking at replicas that were built probably around thirty years ago when they opened up the boundaries for tourism. It's sad. It really is.
The next day we ventured toward the Great Wall of China. Ahhhhhh one of the wonders of the ancient world. To tell the truth, I was not that excited about it. You see, I never really get excited about seeing things like that. I prefer endlessly walking around and finding unique little places among cities that will remind me of them. But I was pleasantly surprised at how awesomely epic the great wall was. We were driven two hours out of the city to a non touristy place that few people come to. At times we were literally scaling the wall because it hadn't been refurbished. It was so cool. The view was absolutely amazing..I can't believe all those little Chinese people built all that! I couldn't see the end of it. For a while we walked alone, and then we ran into some interestingly dressed women. We were all in shorts and tank tops as it was pretty hot and these ladies were covered head to toe, and wearing hats. Bright colors. We later found out that they were Mongolians. That made me laugh.
Tao explained that they wanted to sell us souveneirs. We told them we didn't want any but they insisted and followed us around the Great Wall. Each lady grabbed onto one of us, and tried to speak to us in their Broken Chinese. I was borderline annoyed because I didn't need anyone telling me to be careful and that there were sharp rocks around. And that the great wall was really old. Cool woman, thanks. Actually she told me that the Japanese paid to restore part of the wall so that actually was interesting. Anyway, they helped us down the mountain. She held my hand the hold time but it's not like I actually needed the help. I humored her and Tao explained once again that we didn't want to buy anything from them. When we got to the bottom they literally attacked. They were trying to sell us the most worthless stuff - all for 100 yuan each. Everyone in the group caved but me. No way in hell was I going to spend 15 bucks on some decorative chopsticks! Maybe a dollar fifty, but no more than that. She didn't budge so I told her politely that I really didn't have any money. She asked Bernie if he would front the money. I handed her 20 yuan to thank me for helping her down the mountain but she was PISSED. I was having Tao translate for me and what I got from him was that he was going on about how she was cursing my family or some shit. Oops...
The hotel was pretty nice and even had a pool. That night we decided that we wanted to take a nice refreshing dip to ease our muscles. We were floating around having a good time when an employee came up and asked us if we had swim caps. We stared at him. Then we stared at each other. He repeated the question and told us that we needed to have swim caps to swim in the pool. Did it look like we had swim caps? No. I mean we weren't doing it for exercise, we were just floating. He said we could purchase them for 33 yuan or we could get out. We got out. Weirdest thing, wouldn't the Chinese be happy to have western hair be stuck in drains of their pool? This country is a mystery, I swear. We dried off and decided to see what the Tuesday night club scene in Beijing had to offer us.
Turned out it offered nothing. We went to a Muse type place and found it completely empty. And a cover charge. Puhhhhleeease like we were going to pay that! In Chengdu people begged us to come into their clubs. We left and made our way down to another strip of seedy bars and clubs. There were people hustling for us to come in but they all wanted more money than we were willing to pay so we settled for a restaurant where we could smoke some Hookah. We met some Turkish people smoking at the next table (weird...Turkish people and Hookah) and chatted them up for a bit. It made me think of the burrow and how Ty keeps his Hookah set in a cat litter box. So that reminded me of cats. I like cats, and I like Ty and the burrow so it was an all around good feeling. We hung out for a couple hours, and naturally had some drama when it was time to pay the bill. See, the Chinese still haven't quite got the concept of separate checks, or any sort of organized system that would make the process go a lot smoother.
I guess this is because in China you eat family style and you pay family style. In any case, they really need to figure it out. They don't bring the bill to the table. You have to go up, point at what you ordered, and pay separately. This is okay, but the problem is the Chinese don't seem to want to cross off the items after you pay. This is always the cause of some drama. We have theories that they do this to get more money out of us because they will claim that we didn't pay for something. This was one of those times. We argued back and forth in Chinglish that the girl who just left paid for the rum and coke and everything is good. I think the Chinese assume that since we are foreigners we have lots of money we would like to throw at them. Well we are in college, so we don't, oh and we are kind of assholes when it comes to that kind of stuff. It's probably from living in Chengdu.
The next day we saw some more boring temple type things. I won't go into detail because it wasn't that amazing. Just a bunch of tourists looking at new buildings that represented old buildings that used to be there. It's really sad actually, but I will go more into depth and detail about that in a different post. The thing that was most eventful that happened was me going into major mommy mode. See, I tell people that I don't like kids and that I would never, ever, ever want to produce a snot-nosed child. But the truth is I am pretty good quite kids and have quite a large maternal bone in my body. So when I saw a little three year old boy crying, next to his overturned bike with no parents around I started freaking out. Where were his parents? Was he hurt? Ana and I rushed over. I picked up the little boy and tried to calm him down. Chinese people came over and took pictures of me holding the screaming child and none seemed to be his parents. I wanted to scream like the little boy. Where were these irresponsible parents?!? Tao came rushing over demanding why I was carrying this random child. I told him. He went around asking, and no one came forth. Eventually we figured out his mother was a random woman who was trying to push useless Chinese stuff on tourists. Tao finally coerced me into putting him down and explained that in China you learn to take care of yourself from a very young age. That's the Communist spirit!
Later that night we went to a large market where you bargain for designer knock offs It was more fun than anything - I didn't actually want to buy any of the cheap shit that they were selling. The whole thing was really dramatic. They would show us a ridiculous sum of money that they wanted for the stuff on their calculator than show us the special discount price they would offer only for us. We would show them a ridiculously low price, they would get angry, and roll their eyes, and we would do the same. We would go back and forth saying how poor we both were and that we couldn't afford this - then usually we would walk away and get the price we wanted. Which of course was probably too high to begin with when you factor in production costs. I mean come on, you know they pay them like thirty cents an hour and the raw materials cost like seventy cents each. Also, did you know that in the workshops (sweatshops) the Chinese roll around on rollerblades to increase productivity? Human Rights?
We took another early flight out of Beijing to head down south to the beautiful island of Hainan. I don't need to go into depth on how the flight was because I am sure my regular readers know exactly how it went. A couple of Hail Marys and tears later we were on the ground. On a scale of One to China, the airport was definitely more China. A lot of pushing, staring, and cutting in lines in the bathrooms. So great, really gonna miss that about this place. Anyway, once we got there we had to take a two hour train ride to the south of the Island. The train was pretty sweet. It was air conditioned, and we saw some pretty cool Chinese countryside. The best part of the trip was seeing THE PACIFIC OCEAN. OMG IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL. You have no idea. I love the pacific, since I grew up near it. I wanted to cry. I think we all wanted to cry. We hadn't seen water like this in over two months. It was glorious! I wanted to praise Buddha. Instead I just made a noise similar to that of a goose and jumped up and down a bit.
We got to the hotel. It was beautiful. Amazing, an actual five star hotel. We all joked that WSU set us up with this nice hotel to make us forget about how shitty our dorms were. It pretty much worked. We hopped into our suits and ran into the ocean. Oh It was majestic. Water, lovely, wonderful, tropical salt water. We laughed and splashed around. Eventually I actually looked around at my surroundings and noticed something. The signs were in Chinese, English,, and some other language. What was that? Greek? No it was...Russian. I looked around. There were a lot of white people and I soon realized that they were all Russian. What were all these Russians doing in China?
I realized that Hainan was the closest tropical place for those living in Eastern Russia. For the next two days I studied these people. They all have the same facial expression on their face. Not very happy looking, with furrowed eyebrows. They all also seem to have a nice hefty weight about them. And they don't seem to mind. Women that frequent Lane Bryant were wearing bikinis, bearing it all out on the beach. The men (of course..they are European) were wearing speedos. I was also certain that there were quite a few members of the Russian Mafia there. They were the men with the big guts and gold chains hanging around their necks. And gold teeth. Then there were the ungodly skinny ones who definitely shared the same pant size as my nine year old sister. Because of these Russians, the Chinese had to learn to speak some. Have you ever heard a Chinese person speak in Russian? Hilarious.
As you all know, in America we love the idea of being tan. A little bronzed is beautiful, and pasty white is disgusting. So the tanning industry makes quiiiiiiiiite a bit of money. In China it is the opposite. I'm sure I have already mentioned the whitening cream they sell in stores. But you know what they don't sell in stores? SUNBLOCK. Yeah, so being in cloudy, smoggy Wenjiang we had gotten quite pale over the past two months. Being in sunny Hainan we got burnt to a crisp. All of us. Even Colette, and she is black. We were completely miserable and wanted to cry. Tao just laughed because he turned a nice bronze color. But he was afraid that Fan-Fan would leave him because he looked like a Farmer. Oh the Chinese.
And that concludes the last week of our china adventure together. Everyone was to go their separate places. We said a tearful goodbye to Dayton in the Hainan airport as he was leaving for Beijing. When we got back to our beautiful (ish) city of Wenjiang we split up once again. Most of the group went to Vineyards with Winnie, Helen, and Joanna. Vineyards is Korean owned restaurant that makes American food. We found this place two weeks before we left. Typical. Me, Colette, Ana, and Eamon went to hit the clubs in Chengdu one last time. We of course started off with Shamrock and had a blast with all the rugby boys. I did my best to avoid master Tom and had a blast. We went to Jellyfish next and reminisced with all the good times we had out at these clubs. We avoided the Eurotrash like the plague and danced until three in morning. Unfortunately we never made it to Muse. I am really going to miss my two partners in crime this Summer.
We were so happy to be off that plane and were completely shocked when we looked around and there were....white people. Everywhere. Herds and herds of lowai. Just milling around the airport. And there were normal toilets. No one was staring at us. We weren't exciting. We were just a dime a dozen. We got on our bus to head to the hotel. And then there was the ride there..no one was honking! No crazy drivers, nothing. Oh and the sky was almost blue. What was this place? Surely we were not in China anymore.
We got to the hotel and did the usual waiting game. In China everything takes forever, hotels especially. We milled around. Outside looked clean. We finally got situated and then it was time to head out to Tienanmen and The Forbidden City! It was hot. When I got to China it was absolutely miserably freezing cold out. But the second April rolls around more smog rolls in as does the heat. We were hungry and tried desperately to look for food. For some odd reason there were literally two restaurants around this area. We turned down Bernie's idea of heading to McDonalds. (For some reason Bernie always assumed that we wanted to eat breakfast lunch and dinner at Mcdonalds. I mean, I love my fries and my McChickens, but not that much). We regretted turning him down when all we found was a KFC to eat. We all just stared at each other and picked at our "food" and then ventured on.
Being at Tiennamen was...uneventful I guess? I don't know what I was expecting. It's not like there were going to be a reenactment of the events of 1989 (which the Chinese students don't know about by they way). It was a bunch of Chinese taking pictures of a giant square. People selling Mao memorabilia. "Hello!" they would call out. "Hello! You buy!". Like yeah, I would love a giant stone bust of Mao? It would look great in my apartment next year or better yet my Dad's office. I mean he did so many great things for America? They were also selling these red books that I found out everyone had to carry around as little as 20 years ago. They were all quotations of Mao and his beliefs and what not. I also found out that the Chinese people weren't allowed to see their groceries until a few years ago. Weird? Definitely. We took turn posing in front of Mao and staring at each other until we decided it was time. Time to enter the Forbidden City. Ooooooohhhhhh...
The Forbidden City was cool, I guess. Me, Audra, Colette and Ana decided to buy those giant rice paddy hats to wear around. Instead of actually trying to learn about the history of the City we decided to amuse ourselves by jumping into random Chinese people's pictures. Ha. Give them a taste of their own medicine. Too bad they actually enjoyed it and got really excited when we posed with them. Hurmph.
I am sure that years ago the Forbidden City was amazing. Especially when it was actually, you know, Forbidden. But Mao, in his fit of genius decided it would be best to destroy any part of ancient Chinese culture so we were looking at replicas that were built probably around thirty years ago when they opened up the boundaries for tourism. It's sad. It really is.
The next day we ventured toward the Great Wall of China. Ahhhhhh one of the wonders of the ancient world. To tell the truth, I was not that excited about it. You see, I never really get excited about seeing things like that. I prefer endlessly walking around and finding unique little places among cities that will remind me of them. But I was pleasantly surprised at how awesomely epic the great wall was. We were driven two hours out of the city to a non touristy place that few people come to. At times we were literally scaling the wall because it hadn't been refurbished. It was so cool. The view was absolutely amazing..I can't believe all those little Chinese people built all that! I couldn't see the end of it. For a while we walked alone, and then we ran into some interestingly dressed women. We were all in shorts and tank tops as it was pretty hot and these ladies were covered head to toe, and wearing hats. Bright colors. We later found out that they were Mongolians. That made me laugh.
