Greetings from the Road

My first post after the family arrival. We spent their first few days in Shanghai, with me laughing every time something I now take for granted startled them, and filling the role of trip planner, navigator, translator, food orderer, negotiator and ATM. We went to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition, which had a rather uninteresting diorama of the city as it will look in the year 2020 and half-attempts to explain the city’s efforts in municipal development, transportation, greenification and tourism. The museum did, however, have a lovely exhibit of paintings done by Dali in the 1970s inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and other works. In all, as I may have said before, Chinese museums tend to leave a lot wanting (The Shanghai Museum, at which I saw the collection of Chinese ceramics and slightly condescending “Hall of Minority Ethnicities”, is the only major exception to the rule I have seen thus far), so no one was particularly surprised, but the exhibit was at least different if not informative. We toured around the city, did some shopping and had Christmas dinner at an Irish Pub with an open bar and tables full of loud expats.

From Shanghai we were on to the more Chinese and (somehow) more daunting Chengdu, where we met up with one of my classmates and her family for a Sichuan Hotpot dinner (lots of fun guessing with the non-English menu resulted in some choices not often appealing to your typical American eater: “bamboo ____” proved not to be bamboo shoots but an edible fungus that grows in bamboo forests and resembled a sea cucumber, and what seemed like a safe choice of chicken turned out to be chicken kidneys). Still, I maintain that accidental orders are half the fun of hotpot (the first time I went this semester we ended up with duck’s feet, which turned out wonderfully if left to really boil). Chengdu is big and ugly and utilitarian, with small pockets of charming Chinese temples and gardens. Unfortunately its main appeal is as a base camp for trips deeper into Sichuan, for which time did not allow. Still, we enjoyed spicy foods and a Tibetan neighborhood that sold prayer flags, Buddhist accoutrements and, of all things, chrome blenders, saw a Sichuan opera/variety show performance, drank tea in a Zen monastery courtyard, and had a wonderful DVD shopping excursion that took us weaving through stalls in an electronics market, and suddenly swept to a back stairwell and a small room crammed with bootleg movies and tv shows, where we were allowed to browse to our hearts’ content.

Now we are in Lijiang, in the Yunnan province, and for the first time in two months I find myself not in a city. Lijiang is known for its Old Town, a Song Dynasty village turned backpacker haven that has been entirely rebuilt since it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1996, thus proving that the Chinese can forge and replicate anything, from purses to DVDs to iPhones to German beer to money to historical towns. The town is now full of quaint courtyarded guesthouses and cafes with western/Tibetan/Japanese/Chinese/Local menus and beers and coffee and internet and tour booking, and stores selling all manner of tourist crap, all tied together by cute narrow alleyways with white walls, ceramic tile roofs, red lanterns and small waterways. We had fun guessing which of the locals (and there are many, all old, all in traditional dress) were paid to wander around as part of the local color and quaint scenery. One old guy was carrying a hawk on his arm, identical gaggles of old women came and went through the town squares, and occasionally lavishly decorated ponies were led down the narrow streets. It all seemed very choreographed, but there is something nice about it anyway.

As I post this we are getting ready to leave for an overnight trek in Tiger Leaping Gorge, so I’ll try and post when we get back.

addendum

8. Pajamas. I have on many occasions, especially since it’s started to get colder, seen people of all ages walking around on the street in their pajamas. Sometimes they’re plain, matching cloth or flannel sets, sometimes fuzzy fleece with teddy bears. I don’t get it. They wear bedroom slippers, too. Once I saw someone walking down the street fully dressed, but with big furry orange slippers on.

It's a Mystery

Living in China for several months, there are many customs and trends to which I have adjusted. Early posts centered on the novelties that came with life in China, the things I couldn’t figure out or found troublesome and foreign. Recently these posts have become fewer, partly because I now take many of these differences for granted. I have in many ways become accustomed to life in China. There are, however, still some things that make me realize that I will never fully understand China, its culture or its people. In no particular order, I give them to you now.

1. I was in our campus convenience store trying to spend the cash remaining on my ID card, and found a pile of black and red tote bags embroidered with the words “Trader Joe’s”. I can understand seeing these in a random market with lots of fake purses and such, but a college campus?

2. Chinese fashion and hair. I went shopping last weekend and we saw quite some interesting outfits, including a 40-year-old woman in black leather ankle-length pants, a bright pink cardigan and sneakers. Also one hairstyle that seems to be popular is a perm with lots of choppy layers and a big fan of ironed flat bangs.

