The Mall and World Trade Plaza Hotel

I missed our sports day because I was chilling with various homies. But Hugh went and he sent me his pictures. These are some of the gals in my sophomore class. They were his freshmen last year. Aren’t they adorable? They all had matching outfits which made me want one too. Sadly, I did not get one.

I went on a small spree yesterday and I got some winter wear and a teapot. I also tried to get lotion in a store in the big mall place near the train station and they handed me a bottle of whitening lotion. Not what I was looking for at all. I figured that was all they were going to offer me, so I left the store defeated.

Oh, I finally got my first experience getting yelled at for not buying something. I saw a purse that I really liked and started bargaining with the owner. She didn’t want to budge, so I said I don’t want it and tried to walk out. She said okay to my price and then I noticed the hole in the purse. Hmmm, now I really didn’t want it, so I tried to leave. As I walked out, the lady started yelling in crazy Chinese, telling her store neighbors something to the extent of, “You made me lower the price, I said okay, and now you don’t want it?! What’s wrong with you?” And so on. It wasn’t like she was really that invested in the sale; it lasted all of 5 minutes. Oh dang.

I went to the expat ladies’ lunch today. It’s on the third Sunday of each month. It was the most coherent English I’d heard since coming to China. It was nice. The food was fantastic. We ate at the World Trade Plaza Hotel. It’s the fanciest place I’ve ever seen anywhere, including the US. Look at the ashtray, what the hell? They have their emblem in the ashtray sand. The revolving doors to this hotel have giant vases with flowers in two of the four chambers.

I got my first foot massage today after lunch. Holy crap, it was amazing. They did the whole reflexology thing on my feet and hit my feet with some wooden hammer contraption. It was amazing.

Not Youtube too?!?!

I tried to use Youtube today and it was a bit slower than usual. As in it didn’t work at all. Crap, there goes weeks of ESL plans. For reasons why youtube.com doesn’t work in China, haz click aqui! It really is interesting.

http://shanghaiist.com/2007/10/18/give_us_back_ou.php

Ozomatli + me = bliss

I just read online that Ozomatli was in Shanghai Oct. 5th. Guess who else was there? ME!!! I didn’t know otherwise that would have been amazing to see. It was in Zhongshan Park which we were near enough to go. AHH! I can’t believe I was that close to them. They were in Beijing a few days before. : ( Not to say that we didn’t have a great time, but it would have made my year to see them.

Oh yeah, this is a picture of the group I went to Shanghai with. 9 people total. Pure craziness. Our 9th person, Nate, was taking the picture.

Maybe I'm delusional

I could do this for another year or two. This idea has been invading my thoughts over the last few days. My family would not be happy with me. But, I love being completely anonymous. And I’ve decided that people staring in the US is much worse than the staring in China. Here, people only stare at you because they have never seen a foreigner. It is a curiosity. Can’t say I’ll miss being stared at in the US. I also like how people are so friendly here. Everyone says hello, which I know annoys some people, but I find it cute. I like meeting the foreigners here, even the assholes. These people aren’t in the US because they’re always traveling. Everyone seems to have a story here, even the creepers. I like exploring this place and I like how everyone is outside, not holed up inside glued to the TV or computer. Although many places here shut down around here by 9 or so, it’s still a much more active place than a lot of cities in the US. I do miss my family and friends quite a bit but I fancy this China.

It’s the people that make a place special, obviously.

Shanghai encounters

One thing I forgot to mention which happened when we went to Shanghai was my first encounter with Chinese people in Shanghai. So we had just arrived after our ridiculously long train ride (18 hours) on Tuesday. We went across the street to the Mr. Donut which was amazing by the way. Our group had 9 people in it, so we split up trying to get train tickets back to our respective cities and to buy other items in the store next door. In China, you can only buy train tickets 7 days in advance, which is frustrating but hey, it’s China.