Tao explained that they wanted to sell us souveneirs. We told them we didn't want any but they insisted and followed us around the Great Wall. Each lady grabbed onto one of us, and tried to speak to us in their Broken Chinese. I was borderline annoyed because I didn't need anyone telling me to be careful and that there were sharp rocks around. And that the great wall was really old. Cool woman, thanks. Actually she told me that the Japanese paid to restore part of the wall so that actually was interesting. Anyway, they helped us down the mountain. She held my hand the hold time but it's not like I actually needed the help. I humored her and Tao explained once again that we didn't want to buy anything from them. When we got to the bottom they literally attacked. They were trying to sell us the most worthless stuff - all for 100 yuan each. Everyone in the group caved but me. No way in hell was I going to spend 15 bucks on some decorative chopsticks! Maybe a dollar fifty, but no more than that. She didn't budge so I told her politely that I really didn't have any money. She asked Bernie if he would front the money. I handed her 20 yuan to thank me for helping her down the mountain but she was PISSED. I was having Tao translate for me and what I got from him was that he was going on about how she was cursing my family or some shit. Oops...
The hotel was pretty nice and even had a pool. That night we decided that we wanted to take a nice refreshing dip to ease our muscles. We were floating around having a good time when an employee came up and asked us if we had swim caps. We stared at him. Then we stared at each other. He repeated the question and told us that we needed to have swim caps to swim in the pool. Did it look like we had swim caps? No. I mean we weren't doing it for exercise, we were just floating. He said we could purchase them for 33 yuan or we could get out. We got out. Weirdest thing, wouldn't the Chinese be happy to have western hair be stuck in drains of their pool? This country is a mystery, I swear. We dried off and decided to see what the Tuesday night club scene in Beijing had to offer us.
Turned out it offered nothing. We went to a Muse type place and found it completely empty. And a cover charge. Puhhhhleeease like we were going to pay that! In Chengdu people begged us to come into their clubs. We left and made our way down to another strip of seedy bars and clubs. There were people hustling for us to come in but they all wanted more money than we were willing to pay so we settled for a restaurant where we could smoke some Hookah. We met some Turkish people smoking at the next table (weird...Turkish people and Hookah) and chatted them up for a bit. It made me think of the burrow and how Ty keeps his Hookah set in a cat litter box. So that reminded me of cats. I like cats, and I like Ty and the burrow so it was an all around good feeling. We hung out for a couple hours, and naturally had some drama when it was time to pay the bill. See, the Chinese still haven't quite got the concept of separate checks, or any sort of organized system that would make the process go a lot smoother.
I guess this is because in China you eat family style and you pay family style. In any case, they really need to figure it out. They don't bring the bill to the table. You have to go up, point at what you ordered, and pay separately. This is okay, but the problem is the Chinese don't seem to want to cross off the items after you pay. This is always the cause of some drama. We have theories that they do this to get more money out of us because they will claim that we didn't pay for something. This was one of those times. We argued back and forth in Chinglish that the girl who just left paid for the rum and coke and everything is good. I think the Chinese assume that since we are foreigners we have lots of money we would like to throw at them. Well we are in college, so we don't, oh and we are kind of assholes when it comes to that kind of stuff. It's probably from living in Chengdu.
The next day we saw some more boring temple type things. I won't go into detail because it wasn't that amazing. Just a bunch of tourists looking at new buildings that represented old buildings that used to be there. It's really sad actually, but I will go more into depth and detail about that in a different post. The thing that was most eventful that happened was me going into major mommy mode. See, I tell people that I don't like kids and that I would never, ever, ever want to produce a snot-nosed child. But the truth is I am pretty good quite kids and have quite a large maternal bone in my body. So when I saw a little three year old boy crying, next to his overturned bike with no parents around I started freaking out. Where were his parents? Was he hurt? Ana and I rushed over. I picked up the little boy and tried to calm him down. Chinese people came over and took pictures of me holding the screaming child and none seemed to be his parents. I wanted to scream like the little boy. Where were these irresponsible parents?!? Tao came rushing over demanding why I was carrying this random child. I told him. He went around asking, and no one came forth. Eventually we figured out his mother was a random woman who was trying to push useless Chinese stuff on tourists. Tao finally coerced me into putting him down and explained that in China you learn to take care of yourself from a very young age. That's the Communist spirit!
Later that night we went to a large market where you bargain for designer knock offs It was more fun than anything - I didn't actually want to buy any of the cheap shit that they were selling. The whole thing was really dramatic. They would show us a ridiculous sum of money that they wanted for the stuff on their calculator than show us the special discount price they would offer only for us. We would show them a ridiculously low price, they would get angry, and roll their eyes, and we would do the same. We would go back and forth saying how poor we both were and that we couldn't afford this - then usually we would walk away and get the price we wanted. Which of course was probably too high to begin with when you factor in production costs. I mean come on, you know they pay them like thirty cents an hour and the raw materials cost like seventy cents each. Also, did you know that in the workshops (sweatshops) the Chinese roll around on rollerblades to increase productivity? Human Rights?
We took another early flight out of Beijing to head down south to the beautiful island of Hainan. I don't need to go into depth on how the flight was because I am sure my regular readers know exactly how it went. A couple of Hail Marys and tears later we were on the ground. On a scale of One to China, the airport was definitely more China. A lot of pushing, staring, and cutting in lines in the bathrooms. So great, really gonna miss that about this place. Anyway, once we got there we had to take a two hour train ride to the south of the Island. The train was pretty sweet. It was air conditioned, and we saw some pretty cool Chinese countryside. The best part of the trip was seeing THE PACIFIC OCEAN. OMG IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL. You have no idea. I love the pacific, since I grew up near it. I wanted to cry. I think we all wanted to cry. We hadn't seen water like this in over two months. It was glorious! I wanted to praise Buddha. Instead I just made a noise similar to that of a goose and jumped up and down a bit.
We got to the hotel. It was beautiful. Amazing, an actual five star hotel. We all joked that WSU set us up with this nice hotel to make us forget about how shitty our dorms were. It pretty much worked. We hopped into our suits and ran into the ocean. Oh It was majestic. Water, lovely, wonderful, tropical salt water. We laughed and splashed around. Eventually I actually looked around at my surroundings and noticed something. The signs were in Chinese, English,, and some other language. What was that? Greek? No it was...Russian. I looked around. There were a lot of white people and I soon realized that they were all Russian. What were all these Russians doing in China?
I realized that Hainan was the closest tropical place for those living in Eastern Russia. For the next two days I studied these people. They all have the same facial expression on their face. Not very happy looking, with furrowed eyebrows. They all also seem to have a nice hefty weight about them. And they don't seem to mind. Women that frequent Lane Bryant were wearing bikinis, bearing it all out on the beach. The men (of course..they are European) were wearing speedos. I was also certain that there were quite a few members of the Russian Mafia there. They were the men with the big guts and gold chains hanging around their necks. And gold teeth. Then there were the ungodly skinny ones who definitely shared the same pant size as my nine year old sister. Because of these Russians, the Chinese had to learn to speak some. Have you ever heard a Chinese person speak in Russian? Hilarious.
As you all know, in America we love the idea of being tan. A little bronzed is beautiful, and pasty white is disgusting. So the tanning industry makes quiiiiiiiiite a bit of money. In China it is the opposite. I'm sure I have already mentioned the whitening cream they sell in stores. But you know what they don't sell in stores? SUNBLOCK. Yeah, so being in cloudy, smoggy Wenjiang we had gotten quite pale over the past two months. Being in sunny Hainan we got burnt to a crisp. All of us. Even Colette, and she is black. We were completely miserable and wanted to cry. Tao just laughed because he turned a nice bronze color. But he was afraid that Fan-Fan would leave him because he looked like a Farmer. Oh the Chinese.
And that concludes the last week of our china adventure together. Everyone was to go their separate places. We said a tearful goodbye to Dayton in the Hainan airport as he was leaving for Beijing. When we got back to our beautiful (ish) city of Wenjiang we split up once again. Most of the group went to Vineyards with Winnie, Helen, and Joanna. Vineyards is Korean owned restaurant that makes American food. We found this place two weeks before we left. Typical. Me, Colette, Ana, and Eamon went to hit the clubs in Chengdu one last time. We of course started off with Shamrock and had a blast with all the rugby boys. I did my best to avoid master Tom and had a blast. We went to Jellyfish next and reminisced with all the good times we had out at these clubs. We avoided the Eurotrash like the plague and danced until three in morning. Unfortunately we never made it to Muse. I am really going to miss my two partners in crime this Summer.
The End for Some but the Beginning for Me!
Last night was our farewell party with our Chinese friends. After a somewhat edible Chinese dinner we headed to KTV to sing out our hearts content, along with our professor and a couple bottles of vodka. The last time we went to KTV it was the thirteen of us, Eamon, and one Chinese person, Lisa. We only sang American songs. I looked around the room and saw our group completely integrated with about ten close Chinese friends. They were singing Chinese songs and we were loving it. My, how we have grown! I think it was more emotional for the rest of the group than me since they are all peacing out of this country as fast as they can, while I made my decision to stay in Chengdu for the better part of the Summer. I opted for this over Shanghai because I realized that while I am not in Wenjiang I quite enjoy Chengdu, and besides why would I leave all the wonderful friends that I have made and helped me out here? Also it will be nice to have some friendly faces carry me home from the clubs on my 21 run.
The last week and a half has been kind of a whirl wind of planning, packing, contracting the stomach flu, and passing my finals. Can I reiterate again how weird it is that I am already done with school? I only had class for seven weeks, and as much as it kind of sucked at times it was honestly pretty awesome. I am not going to miss my dorm room, or the SWUFE campus in Wenjiang or really anything else in this area except for being able to see all my lovely Chinese friends all the time! We had a lot of lasts today. Last time walking and listening to the must play between classes, one last meal at the meat locker, and the last time having a great wall party in our dorms. So many memories in the past eight weeks, and I think we have all adapted pretty well and come a long way. Ish.
Two weekends ago we hit up the clubs (as usual) for a long night of drinking (for free), showing the locals how to dance and seeing odd things that are typical with Chinese nightlife. Oh, before I progress with my story I would like to share a little about the clubs/bars in Chengdu. First there are the authentic Chinese clubs, like Muse, Emperor,etc. These clubs are huge, 99.8% Chinese locals only, and absolutely insane. Other clubs and bars like Shamrock, Jellyfish, Paname are mainly places for foreigners. These are broken down into 70% Eurotrash, 15% American, and 15% Chinese who are trying to either be a foreigner or get one. I like both the same and we usually hit up both. We have taken a liking to Shamrock, which we usually drink for free since the Owner and Manager love us (okay and we are always there and bring in pretty good business).
Anyway we headed to Muse around 3:30 to finish the night with some crazy Chinese dancing. Me Brett, Dan and Dayton got tired around 4:30 and waited outside for the rest of the group to stumble out. We were enjoying hanging out and talking when some Chinese drunkenly stumbled out and talked to us. We were bsing with them and saying the little Chinese we knew. They laughed and babbled and told us they loved us. But they looked different. And they were, they were actually Tibetan! We said hello to them in Tibet and they got stoked. They started to get really loud and rowdy. We didn't really think a lot of this because being in the Southwestern Provence of China we are pretty close to Chengdu and there are places here with more Tibetans than Han Chinese. We joined in with them. Dan started chanting "Dalai Lammaaa!!!" So we all joined. Then One Tibetan guy started saying "Yess TIBET! Fuck CHINA!!" We were chanting yes in Chinese just not thinking about the really bad tensions between the two. Ooops.
Then the fight started. And that pretty much sums up the rest of our times at the clubs. We went to Shamrock a couple more times. I got hustled by the owner and manager to make drinks all summer, had some crazy times with some crazy rugby boys and as usual, we ended it with some late night grub at mcdonalds (goodbye China weight loss). We are making the country fat.
Anyway, Sunday night we decided to make dinner for Winnie, Joanna and Spring since they had taught us how to make dumplings, been completely hospitable and had already made us dinner three times. Me being the master Chef, and Colette, Shoji, Audra, and Ana helping wiht everyone else. I made some bomb pasta that everyone loves and some greek salad. Shoji was shocked at how good a cook I was, and was even more surprised that I made my own salad dressing. We also made some delicious mac and cheese shipped in from Japan. oohhhhhhh that mac was so good. It made me think of Taylor and how we eat our mac with forks. We are not spoon people, damn it. Of course Winnie doesn't have forks so we had to eat with chopsticks. Such a crime.
The last week and a half has been kind of a whirl wind of planning, packing, contracting the stomach flu, and passing my finals. Can I reiterate again how weird it is that I am already done with school? I only had class for seven weeks, and as much as it kind of sucked at times it was honestly pretty awesome. I am not going to miss my dorm room, or the SWUFE campus in Wenjiang or really anything else in this area except for being able to see all my lovely Chinese friends all the time! We had a lot of lasts today. Last time walking and listening to the must play between classes, one last meal at the meat locker, and the last time having a great wall party in our dorms. So many memories in the past eight weeks, and I think we have all adapted pretty well and come a long way. Ish.
Two weekends ago we hit up the clubs (as usual) for a long night of drinking (for free), showing the locals how to dance and seeing odd things that are typical with Chinese nightlife. Oh, before I progress with my story I would like to share a little about the clubs/bars in Chengdu. First there are the authentic Chinese clubs, like Muse, Emperor,etc. These clubs are huge, 99.8% Chinese locals only, and absolutely insane. Other clubs and bars like Shamrock, Jellyfish, Paname are mainly places for foreigners. These are broken down into 70% Eurotrash, 15% American, and 15% Chinese who are trying to either be a foreigner or get one. I like both the same and we usually hit up both. We have taken a liking to Shamrock, which we usually drink for free since the Owner and Manager love us (okay and we are always there and bring in pretty good business).
