OMG, meta!
Monday, March 9, 2009
Oh hell yes!
It finally arrived, after perhaps my most high pressure must use Mandarin situation ever:
OMG, meta!
OMG, meta!
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Kunming: Week 3
And another week without a computer. This situation is sliding quickly from irritation to sheer farce. Apparently, they tried to deliver the package on Friday at 5:30 when the package center was closed. So as far as I know, the computer is floating around Kunming somewhere, in the hands of someone loosely affiliated with FedEx, and nobody who speaks English seems to be quite clear on what happens next. For me, this is insane just because, after all, it's not like we shipped my computer with Mr. Chen's Chinatown Package Company, we shipped it with FedEx, but once it crosses the border, nobody seems to know what's going on. Oh well, it's in God's hands now - perhaps literally, for all I know.
I wish I had fantastic adventures to tell you about, but unlike some study abroad programs where you drink your way across Europe, I actually have to work here. In fact, the weeks here can sometimes turn into nightmarish cycles of undercaffinated class (I've already switched from green to black tea, and may have to switch to french press coffee pretty soon) to homework to bed, and again. Class is not bad, when I'm not in a tired daze. I don't like drills or dictation much (does anyone?), but I really enjoy conversing in Mandarin, which I can do at a decently high level now, although my tones are often terrible, and my written Chinese is much better by far. My English classes are pretty good, because the kids on the program are pretty smart. I'm still definitely not feeling this field research paper. I may do a project on the Hui (Ethnic Chinese muslims), though I'm kinda nervous about going to a mosque here. I don't really have much time even to get out and about around the city here, which is kind of a bummer, I basically keep a tight circuit around the school since I don't have all that much time. But back home, it's not much different - except when Karl facilitates the occasional John Donut run, I eat/sleep/work/sleep. I miss good parties however.
The highlight of my week this week was definitely a trip to the local elementary school. Our Chinese professor knew somebody who knew an elementary school teacher, so we were allowed in the school. I assumed that the process would be somewhat more formal, considering we were entering an elementary school, but we basically just walked in. A fun reminder that the Han Chinese may be the most racist people on the planet: my white classmate George walked into the school no problem, but when my black classmate Nick walked in, he was immediately stopped by security. Nice.
I'd like to tell you that Chinese elementary schools are full of portraits of Mao or shaolin monks or something exciting, but actually, they are creepily familiar to this product of the NYC public school system: big, overcrowded, institutional structures, with bars on the windows and barbed wire fences (yes, my middle school had a barbed wire fence). They have English slogans pasted up on the walls, some of them ironically, sadly ungrammatical or misspelled. Many of the kids also wear the red scarves of the Communist Youth League, which is kind of unnerving.
The kids themselves are great, as are little kids anywhere in the world. I was basically shadily hustled into a classroom and told to talk to a couple of kids. So I asked, what did you do today, and they said, nothing, we were here all day. Yes, I said, but you were in class, what do you do in class? Oh, they said, we sit at our desks and raise our hands. Ahh, kids. They have an hour and a half of homework every day and a ranking system, and some of them commute in, although nobody's commute is as long as mine was to Hunter. One girl played the flute, another played a traditional Chinese instrument known as the Guqin. One girl wanted to be a fashion designer (she also wanted to go to France, to see Paris), another wanted to be a teacher, and another (who apparently spoke the best english in the class)wanted to be an ambassador (to which I replied, you already are). I also asked her why she studied English, and she said, because it's the world's language.