3. Cabs. They are convenient and generally cheap, but in Hangzhou they all disappear around 5:00 when they have to check in or switch drivers. It is impossible to get a cab anywhere in the city from about 4:00 to 5:30, peak traffic time and the time when the buses are so crammed full of people that you can rarely get on.

4. China is developing, very quickly. Anyone who reads the newspapers will of course say “well, yeah of course”. But my point is that on the ground development is taking place at a speed that is unheard of in other countries. Consider: I went to a favorite fried noodle place near school one day, and the cooking was taking place, as usual, on the sidewalk in front, next to a table of ingredients. I went back for lunch the next day and suddenly there was an almost completely done kitchen enclosure. A restaurant near school closed down, was entirely gutted, had no front wall for a good period of time, and reopened about two weeks later completely renovated. I heard a story of a street-crossing underpass in Urumqi built in anticipation of greater Olympics-related tourism (Urumqi is really far away from Beijing) start to finish, including outfitting it with retail shops, in a week.

5. The Olympics are everywhere: sponsors have been displaying the Beijing 2008 logo on ads and products for years, every city has official Olympics merchandise stores (and knockoff goods in all the markets), the gym at the University I was studying at was decorated on the outside with the Olympic rings. I know it’s a matter of national pride, but it’s really pervasive.

6. Firecrackers. Rumor has it that during the Chinese New Year, many foreigners fear for their lives due to the number of fireworks and firecrackers people set off of their rooftops, and I believe it. Especially at weddings and grand openings, firecrackers are used in abundance, and you can often hear them echoing from farther-off places, having no idea what they are celebrating. It’s endless. When that restaurant near school re-opened, there was an entire are of sidewalk covered with firecrackers, filling the whole area with smoke and deafening sound.

7. English education. The kid who begged near a bar we frequented spoke practically accent-free (though limited) English, but most of our roommates, echoing spoken Chinese, put a vowel after every consonant sound. I doubt any of their teachers have ever been to English-speaking countries, and the material they study is more absurdly useless than what we used to study. In the course of helping my roommate with her homework, I had to explain to her what Hepatitis was, and explain words like “hoist” taken from a passage explaining US flag protocol. One friend found her roommate memorizing words by letter (for instance, one day just reading a list of words that start with ‘A’). I once looked at my roommate’s corrected homework. The sentence she’d written in response to a question (I don’t know if it was the right answer or not) was grammatically shaky but not wrong, and then the teacher had, in her corrections, added an adjective in an entirely incorrect spot, turning the sentence into nonsense.

Phase Two Begins

I am so sorry for the lapse in entries. The last few weeks of my semester consisted largely of speaking English, wasting time and going out to eat non-Chinese food. I had an interesting time browsing a Chinese bookstore and made pancakes in the dorm with two of my friends. Nothing seemed particularly noteworthy.

Yesterday we had our graduation ceremony, officially ended the language pledge, tested out our roommates’ English abilities and said our goodbyes. I spent the large part of the afternoon lying around with two of my friends singing cheesy songs and wasting time, then set off to take a train to Shanghai, where about half of the people in our program were staying in two hotel rooms to have one last night out. Well, it’s a good thing I gave myself plenty of time to get to the train station, because I first found myself not at the East Train Station but the East Bus Station. I calmly marched myself to the front of the line for cabs, and in my most desperate sounding Chinese pleaded with the attendant to let me get a cab, because I needed to catch my train. At the train station I unloaded my bags onto the X-ray machine, presented my ticket and was told, to my dismay, that I wanted not the East station but the South one. You can’t make this shit up. I was embarrassed that I was still having this kind of trouble after three months. Fighting back tears of frustration, I loaded up my bags again and set about trying to get another cab. I decided if I couldn’t make the train, I’d go back to the school, spend a last night with a few friends still around, sleep in a friend’s room as I no longer had my key, get to Shanghai in the morning. As it is I made the train with time to spare, though in the end I found myself falling asleep in a club at two in the morning (I only slept about four hours on Friday), and dragged myself back to the hotel to sleep. I am now killing time in Shanghai with a few friends, trying to figure out a plan for the week (relaxing around here, possibly with a side trip to Suzhou or Nanjing), and waiting for Sunday when my mom and sister arrive.

Checking In

Just a quick note to let everyone know I'm still here, though my activities for the past week have been limited to cruising around town, class, writing a 2000 character (roughly equivalent to 8 pages typed English) term paper for my one-on-one class, dinners and evenings out, a mild stomach bug and sleep.

We're heading into exam week, and then I'll be off travelling around the country until January 21. I hope you'll all keep up with my adventures, I'll try to keep posting wherever I go.