Indian stores and champagne rooms

So I found an Indian store yesterday!!!! They only sell a few clothes and incense and like 3 cds, but I found an Indian store!!!!! That means there has to be enough Indians or enough people that like Indian stuff to sustain that store. I saw it on the way back from Xinhua with Jenna, I only saw the script that looked like Hindi. I was like oh my god! It can’t be. I love China.

I went to a “western” restaurant with Brick and Hugh. I ate cow tongue, something’s intestines (they made it into sausage), only 1 chicken heart (there were 5 others on my plate I didn’t really want to eat, those poor chickens), and several other odd varieties of “meat.” I did not eat donkey, rabbit, dog, cat, or other stereotypical meats. I’m glad I didn’t know what I was eating otherwise I probably wouldn’t have eaten it. I did know the heart was a heart. I was looking at it and thinking, I’m eating its left ventricle now…now the right atrium…and so on. It was a great moment in biology.

So later I went to Mcdonald’s bar and met a few new foreigners including Emmanuel from Cameroon. Emmanuel can speak like 6 languages. All of the foreigners that I meet that can actually speak Chinese are ones that already know a ridiculous amount of languages. And I also met Peru from Nepal. Oh my god a desi??? What the hell is going on? Two things in one day is just too much for me. And guess what? He speaks Chinese. Oh yeah, he’s a pimp. He was in Nanjing for a year and he learned quite a bit because there wasn’t anyone around who spoke English. I hope to do that by the end of this year. He also mentioned that there are like 500 Malayalees. What? I’m in the wrong city.

So I hung out with Blake, Levi and Peru after Mcdonald’s bar at Scotland. They have good music and no drama, except from the big Chinese guys who want lovin’ from little foreigners. We had fun. Just how I like it. No broken tables, no obnoxious fights. Blake went into the “champagne room” at Dalian restaurant (after the club) and walked out of there maybe 5 or 10 minutes later and could not walk straight to our table. He was completely sober when he went in. It amazes me how much Chinese people can drink. Dalian had good steamed bread (real bread!) and skewers. I also had duck there, which I think I’ve had before but didn’t know it. It was yummy.

Tunisia? Where the hell is that country??

Around 10:30 pm Monday night I heard a knock on my door. I opened it to see a strange man there. He introduced himself and asked if he could come in. I said ok because I didn’t want to be rude but in my mind I was thinking, who the hell is this? So he sits down and I continue to hang up my laundry and he gets to talking about how he likes beer. He asked if I liked beer. I said sometimes, then he asked if I had any here. I don’t actually keep beer here, sorry man. Then he offered me a nut from his pocket. I said oh, no that’s okay, then he said it’s from Tunisia. So of course I couldn’t refuse then, right? I can’t say no to someone offering something from their homeland right? Even if it came from somebody’s pocket? So I had a shady ass Tunisian nut. It wasn’t terrible. There wasn’t as much lint as I had thought.

So we talk and he says I’m so lonely here, I don’t have any friends. I felt bad for him kinda, he had only been here for 3 days and he is a student of Chinese so he wasn’t getting help from the university like the foreign teachers. He kept asking me why I didn’t have a boyfriend and why I don’t like anything. Then he said he didn’t like Chinese girls because they don’t like guys to kiss them and they don’t like to “practice love.” He also mentioned he was Muslim. I’m not sure what sect of Islam allows for alcohol and “practicing love” with Chinese girls. Yes, this is when the conversation got too awkward even for China. I told him I’d introduce him to other foreigners here and he said noo, that’s okay, I said there was a nice Korean woman living in the building and he said, oh, I like women. I got him to finally leave by saying I had to teach early morning, which was true.

There is one cool thing about him aside from the rest of him being creepy: he knows Arabic and some Chinese. I would love to learn Arabic and need to learn Chinese. He needs to learn English more. I can help him with that. In the daytime. Not in my room. No beer involved. Or “practice love.”

Crazy weekend

Friday
I had the leak in my bathroom sink fixed on Friday. It is really nice to have a dry floor now. Friday evening, my doorknob fell off while I was in the bathroom. I had to jimmy it back on there to get the door open. My bathroom is ridiculous. I also have a leaky toilet and a possibly leaky water heater. But I love that my floor is dry, I’m so happy about that.