After a while, a crowd of girls started bombarding me with questions. Apparently, it was all girls because they all thought I was handsome (I kid you not...hey, there's no accounting for good taste). They asked how many people were in my family, so I said, my sister, my mom, my dad, and oh, my dog. A little girl responded mournfully with that international complaint of little kids, I want a dog but my mom won't let me have one. I said, well, dogs are very troublesome. No, the little girl said with authority, dogs are not troublesome, they are cute. I asked her what kind of dog she wanted, and she responded, a German Shepherd puppy, because they have soft fur. They also asked if I had any Disney things, what my favorite color is (well, whatever color is suitable, I responded. Black, for example, if black works. Oh, they said, because black is very cool), and whether everybody in America had very white skin (I replied, some people have whiter skin than me, and well, some...and I pointed to Nick). One girl was particularly fascinated with the American college experience and expressed a desire to attend an American college. Probably my favorite question I recieved: Does America have mosquitos? Are the mosquitos big? Apparently, the girl had seen a thing on TV about how America has huge mosquitos. After our brief interview, me and my classmates went to get our first Chinese pizza, which was both overpriced and exceedingly average.
I'm still all about the language partner. It's really a fascinating interaction, because she seems determined to serve as a representative for China. For example, she said that her teacher had told her that in China, unlike in the West, people feel that everyone who helps you in your life shares in your success, and so your victories are the family and the society's victories. I asked her if she agreed, and she said yes. I asked her if she felt that way about herself, and only then did she back away from it, saying, yes, it's partially true, but also I help make my own successes. I wonder, however, if I am just projecting my own particular ideas about the Chinese consciousness on her; maybe what I see as a Chinese tendency to accept cultural generalizations handed down from above is just someone with relatively few opinions sharing a general view, or someone trying to represent her culture, or someone who frankly believes in these things. We also discussed an incident in my textbook, where a little girl helped a little boy with his homework in class in exchange for money. She saw absolutely nothing wrong with it, and thought it was quite normal, and I struggled to explain to her (and hell, myself) why it wasn't appropriate. I asked her her views on the Hui, to which she responded, what views? My view is that they don't eat pork. Alright then.
Last night, I went over to my professor's for her birthday to make and eat dumplings. I really like the close relationship we have with the professors here, and I took a particular joy in Nick playing an extremely uncensored version of "Get Low" off of my IPod and watching the Chinese professors bob along to the beat. I can also eat so much, goddamn. I think it will be weird to adjust to the lack of safety protocol we have in America: the ability to just drink a glass of water, and to eat a piece of fruit without worrying. I came back to the dorms and was introduced to my new roommate, a Japanese student, 31 years old, learning Chinese to improve his business as an accountant. It's kind of a great situation in that I cannot speak Japanese and he speaks little English, so we have to use Chinese. My Chinese is better than his, I think, but in any case, we often have have many moments of repeating. It's not bad though, he seems like a really nice guy.
Today, we headed off to the gorgeous Xishan area, some forty five minutes outside the city, a Taoist holy site with breathtaking views of the city. I'm pretty spoiled now, at least since Taishan, but I think Xishan is ,marvelous by any standard, with astounding vistas overlooking the lake and the city and lovely karst geology and pine groves. I'll probably make my parents go, when they visit. After a lousy lunch, we went to Dian Chi, Kunming's central lake, and met with an entrepreneur who is trying to clean the disasterously polluted lake. The lake is filled with sewage, busted through with nitrates and phospherous, and strangled with algae, really bad. This guy filters the water through a special filter, and lets lotuses and special plants do the rest. It's astoundingly green for anywhere, not to mention China, and with government subsidies, he makes a profit of about a nickel per square meter of water, which is not much but is something.
I love the parts of this blog where I express general opinions about the state of the country: it's so 19th century foreign correspondent dispatch. But as far as the environmental situation here goes, I think if anyone can solve it, it's China. The central government understands it's a huge problem, and has dedicated giant sums of money to it. The citizenry is also used to living in what we think of as a "green" lifestyle (lights that only turn on with motion sensors, no drying machines, no dishwashers, low flow toilets, public transportation and biking, eat locally, etc.), just because most of the population cannot afford to live in any other way. The real threat is, of course, corruption and heavy industry. The Northeast, China's industrial heartland, is a damn coal-stained nightmare, and government money has a way of disappearing along the way to its intended goal. Also, what's scary about China is the possibility of a Malthusian crisis, that population pressures will just make any sort of equilibrium with nature unimaginable. For example, the best way to clean Dian Chi would be to restore the marshes that Mao drained and destroy the Cultural Revolution era dams that allowed local residents to reclaim around 200 kilometers of land; but if you were to do that, you would basically flood a couple thousand residents, and not rich people either, common folk who are pouring into Kunming for the hope of a better life. But I hope that China can figure it out...if they can't, in any case, it's bad news for all of us.
