[Before reading, note that I have to do this through a proxy this week so some of the pictures are messed up. Usually if you click the red x you can see the photo. Also note that I can’t reply to your comments at the moment, feel free to take advantage of this.]
So Harbin there done that. Time to finally update with everything that has happened since then. As I type this I am on a plane headed to Hangzhou. There’s a guy sitting next to me that is taking up more room than one would expect for a man his size. Lol though, he can’t read what’s on my screen! I win!
It’s a guy with a girl. Something I’ve noticed in China, people don’t move out of the way for you to get past them. Like I pointed to my seat (the window seat) and they looked at me and put their legs in a little more. They were basically saying “Yeah, squeeze past us and put your butt in our faces as you do so. It’s cool, whatever.” At home I think people prefer no butts so they get up out of their seat to let you pass.
Other that that they were nice enough. Taught me the word for flight attendant. I’ve already forgotten though. Cong something. Also they offered me a piece of a fruit that I also forget the name of; it’s kind of like a grapefruit the size of a dodgeball. The guy is much older than the girl. They told me she’s my age (looks older) and he is like… 30 at least. This age gap is a-ok here.
Anyway, on to the photos. This is what greeted me on my return home. They’ve been working on that retaining wall since about a month or two after I got here. It’s still being worked on right now. China builds things very quickly already, but I wonder how much faster things would go if they used more in the way of power tools. I don’t think they want it to go faster though, if you finish early that means there’s no job anymore. This means you no longer have money. So… I don’t know. Construction projects here only confuse me.
I decided it was time to clean my room. I went out, bought some gloves- Excuse me. I meant glove. I went out and bought some glove. Apparently you can buy gloves in pairs of 1?
“Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” - Rod Stewart
Also I notice that in that picture my bed isn’t broken yet. It now sags down beneath the frame. If they had spent 2 extra dollars to put a support in the center of the bed instead of just on the corners this wouldn’t have happened.
While in the subway I noticed these signs. You can tell what people think will be likely problems by looking at their signage:
I’ve never seen a sign on how to properly use an escalator. I’m sure it says something like “Please don’t be some kind of idiot”
”Xin Nian Kuai Le!” (New Year Happy!)
At this point in time Chinese New Year/Spring Festival was happening. It’s the highest of Chinese high holidays. You go and spend a few days with family. The school gave a lot of time off. This the most traveled time in China. Everyone in the cities goes back home to their parents in the country.
Basically, if you’re single, you get to experience a whole week of your parents telling you to get a spouse and pop out a kid. Many a relationship has both started and abruptly ended because of this week. It’s the largest mass migration in China and it happens every year. If it’s the largest mass migration in China, it’s probably safe to assume it’s the largest in the world. Hundreds of millions of Chinese all moving across the entire country at once for roughly the same period of time. The infrastructure that must be required to sustain this is overwhelming.
For the few days everything in China shuts down for a week (save for limited public transportation services). Because of this you can see where people are getting ready to have family over and where people have left to go home.
For instance you can see that this is the day where everyone thinks at the same time “Oh shit I gotta get all the laundry done before grandmother and grandfather get here!”
[edit: I read up on it, it actually is the official day where everyone says "oh shit." You're supposed to clean up on that day I guess.]
So there’s this specialty food in Harbin that they call Harbin Sausages. Everyone loves them and they think they’re the most amazing sausages in the world. Harbin is really really close to Russia though. I tried these sausages. They taste like a bratwurst. Not that that’s bad, I like bratwurst. Also I found cheddar cheese and crackers.
So I spent my couple of days in early Chinese New Year enjoying both sausage with cheddar cheese…
… and the heaven that is corn chips with guacamole while watching LOST:
No one was able to explain the significance of these sculpted orange trees to me. They were all over the place. I still don’t understand what they’re about. All I knew is that I probably was not allowed to walk up and take an orange.
On the first day of spring festival I’m told it’s very very special. You’re supposed to be with family and that’s it. This is the day before the start of spring festival. Spring Festival was on February 14th in 2010 (VALENTINE’S DAY???) and this is a trip I took to go visit someone in town.
