WELCOME TO THE ZHONG GUO!!!!

The Last Days of Daguanghua

2008-02-07T19:03:00.000-08:00

We had looked forward to leaving Daguanghua for a while; it seems like once we hit the 8 month point, the dorm room we'd been living in started to get smaller and smaller. Also, some of our "friends" at the school were becoming more ambivalent about our presence on campus. The tea was cold when we were leaving, indeed. We spent the last month and a half locked up in our room, taking advantage of 2 Chinese websites that allow us to stay up-to-date with all the popular movies and tv shows from back home. We sort of skated through our classes, counting down the days until we got to leave Daguanghua, to enter a bigger city with less of an opportunity to become bored.

We gave our "final exams"; no one was allowed a score lower than 80% even though some of the kids legitimately got zeroes. We cleaned out our desks and started packing. The school wanted us to leave Daguanghua on the same day that the other Chinese teachers were leaving campus, but it wouldn't have worked out logistically. They thought they could just pay us one morning and we could magically be on a plane out of town that afternoon. So ultimately we got to stick around a few more days, but the trade off was that the school couldn't guarantee us a van to take us to the airport.

The last week before we actually left was incredibly frustrating, as it seemed that all of those little things that can be really annoying about China and Chinese people culminated with trips to the post office, the bank and western union (with a little campus bullshit thrown in for good measure!). I don't think I've ever wasted more time standing around as I did that week. One day we were scheduled to have a meeting with the finance office woman at 3:00, and she didn't show up to the office until 4:15. Unfortunately, she's the only woman on campus who seems to be allowed to hand out money; the three other dudes in the office just collect money. Go figure.

The next day we spent two hours at the big post office mailing summer clothes and other random stuff up to Harbin so we wouldn't have to deal with it on the plane. If there's one thing to be learned about dealing with China Post, it's that you should always be persistent; these women went through all our crap, telling us "no, you can't send this" every time they fished something out of a bag or a box. They were perplexed by the deodorant and tampons, and luckily for us, all of the other patrons got to look at our "crazy foreigner stuff" on display. Yippee! They tried to tell Rory he couldn't mail his keyboard, and finally they got someone on the phone to speak to Rory in English. Rory had to explain what deodorant is and why he didn't care if his keyboard was insured or not. Then the big problem was that we didn't have our new address in Han zi (Chinese characters). So that was fun, too. Ultimately we mailed everything we walked in with, though. So there, China Post.

The next day it was back to the finance office, where we were told to meet the finance lady again; she also happens to be the wife of school's owner, and she's the sister of the evil, bitchy human resource woman. This time we waited for an hour and a half. An older man kept us company, though, and we were able to hold our own in conversation. Well, Rory was, anyway. My least favorite thing about being in China is the fact that no one listens to me. I have a hunch that it is because I'm a woman, but it makes me quite angry. I would say something and get absolutely no response from the old man. Two seconds later, Rory would repeat what I said, and the old man acted like it was the most intelligent thing he'd ever heard. And we were saying it the same way.

The exact same thing happened the next day at western union. I've sent money home every month that I've been here, and even though it's always a pain in the ass, things usually get communicated correctly, and magically the money gets wired back home. So I was talking to the woman and showing her my receipt for the month before, telling her that everything was the same except the dollar amount. She was a little thrown off by my dad's account number versus the bank's routing number. I told her that either would work fine, and even though she was completely competent, one of the other bank tellers came over to create a big problem. She grabbed the western union forms and started speaking Chinese really quickly, pointing at the two numbers, asking me "do you understand? Do you understand this?". I told her again that it didn't matter, but she was convinced that I didn't understand what she was saying. I showed her the previous two months' receipts (one using my dad's account number and the other the routing number). I kept telling her I understood and that it didn't matter. She started laughing at me and then looked over my shoulder to Rory, like he could magically fix everything. I told her--and this is all in Chinese, by the way--"don't look at him. I understand you when you speak. The numbers don't matter." Rory, fully aware that this is by far my biggest issue in China, went and sat down. The woman gave up, and I went back to dealing with the original teller. The upside of the whole experience, though, was the knowledge that that was the last time we would ever have to deal with western union in Weihai. Thank god.

Our final evening in Weihai was nothing special. We ate at a hotpot restaurant by the beach, and afterwards we walked down to look at the water one last time before leaving. As we were walking up the 225 stairs at Daguanghua, we rejoiced because we knew we'd never have to walk those stairs again. We spent an hour in Rebecca's room with her and her daughter, Rose. Rose is one of my favorite little people. We went and surprise visited her at her school, and she was so shy around her classmates. But in Rebecca's dorm room, Rose was quite the little ham, the complete opposite of Rebecca, who always seems shy and mild-mannered. I have some good videos and photos from that night.

Rebecca insisted that she see us off in the morning, even though we had arranged a van on our own to pick us up at 6:30. Everyone seemed shocked that we were able to do such a crucial task on our own, but after living out in the middle of nowhere for damn near a year, we can pretty much hold our own when it comes to things like that. Next morning, bright and early, we hopped in the van, loaded up with all our crap (that everyone seemed convinced would never make it on the plane), and headed out the campus gates, away from Zhangcun and down the Yanwei expressway. I didn't feel sad about leaving the school. Perhaps a little sad about leaving Weihai, but I knew that things were just going to be easier in Harbin, eight times larger than our little coastal town.

Chinese hookers ain't free

2007-12-19T23:09:00.000-08:00

We've been holed up in our room a little more than usual lately. We had a big holiday performance, so we had been making all kinds of (time-consuming)props. Meals are free, and they taste like it. Also the cold weather--coupled with our location out in the middle of nowhere--make it easier to stay inside. One Tuesday night, we decided we needed a break from school, so we headed out of Zhangcun to a cleaner area of town with good cheap barbecue, a cool atmosphere and a friendly waiter who speaks a marginal amount of English.

Though we certainly get stared at more in our neck of the woods, this restaurant still provided an audience. I always wonder when and if people will ever stop staring at us, but I always realize that it probably won't happen here in Weihai. Maybe in Harbin, because it's bigger. Anyway, this particular evening was no different. Though we were in a relatively secluded booth, we could still feel people watching us eat and drink and interact, with an occasional, "hello" muttered for good measure.

One "hello" was a little louder than the others, so we looked to see where it came from. There was a man in the corner, holding up his glass of beer to cheers us. So we cheers from across the room. He seemed happy with that and beckoned Rory over to "chat." Rory joined two men who were obviously accompanied by some paid ladies.
I stayed at our table; I didn't feel much like engaging with strangers, and I was sort of obsessed with the soup we were eating.

Ultimately, though, I joined them at the table. It was a good way to practice Chinese, anyway. So we were sitting with them--neglecting the awesome soup--both loving and hating the incredible awkwardness of it all. The two men explained that they were police officers; and when we told them that we worked at Daguanghua, one of them said that his wife was an opera teacher at the school. He even called her on the phone, but kept getting disconnected.

When we were all finished, I went to the counter to pay, and the cashiers (who know us by now) made sure that I just wanted to pay for Rory and myself. No problem. I didn't want to pay for our new "friends", and that was understood. The new acquaintances asked us if we were down with an hour of ktv (karaoke). We kept telling them no, that we had class the next morning at 8:00, but they persisted, so we said okay. Our line of thinking was that a)we didn't want to offend police officers, and b)we didn't want the man to tell his wife that she works with a bunch of rude foreigners.

We walked up the street to a neon ktv place. The sidewalk sign had Korean and Chinese writing, and we read that it was a Korean style room salon. Room salons are bars or ktv places that involve "the company of women." Whatever that actually means. Anyway, we walked in, and as the new people were walking ahead of us, we made it very clear to all of the waiters and employees that we didn't really know what we were doing there.

Once we were in the private karaoke room--which isn't strange in China; you don't just sing in front of a bunch of strangers--Rory left to go to the bathroom. It was me, the two dudes and one lady. Suddenly the door opened up, and a line of women came in to stand in front of us. It reminded me of Enter the Dragon, when all the fighters are "treated" to women each evening. The black dude with the awesome afro ends up picking 5 women or something like that. Anyway, I thought it was really funny. By the time Rory got back from the bathroom, we were plus one person, and one of the police officers was trying to get the paid lady to sit between Rory and me. We had made it very clear from the beginning that we were a)married and b)not interested in a paid lady. We sang a couple of songs, and after seeing one of these old policemen making out with one young chicks' shoulder, we decided we needed to scram.

We said thank you for the time, but we had early classes, and we walked out. As we were leaving the building, the people at the counter/cash register stopped us to tell us to pay. We told them that we weren't paying because the other men were paying. That's part of a custom in China. If you invite someone out to dinner or drinking or to ktv or to your party, you pay for them. It's actually not a bad idea.

Also, at the restaurant before ktv, the staff at least had the common sense to ask if we were paying for just ourselves or the whole group. I expected at least that at ktv, because we had made it clear that we were sort of talked into doing this thing we didn't really want to do. As we were explaining that we had a problem with paying the entire 250 rmb tab, we saw the policemen coming down the stairs. We thought "great, now everything can get figured out." But as soon as they saw us talking to the folks at the counter, they took off running. They bolted out the door and left us standing there, responsible for the tab. Turns out they weren't police officers, and the wife's name homeboy had given us was actually the hr bitch at our school. She's single, and I don't think anyone would ever marry her. We'd been duped!

We tried to reason with the ktv folks, but they just wanted to get paid. We questioned why they would just let the two Chinese men leave as we were explaining that we had a problem with them. We accused them of treating us unfairly because we're foreigners (usually the case). Whatever we said didn't matter, though, because ultimately they just wanted more money.

We called our Chinese friend at the school who speaks English really well. Bill talked back and forth with the counter folks, because there was plenty being said that we still didn't understand. We got the gist of it though, and Bill confirmed our suspicions. The ktv folks weren't sympathetic, they just wanted money. We were able to talk them down to 120 rmb (we shouldn't have paid anything), we exchanged some pleasantries, and we left.

While we were outside, getting ready to flag down a taxi, a younger man from the club came running out after us. He was dressed in a cheap suit, and he obviously worked at the place in some capacity. He wanted more money. Through broken Chinese and a few more phone interactions with Bill, we realized that he was the "pimp". His rationale in getting more money was that we had been a hassle, and we'd given him a headache. We couldn't believe it. We tried to walk away, reminding him that his boss had accepted our money and we were good to go. More shirt pulling, though not nearly as aggressive as the asshole couple on the beach. He seemed more like a whiny kid than someone who could actually do harm.

He wanted 50 rmb for the ladies. We refused, telling him that we had no problem paying for beer we didn't drink and ktv songs we didn't sing, but there was no way in hell we were paying for someone else's hooker. It was so stupid for him to even suggest that we pay, because in China, hookers are pretty much strictly for men. Usually married men who go to ktv. The fact that I was a wife and even in the picture at all should have signalled something to this dude, or clued him in to how ridiculous the notion was. He wouldn't let us leave, instead asking if we wanted him to call the police. I think he thought that that would scare us into paying more money, but instead we said "bring it on."

It's at this point that I should mention that prostitution (like pirated dvds and I'm sure many other things) is illegal in China. It's just that people sort of turn their heads the other way. But for a Chinese pimp to call the cops intent on getting money for two hookers seemed pretty stupid. The cops showed up, and it took a little bit of time trying to explain everything that was going on. Once we conveyed that we had already paid for the karaoke portion of the evening, though, there was a collective "ohh". The cops understood what we were saying, and the pimp didn't dispute any of it. It was really funny, because the cops just looked at the pimp and laughed, encouraging us all to just work it out amongst ourselves. The policemen hopped in their van and took off, leaving just the three of us to try to work something out.

When the police left, we realized that was our ticket out of there. The pimp was asking us for 50 rmb, then "less than 50 rmb". We realized that if the pimp had any authority to get money from us, he would have done it with the police there. We flagged down a taxi, hopped in and went back to Daguanghua, leaving the pimp standing there wondering what the hell had just happened. It was a nice ending, even though we had already paid 120 rmb more than we should have.

"I think we're getting scammed by a kindygartener..."

2007-12-11T18:04:00.000-08:00

Chinese kids love "Home Alone."

We were trying to decide which holiday movies would be good to show to a bunch of different age groups, and we have limited resources, namely an illegal (probably) Chinese website where we find most of our entertainment these days. As of right now, there is no "Grinch" or "Rudolph" or any of the other age-appropriate Christmas classics, but there is "Home Alone", and all of my classes have watched it, save for the one class that has a broken projector.

My second graders are the most in love with the movie, and I'm thinking it's because they're all about the same age as Kevin, their new hero. I don't think I've ever seen such a reaction from the kids before--clapping and shrieking and probably even some peed pants (I'm not joking)--they're all emotionally invested in Kevin and his hijinks. I remember seeing the movie in the theater when I was younger, but I think I would remember if the audience had reacted the way my second graders have been; and they don't even speak English or know enough Chinese characters to read the subtitles.

Plus, my theory is that any time there's a tarantula in a movie or a picture, kids go nuts. Feel free to test this.

Birthday, boondocks and school bullshit

2007-11-29T21:09:00.000-08:00

My birthday was on Tuesday. The big 29. I don't know what I was expecting. I know that on Rory's birthday, the school and important administrative folks threw him a big birthday bash; replete with a personalized cake, booze, presents and a ton of really great food. It was nice. It made both of us feel wanted here at the school. Maybe that's what I was expecting, or at least something similar.

We walked into our dining room on Tuesday, and it was the same meal we usually have. It was Rory and me, some lychee flavored juice boxes, subpar Chinese food and a cake in the corner that said "Happy Birthday" in Chinese. I know I shouldn't complain--after all, at least I got a cake--but I guess I thought that it would be a bigger deal, because we've been told on many occasions that we're the best English teachers who have ever worked at the school, and because we really do put a lot of effort into our jobs.

We didn't think too much of it, though. We still went out to dinner that night, just the two of us, and it was really nice. At least we didn't have to be entertaining for a bunch of folks with whom we can't really effectively communicate. And at Licoshan, we were the only people there, so we were catered to, and the meal was incredible. We had donkey meat dumplings, a rack of lamb, fried carrot strips, Chinese broccoli and some mushroom soup like the kind we had when Jamie visited. We couldn't indulge/imbibe too much, though--as folks are prone to do on birthdays; I'm no exception--because we had to go to Wendeng the next morning for an English exchange workshop.

I was asked to teach a lesson to a group of 4th grade Wendeng students. I asked all of the relevant preparatory questions: will powerpoint/AV stuff be available, how many students will there be, what sections of the book have they covered thus far, how long is my lesson supposed to be...? I prepared two lesson plans, because, as a wise man once said: "this is China..." I didn't want to rely solely on a powerpoint presentation and then get there only to find that they didn't have computers or projectors.

So early Wednesday morning, 5 English teachers and our primary school principal hopped in the van and we were off. We learned that our principal was good friends with the principal of the Wendeng school, and that's why the whole thing was arranged. No problem.

We had only been to Wendeng a couple of times before, because that's where the airport is; and as we were driving through the town, we realized that the airport is probably the only real reason to visit anyway. Wendeng is tiny and much less developed than Weihai proper; it was like a much larger Zhangcun (our neighborhood in Weihai that's way out in the middle of nowhere).

We pulled into the visitor parking lot, and as we got out of the van, we saw a bunch of little Chinese kids, all dressed alike in their turquoise and white track suits with yellow neckerchiefs and baseball caps. The school uniforms over here are designed to be much more comfortable than school uniforms back home. It was a public (government) school, so all the kids were marching in formation. As they walked by, Bill (our friend who is a Chinese English teacher) said "those are all your students." There were so many of them! I said "Jesus Christ", and then he told me he was just kidding. He'd been talking about The Lion King in the van, specficially the song "Be Prepared", as sung by Scar. He used this opportunity to bring up the song again. I was wondering what the hell I'd agreed to. I asked Rory if he thought I was going to have to teach in a classroom with other Chinese English teachers observing me.

We walked towards what I thought was going to be a teaching building, and as we got closer, I realized it was an auditorium. So we all walked in, and the place was packed. A mock classroom had been erected on the stage, with about fifty 4th graders sitting in desks under a banner that said "hand in hand" and a bunch of other stuff in Chinese. That's when it hit me that this was a really big deal for Wendeng and specifically, this school. We were told that Wendeng government schools had never had a foreign teacher, and that for probably 90% of the (more than 300) people in the auditorium, we were the first two foreigners they'd ever seen up close. It was a cool feeling.

Now normally--when someone thinks she will be teaching a class of (maybe) 40 students, and then she walks into an auditorium to teach 50 kids in front of 300+ onlookers--this would be a stressful, nerve-wracking experience. But not for me. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I really thrive in situations where there are a lot of people. Maybe it's the idea that I can appeal to more people, even if more people also think I'm a jackass. Or maybe it's the fact that I can just zone out and try to appeal to the kids, and as long as they're engrossed in whatever we're doing, then the teachers and parents and administration will be impressed. I don't know what it is, but I never doubt myself or freak out in these situations.

There was no powerpoint or AV to speak of, and I would have to use chalk and a chalkboard for the first time in my teaching career. I was stoked. First we had to sit through a 40 minute English lesson given by a Chinese English teacher. It gave me 40 more minutes to try to cater my lesson plan to both the students and the audience. It also gave us more of an idea of how a Chinese English classroom works. We've worked at Daguanghua for 9 months now, and we've never been into a Chinese teacher's classroom, though Chinese teachers and parents have certainly observed our classes on many occasions.

It was fairly obvious that the Chinese English teacher had practiced this particular "routine" or "performance" over and over again with these students. And I'm not going to say that she did a bad job, it was just so different from a Western teaching approach. The unit she was focusing on was "What do you like?", which is all about food and how to ask for things in a restaurant. She would have the kids stand up in pairs and repeat things like "I like milk" or "I like chicken", so there was very little opportunity for the students to speak individually at all. And when she did her restaurant dialogue, she was the waitress. And her pronunciation was all off. She kept saying "I like cock" instead of "I like Coke." Rory, me, Bill and Wendy (Bill's wife and our friend) were all cracking up. I mean, Bill and Wendy are Chinese, and they still know what cock is. And she said "fish" like "faysh" and "milk" like "mee-ulk". The kids responded well to her, but the technique was exactly like I had always imagined in a Chinese classroom--very little creativity or independence and a whole lotta repetition in pairs or as an entire class. Plus, her restaurant "game" involved her intermittently whispering and yelling "restaurant". If she whispered, then the kids had to yell "restaurant" back. If she yelled it, then they had to be silent. Sort of like a less fun "Simon says."

When I walked onstage, Bill came with to introduce me in Chinese. As soon as he said that I was American, the whole auditorium went "Oh!" We took turns talking about my experience (in English and then in Chinese), and every time Bill would finish saying anything, the audience would gasp again. It was so...flattering? I don't know if that's the word I'm looking for. But if you are ever doubting your self worth (which I wasn't), go stand in front of a bunch of little Chinese kids, because they'll love you just for being different. It gets complicated when they grow up, but when they're little, the stares and pointing are innocent, and it's always fun to just indulge them.

I started my lesson and was sort of off in my own little world, paying little attention to the parents and important Chinese people watching my every move. I was encouraging, I made a lot of them talk individually, I showed them how to position their tongues against their teeth so they'd say "thank you" and "something" instead of "sank you" and "somesing", I joked around with them, I taught them some new words...all in all, it went about as well as it could have gone. I utilized some tried and true techniques that I have found to be effective in my classs, and it all went over really well.

We left to go to the actual "workshop" part of the day, held in an administrative building nearby. Not only were we surrounded by Chinese English teachers from this government school, but from all the schools in Wendeng. The idea was that they were going to ask us questions about our teaching styles, but mostly they were nervous and intimidated, so they just sat there and kind of stared at us. Finally, the head English teacher in Wendeng piped up. She had been teaching English for 20 years, and her English was great. Really great. And she was friendly on top of it. She asked us questions about our styles, and was really intrigued by the fact that I was so encouraging even when the kids didn't pronounce words correctly. Really, she was intrigued by everything about us.

It really only took one question for Rory and me to talk at length about all the different ways we think teachers can successfully implement Western teaching methods--like creativity, communication and independence--into the Chinese classroom. They all liked (were amused by the fact) that I threw humor into the lesson (like the "th" thing, when I pretended that I was spitting all over the kids), and they liked the idea of a classroom where the students do most of the talking.

The head teacher asked why I didn't spend more time drilling the kids on new words, instead having them read entire sentences and dialogues (in pairs) with some of the words missing. I explained that all of the words written on the board were words they know already (I know, because we all use the same textbook), and I have faith in the students' abilities to successfully string the words together to make different sentences, filling in the blanks with other foods and drinks that aren't in their book.

I mentioned an instance during the lesson when one particular little girl told me that she liked "ice cream and french fries" (both aren't in the book for this lesson), and I made sure she got the praise she deserved (in front of everyone) for thinking outside the Chinese book. The head teacher was all ears, and after we finished talking, she summarized what we said in English and in Chinese. All of the teachers were quite receptive, but still silent. There's plenty more that I could go on and on about, but I know I'm rambling already. But my ideal job would be to teach and to do workshops like this everyday, and then edit papers and stories at night.

After eating hotpot with our posse and the Wendeng higher ups, we got back in the van to head back to Daguanghua. Later that night, Bill and Wendy came up to our room to give me some earrings for my birthday. They stayed in our room talking with us for a long time. It was nice. We expressed our frustrations with the school, not just about the birthday thing, but about the air of indifference we've been getting from folks at school now that everyone knows we're not re-signing for another yearlong contract with them. Bill and Wendy shared a Chinese idiom with us, something along the lines of "tea is hot when you are staying, and cold when you are leaving..." It made perfect sense, not in any rationale way, but in terms of how we feel people treat us at the school these days, it seemed to fit.

Talking to Rebecca last night, I mentioned the idiom, and she said it was exactly as we feared. She said the important people at school weren't satisfied with the reasons we weren't signing with them again. It's so stupid. We aren't staying with Daguanghua because they refused to change anything about the contract. We didn't require a pay raise, we didn't ask for an apartment, we didn't ask for less work or more vacation. We only asked that they put all of their verbal promises in writing. And they refused to do it, which leads us to believe that if we did decide to stay, the school would try to find some way to screw us over anyway, regardless of the fact that we're the first teachers who have stayed here longer than 6 months. Maybe they're just annoyed because we're not stupid enough to think that a verbal contract is as valid as a written one, even though it's explicitly stated (in English) in our contracts.

So the whole Wendeng and birthday experience is pretty bittersweet. I like doing workshops, but it seems all for naught these days with our school. Really wish there was an incentive to stay here. At the same time, though, I can't wait to get the hell out of here. I want to work at a school where the focus is English and our bosses speak English. Harbin, here we come.

Beijing--Part III

2007-11-09T19:19:00.001-08:00

The next day we slept in. It was nice. It was still gross and rainy outside, and I was still feeling pretty crappy, so we decided to make it a low-key kind of day, with no temples or walls or tourist-y things. We wanted to make sure we got our bus tickets ahead of time, so we headed across town to the bus station.

It was really funny to be in the bus station. Everywhere you look in China, you see the Olympics logo, and especially in Beijing, there is a lot of talk about preparing for the Olympics. So many foreigners will be here, and they'll probably want to travel within China. Not all foreigners will want to fly to their destinations. Perhaps they'll want to take buses. I only mention this because there wasn't a single word of English in the bus station. There isn't at the bus station in Weihai, but we were in freaking Beijing. The capital. We couldn't believe it. And we already get stared out on a daily basis (though not so much in Beijing, honestly), but the fact that we were in the bus station at all was completely unbelievable to most of the folks who were waiting, or mopping the floor, or selling us tickets. We were complete freaks.

On the taxi drive to the bus station, we had passed a gigantic pizza restaurant called "Pizza Factory". After buying our bus tickets, we decided to head back in that direction. We had written the street down on our map and had a good idea of where it was--a straight shot, really. When we hopped in the taxi to try to find it again, we had a cabbie who was unwilling to try to understand us (speaking Chinese)even the littlest bit. It's really funny--somedays we'll have entire conversations in the taxi, where the driver is eager to speak and really goes out of his way to figure out what we're saying. This particular day, though, he tried to tell us that this street we wanted had no restaurants. None at all. So we just showed him the name card for our hotel, knowing that if he just took us back in that direction we would inevitably drive past it. We did. We told him to stop, and he said (in Chinese): "this isn't your hotel." Like, we know, jerk. It's the restaurant you said didn't exist on this street. We've gotten better about being assertive with our Chinese, though, and I think we really starting perfecting it in Beijing.

The pizza restaurant was like any other pizza joint. We sat upstairs and had a nice view, the service was slow, they served every individual item on a tray. I wouldn't have minded if the waitress had just handed me some tobasco and cheese from the next table; but no, she had to run over and get the tray and make a grand presentation out of it. Fine dining.

The best part about this place, though, was the salad bar. According to the menu, one could only visit the salad bar once; knowing this, one had to make the most discriminating of choices when assembling the salad. At the table next to us, two tiny Chinese ladies debated what they should order. They decided they'd share a salad and a small pizza. Fair enough. It was the duty of one of the ladies to make the salad and the other to just wait. I have never seen such an architecturally sound masterpiece. The salad builder had a plan of attack! She lined the entire inner perimeter of the bowl with carrot sticks, thus creating even more bowl!

Then she proceeded to create layer after layer of fruits, a whole lot of thousand island dressing, vegetables, nuts, pineapple rings that she dangled off of the carrot sticks, you name it. And in the span of time it took her to create her salad, four other salad lovers came and went (they employed similar tactics), her pizza came to her table and we had finished half of our meal. And this was on top of really slow service. We weren't the only people who were entertained, either. Most of our side of the restaurant was watching her, wondering when she would ever stop. I think she and her friend were both a little embarassed and impressed. There's no way they came close to finishing (even half of) the salad.

Post lunch, Rory went back to the hotel, and I walked around our area a little bit to check out some reasonably priced silk and handmade stuff. It was nice. I broke a wooden fish in a handicraft store, but she didn't make me pay for it, and I was sort of shocked. I broke a toothpick holder once at a restaurant, and they made me pay for that. I'm a klutz. And I was a klutz with a giant purse and a bag of silk, so even better.

I wasn't feeling the best, so we called it a relatively early evening. Ate McDonalds again and went to 31 to see the rest of the band. Luckily for us, the drunk university kids weren't there again that night. They were probably still hungover from the day before. Even though the full band was performing that night, something about it was less impressive to me. I liked it better when the two guys performed by themselves the first 3 nights we saw them. It was very soothing. But once the lead guitarist/lead vocalist/person for whom the band was named showed up, it suddenly was less soothing. Less intimate. Still very good, but the fact that I was all snotty didn't really help, either.

Next day was leaving day. We had some time to kill before our bus left, and we didn't have any plans other than to eat some more duck at a much cheaper restaurant down the road from our hotel. We walked in, the place was clean enough (though there was no bathroom), and we ordered some duck. It tasted just as good as at the restaurant where it cost 3.5 times as much for it. Let that be a lesson for those who go to Beijing and want Peking duck. It's good no matter where you eat it. I mean, it tastes pretty much the same--it's roasted duck. Even here in Weihai, at the roasted duck restaurant, it tastes the same. Delicious.

We didn't want to do anything too big or that we might not have enough time to fully enjoy, so we opted for Beihai park. We learned in Qingdao that if a park is important enough to put on a tourist map, it's probably worth checking out. It was cheap, and it was close to Houhai park, so it was already in a neighborhood with which we were familiar. The park turned out to be a real highlight of the trip. It was gorgeous, there weren't tons of people there, we didn't feel like we were getting stared at left and right; it was so sprawling, too, and we ended up spending several hours there. We even got to ride on a ferry that looked like a dragon. Pretty cool.

The park was full of different pavilions and pagodas and dagobas. Real highlights, though (and Rory has video footage of this somewhere) were the clusters of (mostly) old people gathered in the pavilions, playing instruments and singing songs at the top of their lungs. Chinese jam sessions aren't too uncommon in parks (we've learned), but it's always a pleasant surprise to just sort of stumble upon them. Especially if the first song you hear is a familiar one, like "Silent Night." There's something really sweet and cute about hearing Chinese folks singing "Silent Night" in four part harmony.

We left Beihai and headed back to the hotel (to pick up our backpacks) and off to the bus station. I had no more memory left on my camera, I was cranky, and I was in no way prepared for another overnight bus ride back to Weihai. As we were sitting in the bus station, I remembered the day before, when we had distinctly asked the ticket lady for two tickets together. Sure, in America, separate us on a trip for a little while, and it's no big deal. We speak English, we can handle it, we can reasonably ask someone to move if we need to. And most of the time, people will be understanding. But in China, for 13 hours, surrounded by a bunch of people who stare, it's a lot harder. Upon closer inspection of the tickets, we realized that they didn't look anything like they were together. 28 and 13 or something. Before we actually got on the bus, I told Rory to be prepared for me to throw a fit.

And I did. I threw a big fit the second we got on the bus, telling the attendant (in Chinese) "yesterday she said we had two tickets together. We need to sleep together. We are the only Americans on the bus, the only English speakers on the bus." The lady just smiled and nodded, like it was going to be no problem to put us together. She shuffled us further to the middle of the bus and pointed to a top bunk bed. I assumed this meant we would have this bunk, top and bottom. So we started putting our stuff down and getting settled in. Then the woman tried to tell me that I was in the back of the bus. I didn't move. I just said over and over "I don't want. We don't speak Chinese. We're the two people on the bus who speak English..." blah blah blah. She still didn't quite understand. That's when I pulled the bratty, little kid temper tantrum move. I sort of threw my hands in the air and let out this big, pissed off sigh. At this point, folks were looking, not really understanding what was going on, but the fact that other passengers had been disrupted at all made the lady spring into action, promptly freeing up two top bunks in the back by the bathroom. Fine. Thank you very much.

This bus was significantly less comfortable than the one from Weihai to Beijing. I thought back to our Weihai departure--our nice send off from the friendly guard--and then the Beijing departure. Night and day, I tell you. It was raining and I'd just made a complete jackass of myself. But at least I was next to Rory and not some dude who smelled like garlic, cigarettes and motor oil. Oh wait, he was sleeping underneath us. He was an old guy who was in charge of the luggage underneath the bus. You could tell he didn't like foreigners. Rory got that impression from him even before we got on the bus and I threw my bitch fit. But once he was underneath us, he was such a jerk, giving us that "there's too much white on this bus" glare. He even got up and reached over my head/my bed to turn off the fan that I had blowing on my face. Never mind the fact that I was sweating and he was down there in just his wife beater and dress pants, surrounded by extra blankets (enough for the whole bus). Julie angry! But I didn't say anything--didn't want to add more to my reputation.

For a few hours after departing Beijing (wonderful Beijing!), I cried and cried. It wasn't because I was sad to leave the city, it was just the first time I've been homesick at all. I was acutely aware of it on this bus, trapped in some little metal bunk bed, surrounded by people who thought I was crazy cause (I'm foreign and) I wanted to be next to my husband. Luckily for us, the trip was only 10 hours this time--evidently more people want to go to Beijing than to Weihai, so there wasn't as much traffic--and when we pulled up to the Zhangcun drop off point near CCTV, the driver and everyone else on the bus were shocked that we were getting off the bus. "There's no way they live out here" they were all thinking (because most people can't believe we live in Zhangcun, which really is out in the middle of nowhere). But as we got our luggage from underneath the bus, we saw a friendly man in a parking lot (at 4:30 am) ready to give us a ride to Daguanghua (without us even having to tell him; he just knew).

It restored my faith in China a litte bit, to have someone there, in a sense waiting for us. I was back in my Zhangcun comfort zone, even if that meant pulling into Daguanghua and walking up 225 steps to a tiny little dorm room.

Beijing--Part II

2007-10-24T04:28:00.000-07:00

Next day started bright and early. This was the wall day, and it was part of a tour package offered by our hotel, with an English-speaking guide and everything. Easy. Frank showed up in our hotel lobby and ushered us into a van, where we joined a Chinese family and a posse of four older Scottish ladies (two sisters and their daughters). It took about an hour for us to get to the wall; traffic was killer, but somehow not as bad as I expected it to be. While en route, Frank gave a mini Chinese history lesson, detailing a few different places to visit in China to get an accurate picture of Chinese history.

When we arrived at the wall and were unloading out of the van, Rory and I both noticed something strange. Two of the four Scottish women couldn't quite walk. One of them had a cane, and the other one had an ankle wrap on. They had difficulty just getting out of the van, and as we looked up at the side of the mountain we were about to traverse, we all sort of knew these ladies weren't going anywhere. The women started asking Frank about the cable cars, telling him that they had explicitly asked for a tour that involved cable cars so the two women would be able to actually be on the wall. Frank misunderstood what they were saying, so he said that there were no cable cars. What he meant was that we weren't at the spot that had cable cars, but it came across like he was saying that there weren't cable cars at the wall at all. This didn't make the Scots happy at all, so we were all standing around watching them awkwardly gang up on Frank. And they were completely right, even though it wasn't Frank's fault. But they had a point--they had come a really long distance only to be told that they probably wouldn't get to go up on the wall.

