The World According to Katie

Going Home/Last Day

2008-08-17T20:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I’m currently waiting for my next movie to show on the airplane. They’ve got a good selection this time. I just finished the newest Narnia movie (which wasn’t as good as hoped), and next is the documentary about the old people who sing rock songs. I’m quite excited about that one.

But now that I have a little bit of a respite, I can look out the window and think. I’ve had my window down for a while now. We had some turbulence and it was just cloudy outside anyways, though it did clear up a little bit and had some of the most amazing cloud formations I’ve ever seen, but it got too bright. Now, the moon is shining brightly, and it’s the only thing that I can see other than the light on the end of the wing. The absence of light is a little daunting, but it does take away a little bit the absence of ground, which is equally daunting at times.

pause for two hours until after “Young at Heart”

Now there are clouds below that are beautifully reflecting moonlight, and I can even see stars. You know, my grandmother used to always tell me about how amazing it was to look out the window while flying thousands of feet in the air. She always talked so fondly, and I remember the first and second times I ever flew. I had to get the window seat. And unless someone else is buying my ticket for me, I always get the window seat. I’ve never been unimpressed. Even if it means I have to crawl over people to go to the bathroom.

Today I was up early again to get things situated – check my email for the last time for a couple of days (sort of) and do last minute packing. I found out that the class I’ve been dying to take (anatomy and physiology) actually conflicts with another class I’m taking, which is more important to my degree, so I’m going to have to take some crappy other class for my biomaterials certificate instead. Anyways, I’ll quit my griping.

We had a whopping breakfast with porridge, yaoqiao (no idea if I spelled it right, but it’s basically a mix between doughnuts and churros), xiaolongbao, veggies, and the last wuxi peach I’ll have for a very long time. I was stuffed by the time we were done, and we left to go to AJC International to see the Shanghai branch. Fei Fei’s dad took us there to make sure that we knew the way, and we made it by 10, which is when we were supposed to meet. The receptionist greeted us and sent us into the conference room while we waited for Janine. She had a background on what AIESEC was, but it seemed like she was unsure about what we wanted. Fei Fei came along to see what they were about, too, and we saw their facilities, including their operations and sales teams’ open air offices. Just like Jerry has it at the Atlanta office, only smaller. It was fun sharing stories, getting clarified on statistics, and hearing more about the Olympics and Shanghai. In reality, we didn’t stay very long, only about 40 minutes, but it was fun. We forgot to take a picture with Janine, but we went back to take a picture with the sign. I’ll have to send it to Jerry later.

Afterwards, Fei Fei walked around the nearby malls with us for a while just to pass time until lunch (eta ~11:30am), which would give us 30 minutes until we had to leave for her apartment to get to the airport in time. Well, as we were walking around one mall, we saw Yao Ming’s gym, and of course I was curious what his/Shanghai gym is like, so I asked to get a quick tour. I wasn’t quite expecting it to last the hour that it did (we left at noon, not having eaten lunch), let alone be asked to try out the equipment, but we got the grand tour – equipment, locker rooms, and side rooms included. It was a brand new gym, so it was quite nice (and of course came with a hefty price). Apparently I’m supposed to call our tour guide if I ever come back to Shanghai to work (he was under the impression we were visiting before getting a job here so that he would actually give us a tour). We’ll see about that.
Even though we didn’t eat lunch, we made it back to the apartment in time. Fei Fei’s mom had made a couple of rice balls things filled with meat and put in a water broth for us to snack on before we left (which turned out to be our entire lunch, which was fine since we weren’t hungry), and once we devoured those, we were off. It was quiet in the car, and it was a long ride. Getting through the airport was uneventful other than we went through security 3 times and had our tickets checked about 5 times, though I was a little underwhelmed about security. Again, shoes weren’t taken off and they didn’t ask for bags with liquids to be taken out. I did it out of habit and got my hand sanitizer taken away because it was flammable, whereas nate had his in his bag and they never even looked at it. When I was packing, I found I had had a bottle in my backpack I didn’t know about that they never asked me about. Likewise, except for the one security check with X-ray, all the others basically just opened all my zippers or only felt the outside of my purse, basically not even looking at my contents. Well, at least it looks like security and makes long lines :P

So what do I think about China? I only saw a very, very small portion of it, but I’ve decided it’s full of beautiful buildings/landscapes/greenery and it’s full of beautiful people, or at least the ones I met were. Everyone was always very nice, though I was frequently bumped and nudged out of lines. I think I’ve written more about this trip, even more than I wrote for my trip to Spain. I’ve learned a lot about this country and about myself. While I wasn’t alone, I’m quite confident at my ability to take care of myself abroad. I had no major hitches except for the one time before I had a phone and I had to stay with Fei Fei. Though had I been on my own, staying with someone would never have been a problem.

I think Shanghai was my favorite city. It was clean even though the Olympics weren’t there and the city reminded me a lot of Atlanta. Speaking of Atlanta, I’m curious to see where Beijing is in 12 years relative to Atlanta now. Atlanta has and has not changed a lot since the Olympics (the park is still here, but many things have changed like the GT Pool). It will be interesting to see how Beijing develops. It’s been fantastic to see all the economic development that’s been going into this country simply for the Olympics (more marketing has gone into the Olympics than anything I’ve seen in my life), and hopefully that will balance out the 6% increase per month in the standard of living for people. There still are a lot of disparities between even middle class and lower class, but I can only imagine it’ll improve.

And of course, Hangzhou was my favorite smaller city. While Hangzhou is a city itself (it’s the capital of its province), there’re smaller areas that I was around that weren’t “city” as much. I don’t know much about Feng Shui, but I think I’ll have to learn more to incorporate it into my life and decorating. Unifying nature with living is important to me, and it would be cool to have a fish tank in the center of my house with a lot of green plants and windows facing the right directions. Things to keep in mind for the future.

Ever since this summer started, I’ve felt a lot older. I imagine that part of this is because I realize that I should be done with school right now and I’d be working. I’m an adult who has the capacity to take care of herself physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially, and I kind of feel like I’m just biding my time now until I can make that really happen. I’ve got a lot of stressful times coming in the next few months, and I’m very thankful that I got these two weeks to not care about home and that future, even if they were 2 very hectic, nonstop weeks. I didn’t get a break between Spring and Summer semesters, and I noticed the strain on me. This has been an amazing trip and I look forward to an amazing year.

Ugh, turbulence and stomach turning. Gotta go.

ZhouZhuang

2008-08-14T16:52:00.001-07:00

ZhouZhuang, the water village

Today Nate and I woke up nice and early to pack all of our things and get stuff together, as this was the last time we were going to be at his aunt and uncle’s house. It was a little bittersweet because while it seems more and more like it’s time to go home, they’ve only shown us a lot of kindness. Once again, I came down to breakfast first, and Miao Miao was there waiting for us. She told me she had a present for me – a beautiful string of pearls. I couldn’t believe it – after everything that she’s done for me, she got me a stunning pearl necklace. Needless to say, I put it on immediately and didn’t take it off until I showered tonight. I think I have a new favorite “nice” necklace.

Breakfast was the bfast version of moon cakes again. Those things are so darned delicious – it’s basically all nuts with pastry on the outside. I’m also quite excited because Fei Fei’s parents also gave me real moon cakes as well. I swear, I gained so much weight on this trip. So much for being in shape from the tri. We went upstairs, then, to make sure that everything was packed. We said our goodbyes to Miao Miao (who apparently is a little sad that we never called her by her new English name we gave her, but that’s because (at least for my part) I learned her as Miao Miao, not Mia. Anyways, it was a sad goodbye, but we didn’t have time to do a lot of adioses because we were off to Zhouzhuang, the water village.

It was about an hour and a half drive there (we got lost and I think we got pulled over once), but we eventually made it. I knew literally nothing about this place when we walked up to it, and while I was in the bathroom (sorry, I never got a good photo of asian style toilets….. the public ones were too gross for me to take a picture), nate’s uncle got tickets that had a little bit more information. Apparently, it was first built in 1086 and has buildings and bridges from the Ming and Qing dynasties (oldest up to ~600 years old). There was a little bit of an ordeal it seemed at first because I guess there was a shortage of English speaking tour guides for Nate and I. Eventually, we gave in and went ahead and took a boat to the island, where we waited for one to show up. Her name was “Rice,” and she also had a strong accent, but she knew what she was talking about. And we were off.

We went to a couple of old-time houses. These were pretty typical of all old-time houses I’ve seen so far, so I wasn’t all that impressed. That and it seemed like it was pretty new looking, much like almost everywhere else on the island. They were refurbishing a decent portion of it and it appeared that they were building a new resort to boost tourism. We eventually headed to a museum that showed pictures of all the famous people who had been there, and it seems to be that someone thinks its popular. It wasn’t a bad place to be, but it wasn’t Hangzhou, or at least in my opinion. However, it had its own uniqueness, with small alleys, a handful of ancient stone bridges, restaurants every couple of pearls or fan shops, and water water water.

We decided to pass on lunch for a while since Nate and I weren’t hungry yet and there was more to see. After a while, I started to get hungry and we saw basically everything. So, his aunt and uncle tried to get us to pick between two restaurants side by side with waitresses pestering us to eat at their restaurants. I wasn’t quite in the mood for pork hooves, so I wasn’t really looking for either of those restaurants in particular, but I didn’t really care which of the two because both of them had the same menu, I think. Well, Nate still wasn’t hungry, but was rather grumpy, and got quite frustrated with his uncle when his uncle didn’t understand his attempt to say “I’m not hungry” and “we don’t care.” This led to confusion on their parts and mine because Nate wasn’t really talking to me either, and we left the area. We eventually went to another restaurant. At the moment, all I wanted was water because I was sweating like none other. Unfortunately, I didn’t portray that very well because his aunt just sent me over to get ice cream instead. Thankfully, we had a very light lunch of vegetables and a meat broth, but we got hot tea. Sad Katie. Don’t get me wrong, I like tea, and hot tea in particular, but not when it’s 100 degrees outside. Oh well.

After lunch, we went shopping. Almost every type of store was replicated at least 10 times. There were (fake) pearl shops, necklace/jewelry shops, (fake) silk shops, and a couple antique shops that were fun to look at. Nate finally got a new tiger necklace since his had broken, and afterwards, we walked back to the ferry. It had started raining at this point, and it was so much nicer than it was. It had greatly cooled down and there were a lot less people. On the ferry, I passed a Spanish couple, which was fun to hear Spanish. Other than that, nothing too exceptional. We drove back to Wuxi to waited for Fei Fei to get home. I decided to listen to my ipod, but in the background I heard a song playing on the radio, and it sounded quite familiar. I pulled an earbud out to see if it actually was the Jay Chou song that I knew, and it was. I got a little more excited than I probably should have, but it was something I had talked about with Fei Fei and Miao Miao earlier, and I tried to portray to his aunt and uncle that I knew the song. I sat forward and kept pointing to the radio trying to say Jay Chou’s name (apparently it’s different here) such that they’d recognize it, but they just thought I wanted the air conditioner on. When I managed to convey that the air was fine, they thought I wanted to hear the marching cd that nate’s uncle had had in almost the entire time we’ve been in China. Nate was sleeping, so he couldn’t help, so I just sat back and did my thing.

Once we got there, it was time to seriously pack our bags. There had been a little doubt in our minds about our luggage capabilities given the amount of stuff we were bringing back, but as it turned out, we had plenty of space. I went downstairs to wait for Fei Fei while nate continued to get his stuff together. Well, when I went down, she was there and dinner was ready. I went up to go get Nate, and he was panicking because he couldn’t find his wallet. That last time he’d known he’d seen it was when he bought his necklace, which was a long time ago. We conceded that we’d turn our luggage inside out after we ate dinner. Once we were finished, it was back upstairs to unpack everything. I thought I’d seen his wallet on the bed earlier, and he said he put it up there, but apparently he said that just because he emptied out his pockets and didn’t –really- remember putting it there, which made me doubt that I had seen it. I got through 2 bags and was mostly done dumping out my duffle bag when I looked over at a pile of cables that I had packed and unpacked that the wallet was wrapped around. I had had them on the bed earlier and his wallet must have slid into the wires and gotten hidden pretty well since I didn’t even see it when I took them out of my bag initially. Either way, it worked out for the better.
At this point, I wanted to settle some tabs with Fei Fei. I had asked Miao Miao if I could pay her for the tickets to Beijing, and she said she’d talk to Nate about it. I wasn’t sure she would actually talk to Nate, but she did and said it was about $400 yuan. Nate then told me that Fei Fei paid for the other ticket, which was about $1000 yuan. I didn’t have enough yuan to pay for it, but I knew that they could easily exchange US dollars, so I set aside the appropriate amount to give to her. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t hear any of it. She took the amount I owed to Miao Miao but wouldn’t let me pay for the one she bought. My back up plan was to either pay for dinner or to treat everyone to manicures, but we’d already eaten and it was pouring outside, so Fei Fei didn’t really want to do that. I conceded with tons and tons of thank yous and promises to show her around if she came back to the states.