On that somber note, I bid you farewell, and promise to check in at least next week, and with photos as soon as I am able.
I wish I had fantastic adventures to tell you about, but unlike some study abroad programs where you drink your way across Europe, I actually have to work here. In fact, the weeks here can sometimes turn into nightmarish cycles of undercaffinated class (I've already switched from green to black tea, and may have to switch to french press coffee pretty soon) to homework to bed, and again. Class is not bad, when I'm not in a tired daze. I don't like drills or dictation much (does anyone?), but I really enjoy conversing in Mandarin, which I can do at a decently high level now, although my tones are often terrible, and my written Chinese is much better by far. My English classes are pretty good, because the kids on the program are pretty smart. I'm still definitely not feeling this field research paper. I may do a project on the Hui (Ethnic Chinese muslims), though I'm kinda nervous about going to a mosque here. I don't really have much time even to get out and about around the city here, which is kind of a bummer, I basically keep a tight circuit around the school since I don't have all that much time. But back home, it's not much different - except when Karl facilitates the occasional John Donut run, I eat/sleep/work/sleep. I miss good parties however.
The highlight of my week this week was definitely a trip to the local elementary school. Our Chinese professor knew somebody who knew an elementary school teacher, so we were allowed in the school. I assumed that the process would be somewhat more formal, considering we were entering an elementary school, but we basically just walked in. A fun reminder that the Han Chinese may be the most racist people on the planet: my white classmate George walked into the school no problem, but when my black classmate Nick walked in, he was immediately stopped by security. Nice.
I'd like to tell you that Chinese elementary schools are full of portraits of Mao or shaolin monks or something exciting, but actually, they are creepily familiar to this product of the NYC public school system: big, overcrowded, institutional structures, with bars on the windows and barbed wire fences (yes, my middle school had a barbed wire fence). They have English slogans pasted up on the walls, some of them ironically, sadly ungrammatical or misspelled. Many of the kids also wear the red scarves of the Communist Youth League, which is kind of unnerving.
The kids themselves are great, as are little kids anywhere in the world. I was basically shadily hustled into a classroom and told to talk to a couple of kids. So I asked, what did you do today, and they said, nothing, we were here all day. Yes, I said, but you were in class, what do you do in class? Oh, they said, we sit at our desks and raise our hands. Ahh, kids. They have an hour and a half of homework every day and a ranking system, and some of them commute in, although nobody's commute is as long as mine was to Hunter. One girl played the flute, another played a traditional Chinese instrument known as the Guqin. One girl wanted to be a fashion designer (she also wanted to go to France, to see Paris), another wanted to be a teacher, and another (who apparently spoke the best english in the class)wanted to be an ambassador (to which I replied, you already are). I also asked her why she studied English, and she said, because it's the world's language.
After a while, a crowd of girls started bombarding me with questions. Apparently, it was all girls because they all thought I was handsome (I kid you not...hey, there's no accounting for good taste). They asked how many people were in my family, so I said, my sister, my mom, my dad, and oh, my dog. A little girl responded mournfully with that international complaint of little kids, I want a dog but my mom won't let me have one. I said, well, dogs are very troublesome. No, the little girl said with authority, dogs are not troublesome, they are cute. I asked her what kind of dog she wanted, and she responded, a German Shepherd puppy, because they have soft fur. They also asked if I had any Disney things, what my favorite color is (well, whatever color is suitable, I responded. Black, for example, if black works. Oh, they said, because black is very cool), and whether everybody in America had very white skin (I replied, some people have whiter skin than me, and well, some...and I pointed to Nick). One girl was particularly fascinated with the American college experience and expressed a desire to attend an American college. Probably my favorite question I recieved: Does America have mosquitos? Are the mosquitos big? Apparently, the girl had seen a thing on TV about how America has huge mosquitos. After our brief interview, me and my classmates went to get our first Chinese pizza, which was both overpriced and exceedingly average.