I wanted to satisfy all parties involved. I got out my Beijing tourist map and showed Frank and the ladies that there is a picture of cable cars at the wall, and that's why the ladies were so incensed. We talked about it a little more and decided to hop back in the van and go to the spot where there were cable cars, even though we would all have to pay a little more to take the cars. Fine. Whatever. As long as we all got to be on the wall, I didn't care. When we left one parking lot and approached the other, we could see that damn near everyone in China decided they wanted to take the cable cars, too. Buses were lined up for more than 10 km, and passengers were abandoning ship to walk to the entrance. So grandparents and little kids were walking up the long, winding hill (for 10 km) just to get to the wall to hike some more. The Scots weren't happy about this, either, and again, I totally understood.

But I guess at this point I also started thinking--"wow, this is time that we could be spending hiking up the wall...". I also felt bad for the Chinese family on the tour. I'm not really sure why they opted for the "English tour" since none of them spoke English, but they were really confused and annoyed by the whole cable car misunderstanding. And I think that the ladies should have been a little more understanding. They couldn't believe that buses were just stopped on the side of the road, sans passengers. But it's like--a)we're in freaking China--anything goes! And b)it's one of the biggest holidays of the year. What did you freaking expect? So there was more Frank assualt and angry phone calls, and finally I suggested that we just have a rendezvous time, with the physically capable folks going back to the first spot and the crippled couple trying their luck with the cable cars. Frank didn't seem to think this would work, but then I reminded him that adults are able to handle situations like this (and it was his job to keep everyone happy). So finally, after wasting about an hour of our wall climbing time fighting a battle for some chicks I'll never see again, we went back to the first spot. We had an hour and a half to walk up to a certain point, turn around and walk back.

The wall was even more incredible than I thought it would be. I remember when we went to Mt. Taishan--I had prepared myself for the mountain, but not for the people. This time around, I did just the opposite--I thought the wall meant "peoplepeoplepeople"--so when we actually got our first glimpse of it, even though it was packed, it was just amazing. Almost like a surprise. A surprise that you can see from space...

As soon as we could ditch the Scottish ladies, we did; Frank led us up to a certain point (where it started to get steep) and then bailed. It was nice to not have someone holding our hands the entire time. That would have been impossible anyway--it was so packed! Shoulder to shoulder with a steady stream of people coming and going. I guess to some degree that was nice, because it created a pretty good flow. There was no pressure to walk any faster than the person in front of you. At one point, the stairs stopped altogether, and the path became these big, thick logs that had been drilled into the ground. It was steep, but somehow there were still really old people climbing it in trousers and dress shirts, as well as a fair share of parents carrying their little ones. I don't know how they do it. I was worried about dropping my camera, and there they were, piggybacking fragile little kids.

After our allotted hour and a half, we met Frank to go to the next part of the tour. We got back in the van, and there were the two (marginally)crippled ladies. They never got to get on the wall. I felt really bad for them; it seems like such a tease to take people to the base of the freaking Great Wall, only to tell them, "Take a good look, cause that's all you're getting to see..." They didn't seem as frustrated by it anymore, so we took off to the next locale without too many complaints.

Initially we thought we were just going to the wall, the Ming tombs and lunch. But first we were stopping at a jade factory. Okay, it sounded cool enough. Then we walked in. There were more foreigners at this particular place than there are in all of Weihai; each of them getting the same spiel from some Chinese person who spoke a moderate amount of English. We walked past women slaving away over these little jade pieces, foreigners snapping pictures through the glass. I felt weird being there with all these other folks who probably didn't know much Chinese. I'm not saying I know a whole lot of Chinese, but I know enough to realize when I've been duped into participating in a tour designed for (rich) foreign suckers.

This realization became even more obvious when we entered the gift shop part of the factory. There were rows and rows of elaborate jade and jadeite pieces that went for more than twice as much as they should have. At this point I was thinking "boy, I wish I was still walking on the wall, without Frank and the Scottish ladies..." I think that Frank was even nervous about us saying something to the Scottish ladies about the prices of things, like we were going to ruin their tour. We didn't say much--we didn't want to seem like know-it-alls, but you could tell a little later that Frank empathized with us. Once all the foreigners were "released" into the gift shop, Rory and I snuck away to the rendezvous point and drank some beer.

Our next stop was lunch. As we pulled up to the restaurant, we saw about 100 other vans and tour buses in the parking lot. "Here we go again," we thought. We walked in and sat down at our respective tables; this was funny, because Frank opted to sit at a separate table with the Chinese family, rather than integrating with us foreigners. The lunch was standard "Western version of Chinese food" Chinese fare. We had hot and sour soup and a lot of random fried things. It was okay, but it wasn't an accurate example of a Chinese meal. I don't know what I was expecting at this point, but still... The whole restaurant was full of foreigners, many of them the same ones we had seen at the last jade place. Once we were all finished eating, we were released into another gift shop area, where the prices for the same factory jade pieces were considerably cheaper. Once the Scottish chicks caught onto this, they were a little annoyed, but happy that they hadn't purchased anything at the previous locale.

I saw a cheaply made fish kite on the wall, and just for curiousity's sake, I wanted to see how much it cost. While we were in Weifang--China's kite capital (near Changyi, where we visited Mayor Ma)--Rory and I visited a kite shop and bought three really impressive and well-crafted kites for 150 rmb. Of course, it probably helped that we were with a freaking mayor... The cheap kite at the restaurant gift shop was marked 280 rmb. I couldn't believe it! There were also signs all over the store that read: "This is a government friendship store. All prices are reasonable. No bargaining." I understand that the folks want to make a buck, I just wished I was on a different tour.

Next stop was the Ming Tombs, which were a lot less impressive than we thought they were going to be. Of course, at this point we realized how much of our day was being wasted by folks trying to get our money, and we really wanted to just ditch the tour. Couldn't do that, though, so we suffered through four more hours of the same crap. We stopped at a tea shop (full of foreigners and overpriced tea) and a silk factory (full of foreigners and overpriced silk goods), before heading back to our hotel. We did get to drive near the Olympic stadium and village that are still being erected, and we all wondered out loud to Frank if Beijing was actually going to be ready for the Olympics next year. He seemed to think it would be no problem, but the lack of progress, coupled with English skills that most Beijingers seemed to lack, indicated otherwise. We shall see.

Once we were dropped off at our hotel, it was close to 6:00, and it was hard to believe we had been to the Great Wall earlier in the day. But that's what pictures and videos are for. We certainly learned a lesson, too: if you think that there's any way you can do something on your own, you probably can. We could have figured out how to get on a public bus to head out to the wall and spent as much time there as we wanted. Next time! But we definitely weren't signing up for the Tiananmen tour we'd been eyeing at our hotel.

Ate McDonald's again for dinner (part of our budget included lots of cheap McDonald's meals; it's tactical, really...) before we decided to clean up and head back to Houhai and 31. The waitstaff, boss and band were happy to see us again, and we spent another relaxing night there, listening to music and sipping whiskey.

On our way back to find a taxi, we passed by a bar that was playing "In the name of Love" by U2 really loudly. The sign outside also boasted a "fucking good mojito", so we thought we owed it to ourselves to check it out. We sucked down a proper mojito and headed back to the hotel.

Bright and early the next day (after McDonald's breakfast and coffee), we hopped in a taxi and said "Tiananmen". Piece of cake. We were dropped off amongst a swarm of people. We saw the famous Mao portrait, and we started walking with everyone else to the entrance.

Though there were so many freaking people visiting the palace museum, it wasn't nearly as crowded as the wall, simply because it was so spread out. The size of this place was so impressive. We sort of figured out that in China, people don't screw around when they want to make something big or elaborate--they do it right!

While people were waiting in a long line to get entrance tickets, there were scalpers walking up and down and in and out of the people, selling day-old tickets, telling people they didn't need to wait in line. We didn't think anyone would fall for it, but after we had purchased our tickets and were walking through the palace entrance, we watched as the four college-aged Chinese guys in front of us were detained for having phony tickets. If I can avoid being detained in China, great.

The architecture was probably the most fascinating part of the palace for me. That and the sheer size of it. We were glad that we had already been to Qufu to visit Confucious' temple, because compared to Tiananmen, it was like a Texaco versus a Super Wal-Mart. There were so many children, too. It seemed like they were all climbing on statues, next to very explicit signs that read "No climbing" in Chinese and English. But I guess if it makes a good photo opportunity, go for it... Before we left, we tried to climb up in the gate, to take a picture of the entire palace, but the security was too tight for my liking; they wanted us to check our bags and purchases, they wanted to pat us down, etc. There was no way I was checking our stuff at a public place in China, so I told Rory to just go up without me--I'd hold onto all the stuff and he could just take a camera. But he was stopped. No pictures allowed. Fair enough.

After a quick pit stop at the hotel to drop off all our goodies, we headed over to an area of town called "Soho" in an effort to eat at a German restaurant we had read about on our map. The prospect of eating bratwurst and sauerkraut was really exciting. When we got to this Soho area, however, it was really difficult to navigate our way around. A lot of the buildings were empty, and once we actually found the restaurant, the atmosphere wasn't distinctly German or cozy. Plus, it was really expensive. We hopped back into another cab and tried to go back to the pizza place. On our way, though, we passed a Texas BBQ place and a Mexican restaurant. We opted for the Mexican Wave restaurant. We had frozen margaritas and chimichangas and nachos, and it was incredible! You don't realize what you're missing until you're teased by one Mexican meal. It was really good. While we were there, it started to rain, and we were very thankful that we had already visited the two big spots we wanted to see.

It was a pretty late lunch, so we headed back to take a catnap and to clean up before wandering around to find dinner. We settled on a hotpot place (after realizing we were on a street full of hotpot restaurants). The hotpot was subpar. They told us they had carrots, and then they didn't. Maybe this doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's a real selling point for me with the hotpot restaurants. It determines which places we go to. Anyway. My carrot issue wasn't nearly as bad as Rory's eye issue. Somehow, his super spicy side of the pot bubbled over, and some broth jumped up underneath his glasses and into his eye. Not good. So he's sitting at the table, crying one eye out, asking for cold water, and the waiter just didn't seem to get it at all. He brought back a full glass of boiling hot water. We got the hell out of that place and headed back to 31.

I think that the rain and general change in the weather took its toll on me, and by the time we got to 31, I had a pretty rockin' case of sneezing and sniffling. So that was fun. There was also a group of maybe 7 American university students hanging out, wasted. It was somebody's birthday and someone else was upset about making out with another one (we got to hear a lot of what they were drunkenly, loudly saying); one girl was puking in the bathroom while another girl was puking over the railing across the street, into a lake. The leader of the pack decided to strike up a slurred conversation with us. He was funny. We were friendly with him, but just thinking to ourselves--"I think you need to be at a different bar." 31 is a nice, relaxing place, and it just seemed weird that these incredibly wasted folks were there.

After the kids left, one of the band members came over to talk to us. His English was great! He had taken special English classes and had a degree in horticulture. He was really friendly and soft-spoken. The other member of the band reminded me of a grown-up version of my favorite student in Korea. I couldn't stop staring at him; it was uncanny. Mufel--the one who spoke English--told us to come back the next night, when the whole band was there. We had already been to this place our three nights in town, so we told him we'd definitely see him the next night.

It was only a matter of time...

2007-10-21T02:21:00.002-07:00

Last night we were in a taxi on our way to a Korean bar near the Chinese beach. As we came upon a busy section of Shenyang Road, we noticed that traffic had slowed down a little bit. As we got closer, we saw a fairly banged up black car pulled over to the shoulder of the road, windshield busted and front (in general) pretty well smushed. Surrounding his car was the carcas of a motorbike, bits and pieces strewn everywhere. At this point the taxi driver asked us if we understood Chinese. I told him that we understood a little, and that this (pointing to the accident) was not good, and we all had a laugh.

Our taxi pulled a little to the right to pass the car in front of us, which had slowed down considerably at this point. As we inched further and further right, I looked at the ground, and there it was. First it was just a head and shoulders and a pool of blood, and then it was the rest of a Chinese man, face down in the middle of the street, his body twisted and unnatural-looking. He wasn't moving. It was real. I just started saying "Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god" over and over while trying to keep it together as we drove past. I thought I was going to puke in the back seat while Rory and the cabbie (in Chinese) were telling me "don't look don't look don't look." I couldn't believe it. I saw a dead person. And no one was helping him. He was just there in the middle of the street, by himself, and no ambulance was in sight; somehow I doubt Chinese ambulances are famed for their response times.

After that, I was just in shock--it wasn't right for me to see someone's dad face down in his own pool of blood. Dead. Probably on his way home with dinner or something. Jesus Christ.

Wear your helmets, people.

Beijing--Part I

2007-10-13T02:11:00.001-07:00

Beijing Beijing Beijing. When people think of China--us included before we actually came over here--they think of the biggies: Tiananmen, the wall, the 2008 Olympics, the people. We have had a few significant vacations allotted to us thus far at our school, and each time we have tossed out the idea of Beijing, intimidated by the prospect of going to the second largest city in China. We have heard horror stories from friends and other foreign teachers about how expensive it is and how people will try to rip you off. That kind of stuff just doesn't sound fun to us, but we also knew that we should go to Beijing sooner rather than later to avoid all of the pre-Olympics chaos. So we said "screw it"--we had a weeklong vacation and a chunk of change to burn--we were going to Beijing.

On Monday morning, we decided to head to the bus station early to get our tickets. Easier said than done. It was the first real day of the holiday, it was morning when everyone wanted to leave, and there were no taxis. Even the buses were so full that we got rejected by a few of them. That NEVER happens in China. Really. Finally, after about an hour of trying to get on buses or get in taxis, we hopped on a taxi and headed to the bus station, which is really pretty far away from us. The cabbie loved that.

When we arrived we bought our tickets to Beijing, no problem. It paid to be early. As we were getting ready to go back into town for lunch, we saw our friend, one of the bus station guards. Every time we have gone to the bus station, he has been there, ready to help us, to push us to the front of the line, to offer any and all assistance should we need it. What a friendly fellow. We take pictures with him every time we go to the station, and we need to send them to him, we just haven't gotten around to it yet. We chatted with him in broken Chinglish for a little while, and then we headed to McDonald's. We were in such a rush because we knew how hard it had been to get a taxi.

We ate McDonald's in the taxi back to Daguanghua. When we got back to the school, we ran up the stairs (all 225 of them), grabbed our bags and headed back down to catch the bus. We got there with 6 minutes to spare. We are pretty proud of our get-up-and-go abilities now. When we actually got back to the big bus station, we had three hours to kill. So we did it the best way we could think of--in the restaurant/bar attached to bus station. We parked at a table for the next 2.5 hours, nursing our beers (the waitstaff loved that), doing madlibs and killing time.

When we headed back up to the boarding/waiting area, we saw our friend again. He led us to the right bus, talked to the driver a little bit--"These are my friends. Take care of them" sort of stuff--and posed for pictures.

I was pretty excited as we got on the bus. We've slept on newspaper on the floor of a ferry, but we haven't slept on a bus full of beds. Tiny beds. Sets of bunk beds three wide and nine deep. I just liked that there wasn't any way to pretend I was going to be productive for the next 13 hours. Options included: sleeping. I had just closed my eyes and was trying to get comfortable in my bottom bunk (Rory was on top), when I felt something rustling on me. I opened my eyes, and it was the guard. He brought us a bag of rice cakes, soda and water. He wanted to make sure we had provisions on the trip. Again, what a swell guy. We want to adopt him.

The next thirteen hours weren't nearly as rough as I thought they would be. Highlights included: muddy potholes, peeing on a building in the dark with a friendly Korean lady on the bus and trying to understand a Chinese movie that had Harvey "Bad Lieutenant" Keitel in it. From what I saw, he kept his clothes on.

We rolled into Beijing around 6:00 am, hopped in a taxi, and away we went. Rory had made reservations at a youth hotel (which is really just a hotel) recommended by a friend, and we had the name card and address of the place, so there was no problem getting there. So far so good. We're always impressed when things happen like we hope they will. We don't necessarily doubt ourselves, we're just ready for adversity should it present itself. In the hotel we bought a map, and it wasn't until we were in our room that we realized just how close we were to all of the big spots (except the wall, of course).

We were hoping to just throw our bags down and hop on a bus to the wall as part of a tour. After waiting a little while, we got the call. We'd visit the wall the next day, so the first day we had on our own to kind of walk around the area and take pictures. We ate McDonald's for breakfast and took a nap for a few hours. Though the bus had beds, that didn't necessarily mean we were well-rested. After our nap we walked around the neighborhood, doing what we do best--getting lost and running into cool things. Turns out that the side street next to us was full of guitar shops and proprietors with full sleeve tattoos and long hair. Just our luck. We spent days searching for guitars in Qingdao, and in Beijing by our hotel we were surrounded by them. So now we know.

After walking around for awhile, we found ourselves walking along some side streets that revolved around a canal and a lake. It was a lot like Amsterdam--all of these little sidewalk cafes and (mostly) bars (that weren't yet open). We saw rickshaws and lilypads and all of these cool little shops selling lanterns and silk and Mao stuff. This was an area known as Houhai Park.

We took a few name cards and vowed to come back that evening for some drinks. We were actually a lot closer to our hotel than we realized. It was lunch time, so we wandered out of Houhai park, past some bleak-looking area that was under construction, to a really nice hole-in-the-wall (but really clean and upscaleish) restaurant. Our first Chinese meal in China was a) delicious and b) comparable to any prices we would pay in Weihai. Score. Plus, they were impressed with our Chinese and ability to order what we wanted. It was really good food. There was also a table with little Chinese twins next to us. These girls were climbing all over everything, opening drawers and touching anything in sight. They were so cute. Before they left, their parents were trying to pay the bill and finish their drinks. The uncle (I assume) kept giving them beer while the parents' backs were turned. It was really funny. Start em young, I guess.

Earlier, when we had been killing time in our hotel room, I made a list of some things I wanted to check out in Beijing. There was a flea market that was pointed out on the map, and I'm a sucker for things like that, so we decided to go after lunch.

This place was huge! At first we started out in an area that was specifically furniture, all of it impressive and expensive and beautiful. I think a nice way to put it is "majestic." There were entire cabinets that spanned an entire wall of a room, floor to ceiling, all carved and polished up. Gorgeous. There were also rooms full of busts and famous Chinese folks. We didn't spend too much time looking around because I was convinced I was going to knock something over.

We walked to an inside, upstairs portion of the flea market, where the vendors mostly sold old Mao paraphenalia and old Chinese things in general. It was really interesting, there weren't tons of people there, and we managed to get some good deals on Christmas presents.

Down a different stairway and out a different exit, and it was like we were in a completely different world. A world where everything I want to buy is on sale in shop after shop after shop. Earrings, scarves, paintings, silks, you name it. It was awesome. We were able to keep ourselves under control, but we spent a significant amount of time wandering around, bargaining just for the sake of bargaining. It was great.

We spent a good amount of time at the flea market, so we were hungry again. We headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up. We wanted to experience some famous Peking duck in Beijing, so we put on our good clothes and went out again. We were trying to explain to the cabbie exactly what we wanted. We wanted a duck restaurant that wasn't too expensive and wasn't super cheap. He took us to the most expensive restaurant in town. It was all lit up on the first floor of an equally impressive hotel. Generally speaking, hotel restaurants are the best and most expensive meals you can eat here in China. I mean, real hotels--hotels that most foreigners stay in. We hopped out of the taxi and walked into the restaurant on the side street next to the hotel. It also had roast duck, and I'm imagining it was significantly cheaper.

Our waiter was really funny. While we were trying to order in Chinese, he was trying to speak English, writing things down in his little English notebook he carried in his front shirt pocket. It was cute. Once we decided that we wanted Chinese broccoli--which we'd experienced for the first time at lunch and loved--he asked us how to spell broccoli. At the end of dinner we quizzed him, and he had to refer back to his notebook. It was funny. He was a good waiter. And the duck was great! They brought out this plate of sliced up duck, these little pancake/tortilla things, some sauce, cucumber and onions. You wrapped it all up and ate it like a burrito. It was really fatty, but it was so freaking good! When we (thought we) were finished eating, another waiter came over to the table with more duck. We were convinced it was someone else's order, but really they had just prepared the whole damn duck for us. We were too full to do more than pick at it.

We felt like vising Houhai park when it was at its finest--nighttime. We figured out how to get there in the taxi, and the next thing we knew, the streets were full of people and waiters trying to usher us into a particular bar. "Looky looky! Bob Marley music! Budweiser!" It was too funny. Something about a hip Chinese dude excitedly saying "Bob Marley music!" was priceless. We walked for a little while and settled on an awesome bar called "31". What is it with all these numbered bars? 7 and 2046 in Weihai and now 31 in Beijing...

We sat at an outside table across the street from the lake--it was perfect for people-watching, drinking Jameson, smoking flavored tobacco and listening to a Chinese band play really soothing music from Western China. It was great. We went to this particular bar every night we were there.

Yantai

2007-10-13T01:20:00.000-07:00

Jamie left China on a Thursday morning, and Rory and I found out Thursday evening that we didn't have to teach on Friday cause the kids were taking tests. Our weeklong vacation started on Monday, too, so we were basically being handed 10 days off, right after I'd already been off most of the week hanging out with Jamie. I'll take it!

We decided to head to Yantai. It's only an hour away from Weihai--when we flew to China, we flew into Yantai, but that's the only time we'd ever been there. I don't know what I was expecting when we went--perhaps something about as big as Weihai? I don't know. Our school is located by the Yanwei Expressway, so we headed down the street a little ways, and the first minibus we saw was going to Yantai. Okay, easy enough. For less than it costs to get downtown in a taxi, we were headed to a different city an hour away. I think we waited around for maybe 10 minutes before we left. So far so good.

As we pulled into town, we drove past a Super 8 motel that seemed to be right in the middle of everything that we wanted to do. I was struck by how much bigger this place was than Weihai. I guess, technically, it's about three times as big. Our city suddenly seemed really small, especially because such a big city is only an hour away. We checked into the hotel and then went to Pizza Hut. It was awesome, and it wasn't difficult to communicate at all. I don't even think we bought a map the whole time we were there, and that's usually the first thing we do when traveling to any city.

The best way to describe the trip to Yantai is to say that we went on a tour de different foods we can't get in Weihai. We didn't see any historic sites (don't know if there are any), but we ate at a French restaurant, a place called Jackie's that actually had cheese, some pretty subpar hotpot place and Pizza Hut. We also went to a few bars and saw more Westerners in one bar(than we care to) than there are in all of Weihai. And then we came back to Daguanghua as easily as we went.

Jamie came. She saw. She conquered.

2007-10-11T23:55:00.000-07:00

Jamie left for Korea at the beginning of October last year. Though we talk damn near everyday (via email or skype), when she finally got to come visit, we hadn't actually seen each other for almost a year. This marks the longest amount of time we've ever been apart in our 28 (almost 29) years of existence. You could say that Rory and I were excited. We went to the giant supermarket in town and loaded up on cheese(s), champagne, beer and snacks; and we actually did a pretty thorough cleaning of our room to prepare for her visit. We secured a spot for her in our dormitory--on our same floor, even!--and I arranged to only teach about 6 hours the entire week she was here. We also made a funny sign to hold up at the airport, because there was no chance in hell that anyone would understand it. The final two days before she arrived became a countdown of hours, and there was no way to predict how I was going to act once I actually got to see her.

Rory and I arrived at the airport with an hour and a half to kill; the airport was actually about 45 minutes away in Wendeng, but it was a cheap shuttle ride from a downtown hotel. We had a little time to kill, but there was nothing to really do at this tiny airport out in the middle of nowhere, so we drank a few beers, got stared at and did madlibs (an amazing investment, even though they're way too hard for any of our esl students).

It was raining a little bit, but that didn't delay any of the flights at all. Initially we were a little worried about the weather conditions, considering there were typhoons in Southern China and in S.K., but for the most part weather was great. Finally Jamie's flight came in, and seeing her walking amongst all of these short, (mostly) Korean men was really surreal. We hugged, and it was an emotional moment, but I tried to hold it together, because there was so much we had to talk about. We hopped back on the shuttle bus to ride back to Weihai, showing each other phones and cameras and purses and catching up on everything. It didn't really feel like a year had passed.

We hopped off the bus a little before downtown to try to get a taxi back to Daguanghua, which has proved relatively difficult when it's raining (waited for an hour once), but this time we didn't wait long at all. Headed back to the room so she could unload her stuff and we could work out dinner plans. We drank some beers while waiting for Rebecca to call--she wanted to treat us to hotpot, because Sunday night was her only free night, and she really wanted to meet Jamie. At the hotpot place--"The Little Sheep"--we drank champagne and showed Jamie a proper Chinese meal. You can't go wrong with hotpot.

We called it an early night and went back to the room to watch funny stuff on the computer. It was great. The next day we had dedicated entirely to shopping.

Monday morning, after a brief run-through of the neighborhood market, we headed downtown to get fitted for some custom-made silk garments. I think that one of the first words I learned in China was the word for tailor, because I knew I would be getting clothes made at some point. Jamie opted for a standard Chinese dress that she will actually wear, and I opted for a floor-length robe that will probably be framed and put on a wall when I get back to the States. It's gorgeous, but it's not really a practical item of clothing.

We did a lot of shopping--everything's so cheap!--and went back to meet Rory for our dinner date. We eat at a neighborhood barbecue restaurant fairly often, and they were anxiously awaiting Jamie's arrival. They were even making a special menu for us. Even though we had eaten hotpot the night before--and it's legit Chinese food--we wanted to show Jamie the dirtiest locale we eat at, and really it's the only sketch place we go to anymore (since the food poisoning). We would stop going to this place, except that it has the best barbecue in town, and the people there love us. It's a shame that their bathroom is just a drain on the floor.

When in China, it's custom to order way too much food. So we did, and all of it was delicious. The mom and pop who run the joint have a really cool little dog, too (he does tricks), and he came and sat in a chair at our table with us. He's just so cool. While we were finishing eating, we saw the waiters and waitresses setting up chairs near our outside table. It was time for the photo shoot!

After taking a bunch of pictures, we went back to the table to give Jamie her first taste of baijo. I think this particular batch was full of "snake and penis and mushroom and weird shit and death" (Rory). It was full of at least 3 of those things, anyway.

We hadn't planned on going to any of the clubs in town (all two of them) until the next night, but after our friend Simon told us about a special show at "7", we couldn't resist. Turns out there was a midget show going on. Yup, midgets. Or little people or dwarves or whatever the hell they're supposed to be called. Anyway, the lead midget sure could wiggle. He came out with a normal-sized lady who was singing, and he had on a gold, floor-length robe. He looked like a little Chinese pimp. But together they looked straight out of "Willow." It was all too funny. The main midget danced around on stage, but he saw that he was getting a pretty awesome response from us, so (with a little help from a "7" waiter)he hopped up on our table and started wiggling his hips some more. It was amazing. In this picture, keep in mind that the little guy's standing on a platform and Jamie is standing on the ground.

After the main guy was done singing and dancing, it was time for a skit. This skit involved a female midget and two male midgets. The premise of the skit isn't important, but let's just say it was pretty vulgar. The lady ran out and squirted fake breast milk all over the dancers and whoever else was in the audience. It was like on Saturday Night Live when there's a skit that involves puking--they have the fake puke tube--except this was fake breast milk.

The next day was pretty low-key. Jamie came to three of my classes, my two favorite classes (with my really little kids) and my Korean class that I really don't like. They are just a rude group of kids. Jamie used her Korean to put them in their places. It was awesome.

Reba is my newest first-grader:

The plan was to go back downtown to go shopping, but let's just say that some of previous evening's reveling caught up with one of us (Jamie), and it made shopping downtown in the heat a pretty miserable experience. We watched part of a movie, napped, and then we went on a taxi ride along the coast. We were worried that it would rain the next day, so we wanted to make sure that Jamie got to see some of Weihai's famous beaches while it was dry.

Then we went downtown to eat pizza. After pizza we opted for the other club, "2046", and we only stayed long enough to see some Chinese rapper with cornrows, a trio of men break dancing (sort of) and some of the club's resident female dancers doing what they do best. There was some sort of festival going on during this time, so this particular club (much larger than 7)was packed full of folks. We called it an early evening and went back to Daguanghua to sleep.

The plan for the next morning involved checking in on our dresses and checking out a few more clothing shops. Jamie got a really nice coat for super cheap, and it came with a free comforter (which we are now using. Thanks). After that we headed to Licoshan, a mountain near our school that has a really nice restaurant at the base of it. They serve predominantly organic food, and the atmosphere is incredible. There is a courtyard that looks like it is straight out of a ninja movie.

As soon as we walked in, the owner of the place took hold of Rory's arm and escorted us a separate room to pick out our meal. We walked into a room full of meat and vegetables and dead, dried chickens hanging from the ceiling. We picked out vegetables and meat that we wanted and told the chef how we wanted it prepared. Pretty cool.

There was some kind of strange beast dead on the floor. We weren't quite sure what is was. We know that it is quite common to eat dogmeat over here (mostly at Korean restaurants, actually), but it didn't really look like a dog. Rory asked the man what is was. The owner told us that we didn't want to eat it, which we knew, but we just wanted to know what it was. The man grabbed Rory's bicep to indicate strength and pointed to the mountains. He told us in Chinese what the animal was, so we looked it up in our dictionary. It was a freaking wolf! Evidently, if you are really rich, you can eat some wolf meat and it's supposed to make you strong. That's big over here--if you drink baijo with penis in it, you'll be virile; if you eat noodles at the end of a meal, it signifies long life because noodles are long, etc. Everything means something.

As we were finishing our meal, a Chinese man came into our dining room. Each of us had seen him on three different occasions when we went to the bathroom. He came to our room to invite us to his room to drink with his boss. So we went, and even though our Chinese isn't the greatest, it's enough to sort of figure things out in a conversation. The boss was actually Taiwanese, and he wanted Jamie to be his pretend third wife, telling us he "ha[s] a wife in Taiwan and in China, and now he need[s] and American wife..." I think Jamie ended up dancing with him, too.

We left Licoshan and headed back to the downtown area to pick up our dresses. They were gorgeous.

The next day was the last day of the trip. Jamie's flight left at 10:50 in the morning, and appropriately, it was raining. We sat at the little airport restaurant, trying to keep it together while we waited for boarding to start for her flight, getting stared at by the other tables of people. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's really annoying. Little kids always have my permission to stare and gawk, but the wrong kind of staring from adults just makes me angry sometimes. But that's just one of those things you learn to deal with.

When it was time for her flight to leave and she had to check in, that's when I actually lost it. I mean, I could still see her on the other side of the glass, checking her luggage and everything, but that's when it hit me that she was leaving, and I didn't know when I got to see her again. When Jamie left last year, it was really hard on me. We have lived in different cities before; when she was in Texas my dad and I made plenty of trips down to visit her. But when she moved to Korea, the months after were really hellish for me. At the airport, it was the same feeling all over again. Granted, we're closer in proximity now than we were when she was in Texas, but it was still almost a year before I got to see her again. I cried the whole bus ride home. It was horrible.

But let's not end on a bad note. It was great to see her, and hopefully she can visit again around New Year's. We can get some more silk dresses made and get stuck in the snow on a bus. Yeah!

Ironweed at Mt. Laoshan with some friendly (musical) Taoist monks

2007-09-18T01:47:00.002-07:00

Ironweed at the Qingdao International Beer Festival (a little late...)

2007-09-18T01:47:00.001-07:00

Random things you see in China

2007-09-18T01:36:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, after we had finished eating dinner at our favorite neighborhood Korean restaurant (they love us there), we walked outside and saw a little crowd forming. Crowds in China aren't surprising at all; sometimes there's a crowd around a bunch of singing and dancing kids, all part of a promotional talent show for flavored yogurt drinks; or a couple of drunk men are getting a little too rowdy. Chinese folks aren't afraid to exhibit their curiosity. Let's face it--they're really good at staring at things (usually us). And of course a crowd just attracts more people. Anyway, enough about crowds in general.

This particular crowd was huddled around an old man with (what looked like) a really long, oversized paint brush. Imagine a mop handle attached to a giant brush. He was dipping the brush into a bucket of water (his "ink"), creating a series of characters--in traditional style Chinese calligraphy--on the square tiles outside our restaurant and the really busy supermarket next door. Judging from the number of tiles that had characters on them (as well as his pace), he must have been doing it for at least 40 minutes. It was so cool. Makes me wish I would bring my camera with me everywhere I go. Also makes me wish I actually knew more Chinese characters.

