Nightlife in Loudi

  The Chinese aren’t big drinkers. Don’t get me wrong, they do like to drink but not like the Western culture. That being said, the bars here can be pretty fun; I didn’t realize that until Emily came to visit last weekend. After taking our advisors out to dinner, one of them (David) took us to one of the “fun” bars in Loudi. Just to set the right tone for this story, the bar was called Night Impressions and Vogue Club…swanky. We walked into the decorative and decent bar but it was still early so the mood was calm. Though I was struck by the huge Donald Duck portraits on the walls and the very American rap music. After looking at the beer bottle shaped menu we decided we would go with what the server recommended…the “buy 12, get 6 extra free” deal. There were 4 of us so it seemed right. About 8 bottles in the place suddenly became very crowded. All at once people were everywhere dancing….on the speakers, in front of the DJ booth, on platforms near the walls. In China it is perfectly acceptable for guys to walk around shirtless due to the heat so a number of guys were dancing bare-chested. It felt like Spring Break Cancun. The whole night was a whirl of meeting people, making friends, dancing…it is a side of Loudi that I never knew existed. A great side. So good in fact that it’s hard to describe. I’ve got an entire photo album dedicated to it so maybe you can check it out. I’ve done a bad job at getting across the full experience because you really had to be there. There will be more nights like it though so look for more details in the future.

Gearing up for National Day

  Ok, this is the third of three installments I’ve written in a row today so bear with all of the rambling. I’ve been sitting in a pagoda-shaped gazebo outside of my apartment and enjoying the cool weather so it’s a good writing atmosphere. This one is about what’s coming up instead of what’s happened though so it should be pretty good. October 1st marks National Day in China, and with nationalism being a hammered into the culture, it’s a big deal. This year is especially important as it marks the 60th Anniversary of the Cultural Revolution. The streets are exceptionally decorated in every city.

Loudi is decked out in red lamps, China flags, and elaborate works of flower art (a pagoda made entirely of flowers is being built in Louxing Park 6 blocks away from my apartment). National Day marks day one of the Golden Week holiday. It’s 7 days of holiday for the Chinese people and it is usually celebrated by people traveling to see family and friends. Our plan is to visit Xi’an and the Terracotta Warriors. That’s the final plan, it’s gone through a couple of revisions but hopefully it’s set now. On top of normal travel difficulties, China has no central reservation system for buses or trains. This means that we can buy a ticket to Xi’an but can’t buy one back until we get there. Risky. Alright, that’s inconvenient but we can work past it. Also, our Dean’s daughter works and Xi’an and she warned that Xi’an has experienced a couple of cases of Swine Flu. Big deal? I don’t see the problem. In fact, even Loudi has had a couple of cases of Swine Flu break out. And by “break out” I mean symptoms appeared in some younger kids and they were immediately treated. As a precaution though, our Dean advised that we may want to just stay in Loudi during the 8 day vacation while everyone else leaves and has at least some degree of fun. She clearly doesn’t know Americans very well. We’ll risk life and limb just to say we did. In a country of a billion people, 2 cases of swine flu in a city aren’t gonna scare me.

  This is in no way related to this post, but as I write, another inexplicable fireworks session is going on. I call it a “session” instead of a “show” because no one can really see them. They occur all of the time (maybe 4 in a day) and are always inexplicable. Someone knows why; someone probably got good grades or married or found a lucky penny or something. China would be a much quieter place if they’d just give cards like Westerners do. That’s it for today. Tune in next time for the more thoughts from the far end of the world.

Changsha (The Quick Version)