We went to Bailao tai tai for a long and drunken dinner. It was ridiculous. The Chinese people in the room next to us joined us in our room and ganbei-ed us silly. We also met a guy who opened the beer bottles with his mouth. It was intense. We went to Allan Story after that. There were many a drunken foreigner.

Saturday
So let’s just say that someone in our group managed to pee on a guest bed in a drunken stupor. And then he managed to stumble back to his buddy’s apartment on the first floor in the morning. I was surprised to see him downstairs because before I went to bed Friday, I definitely saw him at someone else’s apartment.

We went to bailao tai tai for another exquisite meal in the evening. Tang su li ji (like sweet and sour chicken) is a new favorite of mine as are the carmelized bananas and the beef with the egg is also amazing. I love that restaurant. I need to learn the Chinese names for these things. It appears that Michelle and Erin got wasted off of 1-2 beers. Erin’s funny when she’s drunk. She pretty much made my night. After the restaurant, we headed to Allan Story again and lots of drama ensued which involved Russians, Britons, Canadians, a Swede and lots of drunk CCEPers. It was the most multicultural bs ever.

The night definitely ended when Michelle fell onto 3-4 plastic tables across the street from Mcdonalds and broke them to pieces. I’m not sure how she managed to keep falling onto and breaking tables, but I was mortified. The Chinese owners of the bbq were obviously pissed and we think one was on the phone with the police. They demanded lots of money which one person thought was a ridiculous amount so he tried to argue his way out in English, so of course that meant nothing. Jeremy paid it unbeknownst to the rest of us and some of us tried to walk away with at least one of the troublemakers so that a fight wouldn’t break out. This didn’t work, so we just went home. And this is why Americans are loved the world over.

Banquets and class

I had my smallest class today. It had 16 girls, not one single boy. I’ve noticed there are a few who are a little bit more arrogant in showing off their English skills. I try not to let them take over because some of the students can barely speak and understand English and I’m pretty sure they feel crappy about their skills as it is without the more advanced students showing off. One girl named herself Jane, after Jane Eyre. What the hell? I haven’t even read that. Oh well, they don’t have to know that. At the end of class, I was surprised to find that one of my students wants to learn Spanish. Actually, I was excited. After class, I went to the supermarket and bought “Volver.” I saw it there before but was apprehensive because I wasn’t sure it would be good quality or not. Plus, I wanted it in Spanish, not dubbed over. I can’t wait to watch my Spanish movie in China!! I’m so weird.

Just yesterday I was at a banquet with all the other foreign teachers from Hebei Normal (all the campuses). I met a woman who is from Spain who speaks French, Catalan, English, Spanish (duh), and some Chinese. She is an interesting lady. I also met a teacher who married here. He is an old white man married to one of his former students, as in a 18-19 year old Chinese girl. Perverted? I think so. I don’t understand how her family would have allowed her to marry him. There are a lot of older, perverted men here. It’s creepy as hell. I also met this really nice Korean gal Song Joo. She is also studying Chinese, but she teaches Korean here. After the banquet yesterday, we went to the barbecue place outside our side gate. As everyone was getting drunker and drunker (including me), she suggested I go “over there” with her, pointing to near our gate. I thought we were leaving; it was getting a bit late. I had to teach an 8 am class. It turns out she wanted to buy barbecued squid on skewers. She bought each of us one stick with squid tentacles dangling from it. I was thinking, oh crap, I’m pretty sure not everyone will want to eat this. How do I tell her not to buy so much? Even more, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to eat it. It was dangly and it had tentacles. Caroline came over to see what we were doing and declared her love for squid, so thank god for that. We went back to the table and gave everyone the squid, even Hugh tried it, which was surprising. It actually isn’t that bad. The smaller ones taste like barbecued chicken. I would have felt terrible if I hadn’t tried it. Plus I was not so sober, so it became more okay. After we left, she came down to my room and gave me and Richard moon cakes. She’s so nice!

First freshmen class

I taught my first freshmen class today. I had a few older people in my class, like one who is a mom with children from South Korea. She looks like a typical Korean lady from the soap operas. I also had a student from Inner Mongolia. I totally flew over Mongolia on my way to China. This class is so much more enthusiastic about everything. I like this class way better than my sophomore class. I was really surprised how well some of these freshmen spoke considering they’ve been away from English for 3 months. All the guys sit in the back, I’m not sure if they’re trying to be “slackers” or if they’re just afraid of all of the girls. It’s the same in my sophomore class; the two guys sit in the back. I was trying not to fall out of my shoes because they’re a little bigger than I thought. When I was at the store, the lady said “Oh, ok” to them and gave me the matching shoe. I’m not sure it’s the same size as the other one, since neither are marked with sizes at all. It doesn’t matter really, they’re still cute shoes.