Jamie's here in 5 days. We're gonna paint the town red, white and blue. I think I'm funny.

Pizza partying with Filipinos

2007-08-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we wanted pizza. So we headed into the downtown area, to a side street that we knew boasted a few different pizza places. We settled for the brightest lit place, because low light--as experienced in previous Chinese pizza outings--usually means upscale and pricey. This place had pop art(ish) pictures of pizza and toppings on the wall, and prefolded boxes stacked to the ceiling. It didn't remind us of Shakespeare's, but it did remind us of a pizza place we liked back in Korea. It was great; we have never been so excited to see black olives, not because we were craving them or anything, but just because they're such a novelty over here.

We ate more than we should have, but we were still in party mode. After all, we needed to spend a better amount of time downtown in order to justify the taxi fares to and from. It can get a little pricey. We headed across the street to a club called "Seven." We hadn't ever been to this place before; usually we go to a different place called "2046", also downtown and also home to lots of neon and half naked dancing folks (men and women). When we walked into "Seven" it seemed just like a smaller version of "2046", except significantly cleaner with a more impressive lighting display. It was nice. We sat at the bar and ordered a couple shots of whiskey (which we nursed, cause it's expensive) and some cold beers. It was still early, so there wasn't too much of a crowd, and no one was performing yet. We did notice that there was a keyboard behind the bar, though, which we thought was interesting. There was also a stool and music stand on the stage and a guitar pedal. We had heard from Neal that this club had live music, so our interest was piqued.

Soon enough the band came out. One guy on keyboards, another on guitar, and a tiny chick singing. I was in the bathroom when they started their first song, but I when I came back out, I was so impressed that such a huge voice came out of such a tiny woman. It was settled--we were spending a good deal of time at "Seven." This first song that they played was an Evanescence song. I don't know the name, and even though I don't really like Evanescence, I could really appreciate hearing songs in English. Next they did "Zombie" by the Cranberries. It was awesome. Rory and I were really just floored. They were all such good musicians--I think the highlight of the evening was the disco rock version of "Sweet Child of Mine" by Guns N' Roses. I never would have thought to make it a dance song at all, but I guess you have to cater to your crowd.

We got a chance to talk to the band a little bit, too. They are from the Phillipines, but they are under contract with this particular club for three months, before they go to a different Chinese province to do the same thing. I guess it's really hard for foreign bands to come make money in China, but they said that it wasn't hard for them because their singer was so good. And she was! She could have been on American Idol (or Filipino Idol, if they even have that). They told us how happy they were to see Americans, not just because they prefer performing English songs, but because they usually have to sing all their songs in Chinese, just for that kind of club clientele.

We stuck around for a little longer after they were finished, to watch all of the dancing. The club featured a whole array of cross dressers and girls in nighties. It was really funny. It was distinctly Chinese. I'm working on my Chinese girl dance moves. I think I've got it down. So I guess I could try to get a part-time job...

Friends and hotpot!

2007-07-24T05:55:00.001-07:00

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"Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your" face

2007-07-23T21:38:00.000-07:00

We are in love with our new New Zealander colleagues, Glen and Christine. They are both 56 and have been married for 35 years. The moment they got here something clicked with all four of us, and we've been like a little family for about two weeks. They are almost like a perfect hybrid of both sets of our parents, but with accents. They're very funny, open-minded and youthful. Actually, Rebecca has a really hard time understanding their accents right now, because I think she is used to dealing with primarily American and Canadian teachers here at Daguanghua. When they talk and she can't quite understand, she asks me to translate their English into my English so that she can understand. We all think it's really funny.

Last night we went out to eat a hotpot dinner. So it was four of the new five teachers and Rebecca, the foreign liason. Craig, the new Australian teacher, wasn't invited. I won't go into too much detail, but there is something very creepy about homeboy. We can't quite pinpoint it, but even Rebecca brought it up, before we had a chance to say anything. "He is very strange," she said, "but I can't quite explain. He likes to boast about everything." So last night, as we were all walking to our hotpot neighborhood, I explained what "creepy" meant. So now she thinks he's creepy. We're all in agreement then.

Naturally we all want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, but he has been here for almost a week, and the only thing he has asked any of us is "do you know what ______ is in Chinese?" The first day he came to dinner, he gave us this long-winded speech about why China rules, why he rules and why we don't know anything. When Rebecca called that night--again, before we had the chance to say anything about him--she asked us if we thought he was safe to be around children. And then, two days later, he exploded at lunch, saying "I think I'm going to go eat with the Chinese from now on. I'm like a frigging tree here, listening to you talking, rubbishing China." He apologized the next day, and though we all accepted his apology, we've been keeping our distance, too. I told him we would try to stop alienating him, so we have been making a concerted effort to include him in conversation, but I think he's already done some damage. As Christine said yesterday, "here we are in China for the first time, 56 years old, we never thought we'd be putting someone off so quickly..."

Last night, then, was a nice opportunity to get out of the school gates, to unwind and to not worry about biting around our tongues around the guy that reminded Glen and Christine of one of those "angry kids who would go shoot up a university." Rory and Glen walked ahead while Christine, Rebecca and myself lagged behind, taking pictures and chatting. I might also mention that this is the first time Rebecca has actually accompanied us to dinner or anywhere outside the school gates since the first few days we were here and had logistical things to do. I think she always feels like she will be imposing if she comes to dinner with Rory and me, but once I told her that all four of us were going, she felt more comfortable about it.

Once we got to the street where our restaurant is, Rory and I got turned around a little. We were looking at the spot where our favorite hotpot place was, but the space had been completely gutted and locked up (honestly, not totally uncommon over here). This happened with the first hotpot place we had discovered in our neighborhood--we dubbed it "Santa Claus hotpot" because of all the Christmas decorations on the window--one day it was there, and the next day it wasn't. We walked into a different restaurant that claimed to have hotpot on the menu. We changed tables three times, only to find out that they didn't actually have hotpot. So we walked outside and tried to figure out where to go. As we were deliberating, a little three-wheeled car drove by, and the driver yelled to Rebecca "Do you want to go to hotpot city?" We said no, because we already had a back-up plan, but we were certainly disappointed that our initial hotpot restaurant didn't exist anymore. They had the best peanut sauce!

Instead, we started walking to another of our favorite restaurants. Lately we have been eating bbq outside at this particular restaurant because they don't have air conditioning; they also have hotpot. As we were about to cross the street and go in, a little three-wheeled car pulled up next to us and stopped. There was a man in the passenger seat, and as I looked closer, I recognized him as the owner of the now-defunct hotpot place we had just come from. I said "Hey, that's our hotpot guy!" After a little talking in Chinese, Rebecca figured out that the three-wheel car driver--the one who had tried to get us to come to hotpot city--was the father-in-law of the man who ran our favorite hotpot place. He told Rebecca that he had good ears and could see that we wanted to eat at his son-in-law's place. We all had a good laugh about that, and when they told us that they were running a new hotpot place around the corner, we knew we had to eat there.

The owner jumped out of the car and escorted us down to his new location, and we all had a good laugh about our luck. This spot was bigger and much nicer. Good for him! He led us upstairs to a private room, and we started ordering ingredient after ingredient. Glen and Christine have had hotpot before (they call it a "steamboat"), but they'd yet to have it in China, and they also hadn't had mutton yet. Lamb is very popular in New Zealand, and they export it to China. The meal was really nice, and the owner took pictures for all of us, but it was so damn hot. There was an air conditioner in the room, but it didn't really work, and once it got dark, the owner had to unplug it so he could plug in the outside neon light.

We get the impression that Glen was builder/jack-of-all trades/manual labor sort-of-guy back in New Zealand; when the hotpot guy unplugged the a/c--just to stick the two exposed wires powering the neon light directly into the socket--Glen was shocked. It was really funny. Christine says that as he walks around China, he inspects everything, saying that "this should have been tiled this way" and "I could show someone how to rebuild this properly." Things like that. And Christine was an editor at a popular paper in New Zealand. She finished that up about three months before they came to China. They sold their house to their youngest son and headed over.

After dinner, we were all congregating outside while we decided what to do next, and I saw two of the tallest Chinese guys I have ever seen thus far. Really, shocking over here. Turns out that they play basketball for a team in Shanghai. After I took a picture with them, they asked Rebecca if I could play basketball (I had already crudely tried to explain to them that I played basketball for a long time). When she said yes, they told her that they often come to Weihai to do basketball camps at a private physical education school here in town (of course there's a private physical education school), and they asked if I would like to come be a guest at the school. Hell yeah, I would! We'll see if anything actually happens, because no one exchanged phone numbers or cards, but I would be willing to research a little bit to try to make it happen.

After that interaction, we headed back to the bbq/hotpot place that we had almost gone to earlier. We wanted to have a couple of beers before we headed back. It was just so nice to be out with the kiwis and Rebecca. She commented that Glen and Christine and Rory and I were all so easy to like, so it was no surprise that we got along so well. After that we all crammed into one cab and headed back to school. It was a nice way to spend the evening before we start summer camp tomorrow. Koreans. I hope they don't answer cell phones in class.

Dalian

2007-07-21T00:15:00.001-07:00

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We love Dalian (and friendly Russians)!

2007-07-17T23:53:00.000-07:00

Last week we were in the process of deciding where we wanted to go on the first part of our summer vacation. The regular school year doesn't actually start until the first week of September (and we finished up the winter/spring semester the first week of July), but we've sort of gotten ourselves roped into teaching at the school's summer camp, so that takes a big chunk out of our free time. We're fine with that--this way we won't just be out spending money all summer. This means we have a little bit of time before camp starts on the 25th. Initially we thought about doing a tour de Shandong province; going back to Rongcheng and Yantai, exploring some other nearby areas like Wendeng and Weifang. But as we were walking around in the rain, along the seaside, past little Korean snack shops and seafood tents, we saw a tiny building that said "Weihai Dalian ferry office." So we decided to go to Dalian. Why not?

Dalian is located in Lioaning province, which (relatively speaking) is a hop, skip and jump away from Weihai (like Seoul, South Korea). It's another port city, with a population of 6.2 million people. We had heard from Gary at AAC that Dalian is a newer city (new for China); Gary is from Dalian, and that's part of the reason we wanted to visit. Plus, Neal gave it a pretty glowing recommendation. We were excited about the prospect of taking a ferry, and we would have gotten on the boat that night if we'd magically had all of our stuff with us. We settled for the next night.

The next day, we packed our bags and headed back to the station to buy our tickets. I have been on a large ferry before, when I traveled from somewhere near London to somewhere near Amsterdam. That time I was on the world's largest ferry, replete with disco dance clubs, movie theaters, restaurants and people who didn't want to sleep. It was a very smooth ride, and we didn't have to pay for a room. We just slept in big, comfy chairs. I thought we would have a similar option for the Dalian ferry, too; we even tried to encourage the ladies at the ticket office to just let us pay for seats. Evidently that's not an option. We settled for two beds in a six person room, for 220 rmb each; this was one of the cheapest options. I think we've even paid more than that for a one way bus ticket, so it wasn't so bad.

We had a little time to kill, so we walked back to the little tent restaurants near the water next to the ticket office. We had scoped them out the night before, and we had our hearts set on eating on the roof of a restaurant, until a friendly Chinese man with a GIANT chef's hat ushered us into his tent. He spoke a little bit of English, was very friendly and told us upfront how much our food was going to cost (without us even having to ask). We walked through the tent and to the waterside, where we sat at a patio table, drinking beer, watching people board the boat we'd be taking in an hour or so. We ordered an entire fish and ate the whole thing. It was so freaking good!

There was a table of Chinese men sitting next to us, drinking baiju and throwing their clam shells on the ground. They were a jolly bunch. When an awkward girl and her male (also awkward) sidekick came around--toting an out-of-tune guitar and charging money for their songs--the jolly Chinese paid for a few tunes. We actually knew some of the songs, just from hearing them over and over, and from being roped into karoake with some fellas from our neighborhood. Let's just say this pair don't have a musical career ahead of them. After they were finished in our area, they simply crawled under the rope partition separating our tent patio from the neighbors' and tried to solicit some more customers for their subpar songs. No one else was buying. There was another little guy roaming around, toting another poorly-tuned guitar, but he was probably ten years younger than the folks in the first duo. The Chinese men marshalled the kid over, and you could tell that he was just terrified. He showed the men his little, laminated list of songs. When he started playing, it was so funny. He didn't know what the hell he was doing, so he was just strumming one chord over and over, singing in a monotone. But it was so cute. We kept watching the Chinese men as they tried not to laugh, but it was just too much. I think he played two songs before he was shooed away.

We finished our meal and went to the ferry waiting area. We were in a snack shop buying provisions when I heard a "hello, Julie teacher." As I turned and tried to talk to Happy, one of my second graders, Rory was busy rolling my sleeve down to cover my tattoo. A good team, we are. She didn't see anything. I mentioned that it would be funny if we were stuck in a sleeping room with her and her entire family (this isn't foreshadowing--it didn't happen). We got in line to board, and once again we were reminded why it sucks to be in the mix with a large group of Chinese people. I don't think most people over here know the meaning of "common courtesy." I mean, why should they? There's a sort of an "every man for himself" mentality, and you have to expect it with as many people as there are. Chinese folks don't handle crowds or lines very well. I think I am getting better at handling Chinese people in crowds and lines. I have started to go more with the flow; using my hips to bat grannies, kids and anyone else out of the way. It's the name of the game. We were a little frustrated, though, as we were being shoved and pushed, because we watched as a crowd of 10 Russian women walked to a special boarding area (that was obviously closed off); they sweet-talked the guard and got to board the boat before anyone in our line even started moving. Maybe we should pretend we're Russian next time.

We finally got on the boat and found our way to our room, but as we searched for it, we saw that the hallways were full of people sitting on newspaper or cardboard. Entire families, even. So there were no "seats" on the ferry, but "standing room only" was an option. Noted. The room was nice enough. There were three sets of bunk beds. We hadn't really planned on sleeping--we wanted to turn the ride into a "booze cruise"--so we had all of our stuff compact enough to carry around with us to the mess hall or to the deck. We don't trust our stuff around anyone anymore. We almost learned the hard way. As we were waiting for the ferry to actually depart, we watched the only other (Chinese) woman in our room go through the most tedious steps to brush her teeth, wash and moisturize her face. There was a sink in the room, and I'd swear this woman had at least 5 different products she used on her face. She looked 50ish--maybe she was 80. Don't know.

In the mess hall, we saw that several other people had the same idea as us. There were two families sitting at a table near us, and even the kids were playing drinking games. With beer. I couldn't believe it. They could have been some of my students, and there they were, playing rock/paper/scissors to see who had to drink. We played red/black/high/low while we drank our beer, and I was overcome with that ol' familiar feeling of motion sickness. Maybe a booze cruise wasn't in the cards. I'd forgotten my dramamine. Darts. We packed up our stuff and made our way back to the room, where we slept for the rest of the ride.

Pulling into Dalian at 4:30 in the morning was awesome. The sun rises really early over here (no daylight savings--all of China shares the same time zone), so as we pulled into the harbor, we got to see the water and surrounding ships in a pre-dawn twilight. It was quite pretty. Being awake at 4:30 in the a.m. ain't so bad if it's nice out. We quickly realized that we had underestimated the size of Dalian. We mistakenly thought it was small, but once we got off of the boat and were bused over to the main part of the ferry terminal, we saw skyscrapers galore. This was no small town. And that was fine, too.

It was amazing to us how many people were already awake and moving this early in the morning (about 5:30 by the time we had gotten out of the ferry terminal and had gotten ourselves together). We sat down on some stairs near the tourist information office (which of course, wasn't open yet), eating some bread and drinking Cokes. Cab driver after cab driver approached us and tried to take us wherever we wanted to go. We didn't really know where we wanted to go, but we weren't in any sort of rush, either.

We walked back over to one of the shops (amidst clusters of shops) near the entrance of the terminal. The ladies who were working were friendly and got a kick out of our attempts at speaking Chinese. That's usually the case over here. When we bought a map they instantly wanted to know where we wanted to go. So we said we wanted to find a cheap hotel. It turns out that one of the ladies we thought was working there was just a taxi driver who was friends with the owners. So she immediately tried to take us under her wing. Everyone asked how much we were willing to pay for a hotel, so we shot them our prices. They laughed at us. This usually happens, too, as most Chinese people assume all foreigners want to stay at the Ramada or the Hotel Dalian. And there was a Ramada, but not with our budget. We don't like to pay much for hotels, because we don't really spend much time in them. So we said in Chinese that a cheap, dirty little hotel was okay. Again, they laughed and told us it was impossible. But the cab driver thought she knew a place, so away we went with her. Once we were actually in the cab, we realized she still wanted to take us to a nice hotel. Nice thought, but we didn't want to pay that much. Again, she told us that it would be impossible to find a hotel for cheaper than 180 rmb. We knew we could do better. And we certainly had some time to kill while we tried.

She dropped us off in a part of town dubbed Zhongshan Square ("middle mountain" square). There was a giant orb in the center of the square, and there was a complicated round-about for the cars to try to manuever. The city actually had a few round-abouts that we saw, and they created pretty heavy traffic jams. Just what you need in China--masses of people in vehicles trying to get somewhere. There were a lot of old people out already, all doing their morning exercises (taken very seriously over here). There were women doing tai-chi, there were other women doing strange stretches in casual wear. There was also a man who had this little whizzing, whistling top, and he had a huge whip that he would crack, precisely alongside the top to get it going. It looked dangerous, but he was quite good at it. Not sure if that was an exercise or just a hobby. Either way, highly entertaining.

We walked past all of the main roads, all of the big, expensive hotels, and we started exploring side streets and little neighborhoods. This city didn't feel like most other Chinese cities we've been to yet. All of the little buroughs that we discovered were so unique and autonomous. I can't quite describe it. It did remind us a little of Qingdao, though (the parts we visited anyway). It was very international-friendly, and not once did we feel threatened or like people were shocked to see us. That doesn't really get old in Weihai, because we know our way around by now. But when you're obviously a tourist in an obviously foreign country, it's nice when not everyone is staring at you, watiting for you to screw up. So many people spoke English, too, so that was nice.

We walked past some hotels, but they weren't open yet, so we decided to go walk around some more before we came back. We headed to Zhongshan Park. It was amazing! It was so big, and it was like walking into a sea of old people. The most striking part of the park, though (aside from its sheer size), was a colossal soccer ball on the hillside. It was red and white, and in front of it, seated, was a big, gold Buddha. There was some temple on top of the hill--and cable cars to take you up--but we opted to just wander and watch the old folks doing their thing(s).

We walked past a large lotus pond and an outdoor amphitheater-type area, and we sat down by some old folks who looked like they were dancing with racquetball rackets. The rackets were part of a choreographed dance that this troupe did; you could tell that they were members of the same organization because they were all wearing the same t-shirt. A leading member of the group pressed play on the boombox, music started playing, and they started their routine. They were spinning around, flipping a little ball over their shoulders, under their legs, however they could--all in unison, all caught on their little rackets. I have never seen anything like it. Another thing in China that is completely new. We also saw some old men swinging from a tree branch on a tree next to us. They were as giddy as little kids, swinging like monkeys on a branch. It was really funny because you never see such spry old-timers in America.

After the park, we headed back to the area that we had already dubbed "our neighborhood" to find some breakfast. We are accustomed to little makeshift restaurants under tents alongside the road, but instead we found a place called MiMi's or MiniMini's that served buffet-style breakfast. This was the cheapest and most delicious breakfast food. It was unreal. One side of the buffet had all of the different bread-y, french toast stick-style options, and the other side had all manner of eggs and gruel. Yes, gruel. Or porridge. It's fitting once you actually see the stuff, but it doesn't taste bad. We actually had seconds. While we were eating, too, we noticed that two of the cab drivers who had tried to give us rides earlier were sitting at the table directly behind us. They looked pretty shocked to see that we were eating Chinese-style breakfast with Chinese people at a Chinese restaurant. Shock and awe. We certainly took our time there, and then we walked back to where the two closed hotels were. They were open now, and they weren't hotels.

With a little more asking around, we ultimately found a place, for 119 rmb a night. So we were 61 rmb richer than most of the taxi drivers had projected. It certainly wasn't easy getting the room, though. There was an obvious language barrier and some stupid, nitpicky issues with our passports. So it almost looked like we weren't going to get the room. Then, like some Russian god was looking out for us, Alex walked into the place. Alex is a Russian university student studying in Dalian. His mother was staying at the same hotel we were trying to book. He spoke Russian (obviously), English and Chinese, and we would have been screwed if he hadn't stepped in an given the receptionists a severe talking to. We kept telling him that he didn't need to help us and that we would just try to find somewhere else, but he wouldn't let us leave. Ultimately, we were so happy that he helped us, because the place was cheap and immaculate. So the Russian ladies who boarded the ferry early (all 10 of them) were trumped by one Alex and his willingness to help out a couple of Americans he didn't even know.

We got into our room around 10:30 in the morning, so we already had about 6 hours of dicking around under our belts. We were pretty tired, so we decided we needed to head to the Starbucks we had seen on our taxi ride. We shelled out more money that we probably should for coffee, but the fact that it wasn't instant coffee and was hot (piping!) made us more than willing to pay for it. Next we headed to the train station to buy tickets to Jinzhou, an area a little north of Dalian that was famous for its Golden Pebble Beach. This was our first experience with a Chinese train station; it was nothing shocking, just more people who all magically seemed to be in our way. But it was cheap to buy the tickets, and we actually had seats on the train. That's the part of the rush that I don't understand. If you have actual seats on the train, what's the rush? It's different on an airplane because everyone wants to stow baggage, but this was a little train, and no one had much luggage.

On the train we sat three to a seat, and we were really crammed into these seats, too. Sitting catty-corner from me was a husband and wife couple (I assume). The wife was all dolled up in every imaginable shade of green. Her and her husband looked like money. But the strangest thing about this couple was that for the entire train ride--to our stop anyway, about an hour--this woman had her hand directly on her husband's crotch. There was no table or anything to cover it up, either. And evidently she thought it was no big deal, but Rory and I both noticed it. Gross. Her hand wasn't just resting, either. It was massaging, the same way Rory might try to work out a kink in my neck or something. But this man's neck wasn't in the "down there" part of his jeans, so who knows what the hell she was doing. Tact, lady. Tact. There were freaking children on that train. We almost missed our stop, because we didn't quite recognize the sign--cause we were watching the free show! haha--but an old woman who had been sleeping the entire time woke up in just enough time to tell us we needed to get off the train.

As we disembarked and made our way around the train station, our hands started to instinctively clutch purses, cameras and wallets a little tighter. This station was out in the middle of nowhere (just like in Weihai), it was part of a relatively small town, and there were some very shady people lurking. After we bought our return tickets to Dalian, we made our way over to the waiting taxis. We didn't realize just how far away from the beach we were, and for a few moments we toyed with the notion of hiring a couple of men on motorcycles to take us to the beach. We hadn't ever seen that option before--rickshaws, pedicabs, three-wheeled cars and taxis, sure--never dudes on motorcycles.

We got in the cab with a really friendly lady who wanted to do the tour package, showing us a bunch of different areas of the beach (from her car) for only 130 rmb a person. We said no way, we just wanted to go to the beach and walk around. We drove and drove and drove in this taxi, and 50 rmb later we were at the Golden Pebble Beach. It was beautiful, but it looked like how I envision Club Med or something. It was almost too pristine-looking, which is saying a lot lot lot for China. It was quite the tourist trap, too, as you had to pay to even go swim or walk on the beach. We had already paid about 70 rmb to get there (including the train and taxi), so we didn't want to pay more to just exist there. We tried to rent a little quadcycle (like an elevated go-kart without a motor, pedal-operated), but the man running the joint wanted us to write down all our passport information and pay a 100 rmb deposit. We foresaw our deposit disappearing over some mythical scratch in paint (cause we're rich foreigners), and opted to not rent them. They were pretty cool, though.

As we walked past seafood tents (where Chinese folks like to rip off foreigners), white tents, more Russians in bikinis (not always a good thing), an cop car accident and a giant amusement park, we saw a sign for the lightrail that Gary had mentioned in his email. Rory and I looked at each other and collectively agreed that the Golden Pebble Beach was not for us, so we decided to bail out. We hadn't even been there for an hour. And if the lightrail tickets that would take us directly back to Dalian were cheaper than 40 rmb, we would still save money by just eating the cost of the train tickets we had already purchased, instead of taking a 50 rmb cab back to the train station, where we already had tickets for the last train of the evening. No way we were going to spend 7 more hours there, spending the money we didn't want to spend. So we opted for the lightrail, and tickets were cheaper than the train tickets.

Once the lightrail actually pulled up, it turned into another familiar shoving match between us and some annoying teens, but Rory somehow managed to nab us each a seat (facing each other, even, and apart from everyone else). We were lucky, because the ride back to Dalian via lightrail was about an hour and a half. And the whole time these teenagers were trying to get our attention and just stare and say whatever they knew in English, just so they could laugh at us and make fun of us. So Rory and I started speaking Spanish really loudly. I think that threw them off.

As the lightrail pulled into Dalian, it rolled up into the same train station we had been at earlier. We had searched all over the internet for more information about the lightrail, and we'd found nothing. It was right under our noses the whole time. We'll have to remember for next time.

After refreshing at the hotel room, we headed to Russia town. We had certainly seen a lot of Russians, so we had high hopes for Russia town. Other than the different architecture, it wasn't really impressive. I guess we thought there would be a lot more Russian food and beer and Russian people, and a lot less Chinese food and Chinese people selling Russian-y things, trying to rip us off. But it was still really cool to see so many of those Russian dolls. I have always liked those. And the architecture was indeed impressive.

Around the corner from Russia town was a little strip that had a German/Italian restaurant and a Spanish restaurant called Tapas. We decided to go have some tapas at Tapas while we were waiting for the German/Italian place to open. We wanted to do a world tour and hit up Japanese town later, but that didn't happen. At Tapas we ordered four little appetizers (each was about a bite apiece), and even though the portions were tiny, the flavor was great and it tasted distinctly not Chinese. I don't know how Spanish it was, but it was great. Ordering an actual entree was out of the question, as it was out of the budget. So we walked back outside, only to see that the German/Italian place was still closed and didn't look like it was opening anytime that particular day. We settled for a Chinese restaurant sandwiched in between the international restaurants. And even though we "settled" for this place, we were quite surprised--it had some of the best food we've experienced yet in China. No questionable beef, amazing noodles. Incredible.

Called it an early evening and got up the next morning to wander around and to buy our return ferry tickets for the following morning. This time around we asked for the "standing room only" seats. The Chinese teller was confused--I don't think she knew what we were asking for--so she called over a really friendly woman who spoke English. We told her that we wanted to buy newspaper and sit on it like we had seen all of the other Chinese people do. Everyone was amused, but we insisted. These tickets were only ¥90 each. So we left the ferry station with ¥260 more in our pockets that we had anticipated for our return trip (I think I did the math right). So we thought we would treat ourselves to a "nicer" lunch.

We checked out a hotel that boasted a Latin buffet. The hotel was really nice, the buffet was not. So instead we went to check out Dalian's Korea town. It wasn't as impressive as Weihai's two Korea towns, but we managed to find a really nice Korean restaurant. The waitress was impressed because it seemed like we knew three languages: English, Korean, Chinese. She was Chinese, so I think she was just floored because we knew the Korean and Chinese names for food and beer (the two most important things, right?). We spent a long time there, as we always do when we eat Korean food, and headed off to our hotel. We ran into the man who had recommended the restaurant to us, and he suckered us into coming into his shop for a little while.

He owned a Polo shop, and it's no surprise that the shop was in Korea town. Whenever visiting Korean scholars would come to the Asian Affairs Center, the two main things they wanted to shop for were golf equipment and Polo brand anything. There were no customers in there with us, so we all just sat and drank tea together. He was so friendly, and I think he was just eager to have human interaction. We made it very clear from the beginning that we weren't buying any Polo gear, and he wasn't put off by that at all. I think we spent an hour drinking tea--the most involved tea "ceremony" I've ever been party to, even--before heading back to the hotel.

Our driver misunderstood where our hotel was, so even though he was in the right neighborhood, he was confused as to which side street he should take. We didn't mind, though, because his navigational error revealed the location of McDonald's and a German style microbrewery. Microbrewery! Didn't know that those existed in China. We had the cabbie drop us off there (we were in a familiar enough locale to find our hotel on our own). We walked in and saw a lot of Russians and a lot of beer. We were excited at the prospect of drinking any sort of dark beer. But unfortunately, you couldn't only drink beer--you had to pay the ¥38 each for the buffet before you got beer. We told the waitress that we had just easten, so she went to talk to a manager or something. The manager came over and told us that he had whittled the price down to ¥21, but we weren't interested. We weren't going to pay that much for beer and food we weren't going to eat. It wasn't too big of a blow, it just would have been really nice.

Later we went for a walk around our area, determined to find the McDonald's we had driven past earlier. We knew it was going to be a hike, because we really had no clue which route we had taken in the taxi. After walking around for about an hour (and after all the big, lit up buildings had turned their lights off--right when I was getting ready to take pictures of them), we finally just got in another taxi and Rory drew the McDonald's symbol. No problem. We went directly to a different McDonald's, and it was across the street from a KFC. After we ate, we walked around this area, and it was money central. Both sides of the plaza were flanked by huge designer shops, another McDonald's, another Starbucks. I never thought I would see Dolce & Gabbana, Dior, Chanel and other big names in Dalian. Maybe in Beijing (or what I imagine Beijing to be in my mind), but just one day earlier we thought Dalian was going to be a small city. Freaking Dior!

We woke up the next morning and grabbed a few necessities before heading to the ferry--dramamine(!), newspaper and some strange packets of edible crunchy crystals that were supposed to combat diarrhea. We arrived at the terminal with about an hour to spare, so we strategically scoped out the best seats for waiting close to the gate. Our plan paid off, and we were on the first bus to be shuttled over to the boat. We certainly get a lot of stares over here, but I don't think we've ever gotten as many as we did when we started to lay our our newspaper and sit in the hallway with all of the other (non-rich) Chinese folks. We figured we didn't need beds--it was daytime, and we only really wanted a few nap sessions.

The dramamine and the strange crystals worked, so all in all it wasn't a bad ride. Much smoother than getting there. I immediately started to edit a Chinese colleague's resume (the English parts), and the working-class man who was sitting next to me was so entertained. He kept looking over my shoulder as I would rewrite sentences, and I think the fact that I was writing all of these strange, English letters really quickly was quite the sight to see. I didn't mind, though.

As Rory was sleeping, I noticed a couple of college-aged girls sitting across from us, giggling. One of them was doodling, and she kept looking up at Rory and then back down at her notepad. She was sketching him. I would have loved to have seen that sketch, because I get to see and hear all of the funny things he does when he's sleeping. Lots of chewing. How do you draw that? Ultimately, though, these two girls worked up enough nerve to come talk to us, and that led to an instant audience, including a recent university graduate who had majored in English. They were all very friendly, and we exchanged cards and phone numbers. The girls told us that everyone around us on the boat was very curious about us; why were we sitting out with all of these Chinese people when we could have paid for a room and a bed? We simply said: "because it's a lot cheaper." I don't think that our desire to do something the cheapest way possible will ever quite make sense to Chinese folks, because we're supposed to be rich. But it was funny when these girls confirmed that that's exactly what everyone around us was thinking.

As we headed back into the Weihai harbor, we weren't at all struck with that "it's good to be back home" feeling. We wished we could have stayed in Dalian for a long time. I want to say that Weihai is losing it's luster right about now, but I think that's just the impending summer camp talking. And I'm sure camp will be awesome--the newest teachers are certainly...diverse. Glen and Chrisine, the kiwis, are amazing--we get along really well--because they're freaking NORMAL (which we thought was impossible after Cecilia left). They are hilarious and are somehow the hybrids of both sets of parents. We wished they were staying on with Daguanghua for another year, but after summer camp they will go to a little city near Chanyi (and Mayor Ma). So at least they will be close to us. Let's just say that the new Australian will take some getting used to. He's a character, worthy of an entire blog just based on some of the crazy things he says. It only took him three days to blow up at all four of us. Just when we thought (hope hope hoped!) we were through with crazies...

Photos from Rongcheng Music Showcase

2007-07-08T20:18:00.001-07:00

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Everybody Rongcheng tonight (everybody have fun tonight!)

2007-07-08T00:50:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we accompanied a bunch of my musically-inclined students to Rongcheng, a small fishing community--home to an annual international fishing festival, actually--where they performed a variety show for a bunch of poor, dirty kids. This is the kind of stuff I am sort of opposed to; I grew up in the public school system, and I fully support free (or cheap) education for everyone. So the idea of my students and my school being the "haves" going to Rongcheng to show off for the "have nots" gave me a weird feeling.

