In anticipation of the wave of questions I expect to receive from avid readers of this blog, I have decided to preemptively answer what I predict will be common inquiries.
Are there lots of foreign tourists in China?
Yes.
Do they turn up their nose at you and act offended that they are not the only white person in China?
Yes.
How many foreigners does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Two: One to do it, and the other to document it with a camera from several different angles in 6 different settings, including ¨Candlelight.¨
How bad is the pollution in China?
It is so bad that it takes you ten minutes to realize that the beautiful mountain range being described by your tour guide is next to the road you are on.
How many bobby pins have you lost?
13.
Did you buy a hat made of sheep wool?
Yes
Is it itchy?
A little.
Do the pants that babies wear in China have holes for pooping?
Yes.
Do you wish your pants had a hole for pooping?
Not really.
Are you sure?
Yes.
Why not?
What do you mean, why not? It isn´t practical.
Isn´t it completely practical?
No, my butt would get cold.
Why are you getting so testy?
I don´t know, why are you asking stupid questions?
Why are you answering them?
...
What is wrong with your apostrophe?
I don´t know. The key is broken. It turns everything into an ole´ thing.
That is stupid.
You´re stupid.
You´re the one making up the questions.
Shut up.
Why don´t you just write in a diary so that you don´t embarrass yourself online?
Because my chopstick muscle has been making my hand cramp when I write.
That is a terrible reason.
That is not a question. YOU LOSE!
Why don´t you just go to bed?
I think I will.
Do you hope that everyone reads the previous post instead of this one?
Yes.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Touring, touring, touring
Greetings from Shanghai, where the word on the street is FASHION. Or perhaps, CANKLES. It is a blustery 20-something degrees Celsius, which means unusually warm and humid. Many women here sport shorter skirts in honor of the blatant effects of global warming. Others are still holding out for fall weather, selling faux-fur-lined puffy vests* from street corners and squinting up at the sky as if to say ¨Hurry up and get cold so I can sell more gaudy furry vests to unsuspecting tourists for a ridiculously inflated price!!!¨
* (Note: I do not understand puffy vests. If it is cold enough outside to warrant a down, puffy vest with furry lining, is it still warm enough to have barely covered arms? I do not know about you, but my arms are just as important to me as my torso. I would be seriously upset if I lost just my arms to frostbite while wearing a gaudy purple puffy fur vest that I bought with good money in Shanghai.)
On the street, I saw a couple wearing sweaters of the exact same shade of purple. I reasoned that they had only just started dating, and probably weren´t living together yet, maybe because the girl (let´s call her Judy) has a very strict father who wants Judy to live at home while helping with the family lacquer business, and the guy (Terrence) lives in an apartment with three other boys, all of whom are too smelly/crude/unimpressive to introduce to Judy just yet. After all, they just started dating. I know all this because two people who lived together and got dressed together would never intentionally wear this same color purple on the same day. Unless, of course, they did it to keep from losing each other in the crowd. Which is entirely possible.
Yesterday on the train to Shanghai I made up a game called How Many Disney* Songs Can You Sing Off the Top of Your Head In 5 Minutes and the answer is 13.
* (Songs from Anastasia and Ferngully do not count because they are not from Disney, but I sang them anyway so that makes 18 if you count them).
I also made a game called Make Up Your Own Inspirational Disney Hero Song As You Sing It and this is what I came up with:
¨(pounding drums in the background)
On this journey, I don´t know where I am going
But I know that this way is true
Show me a sign! (drumbeats) so IIII can find...
The place where I will find youuuu
(music swells! Hero stands precariously on tree branch/cliff/moving object and looks into distance)
Here I am! All alone! On a journey for trrrruth...
I don´t know, what to do
So I am counting on YOUUU
Give me a sign! Let me leave!
This pa-aast behiiiind...
(music swells back down)
Help me find the waaaay
Away from who I waaasss...
Onto something newwww...
