March 2008 Journal

36 weeks done, 16 to go! - Tuesday March 4, 2008

That means I'm 70% done with China. I'm not obsessing over the time - I'm just good with numbers.

Living here, I have days where I'm ready to fake my own death and start a new life here - I like it that much! But other days, I'm calculating how much time it would take me to get from my Chinese apartment to my parents house in Salt Lake (22 hours). Within the last four days, I've gone from one extreme to the other multiple times. In other words, life is interesting right now!

I started my new semester. I love my teaching schedule. Basically it's identical to last semester's save one class: my Wednesday afternoons are free. I teach Monday - Friday, 10:10 - 11:50. That's it! Five 90-minute periods. After 11 weeks, I will lose my Monday and Tuesday classes, but I'll pick up two afternoon classes on Saturday and Sunday. I actually think those will be interesting - they're for non-traditional MBA students. Older, wiser students with more to discuss than, "Where are you come from," etc.

The new semester, new students, and finally having a daily schedule again are reasons I feel like living in China forever. I'm happy when I have something productive to do with my time, even if the time is only seven and a half hours each week. And I really enjoy my students for a few different reasons. They make me feel like a celebrity. Every class so far, someone has come up to me and said, "My friends told me all about you, so I signed up for your class." They're also really intelligent people (most going for Ph.D.'s) but I still have something to teach them. My self confidence (both physically and mentally) has never been better.

Aubrey's Visit!

Also, my friend Aubrey came from the U.S. to visit me for 12 days. Seeing China through her eyes gave me a new (and great!) perspective on a lot of things. But at the same time, she was disgusted by a lot of things that are so common to me that I don't even think about them anymore. The reverse culture shock I plan on experiencing when I return to the U.S. is actually scaring me. When she landed and I started showing her around, I was in one of my "I love this place" moods. But when I was at the airport telling her goodbye, I realized that in 24 hours, she would be back in Colorado with everyone/everything I miss, and I would be on a train back to my little Chinese city. I almost emptied her luggage and stowed away inside. I was on the brink of crying at an airport for about the tenth time in my life. I guess airports in general just make me emotional.

But anyway, yes! Aubrey was here. She landed on February 18th. I picked her up from the airport, we took a standing-room-only bus to the nearest metro line in Shanghai, then we got back to our hotel. We walked around outside long enough to eat meat sticks from a street vendor and buy baijiu, then we went home and fell asleep.

The following day, we got up early so I could go to the U.S. Consulate to pick up my new passport. I intended to do it on Monday the 18th, but of course the Consulate wasn't open. They average about 14 minutes of "open time" per year, so you have to really carefully plan your Consulate trip around every single person who's ever lived's birthday. Well, Tuesday morning they were actually open, so I got my passport, we got to the train station, and we got on a train bound for Zhenjiang. Aubrey's first real day in China included a trip on the bumpy old 19 bus, a small tour of campus, a trip to the RT-Mart grocery store, a "banquet" dinner at the most delicious yet run-down restaurant known to man with the other foreign teachers at my university, and finally a small party in our communal kitchen. We exhausted ourselves.

The next morning, I showed Aubrey the back gate of the University. I love Aubrey's look of uncertainty as she sees the extreme poverty next to which I live:



We went to an old section of town and toured around. Then we hopped a cab for Jinshan Park and toured the whole park, giant pagoda and all. After touring the park, we hit up a pretty elegant restaurant downtown (at least as elegant as my city has to offer) and enjoyed roasted pork and fried cakes. We came back to my apartment and played a round of Chinese Monopoly with my friend Emil. He brought us both gifts from his hometown of Taizhou.

Aubrey in the Old City:



Me at Jinshan Park:



Aubrey at Jinshan Park:



The next morning, we went to Jiaoshan Park. We bought some souvenirs from some thrilled shop owners who wanted to speak to us, rode the best ferry in China for the 3-minute ride out to the island, and we walked all around Jiaoshan. We climbed to the top of the 10,000 Buddha Pagoda (no really, there are 10,000 buddhas inside), but we couldn't see very far because of the thick pollution. My city has a perma-haze that only clears up after a rain storm for a day or two. Here we are in the park:





Anyway, while we were hiking around, I got some text messages about the Lantern Festival. Thinking it sounded interesting, we changed our evening plans so that we had dinner at my favorite place (Sichuan restaurant, the most ghetto hole-in-the-wall place with the best food we've found so far!), and we headed to Da Shi Kou to light off lanterns. Look at this restaurant - would you eat here??