I'm still all about the language partner. It's really a fascinating interaction, because she seems determined to serve as a representative for China. For example, she said that her teacher had told her that in China, unlike in the West, people feel that everyone who helps you in your life shares in your success, and so your victories are the family and the society's victories. I asked her if she agreed, and she said yes. I asked her if she felt that way about herself, and only then did she back away from it, saying, yes, it's partially true, but also I help make my own successes. I wonder, however, if I am just projecting my own particular ideas about the Chinese consciousness on her; maybe what I see as a Chinese tendency to accept cultural generalizations handed down from above is just someone with relatively few opinions sharing a general view, or someone trying to represent her culture, or someone who frankly believes in these things. We also discussed an incident in my textbook, where a little girl helped a little boy with his homework in class in exchange for money. She saw absolutely nothing wrong with it, and thought it was quite normal, and I struggled to explain to her (and hell, myself) why it wasn't appropriate. I asked her her views on the Hui, to which she responded, what views? My view is that they don't eat pork. Alright then.
Last night, I went over to my professor's for her birthday to make and eat dumplings. I really like the close relationship we have with the professors here, and I took a particular joy in Nick playing an extremely uncensored version of "Get Low" off of my IPod and watching the Chinese professors bob along to the beat. I can also eat so much, goddamn. I think it will be weird to adjust to the lack of safety protocol we have in America: the ability to just drink a glass of water, and to eat a piece of fruit without worrying. I came back to the dorms and was introduced to my new roommate, a Japanese student, 31 years old, learning Chinese to improve his business as an accountant. It's kind of a great situation in that I cannot speak Japanese and he speaks little English, so we have to use Chinese. My Chinese is better than his, I think, but in any case, we often have have many moments of repeating. It's not bad though, he seems like a really nice guy.
Today, we headed off to the gorgeous Xishan area, some forty five minutes outside the city, a Taoist holy site with breathtaking views of the city. I'm pretty spoiled now, at least since Taishan, but I think Xishan is ,marvelous by any standard, with astounding vistas overlooking the lake and the city and lovely karst geology and pine groves. I'll probably make my parents go, when they visit. After a lousy lunch, we went to Dian Chi, Kunming's central lake, and met with an entrepreneur who is trying to clean the disasterously polluted lake. The lake is filled with sewage, busted through with nitrates and phospherous, and strangled with algae, really bad. This guy filters the water through a special filter, and lets lotuses and special plants do the rest. It's astoundingly green for anywhere, not to mention China, and with government subsidies, he makes a profit of about a nickel per square meter of water, which is not much but is something.
I love the parts of this blog where I express general opinions about the state of the country: it's so 19th century foreign correspondent dispatch. But as far as the environmental situation here goes, I think if anyone can solve it, it's China. The central government understands it's a huge problem, and has dedicated giant sums of money to it. The citizenry is also used to living in what we think of as a "green" lifestyle (lights that only turn on with motion sensors, no drying machines, no dishwashers, low flow toilets, public transportation and biking, eat locally, etc.), just because most of the population cannot afford to live in any other way. The real threat is, of course, corruption and heavy industry. The Northeast, China's industrial heartland, is a damn coal-stained nightmare, and government money has a way of disappearing along the way to its intended goal. Also, what's scary about China is the possibility of a Malthusian crisis, that population pressures will just make any sort of equilibrium with nature unimaginable. For example, the best way to clean Dian Chi would be to restore the marshes that Mao drained and destroy the Cultural Revolution era dams that allowed local residents to reclaim around 200 kilometers of land; but if you were to do that, you would basically flood a couple thousand residents, and not rich people either, common folk who are pouring into Kunming for the hope of a better life. But I hope that China can figure it out...if they can't, in any case, it's bad news for all of us.