Wiiiiiiith yoooooooooou.¨
Then Jeff Schmitz* asks ¨What movie is that from?¨ And I laugh to myself and say ¨I just made it up.¨
* (Note: Jeff is not surprised. Jeff knows every Disney movie soundtrack ever produced, including all the gospel parts to the opening of Hercules.)
I just finished a room-service dinner, which was described as Wonton Soup and Plain Boiled Chicken With Shanghai Style. The plain boiled chicken part was quite enticing although I admit I was a little curious to see what Shanghai style was...
Well, when it arrived, it looked like a normal piece of boiled chicken, sliced and arranged in a little filet. How delightful! Except that when I flipped it over, all the bones and gristle and rib-part-things were still attached. Shanghai-ed, indeed!!
I cut away the bones and ate the meager leftovers, and am now preparing to go out for noodles with Lindsey*, my roommate, who a few hours earlier called me the Human Jukebox.
* (Note: Lindsey has tattoos on her leg and her back. She also has good-smelling body products. I smell them when she´s not looking.**)
** (Her bath products, not her tattoos.)
Lindsey is giving me a funny look. Noodle time!
* (Note: I do not understand puffy vests. If it is cold enough outside to warrant a down, puffy vest with furry lining, is it still warm enough to have barely covered arms? I do not know about you, but my arms are just as important to me as my torso. I would be seriously upset if I lost just my arms to frostbite while wearing a gaudy purple puffy fur vest that I bought with good money in Shanghai.)
On the street, I saw a couple wearing sweaters of the exact same shade of purple. I reasoned that they had only just started dating, and probably weren´t living together yet, maybe because the girl (let´s call her Judy) has a very strict father who wants Judy to live at home while helping with the family lacquer business, and the guy (Terrence) lives in an apartment with three other boys, all of whom are too smelly/crude/unimpressive to introduce to Judy just yet. After all, they just started dating. I know all this because two people who lived together and got dressed together would never intentionally wear this same color purple on the same day. Unless, of course, they did it to keep from losing each other in the crowd. Which is entirely possible.
Yesterday on the train to Shanghai I made up a game called How Many Disney* Songs Can You Sing Off the Top of Your Head In 5 Minutes and the answer is 13.
* (Songs from Anastasia and Ferngully do not count because they are not from Disney, but I sang them anyway so that makes 18 if you count them).
I also made a game called Make Up Your Own Inspirational Disney Hero Song As You Sing It and this is what I came up with:
¨(pounding drums in the background)
On this journey, I don´t know where I am going
But I know that this way is true
Show me a sign! (drumbeats) so IIII can find...
The place where I will find youuuu
(music swells! Hero stands precariously on tree branch/cliff/moving object and looks into distance)
Here I am! All alone! On a journey for trrrruth...
I don´t know, what to do
So I am counting on YOUUU
Give me a sign! Let me leave!
This pa-aast behiiiind...
(music swells back down)
Help me find the waaaay
Away from who I waaasss...
Onto something newwww...
Wiiiiiiith yoooooooooou.¨
Then Jeff Schmitz* asks ¨What movie is that from?¨ And I laugh to myself and say ¨I just made it up.¨
* (Note: Jeff is not surprised. Jeff knows every Disney movie soundtrack ever produced, including all the gospel parts to the opening of Hercules.)
I just finished a room-service dinner, which was described as Wonton Soup and Plain Boiled Chicken With Shanghai Style. The plain boiled chicken part was quite enticing although I admit I was a little curious to see what Shanghai style was...
Well, when it arrived, it looked like a normal piece of boiled chicken, sliced and arranged in a little filet. How delightful! Except that when I flipped it over, all the bones and gristle and rib-part-things were still attached. Shanghai-ed, indeed!!
I cut away the bones and ate the meager leftovers, and am now preparing to go out for noodles with Lindsey*, my roommate, who a few hours earlier called me the Human Jukebox.