Here’s a look at the deserted port of Yantian. There were no cars, no trucks, (no phone, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury) no boats being loaded or shipments being made. It was eerie. Being someplace in China where there is no hustle and bustle, especially someplace where there is normally hustle and bustle 24/7, is quite strange.
So here’s the bus driver and the ticket lady, bored and chatting:
Here’s the creepy empty bus as we drive through Yantian:
Look at this emptiness. Crazy:
This is under the highway. This is the usual route I take to get out of Yantian. Normally it’s filled with toxic fumes and exhaust from semis, now it’s just a couple of cars:
The bus started to get a little more crowded as I went into town. There were a lot more people on the bus with cute little bei beis. Have I ever told you about the squeak toys they put into little toddler’s shoes here? They add like a little dog’s squeak toy to one or both shoes for little toddlers so when they walk they make little squeaky sounds. It makes them 100x more cute.
The bus hit a traffic jam. As we were sitting more and more people kept piling on and they all had big ridiculous spinning flower toys, controlled growth bamboo shoots, and other novelty doodads. Tons of them.
It’s because of this. This was one of those moments where I got kind of annoyed that they make you pay for where you want to go up front. So when I see something like this I can’t really get off and check it out cause I already paid for the ticket. Plus I was meeting a friend so I couldn’t really stop to check it out anyway. Damn. Oh well. All I know is that there were lots of people walking around with oranges that had been grown in the shape of Mickey Mouse, had colored pussy willows, and other unnatural natural items:
Rou Jia Mo. This is my favorite Chinese food. Why don’t we have this in the US? I think it would be a big hit; people would love it. It’s amazingly good. I didn’t expect a flavor like this to exist in China. It’s like a grilled spicy lamb and cumin sandwich. The flavors of Greek + Chinese + Mexican = Rou jia Mo. The lamb is cut loose meat style off of a spigot like gyros, then it’s put into something that kind of reminds me of an English muffin mixed with pita bread. It comes from the Muslim area of northwestern China. Delicious. Love it. I want the whole world to know about this food because it’s sooo good. I want this sandwich to exist in the US so badly. If I was some sort of food entrepreneur I would totally start a hit chain of restaurants with this sandwich as the flagship meal.
Btw, now that I’ve put this killer idea out on the internet, I just wanna say that a family restaurant chain called “Rou Jia MORE” starring these sandwiches and in fact anything having to do with rou jia mo being sold in the US is now fully copyrighted by me, Owen Dennis.
Look how many people love Rou Jia Mo. I mean it’s only 5 RMB (73 cents US):
Here’s the street corner where I got off the bus in Dongmen (the big shopping area in Shenzhen). I was trying to follow the signs to get on to the subway. It’s hidden away underneath the shopping area so you have to follow a lot of signage:
Once again, the underground shopping area is completely shut down. I understand this might not look that strange to you, but to me it’s just crazy. It’s like walking around in the Mall of America with all the stores closed and you’re the only person there (or as only person as you can get in China).
While walking to the metro through the mall I found this store. They make caricature sculptures of you to commemorate… stuff… It’s pretty funny. I like it a lot:
On the 14th, Chinese New Years, there were actually a couple places open in Yantian. However these were like the only people I saw all day. Clearly getting last minute shopping done for the evening’s festivities. The guy in the white hat is Muslim btw. I just want to take this opportunity to point out that every time I’ve walked past him he’s never tried to do a jihad on me. He has a young daughter who often plays with toys nearby and a wife. They look bored most of the time as they sit and sell roasted walnuts. As you can see, Islam is a religion of hate.
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!!
… 3 months too late…
Anyway, enjoy the amateurish photos of fireworks. As we all know, fireworks are the easiest things to take photos of and everyone tries and succeeds at getting them. Here they are, shooting off over the houses in Yantian. It was a good time. Very fond memory looking down over Yantian and seeing all these go off:
The reason it was so cool is because this went on for hours. Every family that was living in Yantian had their own fireworks that they bought that needed to be shot off and they didn’t wait for other people to be finished before shooting theirs off. I had the best viewing location in the port because I was up higher than the rest of Yantian and up on the roof of my building. It was way cool because I got to see every firework going off all across the entire port from different houses in different areas.