The evening was pretty calm. We all traded pictures and finished packing. Tomorrow is going to be a big day with a tight schedule between visiting AJC, eating lunch, and getting to the airport in time. More on this later.

Today’s reflection topic is going to be the Olympics. It wasn’t until I came here and saw the Olympics that I realized how biased China’s media is towards china. And then I thought about it some more and decided that half the reason that I feel it’s so biased is because American media of the Olympics is just as biased. Here in China, you almost never see an event unless there’s a Chinese athlete, and that athlete must be a good candidate to win. They talk about Phelps winning golds, but they never actually show it. I also never heard about how the American basketball coach’s wife got killed, though evidently nate and fei fei had heard about it. However, there’s more to the Olympics in China that just this. I believe I’ve mentioned the Olympics songs that have been on A TON – Hey ya, Beijing song, and You and Me. When I was in Fei Fei’s Dad’s car for the first time and he had his CD of marches in, the Aaron Copeland song that’s used for the Olympics at home was played (the one that starts out with the gong, then goes into the trumpet soli that always makes me think of sunrise), and Fei Fei looked at me as if I were crazy. I just figured maybe she hadn’t heard the song. And then I watched a lot of Olympics…. And none of the songs I always hear in association year after year with the Olympics never played. It finally occurred to me that these are just pieces picked out by NBC as their olmypics theme songs. I can’t say I haven’t missed them. They’re a part of the olmypics for me, and its strange for me to not hear the fanfares and the ceremonial songs. Not hat there’s anything wrong with the China songs, they’re just not the oldie but goodies. Funny how much my own media has influenced my own thinking, and I didn’t even realize it until I was somewhere else. I thought I was an “educated” person who was more impervious than most. I wonder how much more of that there is in my life that I don’t even know about…. There’s only one way to find out….

Anyways, that’s all for tonight. Buenas noches!

Hangzhou Day 2

2008-08-14T16:43:00.000-07:00

Katie Ahi.

Aunt Katie.

This is the name that Tatuo (unsure how to spell), Miao Miao’s daughter, keeps calling me. At 20 months, she’s adorable, and I melt when she looks at me with those deep brown eyes wondering why mine are green, why my hair isn’t black/brown, and why I don’t sound quite right. The first day I met her, I spoke to her in English a lot, and she tried to speak in English back. She actually has quite a Chinese vocabulary already, and her mother could only imagine she was trying to speak English when everything out of her mouth made no sense. I doubt I’ve made a lasting impact since she’s so young, but it’s been fun. She’s going to turn into a beautiful girl.

Ok back to what happened today. Today I actually set my alarm, so I woke up in time to pack my bags and get ready by our 8:30 departure time. Once nate was ready, we checked out, left, and drove to breakfast. Miao Miao was so excited because today we were going to have noodles for breakfast. I like noodles, so I figured it would be fun to try them for breakfast. When I actually got my big steaming pot of noodles, I quickly realized that this was not going to be my ordinary breakfast fare. It looked like something I’d eat for dinner, if anytime. It had a bunch of shrimp and various unknown pieces of meat that I was unable to identify. I felt bad because I barely touched anything except for the noodles and the shrimp (who’d have thought I’d ever eat shrimp for breakfast?), but nate supposedly didn’t eat the exotic stuff either, so I guess it wasn’t so bad.

After breakfast, we had to repark the car, but then we were off back to walking around Xihu (aka West Lake). While we waited for Thomas to come back from parking the car, I saw a couple of interesting, though not terribly important things. The first thing I saw was a girl filling up a water bottle with water from a fountain. All I could do is think, “Sweetheart, don’t drink the water!” But as I sat there watching her, she never drank it. She was actually playing with the water, seeing how her bottle didn’t float anymore now that it was full of water. A couple minutes later, I saw a man wash his face with the same fountain water. Also while we were sitting by the fountain, there was an elderly man in his 70s doing what seemed to be exercises. They were very slow and repetitious – more monotonous than any other regimen I’ve seen. This entire trip, I’ve heard of how people come out in the mornings and do Tai Chi, alone or together, and I imagine this man was either warming up or cooling down. I wish I could have seen him in action, rather than see him just move his arms in circles or nod his head.
We caught a trolley (that played this horrendously out of tune melody anytime a person was walking in the way of the trolley) that took us to the LeiFeng Pagoda, a reconstruction of a wooden pagoda that was built over 1000 years ago by a devout Buddhist. Since it was made of wood, it collapsed in the 1920s, but was rebuilt out of steel in 2002 by the best university in china. We first saw the ruins of the original pagoda, where they found ancient relics (that we later saw). People threw money over the glass to make a wish and hope that it comes true. There was everything in there from 100 yuan bills to $1USD bills. Nate and I threw in US quarters for fun. We then went up to the very top floor of the pagoda. The ceiling was made entirely out of gold, and above it (I think) were other relics and the floor plans for the building. Below the gold ceiling were wooden carvings about Buddha’s life. Nate and I had had a “discussion” about how I thought Buddha’s life paralleled a character’s life in a book we had to read in high school. Neither of us really knew for sure the story of Buddha’s life, but as it turned out, there were early parallels to the character’s life, so that helped to clarify a few things for me. We then walked out onto the balcony. If Hangzhou is this beautiful when it’s cloudy and dreary, I can only imagine what it’s like on a beautiful spring day. I’m definitely marking this place down on my list of places to return to one day. As we went to lower levels, we went to one where we there weren’t doors to the balcony. This floor instead had ornate carvings of the story of the white snake lady, which is a legend that goes along with this pagoda. I got the general gyst of the story from our tour guide, but it wasn’t until we were walking around outside the pagoda later that we saw she didn’t tell the story correctly, at least in English. It is a neat story, and I recommend people reading it online for fun if you’re into fairy tales. After seeing the story, we walked to where the relics were. One item in there was over 2000 years old. Another item was a pure silver pagoda, which supposedly held a lock of Buddha’s hair inside of it.

When we left this area, we decided that we weren’t hungry for lunch yet (even though it was noon. And I’ve learned that Chinese people really stick to their eating schedules. Breakfast early, lunch by noon, and dinner around 6). To bide our time, we went to a national tea museum. I was in 7th heaven. I think I was lost in translation for a couple descriptions of the teas, which I wish I had understood more. One day I’ll be a tea aficionado, I swear. However, I’m closer than I was and managed to purchase some various ones to try at home.

After the tea museum, we went back to eat lunch at the same place we ate the day before. Today’s menu, however, was smaller since it was late and we were going to eat a big dinner at a normal time. We got a couple dim sums, but had a main dish brought out to us. Miao Miao and I got this rice porridge thing filled with preserved egg and chicken that I swear tasted exactly like breakfast sausage. Nate and Thomas got some rice and beef dish. I’m glad I got what I got.

After lunch, we went to a little market. This was another place that satisfied my expectations of China. It was all traditional style buildings filled with stores of clothes, silk, knick knacks, tea, and other oddball things. People were playing traditional instruments in kiosks in the center aisles. And once again I was the only white person around. The first couple of stores we walked into were really neat because they actually were selling traditional Tibetan-style items. I also saw some things that looked like pictures, but apparently were pictorial characters that were an ancient language in china. It was quite interesting. We walked into a couple of silk shops and I saw some dresses that I liked, but we didn’t have enough time to get it altered for my size. On the way out, Miao Miao stopped at a tea place. She had warned me not to buy tea at any of these places, so I was confused. She then pointed out bowls filled with a white powder, which she said was lotus root ground up. I was a little confused at what she was so excited about until she handed nate and me a steaming bowl of the powder mixed with really hot water. I couldn’t eat it for a while since it was so hot, but it had such a strange consistency. It was kind of a slime. I don’t really know what I was expecting, but to my surprise, it was lightly sweet and tasty. Maybe one day I’ll find more as a snack.

When it hit a quarter till 4pm, we had to leave to get back in time to get to dinner at 6pm. I wasn’t ready to leave the market yet, but I understood we had to leave. This was also the perfect opportunity to catch some z’s, which I did. Again, I came up with a list of things to talk about, but I forgot them all. I slept for 2 hours and woke up while we were in the middle of a traffic jam. I thought we were just stuck in rush hour traffic, since it was about 6:30, but a couple minutes later, I soon realized there was an accident on the road; a truck hauling wood had fallen on its side and was facing the wrong direction. It looked bad, but it didn’t look like anyone was hurt, which was fortunate, but it caused us to be an hour later to dinner. After we got passed the accident, I noticed that Miao Miao was booking it – we were going 140 kilometers per hour. Now, I haven’t looked up thte conversion, but just based on how fast things were passing us by and how we had never gone that fast before and how I think the speed limit said 100 kph, I’m pretty sure it was pretty fast.

I thought we were going to have a nice dinner back at his aunt’s house, but as we pulled into a restaurant, it occurred to me that this would be the last evening he’d get to see all of his Wuxi and Haoqiao family. This dinner was the biggest one yet. We had 2 tables in one room – one for the old generation and one for the newer generation. George pulled out a bottle of some fancy alcohol instead of wine tonight, so I was curious to see what it was. When I first smelled it, all I could think of was whiskey, and that was not a happy thought for me as I’m not a fan of whiskey. And as I took my first sip, I tasted a sweet whiskey, but it quickly transformed into dark, dark chocolate and then into vanilla and then into wine. It was one of the most complex beverages I’ve had so far. I’m on the fence about whether or not I liked it. It had just a little too much of a hint of whiskey for me. Dinner today also had the same standard fare of chicken feet (which I again did not touch), fish, dumplings, shrimp, and crawfish, but it seemed like no one was terribly hungry, so I got to appear like I was eating on par with everyone else. I’d been eating so many types of meat lately (though I ate less in general today than ever), I decided that tonight I was going to try to focus on vegetables. That and this whole eating exotic thing is getting a bit much for me and vegetables are, after all, just vegetables.

After dinner, we went back to Nate’s aunt and uncle’s house we’ve been staying at, and the entire family came over. I spent some time laughing to myself because nate wound up getting a ton of gifts from his family, and I’m beginning to doubt how much space he has to take all this stuff home. Anyways, when we had settled back in, we came back downstairs to mingle, and everyone was watching women’s volley ball (China vs Cuba). Of course, seats of honor (the lazy boys) were reserved for Nate and I even though there were easily 20 people there, some of whom were old and deserved them a lot more than Nate and I did. However, I did what I was told. After a while, there was a commotion and I was signaled to go outside. It turns out that George had bought fireworks to see Nate and I off. He set them up in the median of the road. At this point, I’d say it was about 9pm, with cars, bikes, and policecars passing by quite regularly. Nate obligatorily set off the first fireworks set. I’m such a sucker for fireworks, and never before have I been so close to them. I was literally standing directly underneath them bursting. They were loud and quickly died out, so they were a little different than what I’m used to, but what surprised me was the nonchalance of everyone else around. None of the police stopped to see if we were ok. Bikes and cars just kept on going. Once the first set was done, they all tried to get me to go. Now, I like fireworks, but I don’t necessarily like setting them off. I eventually got pushed over to the other side of the road and set off the second, larger set. These were a little bit better htan the first set, in my opinion, and I was again mesmerized.

We came back in and people slowly filtered out. First it was a cousin? and his family from Haoqiao that left. Then Fung Fung (felicity) and George and their daughter left. However, before they walked out, they called nate and I over. They had gotten both of us a set of fans that had a pictures on the back and on the front had their names and a phrase written. Mine had a phrase that was something like “Peace will go further” and the back had two sparrows. I wasn’t expecting it and was quite flattered. How do I thank these people? Eventually, Miao Miao and her family left, so it was sad to say good bye to Thomas and her daughter, though I’ll see Miao Miao again tomorrow morning. At this point, nate’s aunt and uncle said good night to us, and here I am.