* (Note: Lindsey has tattoos on her leg and her back. She also has good-smelling body products. I smell them when she´s not looking.**)
** (Her bath products, not her tattoos.)
Lindsey is giving me a funny look. Noodle time!
Monday, October 6, 2008
Biking in Beijing!
Today we woke up at 3:30am, clambered onto a coach bus, and hopped a flight to Beijing. Short flight!! Safa and I sat next to Regina, a cute half-Samoan girl from Australia who had been on a missionary trip in northern Mongolia. We played Mad Libs and then traded UB (Ulaan Baatar) stories-- she hugged me goodbye at baggage claim and waved goodbye in her ¨I Love Cairns¨ t-shirt.
BEIJING! Despite my apprehensions, my first reaction was this: ¨Niiiiice!¨. A beautiful blue sky greeted us outside (although tinged with brown) and the drive to our hostel was...GREEN.
For some reason I had imagined Beijing to be pure, solid, cold concrete: gray air, gray buildings, gray bulletin boards. On the contrary, the entire length of the freeway ride was lush with trees...tall ones with broad canopies and some young saplings. I asked Daniel, a UPS alum who lives nearby, if it was new. He said they were all transplanted for the Olympics. Talk about a sweet social expenditure!
So we are definitely staying in the high end of Beijing. For lunch, we ate a delicious meal of mapo tofu, orange chicken (it tasted like chicken nugget with a spicy Cheeto sauce- aka DELICIOUS) and chow mein. Mm!! 4 people ate for under $2 each. WOW.
After lunch, Safa, Todd, Epiphany and I went for a bike ride through the city-- the hostel provides bicycles for rent! Todd´s chain fell off and none of our brakes worked but it was terrific! The wonderful thing about Beijing is that there are bike lanes EVERYWHERE. I am talking 12-20 foot wide bike lanes on every main street. This was so exhilarating-- the sun was bright, good smells wafted out of every restaurant, and people smiled and waved and said Ni hao! We said hi back and dinged our little bells.
Suddenly we came upon a long red wall. A really long red wall. Epiphany said, ¨Hm, is this what I think it is?¨ and all of a sudden, BOOM! The Forbidden City! Complete with Mao´s portrait and throngs of pedestrians. On the other side of the street was that place where that thing happened you know when. It was covered in floats left over from the Olympics and there was a massively gaudy fountain in the middle covered surrounded by flowers. We stopped and oohed and ahhed and then pedaled on, delighted by the fact that we had stumbled upon two terrific landmarks- on bikes!
We then stopped for a snack. The owner was watching soaps. The menu was all in Chinese with no pictures, so I pointed to two random appetizers and she said ¨Dui¨ and then screamed over Safa´s head, ¨HAU! HAAAAAAAU!¨ Then a door popped open from the wall and nearly knocked Safa out of his chair, and out peeped a man who said ¨Shenme!¨ (¨What!¨) Then she yelled at him more and he ran through a door in the other wall and popped a dish out through a little flap, which she plopped in front of us. It tasted like strip of tofu with cilantro. The second dish was a nice complement-- sweet radishes. The entire time we ate, she sat in the back and watched this soap opera about a doctor in a love triangle and a crazy woman and a construction worker. When we asked for the bill, she said okay and then sat and waited for the commercial. We weren´t mad because we were watching it too, along with her son who was squatting on the floor and munched on a melon twice the size of his head.
At the end, we wanted to double-check our location so I said ¨Women zainar?¨ which is literally ¨Us where?¨ and she showed us. YAY! Evie, aren´t you proud of me? I not only asked an intelligible question in Chinese, but I also figured out where we were on the map! (We got lost on the way back anyway but that was not my fault.)
Dinner was greasy and spicy. The entire family who owned this restaurant literally pulled us off the street and sat and watched us eat our food. The cups were greasy but the tea was delicious, a sort of cinnamon, nutmeg-y green tea.