Anyway we headed to Muse around 3:30 to finish the night with some crazy Chinese dancing. Me Brett, Dan and Dayton got tired around 4:30 and waited outside for the rest of the group to stumble out. We were enjoying hanging out and talking when some Chinese drunkenly stumbled out and talked to us. We were bsing with them and saying the little Chinese we knew. They laughed and babbled and told us they loved us. But they looked different. And they were, they were actually Tibetan! We said hello to them in Tibet and they got stoked. They started to get really loud and rowdy. We didn't really think a lot of this because being in the Southwestern Provence of China we are pretty close to Chengdu and there are places here with more Tibetans than Han Chinese. We joined in with them. Dan started chanting "Dalai Lammaaa!!!" So we all joined. Then One Tibetan guy started saying "Yess TIBET! Fuck CHINA!!" We were chanting yes in Chinese just not thinking about the really bad tensions between the two. Ooops.
Then the fight started. And that pretty much sums up the rest of our times at the clubs. We went to Shamrock a couple more times. I got hustled by the owner and manager to make drinks all summer, had some crazy times with some crazy rugby boys and as usual, we ended it with some late night grub at mcdonalds (goodbye China weight loss). We are making the country fat.
Anyway, Sunday night we decided to make dinner for Winnie, Joanna and Spring since they had taught us how to make dumplings, been completely hospitable and had already made us dinner three times. Me being the master Chef, and Colette, Shoji, Audra, and Ana helping wiht everyone else. I made some bomb pasta that everyone loves and some greek salad. Shoji was shocked at how good a cook I was, and was even more surprised that I made my own salad dressing. We also made some delicious mac and cheese shipped in from Japan. oohhhhhhh that mac was so good. It made me think of Taylor and how we eat our mac with forks. We are not spoon people, damn it. Of course Winnie doesn't have forks so we had to eat with chopsticks. Such a crime.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Guang'an Adventures
I absolutely hate the question "How's China?" It makes me want to scream and kick things. I mean, I don't even know where to begin to answer that question. It's not like I can be like oh, good, it's great! There is just so much complexity to the whole thing. Normally I just lead people to my blog because this is the only thing that can scratch the surface of what China is like.
Anyway, this weekend I went to New Year's hometown, Guang'an! It is a pretty small (big for American standards) country town about four miles east of Chengdu. If I thought Wenjiang was ugly and dirty then I don't even know what to say about this place! Everything was old, falling apart, and very ugly. It could have been because of the perpetual grey skies, but who knows! An interesting thing that I encountered out here was that the people seemed to be quite thicker than what I was used to. Like normal sized almost. They still had baby feet but they weren't a size negative. Their teeth for the most part were absolutely horrendous. When a local smiled at me I was often quite taken aback.
We were really tired after our four hour van ride and to our surprise our hotel was amazing! I mean, amazing as you get for Sichuan. Kara and I squealed in delight and jumped on our beds and smacked pillows at each other (like every boys fantasy) when we realized that the bed had an ACTUAL MATTRESS! Oh! I thought I was a Queen that night with the sleep I got! I mean the piece of plywood that I sleep on now really does wonders for the best but what a treat it was to sleep on a real mattress! Seriously, you people don't know how lucky you have it in the states. The Chinese actually enjoy sleeping on wood (Chinese mystery number 29393230…)
The next morning we had to wake up early because we were going to travel all around Guang'an to see the kids in the school's that New Year's dad owns. I wasn't happy about waking up before nine but I was so excited to see the first batch of little kids! I didn't realize how much I missed my small siblings before I got to Asia! The kids at the first school were 2 through 6 and they were so much fun to play with! We sang songs with them, played games, and showed them our phones and cameras and they went crazy over it. Audra and I joked that all the small children looked like our mutual friend Le…so Le if you are reading this the pictures I took of the kids will be named in your honor! We were outside when we were playing these games so we got quite a couple country bumpkins peering in through the gates. The local news station also came to film and they interviewed me! So I am basically a celebrity in Guang'an because I ended up being on the news twice. But I will get to that later..
After a long lunch of local hot pot we headed to another school to meet students. This time we were going to a Middle School, (which really means High School) to speak to the students. I was surprised to see dorms when I got there! I guess a lot of students are from the country and it would be too hard to commute in so a lot of them live there. They also wear uniforms which look like tracksuits. I was expecting a lot of stares but nothing could have prepared me for what came next. I looked up and there were hundreds upon hundreds of faces staring out the windows. I looked to my side and there was a small Chinese woman grabbing my arm and leading me through the dark, damp, grey communist style halls up six flights of stairs and in front of a wooden door. I took a deep breath. I opened it. Cheers, applauds, screams, camera flashes. Was I missing something? Did someone really famous just walk in the door behind me? Oh no. It was me. These kids were in shock. Beaaaaaaaaaatiffurllll!!!! They yelled. "MISS! MISS CAN I TAKE A PHOTOR WIS YOU?!" "MISS MISS YOUR EYES ARE SOOOOOOO BIGGG!!!!'' You get the point. Three hours later and three different classrooms later I had sung the national anthem, the fight song, many American songs, and Lady Ga Ga. Now I have a horrible voice, and I am very aware of this. But they thought it was beautiful. They thought it was awesome. They also made me dance. As Matt always tells me, I have horrible rhythm (maybe true but I don't think he has any either) but with whatever moves I threw out there they loved it "sexxxy!!! Sexxyy!!! Like Lady Ga Ga!" After a couple thousand pictures and many "do you have boyfriend? You so hot! Do you think I'm attractive?" and signing my name on people's shirts (!) I was pretty tired. Being a celebrity is rough.
I had to use the restroom so one of the English teachers (she was my age….wtf?) led me to the restroom. It was a huge building outside and it was disgusting. Easily one of the grossest bathrooms in China. It didn't have stalls…just small walls about two feet high separating the squatties. No doors. You could see everyone do their business! The teacher had to go with me and plopped right down next to me. Humming a toon, looking out at the lovely view of a disgusting, dirty river next to the school. Seriously, this place. Boundaries China, Boundaries!! We all don't need to be up in each other's business all the time!
The next morning we were ferried off to yet another school. I was getting kind of wary at this point but I was getting an all expenses paid trip so I was pushing through it. This time instead of being overwhelmed in classes we were all outside and played a bunch of games with the Chinese students. Typical BS contests, except for this one. It was a game where you say a word into the candle to blow it out, and the first person to blow out all their candles wins. It was us verse the Chinese students and we were losing. Bad. I was feeling particularly patriotic as we had just finished belting the National Anthem and the fight song and I was not happy we were losing to a bunch of commie children. The first four had lost, and it was my turn. I was heated. I screamed the words. "America!" "fight!" "peas!" "Mel Gibson!" "FREEEEEEDOMMMM!!" was the final candle I screamed into and I looked up and I was victorious against the innocent little Chinese girl! Ha! I had won! The crowd loved it! I ran to college my prize, all happy and then the evil Chinese dictator principal said although I won, the Chinese won overall because more people won. COOL CHINA. My prize was a pretty awesome pen that I later used to sign more autographs and hand out my phone number and such.
The locals definitely were not as friendly as Chengdu. As in they tried to rip us off considerably more because we were lowai. I got quite heated about two pretty nasty incidents. New Year told me to relax, and that the couple more yuan meant a lot more to them than it does to me. That's true, but I am American and it is still the principle of breaking rules! I will not stand for it! The craziest incident involved apples. Ana, Audra and I were exploring Guang'an and we stumbled across a nice looking fruit stand. We saw some ripe apples and decided to indulge. We bought six. She charged us ten yuan a kilo, so 13 quai total and we were on our way. We no joke had been walking for almost two minutes when we heard yelling and turned around. The shopkeeper ran after us and was speaking in rapid Sichuan Hua. No clue what she was saying but I assumed it was about money. I was right. I couldn't understand her so we called Tao to translate. He told us that we owed her 26 quai now. I was pissed. I started yelling at her, at Tao, at everyone. I walked to the scale and showed her we owed thirteen. What she did next was unbelievable. She changed the price for 20 yuan a kilo. In front of us. Then pointed at it. Is that a joke? Yeah right were we gonna pay that! By that time a 15 year old girl wandered up to us and started freaking out cause we were white then told us it should be 5 a kilo. So she was already ripping us off enough but running after us was ridiculous. We took our money back and left. Ha. Chinese no money, Americans no apples but lots of pride! Tao later told us that the woman was saying that these were the best apples in all of China and that's why they were expensive. Puhhhlease. This woman clearly didn't know that I hailed from the state where the most delicious apples in the world came from: the state of Washington. I don't settle for apples.
The next morning I was kind of in a grumpy mood. New Year told us that once again we would be going to school to talk to kids. I was completely over it at this point. Audra and Kara were sick from the food, and we were all tired and didn't want to get out of our western beds. It was also raining so all I wanted to do was sit inside and watched my bootlegged sex and the city DVDs. Begrudgingly I pulled on my clothes and walked to the van. When we got to the school we noticed all the kids were on the field. We were to have a competition, each white person leading a group of 25 kids in a bunch of different events. We all had to make a flag for our country, a slogan, etc. It actually turned out to be pretty fun and it was great connecting with students on a more personal level! They were just so happy to see me it was hard to be in a bad mood. We sang, danced, laughed and tried to communicate with one another. For one event we did a trust fall…scary! These kids were half the size of me but only three years younger! Our team ended up winning the whole thing so as our reward we got…wait for it…CPC handbooks! I love reading up on communism! The best part was the kids were all so excited..
We finished off the events with letting some hot air balloons go off into the sky. I really wanted to get going as my stomach was rumbling and I was getting kind of overwhelmed. I had signed almost everyone's tracksuit and it was pretty funny looking over and seeing my name on everyone's sleeve. I kept being grabbed, getting my picture taken, etc. But now I was tired, and I just wanted to go home. I gave my phone number to everyone, and my email and finally it was time to leave Guang'an. Two girls who had really taken a liking to me walked me back to the van. I gave them one last hug and hopped in. When I turned around to wave my final goodbye my heart sunk. The two girls were crying. One just had tears rolling down her face and the other was full on bawling, and in need of being comforted. Suddenly I felt horrible for not wanting to be there. These two 16 year old girls had looked forward to us coming for the whole year, and especially the past week. That Sunday was one of the most exciting days of their lives, to meet a foreign person that spoke native English as they had never met someone who wasn't Chinese before. I made our driver stop the van, I got out of the car and hugged them again and promised them that I would see them again someday. I don't know if I will be able to keep that promise as I can't even remember their names but them and some other ones sure text me a lot in broken English! It's racking up my phone bill.
Anyway, this weekend I went to New Year's hometown, Guang'an! It is a pretty small (big for American standards) country town about four miles east of Chengdu. If I thought Wenjiang was ugly and dirty then I don't even know what to say about this place! Everything was old, falling apart, and very ugly. It could have been because of the perpetual grey skies, but who knows! An interesting thing that I encountered out here was that the people seemed to be quite thicker than what I was used to. Like normal sized almost. They still had baby feet but they weren't a size negative. Their teeth for the most part were absolutely horrendous. When a local smiled at me I was often quite taken aback.
We were really tired after our four hour van ride and to our surprise our hotel was amazing! I mean, amazing as you get for Sichuan. Kara and I squealed in delight and jumped on our beds and smacked pillows at each other (like every boys fantasy) when we realized that the bed had an ACTUAL MATTRESS! Oh! I thought I was a Queen that night with the sleep I got! I mean the piece of plywood that I sleep on now really does wonders for the best but what a treat it was to sleep on a real mattress! Seriously, you people don't know how lucky you have it in the states. The Chinese actually enjoy sleeping on wood (Chinese mystery number 29393230…)
The next morning we had to wake up early because we were going to travel all around Guang'an to see the kids in the school's that New Year's dad owns. I wasn't happy about waking up before nine but I was so excited to see the first batch of little kids! I didn't realize how much I missed my small siblings before I got to Asia! The kids at the first school were 2 through 6 and they were so much fun to play with! We sang songs with them, played games, and showed them our phones and cameras and they went crazy over it. Audra and I joked that all the small children looked like our mutual friend Le…so Le if you are reading this the pictures I took of the kids will be named in your honor! We were outside when we were playing these games so we got quite a couple country bumpkins peering in through the gates. The local news station also came to film and they interviewed me! So I am basically a celebrity in Guang'an because I ended up being on the news twice. But I will get to that later..
