Final Thoughts on China (Humorous version)

Here are some final thoughts on my trip in Top Ten List format. Also find attached, photo of me at the Great Wall with some random family that asked me to be in their picture. Bye China!

Most surprising discoveries about China:
1. Crotchless pants
2. Eggplant is the most delicious vegetable ever
3. Freedom of expression is more open than I thought
4. Access to information is more restricted than I thought
5. Beer in a bag
6. Yogurt in popsicle form
7. Its really easy to get past the Great Firewall
8. Its really hard to climb the Great Wall
9. I love shopping
10. No egg rolls, no fortune cookies, and very little dog on the menu

Things I won’t miss about China:
1. Squatters
2. Smoking everywhere
3. Children using the sidewalk as a bathroom
4. The smells (see previous three items)
5. Crossing the street
6. Being stared at constantly
7. Accidentally ordering 4 of the same dish at restaurants
8. Rock hard beds
9. Overly attentive waitstaff
10. Lack of cheese

Final Thoughts on China (Meaningful version)

I’m sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to London, and thinking about how far I’ve come on this trip.  I grab a snack in an airport restaurant, and as a I eat my sticky rice (silently judging the quality and texture as less than exceptional), with my chopsticks (that I can hold at the very back like a pro) and count out my last few quai, I give a quiet thank you to China in my head. This trip definitely felt less like a vacation and more like an experience, and for that I’m very grateful. I’m going home with so much more knowledge than I had when I arrived, and at least an appreciation, if not yet a complete understanding, of what it means to be Chinese in an incredibly turbulent and significant time in this country. I will watch the news from China with a more critical eye, and notice the changes there with a personal attachment to the people that I’ve met and the places that I’ve seen. So thanks, China, for teaching me so much. I promise that the next time I order an egg roll, I will do so with an appropriately cynical look.

Final Thoughts on China (Journalistically worthy version)

Here are the final thoughts I wrote for class, looking at what I had learned about China. Its not nearly as long as that last story, so if you made it though that one, this one’s a breeze. Also, I wanted to refer you to (or reference) Caitlin’s story about condoms in China. There’s a section that basically delineates how American women are sluttier than Chinese women. Thought some of you readers might appreciate that.

Something is always under construction here.

Here’s a look at the scene in front of the hostel where I’m staying.


Its been under construction for 3 months according to the shop owner down the street (very bad for business, she said, and then talked me into buying some bags). What’s amazing is that enormous trenches and pipe work on a street does not slow anyone down. They just set up little ramps along the side of the trench and you wind your way along, climbing over metal pipes and trying to avoid getting tetanus until you get to the shop you want. It may look like chaos today, but probably in a week there will be a completely new street over all of it. Yesterday morning I walked out of the hostel and there was a huge hole where the front steps used to be, and within a few hours pipes had been installed and the hold refilled. Construction moves insanely fast here it seems like. That being said, its not always thanks to modern conveniences. Most of the work is done by hand or with manual tools. The one power tool I saw employed in this process was this little backhoe that was lifting dirt into a janky wheelbarrow, which was then rolled over to a spot where it could be dumped. I’m not sure how this was more effective than using a shovel, but if China is anything like Texas, then any excuse to use a power tool is a good one I guess.

One more clothing item to envy.

I forgot to post this earlier. These are the fantastic little socks that all the Chinese ladies wear. At first we were laughing at how ugly they were - like miniature panty hose with a cuff - but then Caitlin bought everyone a pair and we wore them to the Terracotta Warriors. Turns out, they are the most comfortable socks ever! And they prevent blisters, and keep your feet from sweating. Damn China, why can’t you export this clever little invention? No worries, I’m exporting them myself.

Last day at the beach.

I’m headed back to Beijing today to spend a few more days before my flight to London. I haven’t gotten in that much beach time because we’ve had some rain, so I got up early to spend the morning on the shore. I think it was the first time I’ve been somewhere in China that actually smells good. It was quite lovely. And of course I got to enjoy some more of the insanity of a China beach, and I would like to share a few of the things that you do not want to miss if you ever visit one:

Water.

Sand.


Face masks.


Sand angels.


Leg lifts.


Push ups.


Buried children.

Chicken.


Weight lifting.


And my personal favorite...smoking while exercising.

Squid on a Stick.

We are staying in a town on the coast, so I felt obligated to try one of the many sea dwelling creatures that they serve grilled on a stick. I think this is squid, and it was pretty tasty. It went well with my favorite yogurt popsicle that I have been buying like a fiend in Qingdao after being deprived of them in Shanghai. China needs to get its popsicle distribution system in order, I can’t be having to search around for these pops.

Monday.

It was raining all day today so we decided to do something indoors. Like a movie! Unfortunately, that meant we had to see Transformers 2. I would have picked almost any other movie over that except for, like, Ice Age 3 in 3D.
Oh wait, that was the only other choice.
So we watched Transformers 2 with Chinese subtitles, and discovered the most interesting thing about Chinese movie theaters: assigned seats! That’s right, you get to choose your seat when you buy a ticket and then your seat number is printed on it. This system would normally not work out for me at all because I’m always late to movies, but since we didn’t know the times before we got there we were insanely early. Best seats in the house for the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Oh well, it was worth it to hear the guy next to us cheering whenever something blew up. That’s my people.

Letter to Beds.

Dear China,
Why are all of your beds so hard? I would very much like to visit the rock quarry where you mine your mattresses from, because I didn’t realize it was possible to create a box spring out of solid stone. There are a few things I won’t miss when I go home, China, and back pain is one of them.

Dreaming of feathertops,
Kelly

I've declared my independence from drinking out of cups.