I’ve noticed the Chinese all have very cute shoes. I’ve yet to see one ugly pair of shoes. When I get paid, I’m going shoe shopping for everyone. The hairstyles here range from very cute to very bizarre. I’m not sure if some of them are trying to be punk or just super trendy but long mullets are in with some girls as is having long hair half curly and half straight underneath. I’ve noticed ponytails are very common here and there are not so many girls with long hair which is weird, because I thought everyone would have long hair. The guys dress pretty much the same as in the US, except a lot of them have red string necklaces with jade carved stones on them. China’s a lot more westernized than I thought. No one wears traditional clothing here except a few of the elderly and it’s just the shirts even then.

Saturday at the zoo...

Saturday, I went to the zoo with a bunch of other Shijiazhuangers and Jake. We walked around the train station for an hour looking for the number 5 bus. When we found it, we crammed into it on our long ride into the countryside. The zoo was definitely the biggest I’ve ever been to and it was beautiful. There were mountains and lakes and it was kind of nice for some of the animals. For the bigger animals, it wasn’t so nice because they were in much smaller cages with thick bars. There weren’t that many animals out, I’m not sure why. But there was one fun thing we got to do; some of us paid 5 or 6 kuai to get sticks with fish attached to string at the end of them to feed the crocodiles. I think 3 people did it. It was the most entertaining when Lindsey did it because when she would raise the stick to get the fish away from the crocodiles, she would flip the fish over our heads and splash nasty water on us. When big papa croc got her fish, she got into a tug-of-war with the croc so she could get the stick back and not flip over the bridge we were on. Caroline helped her win back the fishing stick.

Pictures to catch up on

This would be the weird toy I kind of want. As you can see, the white doll shuffles forward and pulls the cart forward. Hidden message? I think so. Very strange but very entertaining.

Under the girl’s curly hair, it says shit. Another thing to note: the girls are holding hands. This does not mean they are lesbians, it is a sign of friendship and basically everyone does it. It’s the same way in India. It reminds me of when Chi and I would walk around like this and sing very loudly/badly. Of course, in the United States, this will get stares and lots of whispering.

Caroline and I are climbing over my gate because it is locked and no one usually comes when we ring the buzzer, so we’re taking matters into our own hands. So logically the next question would be how do I get in if the gate is locked? Well, you would be right to assume the front door is locked, but there is a door in the back locked with a bike lock that I can squeeze through. After squeezing through the back door, I do have to make sure I don’t knock any bikes over which is very difficult when there’s 50 of them and especially when not sober. It’s mission impossible. The only thing that sucks is that after squeezing through the door and through the maze of bikes, I’m covered in dust and cobwebs. It’s gross. But it is better than not getting into my apartment. I’m going to be screwed when they decide to fix the back door. Caroline has more trouble getting into her campus because not only is the front door locked, but the hallway to her apartment is locked.

This would be the aftermath of Caroline clinking Bryan’s beer. What you don’t see is the table soaked in beer and the floor and the hordes of Chinese laughing at us meiguoren.

Look China butt! These are the split pants that babies wear until they are toilet trained. I have mixed feelings about these. In a country of 1.3 billion, I’m glad they don’t use diapers just because that would be a tremendous waste. Although in winter, they have the same split pants which would be terrible for the cold. What if they get frostbite…on their ass?

This gigantic balloon appeared mysteriously one night in front of TKL (the stadium/supermarket). Jenna and I thought it was cute, but what the hell is it?

KFC after non-stop consumption of noodles and street food. I had chicken because it’s amazing. They’re also big on corn here which is truly strange. I had a small cup of corn and peas with a coleslaw type of dressing on it. It was not bad. I thought I was getting fries, guess not. You can get boiled corn on the cob on many street corners. There is also a cornsicle which is like a popsicle but corn flavored. I’ve been told there is corn juice also. I’m probably not going to have corn juice. I’ll probably have the cornsicle though. In short, corn corn corn.