And now, for your reading pleasure…Traveling in China…so far. I could write all day long about the quirks, annoyances, and joys of traveling in China but I’m going to limit it to our recent experiences and immediate plans. I was just in Changsha two weekends ago. Changsha is the capital of the Hunan province (the one I’m in) and houses one of the best museums in China, the Hunan Provincial Museum…which we didn’t get to go to. We were on a bit of time crunch since we got there Saturday morning and were then told we had to be back by Sunday night. Let’s cover the bus trip for a minute. The bus system in China is reasonably good, but weird. Of course there are main bus stations in the cities but buses will also stop for people along the road in the countryside. Basically anyone can flag down the bus and jump on as long as there are seats available. Otherwise, they have to flag down the next bus. On top of those stops, buses will seemingly stop for any whim, seriously anything at all. We stopped to let a man pee on the side of the road. We stopped so someone could buy a water. That being said, oftentimes the bus is faster than trains because of all the mountains in the region. We arrived in Changsha and made it to our hostel only to find that the electricity was out due to construction and no one knew when it would be back. Awesome. It was 5pm by then so the museum was closed but the park next to it, Martyr Park, was still open. Martyr Park is a sprawling, beautiful area with tons of gardens, a permanent carnival, and a huge monument in the center. We wandered around the monument, which was under construction (like everything else in China), and eventually ended up in the carnival. Feeling the urge to ride at least one thing, we chose the Hot Air Balloon ride. You step into a metal cage shaped as a hot air balloon and slowly rise up high enough to see all across the park. Then you suddenly drop towards the ground, and as the pavement hungrily speeds toward you , you suddenly stop and begin to rise again. It’s basically a safe way to experience the worst hot air balloon scenario possible. After the park we went back to the hostel, still no electricity so we went to eat at a nearby KFC (don’t let the “Kentucky Fried” part fool you, it’s all still pretty Chinese tasting). Finally, at 9pm the lights make a miraculous comeback and Kirby and I are so excited about it that we go to bed about an hour and a half later….come on, it had been a long, hot day. Next morning we woke up to tackle Yuelu Mountain. Nothing overly special about the place except that there is a chute that lets you slide down the mountain from about ¾ of the way up. Kirby was too scared to do it, so I chivalrously abandoned her to go slide. Well worth it. The real struggle though was the bus ride from Yuelu back to the hostel. All of the station signs are in Chinese and apparently the way there isn’t necessarily the way back…which we learned after an hour on the bus. After a corrective taxi, we race into the hostel, grab our stuff, and hail a taxi to try to make the 25 minute taxi ride and catch the bus that leaves in 30 minutes. Good luck with that one. Our taxi driver stomps on the gas and ignores all traffic laws (which is the standard behavior for all drivers in China apparently) and manages to get us to the station with 5 minutes left. We rush to buy the tickets and God smiles down upon our sweaty, worried faces by allowing us to catch a 3:50 bus that we didn’t know existed. Temporarily relaxed, we crowd onto the bus. Two and half hours later we reach Loudi only to bombarded by phone calls from our Dean telling us that we will be having dinner immediately after arrival. So sweatily, smelly, and tired we enter the nice restaurant and politely apologize to everyone for them making us cut our trip short and show up to dinner with our bags in tow. Sorry, mandatory dinner guests. But then again, it was free food.
So that was the whirlwind trip to Changsha and I left out some of the details about the heat, the dust, and the 15-20 people who came up to us for the sole reason to yelp that we were American and that their English is “so poor.” It really is like being a B-list celebrity.

Hungry?

Where did this blog leave off last time?  I’ll just start in the middle of things.  Lately Kirby and I have begun to get sick of rice and noodles all the time.  Of course we’re branching out towards rice with eggs, noodles with chicken broth, rice with eggs and vegetables, whole wheat noodles…yeah, it can be dietarily boring.  So instead we decided to launch into the wide, strange world of Chinese restaurants. 

   The quick description is this:  Your basic Chinese restaurant is comprised of a bottom floor featuring a number of small tables set with a few chairs and, generally, washed and shrink-wrapped dishes.  Evidently there is a service that goes around, picks up these dishes, shrink wraps them, and delivers them back the next day.  Handy.  The upper floors are usually private rooms complete with a large, circular table, a couch, and always a television.  I’m not sure who goes there to sit on the couch and watch TV but apparently it’s a common thing.  One of the quirks of these private rooms though is the fact that the seat directly across from the doorway is the seat of honor.  It completely ruins the Western ideal of equality with a circular table.  There is a lazy susan that spins food in the center of this large table and the food comes at you Italian family style with everyone sharing the huge dishes.  In China, vegetables are really the main dishes with splashes of meat thrown in only to spice things up.  And in Hunan, they truly mean “spice.”  This province takes a ridiculous amount of pride in their peppers and spicy food.  The word “la” means spicy so it can be pretty amusing when people cry out how hot their meal is with a “la, la, la, la, la!”  Kirby and I have been sitting in the bottom floor s.  We’ve found a few favorite restaurants now and are fully employing the “point and pick” method successfully.  We know enough Chinese to delineate categories of food and after that we just point at an item on the menu.  It’s working well; we’ve had some delicious stuff.  Though at the same time, we’ve encountered some terrible dishes too.  No problem, you can always just orders something else since a general meat dish here is about 18 Yuan or less than 3 American dollars.  Vegetable dishes are only 10 Yuan, or about $1.50.  Recently we’ve been big fans of the Beijing Jiaoziguan, or loosely the “Beijing Dumpling House.”  It seems to be the Chinese equivalent of a surly American diner.  I’m pretty sure that our waitresses are all single mothers just trying to get by.  The food is great though. 