But as soon as we got to the school and saw the bathrooms the kids and faculty have to use, I was immediately (re)thankful for my position at Daguanghua. The Rongcheng school had bathrooms worse than the bus stations--outside, communal troughs. I asked a colleague how bathrooms like this are effectively cleaned, and she explained a gross process that involves a giant hose and a shovel.

The school itself was in a really cool area, though. It was on the side of a mountain, overlooking the sea. Rongcheng has a lot of beaches, too (like Weihai), but there was something very choppy and untamed about the water there, so it was appealing for different reasons. It reminded me of going to Sokcho in Korea. We will definitely be going back there soon. It's close to Weihai.

When the bus pulled up the first day, we still weren't quite sure what we were doing or what the itinerary was. All we knew was that I was singing a song with some of my students. The song is called "God is a Girl", and it's blasted from every freaking hair salon in Weihai. The lyrics are really stupid "God is a girl, however you live, do you believe it? Can you receive it...?" over and over and over. I didn't have the heart to tell my boss that there are some people in the world who might be offended by the notion that god is a woman (excuse me--girl) and that a bunch of little Chinese kids with makeup on are dancing around, singing it. When I mentioned my upcoming performance to Cecilia earlier in the week, she started to go off on a tangent about how "they'd better not play that song around me...".

Cecilia got fired. They can play whatever they want around here now.

Ten of my students are from Rongcheng, so as we got off of the bus on that first day, different cars full of parents would pull up, bringing ice cream to everyone, opening up entire trunks full of watermelon and bottled water. The first day we were performing outside. And we had to erect a stage. I thought for sure there were going to be other schools performing, but no. We just had to allot a lot of time for the stage erection and practice. There were so many people from our school there, too. We brought a sound guy, a security guard, random parents, you name it. And we all crammed on one tiny bus with all of our props and sets. All of the kids had to sit three to a seat. It makes me fondly remember riding the bus to work everyday in Columbia, the seats on either side of me empty. Oh well.

As it actually got down to showtime, the security guard had to usher all of a bunch of local little kids and parents away, back to the audience. They all wanted to look at me. They had probably never seen a foreigner before. I tried to talk to some of them and to be friendly, but they were just too dumbfounded. They would (quite literally) turn around, scream and run away. Funny stuff. I explained the idiom "I won't bite" to some of my school folks, and they thought it was funny. But they were very proud to have their own English teachers to show off.

The first night's audience was probably the biggest crowd I've ever performed in front of. Not only were there children and teachers there in the audience, but it was more like half of Rongcheng was there. So many people. The song was fine. The two little kids who were also singing "lead vocals" were mic'ed, too, so basically the audience heard some screaming kids trying to unintelligibly sing and dance to that damn song. It was funny. And I was really awkward, but I tried to channel my inner cheeseball (a la Branson), pointin and waving to a lot of little kids in the audience.

The second night we performed at a nicer school (bathrooms inside!), and I got a huge round of applause just for walking on the stage. Again, they had hyped me up as their "beautiful American teacher" or something like that (I think that's what Rory heard. It was all in Chinese). The second day wasn't nearly as fun as the first. It was raining, and it seemed like we were waiting a lot more than the first day. And to top it all off, on our bus ride home our driver went the wrong way on a roundabout. Not once. Not twice. Three freaking times.

But it was a nice way to spend a weekend. As we were all falling asleep on the bus ride home, we heard my principal say "xie xie, Julia..." (thank you, Julia). I love my job.

Changyi

2007-07-02T06:23:00.001-07:00

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That's right, he's the mayor!

2007-06-14T00:44:00.000-07:00

When we were working at the Asian Affairs Center back in Missouri, a group of 20 government officials from Shandong province came to Columbia to live and study for 6 months. The stand out of the group was Mayor Ma. His English abilities were far superior to anyone else's in his group of 18, and he was really funny on top of it. Yes, he's a real, live mayor in a city that is only 4 hours away from us. He has visited us once here in Weihai, and we were super-embarrassed by our shabby dwelling. A couple of weekends ago we decided to go visit him on his home turf.

It was one of those scenarios where we weren't sure if it would be awkward or not, because we didn't really know anything about Changyi (other than that it's got approximately 600,000 people and is known for silk production). We had, however, heard all about Mayor Ma's hospitality when hosting visitors. A Chinese volleyball player at MU told us that she had never experienced a meal as nice as the one Mayor Ma treated her family to. As we boarded the bus to Changyi--we were two of only 6 other people on the bus--the only thing we really knew was that we were being dropped off somewhere other than the bus station, where a friendly man who spoke English well (Mayor Ma's translator) would meet us.

When we actually stepped off the bus, just past a tollway off of the main drag, we saw a black car and three smiling faces waving at us. We met a driver; the translator, Mr. Yang; and Mr. Yang's colleague, Ms. Fan. They told us how excited they were to meet us so that they could practice their English. Mr. Yang was very confident in his speaking skills; and rightly so--he taught English for 5 years and has traveled all over the world. In the USA, he's been to L.A., D.C. and New York.

We bantered a little bit while we drove through the city. There are basically two main roads in the town, perfectly perpendicular, and most of the buildings are along these two main streets. Similar to Qufu, much of (one of) the road(s) was flanked by a dirty little canal, that--though smelly--was lined with trees and was pleasant enough to look at. As we turned into the driveway of Changyi Hotel, Mr. Yang told us that Mayor Ma had arranged the nicest hotel in town for us.

He wasn't kidding.

We walked in through a revolving door, and instantly we saw a massive chandelier and blue and yellow-colored ceiling drapes hanging from a vaulted ceiling a few stories above . Mr. Yang told us to take a rest and to meet back downstairs when we were ready. Two different hotel employees escorted us to our room on the second floor, where another two women were standing by the open door to our room. The room was incredible. I mean, it wasn't overwhelmingly huge like you see in magazines or anything, but it was just so damn nice. And it actually had one big--SOFT--bed. The shower actually worked, there were fruits and tea set out for us, and there was a bidet--which is a big deal in China, folks. In Korea there were bidets everywhere. Not so in China, where the average toilet is a hole or trough of some sort with crap splattered all over it.

We had slept on the bus, so we didn't really need too much time to rest. We were really eager to see Mayor Ma, so we cleaned ourselves up a little bit and went to the lobby to wait. No one from our party was there yet, so we took it upon ourselves to explore a little bit. We walked down one corridor of the hotel's main floor, past the fresh seafood annex(?) of the kitchen, where all kinds of water creatures were swimming around, waiting for some rich dude to eat them. Past that was a little photo opportunity area, which included a goldfish pond with a rock path and a big fake mountainscape on the wall. Good stuff. We walked down the other main hallway to the tea rooms. I have never seen tea rooms like this before. Each room was private, with a sliding door and individual decoration. The lobby looked like some sort of Mexican cantina, except it somehow maintained a distinct Chinese feel, Christmas lights and all. All of the tables were made of out solid pieces of strangely twisted and shaped tree trunks, their branches contorted and shellacked and turned into a series of shelves for holding tea or spoons or pots or whatever else can be shelved in a tea room. I wouldn't know. We only looked at the rooms.

Back in the lobby we met Mayor Ma, who followed us up to our room so he could make sure it was to ours/his liking. We presented him with the bottle of Jim Beam we had purchased for him as a gift. He insisted that we bring it do dinner. We walked back downstairs to our private dinner room, where we met Mr. Yang and Ms. Fan, the driver and some other man. I don't remember his name. But I think I gave him our cards. I know that he got up in the middle of our meal to go next door and buy me some medicine for my throat. I had a nasty cough--still do; going on 2 weeks now--and everyone was convinced that I needed lozenges and whiskey to make my throat feel better.

Dinner was nothing short of incredible. Really. There were more than 25 dishes on the table, and because we were "honored guests", Mayor Ma went all out (I suppose, too, because he's a high-ranking government official). We had a few different delicious soups, sea cucumber (an edible status symbol over here), duck, beef, pork, chicken, every vegetable imaginable. Too many things to even remember. And we cheersed a lot while Mayor Ma told us that we have to come back with Jamie in July, because he "miss[es] her very much." A really endearing sentiment. We drank the bottle of Jim Beam (an "American" gift), and then Mayor Ma insisted that we try some wine made in Changyi. "Wine" here means baijiu, and it didn't taste nearly as good as the whiskey, but as far as baijiu goes, it wasn't bad.

After dinner, Mayor Ma changed into sporting clothes and invited us to play table tennis and pool. Table tennis is taken very seriously over here, and it was a really funny experience playing with Mayor Ma. I mean, we're just a couple of 20-somethings, really easy-going, with tattoos, converse and lots of food service experience. But Mayor Ma doesn't care. He's just thankful that we helped improve his English.

Rory is much better at table tennis than I am. Initially, the two of us were playing, and I suggested that just Rory and Mayor Ma play. Mayor Ma said "I think that I am better at table tennis than you." It was funny because it was so obvious. But Rory, too, had been holding back while playing me, so as to not make me look like a complete idiot. Once he and Mayor Ma started playing, though, he stepped up his game. Mayor Ma just kept saying "Oh. Good job. Oh. Good job." It was pretty funny. The best part, though, was that there was some hotel staff member who had been assigned ball pick-up duty, so she ran around in a formal uniform and high heels, picking up ping pong balls that were flying all over the room.

We decided to try to play pool for a little bit, but we are really bad at that, and Mayor Ma had never played before. There was some instruction, but we gave up on that really quickly. The two dudes went back into the table tennis room, and I tried to play pool with the lady ping pong "ballhunter". We both laughed at how bad we were, and then we gave up and rejoined the dudes. We called it an early evening and went to sleep.

We met Mayor Ma and the gang for breakfast. It was in the same room we had the night before, and it was probably the largest breakfast I've ever had. I thought that getting the #11 from Ernie's was massive, but this spread was incredible. It was also a good excuse to eat meat in the morning--it's just a regular meal, but the breakfast part of it is the milk and coffee and eggs.

Unfortunately Mayor Ma was going to be busy all day--doing mayor things, I guess--so he said his goodbyes and told us he'd see us at dinner. We walked up to our room to get out things for our day of exploring with Mr. Yang and Ms. Fan, and Mr. Yang met us there with presents from Mayor Ma. We each received a nicely wrapped box of towels. Evidently there is a pretty sizeable towel factory in Changyi, so it seemed fitting. We were very thankful for the towels, and we were very thankful that we had English-speaking tour guides for the day, especially because we had no idea what we were going to be doing and we wouldn't know where to start on our own in a city like Changyi.

We all met up and took off on a drive out into the country. We drove out of the city, down little side roads, weaving in and out of farmers who were using the pavement to rake, sift and dry their wheat crops. I have never seen anything quite like it. Evidently it is illegal to use the road for grain/wheat drying, but as long as farmers don't do it on the main streets in town, no one cares. But there were at least 50 different farmers out on the roads, each with their own little plots of wheat--maybe 15 feet long and 6 feet across--walking back and forth, raking and beating out the moisture. So cool.

We drove a little further, and the groves and farms on the sides of the roads started turning into lakes, ponds, hatcheries. We pulled into a hatchery, and we weren't quite sure what was happening. We all opened our doors to get out of the car, and two really mean dogs started lunging towards us, barking. So we stayed in the car a little longer and pulled up closer to the entrance of a building. There was big truck parked in front of the doorway, with two men in galoshes standing in the bed of it. It was full of fish. Turbot fish. We were at a turbot fish hatchery. Another man (shirtless and sweaty) kept going back and forth between the truck and the hatchery, carrying big buckets of these crazy-looking, slimy fish to load up in the truck. The men smiled at us, but I could tell that they weren't necessarily thrilled that some "rich foreigners" came out to watch them slave away over some fish.

Inside the hatchery we could see rows and rows of round cement tubs, all full of water and fish. When we looked in the tubs, though, it was hard to see the turbot--they were the same color as their surroundings, and they all lumped together at the bottom of the pool. We didn't stay there very long, but long enough for me to take some pictures with my new camera. It was dark in the place, and I haven't quite figured out how to use the camera, so we'll see how the pictures turn out.

After the hatchery, we drove further down a road that really was out in the middle of nowhere. Eventually pavement turned into gravel, and we found ourselves surrounded by shrimp farms. Mr. Yang explained that we were very close to the sea, and that the particular locale was responsible for the most shrimp output in Shandong province. Evidently the farms used to be full of Japanese shrimp--which taste better--but after all the shrimp succumbed to some sort of shrimp disease, the farm started using orange shrimp imported from South America. Disease-free, yes; but not as tasty.

We got the impression that our hosts might not have been sure whether we were enjoying ourselves. They were responsible for planning our entire day, and maybe the 20-somethings would want to do something besides look at shrimp farms. We made sure to let them know how grateful we were to be out in the middle of "real China". We got to go to the places where the buses can't go, and the only way we would ever get to see anything like this is if we watched Discovery Channel. Or if we know Mayor Ma. We felt very privileged.

A little further past rows of shrimp farms, the gravel road curved and we could see water. Lots of it. We had come to the sea. There was something pretty remarkable about this spot, too. There weren't any tourists or vendors or restaurants, and when you looked out across the water, all you could see were fishing boats and little belts of sand and gravel that peeked through shallow water. We actually had some privacy in a beautiful place--rare in China. I imagine this place would have been amazing at sunrise.

Our next stop on the tour de Chinese countryside was a salt farm. Yes, salt. I believe Mr. Yang said that this area of Changyi also produced the most salt. We drove up to a giant mound of it, still in big, rocky chunks. There were two men standing on top, raking through it, doing whatever you do in this phase of salt production. These were some hard-working fellas, and as we walked across a water ditch--via a little wooden plank--we came across more workers, knee-deep in mud and water and salt. One man was driving this four-wheeler-looking thing, and I tried to imagine the start of the day; a bunch of dudes drawing straws to see who gets to ride around in the mud all day. That actually looked really fun.

We left the salt farm and started driving back into town, back past the shrimp and turbot and wheat. Once we were in town, we pulled into the driveway of something that looked like the botanical gardens in St. Louis. There were all kinds of crazy flowers and plants and greenhouses. It was so cool! We walked on a zigzagging footbridge across a pond full of lotus flowers. Mr. Yang told us that this place had been designed by a poor farmer a long time ago, and the man wanted to show off his love and knowledge of horticulture; he also wanted to make sure his son wouldn't be poor, as long as he kept up the place.

We walked into a building on the premises, and it was like walking into some tropical paradise. Maybe that's a little extreme, but after walking around salt/shrimp/fish farms, this place was such a stark contrast. Inside the building (which was a hotel and restaurant), everything was climate-controlled, so the trees were tropical and it felt like being in a rainforest. We walked into a little room that had wicker furniture, a lazy susan table and a bathroom (with bidet). One of the walls was made entirely of glass, though, and it looked out into the "rainforest", pagodas and trees and paths. We thought that we were just taking a little rest before we went somewhere else. I mean, yes, we were with the mayor's entourage--actually, this weekened we were part of the entourage--but we didn't think we'd be eating out of gold bowls, with gold chopsticks and little gold dragon cups. But I guess you should expect anything when hanging out with members of "the party", and it turned out we were eating there.

This was probably the nicest meal of the entire trip. It's a shame that Mayor Ma wasn't actually there, because the food was awesome. Again, there were more than 20 dishes, all to welcome us, the honored guests. It was nice. After this meal we went back to the hotel to nap for an hour or so before heading to Weifang. Changyi county is part of Weifang city/municipality (the way that works is exactly backwards from the United States). Weifang has 8.5 million people, and it is the kite capital of the world.

It didn't take much time to get to Weifang, and it was (obviously) significantly larger than Changyi. For starters, it had more than two main roads Before going to the city museum, we went to a multi-level department store in the heart of downtown. We have multi-level department stores here in Weihai, too, but we hadn't been into one this nice before. We bought some batteries for the camera and headed to the museum.

It was so cool to look at all of these ancient archealogical artifacts and realize that damn near all of them are older than America. I mean, China knows the meaning of "ancient." One floor of the museum had a bunch of kites on display on the wall, and that's when I remembered that Weifang has the international kite festival every year. I decided that we needed some kites. Rather than buying them from the museum, though, Mr. Yang said he knew a good area of town to go to. So we were off again, and when we stopped, we were on "kite row". Both sides of a street were lined with kite shops. Kites unlike any I've ever seen. And they were so cheap. Walking into a room full of brightly-colored kites made me feel like a little kid. I wanted to buy a hundred of them. We settled on three. We will definitely be going back to Weifang for the festival in September.

We headed back to Changyi to meet Mayor Ma for our last dinner of the trip. We had another incredible meal--minus the Jim Beam this time, which was okay, since we had to catch a 7:00 bus the next morning--and it was nice to just recount the events of the day. We called it an early evening.

We met the next morning for an intense breakfast. They served us hot milk (not room temperature like all of the other milk); and I actually like hot milk, but it would have been bad with all of my snot. After the meal we said goodbye to Mayor Ma--he gave us another gift of Chinese paper cutting--and we vowed to come back in July so we can visit a silk production plant where workers actually remove the silk from the silkworm. And we'll go to a clothing factory. Mr. Yang and Ms. Fan accompanied us to the bus station--they even bought our tickets for us--and they made sure to let the driver know that we were the mayor's guests, and we needed to be dropped off in a special locale in Weihai. That was an awesome gesture, too, because it saved us about 35rmb that we would have spent taking a cab back from the bus station, way out in the middle of nowhere.

We came back to our school and our room and our squatter, and the whole "being treated like royalty" thing still hadn't sunk in. We walked into our room with our arms full of presents and a day off from work. The Party is truly powerful over here. And we know people who are a part of it all. It's crazy.

Chinese police love us!

2007-06-12T00:20:00.000-07:00

Last week was an interesting one. We are fast approaching a Neal and Alyssa-free Weihai, so we have to get in as much hanging out time as possible. We decided to meet Neal on the beach so we could go eat somewhere. The week before Rory and I had gone to a little joint that had a nice view of the water, where the owners were super-friendly and didn't overcharge us, so we opted to go back. The two dudes went inside to decide what we were eating; looking at the pictures on the wall, asking for recommendations and checking the prices. The meal was just okay--the highlight being fried potatoes--and we asked how much we owed. The woman wrote down some exorbitant price, and we were shocked.

Neal speaks Chinese very well--he can actually understand things in a conversation format--and he had demonstrated this with the owners right from the get-go, so we didn't understand why they would try to be jerks to him or to us. We (I say "we", but I mean Neal) kept telling the wife/waitress that it was too much, especially since she had already quoted the prices when we ordered. We all looked at the ticket. The prices she had initially given us were written down next to the menu items, but then they were crossed out, and some higher numbers were written. For no valid reason, other than the fact that we're American. Neal pointed this discrepancy out, and we tried to compromise on the price, offering 100 rmb (which was still way too much). She refused. She walked inside and started cleaning, and we continued to do the math in our heads. There was no way the meal should have been more than 80, yet we were offering 100. We went back and forth about how unreasonable her logic was, showing her that there was no way our lamb dish cost more than the most expensive seafood on the menu.

Rory went back inside with 100, and tried (again) to offer it to her. She refused. Again. So he came back out, and we all tried to figure out what to do. Giving her the 127 she wanted was like giving in. Everyday we have to deal with people trying to overcharge in one way or another, simply because we're foreign and must, therefore, be rich. But we work in China, and we make Chinese money. Granted, it's a lot more than these restaurant owners make, but that doesn't mean we should have to pay more. It's just flat-out discrimination, and it wouldn't happen in the United States (this is where I mention that I fully realize we live in Communist China. There, I said it).

Also, the last time we were in so obvious a situation was in Qufu, where another mom and pop place tried to charge us more than 5 times what we should have paid. We stood our ground then; we were firm in our refusal to pay what they were asking. It was like a little game, and we left that place paying significantly less than they wanted (and significantly more than we should have). No one was upset, it was just a series of motions we had to go through in order to get our point across. Neal only has a few more weeks left in China, too, and I'm sure that a year of putting up with this whole Chinese bargaining system takes its toll on a person.

I had been relatively quiet up to this point, so I thought that maybe I could try again, and they wouldn't yell at me because I'm a woman. At first we thought "we'll just leave the 100 on the table", but we didn't want it to blow away. So I walked in with the 100 and put it under the calculator at the cash register. No problem. I walked outside, and we started to head off across the street, to the beach. We figured it was over. We put our collective foot down and stood up for ourselves as foreigners.

But the next thing we know, the woman was clutching Rory's sweatshirt, digging her claws into his arm and refusing to let go. We couldn't believe that she was actually touching him. So we told her a few more times that she had overcharged us--and that she knew it--and she still didn't let go. So Neal and I reached down and tried to peel her fingers off of Rory's arms. Then she grabbed Neal with her other arm. What happened next is sort of a blur, but we knew the whole time that we had done and were doing nothing wrong. We were the ones who were getting screwed. Soon the husband joined the mix. The woman tried to grab my purse. She clawed at Neal and ripped a huge hole in his shirt. He hit her arm. The husband hit me in the shoulder. It was real. We were in the middle of this giant Rory tug-o-war. We just wanted to get out of there. The woman ripped a hole in Rory's sweatshirt. I started pounding on her tiny little arms, but she refused to let go. Rory tried to make everything stop, to just stop the fighting and talk about it, but it was already past that point. I was much bigger than the woman, so I tried to puff my chest up and nudge her away from Rory using my boobs. Didn't work. If I would have continued, I would have knocked her down. I think the three of us were fine just being in defense mode, but we weren't going to make a heated situation even hotter. The woman made Rory's sweatshirt hole bigger. Then she made a phone motion, like she was gong to call the police. The three of us had a collective "bring it on" sort of moment. All the neighboring restaurant folks were watching us at this point, trying to see who would prevail. I somehow freed myself, so I took Rory and Neal's wallets and got into the cab that we had hailed (that the woman tried to shoo away). I didn't know where I was going, but I knew she wasn't getting any more money.

I rode in the cab for a few minutes, having a hysterical freak out in the back seat. I realized I didn't have a phone, and I would have no way to communicate with Rory or Neal. I got out a few blocks later, and the cabbie didn't charge me. He could see I was in distress. I started walking back to the scene, regaining my composure. When I got closer to the restaurant, I could see that a police van was there, and two officers were talking to Rory and Neal. I approached them, and the boys brought me up-to-date. The officers asked Neal if we could pay the 27 rmb, and Neal responded (very appropriately), "No, we can't pay it, because it's too much." Neal also told the police that there was no way the meal should have been more than 80 rmb, so we were already paying way more than we should have. At this point, we couldn't believe that they restauranteurs had actually called the police over 27 rmb. I don't think the police could believe it either. There was a lot of back and forth between us and the cops and the couple from hell.

The cops kept telling us: "you have to check the menu beforehand, you have to check how much they're charging you, blah blah blah...". And each time, Neal told the police, "we did do that". We had done exactly as we were supposed to do the entire time. The police said something like "you can't just put money on the counter and walk out." Our argument was that we doubt the police wanted to hear from foreigners every time they get overcharged in a restaurant. There was a lot of suspense--who would win this battle? If the couple won, it sent a sign to all the other shop owners that they can charge foreigners as much as they want. If we won, the police were taking the sides of foreigners. Ultimately, though, the police knew that we had been wronged. They were actually really straightforward about everything, and they let us walk away, without us having to pay a single extra yuan.

We were really shaken up after that. We decided not to go to the beach, instead walking more in Neal's direction. We stopped and sat on the sidewalk, recounting all of the things that had just happened, sort of laughing about it a little bit, happy (and relieved) that the cops had done the right thing. The gravity of the situation didn't really hit me until the next day, when I realized what a potentially dangerous situation we had gotten into. When something like that is actually happening, you don't really have time to think, only to react. But I do know one thing--we sure as shit aren't going back to that restaurant.

We're mobile!

2007-06-03T22:50:00.001-07:00

We're mobile! My bike is blue-- Rory's is green and silver...
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78

Facing my fear of (things with) wheels, we bought bikes.

Surprise

2007-06-03T22:48:00.001-07:00

Best surprise present ever!
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78

Rory skipped lunch and came back to the room with a "surprise." They're alive!

Vacation III--Qingdao

2007-05-30T20:10:00.001-07:00

In our hotel room in Taian, Rory set the alarm clock for 4:00 am, hoping to get to the bus station early enough to get us tickets for our Qingdao bus (that we thought left at 6:00). I started packing up our stuff. Fifteen minutes later Rory was back--"The bus station's not open yet." So we went back to sleep until 5:00, when our alarm went off again. I picked up where I had left off, packing-wise, and Rory ran back across the street to try again. Fifteen minutes later, he was back. The station still wasn't open. So we were ready to go, but we didn't have tickets, and we didn't know what time the bus station was going to open. At 6:00 he ran back across the street. Fifteen minutes later he was back--"got the tickets. Let's go." Evidently the voyage from Taian to Qingdao is a pretty popular one, so there are buses that depart pretty much as soon as they fill up. We were some of the first people on the bus, so that was good, and it was nice to know that we didn't have to worry about anything for the next 4 to 5 hours. After about an hour of waiting for other folks to board, we actually departed.

As we were en route to Qingdao, we got to really experience how hellish it is to be on the road during a major Chinese holiday. If I thought Chinese people were impatient and sneaky in line for the bathroom, they were even more so on the road. Rory and I had fallen asleep pretty much immediately on the bus, but we both woke up to standstill traffic. In the United States, when you are in bumper-to-bumper, standstill traffic, there are a number of things that go through your head: the road is just really busy/it's a bad time of the day, there's been an accident, or there is construction being done on the road. In any one of these three situations, it (usually) doesn't occur to an American to swerve over to the shoulder of the road to take a shortcut--in fact, you will be pulled over if you're caught. And if there is an accident or some sort of construction, emergency and work vehicles rely on the shoulder, not impatient vacationers. But we saw people driving on the side--passing on the right or wherever there was enough room to sneak a car through--like it was nobody's business. It was really frustrating to watch, and it made me understand more why there is a sterotype (in the United States) that Asians are really bad drivers.

Luckily for us, though, the trip to Qingdao was significantly shorter than we thought it would be, and we pulled into the bus station ready to get our bearings and to relax. We noticed that we didn't seem like we were in the heart of downtown. We bought a Chinese map and found the coast, where there was a lot of activity/civilization. We tried to flag down a couple of taxis, but both times, the drivers refused to go to where we pointed on the map. We were getting progressively more frustrated, when a friendly Chinese man came up and said (in English): "Can I help you with something?" We were so relieved.

He told us that his name was Jim, that he was from Weihai, and that he was studying at Qingdao University. He also confessed that he didn't really know his way around Qingdao. But he was very helpful nonetheless. He pointed to the bus station on the map--it was way the hell away from anything! He said it would be hard to find a taxi to take us into town (and it would be expensive), but he would find out which bus we should take. He hopped on a couple of different waiting buses to talk to the drivers, and we figured it out. We crossed the street and waited. And waited. And waited. He checked with another bus driver, and then told us that we were in the right spot; the bus would show up any minute. While we were waiting some more he told us that his dream was to meet foreigners and to speak English to them. He was really earnest and friendly. He also asked how much money we made, which didn't offend us at all. We told him how much we make a month, and his eyes got very big; he explained that after he graduates from university, he will be lucky to make 1,000 rmb ($131) a month. I felt very spoiled.

I felt even more spoiled when a taxi pulled up next to us, and the cabbie said he'd take us to the center of the city. As Jim explained that the bus was cheap but we should look out for people trying to steal our stuff, we opted to take the cab. And we felt really bad, simply because taking a taxi whenever it's convenient was not and is not an option for Jim; and here we were, in his country, getting paid a lot more, going on a lavish vacation with the intention of buying a guitar. We took the taxi anyway; we exchanged phone numbers, Jim told the cabbie where to go, and he negotiated a rate. Away we went.

As we got closer to the city part of Qingdao, it became more and more like I had envisioned it in my head. Enormous buildings, people (9 million of them, in fact), cars, double decker buses, beautiful parks, all of it. The cabbie turned on to a really busy street, teeming with Chinese folks who looked like they were about our age. Jim had done a good job. We asked where a cheap hotel was, and the cabbie pointed up and down the street on which we were stopped. We were certain it would be a piece of cake to find a place--we hoped so anyway, as we were carrying all of the stuff we had thus far accumulated on vacation, Rory's backpack alone filled with the bulk of the stuff. We walked around for about fifteen minutes, popping in and out of little places that either weren't hotels or didn't have a room available. We were at the "fifteen more minutes of this and I'm going to have to take a breather" point when Rory noticed a woman just sitting at a desk inside a sort of empty room. He popped in and asked if it was a hotel. It was. We were sold.

We only paid for one night, thinking that we might search for a cheaper place the next day, but we were so relieved to have a place to just store our stuff and wash our faces. The ladies working were really friendly, and though they didn't have the super cheap room we were hoping for, they did show us up to ours--it was the nicest room of the trip. We had two separate beds, but that was okay, because there was actually a significant amount of water pressure in the shower. And there was a picture of a naked Chinese lady right at eye level if sitting on the toilet. She was actually painted into the tile, not taped or adhered to the wall or anything. Funny stuff.

We set our stuff down and went to find some food and drink. It was only 3:30, but we hadn't eaten all day, and we were ready to explore. As we were walking past all the different stores and boutiques, we saw a picture of a giant steak dinner on the outside wall of a restaurant. Sold! We walked in, and after having some difficulty explaining that we wanted a giant plate of meat, Rory walked outside with the waitress and pointed to the wall. Turns out they didn't actually have that item. Oh well--they had pitchers of beer. From kegs. We'd sort of forgotten what kegs and pitchers looked like, because we hadn't really seen them anywhere in Weihai (now we do because it's warm). We ordered an entire fish (we learned how much we loved it in Qufu), some chow mein, some tomato beef soup and some rice. It was amazing. We ate so much! We drank a fair amount of beer, too--humoring some college-age kids with our across-the-room "cheers"-- and the fact that the beer was sort of cold was really nice. We are lucky that we started drinking room temperature beer (Chinese-style) while it was still February and really cold in Weihai. So we've sort of been eased into the whole experience--it's not as hard as I thought it would be, considering the fact that we're beer lovers.

We left the restaurant and wandered around, asking younger folks where the guitar stores were--we had heard there were guitar shops everywhere, yet we still turned up a lot of "I don't know"s and "Nowhere around here"s. We ended up at a really big musical instrument store, but it was closed, and just from peering through the windows, it didn't look promising. We wandered around for a couple more hours, visiting the Super Wal-Mart we had discovered that was fairly close to our hotel, marvelling (still) at all the people. It made us re-hungry, so we decided to stop by (what we thought was) a shabu-shabu place similar to one we had experienced in Korea. They had a pretty nice special advertised on the sign outside--a bunch of food for only ¥19--but once again, we discovered that this option didn't really exist. It also wasn't really shabu shabu--it was just regular ol' hotpot--but we got our own, individual pots in front of us, so that was cool.

What was not cool was the temperature of the restaurant. I'm not talking about the food temperature; I'm talking about a hot-ass restaurant, where we were stuffed on the second floor, and the windows didn't open. And someone was wearing makeup, so it was a bad scene. I looked like I had melted. But the food was really good. As we were leaving and walking around more, we got a phone call from Jim. He wanted to show us around Qingdao the following morning. We thought it would be a good opportunity to not only see the "hot spots", but also to gain insight as to where a guitar store (or street) might be.

We woke up pretty early the next day, paid for two more nights in our hotel and hoppped in a taxi to meet Jim, who texted us his location in Chinese. The taxi took off and stopped 15 minutes later in front of a gate at Qingdao University. We waited and waited, and finally we sent Jim a message asking where he was. He wanted to know where we were--the cabbie took us to the wrong spot! So after a little more walking (and showing Jim's messages to strangers), we were finally able to find a different gate--the right gate--where Jim and a friend would meet us. While waiting, I annihilated a Snickers--they're hot commodities over here--my eyes light up every time I see one. It's not like I would eat snickers all the time in the US, but something about the Chinese version of chocolate makes me appreciate US candy more. Anyway... Jim showed up with his friend John in tow. John didn't speak much English, but he understood a lot of it, and he was really friendly. I think he was just intimidated being around Jim and us at the same time.

We walked over to a little grove area and talked about where we would go. We hopped on a double decker bus (my first time!) and went to the big red sculpture that had long been the desktop picture on our computer back in CoMO. It was at a coastal park in Wu Si square, an area full of tourists--most of them Chinese--their enthusiasm for this particular spot bolstered by the fact that the upcoming sailing portion of the Olympics will be held there. There were Olympics signs everywhere, too; but they're pretty much everywhere you look in China, even in Weihai. We walked next to vendors, saw a few foreigners, and we got tailed by some unsavory Chinee who were probably just waiting for us to look the other way so they could try to steal something. Next we hopped on another bus. I'm not sure where Jim wanted to take us, but we ended up driving past some German architecture--we wanted to explore that more, but didn't have the chance--and to another really crowded beach.