This trip to Hangzhou has made me realize a couple of things. The first is that American food has no diversity. None whatsoever. When I think about the few vegetables that we have (let alone fresh veggies) and the only one I ever eat on a regular basis (green beans), I’m a little embarrassed and wonder how I get all my vitamins and minerals. Must be those vitamins I take. And not just vegetables, but different styles of meat, seafood, and “desserts” all vary city to city; each are unique. I’m used to many of the flavors by now, and I wish that I had any clue as to how to make some of these dishes and I wish that I had access to the same choices of ingredients in the states. I like fresh food, and China is right up my alley for that.

The other thing that I realized (not unexpectedly) is that I don’t think I’ll ever look at St. Augustine or any of our “cultural” things the same again. My concept of old has been thrown out the window, just like my understanding of Buddhism. When I see items in front of me that are as old as my own religion, it kind of puts things into perspective. While my country has had only 300 years of development, that was only 3/4s the duration of some dynasties. I’ve learned about how tea culture has developed over the last millennia, which I had no concept for even a year ago. Tea was tea. It was brought over from India by the Brits, which was originally brought over from China, but that’s not perspective. Perspective is seeing 2000 year old tea vessels. Fireworks also instilled this concept of culture in me. In the states, I’d never get away with setting off fireworks in the middle of the street in the middle of the night unless it were either the 4th of July or New Years Eve. Fireworks and gunpowder were invented here and have had a long-standing tradition in Chinese culture that makes them appreciate these things more than I feel like my countrymen do sometimes. I wonder if that’s just my opinion/experiences or if other people feel that way….

Anyways, that's all for tonight.

Hangzhou Day 1

2008-08-12T09:03:00.000-07:00

So today was interesting. Last night, I went to bed ~11pm, so not too terribly bad, but I fell asleep watching the Olympics and never even thought about setting my alarm. Well, today we were supposed to wake up early to go to Hangzhou – breakfast was supposed to be at 8 and leave by 8:30. Unfortunately, I woke up at 8:15 and hadn’t even packed. Not 2 minutes after I woke up, Nate’s aunt came knocking on our door asking, I assume, if we were up, I was still quite groggy as I opened the door and tried explaining then quickly got frustrated at the language barrier in my tiredness, but I think she understood. I packed and was ready in 15 minutes – I’m quite proud of that feat. I went down, then, for breakfast, where I ate 5 xiaolongbaos. I swear, they’re my new favorite breakfast food. I’m going to miss them when I go back to the states. I also ate another salted egg for breakfast – not my favorite. I’m still amazed that at breakfast everyday, we’ve all been having milk. I always thought that most Asians were lactose intolerant, so they couldn’t handle anything more than soy milk. I guess I was wrong.

We found out that we were going to only spend one night in Hangzhou, so I went upstairs to repack so I only brought one bag instead of two. This time, I brought my suitcase and nate brought his duffle bag, whereas in nanjing it was the opposite. After I was done packing, I checked my email, and it turns out that Jerry, the CEO of AJC international, got his assistant to set up a tour of their Shanghai facilities for us before we have our flight on Friday. That should be pretty fun, but we don’t know what Fei Fei has planned for us yet, so tomorrow we’re going to call and see if this is ok before we confirm with AJC. On another note, Seancy asked for me to bring back some Shanghai brand cigarettes for him, which practically no one here has ever heard about. I also got an email from him saying that you can only find them in Shanghai, which makes sense as to why we haven’t been seeing them.

Around 9:30, we left for Hangzhou. I remember thinking about insights I’d had since the last time I’d written, and I came up with two topics. However, I fell asleep after coming up with these two topics, so I only remember one. Jackie Chan is a pop star here. Like, he’s a 50 some year old Britney Spears here, no joke. Jackie Chan is part of a quartet that sings You and Me, the Olympics song this year, which is so funny to me because I had no idea he could sing. Another person who sings in the quartet is probably the most unattractive woman I’ve ever seen. She looks like a short (maybe 5 feet tall) middle aged man. But she has got an AMAZING voice. Hang Hao I think is her name, and she’s from Tibet. Mental note: get her music on itunes. (p.s. bo, I’ve heard jay chou on the radio and on tv here! Apparently they make fun of him b/c you never can make out what he’s saying).

You know, for having slept 9 hours, you wouldn’t think I could sleep another 2 hours in the car on the way to our destination, but I did.

We checked into a famous, beautiful hotel on Xihu lake here in hangzhou. This is the greenest (literally, not environmentally) city I’ve seen yet, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. The entire lake area is filled with trees, water, and small shops/restaurants. There are a lot of people, but it didn’t seem as “city” as the rest of China I’ve seen. Much later, we drove around a bit, and we found the city proper, which was more like the rest of what we’ve seen, and seems to be more “American” than the rest of the ones we’ve seen (wider roads, more American food places and shops, etc).

After we checked in, we left to go find lunch. Miao Miao and Thomas didn’t really know the area either, so we went exploring. We eventually got to this one place and ordered baby clams (OMG so good), tea cake, chinese bbq - pork, shrimp with fruit balls (dragon fruit, watermelon, canteloup; served warm), tofu with something, beef wrapped around mushrooms/fungus (omg I could survive on all the mushrooms they serve in china), a couple dim sum things, and green tea pudding for desert. For a beverage, we had sour plum juice, which was like a very sweet lemonade – delish!

When we got done, we drove to a Buddhist temple/park area. Once we got an English speaking tour guide (very strong accent, I had to get nate to translate a lot), and started on our way. The first place we stopped were some statues of guards to the area. One sneeze from these stone guards and you die, or so we were told. Behind them were statues of the supposed builder of this area and his two students. I quickly snapped a picture because I thought it was cool, but was soon told that it was rude and awkward and that I shouldn’t do that anymore. Or rather, if you believe in it, it’s rude; but since I don’t believe it’s not so bad, or something to that effect. I took that to mean that I shouldn’t take pictures of things unless I saw other people taking pictures. When we entered the cave, we saw carvings that were 1,000 years old, just the beginning of seeing relics of that age. Among the carvings were statues and carvings of a laughing Buddha, the goddess of mercy, and the monkey king that we had heard about in a story at the summer palace. Upon hearing about the goddess of mercy, I was a little confused, but I pushed it to the back of my mind. It wasn’t until we got to the temple itself and saw all the deities and different forms of Buddha that my prior concept of Buddhism was crumpled up into a little ball and thrown out the window. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Before entering the temple, Miao Miao bought some incense. It turns out that she bought it for Nate and I to pray at the temple. Before we went into the room, she showed us how to bow/pray in front of a Buddha, where you sit on a prayer pad and basically bow 3 times while asking in your mind whatever you’re asking for (a lot of Buddhas were there to ask for wealth, actually. And for baby boys.). Needless to say, I wasn’t quite into the whole bowing thing, but I held my incense with dignity in front of the statue, thought my little thoughts, and then we just threw away the incense even though it was only partially burnt. Personally, it was a strange experience for me. At first, I felt like I was praying to an idol, which I grew up being told not to do, but upon further consideration, I realized that it was the same thing as praying at an alter with a cross on the wall behind it. You’re not praying to the cross, but who/what the cross symbolizes – it helps you focus. Or at least that’s my opinion. The other thing I thought was weird was the thought of praying to not God. This was the second thing that started to make me think that my concept of Buddhism was skewed. I thought the point of Buddhism was that there’s not a “god” per se, but that the point of the religion was just to achieve nirvana through the 8 fold path and many, many reincarnations. Again, this was knowledge brought up from 9th grade history, but I thought it was a relatively sturdy foundation, and at least somewhat close to the truth. I hadn’t seen anything to disprove this conclusion, anyways.

Well, when we walked into the temple, We started being told stories about the gynormous Buddha in front of us (the biggest one in china; not the oldest, as it was destroyed and rebuilt in the 1950s), as well as the guards to the sides of him. I was getting more and more confused, and then when we got to the other side, there was a huge statue of the goddess of mercy that was talked about before. At this point, I had to stop. I began to doubt the vague stories the tour guide was giving and had to stop nate and ask what on earth was going on in Chinese Buddhism that there were deities and different Buddhas. Apparently, there’s Buddha Buddha. Then there are reincarnations of Buddha (like this one statue of one of the few female versions, who was a bad Buddha because she ate/killed children because her own child died). They are also on the same tier of gods/goddesses/deities that people prayed to. For instance, earlier in the caves, we saw a laughing Buddha, who was a past Buddha, but also a Buddha who will come in the future or somesuch. The bottom tier are actually not buddhas, but more like priests or somesuch that were cool guys, I guess. Like I said, I crumpled my past concepts of Buddhism and tried to start afresh. I still don’t entirely believe that I could have thought what I thought and also have this be true at the same time, so I think I’ve just missed some (or a lot) of details. Perhaps I will look into this more later.

Once we got through the main parts, we sat down for a rest in a gift shop area. Pretty soon after we sat down, a young couple sat down beside Miao Miao, and they asked her if 1) I would take a picture with tem and 2) if she would take the picture. I got a chuckle out of it and went out to take a shot with them. These two were more touchy feely than the last guy who had asked meand grabbed my arm and stuff for the picture, but I just shrugged it off. They didn’t mean any harm. After we went back in, we left to go look at another temple area thing that had 500 statues of the third tier people. Some of them were humorous looking – we saw one guy smoking pretty shapes like Gandalf did in LOTR. Another guy was holding his 5 foot long eyebrows. Others were just creepy, like a guy who looked like he was about to rip someone’s throat out.

We eventually left and headed back to the hotel. You’d think that after 9 hours of sleep plus a two hour nap that I wouldn’t be sleepy. Au contraire. I slept hard for another hour and a half, having some weird dream about being on a cruise line looking for my room, and after having entered the kitchen accidentally and quickly shutting the door, having somebody working in there come out and berate me for 5 minutes for doing that because apparently every now and again the cruise mafia would do that but also shoot someone when they walked it, so it was a bad trick, all the while, I duly sympathize but want to keep looking for my room because I really had to go to the bathroom. Random.

Woke up just a few minutes before 7 and we left for dinner. We had hot pot! Basically, it’s Chinese oil fondue. We had a mild side and a spicy side. I didn’t feel like the spicy side was really all that spicy (though it certainly was spicy, don’t get me wrong), but any time I ate a piece of food from it, all I would do was cough. I guess I didn’t react terribly well to it, so I just ate my mildly cooked food and stuck it in my mild sauce (kind of like ketchup, actually, so of course I liked it). Nothing too exotic was for dinner tonight, which was fine by me, but we did have beef, lamb, more fungus, some lettuce thing, fish balls, bean curd things, and some dumplings/wonton wrapped things. It was quite delightful.

After dinner, we took a cab back ot Xihu lake to walk around. This place ranks among my top 5 date places around the world. Actually, there are only 2 international places on the list so far, but hey, I’ve been to several international cities so far, so it’s up there. It was dimly lit and very romantic, with the calm water on the lake, lights from the city in the background, and plenty of benches lined along the weeping willows. We walked and talked for quite some time and then stopped at a tea house. We weren’t really hungry, but we were thirsty, so we got some nice green tea. They also brought out more lotus buds to eat the seeds, as well as cousins of lychee (sweet fruit), so we nibbled on that while we talked. Nate’s talking more and more in Chinese now that he lost his crutch when he was with his mom’s side of the family. Now, I’m feeling more and more left out. I feel like I’m getting more and more of general subject matter that people are talking about, but I still am completely lost when it comes to actually understanding. I really really won’t put myself in these shoes again or at least not try to learn more while I’m here. I know it’s a difficult language, but when there are so many people talking around you all the time, it’s got to be somewhat easier. sigh. Next time.

We eventually meandered our way back to the hotel, where I’m writing this blog. Up early tomorrow to go to breakfast (going ot a noodle house?), check out, and go to a tea museum, among other things.

Buenas noches!

Nanjing Day 2

2008-08-11T05:37:00.000-07:00

So dearest blog, your most recent update is currently being written on a train from Nanjing to Wuxi.