On that somber note, I bid you farewell, and promise to check in at least next week, and with photos as soon as I am able.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Kunming, Week 2
Dang, it's a real drag not to have my computer again. This week, my computer, finally in the same country as me at least, chilled its heels at customs while I attempted to puzzle out what a FedEx Customs rep needed me to do. The rep called me on the cell phone, and according to the rules of my program, I answered in Chinese. The rep let out a flurry of Chinese, and I meekly said, in Chinese, "come again?". He then started in an English which was only marginally clearer than his Chinese. With the help of my professors, I figured things out, and my computer is scheduled to be here some time this week - lawd willing - at which time I'll post pictures, as promised. Meanwhile, I'll give you a state-of-the-me update, and share some fun antecdotes.
First, the antecdotes. Last Sunday, I headed out to try one of Kunming's specialty dishes, Guoqiao mixian (crossing-the-bridge rice noodles). Like a lot of Chinese cooking, it's a very showy dish. The waitress brings a bowl of steaming hot chicken broth, and various fixings, including rice noodles, several different types of vegetables and slivers of raw pork, and throws them in the broth to cook. The result is a delicious, interesting mix of the broth and the oil of the vegetables and pork. However, first, I had to figure out the procedure. I wandered into the restaurant, looking like the confused westerner I often am in this country, and saw a bunch of people taking food from a window, while other people seemed to be waited on. So, assuming it was the traditional restaurant scheme of waited and waited on, I sat down. After about fifteen minutes, another table called the waitress over to explain to me the situation. After having her repeat herself once or twice, I caught on the key phrase - "mai piao", buy a ticket. So I wandered out to find the ticket office, bought a ticket and triumphantly presented it to the waitress, to the laughter of the table who had helped me out. The waitress brought the noodles and mixed the ingredients for me, and figuring that the pork needed to cook, I waited a little bit. A Chinese guy approached the table after five minutes, patted me on the back and said, to my embarassment, "It's ok. You can eat it."
This actually, is exactly the kind of scenario that demonstrates what I mean when I say I can't get angry in China. None of the embarassment and irritation here is anyone's fault but my own. In fact, I'm the one to blame for being a general pain in the butt for everybody who has to deal with me. It's my fault I can't understand the language or the culture, and yet I've come here and put myself in situations where these things are necessary to understand. So I have no right to get angry; I just thank everybody, and hope they can be patient with me, and feel embarassed that I can't help but be a pain in the butt.
Another fun story. The Chinese are the least race conscious people on earth, which makes for fun times with my black classmate here, Nick. When we went to register with the university, the registar said, excitedly, to Nick, "You look like a basketball player!" Nick, without a beat, responded, "Yeah, I play for The Lakers". Good times.
Overall, my mood here varies depending on the day and the situation. Some days I just don't feel like speaking Chinese and am tired and generally agitated. Especially since the language pledge took effect (it's not too strict, but strict enough), I've been feeling the stress of being isolated from my language. It's often no fun to have to use Chinese all the time, and can take a lot of energy. Often, I'll get the jist of things, when I have to deal with administrative details in Chinese, I can get very lost very fast. Also, as part of my program, I have to do what's essentially an ethnography, with cultural informant interviews and various other elements I neither have the skill set for, nor the desire to do. The prospect of that project is majorly stressing me out. Wednesday was a really bad day. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and was just generally in a bad mood the whole day. Finally, I ate three awful Chinese donuts and slept for two hours.
China brings some of my bad personality traits into particularly sharp relief. Here, I realize that my occasional bouts of depression and especially my sometimes extreme social anxiety are not normal and do me no favors. It strikes me here, in such a different place, that I might be able to, and what's more, might need to, switch to another way of being.