Wednesday
My second class went awesome. The students were active and talking and moving around and hopefully expanding their vocabulary. Although, I’m not very good at getting the attention of the class when they’re all loud and won’t shut up.

After class, I went to the Martyr’s cemetery with Jenna, Caroline and Bryan. We walked there and it took more than 2 hours. On the way there, we stopped in a park and let China come to us in the form of babies and old folks as we sat.

The cemetery was very large and unlike most places in the Shiz, very clean. The actual cemetery had the plots next to each other with flowers growing on top of them. The most surprising thing to me were the Indian martyrs that were recognized there. I didn’t realize there were any. There were several including one doctor who had his own statue. There was also a very large statue near the entrance, similar to the Washington monument.

After the cemetery, we took a taxi back to Caroline and Bryan’s campus. Walking down the street, we definitely heard a Snoop Dogg song from a long time ago. On the way to the cemetery, I think we passed the same store and that time it was playing “It’s a wonderful world.” We went to a hot pot restaurant and had an interesting experience there. After the hot pot we went down the street a little bit for some after dinner beers/ice cream thingies at an outdoor eatery. This was the best part of the night. While we were there, we saw a person who we thought might have been American. Maybe he was German? He had light brown hair! We totally thought he was American or European. Well, after Jenna went up to him and said something, the non-English speaking American-looking foreigner made fun of Jenna to his Chinese friend by waving his hands crazy style. We moved on to the actual purchasing of the ice cream float. The ice cream thingy looked kind of good. I may get it next time I’m there. It had fresh fruit chunks, boba, frozen yogurt, peanut butter at the bottom, smoothie. It was pretty much any sweet, cold thing you could eat with a spoon thrown in there.

The highlight of the evening, however, came when we got a beer for Bryan while he went to go buy his bananas. Jenna had asked whether this Chinese beer could be clinked. Caroline replied “Of course you can, it’s glass.” Just as Bryan was lifting up his beer bottle to drink it, Caroline tapped the top of it with the bottom of her mug so that the bottle hit the table. Bryan had tried to drink it, not realizing how quickly the foam filled the bottle…and spilled completely out of the bottle. Beer (well, mostly foam) shot out of Bryan’s mouth and definitely sprayed Jenna’s shoulder with beer. The beer was flowing uncontrollably like a volcano and Bryan tried to contain it by covering it with his finger, which sprayed more beer out of it and onto Jenna, our table and the floor. It was full before it was clinked and after it probably held 2 or 3 sips of beer. The other tables definitely stared at us and some were like laughing their asses off. We were pretty much gone for the next 5 minutes. My stomach was hurting from laughing so much. It was great. We were still laughing and everyone around us had gotten over it and was back to their normal stoic reserve. Gotta love China.

Yesterday (Thursday)
So most of the Shijiazhuangers met a bunch of other foreigners at Mcdonald's bar and then we all went to dinner. There were about 15 of us in all. We had an amazing dinner and we met lots of people. The people we met were all teaching very young children, like ages 1-5 or 7 or 8 year olds. We have it much easier than that at the university. They also have to work on Saturdays and Sundays which is unfortunate. After wards, we all went back to Mcdonald's bar and had a few, then we went to Allan Story I think. On the way, Jake (our resident party member) and Fergol almost got into a fight on the street. I was amazed that Caroline and Jenna and Blake were able to hold Jake off of Fergol because Jake's a pretty big guy. Anyway, we all made it to Allan Story and had a good time despite the tension. It was a very late night indeed.

Yesterday was Teacher’s day (September 10th). I didn’t have any classes to teach so I didn’t get the full Chinese experience. One teacher got flowers and another was taken out to lunch by his students. I talked to my waiban (foreign affairs) and I received a big case of milk and peanut oil as gifts for this day. It was great because I was on my way to the grocery store to purchase these items, so I was happy. I still have no way to light my stove as I still have not found fuel for my useless candle lighter.

These are pictures of TKL. It is where I shop for everything, except candle lighter fuel. You would think a store this large would maybe have one. It has a stadium on top of it. There are many stores and restaurants along the perimeter of the TKL. There is also another side to it with more restaurants and small stores. It is like a mall...except it has a stadium on top of it. Occasionally there are big blown up anime like characters which I don't understand, but on that day only the red balloons were out.