After a long lunch of local hot pot we headed to another school to meet students. This time we were going to a Middle School, (which really means High School) to speak to the students. I was surprised to see dorms when I got there! I guess a lot of students are from the country and it would be too hard to commute in so a lot of them live there. They also wear uniforms which look like tracksuits. I was expecting a lot of stares but nothing could have prepared me for what came next. I looked up and there were hundreds upon hundreds of faces staring out the windows. I looked to my side and there was a small Chinese woman grabbing my arm and leading me through the dark, damp, grey communist style halls up six flights of stairs and in front of a wooden door. I took a deep breath. I opened it. Cheers, applauds, screams, camera flashes. Was I missing something? Did someone really famous just walk in the door behind me? Oh no. It was me. These kids were in shock. Beaaaaaaaaaatiffurllll!!!! They yelled. "MISS! MISS CAN I TAKE A PHOTOR WIS YOU?!" "MISS MISS YOUR EYES ARE SOOOOOOO BIGGG!!!!'' You get the point. Three hours later and three different classrooms later I had sung the national anthem, the fight song, many American songs, and Lady Ga Ga. Now I have a horrible voice, and I am very aware of this. But they thought it was beautiful. They thought it was awesome. They also made me dance. As Matt always tells me, I have horrible rhythm (maybe true but I don't think he has any either) but with whatever moves I threw out there they loved it "sexxxy!!! Sexxyy!!! Like Lady Ga Ga!" After a couple thousand pictures and many "do you have boyfriend? You so hot! Do you think I'm attractive?" and signing my name on people's shirts (!) I was pretty tired. Being a celebrity is rough.
I had to use the restroom so one of the English teachers (she was my age….wtf?) led me to the restroom. It was a huge building outside and it was disgusting. Easily one of the grossest bathrooms in China. It didn't have stalls…just small walls about two feet high separating the squatties. No doors. You could see everyone do their business! The teacher had to go with me and plopped right down next to me. Humming a toon, looking out at the lovely view of a disgusting, dirty river next to the school. Seriously, this place. Boundaries China, Boundaries!! We all don't need to be up in each other's business all the time!
The next morning we were ferried off to yet another school. I was getting kind of wary at this point but I was getting an all expenses paid trip so I was pushing through it. This time instead of being overwhelmed in classes we were all outside and played a bunch of games with the Chinese students. Typical BS contests, except for this one. It was a game where you say a word into the candle to blow it out, and the first person to blow out all their candles wins. It was us verse the Chinese students and we were losing. Bad. I was feeling particularly patriotic as we had just finished belting the National Anthem and the fight song and I was not happy we were losing to a bunch of commie children. The first four had lost, and it was my turn. I was heated. I screamed the words. "America!" "fight!" "peas!" "Mel Gibson!" "FREEEEEEDOMMMM!!" was the final candle I screamed into and I looked up and I was victorious against the innocent little Chinese girl! Ha! I had won! The crowd loved it! I ran to college my prize, all happy and then the evil Chinese dictator principal said although I won, the Chinese won overall because more people won. COOL CHINA. My prize was a pretty awesome pen that I later used to sign more autographs and hand out my phone number and such.
The locals definitely were not as friendly as Chengdu. As in they tried to rip us off considerably more because we were lowai. I got quite heated about two pretty nasty incidents. New Year told me to relax, and that the couple more yuan meant a lot more to them than it does to me. That's true, but I am American and it is still the principle of breaking rules! I will not stand for it! The craziest incident involved apples. Ana, Audra and I were exploring Guang'an and we stumbled across a nice looking fruit stand. We saw some ripe apples and decided to indulge. We bought six. She charged us ten yuan a kilo, so 13 quai total and we were on our way. We no joke had been walking for almost two minutes when we heard yelling and turned around. The shopkeeper ran after us and was speaking in rapid Sichuan Hua. No clue what she was saying but I assumed it was about money. I was right. I couldn't understand her so we called Tao to translate. He told us that we owed her 26 quai now. I was pissed. I started yelling at her, at Tao, at everyone. I walked to the scale and showed her we owed thirteen. What she did next was unbelievable. She changed the price for 20 yuan a kilo. In front of us. Then pointed at it. Is that a joke? Yeah right were we gonna pay that! By that time a 15 year old girl wandered up to us and started freaking out cause we were white then told us it should be 5 a kilo. So she was already ripping us off enough but running after us was ridiculous. We took our money back and left. Ha. Chinese no money, Americans no apples but lots of pride! Tao later told us that the woman was saying that these were the best apples in all of China and that's why they were expensive. Puhhhlease. This woman clearly didn't know that I hailed from the state where the most delicious apples in the world came from: the state of Washington. I don't settle for apples.
The next morning I was kind of in a grumpy mood. New Year told us that once again we would be going to school to talk to kids. I was completely over it at this point. Audra and Kara were sick from the food, and we were all tired and didn't want to get out of our western beds. It was also raining so all I wanted to do was sit inside and watched my bootlegged sex and the city DVDs. Begrudgingly I pulled on my clothes and walked to the van. When we got to the school we noticed all the kids were on the field. We were to have a competition, each white person leading a group of 25 kids in a bunch of different events. We all had to make a flag for our country, a slogan, etc. It actually turned out to be pretty fun and it was great connecting with students on a more personal level! They were just so happy to see me it was hard to be in a bad mood. We sang, danced, laughed and tried to communicate with one another. For one event we did a trust fall…scary! These kids were half the size of me but only three years younger! Our team ended up winning the whole thing so as our reward we got…wait for it…CPC handbooks! I love reading up on communism! The best part was the kids were all so excited..
We finished off the events with letting some hot air balloons go off into the sky. I really wanted to get going as my stomach was rumbling and I was getting kind of overwhelmed. I had signed almost everyone's tracksuit and it was pretty funny looking over and seeing my name on everyone's sleeve. I kept being grabbed, getting my picture taken, etc. But now I was tired, and I just wanted to go home. I gave my phone number to everyone, and my email and finally it was time to leave Guang'an. Two girls who had really taken a liking to me walked me back to the van. I gave them one last hug and hopped in. When I turned around to wave my final goodbye my heart sunk. The two girls were crying. One just had tears rolling down her face and the other was full on bawling, and in need of being comforted. Suddenly I felt horrible for not wanting to be there. These two 16 year old girls had looked forward to us coming for the whole year, and especially the past week. That Sunday was one of the most exciting days of their lives, to meet a foreign person that spoke native English as they had never met someone who wasn't Chinese before. I made our driver stop the van, I got out of the car and hugged them again and promised them that I would see them again someday. I don't know if I will be able to keep that promise as I can't even remember their names but them and some other ones sure text me a lot in broken English! It's racking up my phone bill.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Wanna know an Ancient Chinese Secret?
Of course you do. You may be under the impression that the Chinese are completely genetically skinny, almost putting forth no effort to maintain their size negative physique. They inhale large bowls of rice and noodles without taking a breath. They never really partake in sports, unless if it involves a racket. Their main form of exercising is drawing anime and studying (mainly math equations). While some of these stereotypes are true to an extent (a large one at that) many of you may be shocked to find that the Chinese exercise. Quite a bit at that.
I discovered this secret a couple weeks ago. It was a random night, and it was around 10 PM. I was feeling the stress of China and my large amounts of exams so I decided to go on a late night run around the track outside my dorm. I figured I would be alone given the time of night and my previous assumptions of the Chinese. I was surprised to find thousands of people running, walking, sauntering, and in general lugging themselves around the track. Okay not thousands, but there had to be at least 100 to 200 people running around the track. Most not even listening to music, some jogging and gossiping with friends. In the middle of the track there was a large group practicing Kung Fu and Tai Chi. I looked over towards the Communist Chinese playground and every single plaything was occupied by at least three people. The monkey bars seemed to be the most popular. I really need to get a picture of it, because it is completely insane. Now I understand why I get such funny looks when I run around the track during the daylight. I can't figure out why everyone runs at night. One of my more logical theories is that they are too busy having class all day, but I think it's because no one can see anyone. I kind of like it as well because I blend in pretty well.
Also, many Chinese girls have taken up the American habit of constantly stating to their friends (or anyone) that they are "fat". To this I usually respond "well then what am I?". Seriously, these girls are skinny to a point that they wouldn't be able to come close to fitting into woman's sizes. a size 24 would be sagging off of them. A double 00 (same thing) would not suffice, some girls are more around a size -4. Their thighs are half the size of mine, even with my couple pound weight loss I got goin on.
In other news, everyone here contracted some sort of plague from the Tibetan Mountain village they visited last weekend. My poor roommate spent the last night throwing up in the squatty, and the night before Craig, Mal, Bret and Audra were all infected. I think it must be food poisoning because neither me Dan, Scott, Shoji nor Sam contracted it. God that would be miserable.
It's really funny to hear the Chinese explanations of why we are sick. And the remedies they give us for our sickness. In America, when we have the stomach flu we just expel the fluids until there is nothing left. Our parents might give us some pepto bismal (which quickly gets thrown up)and some gatorade and saltines to help. I have yet to see any of those things in China. Winnie went to the student hospital and came out with about a thousand herbs for everyone to take. She also advised the girls to drink water, but only warm water. You see, it is not appropriate for women to eat or drink anything cold. It needs to be Lukewarm or Hot. I think it's because cold things cause infertility or something. Most things here aren't refrigerated anyway. Their frugality rivals Matt's. He refuses to turn up the heat when I am cold, but will give in a little. I'm pretty sure the Chinese don't have heat in any of their buildings, or refrigeration. It's always a shock when I reach my hand in what I think is a fridge expecting a cold drink to find it the same temperature as their friends on the shelves. The only thing they refrigerate here is yogurt.
Tuesday morning I woke up to quite a bit of commotion. People out in the hall were screaming. I had a bad migraine so I was slightly upset. I walked out to find Audra yelling about voodoo magic being performed in her room. Turns out the "voodoo magic" was another ancient Chinese healing tactic. Winnie's stomach hadn't been feeling well so she had Johanna scrape the skin off of the backside of her elbow on her right arm. I tried to ask her about it but she said it couldn't translate. She also told me a couple hours later she felt quite better. Hmmm.
I took another nap later that day because my migraine got pretty out of hand. I was awoken to two of my favorites, Tao and New year. Like most Chinese they only have one volume: LOUD. My stepmom would say that they had the loudspeaker on when they were talking. And oh, they do. They were asking Kara and I about how we were feeling and then proceeded to tell us the reason that we were sick was because of the weather, and how the air was changing. Then New Year opened the window and told us to drink warm water. Great. Well, as rational as that diagnosis sounded Kara was sick because she had food poisoning and I had a migraine because I was severely dehydrated. I try and drink three liters of water minimum here but sometime's it's not enough. I really don't know how the Chinese do it. They are very liberal with MSG, and many other salts and spices in Chinese cuisine, but especially in Sichuan cuisine. I usually get headaches from the little amount of MSG I eat at home but here it is just insane. You can't avoid it unless if you want to permanently be on the BRAT diet. I don't like bananas or applesauce and they don't have toasters here so I would just be on the R diet.
I guess that's all for now. I am going to Guang'an this weekend to meet New Year's family (who owns half of China) so I am looking forward to it! I am sure I will have plenty to say when I return.
Oh! Another interesting tidbit. Monday is some kind of holiday in China. So classes are cancelled that day. This is great, except in China, you make up those classes. We are going to have to Monday classes on Saturday. Good thing I'm going to be gone this weekend. Only in China.
Also this is my Chinese phone number: 13.880.752.4599 If for some reason someone wants to call me you can buy skype credit and call this number :)
I listened to the whole Let It Be album while writing this. It made me think of my dad. Hi dad!
I discovered this secret a couple weeks ago. It was a random night, and it was around 10 PM. I was feeling the stress of China and my large amounts of exams so I decided to go on a late night run around the track outside my dorm. I figured I would be alone given the time of night and my previous assumptions of the Chinese. I was surprised to find thousands of people running, walking, sauntering, and in general lugging themselves around the track. Okay not thousands, but there had to be at least 100 to 200 people running around the track. Most not even listening to music, some jogging and gossiping with friends. In the middle of the track there was a large group practicing Kung Fu and Tai Chi. I looked over towards the Communist Chinese playground and every single plaything was occupied by at least three people. The monkey bars seemed to be the most popular. I really need to get a picture of it, because it is completely insane. Now I understand why I get such funny looks when I run around the track during the daylight. I can't figure out why everyone runs at night. One of my more logical theories is that they are too busy having class all day, but I think it's because no one can see anyone. I kind of like it as well because I blend in pretty well.
Also, many Chinese girls have taken up the American habit of constantly stating to their friends (or anyone) that they are "fat". To this I usually respond "well then what am I?". Seriously, these girls are skinny to a point that they wouldn't be able to come close to fitting into woman's sizes. a size 24 would be sagging off of them. A double 00 (same thing) would not suffice, some girls are more around a size -4. Their thighs are half the size of mine, even with my couple pound weight loss I got goin on.
In other news, everyone here contracted some sort of plague from the Tibetan Mountain village they visited last weekend. My poor roommate spent the last night throwing up in the squatty, and the night before Craig, Mal, Bret and Audra were all infected. I think it must be food poisoning because neither me Dan, Scott, Shoji nor Sam contracted it. God that would be miserable.