The most rewarding part of this program, by far, are the opportunities we get to interact with the Chinese. Not only do I have a language partner, but another student and I are matched with a Chinese family, whose home we visit every other weekend. I really like asking my language partner about things, and explaining to her various facets of American life. This week, I asked her about her views on the problems facing Chinese children. She said that since many Chinese kids are only children, they often are selfish and don't know how to interact with other people. She also said they watch too many violent/sexual videos on the internet. I also discussed the Chinese education system, and gave her an Obama pin and a map of NYC.
The most curious part of interacting with her is her conviction that the Chinese are one way, and the Americans are another, and that is that. For example, she is convinced that Americans always insist on their children's independence, while the Chinese are overprotective and controlling. When I said that in some cases, American parents also are overprotective, she shook her head and said, no, for example, Chinese parents are always holding their kids hands when they cross the street, Americans don't do that. When I said, uh, yes, actually they do, she just shook her head, and I stopped arguing with her. I also enjoyed when she looked at the map of NYC and asked where my college was, and looked shocked when I said it wasn't on the map, in fact, it was three hours away by plane. Talking to her about the education system carries its own particular baggage. This college is not a top Chinese university, and so the students here are often kids who have lost out in the great contest that is the Chinese education system. I, on the other hand, am somebody who has been fairly lucky with America's education system. Watching my language partner explain the unfairness of the Chinese education system therefore made me a little bit uneasy.
A final fun language partner story. We were scheduled to meet on Thursday, and although she usually texts me, she had to tell one of my classmates that she misplaced her cell phone and would meet me at the usual spot at 5:30. When she met me, she explained that she had left it at a friend's house. Afterwards, she borrowed my cell phone to call her friend. A male voice answered, and I could tell by the nature of the banter that it wasn't just a friend. I teased her about it afterwards and laughed all the way back to my room, and was pretty much in good spirits the rest of the day. There's something extremely reassuring about knowing that the young Chinese are also doing it.
I also visited my chinese family this weekend. They asked me and my classmate Michelle when would be a good time to meet, and we, very politely said, oh, any time that's convenient. So they replied, ok, how about 9 AM. D'oh. Our family is a sophomore at Yunnan Normal University and her father and mother, who look about in their late fifties, early sixties. The father is a sports facilities manager at the university, and the mother is retired. They are very charming, and I especially liked it when the student cheerfully showed us her music collection (complete with Enya, Dido and the Backstreet Boys). They made us a delicious lunch, and we discussed various matters (I found out that Kunming folks are more easy going than most Chinese, in their opinion, that Mah Zhongg is a waste of time, although their neighbors play, and that their ancestors came here from Nanjing 200 years ago - I think). We also watched a cartoon version of the Tang Dynasty classic "Butterfly Lovers", which I half-understood and was half awake for. Oh, and in a classic Chinese mother moment: Michelle asked the mom what the daughter was like when she was young. The response: "She used to play piano". When Michelle said later that she could play a little piano, the mother dutifully dragged out a keyboard and insisted that she play, to Michelle's embarassment.
Friday night, I headed out to a Karaoke club. This club happened to have an incredibly bizarre floor show, complete with an MC who asked the entire club to welcome "our international friends". I don't even know whether I would call what I saw a show. It was a pounding techno hallucination, with a mock beauty contest, women in short skirts clog dancing to "Cottoneye Joe" and weird, reject cirque du soleil type guys posturing in odd costumes. Whenever China attempts modernity, the result just seems to prove that China is a real confused country. As for me, I drunkenly sang "Like A Virgin". And, to my joy, the bathroom had a cartoon explaining that blowjobs in the bathroom were forbidden.