We took our shoes off, walked down some steep and narrow concrete steps, and we sat on newspaper on the beach. With several thousand other people. It was crazy. John opened up the backpack he'd been lugging around and pulled out some water and nuts. So we sat on the beach and ate nuts, watching little kids dig in the sand while we got harrassed by people trying to convince us to go waterskiing. Rory and I were felt like time was wasting--we wanted to do some guitar shopping! We told Jim and John that we would take them out to lunch since they showed us around, but we wanted to eat lunch in an area where there were guitar shops. We insisted that we take a taxi and pay for it.

I think we were en route to a taxi stand when John stole some little plush animal toy. Evidently someone had been looking at it, and this person dropped it. John picked it up and later gave it to me. I just assumed that he'd bought it, but Rory saw the whole thing go down. I mean, it wasn't too big of a deal because the thing cost maybe a nickel, but still--I didn't know I was receiving stolen goods! And it was just some junky little toy, not worth stealing.

Moving on...after some more guitar queries in Chinese and a quick taxi ride, we ended up back in the same neighborhood where we were staying. We were really hungry at this point, so we walked around looking for the perfect restaurant. Each time John and Jim would see some little hole in the wall/food poisoning restaurant, they would suggest it. We certainly value Chinese judgement when it comes to food recommendations, but I told them that if we were treating them to lunch we were going to do it right. We ended up at an upstairs place. We tried to order a whole fish, but the waitress said it would take too long to prepare during the busy lunch time. Fine.

We ordered some other food, including one of the superhot Sichuan dishes. The first bite I took featured some strange spice (that looks like a peppercorn/little pacman) that made half of my mouth feel frozen or numb or something. I was drooling a little bit on the left side of my mouth, like my dentist's anesthesia hadn't yet worn off. It wasn't a bad feeling--it was actually pretty cool--but I didn't feel like eating any more of that dish. We also drank beers. John and Jim said that they weren't big drinkers, and when we tried to "ganbei" them (keep in mind these are with little glasses), Jim didn't finish his beer, instead pouring his beer in the other three glasses. At a certain point, Rory and I were stuffed, so we sat back and told them we were finished eating, but we encouraged them to keep on. And eat they did. They finished every piece of meat and every (edible) vegetable. It was like they hadn't eaten for days and this was their feast. It was nice--it felt good to be able to give them the best meal they'd eat all month. Also gave me that weird, spoiled feeling, but I quickly got that out of my head. Eyes on the prize--guitar.

We left the restaurant and started walking around a little, Jim ocassionally asking for directions, and soon we were in a very familiar niche of our (3 day) `hood. We started walking to a store, and even though we knew we were going back to the store that had been closed the day before, we didn't want to say anything, so we just sort of went along with it. Maybe we were wrong about it. Maybe we would get lucky. We didn't. It was a bust. But at least Jim tried for us. We told Jim and John that we were going to go back and take a nap and put on sunscreen--Rory was already a lobster--but we promised to talk again before we left. They wanted to show us around their university the next day, but we all sort of knew that probably wasn't going to happen. We wanted to explore, but really with just the two of us. That's how we rolled on this trip.

We did go back to the room, to regroup and figure out how we were going to find a freaking guitar. We talked to the girls at the front desk, and they gave us cab directions to a store that they knew sold guitars. Great! Away we went. We walked into the store, and though it did have more of a selection than the first place, it still painted a bleak picture. Luckily for us, though, the couple that ran the store found us highly amusing (the wife got really excited about tattoos--very rare amongst older folks here in China). They gave us directions to another place; they wrote the directions down on paper, but then they followed us outside to help us flag down a taxi so they could actually talk to the driver. They were great!

So we drove to place number two. Along the way, I saw another guitar shop, so I was thankful that we stopped relatively close to it, or I would have forgotten where it was. We walked into this place called "Orient" or something. It was really promising. Rory was like a freaking kid in a candy store. It was funny to watch. They had a bunch of good guitars, including some Italian brands that he'd never heard of before. He had his eye on a Fender Stratocaster. We asked the owner what time they closed and told him we'd be back. At this point, we were both pretty much sold on this Strat, even though it was used and (we didn't realize it at the time) way overpriced. But we wanted to do a little more investigating.

We walked down the street to the other music store, where I had seen drums in the window. As we walked in, it was like in Wayne's World, where a big beam of light shines down onto the perfect guitar. There she was, Rory's soon-to-be new plaything, a white Epiphone Les Paul with gold hardware. He sat down and tooled around a little bit, warning me that he was about to "riff" (that word makes me giggle just writing it. I don't know why). It was a little out of our budget, but we knew we had come to Qingdao for this very moment, plus Rory said it was a guitar that he'd wanted for a long time--though he could have just been telling me that to make me forget about our budget... I didn't really care. It was going to be his baby. We talked to one of the owners about a guitar and amp package deal, and soon she was on the phone calling someone about an amp, though there were several lined up against the wall behind her. We also eyeballed our future purchase from the store--a drum machine. But that will be another blog altogether, I'm sure... While Rory went to an atm, I practiced my Chinese with the woman, and her husband started giving drum lessons to a little girl who couldn't have been older than 10. Her mom stood there the whole time watching. It was really cute. She was practicing on this big drum set in the window, so anyone who walked by could see her.

Rory came back with money, and shortly after another man walked in with a couple of different little amps for him to choose from. We picked out some picks and strings and made the purchase. His guitar even came with a leather hard case. Success! We took a taxi back to the hotel, and as we walked in with a guitar and an amp, the workers and other patrons looked at us like we were rock stars--good stuff! Inside our room, we tried to "hide" the guitar the best way we could, just in case. We walked to a pc bong to check out different cherry blossom festivals that were supposed to be happening in and around Qingdao. Extremely satisfied with the events of the day, we decided to eat at a restaurant we had noticed on the first day we arrived. It was a Sichuan/Canton restaurant. It was just okay. We thought we had ordered the breaded pork dish we enjoyed in Qufu, but it was actually shrimp and the batter was gross. Oh well.

We left that restaurant still a little hungry, so we explored the convenience mart offerings close to our hotel. We gravitated towards a larger, lit up pseudo-Family Mart place that had a cooler full of ice cream. I got an ice cream bar, and it was awesome--it made up for my mistake at Mt. Tai, when I thought the picture of beans on an ice cream wrapper was actually grapes. What a surprise! We headed back to our room and fell asleep early.

We woke up the next day and asked the front desk ladies about buses to Weihai, thinking it would be really difficult for us to figure out on our own so we should try to do it ahead of time. Luckily, right there on the tv, there was a channel you could turn to that had all of the departing buses and destinations. The buses left fairly often the following day, and we wouldn't have to go back to the super far away station--there was a station that was ten minutes away. We felt relieved. We decided to be American and eat at Pizza Hut, conveniently located by the Super Wal-Mart and the KFC.

Chinese Pizza Huts are considered fine dining, and the prices reflect that. But we were on vacation, dammit! So we sat down, ordered Budweisers and pizza, and we ate the whole damn thing. It was awesome--real cheese! After looking at some different boutiques and drinking some bubble tea outside, we opted to go to Zhongshan Park to check out their cherry blossoms. I had wanted to go to Laoshan (part of Qingdao) before we even left for vacation, to go to their annual cherry blossom festival. But we weren't exactly sure how far away it was, and though we knew which buses to take, we opted to just go to a park in the middle of Qingdao; evidently this park was supposed to have some impressive cherry blossoms.

The park itself was huge! I've never been to a park so big. It was really cool, but the only map we could find was posted on a giant sign as soon as you entered. And it was all in Chinese. So we walked around, past rickety spinning roller coasters and super primitive carnival rides, cool flowers and sculptures. It was nice. There was also a huge stage erected in the middle of the park, and these whored-up Chinese girls were dancing, trying to promote a new apartment complex that was being built. There was also a magician, but we saw him from the side of the stage, so we could see through all of his tricks. That was funny, though.

Throughout the park there were even little signs directing us to different areas--the magnolia trees, some cable cars, the cherry blossom alley. We started walking along, and we couldn't find any elaborate array of cherry blossoms. Sure, there were some cherry blossoms, but nothing I would call impressive. I felt very defeated. We almost left the park, but we decided to give it one more try. We walked around in circles--no festival. But we did find some more cable cars, and for fairly cheap, we got to ride above Qingdao, up to a really tall tv tower that overlooked the city. There were three different stops, but we sort of just got off the cars to get on the next one. At each stop you were expected to enter another park and pay another fee, but we just opted to...not. We are now in love with cable cars.

We left the park, and went back to our hood. We walked into an underground area, full of boutiques with really cute clothes, but we weren't in the shopping mood, so we ditched that and started walking back to our hotel as a huge storm was brewing. A storm will clear out a busy part of the city, too. There was no one on the street. It started raining as we entered our room. We napped through the storm, and when we woke up it was significantly cooler. We decided to try to find a bar--we'd yet to go to an actual "bar" on vacation, though they are certainly harder to come by here. We also needed to eat dinner, so we wanted to go back to a Mexican restaurant we'd seen as we were heading into Taidong that first day in the cab. After some searching, we found the place!--as they were closing.

But across the street there was what looked like a little dive-y sort of bar. We walked in, and we were the only people in the joint. Sweet. The waitress led us upstairs to a booth that overlooked the closed Mexican restaurant. It had cool curtains that you could close for more privacy, and the interior of the place looked like someone barfed up a paper mache tiki bar. It was awesome, Christmas lights everywhere! And they were playing Tom and Jerry on tv. So we sat there drinking beer, eating a fruit plate, watching Tom and Jerry while listening to American hip hop. And we were pretty much the only people there. It was one of my favorite parts of our entire vacation.

We still hadn't eaten anything substantial, so we opted for our old standby (standby at this point meant whatever the hell was open)--hotpot. We were definitely the last two people there, but the food was really good and all of the workers were really friendly. Even when I clumsily broke one of their plates. We walked back to our hotel to pack and sleep. We were glad that we didn't have to rush the next day because there were so many buses to choose from. And though vacation is always awesome, we were definitely ready to go "home."

It's funny--as we were unpacking in our dorm room here in Weihai, after being on vacation for 9 days already, we decided to go to the beach. All this traveling around, and we still got to go to the beach at the end of it all. How lucky. During the summer we get a month and a half of paid vacation--who knows where we'll go.

Vacation Video #2

2007-05-21T06:24:00.000-07:00

Two videos in one day. I'm just that good. This one is of our second day in Qufu, the Confucious mansion.. and some interesting things on the street.

Vacation Video #1

2007-05-21T04:31:00.000-07:00

Hello. This is the first of a few vacation videos I'll be uploading throughout the week. This is from our first day in Qufu, and the Confucious temple the next day. Enjoy.

Me. 1,545 meters.

2007-05-17T19:28:00.001-07:00

Me. 1,545 meters.
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

At the top. Do work!

At this point, we had already climbed a mountain.

2007-05-17T19:27:00.001-07:00

At this point, we had already climbed a mountain.
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Temples, Hotels, Restaurants....

2007-05-17T19:26:00.001-07:00

Temples, Hotels, Restaurants....
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

on the top of the tallest mountain in Shandong. I drank the most holy sprite I've ever had.

Serious cable cars.

2007-05-17T19:25:00.001-07:00

Serious cable cars.
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

These were the kind where if you fall you're dead for sure.

Hard Workin' Man

2007-05-17T19:24:00.001-07:00

Hard Workin' Man
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

That looked pretty heavy.

"Vacation--had to get away..." Part II: Taian

2007-05-11T01:55:00.000-07:00

We left Qufu bright and early Wednesday morning. There are buses that go to Taian nearly every hour, as it is a short trip, so we were lucky in that it wasn't as crowded as it could have been. We somehow managed to get all of our stuff on the bus--we had acquired quite a bit in Qufu--and we crammed ourselves into two seats in the back. Though the trip was short, I was pretty hungover, and the entire bus ride made me question whether or not I would need the little (double) baggies I had brought with me in case I was going to ralph. Turns out I didn't. Good. I preserved my dignity (?) a little bit, if only for an hour in front of complete strangers. And Rory.

As we got closer to town, we saw a bunch of different mountain peaks, and we took turns debating which of these peaks was Mount Taishan, the most holy of five holy mountains in China. As we pulled into the center of town, past all the industry and development we had already heard so much about, we saw it. Mt. Taishan is a force to be reckoned with; I suppose it's the "holiest" for a reason. We were still pumped about the prospect of climbing up the 7200 steps, but first we had to wade through every other Chinese tourist (who hadn't decided to go to Beijing) and find a hotel. We weren't necessarily in the mood for a hotel search, so we just went to the first one we found. At the front desk they showed us pictures of their luxurious rooms--the showers that have vertical streams built into the walls (that hit you from both sides!) and a jetted, jacuzzi tub--and the thought of taking a real bath sounded awesome. We were sold! We paid more money that we wanted to spend, but they weren't cheating us, and we waited for them to finish cleaning the room (it was still a little early).

During this wait, Rory decided to go to the bus station--conveniently located across the street--to check out the bus tickets to Qingdao, where we would go the following morning. I sat down on the couch, and immediately three different people brought out dixie cups of hot water for me to drink. I used the little Chinese I know to try to communicate with the front desk lady, but finally we both gave up. We had spent a good 10 minutes being equally enthusiastic about communicating, but it all ended up being a lot of laughing, smiling, nodding, overall befuddlement. It turns out, though, that "I have no idea what you're saying" is a universal look. I took out my ipod and started listening to music, when a man came over to me and just laughed and pointed. He thought the little ear buds on my ipod were really funny. I thought the fact that he was so tickled was really funny.

Turns out he was the head security guard at the hotel, and he knew some English. The first thing he said was: "this way, please," with a sweeping hand gesture, pointing to the stairs. Our room wasn't ready yet, and I don't think he actually wanted me to go anywhere; I think that was just the first thing he could think of to say. He sat down next to me on the couch, and we took turns speaking, me in Chinese and him in English. He insisted. It was cute. I had my electronic translator, and he had a REALLY old paper dictionary, maybe from the 70s, that had the most random English phrases in it. We took turns talking about family--okay, mostly just my family--and it was somehow really successful. He disappeared for a few minutes, and I gave some pop rocks to the little boy who had been spying on me from behind the front desk. He ran off, but when he came back out, he was being nudged by the security guard, who made him say "thank you very much" in English. My new friend had a little tape player and headphones in his hand. He pressed play and put the headphones on my head. It was an English tape: "...this is my friend, John." "Hello, John." It was so funny (British English), and at the same time, I was really impressed. Here was this 48-year-old man who worked in a hotel, and in his spare time he listened to these English tapes, waiting for the day some foreigners would walk in. I mean, in Taian, there are probably foreigners there all the time--it's a tourist city--but you could tell that he was really satisfied to see me smiling like a little kid as I listened to this tape, wondering how many times he listens to it on a daily basis. Rory came back, and the man helped us take all of our stuff up to our room, really happy the whole time. When we got to our room he told us to "remember safety" and demonstrated how to lock the door.

We threw our stuff down, and off we went. No sense in wasting time. We went to McKonkey, a Chinese fast food joint that's a rip off of McDonald's. They were having their grand opening, so while we were inside eating our McChickens, we watched this teenage employee get into a blow up chicken suit while little kids tried to knock him over. He was in there for maybe 5 minutes before he came back out, all sweaty and gross. Next we hopped into the first cab we could find and just pointed to the giant, freaking mountain. "Uh, Taishan?" Rory said, pointing. The driver pulled out a little laminated park map and told us to pick our entrance. Rory picked, and away we went. The cab ride was actually pretty cheap, and we were dropped off at the base of the mountain, where there was a sea of Asian folks, all clad in "hiking gear." Hiking gear really just means walking sticks that all the vendors were selling.

Vendors are the name of the game in China, and Mt. Taishan was no different. As soon as we stepped out of the taxi and onto "holy" ground, we were surrounded by Chinese folks hawking walking sticks, drinks, fruit, incense, hats, anything you can imagine. You would never see this at the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone. Sure, there's a gift shop or a series of gift shops at the top of the Canyon, or in one specific area of the park, but throughout? We both assumed that there would be a point where the selling of goods would stop--we were climbing a massive freaking mountain, after all--but little tents and kiosks quickly became as much a part of the picturesque landscape as the trees, peaks and...tourists. The only thing we could see before us were stairs. Lots of stairs. And people. It was like a big city sidewalk had been transported to the side of this mountain, yet we saw (maybe) only 8 other foreigners the entire time we were hiking.

And hike we did. For three hours. The stairs became steadily steeper, yet we were consistently being passed by 80-year-old Chinese women and fathers with toddlers on their backs. I don't know how they do it, but they stay in shape for a really long time over here. Seriously. We stopped off to drink a couple of beers on the side of the mountain, sitting at a little stone table that overlooked a hillside farm; and we wondered about the people working on the mountain: do they live on the mountain? Do they make the trek up it every day just to sell stuff? What do they do during the off season? What if there's inclement weather? Where do they get all this stuff? Is this their farm that we were looking at? A little further up the mountain there was a man with a monkey that did tricks and a couple of men doing caricatures. We found (okay, Rory found) some prayer beads that we had been searching for in Qufu, and we bought them for much cheaper than any price we'd previously been quoted. Those beads were the only tangible things we bought in Taian, other than food and drink. We passed through several different "levels" of the mountain, each represented by a different temple, as well as a handful of men dressed in traditional Buddhist and/or Taoist garb. There were large chimenea-type things set up in the courtyard area of these temples, and the people who were on some sort of tourist-y, religious pilgrimmage would light incense and say prayers. It was really cool. Even though we were surrounded by people, the beauty of being an American in Asia is that we can be as much or as little a part of it all as we want to. Even though it was somewhat distracting to be surrounded by people, to be unable to take photos without other people in them, it was all still part of our distinctly (unique) Asian experience.

After those three hours of hiking, we got to a really bustling resting/"decide what you're going to do from here" point. There were bathrooms, more vendors, temple areas, restaurants, a bus area where you could take buses back down the mountain and a cable way that was 10 times more intense and frightening than the one at Liugong Island. While we were walking around looking at everything, I noticed that a Chinese dad had dropped some money out of his pocket. I reached down to grab it, and as I was grabbing it to give back to him, some Chinese woman was looking at it like it was gold-she wanted it for herself! When I picked it up, she gave me a look like: "damn, now she's that much richer than me!" I think she was even more flipped when I walked up to the dad, tapped him on the back, pointed back to where he had dropped it and handed it over. He looked at me confused, and at the same time like I was the nicest person in the world. I thought it was funny that the Chinese lady didn't want to help out this other, fellow Chinese person, but the foreign girl did the right thing and gave him back his money. I can do nice things for strangers.

I decided to use the restroom while we sort of figured out whether to hike on foot or to take the cable cars (that everyone else was opting for). While in line for the bathroom, I got to experience the frustration that is waiting with a bunch of Chinese women who think they have to pee worse than any foreigner. An old woman pushed her way up in line, in front of me and two women in front of me. No one said anything. I mean, she was really old. But then some mom came barging through the line, using her daughter as a way to force her way to the front. She had her hands on her daughter's shoulders and was pushing her through people, alongside the rest of us who were waiting and directly into the oncoming traffic of people who had finished their business and were struggling to exit the wc. It created a log jam of sorts, and the women trying to get out of the bathroom seemed pretty annoyed. I don't think the little girl really knew what was going on, but her mom sure did. The old woman--who had already committed the same crime--put her arm up, barring anyone from passing her, like she had that right after already cutting. I was standing there, taking it all in, wondering where the hell the sisterhood/bathroom camaraderie among females was, when a third woman forced her way past me. Using the very little classroom Chinese that I know, I said something like: "I am waiting." The woman behind me, obviously fed up, decided it was time for some vigilante bathroom justice, and used the fact that I (the foreigner) said something as an opportunity to start screaming at the three cutters. I looked down at my feet and pretended that I didn't quite realize she was fighting on my behalf; but whatever she said, it made these other three ladies completely silent and embarrassed. I just know there was lots of pointing at me and saying "mei guo ren" (American) on her part; and when the next stall opened up, no one moved. My new bathroom friend sort of nudged me and pointed to the open stall. As I shut the door, I made eye contact with her and just said thank you in Chinese. It was a nice moment.

But 10 minutes later, Rory and I both got to experience the same thing again, as we waited in line to board a cable car. Even though they were super intimidating, we were determined to get to the top of this mountain. Turns out we had been a little naive in thinking we could hike up and down the whole thing in one day/afternoon, so in order to get to the top, our only real option was a cable car. The line was akin to something you would see on a busy day at Six Flags, weaving in and out of poles and railings in an effort to convince everyone that they wouldn't have to wait that long. As soon as there is an inch in a line in China, someone (or someone and 4 of their friends or family members) tries to squeeze and push past you. There is no such thing as personal space. In the U.S., if you mistakenly run into someone or jam your elbow into someone's back while waiting in line for a movie on Thanksgiving, you feel bad--maybe you say sorry or make a face like "oops, I totally just whacked that person in front of me"--not so in China. It's really annoying. Finally we decided to just link arms and create a wall of American that was impassible.

We got to the cable car loading area, and it was similar to Liugong (or a ski lift) in that the cars don't stop. You and 7 other people stand on a platform and sort of hop in and hope your shoelace doesn't get caught on something. Once inside, I hadn't quite prepared myself for how fast the thing was going to go. We took off, and immediately I shouted "Oh my god." Rory told me that probably made everyone's day in the cable car, like if we went to Mexico and someone said "Hasta la vista, baby." If you hear any English over here, it's often "oh my god." Pretty funny stuff. After a few tense minutes of me clinching Rory's pants and looking straight ahead, I was able to look down and around. It was incredible. In the car our ears popped, and as we looked out the left side window and down, we could see the steps we would have had to walk on, had we decided to actually hike up the mountain. Whereas our hike to the cable cars had been chock full of people, we saw very few people continuing to hike on foot. Very few as in, like, 10.

We reached the top and it was crazy. The scenery was crazy, the amount of people was crazy--all the different trails converged at the top--and just the China-ness of it all was crazy. There were still more temples to walk to, though the hardest part was certainly over. We took pictures and lots of video footage, but somehow it doesn't do that mountain justice; like if you visit the Grand Canyon and then look at the pictures of it on postcards; the pictures never really capture how "grand" it is at all. Similarly, I guess you can't really capture how holy a holy mountain in China is. We spent a good amount of time at the top, even eating at an overpriced restaurant. But it was overpriced on top of a mountain, dammit!

We opted to take a different cable car down; the line for this system was considerably shorter, so we figured what the hell? It dropped us off in another area of the park, way out in the middle of nowhere. We hopped on a bus that we hoped would take us back to civilization, but again, no luck. We were really far away from town, and though it was beautiful, we sort of just wanted to be in the jacuzzi tub at our hotel. We walked a little way and finally found a taxi to take us back. We cleaned up a little bit and went back to McKonkey, where the same employees were still working. This time, though, there was a huge grand opening going on, and the chicken man was running around in his costume. It's weird that in the same span of time we went up and down a holy mountain, these high school and college-aged kids at McKonkey fried chicken and danced around for a bunch of little kids. I guess I've been on the other end before--I mean, I did work 8 years at a pizza place, but there ain't no Mt. Taishan in Columbia.

We got back to our room, and I started up our jacuzzi tub. It wasn't working. I figured it was one of those things where the tub can sense that a female is messing with it so it refuses to work. I made Rory fiddle with all the knobs and buttons. No dice. Even the sweet shower was broken, so all we got was some lame regular shower with no water pressure. Bummer. We fell asleep and set the alarm for 4 in the morning. The women at the bus station had told Rory that the bus to Qingdao left at 6, so we wanted to get their bright and early to buy tickets. As we fell asleep, we were glad we were only spending that one day in Taian, full of pollution and people. Holy mountain or no, the town was a tourist trap--everything was expensive--and we were eager to get to Qingdao, where our only real plan was to buy a guitar.

King Me

2007-05-10T17:39:00.001-07:00

King Me
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Best picture of me ever? Yes.

People Taking Pictures of Julie

2007-05-10T17:38:00.001-07:00

People Taking Pictures of Julie
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

You'd figger they'd want to take pictures of the thousand year old scenery...... but I guess white people are just as exciting.

Flowers on the Roof.

2007-05-10T17:36:00.003-07:00

Flowers on the Roof.
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

I wonder how they got them up there.

Confucius Temple. Trees.

2007-05-10T17:36:00.001-07:00

Confucius Temple. Trees.
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Goat Face

2007-05-10T17:35:00.001-07:00

Goat Face
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Julie tried a free sample. She said it was good, but a little salty.

Eating Outside

2007-05-10T17:34:00.001-07:00

Eating Outside
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

"V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N! We're gonna have a ball!" Part I: Qufu

2007-05-07T18:19:00.000-07:00

We have only been in China for two months, and already we got to go on vacation. There was a labor day holiday, so all the people in China who have "real" jobs got to take a break. The other teachers at the school got (maybe) 4 days of vacation, but we received 10. Just being in Weihai seems like a vacation to us already, so we were (and still are) feeling a little spoiled. But, as people who have spent the last few years of our lives working in jobs with no health insurance or benefits--and especially not paid vacation time--we were really excited about the prospect of traveling here in China, and we were determined to make the most of the time off. We thought about going to Beijing and surrounding areas to see the Great Wall, but then we were told that everyone is in Beijing during the holidays, and that the Great Wall might lose its luster in a sea of tourists. So then we decided to just travel around our province a little bit.

Our first stop was Qufu, Confucius' hometown. Initially we were going to go to Jinan and then to Qufu the next day, but there was a little bit of a misunderstanding at the bus station (nothing we couldn't fix, though). We ended up getting tickets directly to Qufu (en route to Jining), with the bus departing bright and early Sunday morning. When we showed up at the bus station, one of the first people that we saw standing outside was a police officer/security guard. He was eager to talk to us and help us out in any way possible. Even though we told him we didn't need any help and that we knew where our gate was/had already purchased our tickets, he insisted. It paid off, too. He walked us to our gate, spoke with the ticket lady, and then motioned for us to follow him out the doors and to a really busy bus "waiting" area. We walked right through a mass of people with whom we would later share the bus. I'm sure they loved that. Our bus was not yet in the loading zone, but there were already a few other people on it. A really old couple was sitting in seats near the front of the bus, the woman coughing up snot and whatever else into a little trash can between her feet. She would do this for the duration of the trip. We put our two big bags under the bus, and then we were shown to our seats. They were the first two on the bus, directly across from the bus "helper" seats.

In China, because there are so many freaking people, it is impossible to find a store or a shop or anything with only one person working. When you walk into a restaurant, a grocery store, a mall--anywhere--there are immediately more than enough people there to help you. It's the same on the bus. There were two drivers (it was an 8+ hour trip) and maybe two bus "helpers". These people collect money, maintain order on the bus and generally just sort of hang out. We showed the police officer and our bus driver our text message in Chinese that said (I think): "we need to stop at the bus station in Qufu." Sophie, a girl I work with, really helped us out in getting our tickets and making sure we knew (and the bus driver knew) where the hell we were going. We took pictures with the police officer, told him thank you over and over, and got ready to depart.

The bus filled up quickly. We had already heard the lore of crazy mass transportation during the holidays, so we were just very thankful that we were able to be on the bus before everyone else, fair or no. We stopped at a bus station very close to our school to pick up more people who wanted to go to Jining. Turns out there weren't enough seats for everyone, so the bus helpers started breaking out little folded up stools that had been hiding underneath seats. There was a trio of girls who sat on stools or (on newspaper) on the floor of the bus. For 8 hours. I felt bad for them, but then I was just glad that I wasn't the one awkwardly crumpled up in a little heap on a tiny stool.

The first bus driver was awesome. He was a real "take no shit" kind of guy who made it immediately clear that he was the king of the road. He was constantly laying on the horn; making all the cars, industrial trucks and even the other buses get the hell out of his way. He also chain-smoked and hocked loogies out the window. I sort of got the impression that he and the other bus driver/helpers were saying inappropriate and funny things to the Chinese girl trio, but because I couldn't understand it, I wasn't offended. We took a picture with him, too. We also took a picture of the really cute baby who sat behind us; actually, he pretty much stood on his mom's lap the entire ride, so every time I would turn around, I would be face to face with this little baby, singing a bunch of the same words over and over at the top of his lungs. He was really well-behaved for such a long bus ride.

Right before we pulled into Qufu, we stopped at a gas station to refuel. We got off the bus to stretch a little bit. It turns out that one of the bus helpers spoke some English, but he'd been holding out on us the whole trip. We think he got the courage to talk to us because he knew that we were getting off the bus in 10 minutes. So he and another man came over and started to draw a few characters in the sand. We couldn't understand them, but then they started talking: something along the lines of: "Bush is enemy". They made motions with their hands of gunfire. It was the first time we experienced any sort of political "discourse" here in China. So we just said (in our best Chinese, which is laughable): "Bush shi bu hao"--Bush is not good--and we gave the thumbs-down sign. The Chinese folks liked that a lot, so they said "good" over and over, patted us on our backs, and we got back on the bus.

When we rolled into Qufu, it seemed like all of the little things that could potentially be a real pain in the ass didn't come to fruition, and everything magically fell into place. One of the bus helpers led us to a man who had a sheet (in English) with price listings for all the nearby hotels. We pointed to the cheapest one--while they tried to insist that we spend 5X as much money--and away we went. We walked out of the bus station, past Confucius' temple, to our hotel. We were so close to everything we wanted to see. When we walked in to the hotel, they tried to charge us more money than we had first pointed out, so we did our new favorite thing: turn around and pretend like we're leaving. It worked. They gave us the room we had asked for, and I paid the man 10 extra rmb for guiding us to the place. The room wasn't that great, but it wasn't bad, either. We have low expectations for shelter here in China--we already have to live in a tiny dorm room with a squatter--so a room with a western toilet that is pretty dirty is no big deal. We didn't plan on hanging out in hotel rooms for our entire vacation anyway.

We set our stuff down and decided to go explore (and eat) a little bit before calling it an early evening. We had a busy day of touristy stuff to do the next day, and we wanted to be in fine form. We walked past some small boutiques to the first clean-ish restaurant we could find. We sat down, ordered some beers and food and started people-watching. There were plenty of people walking by, and once they saw (through the windows) that there were two foreigners in town, they all did double and triple takes. It never gets old. We had our eyes on one little boy who was playing outside, though. He was fiddling with something, but for the longest time we didn't know what it was. And then I saw a wing. I asked Rory if it was a dead bird, realizing how ridiculous that seemed as soon as I asked. It was a bird. But only partly dead. With its feet tied to a string, the other end held by this really excited little boy who was shaking it violently up, down and around. His mother saw that he had the bird, and rather than slapping it out of his hand or scolding him or making him wash his hands, she instead tossed the bird into a little basket on her motorcycle and she and her son rode off. It was a little disturbing. I don't want to pass judgment, but that's freaking gross.

We finished dinner and walked around the temple area, the streets lined with vendors selling "chops". Chops are stamps, little pieces of stone with Chinese images and symbols on them; and for a small fee, you can have your name carved into the bottom of one, so when you stamp something, your name shows up. Chops vendors were everywhere, and their signs bragged (in Chinese and in English) that "the job is done in 2 minutes." It seemed funny to me that they would focus on the fast part of carving names, characters and letters into these tiny pieces of stone. Just spell everything correctly and make it look nice--take five minutes if you need to do it right. The other vendors sold a lot of scrolls, things made out of coconut shells, jewelry, toys, fake swords, you name it; and you try to name your price. Haggling is the name of the game. And it was all within walking distance of our hotel. In fact, the entire 3 days we were in Qufu, we never took a taxi. That was nice. We walked back to our room and called it quits for the evening.

The next morning we woke up bright and early--which isn't too difficult these days, since we have to be awake early everyday anyway--to go tour Confucius' temple. It was raining a little bit, but that sort of just went with the mood of a temple tour. We walked in, and we were immediately struck by just how old everything was. I mean, in America, when you visit a museum or an old place, you see things that are hundreds of years old; but in China, "old" takes on a whole new meaning. This temple is one of the three largest architectual complexes in China, and it originated in 478 BC. Each year, as Confucianism became more of the governing ideology of China, the temple was expanded (accordingly). I never really thought I would see something that old, but then I was surrounded by the temple walls, the trees--we saw trees there that were 500 years old! 500 years old! It was incredible!--some of the original paintings and curtains, and it was just an amazing time. And through it all, we were in the midst of all of these other tourists (99% Asian; I think we saw some big, hairy white guy, too...).