This morning I woke up bright and early to take a shower and pack my bags because it was our last day in Nanjing. I decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to take out my shower stuff since we were in a fancy hotel and of course it offered amenities like shampoo and conditioner and soap. When I opened the bottle to the shampoo, I smelled it, and it smelled familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It seemed like it smelled like a soap grandma had had at her old house or something. That was my best guess. Anyways, after I get out of the shower and am brushing my hair, I smelled a new smell, and it wasn’t the same as the concentrated smell from the bottle. Apparently the hotel stocks Chinese Axe for men in their shampoo bottles and I smelled like a boy. Fantastic.
I got over it and just went on my merry way. I tried to pack by bags, but of course, this had to be the day trip that I completely mispacked for. I brought my backpack, but it was stuffed to the brim before getting here; apparently I didn’t even think about the possibility of staying in a hotel (didn’t pack flip flops – don’t worry mom, it was a super nice hotel, I’m a lot less likely to get foot diseases; besides, they provided a fresh pair of house slippers), nor did I think about the possibility of buying things while here. Let me tell you, my back pack was stuffed to the brim as I left.
Nate and I checked out and waited for his family to get there. He was in contact with his uncle, but they were running late. We decided to wait by the rotating door, and while we were there, someone walked up to nate and said Nate’s family name, but nate didn’t recognize his given name. We weren’t sure who he was, so we just stood there. And so did he. It was a little awkward. And eventually, he invited us to go sit in the lobby while we waited. I followed Nate and eventually his grandma (who reminds me of a Chinese version of my grandmother) and an aunt walked up. Turns out the guy who was waiting with us was his mother’s cousin, who I guess nate had never met before. Anyways, we all get in the car and drove to some unknown location to us.
When we get dropped off, we’re in this small district around a lot of houses, but we’re obviously in front of some museum thing because there’s a HUGE bronze statue of someone. His aunt and grandmother told us to go on into the museum (which we had no idea what it was about or what it was called) and take a look. As we walked up, there was a sign saying something about Zhou Enlai. Now, in high school, I took Chinese history of the modern era at least once, but in my stay here, it’s mostly failed me. I’ve realized that I remember practically nothing of details, though I have some small ideas about overall trends. I recognized the name Zhou Enlai, but I had to ask Nate who he was and why he was important; Nate was as clueless as I. This museum had very few translations compared to the one we visited yesterday, so I walked in and read the prologue. I snapped a picture of it because it clearly laid out the purpose of the museum and promptly showed me that somewhere between school and this museum, I was seeing or had seen propaganda. The museum was about Zhou Enlai (among others), one of the first leaders of the CPC (communist party) who brought the party to power. Now, in my education, I vaguely remember learning about the CPC, the communist party, and the KMT (Koumintang) which was the nationalist group that were basically “the good guys” who were kicked out of China. I had been educated that the KMT were actually the democratic group, while the communist party was the underhanded group that was not democratic. In contrast, the sign said, and I quote, “Although the peace talks between KMT and CPC in Nanjing failed, the policy of peace, democracy, and independence adhered by the CPC and that of civil war, dictatorship, and disruption of the country upheld by KMT were made known to the public during the peace talks.” Now, I can’t say that my education wasn’t 100% unbiased, but there certainly is a discrepancy between these two pieces of information. I have to admit that while I’ve been here, China hasn’t seemed as “communist” as I would expect a “communist” country to be. I know I have a poor understanding of the meaning and frequently mix it with socialism, so I have been surprised to see the amount of capitalism and freedoms within the country. And nate mentioned to me that apparently the government does all it can to make the people think it’s a democracy. Once again, I don’t know a lot about the subject, so I don’t want to form strong opinions, but the language in the museum did seem very strong and really denigrated the name of the KMT, similar to how the prior museum really badmouthed the Japanese invasion. However, I’m pretty certain this is all just a lot of propaganda.
After the museum, we actually walked around the houses that the CCP officials lived in during the rough initial years when they were just trying to make communism the form of government for China. It was interesting enough to see the accommodations where probably some of the most important strategizing of this country’s modern history happened. Afterwards, we went to the Presidential Palace, another place that we had no background information on. Slowly, we figured out that this place housed many people over the years. I think at one point, emperors used it, then I think a peasant rebellion held its leaders here, the Japanese used it during their invasion, and Chaing Kaishek among others past leaders used it as their offices. There were several corridors that gave me a better background on the development of modern china culturally, economically, etc, which I found useful. I still don’t have a crystal clear view, but I have a better idea. It started raining, so we cut our tour short and got the car to go to dinner.
This trip has been a lot more difficult for me personally (and I assume nate, too) because there’s been such a language barrier. Since I know about 0.0001% of Chinese, I have no idea what on earth his relatives are talking about, and even nate doesn’t get everything. It’s been kind of fun because I’ve heard him speak more Chinese to respond to questions than I’ve ever heard him say in total, but it’s been much more difficult having him translate than Fei Fei. I think because of this, I wasn’t able to establish the relationships with them that I was able to with his Dad’s side of the family, though I’m sure it would have been easy. They seemed like a lot of fun. And Nate’s cousin Jane looks like the spitting image of a Chinese Miyu.
As it turned out, Nate’s aunt had to leave, but his uncle from yesterday and Jane decided to join us for lunch. As it turns out, we ate at the mall that I saw from outside our hotel window. Once again, we had a gut busting meal. Some of the things we had were sushi, hot pot with various meats, scallops, meatballs, glass noodles, yogurt with custard, fried pigeon (actually quite scrumptious), congealed blood (not so scrumptious), lamb, and beef tar tar (really really good, surprisingly). Nate’s grandmother also mentioned how she was going to give Nate a red envelope with money as a gift, but wasn’t going to since she found out that I wasn’t his fiancé. Insert laughter.
If there are two things I’ve learned form this trip, it’s how to gorge and true hospitality. This entire trip Nate and I have been treated like royalty. We’ve been given the master bedrooms, been put up in hotels, had every meal and ticket paid for, and always are given the first choice of anything. Nate warned me about asian hospitality, but things are happening that I would never expect to have happen. It makes me embarrassed about all my tours I’ve given to students, friends, and family around Atlanta. I guess I can hide behind the excuse that I’m a college student and can’t afford to pay for these things and always go to the aquarium whenever someone wants to go. And I guess the best I can do now is to resolve to do better when I get a job (tack that onto the list of about 40 other things I want to do when I graduate). But this trip has certainly influenced my concept of hospitality, enjoyment, and social classes.
After lunch, his grandmother and uncle had to leave since this trip was such short notice. Jane took us back to the hotel because she thought we hadn’t checked out yet, but she still had to get her deposit back, so we waited for her. Afterwards, I thought we were going to drive to the train station, even though it was really early, but Nate and I had never done the whole train thing before, so I figured it wasn’t such a strange idea. Instead, they took us up on this mountain with some great views. We kept going up and kept seeing more of the city, though our view was severely limited due to fog/smog. Eventually, we got to the top, and there was an observatory. The observatories themselves housed telescopes from the 1930s donated from Germany. They looked pretty rustic and didn’t look like they’d been used in quite some time. Besides, I bet it’d be difficult to see at night due to all the light pollution anyways. However, they also had other constellation guides and things that were from as far back as the early Ming dynasty (over 600 years old). The MSE-er in me marveled at the way one of these…… constellation things were cast. They were made of large coppery beams, but also had ornate flowers and dragons all around the poles. I can’t decide how they would add those on – either by some primitive form of welding or if they somehow carved out pieces or perhaps they even had a really uneven original beam that had blotches on the surface molded and shaped into what it is today. Hopefully, I’ll learn more about forging and casting in my alloys class this spring.
After the conservatory, we left for the train station. We were warned that we had to put all of our most valuable things (i.e. money and passport) in our safest pocket, which means Nate and I busted out the under-the-shirt fanny packs again. Apparently, pick pocketing is a big problem in the train station, and I can see why with how crowded it was. However, so far knocks on wood we’ve been unscathed.
We should be arriving in Wuxi soon, I imagine. It’s interesting to note that the Chinese countryside I’ve seen on the road trips and this train trip isn’t as rural as I had expected. There are buildings and developed areas everywhere (though who knows how “nice” they really are), along with dirty looking places and trees. There are also quite a few farms/gardens/orchards. Vegetables are arguably more important in Chinese diet than American diet, and you can tell in the meals and in the landscape. Any bodies of water I’ve seen all look quite gross, either filled with algae or just gross, though some are prettier than others (Tai Lake, Summer Palace). The surrounding flora doesn’t seem to be affected by the water that is evidently so toxic to humans. It may be interesting to also note that I haven’t really seen any fauna, excluding birds here and there, a couple of cats, a chipmunk, and ants.
It took me about an hour minutes to get up to this point, so I hope you can understand why it’s so hard for me to update. That and internet is so sketchy here – sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes Nate and I don’t even have access to it (i.e. Beijing, nanjing). I’m sure more will be happening tonight, so maybe I’ll add more later. Tomorrow, Miao Miao and Thomas are taking us to Hangzhou to the water village to stay overnight. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to find cheap tea there because I want to spend all my cash before I leave China, and that’s a pretty good way to spend it. Other options for spending it, though, are to buy one of the nice, traditional, formal Chinese dresses, but I don’t know if I can fit correctly into one of those things, since I’m considerably more curvy than most Asians. I would also like to buy dinner for everyone one night and pay for my plane tickets to Beijing, but I’m not sure if I’ll be allowed to. I’ll need to practice my insisting skills in front of the mirror tonight because it might be pretty darned difficult. Time will tell.
So now I’m back at Fei Fei’s parents’ house. We got picked up by Fung Fung and her husband (felicity and george ;) ) and almost immediately had dinner, which thankfully was more bland than the super spicy lunch I had. We also had spare ribs unique to this area, and they were pretty good, but it made me miss Dad’s ribs. Speaking of missing, I have to admit that I’ve missed home a couple times this trip. I don’t visit often enough, and I really wish it weren’t a 6 hour drive sometimes. Anyways, after dinner we watched more Olympics. Big surprise. Anyways, once nate gets out of the shower, it’s my turn, so that I can turn in early. We leave at 8:30 tomorrow.