It's really funny to hear the Chinese explanations of why we are sick. And the remedies they give us for our sickness. In America, when we have the stomach flu we just expel the fluids until there is nothing left. Our parents might give us some pepto bismal (which quickly gets thrown up)and some gatorade and saltines to help. I have yet to see any of those things in China. Winnie went to the student hospital and came out with about a thousand herbs for everyone to take. She also advised the girls to drink water, but only warm water. You see, it is not appropriate for women to eat or drink anything cold. It needs to be Lukewarm or Hot. I think it's because cold things cause infertility or something. Most things here aren't refrigerated anyway. Their frugality rivals Matt's. He refuses to turn up the heat when I am cold, but will give in a little. I'm pretty sure the Chinese don't have heat in any of their buildings, or refrigeration. It's always a shock when I reach my hand in what I think is a fridge expecting a cold drink to find it the same temperature as their friends on the shelves. The only thing they refrigerate here is yogurt.
Tuesday morning I woke up to quite a bit of commotion. People out in the hall were screaming. I had a bad migraine so I was slightly upset. I walked out to find Audra yelling about voodoo magic being performed in her room. Turns out the "voodoo magic" was another ancient Chinese healing tactic. Winnie's stomach hadn't been feeling well so she had Johanna scrape the skin off of the backside of her elbow on her right arm. I tried to ask her about it but she said it couldn't translate. She also told me a couple hours later she felt quite better. Hmmm.
I took another nap later that day because my migraine got pretty out of hand. I was awoken to two of my favorites, Tao and New year. Like most Chinese they only have one volume: LOUD. My stepmom would say that they had the loudspeaker on when they were talking. And oh, they do. They were asking Kara and I about how we were feeling and then proceeded to tell us the reason that we were sick was because of the weather, and how the air was changing. Then New Year opened the window and told us to drink warm water. Great. Well, as rational as that diagnosis sounded Kara was sick because she had food poisoning and I had a migraine because I was severely dehydrated. I try and drink three liters of water minimum here but sometime's it's not enough. I really don't know how the Chinese do it. They are very liberal with MSG, and many other salts and spices in Chinese cuisine, but especially in Sichuan cuisine. I usually get headaches from the little amount of MSG I eat at home but here it is just insane. You can't avoid it unless if you want to permanently be on the BRAT diet. I don't like bananas or applesauce and they don't have toasters here so I would just be on the R diet.
I guess that's all for now. I am going to Guang'an this weekend to meet New Year's family (who owns half of China) so I am looking forward to it! I am sure I will have plenty to say when I return.
Oh! Another interesting tidbit. Monday is some kind of holiday in China. So classes are cancelled that day. This is great, except in China, you make up those classes. We are going to have to Monday classes on Saturday. Good thing I'm going to be gone this weekend. Only in China.
Also this is my Chinese phone number: 13.880.752.4599 If for some reason someone wants to call me you can buy skype credit and call this number :)
I listened to the whole Let It Be album while writing this. It made me think of my dad. Hi dad!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
The sun rises in the East but Sets in the West
This morning I took advantage of the fact that I was not completely hung over by going on a long bike ride through Wenjiang. I headed out past the east gate of our school, down by the river and towards the epic teahouses that chengdu is known for. It was pretty busy, all tables were full so I rode on and kept riding. The tables were full of families, laughing, chatting and enjoying their tea. Ladies exchanged gossip, and old men played Chinese chess and smoked some cigarettes. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. As usual, I was spotted (my hair kind of lets me blend in but my face fools no one) and I got the usual stares, points, and lowai!! Greeting. I decided to come back later when it was less busy so I continued to weave in and out of traffic to discover new areas.
The driving here really is like an intricate dance, you just have to learn the moves and pay attention. I often ride my bike on the middle of the street now because I learned the rhythm and understand the hierarchy. If they honk, move the eff over or you are gonna get hit. It's actually kind of fun. Adds a little more Indiana Jones to my morning bike rides. I rode along the river and did some pretty good people watching and before I knew it I seemed to be out of the city, with the towering apartment buildings. I looked around. Old people everywhere. Riding bikes that were hauling food, produce, garbage and other goods. Chickens roaming around, dogs sleeping. And there were houses, lots of very old, run down houses. More Chinese people drinking tea and playing games. I got more stares than usual as I feel very few lowai have braved this part. I felt like I was seeing the China that most people never get to see.
Most foreigners just come to Beijing and Shanghai to see China. These cities are highly westernized and I feel like you cannot get the real feel of the whole diverse country. It's sad, because although I love the thought of the big city, more western life of Shanghai, I think that sichuan is beautiful. I can't really explain it, it's kind of like that one WSU quote. You kind of have to be out here to experience what I experience. All I know is that when I explore random streets and roads out here I always have a huge smile plastered to my face. I zip past flower fields and watch the people of China integrate their old life with the new, rapidly westernizing China. I often wonder what the elders think about it, and if they like it. Most of them adapt, but I use that term loosely. Many have moved to the cities but they bring their country lifestyle with them. It's really interesting, and I know I keep using this word a lot but it is beautiful. Maybe remarkable.
I zip past fields of flowers and stare into rickety old houses and shops. Most of the furniture is made out of bamboo. Some people were lighting off fireworks just for the heck of it, and when I smiled at the locals i got warm smiles back. Eventually I found myself back on the main road and towards a park where I hear music. I got closer and realized there was an exercise dance class going on. I rode onto the sidewalk and watched while still on my bike. It was mainly older women dancing, and reminded me of my Grandma Caroline. If she were still around and in China with me I could definitely see her dancing with the other older ladies! The funniest part was watching the older men who were itching to dance but wouldn't quite go for it. They would just stand to the side bobbing their heads. To the left of me there was a large tree that was full of Children climbing it. There were exotic birds in cages to the right of me, and when I looked up i could almost see sun and blue sky through the smog. It was a beautiful spring day in Wenjiang.
I was spacing out but my daydream was disturbed by an older woman who came up to me and started speaking at me in Chinese. She kept pointing at my arms. I had taken my jacket off because I had gotten on my bike, but she seemed kind of concerned about it. More old women came up and started pointing at my arms. Was there something wrong with them? I mean I know they aren't my best feature but I didn't know they would cause so much controversy! Self consciously I pulled on my jacket and that seemed to do the trick. Turns out they were concerned that I would catch a cold! That's another thing I love about China, they have their old ideals and believe they should apply to everyone and aren't afraid to tell you about it. I was once again disturbed by a different voice, speaking English with a thick Chinese accent. "EXCURRRSE ME BOOTIFURRL GRRRR, WELCUM TO WENJIANG WOURRLD YOU PREASE DANCE WIS ME?! BOOTIFUL GRRRR!" This woman would not take no for an answer. I got off my bike and busted a move with this woman. I must say it was pretty fun until I looked up and noticed we were the only ones dancing, and instead everyone had stopped what they were doing and stared. Even cars on the street. They were lovin' it. I started to love it again and got really into it. I mean, the locals are going to stare at me no matter what, so I might as well give them something good to stare at, right?
I finally peeled away from the dancing at the park and rode back to a smaller teahouse. I sat down and ordered some green tea in what I think was perfect mandarin. I guess it somewhat worked because I got the tea. I sipped it, stared at the river and listened to the birds and traffic and enjoyed a few more tranquil seconds until some excited Children approached me. They wanted to practice their English, and eventually more people came over to talk to the lowai as well. Old, young, whatever. They all wanted to come see what was up, and this led to me having some deep conversations with the locals. Like answering how old I was, and where I was from. Pretty inspiring all around. The little girl was really cute, she was around my sister's age. She was playing cats cradle (which I was pretty good at back in the day) and so I played with her for a few minutes. I was pretty happy when they all cleared out so I could go back to relaxing and enjoying my tea. I tell ya, it's real tough being treated like a celebrity in China...
The driving here really is like an intricate dance, you just have to learn the moves and pay attention. I often ride my bike on the middle of the street now because I learned the rhythm and understand the hierarchy. If they honk, move the eff over or you are gonna get hit. It's actually kind of fun. Adds a little more Indiana Jones to my morning bike rides. I rode along the river and did some pretty good people watching and before I knew it I seemed to be out of the city, with the towering apartment buildings. I looked around. Old people everywhere. Riding bikes that were hauling food, produce, garbage and other goods. Chickens roaming around, dogs sleeping. And there were houses, lots of very old, run down houses. More Chinese people drinking tea and playing games. I got more stares than usual as I feel very few lowai have braved this part. I felt like I was seeing the China that most people never get to see.
Most foreigners just come to Beijing and Shanghai to see China. These cities are highly westernized and I feel like you cannot get the real feel of the whole diverse country. It's sad, because although I love the thought of the big city, more western life of Shanghai, I think that sichuan is beautiful. I can't really explain it, it's kind of like that one WSU quote. You kind of have to be out here to experience what I experience. All I know is that when I explore random streets and roads out here I always have a huge smile plastered to my face. I zip past flower fields and watch the people of China integrate their old life with the new, rapidly westernizing China. I often wonder what the elders think about it, and if they like it. Most of them adapt, but I use that term loosely. Many have moved to the cities but they bring their country lifestyle with them. It's really interesting, and I know I keep using this word a lot but it is beautiful. Maybe remarkable.
I zip past fields of flowers and stare into rickety old houses and shops. Most of the furniture is made out of bamboo. Some people were lighting off fireworks just for the heck of it, and when I smiled at the locals i got warm smiles back. Eventually I found myself back on the main road and towards a park where I hear music. I got closer and realized there was an exercise dance class going on. I rode onto the sidewalk and watched while still on my bike. It was mainly older women dancing, and reminded me of my Grandma Caroline. If she were still around and in China with me I could definitely see her dancing with the other older ladies! The funniest part was watching the older men who were itching to dance but wouldn't quite go for it. They would just stand to the side bobbing their heads. To the left of me there was a large tree that was full of Children climbing it. There were exotic birds in cages to the right of me, and when I looked up i could almost see sun and blue sky through the smog. It was a beautiful spring day in Wenjiang.
I was spacing out but my daydream was disturbed by an older woman who came up to me and started speaking at me in Chinese. She kept pointing at my arms. I had taken my jacket off because I had gotten on my bike, but she seemed kind of concerned about it. More old women came up and started pointing at my arms. Was there something wrong with them? I mean I know they aren't my best feature but I didn't know they would cause so much controversy! Self consciously I pulled on my jacket and that seemed to do the trick. Turns out they were concerned that I would catch a cold! That's another thing I love about China, they have their old ideals and believe they should apply to everyone and aren't afraid to tell you about it. I was once again disturbed by a different voice, speaking English with a thick Chinese accent. "EXCURRRSE ME BOOTIFURRL GRRRR, WELCUM TO WENJIANG WOURRLD YOU PREASE DANCE WIS ME?! BOOTIFUL GRRRR!" This woman would not take no for an answer. I got off my bike and busted a move with this woman. I must say it was pretty fun until I looked up and noticed we were the only ones dancing, and instead everyone had stopped what they were doing and stared. Even cars on the street. They were lovin' it. I started to love it again and got really into it. I mean, the locals are going to stare at me no matter what, so I might as well give them something good to stare at, right?
I finally peeled away from the dancing at the park and rode back to a smaller teahouse. I sat down and ordered some green tea in what I think was perfect mandarin. I guess it somewhat worked because I got the tea. I sipped it, stared at the river and listened to the birds and traffic and enjoyed a few more tranquil seconds until some excited Children approached me. They wanted to practice their English, and eventually more people came over to talk to the lowai as well. Old, young, whatever. They all wanted to come see what was up, and this led to me having some deep conversations with the locals. Like answering how old I was, and where I was from. Pretty inspiring all around. The little girl was really cute, she was around my sister's age. She was playing cats cradle (which I was pretty good at back in the day) and so I played with her for a few minutes. I was pretty happy when they all cleared out so I could go back to relaxing and enjoying my tea. I tell ya, it's real tough being treated like a celebrity in China...
Weekends in the dirty 'Du
You're going about your day. You might be preparing some pastries, drinking tea and smoking with your friends while exchanging gossip. Maybe you are out on a walk with children or your husband. It's a normal day, but you see something a little off in the corner of your eye. You look up. Taller figure but with jet black hair. You go back to your business. But wait, something was different, so you look back. Those eyes! That hair is like yours, but that face is unmistakably Caucasian. You get excited. Lowai! You say to your friends. You point at the funny foreigner who is on her bike. She seems just as curious about you as you do her. Soon you and all your friends are staring. Meiguo you say excitedly, as this funny girl couldn't be anything but American. But what is she doing here in Wenjiang? Maybe someone snaps a picture, but soon she has ridden on and you go back to your business.
I go through that little ritual everyday when I bike past remote parts in Wenjiang. I don't know if that's exactly what they are thinking, but I have picked up on two words so far when I am around locals and I know they are referencing me. Lowai, means foreigner, and Meiguo is America, or American. I am pretty proud of myself for picking up on that, actually.
The best part of biking in Wenjiang is getting my 25 cent breakfast. I loooooooove street food. I don't even get off my bike I just hand my 2 yuan over to the lady and she hands me the goods. She knows what I want and she hooks me up. That's what I love so much. The people here remember who I am because I am one of the few white people that they have ever seen. I even have started to pick up on words when I am ordering. Like I can now successfully say that I would like some green tea, to the women at the tea shop. Nothing too useful, but hey it's a start! I am sure that after this summer I will be practically fluent!