English skills

This is supposed to be “skip to my lou,” I think. Yes, although the Chinese go through 7 years of English by the time they begin college, this is the result. Another fine example would be when we were both walking behind a group of girls. One of the girls had the word “shit” in big letters written on the back of her shirt. One of the male students gave himself the English name of “c---” (I’m sure you can figure it out.) Most of the young people I see walking on the streets have English words on their shirts, especially the girls. However, most of it makes no sense.

World Trade Plaza

The World Trade Plaza is one of my favorite places to go in the evenings. There is always something going on, if not multiple things going on at once. Yesterday I went there with Jenna. We watched Chinese dancers and a singer. There was also a bizarre Bollywood dance done by the Chinese dancers. Jenna has the actual video of it with the accompanying Hindi music.

There was an actual Chinese dance also. In the same plaza the techno dancers were doing their group thing. On the far side of the plaza near the children’s play area, there were couples receiving lessons in slow dance.

One of the things that was surprising to me was to see some of the elders out and being active. Some were doing the techno dances and some were doing slow dancing. They’re not sitting at home staring out a window.

Jenna successfully haggled!! She got a drink for 1 kuai instead of 2. The lady was trying to get 2 from her, but Jenna just handed over 1 and walked away. I was so happy. It was the first successful bargain I've heard of in our group. The second day I was here, I tried to bargain, but failed terribly. It is about saving face.

Tea houses and xianqi

Yesterday I went exploring with Jenna. I love exploring, especially with a buddy. Actually I was trying to find Beiguo mall so we could find an English bookstore somewhere in the vicinity of that mall. We walked from our place to downtown which is really two turns so its quite easy. I can't imagine walking downtown from Drake. Everything here is very compact and close to everything else, so it's nice that you don't have to rely on cars. We ended up walking all over the place looking in stores that looked interesting. There was an area of downtown that had maybe 10-20 cell phone stores. They all had people outside badgering passersby to pick out a number on the list. Near this area, we happened upon a bunch of guards or officers who were playing xianqi, chinese chess. Jenna had just taught me how to play it the day before so I was excited to see some "pros" play it. There were about 4 or 5 guys huddled around the board and this game was very intense. They were yelling and throwing pieces down like mad people. One guy was definitely losing and not taking it well, so it was funny to watch them and actually know what's going on in the game.

We moved on and eventually stopped in a tea store. The lady sat us both down and started making tea for us to try. We had green and jasmine tea, maybe about 10 small cups in all. It was good tea and I wasn't really a fan of tea without milk or sugar before yesterday. I was hooked on the jasmine tea. They used real jasmine flowers. It smelled wonderful. So I bought some. We also got to try tea cakes and these tea fruits which were like dried fruits but they had some tea flavor in them. I couldn't taste the tea flavor, but they were yummy little snacks, so I got some of those also. I think the store was called Ten Fu's Teas or something like that.

We went to KFC to have dinner with Caroline after that and I had chicken wings and a coleslaw like cup of corn, peas and carrots. It was not bad. I had an orange drink that was very strange. It wasn't like Hi-C and I think it was supposed to be something like it.

We went to the plaza across the street and watched the techno dancers for maybe half an hour. They just kept going and going. There were people of all ages doing these synchronized dances, it really reminded me of DDR. Some people (guys) would show off by throwing in extra spins. And there was definitely one guy who was smoking a cigarette and dancing. Not to be outdone, a girl later on was on her cell phone as she continued dancing. We walked to the other side of the plaza and saw the couples slow dancing. I think this goes on every week. It's so cool.

We saw some of the strollers with the mechanical dolls pulling the stroller forward. It looks like a cool toy, but what a weird message because all the dolls are white.

Headed over to McDonald's bar after awhile (Youth Year Beer Bar is the actual name of it) and chilled there for the rest of the night. Met more teachers and I finally saw one of the other Indian teachers, Dinesh. Didn't talk to him just because I didn't want to be all like "Hey I'm brown too!" There is a Vivek here but I haven't met him so far. Haha, something really funny happened and I had no clue. The other night at this bar, I met a Chinese student whose American name is Bill Gates. Apparently he likes me. He liked my demeanor? I was really quiet the night we met so I guess he liked that I wasn't an obnoxiously loud drunk American. It was funny because other than saying our names we didn't talk at all that night. Oh China.