P.S. I still haven’t had pizza hut L

Nanjing Day 1

2008-08-11T05:30:00.000-07:00

Well, this morning I woke up early from weird dream. Once I finally fell asleep again, I kind of hit the snooze button on my alarm twice, but it turned out ok because I got packed and dressed in time for breakfast. I ate Chinese bread filled with meat and moon piese filled with meat – they had to be eaten hot and super fresh or else it wouldn’t be good, and let me tell you, it was delicious. After breakfast, I went to look at the garden out in back, where they had a couple orange trees that had a total of 4 green oranges. They also had a fish pond that was a little low, but I couldn’t see any fish, so I just took fei fei’s dad’s word for it. Fei fei’s dad then pointed out their well to me. He asked me if I wanted to see it, so he lifted the lid and pulled out a pail of water. Then, he asked me if I wanted to try. The second that I got the pail to touch the water, it started POURING. It was actually quite humorous, so I was told that I could do it on Monday or Wednesday when we’re back.
Afterwards, I rode to nanjing with nate, fei fei, and fei fei’s dad in one car and George, felicity, fei fei’s mom, and uma in another car. Now, yesterday, we decided to make English names for basically everyone except fei fei’s parents for me so that I could remember names and actually pronounce them correctly. Nate’s cousin Fung Fung became Felicity (the best name we could come up with for F), Fung Fung’s husband became George…. Just because, and Yuyue decided that she liked Uma better than anything else we could come up with (yuki, a japanese name). By the way, Miao Miao became Mia and her husband became Thomas.
Once we got there, we stopped at uma’s/nate’s dad’s university – the agricultural university of nanjing – and saw that they’ve got some great entertainment for students. They had a karaoke place, a cinema, and a party place. They also offer housing to all 30,000 students, but the accommodations are bare minimum. No electronic devices are allowed inside and all laundry is done by hand, with clothes air drying outside. I wasn’t allowed to go very far inside since I was a foreigner, but it made me appreciate tech housing so much more, even though I had to pay for it. The students were on their summer break, so you’d they’d all be gone. Not so; there were a large number of students on campus, many of them were studying early in lecture halls individually.
After the tour, we had lunch at a local place that is usually only gone to by students on birthdays or fancy dates. It really wasn’t that fancy, but as a college student, I understand that you’d normally only go there on special occasions. Since I’ve gotten a little less excited about trying abnormal things, I decided to go with something easy – Mushrooms and chicken. Of course, as would be my luck, it wasn’t quite normal like I know it. The chicken pieces all had bones attached, so I had to work at removing meat with my teeth. I think what frustrated me most about that is because I never eat like that normally and because I grew up being told to use a knife and fork, eating with my incisors is almost unnatural to me. Anyways, when I walked into the restaurant, I saw someone eating a mountain of what I thought was ice cream, so the group decided to get one for our table, too. Needless to say, it wasn’t quite a mountain of ice cream. It was mostly a mountain of ice with green beans and red beans covering the outside with a dollop of ice cream on the top.
After lunch, we went to the museum about the nanjing massacre, a tribute to the injustices performed by the Japanese in the 1930’s in Nanjing. It reminded me a lot of holocaust museum’s I’ve been in because 300,000 people died in this event, and there were several stands that talked about how it was ridiculous for people to say that it never really happened. I sympathize – I think it’s ridiculous when there’s overwhelming evidence for such an event to deny that it happened. However, the unbiased historian in me had to step back a little bit and analyze what I was reading. It was amazing how biased some of the information seemed – it was just anti Japanese invasion after anti Japanese invasion statement. Now, I word that carefully because it wasn’t quite anti Japanese, but I felt like more was insinuated in the words about the events than just the events. I still felt bitterness in the rooms, particularly when they had very very updated sections; for instance, one section was about a woman who claimed defamation of character in a 2007 lawsuit. In their defense, everything was quoted and cited. I realize that what Japan did was atrocious – hundreds of thousands killed and thousands of women raped, but there’s still a lot of animosity residing – I’ve even heard it in some of the comments that my hosts have said, though it’s basically only been mentioning how said animosity exists still. I didn’t really make any huge opinions about the subject, though, until I got to the top floor. The bottom floor was all about the nanjing massacre and surrounding areas. The top floor was any random Japanese injustice between 1900 and the end of world war 2. We only saw about 1/5 of the museum, so I’m curious to see the rest of it before I make any real opinions. Sadly, I took too long looking around, so we were running late to meet Nate’s family from his mom’s side.
As it turns out, we met them at the Jingling Hotel, which is a really nice hotel here. The building is right beside the world trade center and my 18th floor window overlooks a huge versace store. When we checked in, we (nate’s grandmother, his cousin, and his uncle) went to dinner in this tiny little alley place that was quite crowded. It actually was a really cool restaurant. They brought out, once again, tons and tons and tons of food. A listing of the menu follows below. They kept trying to feed us even after I was really full. Somehow, I managed to keep eating a couple of times. I felt kind of miserably full after a while, and I think it showed. Anyways, during dinner (most of which I didn’t understand because it was all in Chinese – though its interesting to note that I finally heard nate speak Chinese!), apparently his grandmother went off on some tangent about how I look like I come from good people. It wasn’t until I went to the bathroom after dinner that his cousin asked him if I was his girlfriend, so apparently his parents didn’t pass the note on to this side of the family and the good people comment was grandma giving her blessing. Hah! Luckily, that’s really the first time that’s happened with his family.
After dinner, which lasted until after dark, we took some pictures and then walked around the nearby area, which was about 10 times more crowded than it was, which was quite a feat. As it turns out, the area was really, really, really cool. That was the stereotypical Chinese market I was expecting. And I was the only white person that I saw the entire evening! Truly authentic! We were warned that we had to be really careful about pick pockets, and we were fortunate enough to leave unscathed. We did a little shopping, went into a Confucian temple that was rebuilt after the massacres, and on our way out, nate’s cousin found a candy maker, something she hadn’t seen since she was a little girl. Basically, you picked a design from a given set of pictures, and the artist took boiling sugar and placed it on ice/marble (not sure which) and poured it into designs. I got the panda fuwa which was the cutest thing on earth. I’ve decided that they’re too cute for their own good because after I got it, I didn’t want to eat it. Look for these pictures and you’ll see what I mean. Ultimately, I ate it, though.
We walked around a little bit more, and then we were driven back to the hotel, where we we’ve been relaxing and watching the news/Olympics. Woo for being in china at the perfect time!

Duck feet
Good green roughage
Tea egg
Flat fish
Bony fish (annoying. Think bony chicken, but worse)
Lots of soupy things
Spicy glass noodles
Smelly tofu (didn’t really smell)
Chunks of blood in soup
Duck famous for nanjing
Yellow chicken
Xiaolongbao
Green thing that is good for skin (note: everything in china is good for skin, or from what I’ve gathered)
Watermelon (I’ve eaten more watermelon in the past 2 weeks than I have in the last 2 years)
Watermelon juice
Tea

wuxi 8/9/08

2008-08-09T17:26:00.000-07:00

Wuxi day 3

Bfast – doughnuts/youtiao; tried not to eat much b/c of yesterday
Went to home town houqaio
Walked around/off roading with umbrellas
Grave stones
Prayers/burning money; special occasion for me J
Old woman walk by, reminds me of grandma
Lunch – ate hardly at lunch; pumpkin stem; eggplant biscut; I really like this random fungus; normal stuff – pork/chicken/beef/tofu
Kitten/pictures
Drove to park
Wow roller coaster
Buddha
Incense burners
Temple w/ bell and gong
Clay dolls
Almost bought a fan then told cheaper
4 weirdo angry dudes
left
came back
leftovers – NO DRINKS (wine 3rd meal in a row except bfast)
badminton
bed

new blister
allergies – probably pollution/city. Slowly got better while at hometown and park
Learning about Nate.

Wuxi 8/8/08 - really cool day

2008-08-09T17:25:00.000-07:00

Wakeup
Breakfast – xiaolongbao
Drive to suzhou – picked up this woman who was going to tour us around then jumped out
Suzhou – gardens; tour guide spoke funny; 3 sectionsfloor patterns
Lotus flowers and seeds
Drove to teahouse – lost like 3 times during the day
Teahouse
-lunch
-saw antiques/teas
-tea ceremony demonstration/tasting
-attempt tea ceremony w/ oolong, something I couldn’t pronounce, and pu’ar
-automated mahjong
-nate gets tea ceremony set
came home
dinner at some restaurant with live pheasant and seafood waiting ot be killed and rusty pipes
dinner – drunk cousin-in-law
came home
watched the opening ceremony, or part. Also, china really cares about the # of golds they win
super tired and upset stomach and fell into bed.

8-8-08 is a super special, lucky day

turtle
duck
squirrel fish
crab
some animal’s stomach
eel
chicken head rice
pickled radish
fish soup
fish ball soup
assorted veggie dishes
crawfish
jelly fish
squid
delicate piece of chicken foot
thousand year duck egg
quail/pigeon egg in soup

Wuxi 8-7-08

2008-08-09T17:24:00.000-07:00

Wuxi day 1

We woke up late this morning since we had been having a whirlwind trip. Late actually means 9:30 because we were supposed to leave by 11am and I hadn’t packed yet. But we got breakfast

Ate bfast
Left
Met up with fei fei’s dad at hotel; miamaio + mom+daughter come; prince of Egypt, carpenters, enya
Came to house and dropped off stuff and relaxed with baby
Came to tai lake – walked around
Had dinner with ahlf his family – crazy tea leaves; pumpkin, papaya/sea cucumber
Went to miaomiaos to watch the video
Twin ultimatum/English
Full body massage/foot massage $10/2 hours
Crash

To prove I haven't fallen off the face of the earth

2008-08-09T17:22:00.001-07:00

In order to prove I haven't gotten typhoid or fell in a hole, I'm uploading more lists from the last 3 days. Again, they're not going to make sense, but it's for me to fix later.

Today we're going to Nanjing to meet Nate's mom's side fo the family and see yuyue's university. More later.

delay

2008-08-07T17:14:00.001-07:00

Sorry for not posting for a while. I plan on writing them all tonight and uploading them.

Oh, and I changed my mind again. I think I just have allergies. I feel fine, and I tend to get better as I hang out in the countryside as opposed to the city.

I'll keep you informed about pictures as soon as I get picasa to recognize them.

Updates

2008-08-06T19:20:00.001-07:00

*poke* look at the last two blogs for updates. Both are ready.

And yes, I definitely have a sinus infection :(

Day.... i lost count

2008-08-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

So tonight I will post yet again another list of things that I want to write about later. I'm unbelievably tired. On the upside, I am uploading pictures to picasa online. More on this later. Tomorrow morning, we're not leaving for Wuxi until 11am, so I hopefully will have time to fill in the gaps.

Funny note: All these notes I wrote on the back of a receipt while waiting for check in time to roll around at the airport today.

Nate and I were up bright and early so that we had enough time to eat, check out, and be ready for our tour today of the great wall. I was ready 20 minutes early, so I went downstairs to try and check out. Unfortunately, I couldn't check out without the key that ante had, so I sat down by the tourist table and patiently waited. A little girl wound up walking up to the woman at the tourist table and kept staring at me. I smiled and after a while she said hello to my surprise. She was 7, so I guess she had started learning English. I started to talk to her, slowly asked her name, how old she was, etc. She was adorable because she kept having to get translations from the tourist table woman. After a while, she lost interest, and I got to staring out the window. After a while, Nate came down and apparently the little girl was leaving and said bye to me, which I didn't hear because I was lost in my thoughts, so Nate was like Katie, pay attention. So we waved bye to each other. Such a small and seemingly unimportant instance like that somehow always seems to make my day.

On a side note, I seem to be getting sick, or I'm developing allergies to the smog. More on this later.

Our tour guide came late this time, but when she came in, she was a ball of energy. She had better English than our tour guide the day before, so that made listening a lot more clear and easy. The group that day consisted of the same American couple as the day before, an Italian, some Chinese, some Brazilians, and an Australian father/son pair. This day, we went to the Ming tomb first, which again was absolutely huge. The entire place was super feng shui (supposedly) and also resided on the meridian line, like all the other important places in Beijing.

Sorry kids, got to pause here. Got to get dressed and pack for Wuxi.

Alright. Now I’m in Wuxi, just got done with lunch and am now “resting” until we go to Lake Tai (no idea how to spell anything around here unless I see it written). Back to the story if I don’t doze off first. I’m taking some Chinese pills for head cold, so they might be making me sleepy.

Back to the Ming Tombs. The Mings were some cool people, it sounds like. They got a lot of stuff done. For instance, one guy commissioned the moving of the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, had the Forbidden City built, and created these tombs. Mr. Productive, especially considering this guy also had to steal his power from his nephew who came to power in a roundabout way.

After the tombs, we went to the largest jade factory in Beijing. It was cool to walk around and see the different pieces of jade carvings, large and small, but we didn’t really get to see much of how jade it actually made, which would have been nice for my MSE eyes. But they did teach us about some of the properties and talked about the folklore. It turned out the place was actually just one huge show room for jade and everything we saw was for sale. And it was expensive. Really expensive. I didn’t see anything under 100 Yuan (~$15), not even little tiny trinkets. Needless to say, I bought nothing and wound up sitting down for most of the time we had available to browse.

Lunch was actually connected to the jade factory at a restaurant in back. The food was a little bit tastier than yesterday, but these two events still have been the low point of my culinary experiences here. I sat at a table with the American couple, the Australians, and an Italian intern in some city who just wanted to do some touring while he was here (I didn’t catch if it was an AIESEC internship or not). It turns out that the Australians were here for the games, and the first set of tickets they bought they found out recently they were fake. They were directed to some Beijing website months ago that was selling tickets, and they made over $80 million in profits. Luckily for the Australians, they had tix to boxing, baseball, and something else to occupy their time. The lucky ducks were also going to get Peking duck that night at the super famous place, which Nate and I never got to mostly because we forgot. Supposedly there’s a place in Shanghai, so maybe we’ll have it there?

Brb fruit break. They eat so much fruit here – I eat it at least 2 or 3 times a day. I love it.

After lunch, we loaded up the bus to go to the Great Wall of China. We found out at the tombs that the Badaling section we were supposed to go to was actually closed for the Olympics, so we had to go to a different section (no idea what it was called). As it turned out, they were going to close that section down, too, after a certain time because the road bike race was finishing there. I’ve got some cool pictures of the finish line with actual Olympic bikers riding the track (not sure who all was there, but I know I saw Chile and I think France). I even bumped into two Venezuelan sports news hosts talking about what was going on and all that jazz. It was so nice to finally hear a language here that I could understand other than English!

Anyways, we had the option to climb either the left side of the wall or the right side of the wall. The left side was a harder climb, but supposedly had better views, while the right side was easier with worse views. Nate had high aspirations to climb both sides in the 2.5 hours we had, but I wasn’t feel enough to do both at a fast pace, so I just went on the harder one at my own pace. I wound up getting farther up the wall than I could see from where we started, so I figure I didn’t do too bad. Most of it was a vertical climb up stairs, which made me feel a lot of pity for Seancy when he had to climb it for the marathon. By the time I got to my highest point, I was drenched with sweat, my heart was beating 90 miles an hour, and my legs felt like rubber. I had climbed the last 100 feet or so with the American man, and we chatted at the top for a while about Chinese hospitality since he was in a similar situation as Nate and i. We also tried to take in the view, which I imagine was astounding, if only it hadn’t have been foggy/smoggy. At least it wasn’t hot.