This weekend was quite stressful, and I definitely needed to catch up on some much needed sleep. So I opted to stay behind and not go on the trip we had planned and instead hang out with Dan, Scott, Sam, and Eamon around Chengdu. While everyone got up at the crack of dawn to go on some freezing cold nature hike I slept till 2 pm and slowly got out of bed. Wow it was great. We decided that it would be a good idea to see some new clubs and hit the town. We got dressed to the nines, grabbed some road mons and took the bumpy ride into Chengdu. Eamon took us to the old SWUFE campus, where we should actually be staying. Man did we get screwed. The rooms at the foreigners dorm are like hotels. Beds on the ground, western toilets, heat...right in the center of Chengdu. And there are actually foreigners there! Like from Europe, and America and stuff. Lots of them! As much as I wish I was in the city and not out in Wenjiang, if I was never here I would have never made such good friends like Lisa and Eamon so I guess I am slightly thankful. But western toilets? Come on...
We trudged on towards the clubs and decided to grab some street food cause our stomachs were getting a little rumbly. I discovered that they could grill me up some Chicken feet so I decided to go for it. I'll upload the pictures later on facebook..it was pretty entertaining. You may say that I have completely lost it but I actually took a bit of the chicken talon and it was pretty tasty. yes the toenails were slightly off putting but really, it tasted just like chicken :) The boys were not having it so I chased them down a few streets of Chengdu with the chicken talon. Methinks the Chinese may have taken offence to this.
We hit the first pub, Shamrock. We were excited because we thought it would hold white people and we were right. In fact, that's all it held. We had found all the white people in Chengdu. All the old, creepy expats. It was amazing, there were literally maybe four Chinese people in the whole joint. We ordered a couple of drinks and I got a greek salad. Oh it was amazing! I mean the one I make and that Matt makes are way better, but beggars really cannot be choosers our here in the far rural west of China! It wasn't quite a dancing club and Eamon was trying to get his Caribbean on so we headed to Muse for the rest of the night.
It was better than last time, as we had a smaller group and were able to maneuver around way easier. We were the only white people there that night so we all set off to make some friends. And friends we made, about ten feet in to the club some old guy saw me and insisted I take about six watered down shots with him. I tried to say no in Chinese (and english) but he was too excited about the meiguo and insisted. He was a lot worse off than me, and eventually he pushed me down in the couch and gave me some sort of lap dance while the rest of his group took pics and cheered. Keep in mind this guy had to be about sixty. Hilarious. What I really like about the clubs is that no one there really speaks any English, and my Chinese is limited to compliments and ordering food so I'm kind of useless as well. But they don't care! They just get so excited that a lowai is there! I find it almost awkward cause we can't talk but they love it. I need to charge for getting my pic taken at clubs cause I could start making quite a few yuan off of it. I guess the sincere compliments are enough "you rrrrrrrr beautifurrrrr grrr!!! varrrrrlyyyy beutifurrrr!!!! I likkkeeyyy youU!)
Oh! The most exciting part of the night was when I got straight up molested by a ninety pound Chinese girl that spoke broken English. At first I thought she was trying to grab my neclace, but nope she was going for booby. She straight up grabbed my boob, tried to kiss me then screamed "GIRLS GONE WILD"! Umm, no sweetheart. I know you may have seen it on TV but just because some girls in America like to do that doesn't mean we all enjoy getting molested by female strangers. Namely, me. I ran away from her and tried to seek refuge in the girls bathroom but unfortunately it was occupied. A girl and a guy walked out ten minutes later and I was completely shocked. Let me take a break from my riveting story to talk a little about Chinese (namely sichuan) culture. The Chinese, though integrating and picking up more onto our western world, still very much hold on to their old ideals and beliefs. From my understanding with talking to my peers here at SWUFE there is absolutely NO SEX before marriage. None. Most would not even think about it for a second because that is lowly and that is how it's always been. Maybe this is more with just the educated class, but it seems to be a pretty strict rule. Girls probably wouldn't get good husbands. Also, when talking to Winnie and my other female Chinese classmates there is a zero drinking rule. It's not like it's completely enforced, but I guess it is still looked down upon when females drink. Winnie told me that she would not be able to get a good husband at all if people knew she drank at all, and if she did get a good husband and he found out she drank before he might leave her. I was thinking about what a difference between here and America (namely Pullman) this was. I mean, no girl in Pullman would ever get married if these rules applied! I'm not so sure still about these rules because there seems to be quite a few girls at the clubs dancing and drinking...maybe just college students?
But yadda yadda yadda, I got drunk, everyone got drunk, we climbed into a taxi and babbled some nonsense about food to the driver. The next morning when I woke up I wanted to die, but more than that I wanted some salty food. Oh what I would have killed for some fries! I knew I wasn't going to get that so I stumbled to the market and tried to find some chips. Just some normal, regular, potato chips.
And here is my rant about potato chips to China. I love China. I think it's great. I am going to stay here all summer. Yeah, the spitting, pushing, grabbing, and such are a little hard to handle at times but I deal. The buildings are cold and the beds are hard but I have adjusted. But really, blueberry, cucumber, Italian red meat sauce, american turkey, steak and god knows what else are NOT adequate potato chip flavors! All I ask is for some normal, some salt and vinegar, maybe jalapeno, something! Come on China, throw me a friggen bone here!
I didn't get the chips but what I did get was better. Significantly better. I got a two hour long Thai massage for a mere fifteen bucks. Oh it was awesome. These women are half the size of me but I swear they could beat up a man twice my size. The massage parlor was a bit different than what I am used to though, as you get massaged with at least one to four other people in the room. You didn't get naked of course, but it was different. Also, typical of them they didn't have the heat on, but I guess I was warm enough since I was getting beat up by this 80 pound woman. After the massage we headed to this delicious tex mex restaurant that tasted just like home! Everytime I go to an American restaurant I always order way more than I can eat just cause I get so excited when I see all the choices! Seriously, you people back home don't know how good you have it. America has such diversity when it comes to food. You can get american, italian, chinese, japanese, thai, spanish, french whatever! China, at least in the western provinces you can mainly get Chinese food and more Chinese food and then maybe some stuff you can't even call food but they still eat it. Yum.
We headed back to the SWUFE campus to meet up with europeans to head to the clubs that night, but instead of meeting up with them I ran into seven new Europeans. One from Holland, one from Amsterdam, one London, oh and Americans. One from Pennsylvania and one from Delaware. I decided they would take me somewhere good so I followed them and was not dissapointed. One guy, Kent from Pennsylvania got into the cab and started spitting the dirtiest sichuan hua at the cab driver. I was impressed. He knew bot Sichuan and Mandarin and was impeccable at both. This is no easy task. You see, the Chinese have lots of dialects. It's not like America with our accents, because we can still for the most part always understand each other. Here it's like a completely different language. I mean I know this place has 1.3 billion people but come on China, unify, damn it! Make it easy for me to just learn one language and one type of tones.
The bar they took us too was cool. It was rasta themed and they had a stage with a guitar, drums, etc that anyone could just play at random. I sat outside chatting with my new friends for a while and we joked about China and life. It was nice to meet some new people that weren't Chinese and knew what I was coming from, and they also gave me some good advice. They think I should stay in Chengdu instead of Shanghai for the summer so that's definitely something to think about! Eventually they all started free styling and I must say they were pretty damn good. It made me think of Cyril and his band and how he better visit me in China this summer!
Nothing too good happened at the next series of clubs, except for when we all started throwing cake at each other. That was pretty exciting, and I think we kind of just solidified the fact more that Americans are crazy to the Chinese. Lisa spent the night with me in my dorm last night, as the dorms here kind of have curfews. Since it was past eleven she wouldn't be able to get into her dorm as they close the gate and they are pretty strict about it. They try to do it to the foreigners but we just play the whole "what? We are white we don't understand.." card so they begrudgingly let us in. Every time.
I go through that little ritual everyday when I bike past remote parts in Wenjiang. I don't know if that's exactly what they are thinking, but I have picked up on two words so far when I am around locals and I know they are referencing me. Lowai, means foreigner, and Meiguo is America, or American. I am pretty proud of myself for picking up on that, actually.
The best part of biking in Wenjiang is getting my 25 cent breakfast. I loooooooove street food. I don't even get off my bike I just hand my 2 yuan over to the lady and she hands me the goods. She knows what I want and she hooks me up. That's what I love so much. The people here remember who I am because I am one of the few white people that they have ever seen. I even have started to pick up on words when I am ordering. Like I can now successfully say that I would like some green tea, to the women at the tea shop. Nothing too useful, but hey it's a start! I am sure that after this summer I will be practically fluent!
This weekend was quite stressful, and I definitely needed to catch up on some much needed sleep. So I opted to stay behind and not go on the trip we had planned and instead hang out with Dan, Scott, Sam, and Eamon around Chengdu. While everyone got up at the crack of dawn to go on some freezing cold nature hike I slept till 2 pm and slowly got out of bed. Wow it was great. We decided that it would be a good idea to see some new clubs and hit the town. We got dressed to the nines, grabbed some road mons and took the bumpy ride into Chengdu. Eamon took us to the old SWUFE campus, where we should actually be staying. Man did we get screwed. The rooms at the foreigners dorm are like hotels. Beds on the ground, western toilets, heat...right in the center of Chengdu. And there are actually foreigners there! Like from Europe, and America and stuff. Lots of them! As much as I wish I was in the city and not out in Wenjiang, if I was never here I would have never made such good friends like Lisa and Eamon so I guess I am slightly thankful. But western toilets? Come on...
We trudged on towards the clubs and decided to grab some street food cause our stomachs were getting a little rumbly. I discovered that they could grill me up some Chicken feet so I decided to go for it. I'll upload the pictures later on facebook..it was pretty entertaining. You may say that I have completely lost it but I actually took a bit of the chicken talon and it was pretty tasty. yes the toenails were slightly off putting but really, it tasted just like chicken :) The boys were not having it so I chased them down a few streets of Chengdu with the chicken talon. Methinks the Chinese may have taken offence to this.
We hit the first pub, Shamrock. We were excited because we thought it would hold white people and we were right. In fact, that's all it held. We had found all the white people in Chengdu. All the old, creepy expats. It was amazing, there were literally maybe four Chinese people in the whole joint. We ordered a couple of drinks and I got a greek salad. Oh it was amazing! I mean the one I make and that Matt makes are way better, but beggars really cannot be choosers our here in the far rural west of China! It wasn't quite a dancing club and Eamon was trying to get his Caribbean on so we headed to Muse for the rest of the night.
It was better than last time, as we had a smaller group and were able to maneuver around way easier. We were the only white people there that night so we all set off to make some friends. And friends we made, about ten feet in to the club some old guy saw me and insisted I take about six watered down shots with him. I tried to say no in Chinese (and english) but he was too excited about the meiguo and insisted. He was a lot worse off than me, and eventually he pushed me down in the couch and gave me some sort of lap dance while the rest of his group took pics and cheered. Keep in mind this guy had to be about sixty. Hilarious. What I really like about the clubs is that no one there really speaks any English, and my Chinese is limited to compliments and ordering food so I'm kind of useless as well. But they don't care! They just get so excited that a lowai is there! I find it almost awkward cause we can't talk but they love it. I need to charge for getting my pic taken at clubs cause I could start making quite a few yuan off of it. I guess the sincere compliments are enough "you rrrrrrrr beautifurrrrr grrr!!! varrrrrlyyyy beutifurrrr!!!! I likkkeeyyy youU!)
Oh! The most exciting part of the night was when I got straight up molested by a ninety pound Chinese girl that spoke broken English. At first I thought she was trying to grab my neclace, but nope she was going for booby. She straight up grabbed my boob, tried to kiss me then screamed "GIRLS GONE WILD"! Umm, no sweetheart. I know you may have seen it on TV but just because some girls in America like to do that doesn't mean we all enjoy getting molested by female strangers. Namely, me. I ran away from her and tried to seek refuge in the girls bathroom but unfortunately it was occupied. A girl and a guy walked out ten minutes later and I was completely shocked. Let me take a break from my riveting story to talk a little about Chinese (namely sichuan) culture. The Chinese, though integrating and picking up more onto our western world, still very much hold on to their old ideals and beliefs. From my understanding with talking to my peers here at SWUFE there is absolutely NO SEX before marriage. None. Most would not even think about it for a second because that is lowly and that is how it's always been. Maybe this is more with just the educated class, but it seems to be a pretty strict rule. Girls probably wouldn't get good husbands. Also, when talking to Winnie and my other female Chinese classmates there is a zero drinking rule. It's not like it's completely enforced, but I guess it is still looked down upon when females drink. Winnie told me that she would not be able to get a good husband at all if people knew she drank at all, and if she did get a good husband and he found out she drank before he might leave her. I was thinking about what a difference between here and America (namely Pullman) this was. I mean, no girl in Pullman would ever get married if these rules applied! I'm not so sure still about these rules because there seems to be quite a few girls at the clubs dancing and drinking...maybe just college students?
