A lucky week

On my birthday last Thursday my afternoon classes and all of Friday’s got cancelled because of some physics exam. I hopped on a bus to Shanghai to start off the birthday weekend a day earlier than planned. Because of the cancellation I got to vote! I didn't know if I'd be able to because the embassy in Shanghai is only open during the week until 2:30 pm, I didn’t get my ballot until the day of my birthday, and Alabama 1. requires that you have the document notarized and 2. won’t let voters send in ballots through Fed ex (which is providing free expedited mailing service for expat voters accepted in EVERY state besides Alabama). Hey Alabama, way to live up to your reputation for disenfranchising. The lady at the embassy was like, "Are you sure you need a notary? Very few states require a notary. And we are going to send this Fed Ex, that is the only mailing service we offer for voters." I had to talk to three people and convince them that "Alabama is different."

Friday night was the big celebration night. We got off the subway on the way to a Dutch borrel (beer party) for Dutch expats, and Steph stopped in at this club that has western toilets. She ran in first and Emily and I came in a few seconds later and entered a room lined with Chinese men and women sitting on barstools. They started applauding and so I danced up and down the big open space in the center of the room while they cheered and then ran up and down the length of the crowd giving out high fives. Afterwards, while standing at a table munching on some free food this guy told us to eat, we found out we had stumbled upon a birthday party for the six or so people who have October birthdays in this group of coworkers? friends? At this time, I was wearing “special occasion pants” (shiny really 80’s lycra stretch pants) and a birthday hat Steph made for me that said “it’s my birthday” in both English and Dutch. We were each given a small red scented candle to hold as we fell in line with everyone else. Then, a massive three-tiered cake was brought out and set up, beautifully decorated with fruit and cherry tomatoes.

Soon, the guests of honor come in blindfolded, unaware of the vigil of people standing in a circle holding lit candles. You could tell they were being told to watch out for holes and obstacles because they were moving really awkwardly. Each blindfolded person had a guide and as they were walked around the room the people sitting on stools would hold up their legs and make them maneuver around or hold the burning flames of the candles to their faces. Some of the people in the room were pretty drunk. Eventually one of the Chinese people who was explaining everything that was going on to us told the hostess who was busy interviewing the blindfolded guests that it was my birthday too. So they brought me up with the six other people and gave me a white rose from someone else's bouquet. Everyone sang happy birthday to us and then broke out into this chant in Chinese. A woman standing next to me translated it for me. The chant was basically about counting your blessings. For example, the crowd would say “For your parents who gave birth to you and cared for you” and the birthday people would respond to each statement by shouting “I love you.” Then we all took turns cutting the cake. They gave me a giant piece and Steph, Emily, and I dug in at the bar where we also drank some free wine. It was really special. Rabbit rabbit works people.


The high fives that occurred after the applause and before we figured out what all of those people were there for.


On the street outside the borrel. A beggar's child who was fascinated with my birthday hat. I let him wear it for a little while. So cute!

The next day Steph and I went to the Science and Technology Museum way out in Pudong. It was absolutely massive. It kicked the McWane Center’s ass. As an added bonus, there were strangely serious placards at the different exhibits preaching Obama-like messages of peace and harmony with things like robots and spiders. For example:


There was a big exhibit dedicated to outer space. China is very proud of the space program it is building. Steph and I got to harness ourselves up and feel what its like to walk on the moon. And I found out about China being the very first in at least one aspect of space exploration--growing mutant space vegetables. Apparently, in space, because cells grow all messed up, you can breed a genetically mutated cucumber with 30% more vitamin C!

Speaking of nutrition, since I have been here, I have acclimated myself to Chinese cuisine. I like the food, especially street food (even though it has been wreaking havoc on my digestive system and most of what I eat is nutritionally barren). However, pancakes, fluffy oversized pancakes with maple syrup, are something I have been craving since I arrived. On Sunday in Shanghai we went to a diner that served American food and I finally found some pancakes! It was a perfect way to end my birthday weekend. Unfortunately, one unlucky thing did happen this week: I lost my phone after dropping my purse on the ground about fifty times on Friday night. But, when I bought a new one today, they did give me two free thermoses!

Another fortunate event that happened this week was sports day. Because of sports day I got today and yesterday off while the kids competed in various track and field competitions. Yesterday Mary Beth and I went on a long bike ride to one of the beautiful parks South of the city and watched the sun set over the lake. And today I finally got my birthday package! It was held up in customs for a couple of weeks and I was starting to think I was never going to see it. Included in the package was a box of cake mix and a box of brownie mix. It’s going to be hard to make those in a wok. I’m thinking that I can make little batches and put them in foil bowl and bake them in the toaster oven that we have. Chinese kitchens don't have ovens.