I wish these pictures could do it justice. Just note that every time you see one firework going off there are probably two more that just went off somewhere else. Whenever the fireworks stopped all you could hear was the entire port of Yantian full of singing car alarms.
One other thing that was probably my favorite part was when, somehow, everyone in the port decided to set off firecrackers at the same time. All the big explosive ones in the sky stopped. What it looked like from my angle was all of the roads and alleyways between the houses down the entire port started glowing white and yellow and all I could hear was the sound of static. There were so many firecrackers going off in so many different places at once that it sounded like white noise. It was amazing. Chinese New Year is way cool.
Aw what’s this guy doing at home? He should have been out on the roof like I was… :(
This was the only truck I had seen all day (thus why I was so amazed and actually took a photo of it):
On the second day of Chinese New Year/Spring Festival you’re supposed to be with family as well, but you’re allowed to mix it up a little bit and you can maybe see some friends too. Helen invited Quentin and I over to her house and we got to meet her family and eat food (a lot of food).
While going to Helen’s house we saw this guy. I don’t know what he’s selling, but I love him. I have named him Chinese Leisure Suit Larry.
“… Hi…”
View from the roof of Helen’s apartment building. It’s a really nice place. There are four identical towers that are attached near the base with an elevated park and a park on the roof:
I don’t know exactly what plants did what here, but it’s kind of a neat pattern:
Every four floors or so there’s a little tiny area like this as a break from the monotony of condos being on every floor. There is usually a condo attached to this section and those apartments are more expensive. It’s basically a little patio/back yard every few floors. Kind of cool. I haven’t seen that before but it seems like a good idea when there is a high population density like this.
This is the big elevated park kind of thing that connects between all the apartment buildings. Also acts as a backyard and playground for people who live in the buildings. Again, not something I’ve seen before but makes sense.
Lanterns in the lobby:
So after being completely stuffed with food Quentin and I went back home. We split up on the bus because I wanted to do some food shopping or something I don’t remember. I just know that I went out on the street and people were still shooting off fireworks and having a good time. Here’s some from the parking lot of the hospital:
Here’s one in front of an apartment building. Shooting giant balls of flame up into the sky (read: mid-way up the side of a building) while right next to a building where people hang flammable garments and so forth seems dangerous at first, but then you stop caring.
This is the one where I found out people weren’t just shooting from the ground, they were shooting downward from up on their balconies:
Here’s some smoke wafting down the street:
For fireworks being so illegal in China (what a sad state of affairs when the inventors aren’t allowed to use them anymore) they sure didn’t care and had a good time. Fireworks continued to be set off for like 2 weeks after Chinese New Year was over. It was great.
Random Short Snippets of What’s Been Happening in my life or: The Return to Chinormalcy
Do you remember when I saw the DVD 3 pack with Peter Jackson’s King Kong and King Kong 2? It finally came down to an acceptable price and I bought it.
However when I opened it I found out it was a trick:
1976 King Kong?? What is this BS? I didn’t even know there was a sequel to that one. I bought the 1976 version of King Kong and the 1986 sequel called King Kong Lives. I didn’t know that this sequel existed and I’m sorry that I had to accidently unearth it.
In the meantime people started coming back from vacation to live and work at the school again. Here is a little kid that lives on the first floor of my apartment building. When he saw me he ran over to me and hugged me. Also he started shooting me with his sweet machine gun toy. Toy guns are way more cool here because they can be painted black, unlike back home where you can be shot by a police officer for having one of these:
I had a conversation with him as he and I and his mother walked back to our apartments. I don’t know everything that he was saying but he seemed happy to talk to me. I remember I asked him if he was tired and he said “I am so tired because I was running and then jumping and running around and something something something” just talking on and on in Chinese. No idea what he was saying.
The school was still all made up nice for new year:
… ???
The day before classes started teachers were eating in the student cafeteria. I hadn’t eaten in there before. I kind of liked it a little better. It was more friendly. In the teacher’s cafeteria each table only sits 4 people so if you’re not cliqued up already it’s hard to find somewhere to sit. Here each table sits like 12. Also the floors were really slippery so I was running and sliding around on them:
Where am I? What is this place?