So I stood guard of our bags in Mr. Donut and a Chinese person comes up to us (Michelle and Caroline and I) and hands us a card. It says he is deaf and that he would appreciate any financial help we could give him (in English). So what are the chances that a deaf Chinese person would happen to come across a foreigner who happens to be fluent in American Sign Language? Oh yes, that’s exactly what happened. So I was ecstatic because this was the first Chinese deaf person I had met in China. I started signing to him in ASL and he signed back to me in Chinese Sign Language. I was surprised to find that I actually understood about half of what he was saying. He still wanted money, but I kept insisting that we didn’t have much because we were teachers. He asked if we had flown to Shanghai and I said no, we took the train. He decided that since we had taken the train, we actually didn’t have money, so he left. Well, I might have scared him off with my ability to sign. But it was so strange because that was the first Chinese person that came up to us in Shanghai and he happened to be deaf. I felt bad for him even though he probably wasn’t really a beggar, but he might have been just because China isn’t too proud to have people that are blind, disabled or deaf. Later that same day, as we were walking back to our hostel, I saw a group of 3 or 4 people and they were also signing. It made me think that there was a deaf school nearby or something, which would have been really cool to see.

Buses and gangsta Tibetans

I’ve managed to hop onto 4 buses today, all of them wrong. In the morning, I hopped onto the one that Mr. Zhang was on so he told me it was the bus in front of me to go to the west campus. On the way back to east campus, I tried to get on the wrong bus shuttle again. I got on the right one only to be kicked off because it was too full. Are you kidding me? There were 4 people standing, the rest were sitting. Considering the city buses are cram-packed full of people, don’t think 4 people standing was really that big of a deal.

So there I was stranded (sorta) at Caroline’s campus when I decided to befriend the girl that was in front of me when we were kicked off. So after a little bit, she decided that we would need to take the bus cause they weren’t sending another shuttle. Okay, I follow her onto bus #46. And this bus was pretty much empty, so that should have been a red flag. Only people that live out in the country would get onto buses that empty around rush hour. We go a little bit and she decides that we’re on the wrong #46 and that we need to be going the opposite direction. We hop off and hop onto another 46 only to realize the same thing, only this time we’re really out in the middle of nowhere. Okay, the girl talks to the bus driver and then decides to jump off. I was like “Oh fuck!!! Wait!” So about a block later the bus driver decides to let me off. I run back towards where the girl was standing and of course, I couldn’t find her. By this time, the fog had settled permanently and it was night time. We were at a school but I don’t know which one because there were tons of students around and tons of street vendors. So I saw a taxi and took my chances on it. 25 kuai later and I arrived at my campus. I should really learn Chinese so I don’t have to rely on Chinese people who may or may not know what the hell is going on.

On a different note, when I was at the west campus, I saw the sports day meetings that Caroline was talking about. Basically, it’s an all-school event where everyone either participates in some sport or cheers on people participating in a sport. There was tug-of-war, track events, some game like monkey in the middle among others. It was interesting to see. What we did not expect however, was to be paraded around the track by Caroline’s students. First one came and after a while another came and talked with us. Then another and then we saw the section of students that Caroline teaches. Oh man, we were like celebrities, they all whipped out their cell phones to take pictures and some of the students were bold enough to jump out and stand next to us as they got their picture taken with the teacher. We couldn’t do anything but smile and wave and try to walk around the track faster. There is one thing which is hilarious about her students though, they really are gangsta. I didn’t believe her when she said it but it is true. Gangsta Tibetans. How weird is that? The other weird thing is that some thought I was Chinese, others assumed Tibetan. I’ve been told that there is an ethnic minority in China which I resemble, but I didn’t make the connection that it was the Tibetans which I resembled. It was weird walking by her students and having to tell myself, they are not Indian because some of them really look Indian. I even saw a girl with a nose ring and her head covered.

The Whore of Asia (Shanghai)

Shanghai recap (very long):

Train ride to Shanghai:
We left at 1:40 pm from Shijiazhuang to Shanghai October 1st and were to arrive around 8 am the next day (~18 hours).