When we first walked in, we noticed a lot of giggling high school and college-aged Asian girls, but we didn't really think anything of it, until we realized that they were trying to "secretly" take our pictures. Obviously, we don't care if folks take our pictures--we're friendly, we won't bite--snap away! So as it was becoming more clear that these chicks cared less about Confucius and more about the foreigners, some of them built up the courage to come take pictures with us. The first person who built up the nerve was a middle-aged woman in a white track suit with matching white gloves. She was really funny, and you could tell that there was some sort of pride on her part because she was the first to pose with us. After that, though, everyone wanted pictures. For the rest of our time in the temple, in fact. There was even a Korean family that wanted us to pose with their two children. It really is like being a celebrity. We love it. We got to take some funny pictures of our own, though. Inside one of the temple buildings, there was an area where you could--for a small fee--dress up in traditional garb and have your picture taken in a throne. We only had enough money on us for one of us to do it (go figure--no atm in the temple), so we decided Rory should do it. It was hilarious. Rory with his royal mustache...

We went and ate lunch, and then went back to the room to rest. Later we went back to a different area of town--still within the temple walls--and had some crawfish that we hand-picked out of a cart. We sat at a table outside and watched all the people try to cycle or walk or even drive through the crowds of people buying goat head meat (which I tasted-not bad!), bubble tea, squid skewers and every other random thing you imagine you will never want to eat. It was nice. We also ate at this McDonald's knockoff place that sold chicken burgers--McChickens, really. They still had their Christmas tree up from the Chinese New Year celebration, and the entire time we were in the place, there was a little guy hiding behind the tree, spying on us. It was funny. I took a picture of the tree, and I think he thought I was taking a picture of him being nosy. But like I said, we don't really care if people stare at us or take pictures of us. We know we look different over here.

The next day we woke up and decided to do the mansion tour. It was significantly cheaper to go to the mansion, yet it was just as big, and we both liked it better. It was just like you see in all the kung fu movies: a knot of narrow corridors that somehow linked all of the large gardens and courtyards; balconies that seemed ideal for some ninja to scale (or toss someone off of); amazing foliage and attention to (ancient) detail. In all of the paintings we saw, I was so struck by how well you could still see the colors. I mean, these were ancient paintings, and yet the blue was so vibrant. Even the painted ceilings and columns all had this incredible blue throughout them. It was cool. We were hoping there would be a similar opportunity for me to dress up like an empress--we brought money this time, and my hair looked cute!--but there was no such luck. We did ask two girls to take our picture on a little bridge, though, so that turned out nice.

After the mansion tour, we ate lunch at a really nice restaurant immediatly across the street from the mansion gate. The menu was in Chinese and in English, and it involved a lot of pictures. Plus, they served cold beer. Cold! We ordered some really good food, marvelled at the fact that no one tried to screw us over (being foreigners), and vowed to come back for dinner. After lunch we went shopping. We bought (and bargained for) scrolls, fans, piggy toys, chops with our Chinese and English names carved in them, everything we had decided we wanted the day before. It was great. We had yet to buy anything really tangible in China, so it felt good to purchase these "real" reminders that a) we're in China and b) Confucius would have wanted us to buy a jumbo, husky pencil with his likeness on it. In fact, he would have wanted us to buy four of them.

We went back to the market/outside food area to have a snack before gorging ourselves at the nice restaurant for dinner. We eyeballed some vegetables and repeatedly asked (in Chinese) how much it would cost. The vendors pretended they didn't hear or understand us. We figured it would be cheap because we didn't have any meat or anything, we just had a couple of stir-fried veggie dishes; and we know how much things are SUPPOSED to cost. When we were finished, though, the old couple who ran the cart tried to charge us waaaaay too much for the food. We ain't fools, so we started a shouting match in the street, standing our ground (in Chinese). Other vendors from neighboring carts came over to see what the commotion was, and although they laughed at the price the couple had written down, they certainly didn't try to help us; realistically, they probably would have tried to do the same thing. We ended up getting our way, and off we went to do more exploring.

We walked past some cages of sleeping puppies, and of course I wanted to take pictures of them. The man selling the puppies thought that maybe I wanted to buy one, so he came over and started to shake the shit out of these cages, shouting at the puppies in Chinese: "wake up! wake up!" and probably "make me some money!" It seemed cruel, but somehow I couldn't stop watching him shake these cages. Rory brought me out of my trance, and we continued walking, trying to follow the sound of loud, live music blaring out of a speaker. We came across an electronics store that was doing an mp3, mp4, pager promotion. They had erected a large stage in front of the store, where a small crowd was gathered, all trying to get the attention of this spiky-haired singer and his female, sexy(?) counterpart. They were writhing around on stage, singing songs and hamming it up, all trying to get folks to check out this electronics store. I grabbed the camcorder and headed toward the stage. As soon as the dude saw me in front of the stage, with a camcorder, he turned into an American Idol hopeful, hand gestures and everything. Maybe he thought I was going to put him on American tv. Nope, just our blog. My curiosity, coupled with his desire to be an American pop star, was fruitful. He gave me a bag. We stuck around a little longer, watching people practically fight over these pagers that were being thrown out into the audience, and then we headed back to our restaurant.

We ordered some of the same food we had eaten earlier in the day, and we also ordered an entire fish. It was steamed and brought out on a platter. Oh my god it was good! There were two waitresses in the restaurant who were students at Qufu Normal University, and they were working at the restaurant for one week only, just during the holiday time. They spoke English pretty well, so we encouraged them to talk to us. Finally we asked their boss if it was okay for them to sit down and drink some beer with us. He was amused by all of it, and gave them permission. We talked and drank beer until the restaurant closed. Then the entire wait staff and the boss joined us at our table, giving us some more (free) food and adult beverages. It was a really nice time. We left the restaurant and walked past one shop that was still open. It was a scroll shop; Rory spent some time inside bargaining with the owner, while I went outside to get some fresh air and remind myself why it's bad to overindulge. We went to sleep and woke up the next day--one of us pretty hungover. damn baiju--ready to depart for Taian and Mt. Taishan, only one hour away. Even though I was hungover, I was still in good spirits. We were on vacation, after all, and something about Qufu and Confucius and scrolls made it clear to me that we are in a place with so much history and culture. I felt very privileged to be a part of it all; I maintained this attitude for the rest of our trip, and I maintain it still, even as I sit in our tiny room. Our tiny room in freaking China.

Surprise, surprise...

2007-04-22T02:25:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I had to teach my 3.1 class (my favorite students). Usually I don't teach at all on Saturdays, but this was a special deal because a bunch of parents were on campus, attending classes with their kids. About an hour before class I realized that I hadn't typed anything up to give to the parents as a sort of "welcome to class" formality. I went to the administration building--which houses the one printer and one photocopier on campus, that all 100 teachers share--to quickly type something up. As I was printing out these cheesy and impersonal letters, I was approached by our human resource director--one of two people who met us at the airport when we arrived--who wanted me to follow her to her office. I walked in, and there was our surprise guest, all smiles and mustache. It was an older man, and I had no idea who he was. He was very excited to see me, though, so I pretended that I recognized him, enthusiastically shaking his hand and saying "Ni hao" over and over. He showed me one of my old business cards--one that still said Asian Affairs Center and had my email address written in pen. Then he handed me one of his cards. All in Chinese. The only thing I recognized was a yin yang. I apologetically told both of them that I had to go to class, and they somehow communicated that Mr. Mustache would wait in the office until my class was over. I walked to my office, and I showed the business card to the first person I saw. It was my colleague, Bill, and he explained that the man was a professor of Chinese medicine. I immediately remembered him then.

I ran to my class with a few minutes to spare, and I stood outside the door with all the students' relatives, peeking in at my 3rd graders and their math teacher. According to my schedule, my class was supposed to be from 9:00-9:40. The math teacher went over by about five minutes, though, and had to be asked to finish class. A whole group of people was ushered into my tiny classroom. Not only was the classroom jam-packed with my students; but also with moms, dads, sisters, grandmas and 8 other Chinese teachers. All watching me teach their kids. In Korea, when there was a similar "experiment", it was really funny to watch all the kids clam up and become shy. This was not the case with my students this time, however. Before I even set my bag down or opened my book, little kids were all around me, pulling my arms and hugging me and giving me fake kisses. It was almost like they were proud to show off their foreign teacher to their parents: "look, mom and dad, this is the American lady that I get to see everyday and you don't..." It was a really cool feeling. Bill got up and introduced me to the parents (in Chinese) while I passed out my letters (in English) to all of these people who wanted me to prove myself.

So we started talking about seasons and weather, doing some dialogues from the book, along with some dialogues that I had typed up myself. The day before I had taught them all the "How's the Weather?" song, using their new vocabulary. It went over really well, but I was a little nervous that they wouldn't be able to deliver in front of their parents. But they stood up and sang (screamed) all five verses. Twice. Proudly. It was awesome. There was a Chinese teacher running around the room, taking pictures and video of the kids singing and of all the parents clapping.

After that it was 9:45, and even though I was having a good time with the kids and their parents, I also had a visitor waiting for me. I announced that class was over and that I had to go, and all the Chinese teachers started saying "class is not over. 5 more minutes...10 more minutes..." I showed them my schedule that said 9:00-9:40 and tried to explain that I had a visitor waiting for me. This all went on in front of the parents, so I hope it didn't look too unprofessional. But this day in particular, I wasn't willing to stay later just because I was forced to start later--it wasn't my bad.

Rory was waiting for me in my office. I told him about our visitor, and we walked up to the director's office. It was all a really funny and odd encounter. This man spoke no English, and we speak very, very little Chinese. But he was very friendly. After we had first been in Weihai for (maybe)a week, we took a public bus from downtown back to our school. We sat next to our "surprise visitor" on the bus that day. Luckily, at that time, there was a young woman on the bus who spoke English really well, so she translated for us. The man talked about Chinese medicine and how he would love to teach us some time. I gave him my makeshift business card, we got off of the bus, and we didn't really think anything of it. Until we were sitting across from him in the HR office of our school more than a month later. He had evidently remembered where we worked, and he had hunted us down to formally invite us to his home and to learn Chinese medicine (acupuncture and massage).

It sounds really interesting, so we accepted his invitation, and we will meet him this weekend. We'll have to start learning some more Chinese, though. I'm sure we will learn very specific things, like "needle" and "pain", but overall our Chinese should improve, just from being around this man. We'll see what happens, but how's that for a distinctly Chinese experience? I mean, we can bring back chopsticks and tea sets and things like that as gifts for people when we ultimately leave China, but if we brought back some massage and acupuncture techniques (learned from a real Chinese doctor), that would be pretty cool, too. China rules!

"I was on a island..."

2007-04-19T02:10:00.000-07:00

We finally made it out to Liugong Island, and now that I think about it--that's the only island I've ever been to. Neat! When we were walking around downtown on Friday, we saw signs for Liugong that had all these pictures of temples, and it sort of looked like a magical place. I mean, even the billboards called it an "enchanting isle...". So we decided to come back on Saturday, spend a little chunk of money and get out to this island.

We rode the bus downtown and got to the ferry terminal with minutes to spare. We paid for our round trip ferry tickets and hopped on the boat. At lunch I had taken some dramamine, just in case. Once, I was on a deep sea fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico on a fishing expedition. For more than 6 hours we were out at sea, in this choppy water. Initially (as in, like, the first 20-30 minutes), I was having the time of my life, making fun of all of these little kids barfing off the side of the boat. And then the motion sickness kicked in, and I joined their ranks. For the next five hours. I didn't want a repeat, even if it was only a 20 minute ferry ride to an island 4 km away from Weihai. But there were no problems. We stood on the highest deck of the boat against a railing, leaning over and looking out at the approaching island and all of these huge fishing boats that seemed to just appear out of the fog. It was almost otherworldly (then again, everything is otherwordly over here). There was some guy on the ferry (who was maybe famous), and he had a cameraman following him around everywhere, taking pictures. So he made sure to take a picture with us. Maybe that's going to be in some Chinese version of Tiger Beat magazine or something soon.

We made it to the island, and even the ferry terminal was impressive. From the outside it looked like a building that ninjas would scale down in a movie, right before they get annihilated by Jet Li or something. But instead of ninjas, the building was full of all of these little shops; selling binoculars, drinks, cigarettes, swords and anything (and everything) that could conceivably be made out of shells. We opted for the temple tour, paid another fee, and we were on our way. We were surrounded by all kinds of interesting and completely foreign (obviously, to us) vegetation. Yes, there were your standard bonsai trees--which we incredible!--but there were also these taller trees that looked like giant yuccas, with some type of heavy duty twine wrapped all the way around their trunk parts. Landscape architecture is something that is taken very seriously here in China. Even on our campus, there are a few different people in charge of landscaping. On the bus to Rizhao, too, we saw an entire, massive tree being transported from one spot to the other on the back of a huge, industrial truck (like when you see those "oversize load" mobile homes being trucked down the highway in the US). It makes me look forward to springtime. I'm sure it will be beautiful--things are just now starting to bloom...

Once inside the initial walls of the temple, we were amidst a labyrinth of different buildings and sculptures. We looked up towards the top of the main mountain--"main" as in it's the first peak you see when you get off of the ferry--and saw another impressive temple, with all of these little teacup-looking, two-person cable cars that ran from the base of the mountain to the top. They looked scary. And rickety. And distinctly Chinese. And I was determined to ride in one.

We wandered around these different scenic sites--taking pictures, walking up inside temples and going to the "British folks are bad for occupying Weihai" museum. We walked into one building that had these giant, barbarian-looking statues in it. The second we walked in, this table full of Chinese twenty-somethings who were sitting behind a table, dressed in similar garb as the statues, started laughing at us. I don't know why, but I have to guess it's because they could sense how hilarious and entertaining we are. I'm sure that was it. We took pictures and left.

I should mention that once when I was visiting the royal gorge with Jamie and a friend, we thought it would be a good idea to ride a cable car, too. Over the royal gorge. Long way down. We waited in a line for a long time, and once we got to be next in line, I chickened out. I just couldn't do it. I'm not necessarily afraid of heights, but something about a car dangling from a wire, full of 20 other people I didn't know seemed really scary. And it was a looooong way down, let me tell you. But we walked into this little cable car building next to the temple to check out prices, and I thought "hell yeah we're riding one of these cars." I mean, there was a little certificate on the wall that said the establishment had passed the "rope safety" test. In the nineties... So we paid some more money, got in a car and started our ascent. Initially I thought I was going to freak out--I told Rory I would have my eyes closed the entire time, but I didn't even do that. It wasn't bad at all. It was actually really nice. It wasn't too windy; it was a long, slow ride; and there were plenty of cool things to look at and take pictures of along the way. When we first got into the cable car, there weren't any other passengers in cars going up or coming down, so the machine was stopped, we could take our time getting in and out of the car. But once we got up to the top, some other folks had decided to take a ride also, so they didn't stop the ride at all. A Chinese man met us at the top; he quickly opened the door of our teacup--while it was still moving--hurried us out and told us not to hit our heads. It was pretty funny, but it was okay because it was moving very slowly. Still, it struck me as very odd. On a busy day in the summer you could have some kids in jeopardy of riding back down the mountain, half in and half out of one of these little cars. It was the same when we got back in the car to ride down. Too funny.

We descended the mountain, and the view coming down was even better than when we went up. We could see so much of the island, the mountains, the water, everything. It was nice. At the bottom we decided to get back on the ferry, head back and eat some food. The boat ride back was great, too. We were moving much faster this time, and we got to see different parts of the island (that we'll have to explore next time). There was a trio of older Chinese businessmen on the top deck with us, and they were taking all kinds of funny pictures on the boat, trying to look regal and get all of these "good" shots of each other with the wind and the seaspray. It was funny.

Once we were back on the mainland, we decided to go eat at a restaurant that had quickly become our favorite around school. The food was really good, the friendly waitress always recommended something delicious, and they didn't screw us over with prices. So we went there and ordered our eggplant dish that we're addicted to, this pork rib and dumpling plate that we'd had the time before (that was awesome) and something else she suggested, but we didn't know what it was. When the first two plates came out, the eggplant was great--as usual--but something about the pork rib dish was "off." It didn't taste bad, it just wasn't as good as the time before; like we'd gotten the bottom of the barrel or something (some questionable pieces of meat, anyway). Then the lady came out with this giant plate of fried bugs. Maybe beetles. This was the dish she told us we would love. She could sense our skepticism and encouraged us to eat anyway, telling us how delicious it was in Chinese. So we ate a few bugs. Rory ate a few more than me, but I really just couldn't do it. And the more room temperature they got, the more they smelled like earth and those gross bondaeggi beetles in Korea. Anyway.

Several hours later we had food poisoning. Two bodies fighting for bathroom time. With a squatter. I don't need to go into too much detail, but it was horrible. We don't think it was the bugs that did it, either--I mean, they were just pure, fried, disgusting protein. But that meat! Something was off about it. And even thinking about it makes me want to ralph. Anyway, it's been a rough week, recovering and everything; trying to convince our bodies that we like food. Last night was a good sign, though. We played basketball with some other teachers and colleagues. Rory and I look like Shaquille and Kareem over here. It's awesome. I get to post up again, because I'm a few inches taller than damn near everyone.

On Saturday we're supposed to have a "surprise" visitor here at the school. We have no idea who it will be, but we keep getting these hints from Rebecca, who is getting them from someone else. Hints like: "this person may be your friend", "this person knows you but you may or may not know this person" and "this person will wait for you in the director's office...". We don't even really have a hunch as to who it will be, but you can bet your buns there will be a blog about it.

Chinese silk--better than a key to the city!

2007-04-16T04:41:00.000-07:00

Thursday night kicked off the start of our long weekend here at school. Every other weekend we have a three-day weekend--most of the students go home or to homestays here in town, and if you are lucky (like one of my Korean students, Natalie) your parents are rich enough to own a second home here in Weihai for you to stay at on the weekends. So Natalie gets to go hang out with basically no supervision, just her and her 18-year-old sister, who is one of Rory's students. Though we don't have anywhere to "escape" to--Weihai is our escape--we did have an out-of-town visitor on Thursday. He's the mayor of Changyi, a county here in our province, relatively close to us (3.5 hours by car). Mayor Ma was one of a group of about 20 visitors to UMC, all government officials from Shandong province, but he was the only mayor. Jamie was his English Conversation Partner back home, but I hung out with him a lot, too; we went to the capitol together, we visited Central Dairy and our folks' home, we would go eat at Uprise when Rory was working, and his entire Shandong delegation invited Jamie and me over to their apartment for a traditional Shandong meal. That's where we ate sea cucumber for the first (and only) time. He was going to be in Weihai on Thursday, leaving Friday morning. We didn't know what to expect when he first mentioned that he might have time to see us. Would we go to his hotel and meet his other government friends from Weifang? Would we meet him out later to go around town? Would he come to our dorm room? What sort of gift should we give him? What should we wear?

After talking with Mayor Ma a little more, it became very clear that he didn't have much time to spend with us, which we understood--he's a freaking mayor--he was here in Weihai on business. He called after his big official dinner, and asked us what time he should meet us at our school. I told him that he didn't need to come all the way out to our school, we could just meet him somewhere. But he insisted on meeting us at the school gate, telling us that he had a car and a driver. Okay, we were sold. So we met him down at the gate. I tried to explain to him that no one was on campus, because it had basically shut down so all the kids could go home. But he wanted to see our room anyway. The gate was closed, so we were trying to explain that you have to get permission to go inside (especially with a car). Mayor Ma and his driver got out and talked to our favorite guards, and you could get the heirarchical muscles flexing. "That's right, I'm the mayor!" The gate opened, we all had a good laugh about the fact that a mayor is friends with two white folks who can't speak any Chinese, and then drove back up to our room. We were really embarrassed, because all we have is a dorm room. With a squatter. For the mayor. Granted, we didn't choose where we're living, but you certainly want to impress the mayor with your pad. It hadn't even occurred to us that he might want to hang out in our room with us, so luckily it was clean. He explained that he couldn't stay long because he had to leave at 8:00 in the morning; we were just impressed that he was there. I mean, he had so little time in Weihai, yet it was important to him to see us. He came in carrying two bags of gifts for us: one bag had a wide array of fruits, and the other bag had two sets of silk pajamas. Rory had already done some research on Changyi, so he knew that this particular county is famous for silk; his reward for learning about Mayor Ma's town was that his pajamas actually fit. Of course I figured they wouldn't fit me. I've got birthing hips. So basically we sat in our room and looked at a big map of China on the computer, while Mayor Ma told us all of the must see destinations--"...if [we] have little time, go here. If [we] have much time, go here..." It was great. He was comparing all of these places in China to places he'd visited (or places he knew about) in the United States. It was a nice frame of reference. We walked him back out to his car, where his "driver" got out and handed us his business card, saying "if you ever need help here in Weihai, let me know." Turns out his driver was the Vice Director of "Weihai Huancui The District Party Committee Office". I'm not necessarily sure what that entails, but we've got one more government dude on our side, should we need it. Part of the reason we wanted to come to Weihai in the first place--besides the sweet locale--is because of the government connections we'd made in the U.S.

Sometime in the near future, either with Jamie or with Gary or with both, we will visit Changyi. It's a smaller county (maybe only 670,000 people), but it's going to be really exciting to see Mayor Ma in his element, schmoozing with all his cronies, telling us how "bad [his] English is...", even though it's a lot better than I remember it being in the US. When I first spoke with him on the phone a few weeks ago, he made sure to end his conversation by saying "you and your sister and your husband are my three best [American] friends..." It seemed like such a nice thing to say. And after his made his pit stop to our shabby little dorm room, bearing gifts of silk and fruit, it really made us feel important here in China, if only for an hour or so. What a great place to be!

LiuGong Dao

2007-04-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

Ok. So since we bought our map of the city we've been wanting to check out the big island a couple miles off the coast. Well, we finally did. It was a b-last. So here's the video and some pictures. Make sure to check the older pages, because I don't think it all fits on the first one. Word. Enjoy.

Conquest!

2007-04-15T22:14:00.003-07:00

Conquest!
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Cable car city!

2007-04-15T22:14:00.001-07:00

Cable car city!
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Pool from the cable car

2007-04-15T22:13:00.001-07:00

Pool from the cable car
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Julie is on the boat, too.

2007-04-15T22:12:00.001-07:00

Julie is on the boat, too.
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

I'm on a boat

2007-04-15T22:11:00.003-07:00

I'm on a boat
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Fellow LiuGongers

2007-04-15T22:11:00.001-07:00

Fellow LiuGongers
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Temple

2007-04-15T22:10:00.003-07:00

Temple
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Weihaiwei flag

2007-04-15T22:10:00.001-07:00

Weihaiwei flag
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Dragon Pool

2007-04-15T22:09:00.001-07:00

Dragon Pool
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

I think they're supposed to be important.

2007-04-15T22:08:00.003-07:00

I think they're supposed to be important.
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Brown giant.

2007-04-15T22:08:00.001-07:00

Brown giant.
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Green giant.

2007-04-15T22:07:00.001-07:00

Green giant.
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Random Pictures

2007-04-08T02:04:00.000-07:00

Hey all. I just threw up some pictures from the last couple of weeks. There's no rhyme or reason to them, I just thought you might think they're purty to look at.

McZhongGuo

2007-04-08T02:03:00.001-07:00

McZhongGuo
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Sometimes, you'd just rather not use chopsticks.

Here's the beef.

2007-04-08T02:02:00.001-07:00

Here's the beef.
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

This was pretty killer.

View from the mountain

2007-04-08T02:01:00.003-07:00

View from the mountain
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

View of Liu Gong

2007-04-08T02:01:00.001-07:00

View of Liu Gong
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

That is the island we're going to check out sooner or later.

Fishin' boats

2007-04-08T02:00:00.001-07:00

Fishin' boats
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

Boats float.

Trycicar

2007-04-08T01:59:00.001-07:00

Trycicar
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

These are a cheap mode of transport, but I just can't help but think they're missing something...

Awkward lunch and awesome dinner!

2007-03-31T20:00:00.000-07:00

While I was working in my office on Thursday morning, one of my co-workers (a Chinese English teacher named Bill) got a phone call from Rebecca (Chinglish teacher also), inviting the three foreigners out to dinner with the minister of our school, along with our bosses and English teaching colleagues. The offer couldn't have come at a better time, actually. Free food and beverages are just what we needed, after week of being broke, and a pending three day weekend of being broke. So I walked into the lunchroom, happy to share the news with Rory and Cecilia. Rory wasn't there yet, but I started to tell Cecilia about the sweet invite.

Me: Hey, the school wants to take us out to dinner tonight-- (cutting me off)
Her: I'm not going anywhere, I'm not feeling well.
Me: Oh, well that sucks, but they want us to meet at 7:30 at the-- (cutting me off. again)
Her: I'm not feeling well, so I'm not going.
Me: Okay, I know, you're not feeling well, but I'm just telling you what they told me. We're meeting at the gate at 7:30 to go out with the minister and the other English teachers. (Rory walks in) Hey Rory, the school's taking us out to dinner tonight--sweet!
Her: Well, I'm not going. I'm not feeling well.

This is how every freaking conversation is, actually. So secretly we were rejoicing because she wasn't going to go. We wouldn't have anyone looking over our shoulder, speaking on our behalf, being rude to everyone. Sweet relief! Rebecca walked into the lunchroom to share the good news; she didn't realize that I'd been in the office when she spoke with Bill. So she reinvited us to dinner, and Cecilia told her she wasn't going to go because she wasn't feeling well. But this was the fourth time she had to tell us, so she was getting irate, speaking really quickly and unitelligibly. And Rebecca didn't really understand what Cecilia was saying, so she continued to invite the two people who were still actually interested (Rory and me), saying "I think you'd better be at the school gate at 7:30" (Rebecca never says "should", it's always "you'd better"). Cecilia was fed up, and she barked: "I'm not going to go! I'm not feeling well, and you can't force me to go if I'm not feeling well!" Like, how dare you invite me to come eat and drink for free with my colleagues! The nerve! Rory and I just sort of looked at our plates. It was really awkward and sort of comical, in an "are you kidding me?" sort of way. Cecilia then continued with this long diatribe about menopause and hot flashes and periods, again, speaking super-quickly and angrily (unintelligibly for us, so imagine the difficulty for Chinese folks). Then she gave up, and she told me that Rebecca didn't understand what she was talking about--I'd better explain it to her. Like I'm a menopause expert all of a sudden. So I said, "uh, maybe I'll try to explain later, as much as I know Rory loves all the gory details." So weird. So awkward. So often...

So Rory and I met the others at 7:30 to go to dinner. We were stoked! There were ten of us total: Rory and myself, Rebecca, Bill, Bill's fiance Wendy, both of our bosses, another English teacher, the van driver and the minister. The first restaurant we went to was full (we hadn't made reservations), so we had to drive to a different restaurant. We walked into this really fancy seafood place, and under normal circumstances, I would be really intimidated or grossed out at the thought of a strictly seafood meal, but I remembered how much we had liked the seafood at that first luncheon we attended. We were taken to our private room, and there was a round table set up, with one important seat designated by a specially-folded napkin. The most important person sat there, and the next two important people sat on either side. So the minister sat at the head of the table, and Rory and I sat on either side of him. It was nice.

The minister kept saying that his English was bad and that he wasn't smart, and Rory had the highlight line of the evening with: "well, you have to be smart to be the minister!" After it was translated, the minister turned to Rory, hugged him and told him that he loved him. It was really funny. The whole experience was great. It was just so much fun, and they were so nice to us. We drank beer and baiju (sp), and I think that they were all shocked that Rory and I could handle our Chinese liquor. They said that "the Americans are very good drinkers!"

While all of this was going on, more and more food was being brought out to the table (again, lazy susan-style). There were clams and mussels and chicken feet (and plain ol' chicken, too), some soup with octopus and the Japanese tofu, fish dumplings (which I know sound gross, but were actually really good), some buttery cabbage with beef and shrimp--the best dish of the evening, I thought. They could see that we liked it, so they brought out another plate of it--these almost sweet fried bread things with a bunch of ham/bacon, the list goes on and on. And the whole time they were all asking us if we had "anything like [it] in America...". So we explained that there was nothing quite like baiju and that people don't typically eat octopus and/or squid in the midwest, unless they're at a sushi place. We compared the art on the wall (absolutely beautiful) to things you might see in the U.S., and the exchanges that took place were really nice. They were genuinely interested in our background and interests.

At various points throughout the evening, each person was supposed to toast. Rory toasted for the both of us--and did a damn good job, too. They were pleased--and everyone took turns. When it was time for Bill to toast, he asked us if we knew why he chose the name Bill for his English name. We didn't know. So then he told us about how his idol is Bill Clinton, because he stands for democracy and freedom. It was a real highlight of the evening for me, because he was speaking with conviction and confidence, and you could tell that he really wanted to share this with us. Speaking of confidence, he was saying that he has confidence in his English skills, and that makes him a more confident person. It was really refreshing to hear that, because the biggest problem with Asians who are learning and using English (based on my experience, anyway) is a total lack of confidence. So to hear Bill declare that he did, indeed, have confidence, was really nice.

Rory's boss was really cool. My boss is cool, but she doesn't really speak much English. Rory's boss speaks better English than most of the people we've met thus far in China. He was asking Rory if he liked basketball, so Rory sort of threw that one my way, and we started talking about Patrick Ewing and other different (oldish school) basketball players that I grew up watching on tv. There was a discussion going on as to what kind of monkey he most resembled. I think that chimpanzee was the winner. Then it was decided that we had to have a basketball game: primary school (my school) versus junior/senior (Rory's school). Not the students--the teachers. That should be pretty funny, now that we have a reputation for being better basketball players than the Chinese folks (after only one night of playing).

A few more toasts--the kids love you and think you are great (Rory and me)--and we were ready to go, full of seafood and the knowledge that this one evening out with the coworkers meant so much to all of us. It was a really good time, even if we aren't all bilingual. It made me proud to be here, and it gave me confidence in my teaching abilities and the impact I have on these kids. These awesome little kids.

Rizhao--Land of Black Snot...

2007-03-28T01:28:00.000-07:00

Rizhao is another city located in Shandong province, 2 hours west of Qingdao (one of Shandong's most popular cities). It is a little bigger than Weihai--closer to 3 million--and it is a city we considered living in before we received our current job offer.

My friend Gary, from the Asian Affairs Center (the Chinese Programs Coordinator), was going to be there over the weekend, to get more information and to tour the town in preparation for a China group tour he is leading near the end of May. So we wrote a formal letter to our school requesting Monday off, and we borrowed money/got an advance on our paychecks from the finance office on campus--we are pretty broke until we get our first paycheck--working for a month before getting paid takes its toll on the dough (or lack thereof). We had corresponded with Gary a lot through email; we'd been talking about the visit before we even left the United States. It was a unique situation, too, because the same time we were going to be hanging out with Gary, another AAC person (Sang, the director) was going to be in Korea with a bunch of my former colleagues, visiting Jamie and other Mizzou alum who currently teach throughout Korea. So on the same weekend, both McGeorges and Rory were going to get to see friends from back home. Pretty cool.

Though Gary had confirmed that he had our phone number and that he would help us book a hotel once we arrived in Rizhao, we were still pretty nervous about traveling out of Weihai for the first time without somehow corresponding with him beforehand. So Saturday night I called Jamie to see if Sang had Gary's phone number; before flying to Korea, Sang had been with Gary in Chongqing, China. So Jamie asked Sang for Gary's cell phone number, but he didn't have it. We were assured by Sang (via Lesley and Jamie) that everything would be okay. We should just wait for Gary's call. Okay, no problem. Thomas and a few different people from school helped us buy our bus tickets, directly from Weihai to Rizhao, and a driver from our school took us out to the bus station at 7:00 on Sunday morning.

The bus ride, though cramped, wasn't bad at all. It really didn't feel like we'd been passengers for a little over 6 hours. It was really nice to see the landscape change, to drive through all of these (relatively) tiny villages, to see random dogs and children running around in the street, cows tied up to posts like pets. And more women washing clothing on rocks. Masses of them. There was one point where we passed right through a really craggy mountain pass, and it was sort of like being at elephant rocks, except much more majestic. And in China.

We even had potty breaks on the bus. Bus/gas station toilets are...interesting. And pretty disgusting, but I guess that's par for the course anywhere you go. I remember being in France, at a public rest area, picnicking and looking at the beautfiful view from the top of a pretty sizeable hill, when I experienced my first squatter. I had no idea what it was, how the hell it worked, or why anyone would think that was a suitable way to conduct your business. I had another "rude" awakening on this bus ride. We stopped after the first two hours of riding, pulling into a public bus terminal along our route. I have already grown pretty accustomed to the constant smell of poopoo and peepee within a 25 foot radius of any bathroom in China; as well as using a squatter daily in our own apartment, but this blew my mind. I walked in and there was a series of stalls, with little partitions (no, not walls) about 2 feet tall dividing each plot (again, don't know what you would call it. Space? Area you "go" in?...). There were no doors, so as soon as I walked in, I saw the pale asses of a bunch of Chinese lady strangers, squatting down, straddling a trough that ran the length of the entire bathroom, full of everyone's "stuff." I wasn't going to not go to the bathroom, so I stepped right up and let it fly. I mean, if you're on a bus for that long, you take any opportunity you can to pee, right? So not only was I getting stared at because I'm a foreigner, but these women and little girls were trying to look at my parts--because they're foreigner parts. Rory experienced the same sort of curious glances/stares in the men's room.