Today, I went with my professor and a small group of us to a Taoist temple on the outskirts of town. It wasn't the most magnificent temple I've ever seen, but it's nestled in the mountains among flowers and lovely trees, with buildings and natural elements mingling to a lovely extent. It's nice to visit temples and parks here, because it's basically springtime and the flowers are in bloom. Walking around the temple, I mostly thought about Wash U politics. I'm amazed the extent to which this trip really has served, as I hoped it would, as a time and place for me to reflect on where I want to go and what I want to do overall. I've been thinking a lot about the big question of, if the position were to open up, would I run to be KWUR's GM again. KWUR and the issue of SU reform have, in recent years, been intertwined, often for the benefit of neither. For example, it'd probably be better for SU reform if this proposed constitutional change was sunk in referendum, but it'd do KWUR no favors to campaign against it. Additionally, the reality is that what KWUR wants is generally not incredibly significant; there are bigger issues with SU then just the fact that they cut the funding for KWUR Week. So I've been asking myself a lot, am I more interested in SU and university reform, and would I want to channel my energies in that direction? Or do I really ultimately not give a damn what the university as a whole does, as long as KWUR does alright? Or, beyond that, would it be better for me just to, as Voltaire puts it, tend to my own garden, and leave all this stuff behind? I don't know. I'm still thinking about it, though the results of KWUR's block funding initiative will certainly impact my decision.
I fear that this blog has become the kind of confessional thing I wanted to avoid. But I did say that I would talk about what I saw, and how it affected me, and is, it's affecting me a great deal. So, no mission creep, IMHO, not yet. I will soon post pictures, God willing. See you later.
First, the antecdotes. Last Sunday, I headed out to try one of Kunming's specialty dishes, Guoqiao mixian (crossing-the-bridge rice noodles). Like a lot of Chinese cooking, it's a very showy dish. The waitress brings a bowl of steaming hot chicken broth, and various fixings, including rice noodles, several different types of vegetables and slivers of raw pork, and throws them in the broth to cook. The result is a delicious, interesting mix of the broth and the oil of the vegetables and pork. However, first, I had to figure out the procedure. I wandered into the restaurant, looking like the confused westerner I often am in this country, and saw a bunch of people taking food from a window, while other people seemed to be waited on. So, assuming it was the traditional restaurant scheme of waited and waited on, I sat down. After about fifteen minutes, another table called the waitress over to explain to me the situation. After having her repeat herself once or twice, I caught on the key phrase - "mai piao", buy a ticket. So I wandered out to find the ticket office, bought a ticket and triumphantly presented it to the waitress, to the laughter of the table who had helped me out. The waitress brought the noodles and mixed the ingredients for me, and figuring that the pork needed to cook, I waited a little bit. A Chinese guy approached the table after five minutes, patted me on the back and said, to my embarassment, "It's ok. You can eat it."
This actually, is exactly the kind of scenario that demonstrates what I mean when I say I can't get angry in China. None of the embarassment and irritation here is anyone's fault but my own. In fact, I'm the one to blame for being a general pain in the butt for everybody who has to deal with me. It's my fault I can't understand the language or the culture, and yet I've come here and put myself in situations where these things are necessary to understand. So I have no right to get angry; I just thank everybody, and hope they can be patient with me, and feel embarassed that I can't help but be a pain in the butt.
Another fun story. The Chinese are the least race conscious people on earth, which makes for fun times with my black classmate here, Nick. When we went to register with the university, the registar said, excitedly, to Nick, "You look like a basketball player!" Nick, without a beat, responded, "Yeah, I play for The Lakers". Good times.
Overall, my mood here varies depending on the day and the situation. Some days I just don't feel like speaking Chinese and am tired and generally agitated. Especially since the language pledge took effect (it's not too strict, but strict enough), I've been feeling the stress of being isolated from my language. It's often no fun to have to use Chinese all the time, and can take a lot of energy. Often, I'll get the jist of things, when I have to deal with administrative details in Chinese, I can get very lost very fast. Also, as part of my program, I have to do what's essentially an ethnography, with cultural informant interviews and various other elements I neither have the skill set for, nor the desire to do. The prospect of that project is majorly stressing me out. Wednesday was a really bad day. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and was just generally in a bad mood the whole day. Finally, I ate three awful Chinese donuts and slept for two hours.