   This post seems to be all about restaurants so I’ll throw this last bit of trivia out there.  We recently ate at a restaurant called Maojia.  It’s a franchise restaurant in China started by the former personal cook to Chairman Mao.  For those uninitiated, Chairman Mao was the leader of China during the Cultural Revolution and is revered as basically a demi-god.  There is literally a small shrine to him in this restaurant, complete with offerings of his favorite dishes at the altar.  Again though, it was delicious.  Alright, enough for this post; this blog format is so narrow that you probably feel like you just read War & Peace so I’m breaking it up a bit.  Next installment:  Travel in China.

End of Week One

  It's Thursday today which means tomorrow marks the last day of our first full week in Loudi (pronounced Loh-DEE).  After talking to Emily, it seems my college prefers the "do it yourself" approach to settling into a new town.  We've been cooking, cleaning, shopping, and doing everything else so far basically on our own.  Our contacts are more than happy to help us if we have any questions but as for the actual action, that's all on us.  Which is good; makes us feel more a part of the city.  Though it does make for slightly more complicated situations frequently.  We've been to KFC twice (which I think are the only true Western fast food places in Loudi).  That's right, we broke down and decided we needed something at least vaguely similar to home.  After a series of gestures, pleads, and pointing fingers we managed to order some chicken sandwiches and french fries.  No soft drinks though.  Soft drinks in the bottle here are great.  In the can are great.  Out of a fountain drink machine?  Awful.  It's like they never had carbonation added to them, completely flat and lifeless.  It's like drinking coca-cola flavored kool-aid.  No problem though, gotta push through.
  So in that spirit of "do it yourself" we bought our bus tickets today to see Emily tomorrow morning.  So far, if we're not walking somewhere in Loudi then we're taking a taxi (we're working on getting bicycles).  I'm pretty good at telling them where we want to go, but not so much at telling them how to get back.  I must be messing up the word "college" or something because they just aren't getting it.  Every time I try though.  So we got to the bus station, asked a local to point us in the right direction, went up to the gate and bought two tickets.  Evidently, two tickets that left in an hour.  Whoops.  So we paged through our Chinese phrasebook to find the words "tomorrow morning" and wrote down the date we wanted to travel "2009-09-04" on a sheet of paper.  Amazingly it worked.  Our luck has been holding up on things like that so far.  So now we're the proud owners of two tickets that leave tomorrow morning at 8:30am to where we can only hope is Hengyang.  We still have to open a bank account and set up cell phones though so that should be fun.
  Alright, I wanted to wait to write about this later when I have some good pictures and maybe a video but this has to be shared.  I can post some media later but maybe this will serve as a good preview.  There are a number of parks near our college.  One is called "Shima" or "Stone Horse" Park.  It's a cool park; a big pond stands as the center with trails all around.  The equivalent of a small carnival takes over one corner of the park with bumper cars, a skating rink, a haunted house, and a very rickety ferris wheel among other rides and games.  The first day we went we even saw pony rides and men with long brushes drawing water calligraphy on the stone tiles.  Ok, all of that seems relatively normal for a park.  We were also told that people go there at night to "dance."  They didn't say it with those quotation marks but once you've seen the "dancing" then you have to say "dance" like "dance."  We're walking home from Wal-Mart (one of only 3 in China) and stop by the park to be greeted by the most unlikely sight I have seen so far in this country.  At least a hundred people had gathered in the main stone entrance of this park to "dance" what seems to be some kind of line dance.  Everyone in the group was doing little skip steps, then a turn, and then waving their arms side to side above their heads.  Not waves like "hi!" waves, waves like "Throw your hands in the air like you just don't care!" waves.  Very weird.  And they knew multiple dances; music (whose source I still haven't found yet) would change and these people would all begin "dancing" another "dance" in unison.  So strange.  I promise I'll put up a video soon since it's a sight you have to see.  And the strangest part is that this isn't a weekend event, it's an every night event.  Nightly, people say to one another "let's go 'dancing' at the park. Let's just get out there and let loose with completely uniform boogie-ing."
  Last thing before I post this.  Kirby and I finally found what is always at the heart of every Chinese community, whether it's a Chinatown in America or Loudi in the China motherland.  We discovered the seedy back alleys that sell everything from imitation leather belts to Victoria's Secret clothes to cell phones to dvd's. Basically, we found where all of that stuff that "falls off the truck" ends up.  There it was, right across from the bus station.  It was subtle though; you take a few steps toward and all you see are fruits and vegetables.  But then the glint of a necklace briefly catches your eye on a table.  Wait? Is that what I thought it was, that doesn't belong in a farmer's market.  Then you move closer and you begin to see the outdoor stalls filled with cheap toys, cheap watches, and cheap souvenirs.  Ok, cheap trinkets, no big deal.  But, oh wait, is that the open garage door of a large, seedy warehouse filled with stalls of knock-off and possibly stolen goods?  I think so.  Heck, I hope so.  ...and it was.  Don't get me wrong, it's not the junk I love, though from time to time you can get some good stuff in those back alleys and dark warehouse/flea market type places.  I love the people who work those things.  Most are either bored with blank looks on their faces or just flat-out sleeping (which is strange, are they not worried about theft? I guess they assume the stuff is already stolen, what more can happen to it.)  But the people who are awake and alert have completely unassuming looks on their faces.  As though it's totally natural to have a complete inventory of Adidas wear just hanging up in this no-name shop.  Needless to say, we had to buy at least one thing so we bought a watch for Kirby.  We haggled some but in the end we used the shopkeeper deathblow technique...the "walk-away."  Only the rare and incredibly stubborn shopkeeper can resist it.  If you walk away, you'll either get the price you're asking for or at the very least you'll re-open negotiations.
  So that's it for today; I know there were no pictures, that must be disappointing for you.  Next time though.

