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.