Today I bought some new pillows because the ones that were here when I moved in are totally grody and smell funky when I go to bed with my hair wet. Yesterday, when I washed my sheets for the first time, I saw that they were all stained and just gross. So I’m biking home with one pillow hanging on each handlebar and the wind is blowing them out perpendicular to my bike and I’m taking up a lot of space. Bike lanes here are part of the sidewalk and though they are red and the sidewalks are grey, pedestrians walk on both indiscriminately. On this one shopping road the sidewalks are always full and there are little guards stationed every 15 feet with whistles and armbands pointing and blowing their whistle at you if you bike in the car-less street. So I was forced to bike down the sidewalk and hit all of the oblivious pedestrians in the butt with my new pillows as I cycled past.

This weekend I am NOT going to Shanghai for a change, but a little bit further South to a city called Hangzhou. I’m excited to see a new place! Maybe I'll find some shoes there because one of my two pairs has a whole in it and they have foreign clothing stores there like H and M. Salespeople just shake their heads every time I walk into a Chinese shoe store here and hold my hands out far apart to indicate that I need something in size YETI.

Till next time,

Rachel

Vacation update/Happy Birthday to me

For 23 hours to Guilin and 23 hours back I sat on a train in the “hard sleeper” cabin. A hard sleeper is a made up of little cubbies with three hard and narrow beds stacked on each side for a total of six beds per cubby. At one end of the car is a small room with two sinks and two toilets (“squatters” as we call them) with a conveniently placed bar that you can hold on to to stop yourself from swaying side to side with the train and missing your target. The other end has a boiling water station to fill up your tea thermos or your noodle bowl. It wasn’t actually so bad. On the way down, we made French, Israeli, and Canadian friends and on the way back we occupied ourselves by making hundreds of origami paper stars (something a Korean girl I tutor turned me on to). Lucky for us, we didn’t have hard seats like the Canadians I met sitting in the front of the train on rows of plastic benches, three seats across, with two rows facing each other. I met the Canadians in the dining car downing beer to prepare themselves for a long night in these crowded seats with people who bought standing room only (!) tickets huddled around them in the same car but without chairs. It was pretty brutal in there.

Rosh Hashanah=an apple, honey, and an Israeli on a crowded train.

After a train ride that wasn’t so bad really except for brief moments of desperation, we got to Guilin and took an hour and a half bus ride to Yangshuo. The landscape of the area is filled with eery and beautiful karst peaks (a karst landscape is one that is shaped by dissolution of rock by acidic water). Yangshuo itself is a cute little tourist town with dense streets and lots of little shops selling things like fans, scarves, and other Chinese tchotchkes.

During our stay we went on a bamboo raft ride down the Yulong River. We had a little bit of a wait once we got to the river while everything got set up—it was all a little hectic that day because it was the actual national holiday (October 1st) and Yangshuo was packed with Chinese tourists. While waiting, we were constantly harassed by old ladies selling various merchandise including little flower wreaths for your hair, stupid water guns made out of PVC pipe, postcards, and random little trinkets. These old ladies were everywhere in Yangshuo. They were really freaking cute and a bunch of them bring around their doubly cute toddler-aged grandchildren.

To turn down peddlers, there is a phrase in Chinese that you are supposed to say--“bu yow”--which means “I don’t need.” It hadn’t been working for us that well the day before as we ate on the patio of a restaurant with old lady after old lady coming to our table. However, later that night, someone revealed to us the secret to getting those little old ladies to back off: 1. wave your hand really fast back and forth from the wrist 2. make a little frowny face. This is what the Chinese themselves do. The original gesture is pretty subtle and effective, but not the way I do it. To ensure that there is no question about whether or not I want what they are selling, I hold my arm out straight and stiff with my hand very close to the peddler’s face, make an exaggerated frowny face, turn my upper body away from them, and shout “bu yow!!” At first I felt bad doing this to toothless old ladies with babies strapped to their backs, but they all just laugh good-naturedly and then peace out. One imitated the way I say bu yow but she said it in a really gruff man voice that I don’t think I really sound like but maybe I do. Is this a bad way to start of the new year--dissing sweet, smiley, and tenacious old ladies one by one? By the way, the Chinese tourists totally bought all of those stupid little crap things. An older gentleman even shot at me with one of the water guns while I was on my bamboo raft and got me wet.

Floating down the river for two hours with the beautiful scenery on either side of us was very relaxing. Even more so because Steph and I both had a couple of beers that were sold from stationary bamboo stands in the middle of the river. By the time we got to the end of the ride and got off, we were a little tipsy. Immediately, a cute little six-year-old boy took our beer bottles to recycle them. (You couldn’t hang on to an empty container for more than five minutes without a little kid or an old lady taking it from you to recycle. It was great.) And then…we stumbled onto one of the many photo opportunity stations that are set up all around Yangshuo—some monkeys dressed up in shiny little suits on stools. Stephanie forked over the 75 cents and we had a great photo shoot with some tiny furry monkeys.