Now I am back in the lounge of the hostel which has a terrific wifi connection, chilling with Fayez, Kelsey, Nat, Reed and Mark from UPS (who is studying abroad in Beijing and met up with us tonight). I am content and happy and greatly looking forward to my soft bed tonight.
I don´t know if I will be able to/ it is wise to upload my Mongolia pictures, so those will come eventually! More soon!
BEIJING! Despite my apprehensions, my first reaction was this: ¨Niiiiice!¨. A beautiful blue sky greeted us outside (although tinged with brown) and the drive to our hostel was...GREEN.
For some reason I had imagined Beijing to be pure, solid, cold concrete: gray air, gray buildings, gray bulletin boards. On the contrary, the entire length of the freeway ride was lush with trees...tall ones with broad canopies and some young saplings. I asked Daniel, a UPS alum who lives nearby, if it was new. He said they were all transplanted for the Olympics. Talk about a sweet social expenditure!
So we are definitely staying in the high end of Beijing. For lunch, we ate a delicious meal of mapo tofu, orange chicken (it tasted like chicken nugget with a spicy Cheeto sauce- aka DELICIOUS) and chow mein. Mm!! 4 people ate for under $2 each. WOW.
After lunch, Safa, Todd, Epiphany and I went for a bike ride through the city-- the hostel provides bicycles for rent! Todd´s chain fell off and none of our brakes worked but it was terrific! The wonderful thing about Beijing is that there are bike lanes EVERYWHERE. I am talking 12-20 foot wide bike lanes on every main street. This was so exhilarating-- the sun was bright, good smells wafted out of every restaurant, and people smiled and waved and said Ni hao! We said hi back and dinged our little bells.
Suddenly we came upon a long red wall. A really long red wall. Epiphany said, ¨Hm, is this what I think it is?¨ and all of a sudden, BOOM! The Forbidden City! Complete with Mao´s portrait and throngs of pedestrians. On the other side of the street was that place where that thing happened you know when. It was covered in floats left over from the Olympics and there was a massively gaudy fountain in the middle covered surrounded by flowers. We stopped and oohed and ahhed and then pedaled on, delighted by the fact that we had stumbled upon two terrific landmarks- on bikes!
We then stopped for a snack. The owner was watching soaps. The menu was all in Chinese with no pictures, so I pointed to two random appetizers and she said ¨Dui¨ and then screamed over Safa´s head, ¨HAU! HAAAAAAAU!¨ Then a door popped open from the wall and nearly knocked Safa out of his chair, and out peeped a man who said ¨Shenme!¨ (¨What!¨) Then she yelled at him more and he ran through a door in the other wall and popped a dish out through a little flap, which she plopped in front of us. It tasted like strip of tofu with cilantro. The second dish was a nice complement-- sweet radishes. The entire time we ate, she sat in the back and watched this soap opera about a doctor in a love triangle and a crazy woman and a construction worker. When we asked for the bill, she said okay and then sat and waited for the commercial. We weren´t mad because we were watching it too, along with her son who was squatting on the floor and munched on a melon twice the size of his head.
At the end, we wanted to double-check our location so I said ¨Women zainar?¨ which is literally ¨Us where?¨ and she showed us. YAY! Evie, aren´t you proud of me? I not only asked an intelligible question in Chinese, but I also figured out where we were on the map! (We got lost on the way back anyway but that was not my fault.)
Dinner was greasy and spicy. The entire family who owned this restaurant literally pulled us off the street and sat and watched us eat our food. The cups were greasy but the tea was delicious, a sort of cinnamon, nutmeg-y green tea.
Now I am back in the lounge of the hostel which has a terrific wifi connection, chilling with Fayez, Kelsey, Nat, Reed and Mark from UPS (who is studying abroad in Beijing and met up with us tonight). I am content and happy and greatly looking forward to my soft bed tonight.
I don´t know if I will be able to/ it is wise to upload my Mongolia pictures, so those will come eventually! More soon!
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