After a while, we came down and met up with his wife, who had a young Chinese girl from the tour following her around, since she spoke Chinese. Since I had been traveling with the American couple, she decided that I was going to be her new friend, too. She was a 14-year-old middle school girl named Rong Rong Chen – American style. At first, I didn’t think she spoke any English because she mostly just pointed at me or laughed or said, “go” to get me to catch up with the couple, etc. After a while, she asked if she could get a picture with me, which I said yes to. Eventually, I determined that she really could speak English, even if it weren’t the best. She understood a lot more than I thought she did, so I started yapping more. Once again, my idea of a personal space bubble was popped very quickly. Since the girl was alone on the tour, she started calling the American wife “aunt”, and latched on to me, literally and figuratively. There was a point or two where she grabbed my arm or hand and walked with me down the stairs (which was quite a feat on rubbery legs, let me tell you). Don’t worry, it wasn’t creepy, especially after I had seen so many people walking down the road arm in arm in a similar way in all the cities. I wouldn’t say it bothered me so to speak, but I noticed that my space was being invaded, and it was very strange to me that someone I had met 10 minutes prior would be so comfortable hanging onto a hot and sweaty me, who barely even could communicate. Anyways, once we got to the bottom, no one wanted to attempt going to the other side even though we had another hour, so we sat at this little rest area thing similar to the summer palace walkway and all just chatted. I got to learn a lot about school life in China from Rong Rong. It turns out that even in middle school, you take 11 classes a day (seven classes, some of them doubled up) from like 8am to 9pm, and on weekends you have no time for yourself because your parents make you trot from piano lessons to sports to whatever enrichment they deem necessary. She was in 8th grade, so she didn’t really have any idea about what she wanted to do. Anyways, during the time, she also started trying to teach me phrases in Chinese, which I sadly almost promptly forgot except for Yes and No; No sounds like “mayo” as in mayonnaise and Yes is something I never ever said right.

As we were walking to the bus to leave the great wall, I saw some men wearing Harley shirts from Beijing. Kirk wanted me to bring him one back from there if I found one, and I was hoping that since so many were wearing them, maybe it was nearby and I could quick run and pick one up. So I stopped one of them and asked where he had gotten it from, and he told me his story. He and his friends rode their bikes from Holland, through Germany, through somewhere else, through Russia, through Mongolia, and when they got to the Chinese border, they were stopped and not allowed in with their bikes. They currently have them in storage in Mongolia and had to drive a car in. When they got to Beijing, they went to the Harley store and told the owner their story, and he promptly gave them Harley Beijing shirts as a consolation prize. When I asked where it was, the guy looked at me with a blank stare and said his tour guide could tell us but that he had no idea and that it was not close. Sorry Kirk. Maybe in Shanghai?

Once we got on the bus, Rong Rong stopped me and asked if I wanted to try something. She didn’t know the translation for it, so she got the tour guide to tell me that it was duck tongue. Well, duck tongue doesn’t really sound appealing, but I was feeling brave, and it was packaged so I decided I’d give it a try. Rong Rong had never had any until recently on a plane flight, where she tried a little and thought it was kind of good. As it turned out, it really wasn’t all that bad in my opinion. It had a slightly strange texture, but that doesn’t usually bother me. However, once I got to the bone and started seeing weird things on the surface I stopped. But I got half way through!

We had about a 45-minute bus ride to where they dropped us off for the taxi. On the ride, Laurel gave me a call, as she had just gotten my email about me being in Beijing the night before. Since I was on the way to the airport, I couldn’t’ really hang out with her, so I had to say bye. I’ll send her an email at some point.

Speaking of emails, I still need to send Jerry one L

When we got to the airport, it was an hour before we could check in, so we checked out the different stores. They had a Kenny Rogers there, so we had to stop and see if it was really like it should be. Inevitably, it wasn’t and served noodles and other Asian deliciousness. I didn’t eat there, though. Ate a chicken sandwich at BK while I wrote half of this on a receipt.

Nate almost threw out his rings, but a server found them first. Our plane was delayed 30 minutes, and I felt crazy gross and dirty from all the walking we’d done that day, but managed to sleep. Anyways, battery is about to die. Adios!

Day 5

2008-08-05T07:17:00.000-07:00

Today's blog will be short. Mostly because I'm dog tired.

Today i was up before 7, as the sun was shining in our room at that point and I thought that we had missed my alarm to go on the tour. Thankfully, I hadn't, but I wasn't able ot fall asleep again. I was up at at em, though, and went and bought breakfast for nate and i. I walked a ways, and eventually found a convenience store. Strangely, the vast majority of their food out for hte day was actually hot dogs and hamburgers sitting out, not refrigerated. It confused me, so I decided to stick with a 1.5 L bottle of water, 2 cartons of milk, and some bread items. I managed to snarf down my bfast and went down to meet hte tour guide and tell him that nate was brushing his teeth and would be down momentarily. I was informed that we were going to be going on a tour today that actually had raised its prices for hte other hotel in the partnership because of hte olympics but htat our hotel hadn't given notification of hte price raise so we had about 200RMB cheaper than them.

Our guide's name was Colin, who was a student at a Beijing university that studied tourism, go figure. Once he picked us up, we picked up the people (a couple) from the other hotel, a white man and a chinese woman. The guy worked in Real Estate and lived in queens, and when I asked what they both did, the woman never responded, so i take it they're pretty well off.

Ok, I'm outlining for tonight and will fill in the gaps tomorrow.

Forbidden City - the forbidden city was absolutely astounding. It was jsut wall after wall after room after room of elaborate wooden structures. I think I learned just as much from this section about Chinese history as I did about chinese culture in the transportation museum thing. Our tour guide was really useful and gave lots of cool snippets. For instance, i know now why chinese people say that they all come from the dragon. back in the day, each of the different fractions of China associated themselves with an animal. When one person finally united all of China, he took on the dragon as his symbol (note, the phoenix is the symbol of hte empress), which has eagle claws, deer horns (never noticed that one before), lion tail, snake body, etc - a conglomeration of all the animals into one creature. Anyways, apparently at hte forbidden city, they were also setting up a stage that was goign to be used for something for the olympics, so it was cool to watch them build it.

Silk Shop - after going ot hte forbidden city, my tour group (consisting of Nate and I and an american couple from New York (but hte wife was originally from China)) went to one of the famous silk shops in Beijing. We learned how silk was spun (either from single or double silkworm coccoons), and they were selling comforters that blew down feather comforters out of hte water (silk doesn't bunch up like down) and they were so cheap! If I had had more room and a need, I might have actually considered it - it was only like $60 for a nice single or double.

Lunch - After the silk shop, we loaded back onto our bus to go to the temple of heaven, a place where the emperor went to worship and pray for good harvests and other things. It was 4 times as big as teh forbidden city, so we only saw the main thing. Anyways, I'm jumping hte gun. We ate at a restaurant that was tucked away somewhere in the temple, and it was a typical chinese lunch, which came with 4 kinds of meats (chicken, pork, beef, fish), various vegetables, rice, soup, watermelon, and tea. The only problem with it was that each and every dish was so bland! There wasn't any kick of any sort to any of hte dishes, particularly the soup, so we were a little sad.

Temple of Heaven - upon finishing dinner, we went to the temple for prayer for good harvests (or something like that). Let me tell you, it was HUGE. It was pillar after pillar of typical chinese architecture. I'll be honest, after the forbidden city and this place, all the places started running together in my mind a little bit because they all look so similar, though still magnificent. We roamed around for a couple minutes and hten had to be on our way to the Summer Palace.

Summer Palace - The Empress Dowager Cixi (The Dragon Lady) built and rebuilt this palace (which trumped the size of both the forbidden city and the temple of heaven and even came with its own manmade lake) like 3 or 4 times. It served as a prison for her son and other emperors and their wives so taht thye could be puppets of her. It was an interesting tactic, but apparently it worked for her. Here, we saw the first imperial phone and the world's longest art gallery. Now, you might ask why on earth there's an art gallery here because you've probably never heard about it. Well, there's a 700m long corridor outside, which is lined with traditional chinese paintings all along it, making it the longer gallery in the world.

Home - While we were driving to the forbidden city, we passed a HUGE shopping/eating area that we were only a block away from when we had been walking the night before, sadly. It looked like the times square of beijing. We decided that we were going to go there for eating/shopping, but we had to decide if we were goign to have hte bus drop us off or if we'd go home first to rest. We'd walked over 5km, so both of our feet were REALLY tired. We opted for the hotel to rest and search for a pizza hut for me.

No Pizza Hut :( - the closest pizza hut from any of our locations was 6 blocks away. In reality, I feel like blocks in Beijing are the equivalent of 2 or 3 blocks in the US (or maybe I was jsut tired), but either way it was too far to convince nate to come with me and I didn't feel like walking all that way by myself just to eat at a sitdown restaurant by myself.

Wangfuxing - about 2 hours after getting back, i'm really starving, so i manage to convince nate that we should go eat. We took the subway, which of course was CROWDED (and we rode on an old line, which really wasn't as bad as Fei Fei was making it out to be), but as we were walking out, we noticed that there were soldiers blocking the way across the street to "Times Square." At this point, I'm getting grumpy because i'm so hungry, and i was quite annoyed that we had to walk a 2 block square just to get passed all the guards. Turns out they were guarding a couple hotels that were being used to house olympic families.

fast food chinese in china (duck!) - Once again, you'd think finding food would have been easy in the section we got to, but it was only department stores! We finally foudn one that offered food, and nate was realizing that i was only going to get grumpier if i had to wait for him at mcdonalds first (ew, mcdonalds), so we walked down to teh food court. Throughout the day, i'd met varying levels of english speakers in Beijing, and most people had a basic understanding of english. However, at all the places I went in the food court, i dind't run into a single english speaker. Which made ordering very difficult. Finally, one place pulled out a hand held menu with english translations, on which I pointed to stewed duck. You know, the duck was actually pretty good. I snarfed it down so fast that I really wasn't hungry for hte other things on my plate, including rice, boiled lettuce (which i woudln't have eaten anyways), and bone soup. Well, the bone soup didn't taste very good either, so nate forced me to eat the rice. I tried to get bubble tea for dessert, but the guy there also didn't speak any sort of english, and i dind't know hwich one taro tea was from the pictorial menu, so i just gave up. Instead, Nate and I both got Belgian Cream Puffs, which were also in the food court. Who'd have thought, eh? They were delicious, partly because they were inherently delicious and partly because i hadn't had one since i went to the mall of america when i was like 12.

mcdonalds - nate was dying to get a chinese big mac, so we went to a giant mcdonalds in the square.

After eating, it was probably 8pm, so we decided we were too tired to go shopping shopping, but we really really wanted to go to the flagship olympics memorabilia store, so we did. I wanted a shirt, but couldn't find any that I liked, so I looked for tote bags. I wound up getting a Jing Jing (the panda fuwa/mascot of hte olympics) that i plan on using for school next year ^_^ The other notable hting about this store is how annoying shopping was. Not only was the place as crowded as ants in an anthill, whenever you found something you wanted, you had to get a receipt for it. When you got it, you had to go find a kiosk to go pay for it. when that was done, you had to go back to the person you got the original receipt from and give it to her so you can get your item. Annoyingness.

We were home by 9:30 and I swear I was in bed by 10:30. I was exhausted. Beijing was kicking my tail.

Day 4

2008-08-04T05:12:00.000-07:00

So on this trip, I've realized that I know a lot more about Japanese culture than I do Chinese culture, and for some reason, I've smooshed various tidbits of these into chinese culture as well. Fortunately, I haven't embarrassed myself by saying konichiwa or anything obvious like that, and I'm realizing that i guess somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that they were Japanese things rather htan Chinese. It's just weird to realize the imbalance of knowledge I feel like I have.

I still will always be suprised at the ability of hte Chinese people to scoot their way from point A to point B. That includes cutting in front of people in lines, sometimes. And it's hilarious because every now and again, someone won't put up with it, and there's a brief argument with someone standing his or her ground, and the other dejectedly walking away.

So I've got 6 items I feel like briefly mentioning before I go through the events of today.

1) Heating/Air conditioning

I've noticed that in the vast majority of smaller rooms, there is no central air. You have this little remote controlled unit resting on the wall that you have ot turn on when you walk into the room. Meaning? It's always really hot when you walk in. And when all you're doing is walking around hot and humid weather outside comparable to atlanta/florida, it's a little disappointing until the temperature gets up to snuff, but it's well cooled once it gets there.