The Lantern Festival was amazing. Tens of thousands of people were crowded around downtown, music was playing, fireworks were going off, and everybody was launching what I can best describe as miniature hot air balloons. The lanterns are all red, about as tall as a person, and they have a small torch at the bottom that you light, hold up, and when enough hot air fills the lantern, they fly into the night sky. Now imagine about 30 of these at a time flying up the night sky, and for each that disappears from view, a new one gets launched. It was NEAT! We started at the city square, but soon walked down to the riverfront to see lanterns and fireworks getting launched over the Yangtze. After a few hours of "wowww...", we hopped in a taxi and headed back home. Pictures of the Lantern Fest didn't turn out well, but here's one anyway:



The morning of Feb. 22nd, Aubrey and I went to the train station and caught a bullet train to Nanjing. We first went to the hostel to drop off our things, then we meandered around the Confucius Temple area and even through the temple itself. Confucius say, "Don't pay to entah tempoh - is major wip-off foh foweign touwists." Haha! But the surrounding shopping alleys are a lot of fun. We found the "authentic" shops where the artists themselves are selling personally-done artwork. We even found a man from Wuxi selling lucky mud babies for 5 rmb / pair. (In most tourist areas, the shop owners start the bargaining at 500 rmb, and you have to bargain your ass off and yell in Chinese for half an hour to get a somewhat-reasonable price. But this man was great! Aubrey and I had the best luck with shopkeepers - we found a similar woman in the Beijing Pearl Market who just had no spirit to bargain, and we got amazing deals!)

After the Confucius area exhausted us, we met up with Scott, Katie, Maia, and Kristin at Hunan Lu for a Yos Mite hot pot dinner. Bad idea!! It turns out that all of us are absolutely immune to China after 9 months, but poor Aubrey caught a bug at dinner that plagued her stomach for the rest of our trip. Unfortunately, you haven't experienced China until you've had explosive diarrhea on a squat toilet. It's miserable. And Aubrey had to catch it while we were in the best city in China. (Seriously - Nanjing is the coolest. I'm going to spend as much time a I can there before heading back state-side.) After dinner, we all went to my hostel cafe and had a few bottles of wine. It was a really relaxed, fun evening that unfortunately ended with Aubrey getting sick, Scott losing his wallet, and everybody calling it an early night. Here we are at the hostel cafe. From left to right: Me, Scott, Katie, Maia, Kristin, and Aubrey. (And of course, the lobster named Hippo.)



The next morning, Aubrey felt so-so. We went to the Presidential Palace (which was GREAT! I was expecting another Confucius Temple rip-off, but thoroughly enjoyed the entire palace. I think it's because I love World War 2 history, and this place had a lot of it. Bomb shelters next to Ming Dynasty temples.) After a few hours inside, Aubrey took a turn for the worse so we exited, crossed the street to buy some stuff from Carrefour, and we caught a taxi back to the hostel. Aubrey was in pretty rough shape, so we just chilled at the hostel for awhile while she took a nap and just felt bad in general. That night, we had to catch our overnight train to Beijing. (She was pretty miserable, but we made it!)

Our overnight trains were so much better than during my last trip to Beijing. Nobody was snoring, I remembered my Tylenol PM, and soon, we woke up in Beijing. Aubrey was pretty exhausted, so we went to the hostel, I tucked her into bed, and I headed out to the dirt market (it was Sunday morning, afterall, which is the best time to go!). I bought dragon pots. They're by far my favorite souvenir so far. White porcelain pots with blue painted dragons on them. I bought 6 - a matching set of each large, medium, and small vases. I got overcharged (about 30 rmb per vase), but who cares - I was a tourist and they rocked! I can't believe I've been in China for so long that I'm pissed about paying $4 for a white porcelain vase. We took it easy all afternoon and just went shopping at the Pearl Market. Aubrey bought some cool jewelry, we had fun bargaining and screwing around at the ripoff markets, and we had some Peking Duck for dinner. Here are my dragon pots:



The next day (that's Monday, Feb. 25th now), we went shopping around Qianmen (pronounced qian MUUUUN haha) and found a lot more cool stuff. Beijing is my favorite place to shop because they have stupid touristy stuff, but it's all better quality than the stuff in Shanghai. We found a cool little tea shop where we sat down with the store owner, drank some free tea, and just chatted in Chinese for awhile. I kept forgetting that Aubrey didn't speak it, so I'd make a comment, look at Aubrey, and wonder why she didn't laugh... "Oh yeah! You don't speak Chinese." I didn't think I did either, but sometimes it just comes out a lot more fluently than I think possible, and it's cool. We took the lobster named Hippo with us all over. Here he is at the tea shop:



Then we visited KFC (the only clean, Western toilets in China) before walking up to the South entrance to Tiananmen Square. I loved getting my bags searched upon entering the square. Let's see... a stuffed lobster, two little lions, an umbrella, posters of old cigarette ads... I know the security guard must have had the Chinese version of "WTF MATE?" running through his head when he saw all this random stuff. Aubrey's and my laughter was escalating with every item he pulled out. Finally he just started laughing, put it all back in our bags, and let us in. We took a million photos, crossed the street to the Forbidden City, took a million more photos, and headed back towards the hostel for dinner. Aubrey's stomach still wasn't doing too well, so she mainly ate steamed rice while I enjoyed sweet and sour, kung pao, beef and bok choy, and some delicious Beijing beer. (I'm so glad Germans settled in Northern China... they bought beer brewing knowledge with them!) After dinner, we went back to the hostel and went to bed early.