Breakthrough!

I finally found a way to get through what locals call "The Great Firewall of China." Facebook, Blogger, Youtube, and a variety of other sites have been blocked for months now. It's alright now though. After figuring out how to get internet on my computer (no easy task in my apartment) and then figuring out how to get past the internet blocks (an even less easy task), I now can roam free in cyberspace.

This may be just a quick recap of what's happened so far. Our flight was delayed arriving into Chicago from Nashville so we were forced to frantically run around the airport trying to find another flight going to either Toronto or Shanghai. Everyone we talked to shared two things in common: (1) agreement on the fact that we had no time to waste and (2) the inexplicable desire to make time-wasting small talk with us. Finally, we managed to find the last flight out to Shanghai from Chicago which left in 40 minutes. We stood in the back of a huge line to show our passports and then just hoped our baggage would meet us in Shanghai. But we had seats and we didn't have to spend the night in Chicago so it worked out.

We landed in Shanghai around 2:00pm. For weeks we have been told horror stories about people being checked and quarantined due to swine flu. But the truth is that you hardly even notice them checking and it's a simple process that really didn't delay us at all. What did cause us trouble was the amount of baggage we brought. Everywhere you go in this country you can expect to push and jostle your way towards where you're going. Now imagine pushing when you have a backpack, a rolling bag, and a duffle bag (or in Kirby's case, two rolling bags which made her three times wider than anyone else). We took the Maglev train; it's the world's fastest commercial train...and seemingly the most unnecessary. It travels 430km/hr but the track is only 30 km long. After that, we packed onto the subway and pushed and shoved our way all the way to Luban Rd and miraculously into the hostel.

The humidity and heat here are unbelievable. It's like a hair dryer blowing in your face instantly and all the time. Sweat is a fact of life. Not just a little either; sweat like you just walked out of a rainstorm. That's how it was all the way up until today. Suddenly the weather dropped from high 90's (sometimes over 100) with 80% humidity to a cool, fresh 60 degrees. Amazing.

So Shanghai was an interesting city to start the trip. It's definitely a metropolis with somewhere around 20 million people packing its streets. There seems to be no build up either; all of a sudden at 6am, there will be hundreds of people on every street. The traffic here is crazy too. Lots of cars, sure, but we have that in America. It's the pure disregard for traffic laws. Red lights? Don't care. Turn signals? Don't care. Lanes? Who needs them? It seems to be the only law is once you start moving, don't stop. Everyone seems to be operating on a single track mindset of "getting there." Crosswalks are an extreme sport. Even with all of the people here though, we didn't get the feeling that we were in that big of a city until we went up to Jin Mao Tower. 420 meters straight up sits the 88th story of Jin Mao Tower. To look out over the city, you can see where it continues to extend well beyond the horizon on all sides. It is a huge and sprawling city. We met some really great people at the hostel in Shanghai so it was sad to leave. But we did have an entourage around us as we hailed the cab for the train station.