Oh okay, but what about this place? It seems rather similar…
What’d I tell you? Fireworks just kept going every night for two weeks.
Here’s a cookie my contact person gave me. I don’t know what it says except it tasted like almond. I assume it says almond:
Poop keychain:
Ah yes. The eye exercises are always ready to interrupt the end of my class. “Aright, just have one last thing to show-“ *music starts and hands immediately start massaging eyes* “-you… oh come on…”
In the US they would have just gotten up and immediately left at the bell; lord knows we don’t want to learn even a minute after we don’t have to anymore. Here they cover their eyes. I’ve shown it before but some days it just sticks out more in my mind than others.
Foggy day:
A painting I made for a friend (names blurred to protect the innocent, we’ll call her “Iuh”):
This is it drying in my “kitchen”:
Gross:
I couldn’t get a good picture of this guy. Just know that his entire shirt was an American flag. I bet he wasn’t banned from school for wearing it either (Ah haaa… topical humor…):
So here was a company I didn’t expect to see in Shenzhen. I guess they’re trying to hop onto that housing market boom/bubble that’s causing so many problems here. I’ve read several articles in China that are very quick to blame foreigners for the housing bubble that’s being made here. The thing is, it’s kind of crying wolf. Newspapers are always blaming foreigners for everything. They’ll show a picture of a foreigner to make a certain event seem more international, but that’s only the pictures. There are often whole articles where it’s like “a foreigner came to China to set up a private English school but it turns out he was using it as a front to sell drugs and have sex with girls”. Yeah like that’s worse than the 5 hair dressers down the street from me that are brothels? Way to find one example of someone else doing something and not looking at the many examples of it happening in your own backyard.
It’s hard to take them seriously when I’m always reading things that feed into the local population’s foreigner phobias. I’m sure there is some blame to be cast on foreign investors, but not as much as some newspapers are saying so vehemently:
The park I went to with Iuh, China always has something happening somewhere:
Yellow watermelon:
Me at a Chinese Brazillian BBQ!! Yes! I love Brazillian BBQ. It was my first time. It was wonderful:
So one of the things with spring festival is that you’re supposed to eat… tang yuan? I think that’s the word. They’re like these sweet tiny little dough balls that you boil and then eat. This is the section where they were selling them at the supermarket:
So one of the things I talked about with my students was body modification. Good class. Great reactions. I found out all kinds of stuff. It was very funny what exactly the class reacted to when they saw piercings.
In China it’s very abnormal to get piercings because 1) your body is whole and to poke holes in it or draw on it is sort of a desecration. 2) Your parents gave you your body and you would be destroying their gift to you. 3) It is not natural. I can’t really argue with the first two because they’re clearly something deeper and spiritual, hard to argue against that. However I was definitely was able to argue on the 3rd (it was usually the first thing they came up with).
“It’s not natural”
“Well then you shouldn’t cut your hair because it’s not natural to cut your hair.”
“Yes it is.”
“If your body wanted you to have short hair then you would have short hair. Just like on your arms where your body wants you to have short hair.”
“But cutting it is something you do naturally.”
“Your body doesn’t make you reach for a pair of scissors, your idea on how you should look does. Your body makes your hair keep growing and growing. Therefore you cutting it is going against what your body wants”
“No but it’s natural.”
“Oh.”
The students got really really grossed out and would scream and cover their eyes when they saw the lip piercing. They thought that was simply crazy. Also the tongue piercing. I got a little nervous when they were freaking out over that stuff because I was going to continue on into implants (in the arm, the eye, etc etc) and if they were freaking out over a lip piercing? Yeesh. Once again my class seemed to hit the social fringe students better than the normal kids. Most of the class was grossed out save for a few girls here and there who were really really into it. The boys didn’t get into it nearly as much as the girls. Girls are much more open-minded than men here. Causes social problems.
The implants part was cool. Except for the part where I was like:
“Implants are when they insert things into the body under the skin *gesture to chest*”
“Oh yes, koreans love that.”
“What?”