Chinese people actually often like to have their own little photo shoots with us. When people ask to take pictures with me I don’t mind, especially when it is an entire family because it’s so funny and odd (last night I had a group of 15 businessmen stop me on the street to take pictures with me, one by one), but what weirds me out is people doing it on the sly. I’m standing there staring into space and thinking about what I want for lunch and then I notice some random 40 year old Chinese man standing ten feet away taking pictures of me. When Steph and I went swimming in the Li River in Yangshuo, we started asking the creepy fools taking our picture for three yuan just like the monkey station does. No one paid up though.

In a mud cave we went to after the bamboo raft. Some lucky Chinese tourists get to show their families yours truly rocking a mud fu manchu.

While in Yangshuo, Steph and I took a cooking class from this great lady named Jessie. She took us to the market and I realized why Chinese grocery stores are full of noodle bowls and little else--because Chinese people still cook for themselves. They go to markets several times during the week to buy fresh produce, meat, and fish. It was great going to one of these markets with Jessie because we could point to all of the vegetables that we had never seen before and ask her what they were and how Chinese people cook them. There were like 10 different kinds of sweet potato that all look completely different. In addition to things that you would expect in China like lotus root and bamboo shoots, there are also lots of different types of corn, squash, mushrooms, and melon that we don’t have. The variety of produce in China is much greater than you can find in a typical grocery store in America. After we bought the vegetables and watched a carp fish get killed for us we brought our stuff back to Jessie’s place. She had a huge patio with a beautiful view and a bunch of woks for us to cook on. We made kung pao chicken (called gung pao in china), dumplings, eggplant, and beer fish (the local specialty--carp cooked with locally brewed beer). Carp fish are part of the iconic image of Yangshuo: a fisherman on a bamboo raft with two cormorant birds tied to it. These large scary looking birds with crazy eyes catch the carp in their beaks but can’t swallow them because of the strings tied around their necks. The fisherman take the fish out of the birds’ mouths and put them into buckets. I’m not exactly sure if this is the method that Yangshuo fishermen still use or if it just for tourists now. BTW Steph also had a photoshoot with the birds tied to a pole. I was too afraid and I didn’t do the monkey thing either because I don’t want to get rabies.

The view from Jessie's balcony and our cooking class.

Some lady at the market loading up her scooter with a big bucket of freaking out live carp. It has to feel so odd having those fish bodies writhing around against your calves.

On Friday morning we left Yangshuo for Guilin, the big city we were leaving from on Saturday morning. Once we got to the hostel, Stephanie wanted to nap so I left with a book to walk around and explore on my own. After taking a couple of photos with random teenagers that stopped me on the street, a man said hello to me and started walking with me on the path alongside the river. His name was Tang and he said he was a teacher too. We walked around for a while and he told me lots of stuff about the area. Then he conned me into spending all of this money on tea and I didn’t even really realize I had been scammed until later that day. First, he walked me by a tea shop and casually asked if I wanted to go inside. He was so freaking excited about tea and we were trying a bunch of different types. It felt like a cultural experience and I was learning about the customs of tea drinking and what different teas were good for (your skin or your blood pressure and other crap like that). A “tea expert” who worked at the store was drinking with us and saying lots of stuff in Chinese that Tang would translate for me. Then Tang pulled out three big ones (300 yuan) for this big old box of tea and I was like wow that’s a lot of cash for tea. Then I spent all of this money and walked back to the hostel feeling buyers’ remorse but also really good about what I learned and the little “experience” I just had. Mary Beth went on a similar buying trip, but she was just approached on the street and was straight up asked if she wanted some tea while I had the little walk-around. Tang buying the tea for himself threw me off. One clue that I didn’t notice at the time is that the labels for the tea, written in Chinese with a number value, were labeled A, B, C to show what level of quality they were at. Why would they use the English alphabet? Afterwards, in a grocery store I looked at tea prices and the most expensive was 50 for a big box. I bought 2 small boxes for 100 each. I guess I’m getting a little bitter about getting ripped off all the time because I am white. I am getting paid in Chinese yuan and my salary translates to way below the poverty line in America, but here in China I am doing alright, but not as well as every salesperson here assumes.

Hey it has been my birthday here for less than an hour. You know what I did for the past two hours that I have never done on my own initiative before (is it on my own initiative or of my own initiative)? Mopped. I know, it’s a pretty big deal for me. My feet were getting all black just walking around my room. Also, non sequitur, today when I was biking home from the grocery store I heard an ice cream truck and I got all excited to try the Chinese version of a Choco Taco, but then I saw that the vehicle making the tinkling kids’ music was a big old street cleaning truck. Bummer. It’s Yom Kippur. I don’t really know what sort of statement you are supposed to make to another person on this day; I know it’s not happy Yom Kippur....May you all be sealed in the Book of Life.

-Rachel