My eventful day

I had my physical today at the hospital. After waiting in various lines for a little more than hour, we were on our way to being poked and prodded. We were in these various lines behind perhaps 5 people at the most. Some of the lines didn't move at all. I jumped in the one that was moving and was on my way. It was an experience I don't want to repeat for unspeakable reasons.

I went to eat at the campus cafeteria. It was craziness and I met a student who wants me to go to a church. I believe organized religion is frowned upon in China, so I probably won't be going to any church services. And I definitely won't be going to any house services, since they're really cracking down on that. I remember an article a day or two before I left for China where they arrested 14 Christians for having unauthorized services in their houses rather than in sanctioned churches. I'm trying not to get kicked out of China before I even begin really teaching classes.

Two students took Richard and I there and there was so much food and so many Chinese. I definitely took too much. Eyes bigger than my stomach for sure. Their system is kind of cool. They have ID cards that they hold close to the debit machine and the server types in the amount to deduct from the card and that's it. It's like the pay-and-go system that started becoming popular in the US. I think we're supposed to be getting ours soon.

After dinner, we played badminton. It was good times. I can't tell you how many times we both nearly whacked a Chinese person. They have no regard for people playing in the street whatsoever. One would think that maybe you would walk around the general area of play to avoid being hit by a flying birdie but no. One guy on a bike definitely swerved after driving right through our game. That's exactly what you get buddy.

On our way back to our apartments, we walked past our gate and heard "Woah" really loudly. Richard felt some splashback and decided the students on the third floor might have been trying to screw with us. Perhaps it was a water balloon.

China? Really?

These children were dancing to Thalia's song Mujer Latina on TV. The reason why I recognized this is because Thalia's a popular singer and I have this song. One of many instances which has bewildered me since being in China.

I have been in China for a week now and have found traces of other cultures here which is really surprising. I thought China was just starting to become westernized, so the fact that there are other cultures infiltrating here other than the west is just plain crazy.

I suppose the first encounter was at the Beijing airport. I sat next to an Indian family and heard Hindi which must have infiltrated my Chinese. Since then, I have been accidentally throwing in a Hindi word or two in my Chinese.

Yesterday, I met a Ukranian teacher, Irina, who was speaking Russian to a Chinese person. They were having a perfectly fluent conversation. They have many foreign teachers here, but I didn't realize there were many students taking Russian here. It makes the US look terrible.

I was watching TV and encountered a show where the children were singing, "Wo ai ni," which means "I love you," and they were signing it! This excited me more than anything but I was so confused. Why were they signing American Sign Language rather than Chinese Sign Language? Was this sign the same in both languages? I'd be surprised if they were because in ASL, its just a combo of I, L, and Y. I would think in Chinese it would be a combination of W, A, I or something more logical like that.

I was in a store with Richard and I was watching Linkin Park and Jay-Z on TV while he bought a WWF hat with a panda on it.

It reminds me of Des Moines. I've been told by numerous people that they're so surprised by how often they would see multiracial families or groups of friends of different races. In bigger cities, I guess it's more the norm for people to stick to their own ethnic groups rather than mix it up.

China!

I'm here and have been for a week now. I have internet now, so that's fabulous as well. I have spent the past week exploring my area of the city and meeting lots of people. I have also been meeting with my Drake group which is comforting.

I first arrived in Beijing in an airport currently under partial construction. They are building a subway for next year's Olympics.

This airport is massive and modern as it is and they are building onto it. I was impressed by the bathroom which had a hand dryer that blew cool air so it didn't chap your hands and it had an ultraviolet looking light which just looked cool. China is mind-boggling at times. One sees lit up hotels next to empty skyscrapers. I am enjoying exploring this place. I have so far enjoyed many meals in restaurants and am fond of one restaurant next to a small store. There are always people outside eating at the little tables and the owner of the store is always hanging out with the restauranteurs. They're nice to us meiguoren even though they laugh at us too. The first time there we ordered food, we ended up with maybe 6 plates and there were 3 of us. It was hilarious. They were laughing as they handed us our food. We had no idea what we were doing.

This is my washer. It's cute and little and yellow. I push its buttons and it makes sounds like an ice cream truck, I kid you not. It's also mighty powerful. The first time I used it, I thought it was going to explode my clothes out of it Jackie Chan style. There is one characteristic in the washer I find in common with Chinese people in general. Look at the smile on my washer! It's as friendly as the Chinese.