2) Roaches

Or rather a lack thereof. I'm very impressed with the roach situation both in Shanghai and Beijing so far. I've only seen one, and that was while i was getting my hair cut yesterday. I haven't even seen any crawling around on the streets, which i would expect in a major city.

3) Salons

People must go to hair salons instead of watching tv here. I swear there's one on every corner. Speaking of salons, I don't remember if I mentioned this in yesterday's update, but before gettin gmy hair cut, they wash your hair, give you a massage, and clean your ears. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I had my ears cleaned with a Qtip by a random person. It was a little weird and a little cool at the same time.

4) Loitering

So, people here loiter. A lot. I find it strange, since in the states most loitering is illegal, and only bums do it. It seems that there's more of a variety of people who just sit outside. My theory is that since a lot of people can't afford air conditioning, why not sit outside while it's cool in the evenings and sit and talk with neighbors/passerbyers.

5) Couples

Today, I realized that I've been noticing a lot of couples, both in Shanghai and in Beijing and at different times of the day. Either walking down the street, eating dinner, or hanging on each other on hte subway, it's refreshing to see sets of two people that appear so happy in their own little bubble, even though there's tons of people and action going on all around them. I don't feel like I see that as much in the states, smiles of happiness shared between two people, looking into each others' eyes, hugs, etc. Very different, but not at the same time.

5) Blisters

So, I've been developing big, big blisters. Thankfully they don't hurt to omuch, but htey just keep growing and I keep getting more. I think I'm at 6 on one foot and 4 on another, with one blister developing inside the remnants of an older one. I'm debating about going to a salon/massage parlor/something and having them help them, but i feel pity for the person who has to deal with it, so I don't think I will. Any tips, other than lots of bandaids and i should have brought more socks?

So back to today. We woke up at 5am to catch a plane to Beijing. There were a TON of security checkpoints, but ti was a lot easier security than in the states. I didn't ever have to take of fmy shoes, and half of hte points all they did was take a piece of paper and wipe down our zippers, I assume to chekc for bad-item-residue. The only notable story from the flight is that once breakfast got there, we got some random yogurt-container looking thing, but we dind't know what was in it. I decided to try and open mine first, and of course, the pull top doesn't want to come off, so I yank harder and, again of course, i get watered down yogurt sprayed all over my face. Attractive, let me tell you.

We landed in Beijing nad finally found ourselves at the taxis, at which point i remembered that i had to find hte china mobile store to get a new sim card. After going to 3 or 4 different people asking where the shop was, I finally walked almost completely across the air port to find it. Unfortunately, there weren't many good english speakers there and nate told me after hte fact that apparently hte rest of hte world doesn't know what the word "text message" means, which was evident in that htey had no idea what i was talking about when i tried to get hte fees explained to me. However, they had olympics specials going on, and i only had enough cash to buy the 200RMB card. I read the rates in the manual and found out that calls to and from the states = 3.6 RMB/minute, .6RMB/min to call in china, .4 to receive in china, and .5RMB for text messages. Summary - if you need to tlak to me, text me. Someone left me a voicemail on my normal phone and i'm dying ot hear it. Evil, whoever did it.

We used the directions Fei Fei gave us to give ot the taxi driver and got to what we thought was our destination. We went to the something something Hotel, but apparently there's also a something something business hotel, and about 20 minute safter arriving, we figured that part out. However, we eventually got in adn situated, left, got our tour planned for hte next two days, and then departed for Birds nest, the olympic park area. We got all the way over to the new line on the subway built for the olympics and were informed that the only people who could go were specially demarcated volunteers. Considering that was one of the high points for me on the trip (since i couldn't *actually go to a game, i wanted to at least see the sights), I was a little disappointed. So back to the subway to go to tian'anmen square. A million sotps later, we get there. and oh hey, we have to walk. Apparently there's no lines in the middle of the square, and let me tell you, it's a large square. We're quite hungry at this point and tol dourselves that we weren't going ot stop unless we found either a KFC, McDonalds, or Pizza Hut, since we hear htat they're a lot different than in the states. 2.5 hours after initially getting on the subway, we found a KFC. Let me tell you, it tastes exactly the same. I coudln't remember the last time i had a normal chicken sandwich (9th/10th grade?) from KFC, but it was exactly how i remembered it.

Upon eating, we felt a lot better (esp. since i managed ot get bandaids on blisters! woo woo!), so we went back to a couple of stores we wanted to see and hten came back to the hotel. The plan was to regroup and find a shopping center to go to, but i kind of fell asleep, which inspired nate to take a nap, too. When i woke up again, i saw nate under the covers (i had just fallen asleep on top and was freezing), so I decided to crawl under, too. 3 hours later at 8pm, I woke up starving. Eventually, nate woke up enough that we decided to go exploring for food. We walked. And we walked. And we walked some more. Apparnetly people don't eat when they're shopping here because we saw a ton of shops, but very few eating places, and we had to find one that could actually allow us to order. Finally, we find somewhere and get very american chinese food - pork and mushrooms, fried rice, and shrimp dumplings. Now I'm home and getting yelled at at nate because it's 12:30 and he still has to blog.

Buenas noches!

Day 3

2008-08-03T02:06:00.000-07:00

So this morning we had another delightful breakfast, but this time it included xiaolongbao(?), which is all the rave I've been hearing about, and they lived up to their name. I was proffered what looked like a little piece of bread, a bun if you will, which looked good, but I wasn't informed that htis is what it actually was. So of course, my first bite included juice running everywhere, as it's a steamed but with juices surrounding a little meatball. My next one was much cleaner.

After that we took the metro to try and go to the Shanghai Museum, which is a really good museum from what i've heard. However, the line was once again 2 miles long, so we decided to go visit Fei Fei's office, which is located in "Shanghai's Time Square." It was on the 23rd floor of a great high rise on the puxi side and had a great view. We discussed our overall itenerary again, but htere are so many places and so many things that are unique to these places, and so many different permutations of how to get there, I'm not entirely sure where we're oging when, so keep watching the blog to find out!

As we were leaving hte building, Fei Fei had to sign out, so I decided to look at the registry of companies in the building. I didn't actually get veyr far because as I got through half of the A's, I see "AJC International." Let me tell you, that made my day. On Tuesday last week, I hung out iwth a few AIESECers and Jerry Allison, the CEO of AJC International, and I specifically asked him where his office was, and vaguely recall him saying something about Huaihai Road and thinking at the time that that was where Fei Fei lived, but apparently not! Jerry didn't even mention what a nice place it was, either! For shame, he should gloat! Anyways, he'll be recieving an email and the photo when I upload my pictures :D

After that, we took a cab to Yuyuan Gardens, which has AWESOME shopping. *This* was the China i had been expecting to see. Yes, it was completely a tourist trap, but hte buildings were all in traditional Chinese style, selling very typical items, like chop sticks, tea, umbrellas, etc. We didn't actually get very far because it started raining, so we bolted for an umbrella shop so that i could buy one. After that, we headed over to a tea house, which apparently was full, and we wanted food with our tea anyways, so we went to an "almost tea house" that apparently is the same as a tea house, except it serves food. Lunch was absolutely delicious as always, and included things like rice wrapped in zhongzi leaves and *real* hot and sour soup (not as sour and not as hot as in the states, oddly enough), and of course lots of green tea.

As we were leaving lunch, I decided to stay really quick and take a picture. Well, everyone else scooted away while i was taking said picture, and assumed that they all went down stairs. I really did not take all that long. Anyways, i get down stairs and oh hey, none of my comrades were there. I didn't panic yet, but i quickly realized that i was in bad shape if i actually lost them, as i dind't have fei fei's number, no phone to call her with anyways, nor did i know her address. I waited at the entrance for about 5 minutes, trying to look into the square that was crowded with hundreds of people to look for the only 3 faces in china i'd recognize. After a while, I heard my name called behind me and thankfully found out that everyone had gone to the restroom and thought i was going to come, too. After this experience, I quickly realized that it woudl be wise to have Fei Fei write down her address for both of us just in case. And that I needed a phone. Sadly, the problem with Sean's phone is that I needed to know hwich city he bought it in, as i can't add minutes to it unless i'm in the city it was purchased in. Thankfully, i just found out it was bought in Beijing, so I'm going to need to figure something out.

Anyways, upon finishing lunch, we walked around the shopping area some more, but headed towards this zig zag walkway over a manmade lake filled iwht Koi that was super crowded. Once we made it through, that was hte entrance to the actual gardens. That was a really cool place to go through - it was a traditional Shanghai house/residence/garden of a rich governmental person, wh housed his family, extended family, and servants there. It contained a beautiful garden filled with these crazy rocks and beautifully architectured relaxing stations (best way i can come up with to describe them). We also got to see more legitimate jewelry, art, and other handcrafted items that were a little bit more pricey than the shops outside the garden. We didn't buy anything here, but I noticed several things (namely a jade flower necklace and some traditional Chinese art) that I think I may want to purchase for myself before I leave China.

After some more perusing of this area, we caught a taxi to go to another less touristy area near the "times square" that actually held a lot of shopping, namely for antiques. Now, i've been on my fair share of antique shopping trips, and this I have to admit was pretty cool. Granted, most of hte stuff there wasn't *that* old compared to some stuff that I've seen before in the states, but there were some pretty interesting things. There were a lot of Mao memorabilia, particularly the little red book, that was being sold, and the other hot commodity was china. Since I didn't get to bring home any Mexican ceramics from my last trip, I seriously considered bringing back some china, but I doubt that I'll be able ot have it back at the states in one piece. And i also saw a really cool looking bird, but didn't get a picture. Apparently, having caged birds is popular.

Side note: I've now seen 3 Hugo Boss stores, 2 Dior stores, 2 Lacoste, 2 Prada, 2 Versace, marc jacobs, 3 Tommy Hilfiger, 1 Burberry, 2 Louis Vuitton, etc. Shanghai likes its fashion.

After that, we walked back towards the metro (I solemnly swear to never complain about Marta being crowded again) to go home to get dinner. Tonight's dinner consisted of fresh water eel, pork bone soup, some hollow vegetable, and delicious eggplant with green bean cakes for dessert. We actually had an interesting conversation about dessert because Fei Fei thought that hte green bean cake was too sweet, whereas I barely noticed it, so I promptly began to inform her about the sugar content of most american desserts, upon which her eyes got SO wide. OH! And at dinner I also got told hilarious baby nate stories. Good times.

After dinner, we walked out to say good bye to Miao Miao, as she was going home to Wuxi since Nate and I leave tomorrow for Beijing, after which we'll be heading to Wuxi. As she was driving away, we walked 10 feet to a hair cut place because nate wanted to test out a theory that american hair cutters were just incompetent at cutting asian hair and that a chinese hair cutter would have no problems with his. I had originally considered getting my hair cut, but decided to hold off, since I wasn't entirely confident in Chinese hair cutters' abilities to cut my white hair (refer to Nate's theory). However, nate and fei fei managed to convince me that i should try something, so i went for it. We started out with a hair wash, followed by a shoulder, arm, and hand massage, after which our hair was finally cut and styled. Please refer to the upcoming picasa album to see before and after pictures. It feels quite weird (tho not a bad weird) because my hair is half as thick as it was , it looks darker, and I sort of have almost bangs. To be honest, my initial reaction is that I looked like Christian Slater in Robin Hood, though nate's impression is that i look like some character from final fantasy 7 (aeris?) if i had slightly longer hair in back in pigtails.

Now we're home and packing for our trip tomorrow for Beijing. After calling my parents tonight, Fei Fei wrote out all the directions and addresses we'll need for Beijing, so we shouldn't run into any hitches. I'm quite excited. This will be our only chance to explore in China alone nad unsupervised (not that having someone around who knows what's goign on is a bad thing), but there's some quality that's appealing about striking out on your own and discovering things for yourself. Technically, tomorrow is our only day completely unsupervised, as we'll be going on tours run by the hotel to the great wall, forbidden city, etc, so we'll be going ot hte olympic areas to see teh sights, and i'm hoping that maybe i can meet up with Laurel from orchestra and perhaps get some clothes shopping in :D

Anyways, time to pack. Buenas Noches!

Day 2

2008-08-03T02:05:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up sometime around 6, as we had left the blinds open to the bedroom last night, and apparently the sun in Shanghai rises/falls earlier than I’m used to. I laid there for a while and took in the view, thinking how not outrageously unfamiliar China had been to me so far. I don’t know how to put my finger on it, but I expected to be more surprised, to have more culture shock, I guess. But it’s not that far from what I’ve experienced before. In fact, some things that I expected to probably see early on I’ve yet to see, like really filthy areas, poor people begging, stereotypical China-Townness of wall to wall signs, buildings, people, and animals.