But yadda yadda yadda, I got drunk, everyone got drunk, we climbed into a taxi and babbled some nonsense about food to the driver. The next morning when I woke up I wanted to die, but more than that I wanted some salty food. Oh what I would have killed for some fries! I knew I wasn't going to get that so I stumbled to the market and tried to find some chips. Just some normal, regular, potato chips.
And here is my rant about potato chips to China. I love China. I think it's great. I am going to stay here all summer. Yeah, the spitting, pushing, grabbing, and such are a little hard to handle at times but I deal. The buildings are cold and the beds are hard but I have adjusted. But really, blueberry, cucumber, Italian red meat sauce, american turkey, steak and god knows what else are NOT adequate potato chip flavors! All I ask is for some normal, some salt and vinegar, maybe jalapeno, something! Come on China, throw me a friggen bone here!
I didn't get the chips but what I did get was better. Significantly better. I got a two hour long Thai massage for a mere fifteen bucks. Oh it was awesome. These women are half the size of me but I swear they could beat up a man twice my size. The massage parlor was a bit different than what I am used to though, as you get massaged with at least one to four other people in the room. You didn't get naked of course, but it was different. Also, typical of them they didn't have the heat on, but I guess I was warm enough since I was getting beat up by this 80 pound woman. After the massage we headed to this delicious tex mex restaurant that tasted just like home! Everytime I go to an American restaurant I always order way more than I can eat just cause I get so excited when I see all the choices! Seriously, you people back home don't know how good you have it. America has such diversity when it comes to food. You can get american, italian, chinese, japanese, thai, spanish, french whatever! China, at least in the western provinces you can mainly get Chinese food and more Chinese food and then maybe some stuff you can't even call food but they still eat it. Yum.
We headed back to the SWUFE campus to meet up with europeans to head to the clubs that night, but instead of meeting up with them I ran into seven new Europeans. One from Holland, one from Amsterdam, one London, oh and Americans. One from Pennsylvania and one from Delaware. I decided they would take me somewhere good so I followed them and was not dissapointed. One guy, Kent from Pennsylvania got into the cab and started spitting the dirtiest sichuan hua at the cab driver. I was impressed. He knew bot Sichuan and Mandarin and was impeccable at both. This is no easy task. You see, the Chinese have lots of dialects. It's not like America with our accents, because we can still for the most part always understand each other. Here it's like a completely different language. I mean I know this place has 1.3 billion people but come on China, unify, damn it! Make it easy for me to just learn one language and one type of tones.
The bar they took us too was cool. It was rasta themed and they had a stage with a guitar, drums, etc that anyone could just play at random. I sat outside chatting with my new friends for a while and we joked about China and life. It was nice to meet some new people that weren't Chinese and knew what I was coming from, and they also gave me some good advice. They think I should stay in Chengdu instead of Shanghai for the summer so that's definitely something to think about! Eventually they all started free styling and I must say they were pretty damn good. It made me think of Cyril and his band and how he better visit me in China this summer!
Nothing too good happened at the next series of clubs, except for when we all started throwing cake at each other. That was pretty exciting, and I think we kind of just solidified the fact more that Americans are crazy to the Chinese. Lisa spent the night with me in my dorm last night, as the dorms here kind of have curfews. Since it was past eleven she wouldn't be able to get into her dorm as they close the gate and they are pretty strict about it. They try to do it to the foreigners but we just play the whole "what? We are white we don't understand.." card so they begrudgingly let us in. Every time.
Chinese Dentist...say AHHHHHHH!!!
My tooth hurt too bad and I didn't have any other choice. I had to brave a Chinese dentist and I had to get to one fast. I noticed a tooth ache starting when I was Japan, sharp pain anytime I opened my mouth too wide or chewed on one side of my mouth. It faded in and out for the most part, but a couple days ago I couldn't handle it anymore. After much speculation I decided it was time to call up Lisa and have her take me to the dentist. She suggested we go to the dentist on campus. I was very skeptical of this plan because I know how Student Health is at WSU, and I couldn't imagine what it would be like here. Well, actually I've never been to student health I just go to Pullman family Medical, but you get the point. They also treated my roommate Kara at the student center here when she had a nasty bout of hives. She ended up having to go to Chengdu anyway because all they gave her was some Reindeer antler or grass or something.
As you can tell from the picture I painted I wasn't all that confident. That on top of one of the busiest weeks I have had in a while I was a nervous wreck. I waited for Lisa at my dorm and before we went we stopped by one of the room's of the foreign students and talked to Lisa's friend, Robina. Robina is from Uganda and she is soooo cool! All the foreigners are cool, they are either from the Caribbean or Africa. I always want to know how they got here to this dirty suburb in this Western province but then I realize that Africa isn't always the best of places either...anyway, Lisa and Robina are both seniors. Seniors at our University don't take classes. They just have a thesis that they have to get done sometime during the year. How awesome is that? Oh and the Chinese are just like us with procrastinating so of course none of them have even started to write it. School is actually way different here and they often come up to Bernie and ask him how they will even possible survive classes in America. You see, at University here classes are only 40 minutes long and they don't have hw...ever. They usually just have one final exam, maybe a midterm. The catch is most of the classes they take are in English so they have to study extra hard just to understand it.
But back to the dentist. Lisa and I walked past the grey buildings, on the grey concrete that meshed in with the grey smog clouds. I had the funeral march playing in my head as the student hospital loomed closer. Lisa spoke some tongues to the women and they led me back to a room with one dentist chair in it. There were about five other kids waiting, and watching some girl get her teeth cleaned. Awesome. Lisa didn't help calm my nerves at all when she kept pointing at the primeval dentist tools the guy kept jabbing at the patients. Finally it was my term and I hopped in the chair and waited for my sunglasses, or earphones like what Dr. Sugamura gives me back home.
Well, as I am constantly reminded China is not America and I did not get any of the usual amenities. Lisa and the Dentist chatted and I told him where it hurt. He started to poke at me with a QTIP. On all my teeth. Open, close, what not. He did this for a good fifteen minutes, then his phone rang. He picked it up, yammered loudly to whoever for a few minutes then resumed the poking with a qtip. Finally he turned to Lisa and said my teeth look beautiful and there is no problem. I wailed and protested. His next idea was that it wasn't my teeth, but my jaw. He thinks that I opened my mouth too wide to bite into an apple. Brilliant! The remedy? Don't eat hard food and massage my jaw. I mean, I got a free appointment so what more was I expecting? I complained more and made a pouty face. He looked excited and then spoke some more to Lisa and made me bite down on some paper. He told Lisa my back tooth sits lower than the others and offered to file down all my teeth for me. As good of an idea that was, I "politely" (shook my head rapidly and hopped out of the chair) declined and we were back out of there. Lisa was so confused by the whole process. She didn't understand why I wanted to go to the dentist if I didn't want anything done.
I did want something done, maybe an X-ray! I explained this to Lisa and she had no idea what I was talking about. So I called Bernie and we reasoned it might be my wisdom tooth. The next morning I skyped with my dentist back home and he laughed. Then he reccomended I go to Japan or Hong Kong to get my wisdom tooth out. I would rather brave the radiation than go to another Chinese hospital so I think I'm going to take his advice and head out in the next week or so! This place, sometimes. I tell ya.
As you can tell from the picture I painted I wasn't all that confident. That on top of one of the busiest weeks I have had in a while I was a nervous wreck. I waited for Lisa at my dorm and before we went we stopped by one of the room's of the foreign students and talked to Lisa's friend, Robina. Robina is from Uganda and she is soooo cool! All the foreigners are cool, they are either from the Caribbean or Africa. I always want to know how they got here to this dirty suburb in this Western province but then I realize that Africa isn't always the best of places either...anyway, Lisa and Robina are both seniors. Seniors at our University don't take classes. They just have a thesis that they have to get done sometime during the year. How awesome is that? Oh and the Chinese are just like us with procrastinating so of course none of them have even started to write it. School is actually way different here and they often come up to Bernie and ask him how they will even possible survive classes in America. You see, at University here classes are only 40 minutes long and they don't have hw...ever. They usually just have one final exam, maybe a midterm. The catch is most of the classes they take are in English so they have to study extra hard just to understand it.
But back to the dentist. Lisa and I walked past the grey buildings, on the grey concrete that meshed in with the grey smog clouds. I had the funeral march playing in my head as the student hospital loomed closer. Lisa spoke some tongues to the women and they led me back to a room with one dentist chair in it. There were about five other kids waiting, and watching some girl get her teeth cleaned. Awesome. Lisa didn't help calm my nerves at all when she kept pointing at the primeval dentist tools the guy kept jabbing at the patients. Finally it was my term and I hopped in the chair and waited for my sunglasses, or earphones like what Dr. Sugamura gives me back home.
Well, as I am constantly reminded China is not America and I did not get any of the usual amenities. Lisa and the Dentist chatted and I told him where it hurt. He started to poke at me with a QTIP. On all my teeth. Open, close, what not. He did this for a good fifteen minutes, then his phone rang. He picked it up, yammered loudly to whoever for a few minutes then resumed the poking with a qtip. Finally he turned to Lisa and said my teeth look beautiful and there is no problem. I wailed and protested. His next idea was that it wasn't my teeth, but my jaw. He thinks that I opened my mouth too wide to bite into an apple. Brilliant! The remedy? Don't eat hard food and massage my jaw. I mean, I got a free appointment so what more was I expecting? I complained more and made a pouty face. He looked excited and then spoke some more to Lisa and made me bite down on some paper. He told Lisa my back tooth sits lower than the others and offered to file down all my teeth for me. As good of an idea that was, I "politely" (shook my head rapidly and hopped out of the chair) declined and we were back out of there. Lisa was so confused by the whole process. She didn't understand why I wanted to go to the dentist if I didn't want anything done.
I did want something done, maybe an X-ray! I explained this to Lisa and she had no idea what I was talking about. So I called Bernie and we reasoned it might be my wisdom tooth. The next morning I skyped with my dentist back home and he laughed. Then he reccomended I go to Japan or Hong Kong to get my wisdom tooth out. I would rather brave the radiation than go to another Chinese hospital so I think I'm going to take his advice and head out in the next week or so! This place, sometimes. I tell ya.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
A word on Chinese fashion, and other things
Wow it has been a while since I have updated this thing! I am so excited that I found a couple of hours to sit down and type to my hearts content. It's been a rough past couple of two weeks. Finance started, and though I love our professor I am really feeling the strain of taking 18 credits in 7 weeks. I will be sad to see him go but I won't be sad to have more free time to ride around on my bike and explore some more of Chengdu! I have also had my past two weekends packed full of exciting trips. I don't know if I will be able to get all the dirty details out in this blog post, but I assure you my dear readers that in due time you will know all the riveting details. Also, I mentioned the bunny Simba. Well, Shoji and I decided to let it go. It was cute, it was great, but it shit everywhere and I was tired of making hauls out to East Gate to buy it vegetables every couple of hours. Yes, I will make a horrible mother, I know. I hope it's still alive.
Oh, anyway, I wanted to take the time to say something about Japan. A lot of people keep freaking out about Japan being close to China but where I am there is absolutely no way I could feel any of the radiation. It is a horrible tragedy and I feel for the wonderful, strong people of Japan. It's no secret that I absolutely fell in love with Tokyo, so I donated a couple yen for the Japanese red cross. I encourage everyone else to do so as well. They are a wonderful people with an awesome culture, and my favorite ninja Shoji Hama comes from there. I would love to return there again someday so keep them in your thoughts, prayers, and maybe let your wallets be a little lighter for the week!
But what I really wanted to talk about was the Chinese fashion. A lot of Americans think that all Asians look the same and can't differentiate between the nationalities. Well, I Taylor Watson am here to tell you that at this point in my travels I can definitely tell the difference. More than appearance, the way they act is completely different, and more extremes are the way of dress. My god. I can't speak for all Chinese but I can say the majority of those living in Sichuan province could use a little help. A lot of help. I mean, yeah it's cold here. I'm not saying it's well lit here either but I swear these people close their eyes when they go shopping for clothes and again when they pick out their outfits. They could definitely use some Japanese influence. There are some girls who dress cute here, like our good friend Lisa. She knows exactly where to shop to find the coolest clothes and once I get done with the stress of the next two weeks I am making here take me out to find her pair of destroyed acid washed jeans and fitted metallic blazers. Oh goodness, I have been in Asia for a while haven't I? Lisa is almost perfect at English, due to the fact that she loves to hang out with the foreigners. She is dating a guy who lives in our floor. He is from somewhere in Africa. Nice guy but I can't remember his name. Maybe it's something like Chewbacca?
Lisa is also very helpful and overall just a great companion to have in China. She is funny, and like most Chinese very hospitable and go to great lengths to help you out. On Friday night, for example she took me to a salon to get my hair done because I was about to have a melt down. My hair had changed from purple, to red, to some nasty multicolored destroyed concoction. I wanted to cry. She took my to a salon at 10 PM (everything stays open late here...perfect for a night owl like me!) and we didn't get home until 1am. The salon was great, and a cut, color, and ten minute head massage came to a whopping total of 20 USD. They couldn't color it my usual dark brown so now after years of going increasingly darker my hair is all the way black. More and more asian everyday, I tell ya. The Salon was almost as hopping as the bar district that Friday night. It was full of gay Chinese men with the craziest anime haircuts prancing around and yelling. In most shops and businesses here the owners live in the back quarters with their family, so the whole family came out to see the American girl get her hair cut. I was surrounded by Grandma's, babies, and the likes. It was really cheery and upbeat and made me appreciate the warmness of the Chinese people even more.