But enough about those bathrooms. We had two bathroom breaks, and one random stop. The random stop was weird, too. We pulled up alongside these two guys, standing on the side of the road, out in the middle of nowhere, smoking cigarettes next to their motorcycles. The driver and the driver's assistant--who was constantly wearing his fanny pack, and who had been ordered to take care of us by the man who took us to the bus station--started pulling up (what we had just assumed were) your standard floor mats in the aisle, between the rows of seats on the right and the left. But under the floor mats were all of these really long, thin boxes of something. I don't know what, but they started pulling these boxes out, and 12 (six to eight feet) long boxes later, they were finished. All of the men who had gotten out to smoke got back on the bus to continue the trip. It was so random and funny. They will store things wherever the hell it will fit on these buses. It was really funny to us. Like-- what will they pull out of a confined space next?

Once we arrived in Rizhao (actually the second our feet touched the ground after getting off of the bus), these strange, really dirty men grabbed us, speaking Chinese very quickly, except for the ocassional and very emphatic "Hello! Hello!" They wanted us to get in their rickshaws so they could drive us wherever we needed to go. But we didn't trust them, and we also didn't know what we were doing or where we were going. Rory and I are a little different than some folks, though. We love not having a plan and walking around, just exploring the new terrain and getting lost. We decided to stay close to the bus station, to wait for Gary's call so that we would only have to pay a taxi fare once we actually knew where we were going. We started walking, past the bus station, past civilization; into this really gross, industrial area that was so loud from the noise of all of these huge trucks. I don't know what they were doing, but there were so many damn trucks. Rory took out his map of Rizhao (all in Chinese), our first purchase after getting off the bus (second purchase--return bus tickets the following morning, back to Weihai), and we asked some random guy on the street where we were. So we ended up turning around and walking back to a really neat little side street closer to the bus station.

We were pretty hungry, and we didn't know what we were doing yet, so we decided to find a restaurant. Our goal is to find a place where there are actual patrons (so we know the locals like it) and where the owners and workers are friendly, but not so friendly (in an insincere way) that we think they'll try to charge us extra because we're foreigners. Usually they are hesitant about having us in their restaurant, but once they see that we like Chinese food and that we know how to say "delicious" and "2 beers", they are amused by our mere presence. We found a place where the patrons really wanted us to come in. A pretty large Chinese man shook our hands and said "Welcome to China." It's always nice when that happens--he's welcoming us, on behalf of his entire, massive country. Sweet! The food was great, the beers were great, there was a really cute little girl running around in there to amuse (mostly) me; and we got to see the sign change while we were there. A bunch of Chinese men, in suits and dress shoes, but with welding equipment (but no protective goggles or mask), started hacking away at the wires mounting the old sign to the storefront. Some of them took turns holding rickety, broken ladders, while others grabbed the bottom of the sign so it didn't smash into the ground when the men on the roof cut the other cables. It was pretty fun to watch.

After they put up the new sign and we finished our beers, we headed out to a pc bong to see if Gary had written. He hadn't. I got the phone numbers of some of our friends in Chongqing--they had been partying with Sang and Gary all week--so we called them up to see if they could give us Gary's contact info. After talking to them both, we were under the impression that Gary had gone to Dalian, his hometown, which is actually pretty close to Weihai. They gave us Gary's sister's cell phone number. So we called it up, and Gary answered. Yea!!!!! Evidently there had been a problem with his flight, and he was unable to come to Rizhao until a few days later. Not yea!!!!! We understood that the flight got screwed up, but no phone call? No email telling us about the change in plans? I felt like I could have avoided this if I'd been able to get his phone number the night before. Even if we wanted to stick around Rizhao for a couple more days, we had only gotten off the one day from work (and our pay will be docked accordingly), and we simply didn't have enough money to stick around. But there was no time to dwell. We were stuck in this place (which had lost its luster in a matter of seconds, funnily enough), with very little money, and we just wanted to get a hotel, get some beer, wake up and go home. It was no longer a fun or exciting situation.

So we wandered around, looking at signs, trying to find a hotel. A few different people on the street sent us in opposite directions; one place thought we wanted a "room" (maybe for a few hours), but when they found out we wanted to sleep and spend the night there, they didn't want us around. We finally saw a man who was really eager to talk to us, so we pulled out the phrase book (best purchase ever!) and asked if there was a reasonably priced hotel around. Reasonably priced. So he hailed us a cab and explained to the driver what we wanted, and away we went, satisfied that the man was going to save us a bunch of searching and hassle. Wrong. We were driving for awhile when I said: "it'd be funny if this guy was taking us to the most expensive hotel in town...Holy shit...I hope he's not taking us there...". "There" was this pretty swanky hotel that had a bellboy and a really soft-spoken, attractive Chinese receptionist (who also spoke English), who was under the impression (as I'm sure every Chinese person is by now) that we are loaded. No no no no no. She offered us a room with a huge discount, but it was still more than twice as much money as we had on us. Luckily, she explained to the cabbie that we wanted a cheap hotel near the bus station. She was really nice and helpful, and we were just thankful that someone knew how to communicate with the driver.

So driver takes us to this little community that was actually pretty cool, but by the time we got there, most everything had shut down. We also had a hunch that we were nowhere near the bus station. Our bus left at 8:20 the next morning. Sweet. We walk into this hotel, tired and frustrated, and the man charges us double what we had set aside for a room. We didn't want to try to bargain or talk him down (difficult to do if you don't speak Chinese, plus we reeked of desperation), so we said screw it. We took the room. It was a dump. Boy, was it a dump, but at least it was a place to sleep, even if the toilet didn't flush and the water smelled like rotten eggs.

We went back down the street to the only restaurant that was open--twas dinner time by then--and of course, it was probably the most expensive joint on the block. A man who was working there probably spoke the best English we've heard in China thus far, so that was a relief, and he was really eager to help us out. He told us that we could come in the back, in the kitchen, and just point to what we wanted. So we pointed at this eggplant dish with shrimp. We keep eating the eggplant stuff over here because it's so good and it's cheap, so we were excited to see something that we recognized. We asked how much it was, and he said "Oh, I think it is very cheap. Maybe only 8 dollars." So we told him that we didn't live in America, and that we got paid in Chinese money, so he needed to tell us the "real" price. It was more than we had. We told him that we needed to eat a really inexpensive meal. Rather than explain our whole sob story, we told him that my wallet had been stolen, so that he would understand why we were so desperate for cheap food. We sort of felt as defeated as if my wallet had been stolen, though, so we didn't feel as bad about fibbing. He brought us some food, it was awesome; and the total cost of the three dishes and two beers was less than the shrimp and eggplant dish. So he hooked it up, and we were very thankful.

We went back to the hotel room, and I called Thomas, who kept telling me over and over again, "Just remember, Julie, T.I.C.--This is China...". I need to put that on a t-shirt, with Thomas' face or something on it. It was too funny. He reminded us that we'll have money soon, and it will be more than we know what to do with (it will also be double the amount we had when we came, so it really is going to be sweet). Then Jamie called. I needed that. We vented, and she told us to forget about the fact that we were broke--now the free meals that the school offers will come in really handy!

We woke up the next morning with an hour and a half before our bus left. We "checked out", which meant we threw our key on the desk as the owner propped his head up from his bed in his bedroom, which was right off of the "lobby" (really, it wasn't quite a bedroom, and it wasn't quite a lobby). We were determined to get on the first bus we could find, use our phrasebook and see if it went near the long-distance bus terminal. This meant we would pay 1.50 instead of the 20-30.00 that a cab would have cost. Luckily for us, the first bus went to the bus station, and we had plenty of time to figure out which gate we needed to go to and all that jazz. Finally, we got on the bus, more than relieved to be headed back to our dorm room in Weihai.

Now Rory is sick with a cold, and we've been sneezing black stuff since we got back. It's no wonder people wear those SARS masks all around China. We are lucky here in Weihai--the air is clean, the water is relatively clean (I mean, we're still in China); maybe Gary's group should come here instead of dirty Rizhao. At least they wouldn't sneeze exhaust.

How to judge an English contest in China...

2007-03-27T03:27:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday we were invited (well, we didn't really have a choice) to be guest judges at an English competition being held on our campus. It was sponsored by CCTV, and the 20 winning finalists will move on to the next round, with other folks from Shandgong province. Some of the participants were Cecilia's kids; it was only open to Chinese students, though there was one Korean girl there, and she did a pretty good job. Rory teaches all Koreans, and I teach the little littles, so these were relatively new faces to us, save for the folks who came to receive our input a few nights earlier in the week. We walked into the auditorium, and it was huge. I guess it comes as no surprise, everything on our campus is huge. The stage was really ornately decorated with these giant lotus flowers, a bunch of random (fake) foliage and sparkly orbs everywhere. It was really a sight to see. So we took our seats in the front row--the judging area--next to Cecilia, the minister of our school and a few other Chinese English teachers (including the two who had provided the counterproductive "help" at our first practice session).

Each participant was to read a numbered passage from a book; we each had a copy of the book, and they all read/performed in order, so already it was a pretty easy gig. There were also a series of questions in the front of the book; we had to choose (according to skill level) a question to ask the students for the "communication" portion of the contest. We had little score sheets with each contestant's number on it, along with a 100 point breakdown: grammer (yes, spelled incorrectly), fluency, tonation, performance, general, communication and maybe a few other things. But it all added up to 100.

Cecilia decided (for us) that we were going to ask the questions, because she wanted the students to get a chance to hear the dialects of the other two foreign teachers. Sure, sounds logical, but it was pretty clear that she was just bullshitting us because she didn't want to ask questions. Whatever. We were fine with asking questions. So Rory and I rotated. The kids would finish their passages and we would ask: "do you like movies?" The answer was always "yes" or "no", and then we'd follow up with "why [not]?" We had 50-something kids reading passages, and 90% of the time, when we would ask them the "why[not]?" part of the question, they would answer that it was either "boring" or "interesting". So finally, when Rory asked a girl why she liked birds, she answered "because birds are free," and I started clapping really loudly, like--about time, people. Early in the competition, I asked a girl what day of the week it was, and she said "it's March 24." When I tried to get her to say the days of the week--prepping her with "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...no? Okay..."--she started crying. So I decided I didn't want to make any more kids cry. So simple(r) questions were the name of the game.

And though Cecilia had bowed out of the questions portion of the contest, she certainly made her presence known anyway. As each student was reading into the microphone, in front of his/her peers, she would make all of these pantomimic gestures; waving her hands in the air--to encourage them to slow down or speed up or smile or dance or something--trying to make eye contact with these kids who were two seconds shy of peeing their pants. It was really annoying and distracting to us, so I can only imagine what she looked like from a Chinese teenager's perspective. And she kept telling us, "No, don't ask that question--they don't know what cartoons are...", even though the five (younger) students before them knew exactly what cartoons are--they're interesting.

There were some contestants who were a little too confident, too, telling us (before they even started reading) "I think I will winner of this contest." Nope. There was actually one girl who said it and then delivered the best performance of the night (in my humble opinion). She had been at our practice session, and she actually listened to our comments, so that when she got to the word "interviewer" (difficult for Asians, who don't have a "v"), she totally nailed it. I gave her the highest points.

We knew that there was going to be a dance routine, because we had seen the girls rehearsing before the shindig started. So these 5 awkward Chinese girls got on stage and danced to some song while the judges tallied the votes. We were just sitting there, taking it all in, filming a little bit of it, when Rebecca came up to us and said "the girls want you to sing the English song `Senorita' so that they can dance to it..." I knew that she was probably talking about that Justin Timberlake song, but instead I feigned ignorance, saying "we don't know that song, and `senorita' is actually a Spanish word...". So we thought we were off the hook, but right after the girls finished dancing, Rebecca came back to us and said "you should sing an English song with no music. Now." We didn't really have time to think, and at this point, we are up for any opportunity to win brownie points with the school, so we said okay. We walked onstage and stood in front of these high school kids who just wanted to hear some American Y107 music. So we sang "Step Inside" by the Hollies. It was really awkward and funny, and it was met with a tepid (okay, non-) response from the kids.

Next they announced the winners (in Chinese, so we still don't know who got to move to the next round of competition--they didn't make them come on stage or anything), and then the minister got onstage and gave a speech about something. I don't know what he was talking about, but he was enthusiastic. The competition was over, and we were greeted by a lot of firm handshakes and promises of a free meal in the future. I think that our colleagues loved that we sang a song, whether the kids did or not. So we decided that anytime we get up and sing in front of people, it goes over really well--we should have some standby songs under our belts just in case. It could mean a free meal.

"...these damned claws!"

2007-03-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

Last night we were asked to come help the Chinese students who are preparing for an English competition to be held on our campus this weekend. We thought it would be a pretty easy, straightforward thing, with the students standing up and presenting their stories to us and the audience. Wrong.

We walked into a conference room near Rory's office in Teaching Building 1, and every seat was packed, all these teenage Chinese faces sitting around a giant conference desk, staring at us, wondering why we were there. Rory and I don't teach any of these students--they're all Cecilia's.

From the get-go it was like a freaking circus. We tried to get all of these kids to be quiet for two seconds so that their classmates could read/present their stories. I didn't want to immediately walk into a room and start yelling at a bunch of students who don't know who I am, but at the same time, I wanted our time spent there to be useful to the students who actually cared. And I didn't want to feel like I was wasting my time. There were plenty of other things we could have been doing. Also, there was a Chinese teacher in there to help us "maintain" the kids. She wasn't doing anything. So I finally just shouted "HEY!" and told them to be quiet. That lasted for 10 seconds. So we said "screw it" and just made all the kids come up to us and read, standing right next to us.

It was still impossible to hear, so Rory went up to the lead troublemaker and made him read next. Each time he would start reading, I'd say "What? I can't hear you?" just to annoy him. So we made him start over a bunch. And the kids didn't understand a word of what they were reading. They just learned how to pronounce the words. So "psychiatrist", "plausibly", "externality", "interviewer" and other similar words were just murdered. We suggested that they try to look up the words in their dictionaries so that they know what the hell they're saying, but I think that suggestion fell on deaf, rude ears. Homeboy who was talking a lot had a story that ended with "...these damned claws!" He didn't know what claws were. I kept thinking that if he knew what claws were, he could have really emphasized his story, raising his fist and pumping in the air (I had a romantic notion of this little guy being like a teenage Charleton Heston in Planet of the Apes...maybe next time).

Rory demonstrated how to read, and to make it sound like a joke. After he finished I started to (pretend) laugh and guffaw uncontrollably like it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard. The kids just stared at us, but we explained that this was the desired response. Again, deaf ears.

One girl actually had most of hers memorized, so she stood right by Rory and me, staring at us with this vacant, zombified look on her face while reading something about washing a cat in a washing machine..."No, doctor, it wasn't the washing machine that killed him--I think it was the ironing..." I know, hilarious, right? Anyway, this chick sort of just creeped us out, even if she was the best one there.

The whole thing was pretty ridiculous. Eventually another Chinese teacher came in, and while we were shouting about how rude the students were being, the teachers went around the room, taking pictures of girls on their cell phones and chatting right along with them. It made me wonder what a Chinese classroom (at this school anyway) is actually like, or how much English learning goes on. Seems like the school is trying to breed a bunch of Chinese parrots.

St. Patty's Night

2007-03-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

Okie doke. So this is the footage from our night out. The band is from the Tomato Bar, and the rest is from 2046. Too much fun. Take a gander.

St. Patty's Day Hike

2007-03-18T17:30:00.000-07:00

Hello all. This is the video of the daytime hike that Julie talked about in her last blog. It's a long one. I'll have the video from the evening up a bit later. I've now exhausted all of my mountain songs. Enjoy.

St. Patty's Day in the China!

2007-03-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was one of those days that was so jampacked with activity that is seems (in retrospect) impossible that we were able to do so much. In one day. Whew!

We slept in late, skipping breakfast. We decided that there's really no need for us to get up at 7:00 on the weekends to go eat porridge and fried eggs. Plus, it gives the cooks a little bit of a break; especially now that we have to log when we're going to be there for meals. Seems like that makes sense (so they know how much food to make for us 3 foreigners), but it's a recent development that came after Cecilia complained about the freshness of the food (it's always something. Seriously...); and now we have to know in advance when we'll be eating at the dining hall or not.

We did end up going to lunch, though. Lunch is usually the most impressive meal of the day, and during the week, immediately after lunch, we have a nap time "siesta" built into our schedules. The whole campus sort of shuts down and everyone "take[s] some rest." So at lunch yesterday we had some meatballs and other random things. The food is getting better and better for us (both taste-wise and tolerance-wise), and our palates are becoming more receptive to Chinese cuisine. Well, Chinese dining hall cuisine. When we eat in restaurants it's no problem, because we get to choose what we want to eat, but in the dining hall, it's anyone's guess, and they don't necessarily know that we don't like squid or octopus in with our vegetables or broth or whatever. But there's always rice and a juice box of some sort.

Yesterday at lunch we were in charge of talking with Cecilia about a little nitpicky logistical contract thing. We spoke with Rebecca--the Chinese English teacher who has taken on the responsibility of being the liason/translator/go-to chick in all matters between us and the higher-ups--and we figured out the glitch and are happy with the results. So we had to explain our decision to Cecilia, who has been saying that we should stick together as a team from the beginning (and now she just wants us to talk to people on her behalf. We're not...). So she wasn't very happy with us or the school, because she wants the school to pay her for days that she wasn't even in China yet (like I said, it's always something with her...). Our lunchtime conversation made us a little frustrated and annoyed, so we were happy to escape campus for a few hours to go meet Thomas and Alyssa (who we met at "church" and with whom we ate dinner earlier this week) to go hike up a mountain. Alyssa is really cool. We talked about travelling (she's been to some of the same places I've been); she was actually applying for a Fulbright grant to Chile before she came here to Weihai. She also has big feet (like me), and is going to hand over some of her shoes to me when her contract is up.

We met Alyssa at Shandong University (where she's an English Instructor), and then we all rode over to pick up Thomas, our guide for the day (he's a natural). Thomas had previously shown us all of these different mountain passes he's traversed, but yesterday he wanted to check out a new spot in a familiar location. So we were happy and thankful that he wanted us to tag along with him. We rode our taxi all the way to a dead end, where the pavement ended, and we could see this pretty massive and impressive mountain looming in the background. Right as the pavement turned to dirt, there was a building that was being renovated. We walked up and peeked around, wondering what it would become--a house? a restaurant? a school?--and I felt like I was trespassing. But I trust Thomas. He had been here before, after all. He gave mountain tours as his summer job last year. He led us up a dirt path, past a couple of elderly women who were washing their clothes on rocks next to this dirty little mountain trickle (not quite a stream). It struck me that I had never been in a situation like this--this was real China (whatever that means--maybe I just have all these images from PBS specials in my head). There were really Chinese women washing clothes on rocks, their shabby dwellings behind them. They told Thomas (in Chinese) that we should cross over and go the other way. Thomas didn't want to, but he didn't make a big deal out of it; we simply crossed the trickle and walked a different route, to make them happy.

When we were in Korea, we never got to experience anything as intimate (?) as this in nature or in the countryside. Sure, sometimes Jamie and I would hike up to this mountain behind our school, just to kill time during our lunch break, but part of the way up was paved. I'm sure we could have climbed mountains, we just didn't know anyone who was knowledgeable about where to go. And here we have Thomas! I think that we're very lucky in that sense. So we headed up, still a little dumbfounded that we were about to climb a mountain. The next thing I know we're face to face with some cows, just hanging out right next to this trail. Their rears were right at the edge of a dropoff, so every time they had to poop they just let it fly, and it fell down a ravine into the trickle. The same trickle the ladies were cleaning their clothes in. But they cows weren't confined by a fence or anything like that; they were tied up, right there, hanging out. A little further up, past a few houses (signs of civilization), we came across a pen full of dog houses. Evidently one of the houses we had passed belonged to a Chinese man who breeds some kind of dog. I don't know what kind of dogs they were, but lemme tell you--these were some cute puppies! So not only are we hiking up the side of a beautiful mountain, with beautiful weather and nice friends, we got the added bonus of getting to see a bunch of puppies. And who isn't a sucker for puppies? What a lucky day, right?

So we kept walking, and it wasn't too rough, but then we ended up at the bottom of this really steep hill. And we had to get to the top. Lucky for me, we decided to climb our first Weihai mountain with a cross-country runner and a guy who has gotten paid to take people to the top. I've mentioned that we have to climb 225 steps every time we enter our school gates, just to get to our room, but it was still no preparation for that section of the hike. I was bringing up the rear, reminding the world "Wow, I'm really out of shape...", but after stopping a few times and resting against trees, I was at the top of our first section. We turned and looked how far we'd come up. It was impressive to me, even at this point, but we had only just started the trek. So we started making our way to this craggy area of rocks that jutted out, and I was really scared all of sudden. I don't know why I do this to myself, but it's like a nervous thing I have. For example, before we flew from the US to China, I had built up in my head all of the terrible things that could potentially happen once we were in the air. And so I was really nervous to get on the plane at all. But once we were up there, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had made it out in my head. And save for a littlest bit of turbulence near the end, the flight was perfect, I'd survived, and I was in China. If I ever go canoeing or something like that, I always build it up in my head that I'm going to drown or get bit by a water moccasin (a la Ricky Schroeder in Lonesome Dove). Similarly, on the mountain, I got nervous crawling on parts of rock (unchartered terrain for me), knowing how much of a klutz I am, thinking "if anyone's going to fall off of a mountain today, it's going to be me...". But I remembered that Thomas knows what he's doing and wouldn't take us out on a hike to kill us. So I joined the others on the crag, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The view was incredible! I mean, we got to see parts of our city that we didn't even know existed! We got to see the island that we'll be visiting soon, when we go ride bicycles and look at British architecture.

Thomas pointed over to another ridge, towards an old, dilapidated house; and he suggested that we do some "ridge hopping" and go check it out, because he'd never been there. I sort of thought that he was joking, and I said "well, we don't have to go that far, but we should definitely do some more climbing around...". So we started crossing all of these ridges, down and back up, down and back up (and none of it nearly as exhausting as crawling up that initial slope, which we remained on top of the entire time); and at the top of each ridge you could see all of these different views of the city and the boats and the islands. It was so cool! And the whole time Alyssa and I chatted about travelling and exploring. It was great! Before I could even realize what was happening, we were at the house! It took a lot less time than I thought it would. So we walked around in this old, (now) roofless structure, taking pictures, drinking gatorade and looking down at where we'd come from. We could see the puppy pen, and it looked so tiny now. I felt very proud of myself for making it to the top. We followed the trail a little further, and we came across another cement structure. It was basically just a cement platform that had a few cement steps leading up to it. So we all walked up on the platform--it was perfect for a "scenic view" of Weihai. But everything about the day thus far (after leaving campus) had been perfect. But Rory and I wondered how the hell people got cement and bricks up this freaking mountain! I can't imagine a genie lift or anything like that that is capable of reaching the top of a mountain ridge, so I'm sure the the construction involved a lot of Chinese folks carrying things on their backs up this mountain.

We started the journey down, and we passed through another cemetery. This one had all of the mounds like the one that we had stumbled upon last weekend. Chinese folks are cremated when they die, and then their loved ones place their urn full of ashes inside these mounds. It's really pretty cool-looking. But there was one (non) mound that was actually a pretty elaborate cement structure, in amongst all of these piles of dirt and decoration. Someone must be a pretty rich person to have such a nice burial plot (if that term even still applies here).

As we got closer to the bottom, we saw a really nice hotel that had a driving range behind it. Alyssa wanted to check out their prices for pool usage, so we just hiked down next to this driving range. Along the way we saw our first Chinese person (we hadn't seen anyone since the ladies washing their clothese--this seems rare for China, where there's never supposed to be any privacy). An old man was gathering straw and bundling it up in some netted basket thing. He was friendly and said "Ni Hao", and we continued down. We stopped inside the swimming pool area of the hotel, and I saw one of my students. We had her friend translate the little card the hotel clerk had given us with pool rates on it. We all split a cab, getting out at our particular destinations and vowing to go climbing again soon.

So we went back to the dorm and got ready for the evening festivities. We had heard through the grapevine that there was going to be Guinness (for St. Patrick's Day) at a bar in the city center. Until I heard this, I had sort of forgotten about St. Patrick's Day altogether. But we hadn't been to a bar at all yet, and we were excited about drinking some real beer. We hopped on the bus and got off at the first stop to eat at a Korean restaurant we'd been eyeing for awhile. So we walked in, excited about using our knowledge of Korean to order food. It turns out that there weren't any Korean-speaking folks there, which is weird for us (well, for our experience here in Korean restaurants, anyway), because Weihai is full of Koreans. So when we ordered "Budaechige", the waitress just looked at us like we were crazy. So Rory flipped back through the menu, reading the Korean aloud (surely that would impress a Korean, right?) until he found our soup, and he showed our waitress. Written next to it was the Chinese version, so we just ended up pointing at it. Oh well, next time we'll get to use Korean somewhere!

We hopped in a taxi and made our way to the Tomato Bar, where the friendly bartender was, indeed, serving bottles of Guinness. They also served us two shots of Jameson. We were the first foreigners there (we were meeting Neal and Alyssa), so we just sort of sat at the bar, singing along to the Beatles songs playing over the loudspeakers. Turns out The Beatles are universally appealing. Fine with me. We saw that there was a little stage and wondered if there was live music. Five minutes later, we discovered that there was--score! So these three Chinese dudes get up there with their percussion, keyboard and guitar, and they start playing the Eric Clapton Unplugged songbook. There were other songs, too, and it was great, but a whole lotta Clapton. So we were singing along to all of these songs, cheering for the band, and you could tell that everyone was staring at us, amused by the fact that we were so amused. The two men sitting next to us bought us a couple of glasses of wine to cheers with, so we had to drink the whole glass to show them that we know what's up with drinking here in China. We drank and pointed our glasses towards them, showing that we had finished in one gulp. They were impressed--we were having so much fun! I think that it is always a little shocking for Chinese folks (or Korean folks) to see us foreigners dancing around and singing and really interacting, instead of being shy or just sitting in a booth trying to avoid eye contact. But I just want everyone to know how happy I am to be in China, and it always goes over really well. It has thus far, anyway.

Neal showed up with another Neil, I think British. We got some more beers and paid--going to bars will be a rare thing for us, I think, because it's significantly more expensive than just getting some beers with dinner. Alyssa showed up with her French friend, the new French teacher at Shandong. She was really nice, I just can't remember her name. It was loud when she said it... The girl sitting at the table next to us "cheers"ed me. So I held my glass up next to her, and we both chugged. Her table cheered for me when they saw me drink the rest of my beer. I think the cheers did a number on her, though, because the next thing I knew, she was taking a nap on the table.

We migrated to a different club, 2046. Before we walked in, Neal turned to us and said "I think you're going to like this place..." So we walked in, and there was a free coat check. Okay, already I like it. We walked through some doors, and we were escorted to our own booth. The room was dimly lit, but it was totally a dance club. All of the booths and tables were situated so that everyone had a clear view of the stage area, djs perched behind, playing random, loud music. It was so fun! So before we even thought about ordering drinks (we didn't have the budget for it last night), Rory and I were out on the dance floor, and it was hilarious. All of these Chinese folks saw us coming, and it's like they parted the waters for us when we got to the floor. So then it was just Rory and me, surrounded by a bunch of folks staring at us and laughing (with us, not at us). The dancing didn't last very long, as it was time for an emcee to come out and get the crowd riled up. So the dance floor was also a stage, a stage where this dude excitedly yelled a lot and chugged entire beers in front of his audience. Once, he even double fisted some Coronas, getting beer all over his jacket and face. He was really zealous about it, though, and you could tell that being a hype man at a dance club in Weihai is an important position.

After he finished getting drunk and letting us watch, he brought up members of the audience to participate in a game. The girls had to hold a bottle in between their legs, and the boys had to hold a straw. The objective was to get the straw into the bottle, but it was really just an excuse to see a bunch of shy(?) Chinese girls get dry-humped on stage by horny Chinese dudes. Like being at a frat bar in Co, MO or something. But with games(?)... Next, all of these dancers came out onstage, dressed like they were in Vegas or something. The girls had on these really elaborate headdresses (bright pink and orange) and belly dancing costumes, while the dudes wore the same color scheme and looked like homosexual matadors. It was too funny! Funny awesome, I mean. As the night progressed, the dancing chicks ended up in less and less clothing, finally writhing around on poles in little more than their skivvies. Then I understood why the table full of Australian, douchebag-looking dudes was sitting so close to the stage. We found our frat boys! But it was so much fun. And it was just too funny--little Chinese chicks who giggle when I say "Ni Hao" to them on the street were now pole dancing in hardly any clothes.

We called it a night and headed home. It was all too funny. Mountain climbing by day and pole dancing by night. Only in Weihai.

Montage City!

2007-03-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

Ni hao! Ok... so this here video is really just a bunch of random clips from our first few days here. There's some stuff from around our neighborhood, some stuff from the park and the zoo... and just some stuff. Enjoy.

Sand, surf and son...

2007-03-12T05:45:00.000-07:00

So this weekend was another fun one (go figure!)...

Last week we finally got around to buying a map of Weihai, so we posted it on our wall, determined to have a sort of "point and go" attitude; we don't have pushpins or anything (I already thought of that, but they won't stick in our wall--tape hardly sticks to the damn wall...). We really felt like we wasted a lot of time in Korea (retrospectively)--there's no time for naps on the weekend, dammit! Only exploration! So we decided to go to the beach. Why not? It was super cold and windy, perfect beach weather if you just wear layers. So we loaded ourselves up in a taxi, opened up our (other, travel) map to the cab driver, and away we went. The entire beach front area is still pretty vacant, like it was the weekend before, when we travelled around with Thomas and Marina; but there were little hints everywhere as to what it might be like in the summer time--I saw swimsuit separates through a window, and shopkeepers were in their little mini marts stocking up on beach essentials. Evidently the March/April months here can be pretty brutal with wind, and there's evidence of this brutality all over town. There are all these massive signs (somehow) adhered to the sides of buildings that look like they've been chewed on. When we get in taxis to go back to school, we always pass this huge billboard that's sort of toppled over on its side. Even the strongest Chinese pole is no match for Weihai wind. For serious.

We headed down towards the beach area--the largest public beach area in Weihai. It was so cool! The breakers were all choppy and white-capped, and there was a pretty substantial layer of seafoam creating a barrier between us and the water. I had never seen seafoam before (notice the "had"--tee hee), but it's pretty cool and...foamy. There weren't a lot of folks there because it was so damn cold. But I also think that some of the Chinese folks we've met thus far have been a little too concerned about us being cold--jacket weather to me is parka weather to them (tomayto/tomahto, right?). So we walked along, holding hands, pretty much just us and the beach. And some huge industrial tractors. I'm not sure what they were doing, but they always seemed to start moving the second we wanted to walk in front of them.

We saw another young couple walking along the beach with a little white trash bag full of seaweed. Later, when we walked back in front of the empty shops, we could see strands and strands of seaweed being hung out to dry (or to blow away, it seems...). It was really funny, too, because even in the sand you could see the markings of a typical Chinese woman. Heels. They all wear heels. And they run in them, or work at the supermarket in them, or walk around on the beach in them. I just don't understand how they do it. Maybe they are born with little stiletto heels fused to their feet. But next to a heel marking, I spotted a sort of dried out starfish. I wrapped him (?) up in some tp and put him in my bag.

After walking around on the beach for a few hours, we headed back towards the same hotpot place we had enjoyed the weekend before. We were determined to do it on our own this time. We walked in around 4:30, and we were the first and only customers in the restaurant, but that was lucky for us, because it allowed three friendly Chinese girls (they all looked like they were 16) to help figure out exactly what the hell we wanted in our hotpot. So we used our handly little dictionaries (electronic and no) to communicate, and we all agreed that the entire scenario was pretty funny. As we were eating our hotpot, my nose started running--they really put the "hot" in hotpot--the spicy side was full of, well, spice. Ladlefuls. So I reached in my bag to grab my roll of tp (we always carry it with us here--smartest thing we ever decided to do), and I grabbed a little wad that was already ripped off. I started wiping my nose and realized it was my starfish. Ewwww...

We went home, relaxed and watched this Andy Richter show we downloaded off of itunes. Boy, it sure beats the Beijing Opera. Not that I don't like or appreciate the Beijing Opera, but really, it's on all the freaking time. And to a foreign ear, it sort of all sounds the same.