“Koreans get that all the time.”
“Koreans do? Not Chinese?”
“No, Chinese almost never do that.”
“China is the first place I have ever seen a commercial on TV for breast implants. It was a commercial that I saw dozens of times that showed the exact procedure of how to they would make certain cuts and then your breasts would look bigger. I’ve never in my life seen a commercial for breast implants before coming to China.”
“Oh… well maybe some Chinese do it…”
Anyway they had a good time. Lots of talking and excitement. Lots of “Americans are so crazy” etc (the people in the photos were predominantly white, therefore they were American).
The last part of the lesson they had to draw a human body and customize it up by adding tattoos, implants, piercings, etc. Here’s one:
Here’s Ronald with a person tattooed to be on his back and what appears to be a corkscrew coming out of his leg. Very creative:
and one of my favorites:
You wanna see something gross? This is a hotdog that you can buy off the shelf and then microwave. No refrigeration required. They also have a hamburger version:
This is a laser that shoots out of the top of the tallest building in Shenzhen. Way cool. Seems like a bad idea for like pilots and stuff, but whatever, still pretty cool:
A lizard in my room?
Stuff falling off the back of a truck:
Every time it gets windy these emergency exit signs fall off and smash onto the ground. I would have thought they would figure out some new way of dealing with them by now. It has happened like 4 times since I’ve been here:
[edit: Since I wrote this post a couple days ago it's slightly out of date. Today I saw them downstairs installing exit signs to be attached directly to the wall underneath "emergency fire fighting exciter lamps"]
I found this on one of the class computers one day. I have no memory of this photo being taken:
Cafeteria food, ewwwwwww:
Club Fair and Culture Fest
Aright so I’m done posting random non-sequential pictures for this last part. My school had a culture fest and/or club fair. So the students all started gathering together for the talent show portion and the club stuff and so on and so forth. A nice family friendly affair:
If “Any sport with athletic young women” was a sport, this would be my second favorite: Walking in slow motion. It makes me laugh the most and want to get involved the most. Basically what happens is a whole bunch of people get together in big groups and the walk around in slow motion. I can kind of understand it, if you try walking in slow motion for a while you can feel it start to stretch your muscles a little bit. I’ve only seen older people do this exercise however, no one in their 20’s.
Every single time I see it I want to join and start swinging slow motion punches and kicks, I don’t think they’d find it funny though:
Students hawking used stuff. Ever the salespeople:
While walking around I noticed students eating popcorn. This made me super excited. I like to have popcorn as sort of a light airy snack sometimes. I hadn’t been able to find any the whole time I’d been in China. I kept asking people and instead of people in the store saying “we don’t have any” they would just say “It’s on the second floor” then “It’s on the first floor” and back and forth forever. Super annoying. The only time I’d had popcorn was at a movie theatre and unfortunately it was sugar coated, not buttered and salted.
So I was quite happy when I found out some student was selling them. He told me he was only able to get it because he ordered it online. I asked how much it cost for me to get some from him and he said “1 for 5 yuan” and I was like “k here’s a 50.” “Whoa… okay” then he gave me 11 and said “buy 10 get one free!”
Turns out it wasn’t buttered and salted, but I didn’t care. Still a good investment:
So here’s what happened over at the Kung Fu booth. They kept trying to get me to try breaking a piece of wood with my hand but I was like “no, you’re tricking me.” They then demonstrated how they could kick my ass:
Anyway you remember how this is a culture fest right? One guess as to what culture she’s representing:
Last but not least, I live up to stereotype:
So we are now half way through all the random stuff that has happened to me in the past 4 months. Haven’t even made it to my birthday yet. Yet again I end my blog post with a hopefully not-empty promise of updating sooner.
Of course, now it’s even harder because I’ve been blocked again and the usual fixes on my proxy have stopped working. Very annoying. I’m probably going to end up buying a VPN in the next week. I really have no idea what I said this time except that maybe I included a youtube link? That doesn’t do anything on other websites. Maybe it’s because they don’t want me talking about tigers? I have no idea. It’s not like they ever give any explanation on this kind of thing. So… This is very annoying. I’ll figure out a way around it though.