Happy Fourth of July everyone! Turns out there aren't very many celebrations to attend in China which honor the birth of American independence, but we did eat meat on a stick for breakfast, drank a beer from a bag, and saw one floating paper candle in the sky... which is kind of like a firework? Oh, and as I was sitting here blogging, a nice Chinese couple just gave me a slice of watermelon. Couldn't ask for much more. Hope your day is filled with BBQ, cold beverages, and friends.

Beer by the Bag.

We have discovered the most amazing thing about Qingdao. Beer by the bag. That’s right, because the Tsingdao brewery (its pronounced the same as the city just a different spelling because they were trying out an earlier form of pinyin at the time) is based here, beer is even cheaper and more accessible than other cities we’ve been to. The corner stores take a plastic bag like you get in the produce section, fill it with beer and put a straw in the top. They sell it by weight, and 1 kilo costs about 50 cents. Good lord, the trip may be all down hill from here.

I guess I couldn’t take a picture worth 2000 words.

So here’s my latest story on the class website. Something absurd seems to have happened on this trip…I’ve started using words. So many words in this last story, in fact, that I forgot to take pictures. Totally embarrassing. Luckily Dawn covered my ass with a nice photo she shot. The story is kind of a culmination of a lot of different information I gathered during the trip, and hopefully begins to explain how complex and contradictory China can be.

Plano meets Qingdao

Dear Indian restaurant owner lady,
Thank you for making a delicious chicken curry, and for having the greatest hairdo I have yet to witness in China. I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch for both reasons.

Completely in awe,
Kelly

Friday.

We moved into the new hostel today, and its quite an improvement. The AC works, bathroom doesn’t smell (seriously China, you gotta look into the plumbing situation), and there’s a nifty little lounge that serves coffee and beer and has free pool. And best of all, there’s a washing machine. Brilliant. I walked down to the beach this morning to read and people watch. Apparently the beach is much like the public parks where all the athletic seniors go to work out. I saw old men crab walking, making sand angels, playing hacky sack, and generally toning up their tanned little bodies. As Mike commented,”I’ve never seen 70-year-old men that are so cut.” For real. These guys are working it. For an idea of what the scene looks like, you should watch Caitlin’s video from Shanghai. Be sure to factor in the speedos. I'll try to document this in more detail tomorrow.

You know you wish they made these for adults.

I’ve been waiting to blog about this because I wanted more pictures to show you guys, but its been a tougher photo to acquire than I anticipated. Turns out taking pictures of naked children can seem kind of creepy. So in China no one uses diapers (for financial reasons mainly but its gotta help with landfills too). Instead, all the children wear these pants that are split in the front and the back for easy access. The babies are trained to pee on demand when their mothers whistle, so you will see moms holding their babies over a trash can and whistling while the baby goes. The toddlers will drop a squat on the sidewalk and you have to watch out for little turds when you walk around. I’m not saying it’s the most sanitary, but the Pavlovian whistling technique blows my mind, and I can’t get over the little split pants. Maybe its just my uptight Western sensibilities, but I’ve seen a lot more baby junk than I ever needed to. Here’s the best image I’ve been able to get without freaking any parents out. Imagine the same split in the front and you’ve got the look.

Pearl Tower

I went to the Pearl Tower on my first and only visit to a tourist attraction in Shanghai (I’ve been so busy finishing my last story I’ve barely had time to do anything around the city – other than shop of course). It’s just a tall building with a view like a lot of towers in big cities, but the best part was the middle deck that had an open air viewing area with a plexiglass floor. So you’re standing on the deck looking down at the ground thousands of feet below you…pretty trippy. But the best part is watching everyone else walk on the floor. I’m in no position to mock, because I did the same thing, but apparently human nature tells us that if we crouch down and tip toe, this allows us to levitate above the earth with no fear of falling. It looked hilarious to see all these people doing that and holding onto the rail as tight as they could. Worth the price of admission.

Eau de Mildew

So I have been doing most of my clothes washing in the sink here, because there aren’t really laundramats in China. One time Dawn and I took some clothes to get washed at a laundry place but they do it by hand and it costs like $2 per shirt, so we decided that wasn’t the most budget conscious technique. Also, because there are no dryers, all my pants are stretched out to the point of falling off my ass. I’m telling myself I’ve lost weight, but I know that I just need to shrink them in the dryer. A few days ago I washed my clothes and hung them to dry in the bathroom, and turned on the heat lamp thinking “this will dry them faster.” It didn’t. And in fact all it did was create a warm moist environment for the clothes to mildew, so now most of my clothes have a really lovely mildewy scent to them. Who knew that washing machines would be at the top of my list for things I miss?

Beach time!

Sorry for the gap in posting. Its been super busy until now, when Mike and Dawn and I finally got to our next destination….drumroll….the beach! We took an overnight train to Qingdao (pronounced Ching-dow), halfway between Shanghai and Beijing on the eastern coast of China. We thought we might make it to Vietnam on this trip, but it turned out to be too far and too expensive to travel to. The beach will be a nice substitute. We're staying at a hostel that’s really close to the beach, but its not very hostel-ish (i.e. no kitchen, no community spaces to hang out and meet people) so today we scouted out a new place and are moving tomorrow. Hopefully there will be better internet there so I can update with photos and hijinx. I'll attach some backlogged blog posts from Shanghai, and then should be able to catch up by tomorrow. Its crazy to think I’ve already been in China for an entire month. I’m glad for a few days of downtime to process everything I’ve seen and learned, and then I’ll update you all with my brilliant analysis of the culture and country. Good talk.