The next day we were invited to go meet some other foreigners and to go to church--each week they meet at someone else's apartment and just sort of rotate. When Thomas first proposed the idea, Rory and I quickly bowed out of the church part. But Cecilia said "Oh, don't worry, it's not going to be a big deal--it will just be people gathering and hanging out together." Thomas said it would be a lot of singing and playing guitar, so we were like--okay, we like singing and playing guitar (and we didn't want to seem like jerks)--we'll be there!

We met Thomas (sans Marina, bummer--she had class) by the gates of Shandong University and walked over to the apartment, which was on campus. Thomas was apologizing for the apartment being small, which was really funny, because when we walked in we could tell that it was waaaaay bigger than ours. But that's okay; we have as much space as we need. It's all good. At the end of the day, it's just a place to sleep. When we walked in, we could see that it was mostly older people. Not old people--older people, mostly 40+. There were a couple people there who were closer to our age, and we're actually going to hang out with them tomorrow. So we sat down and met a bunch of really nice people, but it was still awkward, just because they've all been there for awhile and have formed relationships with each other. Church relationships. What followed (for me, and I'm pretty sure for Rory, too), was one of the most awkward situations I've ever been in. One of those situations where you want to either curl up in the fetal position or toss yourself out the window. Or curl up in the fetal position and then toss yourself out a window.

Yes, there was a guitar, and even song lyrics that were dispersed among us newcomers. Lyrics to all of these church songs. I mean, I thought there would be church songs that I know, and there was "Amazing Grace", but we didn't sing that selection this week. I have nothing against religion--I respect people who have found religion, and I am intrigued by the tenants of various religious teachings, but only within a literary context. I don't know what I was expecting, or maybe I just hadn't prepared myself for that type of setting--it's been awhile since I've been to church, and yes, that's by choice. Maybe Cecilia and Thomas didn't think it would be awkward because they are both religious folk; but when you're agnostic or atheist, it's really awkward. So Rory and I just sort of became flies on the wall, discreetly clutching each other's arms, wondering (well, I was, at least) what to make of everyone there, as well as wondering what their first impressions of us must have been. We weren't participating at all--we were really just sitting there quietly, trying not to be noticed in this room full of about 10 other foreign teachers, a few who work at a Christian school here in Weihai.

At one point, everyone went around the room, taking turns reading passages out of this book they've all been reading. Rory and I passed, but Cecilia read, and then we felt really alienated. Like we'd been duped or something. And she started quoting biblical passages and stuff, and everyone was sharing their take on the book-of-the-month and how it applied to their lives. But the most awkward part of it all, for us, came when the group veterans asked us if there was anything that we would like them to pray for. Other people had friends who were addicted to drugs, and then someone wanted to pray for their friends' stillborn baby (you know, legitimate stuff, and again, I totally respect that. I've prayed for things before, and no, not just a sweet pony or something at Christmastime). Rory and I passed, again, but Cecilia decided to use this time to talk about our school and our contracts. Her opinion about our contract and our situation here at the school is pretty different from ours. She is very unhappy here. She has lived in China before, and she has certain expectations about what her living arrangements should be like--that's totally understandable. For us, though, we already had the worst experience someone can have teaching in a foreign country, so if the tiny dorm room we're in is our only problem, it's not really a problem to us. But she used this prayer time as a forum to speak for all three of us, to ask everyone to pray that the school honors our contracts and that the recruiting agency is honest, saying "I mean, it may be okay for them (Rory and Julie), because they are new to China, but for me, it is unacceptable..." And she just kept going on about it. I wish that I could have seen the look on my face, but I tried to make eye contact with everyone there to maybe send some telepathic message that she isn't the spokesperson for all three of us. Granted, I really like the fact that Cecilia is able to help us out with all of the little logistical things involved with living in China for the first time, but I also like to speak for myself. I was pretty livid, but I didn't want to say anything in someone's house--hey, let's have a confrontation in front of our new friends while I eat their fruit and they pray for us. I mean, from their end, they probably just assumed we were religious folk--why else would we be at their little church gathering?

But hearing these nice people, with their heads bowed and eyes closed, praying for us and for our contracts to be honored, right after praying for someone's stillborn baby...I don't know, it just made me really angry that she had the nerve to bring that up. But hey, maybe she thinks that we are as miserable as she is. But this is a good time to note that we aren't having any problems here. We love everyone at the school, they love us and think we're awesome, and we couldn't be happier to be here. It's so different from Korea. Everything has been handled in a really professional way, and the little things, like a broken washing machine (now fixed) or a broken door lock (also fixed) or a minor miscommunication about some little thing (hey, we speak different languages), don't seem like they merit that much complaint or a freaking prayer. That's just me.

After the shindig was over and we were just talking to Thomas, I was completely honest with him. I said that I thought everyone was really nice, but it's an awkward setting when you're agnostic. And now all of those folks have this impression that we're religious, just shy. It's one of those situations that I don't really know how to handle, though when I said "agnostic" to Thomas, I said it a little loud, hoping some other folks would hear. And I'm sure he'll relay the message for us--he's good like that.

After that church "service" (?), I was a little nervous about continuing to hang out with the group. Thomas had to leave to meet a student, so it was just us and them. But, we're adults, so I figured it would be alright. It was. It was more than alright. One of the guys there, Lyndon, who is from New Zealand, took us all to this little restaurant to have a birthday lunch for his daughter, Zoe, who turned 9. It was great. We ate so much delicious food, we got to talk about stuff other than religion, and we enjoyed both speaking in English, and listening to Lyndon speak pretty fluent Chinese. He's also a really funny dude, and he knows all of the best and cheapest spots to go shopping or to hang out in Weihai. Even bars. He invited us back to his apartment, where his wife, Rachel, was decorating the place for the birthday celebration. So we walked over to the apartment and played a bunch of birthday games. Plus, I spent a lot of time on the floor with the little ones, indulging Benjamin (Zoe's little brother) by asking all about the differrent glow-in-the-dark bugs he was showing off. At the end of the day, we were glad we got to meet them, even if we had to suffer through an awkward section of the day.

But even in Korea, when we met some other Americans and some Australians for the first time, we realized that there are a lot of really religious foreigners in Asian countries (we were cracking open beers as they were praying before eating their lunch), and that we're probably the odd men out. It's just another thing that we can add to our list of new things we have done and will do here in the China.

Video town!

2007-03-11T08:07:00.000-07:00

Hey yous guys.
It's taken me long enough, but I finally got around to putting together a video. In this installment, we headed to one of the beaches. We walked around for a bit, then we got hungry... so we ate. We filmed it. Here it is.

Munchkin-land

2007-03-08T05:03:00.000-08:00

So, today was our first day of actually teaching. We got here a little early, so none of the students were back from vacation, plus there was a huge storm all over northern and northeastern China (worst in 50+ years--thanks for the info, dad), so we started a day later than planned. My classes today were great! The kids were all so cool, except in my one Korean class--they
were little turds, but I guess I would be, too, if I was a second class citizen here at the school. Don't let the Korean characters everywhere on campus fool you--everything is so segregated.

There was this one little guy in my Korean class, though, who will probably become one of my favorite students. His name is Leo, he's really little and funny, and he has big glasses. Today he just kept wanting to show me his sweater. It had three little ghosts on it and said "boo." So when I gave a kid the English name "Bobby" and everyone kept calling him "Booby", Leo just kept pointing at his shirt, saying "boo, teacher, boo". Then at the end of class they all decided to play "chicken", and Leo ran right into the water cooler. It was no big deal, but another girl in the class got really upset about it. So she picked up her bookbag and just clocked him in the head. His glasses flew off, and he started crying, all crumpled up on the floor. He was so mortified, but it was really funny. I told him he was okay and that his glasses (and the water cooler) were fine, and it was no problem. Too cute.

There are kids in each class who are obviously the standouts, and they all helped me sort of explain what was going on to the kids who didn't quite get it. So far at my "picnics" today--a name game where you match up picnic items to the first letter of your name--I got a lion (Luke), some melon (Mike, who wanted to call himself Mike teacher), the sky (Sophie) and a whole
lot of apples. That's cool. I like apples. But student-wise, I have a Banana, an Ivy, a Fay, a Bread, a Miffy and a Montas. Don't ask me what the hell Montas means, but he insisted. Kids are so funny. Every time I would call on Banana, you could tell he got so much gratification out of the fact that teacher called him Banana.

Rory didn't have as much luck. Apparently all his classes had additional textbooks that he didn't know about. Plus, his schedule is definitely the most jam-packed of the three of us. Cecilia and I just have to teach conversational English (because there's already a Chinese English teacher going over grammar and stuff), but Rory's really the main English teacher the Koreans have, so not only does he have to work the most, he has to teach grammar and pronunciation/conversation. The second half of his day went a lot better, though, once he was able to locate the missing books. Plus he befriended a colleague who is going to teach us Chinese if we help her with her English. Sweet!

In each classroom, too, there is a computer built into the desk and every audio visual device you could think of. Yet they
don't have much heat, they poop in holes, and you can't print anything or copy anything unless you go to a completely different building. I don't get it. It all seems pretty funny. Plus, all the students looked at me like I was crazy when I asked them to get out a piece of paper. So now I know I should bring paper to class. No problem.

And on top of it being the first day of classes, I got a present of 100 yuan, because it's women's day. Every woman who works here (approximately 80 of us), got 100 yuan. Hey, I like free money!

That's all for now. I'm sure we'll do something incredible this weekend, and with any luck, we'll have some video going asap.

fireworks in the blizzard

2007-03-05T00:52:00.003-08:00

fireworks in the blizzard
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

gan bei!

2007-03-05T00:52:00.001-08:00

gan bei!
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

nice to eat you.

2007-03-05T00:51:00.001-08:00

nice to eat you.
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

red red wine

2007-03-05T00:50:00.001-08:00

red red wine
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

How to celebrate, Chinese-style...

2007-03-04T18:12:00.001-08:00

Yesterday marked the last day of Chinese New Year festivities, and accordingly, the school wanted to take us all out to lunch to celebrate; it was also sort of a welcome luncheon for the three new foreign teachers. We didn't really know what to expect,--we had only heard that there would be a "toast to [y]our health". Granted, I've had dinners with large groups of Chinese folks before, so I know that toasting and drinking in general is a very formal process. But it was lunch--how much of this toasting would be done in an afternoon?--as opposed to evening time, when most folks in the US, unless they're alcoholics or there's some big sporting event going on, start to imbibe and really party. We got gussied up and headed down to the main administration office. At first it was just Roar, Cecilia, Rebecca and me, but pretty soon the whole building started to fill up with all of the teachers from the school. Also, all the guards, some of the cooks, some children of teachers, the principals, the president, the headmaster, etc. So there was quite a large group of us--probably around 100 people. The school rented a bus for us to take to a restaurant, so we all piled in and sat on laps to head over to the restaurant.

We walked into this restaurant that was incredible! It was in a hotel and huge; with all of these really cool lamps and big, plush leather couches and sculptures everywhere. We had an entire floor (like a huge banquet/meeting room) reserved for us. We walked in and sat down at our respective round tables--we got to sit with the other (Chinese) English teachers from the school. There were about 10 people assigned to each table, and at first I was annoyed because they wanted Rory and me to split up and sit amongst the other Chinese folks. I guess I just don't like people telling me/us where to sit, because we're adults and because I feel more comfortable (especially at this point) with Rory by my side. But it ended up being fine; we sat across from each other and that allowed us both to get different views of what was going on. The whole thing was almost an out-of-body experience--I can't really describe it. There was a giant lazy susan-type thing in the middle of the table, and there were little plates of beef and lotus root and tofu and peanuts--the appetizer portion of the meal. But each table also had a bottle of red wine, a bottle of coke and two bottles of Baijo (sp?), this clear Chinese liqueur that I had previously experienced back in the U.S. This stuff is potent. Cecilia told the waiters that we didn't want the Baijo, so they promptly took it away and provided us with just red wine. Ultimately a smart move, but I still wouldn't have minded tasting this funny drink in the context of a celebration/welcome luncheon. But until I'm prepared to get falling down drunk (yeah, maybe a few years ago), I'm sort of barring myself from Baijo in any sort of formal setting. The waiters even came out and laid down entire packs of cigarettes along with the drinks. That was definitely a first, too. Here, want a cigarette? Want 20? Want 60? Too funny!

The president of the school stood up and gave a toast to everyone--Bill, a Chinese English teacher, translated for me--we were wished good luck in the new year, along with all the standard celebratory well-wishings, like good health and prosperity. While we spun the appetizers around for everyone to share, we were taught the finer points of Chinese drinking customs. I'd sort of heard it all before, but I didn't realize that it's such a serious endeavor. When someone comes to your table to cheers you, he or she will say "gan bei" and then you have to drink EVERYTHING that is in your glass. After you do, you have to tilt your glass towards the "toastmaster" (for lack of a better word--I guess in yesterday's case I can also say my "boss(es)") and show him or her that you did, indeed, finish your drink. If you don't finish it, the toastmaster will watch you as you drink the rest. This happened to a little Chinese woman at our table--the president of our school made her chug an entire glass of red wine. Wow. So, yeah, we did a little bit of drinking; don't worry, we had maybe 3 glasses of red wine over the course of 2 hours. But the tables that had Baijo were a different sort of scene. Whereas our table was pretty tame--we were all sitting down, just taking it all in--the tables around us were full of grown men, standing up in circles around their tables, toasting and drinking this Baijo like it's water. I looked over and saw the "important" table (with presidents and stuff) full of empty bottles and red faces. Wow. Everyone was shouting at each other, and to a foreign ear it sounds like a big argument, but really it's just enthusiasm. It's funny to watch--just when you think someone's going to get punched in the face there's a big, hearty hug. Good stuff.

This was all going on throughout lunch and the presentation of dishes. There was some fresh fish, presented whole with some sauce on it. It was so good. I have never really been a big seafood fan, and I sort of lost any desire to eat it after being in Korea, but here, we're right on the water, and the taste difference between fresh fish and not-so-fresh fish is pretty unbelievable. There was another dish that had beef tendon (I passed), a dish with squid and beans (I passed), a dish with Japanese tofu and shrimp and some buttery sauce (awesome!), escargot (which we both actually ate and enjoyed--who knew?), clams, mussels, bbq chicken nuggety things, fish sticks (a la van de kamp's, but authentic!), tomatoes, cabbage and mushroom, noodles, you name it. The seafood items were actually our favorites, that's so funny! Wow, people's taste(s) can really evolve, huh?

As we were finishing up the last of the food, we noticed a karaoke-type station set up at the stage area in the room. There was a really awkward-looking dude preparing to sing (McGeorge family--he looked like a Chinese Dennis Altheuser). He was obviously intoxicated, as were most of the men in the room, who at this point were having a hard time walking straight. So he busts out some Chinese song and is just screaming his head off, but everyone loved it. It was so funny--he was pumping his fist and nodding his head like he was Mick Jagger (minus rhythm). After he sang, some little Chinese lady sang. I don't really know how she did, because while she was singing, I was being forced to choose a song to sing. Rory and I both agreed that we're not wasting any opportunities to be "in the thick of it", here in China, you know, so we were like, what the hell? Of course we'll do some karaoke. So I picked my old standby--"Blue Bayou" by Linda Ronstadt. So the song starts to play, and I can see the words on the screen, but my god--it was so high! I wasn't prepared for that, but I suffered through it, practically screeching, wondering if all the songs were in the key of some traditional Chinese opera, where all it sounds like is high-pitched whining. Don't get me wrong here--I actually really want to learn to sing some of these traditional songs--I just didn't think my first attempt would be singing a Linda Ronstadt song in front of all of my co-workers at really important function. The awkward drunk guy came up on stage with me, so I put my arm around him and started singing to him and to all the little kids in the audience, who had now gathered at the stage. The president of the whole school was sitting right in front of the stage, so I walked up to him, plopped down on my knees, grabbed his hand and pretended that I was lovingly singing to him. It was really funny, and I think that everyone got the impression that us foreigners are in it to win it.

So then it was Rory's turn--he did his old standby, "New York, New York"-- and in pure Rory fashion, it was hilarious. I think that everyone there wanted to be our new best friends. Drunk awkward guy was just in love with Rory. He kept saying "Number 1, number 1" and just wanted to be next to him. After Rory finished, D.A.G. got up and sang another song while we all prepared to head back to the bus. We didn't get on the bus because they had a special car come to pick us up, but as we were walking out of the dining area, D.A.G. grabbed Rory and gave him cigarette and wanted to light it for him. He just looked at Rory like Rory was Brad Pitt or the president or something.

We went outside to wait for our car, and the little boy who is always hanging around the dining hall was outside. There is an older fellow who is sort of the fix-it man around campus (he fixed our washer AND our lock today, actually), and I get the feeling that the little boy is his son. They were goofing off together outside, pretend beating each other up, running around, using people as diversions, when Rory grabbed the little guy and told him how strong he was. So the little guy did a few pretend punches in Rory's direction, and it was really cute. Then the dad got behind the little guy and depants him. It was so funny! He was still trying to punch, even as he was trying to pull his pants back up over his boxer shorts.

We went back to our room and took a nap before dinner. After dinner, we came back to the room to blog and the weather just started to get freaking crazy! It had been raining heavily all day, but it kept getting progressively colder and colder, and with the cold came the wind. Soon it turned to sleety snow stuff, and before long the ground was covered. There was so much wind, and it was storming so much that the whold campus lost power twice. But it was no big deal--soon we heard the (now familiar) sounds of fireworks. We looked outside, and at all these different spots far off in the city, you could see different patches of fireworks. It was quite a display. We looked below our window, down 5 floors, and saw a few people trying to ignite their own fireworks, but it was simply too windy. I've never been in wind like this--it takes your breath away just to be out in it. It's actually pretty cool. We came back in from our porch and watched American Idol (how cool is that? It's the newest season, even), and we started to hear what sounded like cannons! So we looked outside again, and there was a huge fireworks display going on near the front entrance of the campus. We ran outside to watch, but we got there just as it was finishing up. Evidently there were a lot more fireworks to ignite, but it was just too windy to light anything. So instead we watched a little guy with a sparkler.

Later we heard the cannon sound again, but it was just the door at the end of the hallway. It hadn't been shut all the way, and every time the wind got to it, it pushed the door open and then slammed it against the frame. So I went and fixed it, and hopefully everyone on the floor slept a little better without the noise.

What a fun day! The luncheon was just mind-blowing; watching adults--our superiors, who command our respect on a day-to-day basis--getting absolutely hammered and singing karoake is priceless. Too funny!

Thanks for all the comments--we really enjoy letting everyone know what't going on over here on the other side of the world.

"The world is charged with the grandeur of god..."--Gerard Manley Hopkins

2007-03-04T03:25:00.000-08:00

So yesterday we finally got to meet my friend, Thomas, who I had only really known through email. Thomas is from the United States (somewhere in the south--he's got a pretty thick accent), and I met him through Gary at the AAC. Whenever we had a question about Weihai or China or anything like that, he always helped us out; we emailed, skyped, talked on the phone, everything. So we were very eager to meet him. We called him up, and he told us what to tell the taxi driver to get to his apartment. We're sort of out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by all this industrial stuff, and we didn't really realize how hard it can be to get a taxi to the city center where Thomas lives. So we started walking, hoping we would find one of the three-wheeled cars that we have taken to get back to the school from the grocery store. We hopped in one and told the driver where to go. He just looked as us. His face was really red and his eyes were all bloodshot. He looked as clueless as we did. So we called Thomas, who got his landlord to give directions. Turns out the little, three-wheeled cars don't go into town. They exist just to drive around in the more rural (or in our case, wasteland-y) areas. So we all smiled and said thank you and jumped out to find another cab. This time we got a "real" taxi--it said "taxi" right there on the car, even!--and he took us right to Thomas, who was standing outside waiting for us.

He was easy to spot--another foreigner in a sea of old Chinese men, hanging out, smoking and celebrating Chinese new year. Because he's a foreign teacher, too, it's only natural to compare our surroundings. He lives in the thick of it--like China smacked him in the face--in an apartment that looks really dirty and compact and crummy on the outside, surrounded by men on bicycles who sing "trash, bring out your trash" or "get your shoes shined" or something about a menial service they are offering. He also lives close to all of the bustle that is the downtown area. We walked up a few flights of stairs to his apartment. It was awesome! He has so many rooms. Rooms. But then again, he chose to live off campus, otherwise his set-up would be similar to ours. We met his wife, Marina; she's Russian and is awesome! She is so bubbly and energetic, and she took care of us the second we got there--coffee, candy, you name it. Thomas got out a map of Weihai and started telling us a little bit about the history of the town. Turns out it was under British rule from (approximately--don't quote me on this) about 1900-1930ish. There are still little areas of town that have some dominant British architecture, and luckily for us, we got to see it. Thomas is cool because he can explain things without being pretentious or condescending. We learned so much, but I never felt like he was talking down to us.

Thomas also showed us all of the different mountain passes he has climbed throughout Weihai; you could see his little hand-drawn notations all over the map, which was all ripped and worn. Cool. Marina kept saying "Oh Thomas--now you have more people to suffer through your mountain climbing...Oh Thomas..." She was so funny! She kept sharing all these little wisdoms, prefacing each one with "It's like we say in Russia, blah blah blah..." They were really cute together. It was nice to even just hang out with them. Instant friends. We also got to see (on the map) all of the different potential weekend trips we can take. There is a ferry that goes to other parts of China, there's a ferry that goes directly to Seoul, there's a little island that we can go out to and ride bicycles, there are two different Korea towns, etc. It's nice to look at a map of our town and think--wow, I can go there next week if I want. Hell, I could go there tomorrow!

We decided to hop into a different taxi and go look at some water. We knew from looking at the map that Weihai is pretty much surrounded by water on three sides, but we've yet to really see it. Well, we saw it. We drove right along the coast, just like in those commercials where you see people driving sports cars on the shoreline in California. Except we're in freaking China! We were curving in and out around these mountain passes, past tiny fishing villages and AMAZING views. Never in my life would I have imagined that I could live somewhere as beautiful as this. Never. And there we were, in this tiny taxi, laughing, exploring and taking it all in. Wow wow wow. China rules! We kept stopping at all of these little stop off points to look down at the water and cliffs. The whole time Marina kept saying "Thomas, is this my mountain? I think that this one can be my favorite mountain...", except that by the end of it she had claimed 4 or 5 mountains. There are plenty to go around. Thomas kept pointing up to these massive peaks and saying "I climbed that one a few weeks ago, and on top of that one there's an amazing view..." It's cool to think that we'll get to go hiking with them, to the top of these super impressive mountains--Thomas even got paid to give mountain tours to foreigners over the summer. He said that there were all these people who had climbed over passes in Mongolia and really exotic locales, and the entire time he was giving the tours he was thinking "wow, you guys are in much better shape than me. Why am I giving the tour?", but it's pretty cool that he got to do it at all.

We drove to all of the different beaches that we can go to. I can't believe that we are only a cab ride away from all of this! There are different buses that go to the little fishing villages, too, so when we are more comfortable and more adventurous we can take the bus. We talked about getting bicycles and riding all along the coast together--I can get used to this. I will get my three-wheeled bike! They cost about as much as a large pizza. Really, I'm just in awe and overwhelmed. And Rory--well, Rory couldn't be happier. We're like freaking little kids out here, so curious and eager to explore! Hell yeah! Okay, that's out of the way. Around each mountain pass, there are all these spots where fisherman cast their nets. There are also little shops where old Chinese men still make wooden boats by hand or where they repair the larger boats--it's like we're living in a freaking PBS special!

We finally got out of the taxi to walk along the largest beach in town, golden beach. It is surrounded by hotels (including a 5 star hotel, Jamie, hint hint when you come visit us, or when any of you come visit, really) and all these apartments that are vacant right now but will be full of folks during the summertime. Rory and I had to go to the bathroom, so we stopped by Marina and Thomas' friend's house. Their friend wasn't home, but her two children, Zoe and Daniel (?) were. They are from New Zealand, and they have the cutest little voices. The little guy was playing all of these computer games and telling me that he picked the wrong car for the fruit loops game. It was cute.

After that we decided to eat some hotpot. We've heard so much about the hotpot from our friends in Chongqing, where hotpot is famous (with an emphasis on the "hot" part), so we were ready to chow down. Marina was stoked to drink some beer with us--I guess Thomas isn't a beer drinker, which is okay, too. So we called up Cecilia and some of the other girls from school to come meet us. We've pretty much decided that hotpot rules! You get all this raw meat and vegetables and whatever you want, really, and you throw it in this broth stuff that is cooking right on the stove in the middle of the table. The bowl was divided into two parts (what a novel idea!)--one side for the super spicy broth and one side for the not so spicy. So we ate and ate and ate. And the whole time this cute little girl, who had been tutored by both Thomas and Marina, kept coming up to our table and entertaining us. She was putting napkins on her head and playing with everything she could find, and it was so funny. Her mother kept coming over and fetching her, but that didn't ever last long. She kept coming back and hanging out. Too cute!

Thomas and Marina invited us to church with them today to meet the other foreigners. We told them that we weren't religious, but we wouldn't mind meeting up with them afterwards. Thomas quickly explained that it was a very informal gathering, with singing and hanging out. So we were all going to go, just to meet some of the others, but then we found out that we had a special luncheon planned today. That is a whole nother blog, lemme tell you.

When we finally did get back to the homestead last night, my bag was there! Yeah! What a great day! The strap that I had initially repaired didn't quite hold up through all the flights, but at least all my stuff is here now. Makeup! Sweet makeup! Happy girl!

I can't believe that we are here. I mean, I have to believe it, because we are surrounded by things we've never seen or even fathomed before, but good lord! There's no way I could have ever prepared myself for this. They don't have views like this in Missouri! I just can't wait until tomorrow, because I know we are going to be blown away yet again. And I am so thankful that we get to do this. So thankful. Oh boy...

we live here.

2007-03-03T17:25:00.001-08:00

we live here.
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

clifford the big green dragon

2007-03-03T17:24:00.001-08:00

clifford the big green dragon
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

It was a yellow sand kind of day...

2007-03-03T06:34:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we went to the city center by ourselves. We took the bus that waits right outside our campus and got off at the end of the line, in search of Rory's elusive transformer thingy for his computer. We walked around this bustling area that had all kinds of vendors (probably more when it's warmer out); they all stopped what they were doing to stare at us and try to sell us things like really tacky barrettes and meat on a stick. There was a really old man wearing a giant furry hat--one of those hats that screams: "hey, you're not in Missouri anymore...". He knew how to say "hello", so of course he just shouted it over and over and over. We saw some dirty chicken coops, right there in the middle of everything, next to Korean restaurants advertising things like bibimbop and kimbop.

We walked over to this massive supermarket thing that had a revolving ramp we could get up and down on. We bought some new messenger bags--so we look like professionals--and some other things for the "apartment." While we were waiting in line there was an old man standing behind us with his wife. He had on a funny pleather newsboy hat (looks like there's a theme), so I told him I liked his hat. Well, I sort of pointed to it and gave it an enthusiastic thumbs-up. I think it made his day, because after we went outside--while we were shoving our purchases into our new bags--he came out and just stared at us, smiling and speaking a lot of unintelligible Chinese. It was really funny.

We decided to head over to Korea town and try our luck with some barbecue. We walked down a side road and saw some familiar characters next to a building called "The Tomato Bar", so we walked in, and sure enough, it was a barbecue place. So we went in and said hello and some other stuff in Korean. Jaws were on the floor--what are these two foreigners doing in a restaurant in China, speaking Korean? When we actually lived in Korea, and when we wanted an excuse to eat bacon for dinner (samgupsal--I know I probably butchered the spelling...), Rory would always say something along the lines of "there's a lot of yellow sand in the air...". Evidently there is a real problem in Korea with yellow sand blowing over from China. The air gets thick with it, and the locals think that eating this samgupsal will help clear it all out of your system--who needs sand when you can have some sweet clogged arteries, right? We were so excited--how funny is it that our "comfort food" (already) in China is Korean food? We sat down, and Rory declared that it was, indeed, a yellow sand kind of day, so we ordered a couple of helpings of bacon. And some Soju. Can't be in a Korean restaurant without Soju. Then a group of three older folks walked in. Rory asked if they were Korean, and the second he started talking to them, they were our new best friends, asking all about the Chinese/Korean experience. I guess speaking Korean is like riding a Chinese bicycle? Some things you just sort of remember... I feel like we are in a really lucky position--living in a Chinese city with a huge Korean population--both to use our Korean knowledge and to learn all about China.

Earlier in the day, when we first came out of the supermarket, we had looked across the street and noticed something that looked like a bridge or walkway or something, pretty high up and behind some gated temple facade thing. You never know which is a real temple and which is a supermarket entrance. After our Korean lunch--upon further inspection--we walked back and realized that it was an old abandoned theme park thing, with Chinese versions of the tilt-a-whirl and things like that. We paid 30 cents each and went in. We started walking up all these trails, past old, run-down rides (or as we like to call them--photo opportunities...) to the top of this mountain, where there was a really sweet, massive pagoda. It was almost like a Chinese McClung pavilion--you could probably rent it out for birthday parties. I guess I know where I'm partying come November...hahaha. Anyhoo, the view was great, and there were still a bunch of other trails we could take. Our goal for the day (for our entire Chinese experience, too, to a degree) was to get lost and ultimately find our way back "home", so we wandered around, walking up more steps. Side note: did we mention that we have to climb 225 steps every time we enter our campus, just to get from the front door/gate to our apartment on the 5th floor? It's crazy, but it's good excercise. I have a feeling we're going to be doing a lot of walking. We trekked up these steps, stopping at beautiful pagodas to take pictures of the landscape and the incredible view of our city. Once we got to the top, we wanted to keep walking up this huge radio tower thingy. It had steps, but unfortunately it was all locked up. I was sort of glad I didn't have to climb that many more stairs.

We both really had to go to the bathroom, so we looked for a secluded area to pee. I went behind a tiny little abandoned structure, and sure enough, other folks had had the same idea before. Except they left piles of evidence. No need to elaborate. We started walking back down the trail, a little off the beaten path, when Rory says: "Dude, is that a camel?" So we looked through this fence, and sure enough, there was a camel. We had discovered the backside of a freaking zoo. So we looked at each other and said "well, I guess we're going to the zoo." We paid 50 cents each and walked in. It was really funny and run down. There weren't any zoo workers running around, maintaining anything, there weren't gift shops or anything. Basically there were a bunch of dirty animals confined to these tiny, tiny poopy cages. Sorry, PETA. But there were (dirty) lions and (dirty) tigers. We walked up next to this massive bird cage that had swans, turkeys, peacocks and other random birds. I decided it would be a good idea to do the patented Julie turkey call. So I got up in the face of this turkey and did the call. Then the turkey called back. It worked! I made this male turkey want to go steady with me! There were Chinese folks around, and they really got a kick out of it, so I just kept doing it, speaking my foreign turkey language in a dirty, foreign zoo. Some dude who was there took a picture of me on his camera phone. Priceless.

Next we walked out through the main gate of this park, at the backside. We were back to a familiar point where we had caught the bus the day before. So we ran to our bus, made it just in time, and I was forced to sit next to a really nice old man who spoke no English, but who desperately wanted to talk to us--that's how it usually works, huh? A woman got on the bus, and something about her must have made her look like an English speaker, because the man turned her into our translator. It was really funny--I've never seen a bus so crowded before, but no one wanted to move to the back (where there's more room) because they wanted to listen in on the conversation with the foreigners. So we had all these curious Chinese faces leaning in, trying to learn as much about us Americans as their bus rides could afford. The friendly man told me he wanted me to come to his school. "I can teach you Chinese medicine in 3 months", he kept saying. It was too funny. Then he was concerned that we weren't going to get home, even though we knew exactly how to do it. So he made us get off the bus one stop before we were supposed to. Then he told us to take one of the three-wheeled taxis that drive up and down the streets near our school. So even though we knew what was going on and how to get to and fro, we obliged, to be nice.

We got out at the supermarket so we could buy some beer. So we ended up paying twice as much money to get to the spot we would have ended up in had we just taken the bus to the next stop. But hey, the old man was just trying to be helpful. We ate at the same restaurant we had already been to with Cecilia the night before. The waiter remembered us and what we ate, so we just re-ordered that. There was one man in the entire restaurant, and he really wanted to just keep cheersing us and offering Rory cigarettes. Priceless!

All in all, it was a pretty kickass day. It's nice to get through a day with no trouble, knowing that our Chinese is super limited. Hopefully we'll know some pretty basic stuff soon.

Okay, that's all for now. Will post more pictures and blah blah blahs soon. Thanks for all of your comments--it's good to know that folks out there care about what we're doing.

it's blurry. deal with it.

2007-03-03T06:26:00.001-08:00

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Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

shouldn't there be a fence or something?

2007-03-03T06:23:00.001-08:00

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Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

it was a rock crab

2007-03-03T06:15:00.001-08:00

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Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.