I know I previously spoke about how small Wenjiang district is but now I take it back. Like the rest of China, there is so much more past what meets the eye. I decided to bike past East Gate a couple nights ago and see what I could find. It wasn't long before I was standing in front of a magnificent river with lights everywhere. There were teahouses on all sides and people sitting on benches enjoying themselves. I was there at night but during the day I am sure there are people outside practicing tai chi, reading the dao and overall passing down ancient Chinese wisdom from the elders. Or reflecting on the mass amount of smog everywhere.
A few weeks ago our Chinese friends Winnie, Helen and Spring took us shopping to HM as we wanted to feel good about ourselves and fit into our normal sizes, and not just barely squeezing into a China XL. I think we enjoyed it more than they did and I am sure they couldn't wrap their heads around the prices. We helped them pick out cute clothes that would flatter them in return for them being so hospitable with us all the time. I think one of the number one things I have learned in my travels abroad is the importance of friendship. The Chinese seem to have a different level of commitment with friendship than I am used to in America. Don't get me wrong, I love my friends back home. They're all awesome and I would do anything for them, as I am sure they would with me. But they don't go out of their way to buy me things and do things for me all the time. After HM we were hungry and stopped by east gate to grab some delicious street food. I mentioned to Winnie that I loved the dumplings and the next time she stopped by our dorm she brought some ones she had home made for me! When I mentioned to Helen that I really missed fruit she bought me a knife and apples so I could enjoy them. It's also great to have Chinese friends for bargaining. No matter what, the Chinese will always charge foreigners extra. When you make Chinese friends they find you discounts on everything, and I mean everything. I have found flights around Asia for as little as 50 dollars, and not to mention food and hair cuts!
This week will mark week 5 of our 8 weeks of the program. It's going by too fast and I am not too pleased about it. I don't think the rest of the group shares my same feelings as I don't think they are quite as adventurous as I am, and I don't know if they have fully embraced the culture as much as I have. I have officially been in Asia for a little over a month now, and though that doesn't seem like a long time to get the hang of most things I find myself to be pretty adaptable. I blame it on my mom (in a good way) who decided to yank my pre-teen self out of the school district I had attended my whole life and drop me in a tight nit private school. Sacred Heart turned out to be a great experience, and I made some lifelong memories and met my BFFLYYYFE there. Unfortunately she didn't always like me. Her sixth grade self reasoned that because we had the same name (ahem Taylor Wiesmann) we clearly couldn't be friends and since she was miss popular everyone else decided they really didn't want to be my friend either. Eventually everything turned out okay but the first couple months were rough for my eleven year old self and after breaking into that social circle I know feel like I can make friends anywhere and adapt to a new lifestyle. Obviously China is more extreme than this but I can still apply the same lesson.
At this point I actually crave the Chinese dishes and have gotten over the fact that I am not going to get a huge slab of meat, but rather little chunks. I have accepted it and now I am satisfied with what I have. I can't wait to bring some recipes back and cook them for my family and friends! I am sure my dad and stepdad will be digging through the dishes trying to find the meat but I am sure my mom and stepmom will love it. I have accepted that the bathrooms will be smelly and not what I am used to in the US. I actually prefer the Squatties over the westernized toilets. I mean, it is kind of gross when you think about it and the Chinese do kind of have a point. I'm not saying I don't get frustrated. The whole computer thing really tested my patience, the constantly cutting in line and pushing can be too much at times. I know it sounds dumb but the constant stream of people wanting to take my picture or speak to me in broken English can be too overwhelming. I have felt slight pangs of homesickness at times and had to fight back tears of frustration or sadness. But then something so wonderful happens that it cancels out any negative thoughts. Like the other night when I was ordering a China Pita from a street vendor. I tried to pay my three yuan but he wave it away and instead he handed me a flower. The cutest little girl I have ever seen in my life came up to me an had a small conversation with me in perfect English and offered me her apple. My Chinese friends in class are constantly giving me websites of where I can download free American movies and Music and offering to take me places and do things with me.
As I wrote in my last blog, there is just so much China to see. My plan was to stay in Asia until the middle of May, right before my 21st birthday. However, I don't think I will be satisfied with my trip if I leave then. I was toying with the idea of staying here for the summer, maybe in a city like Shanghai with a host family. I would teach them English and they would teach me Mandarin. I was very surprised this morning when I got a full blessing from my mother to do just that. I haven't completely made up my mind yet but so far I am 90% sure that that's what I want to do. If I end up doing the host program I will be here until August. I'll really miss everyone this summer but this is a great opportunity and I might not have another one like this in the future. I don't want to work or think about what I am going to have to do in the real world quite yet. I just want to travel around, learn languages, and meet people. Or maybe I just want a reason to continue this blog! perhaps my good friends would like to get a Chinese visa and join me in my travels here...? :)
I am tired and still have some more accounting to finish up so I got to wrap this up. I will try and update tomorrow about Xi'an. In other news I have a horrible toothache and I think I will need to brave a Chinese dentist. I will be sure to upload a blog about that whole experience...but I hope everyone had a fabulous spring break. I will be spending my "spring break" in Tibet with my lovely roomate Kara. We officially booked our trip and couldn't be more excited!
Oh, anyway, I wanted to take the time to say something about Japan. A lot of people keep freaking out about Japan being close to China but where I am there is absolutely no way I could feel any of the radiation. It is a horrible tragedy and I feel for the wonderful, strong people of Japan. It's no secret that I absolutely fell in love with Tokyo, so I donated a couple yen for the Japanese red cross. I encourage everyone else to do so as well. They are a wonderful people with an awesome culture, and my favorite ninja Shoji Hama comes from there. I would love to return there again someday so keep them in your thoughts, prayers, and maybe let your wallets be a little lighter for the week!
But what I really wanted to talk about was the Chinese fashion. A lot of Americans think that all Asians look the same and can't differentiate between the nationalities. Well, I Taylor Watson am here to tell you that at this point in my travels I can definitely tell the difference. More than appearance, the way they act is completely different, and more extremes are the way of dress. My god. I can't speak for all Chinese but I can say the majority of those living in Sichuan province could use a little help. A lot of help. I mean, yeah it's cold here. I'm not saying it's well lit here either but I swear these people close their eyes when they go shopping for clothes and again when they pick out their outfits. They could definitely use some Japanese influence. There are some girls who dress cute here, like our good friend Lisa. She knows exactly where to shop to find the coolest clothes and once I get done with the stress of the next two weeks I am making here take me out to find her pair of destroyed acid washed jeans and fitted metallic blazers. Oh goodness, I have been in Asia for a while haven't I? Lisa is almost perfect at English, due to the fact that she loves to hang out with the foreigners. She is dating a guy who lives in our floor. He is from somewhere in Africa. Nice guy but I can't remember his name. Maybe it's something like Chewbacca?
Lisa is also very helpful and overall just a great companion to have in China. She is funny, and like most Chinese very hospitable and go to great lengths to help you out. On Friday night, for example she took me to a salon to get my hair done because I was about to have a melt down. My hair had changed from purple, to red, to some nasty multicolored destroyed concoction. I wanted to cry. She took my to a salon at 10 PM (everything stays open late here...perfect for a night owl like me!) and we didn't get home until 1am. The salon was great, and a cut, color, and ten minute head massage came to a whopping total of 20 USD. They couldn't color it my usual dark brown so now after years of going increasingly darker my hair is all the way black. More and more asian everyday, I tell ya. The Salon was almost as hopping as the bar district that Friday night. It was full of gay Chinese men with the craziest anime haircuts prancing around and yelling. In most shops and businesses here the owners live in the back quarters with their family, so the whole family came out to see the American girl get her hair cut. I was surrounded by Grandma's, babies, and the likes. It was really cheery and upbeat and made me appreciate the warmness of the Chinese people even more.
I know I previously spoke about how small Wenjiang district is but now I take it back. Like the rest of China, there is so much more past what meets the eye. I decided to bike past East Gate a couple nights ago and see what I could find. It wasn't long before I was standing in front of a magnificent river with lights everywhere. There were teahouses on all sides and people sitting on benches enjoying themselves. I was there at night but during the day I am sure there are people outside practicing tai chi, reading the dao and overall passing down ancient Chinese wisdom from the elders. Or reflecting on the mass amount of smog everywhere.
A few weeks ago our Chinese friends Winnie, Helen and Spring took us shopping to HM as we wanted to feel good about ourselves and fit into our normal sizes, and not just barely squeezing into a China XL. I think we enjoyed it more than they did and I am sure they couldn't wrap their heads around the prices. We helped them pick out cute clothes that would flatter them in return for them being so hospitable with us all the time. I think one of the number one things I have learned in my travels abroad is the importance of friendship. The Chinese seem to have a different level of commitment with friendship than I am used to in America. Don't get me wrong, I love my friends back home. They're all awesome and I would do anything for them, as I am sure they would with me. But they don't go out of their way to buy me things and do things for me all the time. After HM we were hungry and stopped by east gate to grab some delicious street food. I mentioned to Winnie that I loved the dumplings and the next time she stopped by our dorm she brought some ones she had home made for me! When I mentioned to Helen that I really missed fruit she bought me a knife and apples so I could enjoy them. It's also great to have Chinese friends for bargaining. No matter what, the Chinese will always charge foreigners extra. When you make Chinese friends they find you discounts on everything, and I mean everything. I have found flights around Asia for as little as 50 dollars, and not to mention food and hair cuts!
This week will mark week 5 of our 8 weeks of the program. It's going by too fast and I am not too pleased about it. I don't think the rest of the group shares my same feelings as I don't think they are quite as adventurous as I am, and I don't know if they have fully embraced the culture as much as I have. I have officially been in Asia for a little over a month now, and though that doesn't seem like a long time to get the hang of most things I find myself to be pretty adaptable. I blame it on my mom (in a good way) who decided to yank my pre-teen self out of the school district I had attended my whole life and drop me in a tight nit private school. Sacred Heart turned out to be a great experience, and I made some lifelong memories and met my BFFLYYYFE there. Unfortunately she didn't always like me. Her sixth grade self reasoned that because we had the same name (ahem Taylor Wiesmann) we clearly couldn't be friends and since she was miss popular everyone else decided they really didn't want to be my friend either. Eventually everything turned out okay but the first couple months were rough for my eleven year old self and after breaking into that social circle I know feel like I can make friends anywhere and adapt to a new lifestyle. Obviously China is more extreme than this but I can still apply the same lesson.
At this point I actually crave the Chinese dishes and have gotten over the fact that I am not going to get a huge slab of meat, but rather little chunks. I have accepted it and now I am satisfied with what I have. I can't wait to bring some recipes back and cook them for my family and friends! I am sure my dad and stepdad will be digging through the dishes trying to find the meat but I am sure my mom and stepmom will love it. I have accepted that the bathrooms will be smelly and not what I am used to in the US. I actually prefer the Squatties over the westernized toilets. I mean, it is kind of gross when you think about it and the Chinese do kind of have a point. I'm not saying I don't get frustrated. The whole computer thing really tested my patience, the constantly cutting in line and pushing can be too much at times. I know it sounds dumb but the constant stream of people wanting to take my picture or speak to me in broken English can be too overwhelming. I have felt slight pangs of homesickness at times and had to fight back tears of frustration or sadness. But then something so wonderful happens that it cancels out any negative thoughts. Like the other night when I was ordering a China Pita from a street vendor. I tried to pay my three yuan but he wave it away and instead he handed me a flower. The cutest little girl I have ever seen in my life came up to me an had a small conversation with me in perfect English and offered me her apple. My Chinese friends in class are constantly giving me websites of where I can download free American movies and Music and offering to take me places and do things with me.
As I wrote in my last blog, there is just so much China to see. My plan was to stay in Asia until the middle of May, right before my 21st birthday. However, I don't think I will be satisfied with my trip if I leave then. I was toying with the idea of staying here for the summer, maybe in a city like Shanghai with a host family. I would teach them English and they would teach me Mandarin. I was very surprised this morning when I got a full blessing from my mother to do just that. I haven't completely made up my mind yet but so far I am 90% sure that that's what I want to do. If I end up doing the host program I will be here until August. I'll really miss everyone this summer but this is a great opportunity and I might not have another one like this in the future. I don't want to work or think about what I am going to have to do in the real world quite yet. I just want to travel around, learn languages, and meet people. Or maybe I just want a reason to continue this blog! perhaps my good friends would like to get a Chinese visa and join me in my travels here...? :)
I am tired and still have some more accounting to finish up so I got to wrap this up. I will try and update tomorrow about Xi'an. In other news I have a horrible toothache and I think I will need to brave a Chinese dentist. I will be sure to upload a blog about that whole experience...but I hope everyone had a fabulous spring break. I will be spending my "spring break" in Tibet with my lovely roomate Kara. We officially booked our trip and couldn't be more excited!
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