Aubrey's kissing Mao:



And I'm squishing the guy:



Tuesday morning, we got up early and took a mini bus to a real bus to the Great Wall at Simatai. Wow! The unimproved sections of the wall are amazing. We met three cute French girls and the five of us enjoyed each other's company as the ONLY people on our section of the Wall. It was great! Trying to describe it will be impossible, so here are a few pictures instead:









Let's not forget the three cute French girls:



After hiking all over the Wall, we were pretty exhausted. Aubrey went to bed early, but I snuck out and hit up the hostel cafe. I met a few really cool people, they bought me way too much beer (it was a local brew on tap! It tasted like liquid gold after drinking Qingdao for the last 9 months), and I stumbled back to my room, laughing and dropping things, around midnight-ish. Poor Aubrey.

Wednesday was our last day in Beijing. We went to the Summer Palace and walked all around the lake before hiking up to the pagoda. After trekking all over the wall, we were both pretty exhausted. We just took it easy, had a relaxed time at the Summer Palace, and took funny photos with all the lions on my favorite bridge in China. I like the Summer Palace:





And my favorite photo of Aubrey from the whole time she was here - also in the Summer Palace:



By the time we made it to the train station on Wednesday evening, we were both flat-out exhausted. We finally found the right train, got in our cabin, and started drinking baijiu while talking to a funny guy who was traveling for business. He got out his laptop and showed us every single photo he's ever taken in his life, we all talked for about an hour, and then my Tylenol PM kicked in and the next thing I remember is being woken up in Shanghai. Don't mix baijiu and Tylenol PM.

These two had too much baijiu on the train:



Thursday morning, we arrived in Shanghai. We did the usual first-day stuff for Shanghai: stopped by the hostel, got both rested and cleaned up, then we took the subway to Nanjing West. We walked East through the People's Square, down Nanjing East road, hit the river front, turned South to the people's ferry, crossed the river, and had dinner at the Super Brand Mall. Then we headed back down to the ferry, got back to the Bund, and had a wonderful open-bar extravaganza (it's the only fitting word) with Justin, Elsa, Anne, Rolando, and his roommate. (Those are all people I know living in different areas of China now - and the stars aligned for us all to meet on the Bund for a crazy night in Shanghai.) The problem with an open bar is that soon, one drink turns into 15 and it's suddenly 3 a.m. The pictures tell me that we had a great time, but I'll be damned if I remember much of the night. Ohhh Shanghai. The night ended with me yelling at a cab driver for not knowing where to go (he lives there and I'm a laowai, but yet it's my duty to tell him how to drive home?!), using inappropriate language when he overcharged us, and then getting counterfeit bills as change. I probably deserved the counterfeit bills - I was a little belligerent as I told him how to drive us home. But we passed them off for a delicious breakfast at the hostel the next morning.

The following morning, we went to Yu Yuan Garden for some dumplings and shopping. We were both pretty exhausted, so we were a little goofy. We found a Safety Zone painted in the road, so of course, Aubrey did the Safety Dance. "You can dance if you want to..." The traffic officer really enjoyed watching this:



And here's Yu Yuan Garden:



After Yu Yuan Garden, we went to the ripoff market at Nanjing West, bought a bunch of stuff, had fun bargaining, and then we headed to the Super Brand Mall. We went and saw the movie Atonement, in English, and I loved it. I hadn't been to the theater for an English movie for SO long. It made me really happy. Aubrey's last night in Shanghai was mellow - we went to a hole-in-the-wall place for some dinner, packed up all of her stuff, and just had a really relaxed night.

The next morning, she got packed up, we took the subway to the MagLev station, and we rocketed at 400km/h to the international airport. Man, what a sad goodbye! Hanging out with an old friend from the U.S. was so great... but the good news is that I held my composure at the airport. We had a big hug, a big goodbye, and Aubrey hopped a jet bound for home. I hopped a bus back into the city, stayed a night in the hostel just to relax before returning home, and got back to Zhenjiang the day before I had to start teaching again. (What great timing!)

And that, my friends, is Aubrey's visit in a nutshell - augmented with lovely photos!