The train ride was 14 hour marathon to Changsha. Again, it wouldn't have been too bad had we not had way too much luggage. So much in fact that we had to use one of our three beds solely for our bags. We rode what is called a "hard sleeper." It's basically two sets of three bunk beds in a single, open compartment. Not bad, the beds were hard but apparently all beds are hard in China. Across from us was a young Chinese couple with a cute baby so that passed the time. We arrived in Changsha about 7:30am and met our contact Ms. Li outside the gates. From there, they took us to a restaurant for lunch. It was noisy and crowded so Ms. Li suggested we go somewhere else. A loud, obnoxious hostess yelled at us for trying to leave saying they had already killed the fish we had ordered. So after a lot of pointing and yelling, we bought the fish, took it to another restaurant, and asked them to cook it. It was a great lunch. Afterwards, our separate schools picked us up and we went to Loudi.

As soon as Kirby and I arrived in Loudi, we threw our stuff down into the apartment and headed back out the door to go to a dinner with the heads of the school. We were dirty, smelly, and sweaty...the best way to meet your employers. The dinner was great again but this time was complete with Mao Tai...and incredibly strong Chinese liquor. They called it "wine" but I kind of doubt that. The first drink we all had a toast together. After that it was like a group of old friends playing together. Every time one of them took a shot, they would choose some one else to toast. People were constantly reaching across the table. Near the end, Kirby and I decided to toast the whole table with the small amount of Chinese we'd picked up. Everyone cheered but maybe that was because they wanted to drink. At one point, the Dean (who was sitting to my right) asked how many drinks of Mao Tai it would take to get me drunk. What is the right answer there? Drinking must be one of those cultural differences since I was asked at least three times if I could drink. Not if I "do" drink but if I can, like if I'm allowed to. They said many people cannot, especially girls.

After the dinner, we went back to the apartment. It is definitely modest. Both of ours have the same set up: a bedroom, a bedroom/office, a living room, a tiny kitchen, and a bathroom/shower. Most of it is decent, I'll put up pictures later. But the kitchen isn't too much more than a cupboard, a sink, and a stove top connected a propane tank...nice. The bathroom door forms the right wall of the kitchen. The shower is directly above the toilet....again, nice. The piping is like a putt-putt golf course. Water flows down the drain in my kitchen sink, through a loosely connected hose (which sometimes spills over), and into a large, open tile basin that sits to the right of my kitchen counter. There, it swirls around until it reaches another "drain" which is really just a long pipe that reaches outside of my kitchen window and pours water out into a concrete drainage ditch. Once more...classy. The bathroom is about the same. There is a lot about the apartment that is nice but the bad stuff is funnier to talk about. Surprisingly though, the computer they gave me is really nice. Unfortunately I don't need it since I have my laptop. They tried hard though to make it comfortable and did a pretty good job. I can't complain much though since I live in the middle of about 7 other apartment buildings and I get the feeling that I have it the best.

We don't start teaching until September 7th so I'm going to spend the time working on lesson plans. Should be fun considering the only Chinese I'm good at saying is "I don't speak Chinese." Also, we're going to visit Emily in Hengyang this weekend so we can see how the other half lives.

And so he walked out of our lives...

Alright, so it's 12:53am, day of. We leave for the airport in just 3 short hours, we leave the country in just 5. For those of you following along at home, we are taking off for the eastern hemisphere with no intention to come back for another 365 days. I'm all packed up with a backpack, a duffle bag, and a rolling bag. Honestly though, I'd feel more comfortable with just the single backpack; any more than that and I feel like I've over packed. All of us are trying to stay under the weight regulations that the airlines are setting on us. Turns out you can't have anything over 5o pounds. I was well under the limit until I packed up my shoes. Size 12 is not a light size. I'm choosing to stay up until we leave for the airport since being tired enough to sleep on a 20 hour flight seems like the best idea; however, since everyone is asleep right now, I may just lie in bed out of a lack of options. But tomorrow I'll get up, throw on sweat pants and a comfortable shirt, and settle in for the duration. Next time you visit the site we'll be in Shanghai.