After a while, I got up and at em, so I went downstairs. Fei Fei and Miao Miao had gone out to buy breakfast, but Mrs. Liu was still there getting the porridge ready, and I had an interesting time trying to communicate at 8am. Mrs. Liu doesn’t speak a word of English, and so far my Chinese vocabulary is Shia Shia (thank you) and Ni Hao (thank you), though I’m very slowly beginning to recognize a few other words when spoken. Either way, we both resorted to a unique form of sign language to get our points across. The only thing I managed to get from her was how did I sleep (via hands closed together, with her head tilted to the side and pointing at me), which I responded to with a smile and a thumbs up. She kept talking, even though I couldn’t understand, and I just gave her this look of “I want to know what you’re saying but I have no clue.” At this point, I began to realize that when I don’t understand others and they’re likely not to understand me, I also don’t talk much. I didn’t really say much in response to her, even though that would have perhaps been nice to acknowledge her other than confused facial expressions. I’ll think about it next time.

Breakfast was delicious. We had porridge (which apparently they call gruel here, which sounds a lot worse than it is in real life, hence I call it porridge), this mix of green beans and other vegetables, churros (not really, but close), the pancakes that bo’s mom made for me that are HEAVEN, this sesame bread thing, and milk that tasted different than normal, even tho it was normal milk. I guess pasteurizing is different over here.

We got ready and left for the big city of downtown Shanghai. We had a driving tour of Puxi and Pudong, and then we parked on the Pudong side. At this point, we got tickets to go on a river cruise to see the Bund and tickets to go up to the top floor of the Oriental Pearl. The cruise was very nice; we saw all the cool looking buildings that lined river on both sides, learned a little bit about the buildings, and began to get our bearings. Once we docked, we decided that it was lunch time (noon), so we went to this HUGE mall. There were SO many people. That was where I began to realize that Chinese people have a very, very different concept of personal space. I had noticed yesterday that people are much more touchy-feely than they are in the states, and not in a gross kind of way, just a platonic, hanging out with your friends or family sort of way. Well, I guess since there are so many people, they don’t mind a lack of as much personal space as I’m used to because I got crammed in on the escalator, jostled, and nudged, and it only got worse as the day progressed (more on this later). Anyways, we got lunch, and I got 2 rolls of 3 sushi since I wasn’t very hungry after a big breakfast not long before.

When we left, we headed over to the Oriental Pearl to go to the top of the building. We saved it for the latter half of the day because it would be much hotter and this was an inside tour. Well, we wound up being inside a lot longer than expected – the lines were HUGE and we had no idea just how long the lines were until we were finished because they were hidden. First, we waited going thru security. Then we waited a long time to go on the first elevator because only 10 at a time could go. Then we waited to get on the next elevator even longer because only ~6 at a time could go. Eventually, we make it all the way up, and the view is absolutely astounding. It’s very New Yorky, when viewed from the empire state building, but even bigger because it’s Shanghai. You could see the 2nd largest building in the world and the first largest that is still being built about 100 feet away. I saw the stadium where Olympic soccer will be held, as well as a different view of the Bund. They also had an interesting set of thank you notes from diplomats around the world who had visited, several of which were placed under more than one flag or under the wrong flag or a flag none of us had either seen (Anyone seen a middle eastern/Arabic speaking country with a Christmas tree in the center of the flag?). And then we had to try to get down. And there were lines. Two, in fact, and by the time we finally got down, it was around 5pm. I was pretty tired, but we were walking past a transportation history museum in it, and you know me – I couldn’t pass it up. I’m so glad that we went on it because it had a lot of scenes of historic china (which apparently aren’t so historic, from what I was told) along with cars. This way, I was able ot learn a lot about the history and culture of China from Fei Fei and Miao Miao than I would have probably this entire trip if I hadn’t have gone. Fun side note: you know those wacky mirrors that are kept in fun houses in fairs? Yeah, they’re called “Ha ha mirrors” here because you go “ha ha” when you look at them.

When we left, I was again surprised at the worry of becoming dark by almost everyone walking around. People were carrying umbrellas as parasols just to keep the sun off of them. I’ve decided that I have to get myself one of these to use as an umbrella in the states. We took a couple of pictures, and hten we were off to “relax.” Originally, I thought relaxing was going to occur at home while we ate dinner, but apparently it meant we were going to a really popular dessert shop form Hong Kong (I don’t recall the name). Sadly, it was a little farther htan we thought it would be, but it held exactly what I needed – air conditioning and a delicious kiwi smoothie thing. I will have to get more of these Chinese desserts, as they all looked very interesting.

At this point, we left for the car, and I fell asleep on the drive back. Fei Fei’s mom was preparing dinner, and we had planned to go to Nanjing road that night, but I was beginning to worry about my abilities to stay awake. Well, Fei Fei’s mom made a GREAT dinner of pork, green beans, cooked lettuce things that I didn’t like as well, and boiled shrimp. Mental note: Boil water. Add in salt. Toss in shrimp and add onion and ginger. Allow to boil and become delicious. Afterwards, I was feeling better, so we decided to go ahead and go to the shopping district. Before I left, I made sure that I used the bathroom because yesterday I learned my lesson about public restrooms. Major thanks to Seancy for warning about the need to bring my own toilet paper and that there are no public “western” toilets, only “eastern” ones. Well, he didn’t entirely explain what an eastern toilet was, and my only basis was the holes in the ground that Maddie had told me about in India. Well, thankfully it wasn’t a literal hole in the ground, but it wasn’t terribl ymuch better. Google image if you need more information. Some of them were super gross and I vowed that I’d never use them unless I had to. I’d be terrified of losing my balance.

The shopping district was pretty cool. Again, it wasn’t as glitzy and bright as I thought it’d be, but it also wasn’t shoddy in the least. We went to the building that held the embassy, and we also saw the most expensive shopping mall. We had to take a break at one poin tbecause poor Miao Miao was starting to wear out, so afterwards, we decided it was time ot head back. And that is where I am now. I’m sitting on the bed writing, but am frustrated b/c Fei Fei’s DSL doesn’t seem to be working, so I’m writing this and saving it for later. We didn’t get to buy a phone card today, so my plans are to get one tomorrow, first thing in the morning. Hopefully I can find out where Sean bought the phone so we can see if I can actually put minutes on it.

Anyways, buenas noches.

China - Day 1

2008-08-01T08:14:00.000-07:00

So this blog title is called China Day 1, but it could also rightfully be called China day 2, considering that I lost my entire Thursday in 14 hours. Thomas picked Nate and I up bright and early at 5am, and we made it uneventfully to Chicago. Likewise, in Chicago, we made a beautiful transition to the flight to China. Now, I've been dreading this flight ever since we made it because the last time I was on a plane for any length of time, I was miserable because I couldn't sleep and time just went by so slow - and that flight was half as long as this was going to be! However, between naps (thank you anti nausea pills!), chatting with my aislemate (a grade student about to graduate from Rice), reading about Shanghai, and watching 21 and Be Kind Rewind, I managed to not go bonkers. At some future point when I can get my own laptop on the internet, I'll post pictures from our trip, as it was completely not what I expected. We wound up flying over Canada, across what I assume is/were the Bering Straights (history class, dont fail me now), on into Russia, possibly through mongolia, and eventually into China. I've got some awesome pictures (or at least i think so) of melting ice flows before hitting russia and of hte plains in russia/mongolia.

Eventually, many hours later (note: there was never "night" on my flight, which threw mefor a loop), we arrive in Shanghai. Nate and I have some issues initially because we don't have Nate's cousin's address (Fei Fei) or phone number. Anyways, we didn't think we'd have a problem, so we went ahead and tried to go through customs to see what would happen. Well, we sounded pretty stupid when we didn't know her address or phone number, nor hte name of hte company where she worked, so Nate used the last of Sean's phone's minutes to call his mom. Thankfully, she gave him the phone number within the 2 minutes we had and that satisfied the customs woman. After that, we went through the "Nothing to declare aisle" since 1 wine bottle and 1 bottle of crown for 2 people were below the limits that we needed to declare. At this point, we make it to the place where people meet and greet the travelers, and we met up with Miao Miao (not sure how to spell) and Mrs Liu, Nate's other cousin and Fei Fei's Mom, respectively. I was quite suprised because the second I walk up, Miao Miao hands me this HUGE bouquet of lily's, saying "welcome and these are for you." I'll have to post a picture of it iwht my standing beside it. Huge is an understatement.

Anyways, nate and i are a little confused ebcause we thought Fei Fei was goign to pick us up, but apparently she had an important business meeting that day, so her mom and cousin took us to her place to change out of clothes and relax until she got home. I'm sure everyone has that first "suprising" moment whenever they go to another country that is something inherent to hte culture that you just never thought about before and i guess suprises you. That happened to me in the car on the way to the apartment, when Mrs. Liu sprayed sunscreen onto Miao Miao's arm without any warning at all, or at least that I noticed. Nate had to then explain to me that dark skin was a sign of lower class in China because it meant you worked outside in lower jobs, which I thought was hilarious because in whitey america, if you don't have a tan, you're a social outcast.

Anyways, we get to Fei Fei's house to wait. Needless to say, I've never had so much green tea poured down me before (awesome hospitality). Around 7, Fei Fei made it home, and we all got ready for dinner. At this point, i see that it's a reasonable time of day on the other side of the earth and give my parents a buzz, but nate used all the minutes before hand, so my dad called me back to verify that I got there. And then we left for dinner. At this point, I'm tired and hungry, so i was excited to see where they were taking us. Apparently, it was a western style restaurant, to ease nate and i into the cuisine. We park at this parking garage and walk through this HUGE, weird shopping mall. I only say weird because it's not like any other shopping mall I've been in - there's a couple of bottom floors that only lead to super markets, but hte top floor is filled with kind of legit as well as knock off stores. I'll be honest, there were a lot of bright and shiny lights and a lot of people to look at that I was a little shocked. Up until that time, I hadn't relaly seen anything *that* out of hte ordinary, excepting a TON of bicycles and 3 KFC's in a row separated by only one shop. Everything i saw could have been found in America, more or less, if only you took out the chinese characters and put in english translations.

Anyways, we walk out of hte mall and down the road towards the restaurant. we walk in, and none of the waiters speak to us in english. At this point, I'm wondering how "western" this restaurant is. Eventually, we're seated, and we get one menu to look at, and this menu is chock full of asian food, and only a few of hte items have english translations. This kind of made me laugh on the inside because that certainly isn't "western" food, but apparently they took us there because it's hte healthy style of asian food, kind of like the whole foods of China, in restaurant form. Oh my goodness, I am so full. And hte tea (made with honey) was absolutely delicious. We also discussed our itenerary for hte rest of our trip, and I think it will be as follows:
-Sat, Sun = Shanghai
-Mon-Wed = Beijing
-Thurs = Shanghai
-Fri-Sat = Wuxi
-Sun-Mon = Suzhou
-Tues = Nanjing
-Wed-Thurs = Hangzhou
-Fri = fly home

I'm home now, sitting on a cot, looking out hte window on the 14th floor of a residential building in Shanghai overlooking a couple of quiet streets. It's amazing to think that I'm *finally actually* here. It's not where I expected I'd take my next big trip, and I'm not upset that I made that decision. I've been avoiding thinking about leaving work and having to start school in the fall, and for now, I'm just going to enjoy myself. Now, my next task will be falling asleep on a bed without sheets, as is commonplace in Shanghai during the summer, apparently.

Buenas Noches!

Getting Ready

2008-07-29T17:07:00.000-07:00

Dearest Blog,

Yes, instead of packing for my trip to China in 2 days, I am in fact blogging. Am I worried yet? No. I had a handful of things left to take care of, namely find a power converter and a plug adapter, but I've been informed by multiple travelers that these are unnecessary, so I'll buy one there if need be. And my issue of buying a phone there has been solved since Seancy will be loaning me his while I'm there.

So how am I feeling at this point? Pretty excited. I was a little nervous a couple days ago, mostly because I had to assuage my parents' fears that China is going to eat me alive. However, now I'm just super excited. I also have this weird conflicting feeling of sadness because I will be leaving my co-op job permanently, or at least for the next year, and it's been such a big part of my life the last 2 years, it's been really nostalgic. I don't know if I'll wind up there again even though I have a lot of personal interest in seeing it succeed, so it's a bittersweet week trying to plan out what I need to take home and what I need to pack to go the 14 and a half hours over to China.

I expect a more frantic and exciting update at this point tomorrow.