October 2nd, 2007 (Tuesday)
At around 3:30 am, the sweeper made everyone get up so he could sweep the trash from all of the areas. Yes, that’s right, it’s most convenient at 3:30 am. Erin jokingly said, “Yeah, and at 4:30 am, they’ll bring out the mops.” So of course that’s exactly what happened. The highlight of the train ride was when around 5 am, Jeremy had a breakdown and started bitching about the baby that kept saying “yeah yeah yeah” over and over. I lost it and could not stop laughing. I think Caroline got part of his breakdown on video. We were so deprived of sleep that it was just the most hilarious thing ever. We arrived at 7:45 am finally.

We went to the Shanghai Museum. They had cool ceramics, Buddha, Goya and mask exhibits. I was surprised about the Goya exhibit there, but disappointed to see that his most famous works were left out. I was also surprised to see Islamic art there.

After the museum we went to the Bund and walked alongside the Huangpu river promenade. It was cool. The skyline was all lit up and lasers shoot from the tops of some buildings which gives for a fantastic show just along the promenade.

October 3rd (Wed)

We walked along East Nanjing Road through the shops and the nonstop people traffic. At the end was the Huangpu River Cruise which we enjoyed for an hour.

After we headed to Nanjing Road again to shop some more and eat. We headed towards Jinmao Tower around 5 so that we could see the sunset. We got some beautiful pictures of the city from 88 floors up.

October 4th, 2007 (Thursday)
We went to the Yuyuan gardens and hit up the bazaar that’s just before it.

After leaving the gardens, we saw a little blond boy wandering by himself in the bazaar. He looked to be at most 4 or 5 years old. We didn’t see his parents around. Jenna and Erin ran after him and he ran into the gardens. They finally got him to stop and our group eventually made it to a corner with security and a loudspeaker on it. We didn’t know what language he spoke at first, but eventually they realized he was French. By the time we had gotten to the corner, not only was our group there, but there was a French group and a Chinese group staying with him. The French girls spoke into the loudspeaker and 10-15 minutes later his mom showed up. There was a moment when his mom came and ran to him and they hugged. At that moment, the Europeans and the Americans started bawling. The Chinese were beaming. I turned around to see what was going on and all I saw was everybody crying. It was a good moment. It was also the absolute worst place to lose a child, in a bazaar full of people who don’t speak the same language.

After that, we went to the Shanghai Temple of the City. It was crowded, but not as bad as the bazaar. After the temple, we split up and tried to find the Indian restaurant I had written down. Turns out it doesn’t exist and neither does the other one 3 blocks from it. So by this time, everybody’s pissed because they’re tired of walking and hungry and of course, I feel bad and this was the one thing I wanted to do and it was out of the way and yeah it didn’t work out. So our group went to a hot pot restaurant across the street from the non-existant Indian restaurant. At least that was good. Then Michelle and CJ left to go back to Chengde.

We went to a tea ceremony with 3 girls and a guy we met on the street. We went in for a nice tea ceremony and had ridiculously expensive tea. Then we paid 258 kuai. We realized later we were scammed because we started to tell Caroline about it after we had got back and she pretty much told us what happened because it happened to a couple of other guys in the hostel that she had just talked with. But at least we got a good luck trinket out of it. We also have their pictures because we thought we had made friends with them. Eh.

October 5th, 2007 (Friday)
Mr. Donut was our breakfast as we searched for info about Special Olympics. Then we went to Longhua Temple and afterwards, we saw the Special Olympics. There was hardly anyone at the Special Olympics which was sad. It was free too, but that didn’t draw any attention. There were these little guys (9-10 years old) who were just adorable doing their floor routines. After the Special Olympics, we went to see the Chinese acrobats. It was an amazing show. After the show, we went to City Walks restaurant and had a fantastic Western meal. I had 4 cheese pasta penne and shared it with Jenna. Caroline had chicken cordon bleu and I think Erin had barbecued pork chops. It was a wonderful way to end our trip.

October 6th-7th, 2007 (Saturday and Sunday)
We had a long and tiring ride back to the Shiz.