China brings some of my bad personality traits into particularly sharp relief. Here, I realize that my occasional bouts of depression and especially my sometimes extreme social anxiety are not normal and do me no favors. It strikes me here, in such a different place, that I might be able to, and what's more, might need to, switch to another way of being.
The most rewarding part of this program, by far, are the opportunities we get to interact with the Chinese. Not only do I have a language partner, but another student and I are matched with a Chinese family, whose home we visit every other weekend. I really like asking my language partner about things, and explaining to her various facets of American life. This week, I asked her about her views on the problems facing Chinese children. She said that since many Chinese kids are only children, they often are selfish and don't know how to interact with other people. She also said they watch too many violent/sexual videos on the internet. I also discussed the Chinese education system, and gave her an Obama pin and a map of NYC.
The most curious part of interacting with her is her conviction that the Chinese are one way, and the Americans are another, and that is that. For example, she is convinced that Americans always insist on their children's independence, while the Chinese are overprotective and controlling. When I said that in some cases, American parents also are overprotective, she shook her head and said, no, for example, Chinese parents are always holding their kids hands when they cross the street, Americans don't do that. When I said, uh, yes, actually they do, she just shook her head, and I stopped arguing with her. I also enjoyed when she looked at the map of NYC and asked where my college was, and looked shocked when I said it wasn't on the map, in fact, it was three hours away by plane. Talking to her about the education system carries its own particular baggage. This college is not a top Chinese university, and so the students here are often kids who have lost out in the great contest that is the Chinese education system. I, on the other hand, am somebody who has been fairly lucky with America's education system. Watching my language partner explain the unfairness of the Chinese education system therefore made me a little bit uneasy.
A final fun language partner story. We were scheduled to meet on Thursday, and although she usually texts me, she had to tell one of my classmates that she misplaced her cell phone and would meet me at the usual spot at 5:30. When she met me, she explained that she had left it at a friend's house. Afterwards, she borrowed my cell phone to call her friend. A male voice answered, and I could tell by the nature of the banter that it wasn't just a friend. I teased her about it afterwards and laughed all the way back to my room, and was pretty much in good spirits the rest of the day. There's something extremely reassuring about knowing that the young Chinese are also doing it.
I also visited my chinese family this weekend. They asked me and my classmate Michelle when would be a good time to meet, and we, very politely said, oh, any time that's convenient. So they replied, ok, how about 9 AM. D'oh. Our family is a sophomore at Yunnan Normal University and her father and mother, who look about in their late fifties, early sixties. The father is a sports facilities manager at the university, and the mother is retired. They are very charming, and I especially liked it when the student cheerfully showed us her music collection (complete with Enya, Dido and the Backstreet Boys). They made us a delicious lunch, and we discussed various matters (I found out that Kunming folks are more easy going than most Chinese, in their opinion, that Mah Zhongg is a waste of time, although their neighbors play, and that their ancestors came here from Nanjing 200 years ago - I think). We also watched a cartoon version of the Tang Dynasty classic "Butterfly Lovers", which I half-understood and was half awake for. Oh, and in a classic Chinese mother moment: Michelle asked the mom what the daughter was like when she was young. The response: "She used to play piano". When Michelle said later that she could play a little piano, the mother dutifully dragged out a keyboard and insisted that she play, to Michelle's embarassment.
Friday night, I headed out to a Karaoke club. This club happened to have an incredibly bizarre floor show, complete with an MC who asked the entire club to welcome "our international friends". I don't even know whether I would call what I saw a show. It was a pounding techno hallucination, with a mock beauty contest, women in short skirts clog dancing to "Cottoneye Joe" and weird, reject cirque du soleil type guys posturing in odd costumes. Whenever China attempts modernity, the result just seems to prove that China is a real confused country. As for me, I drunkenly sang "Like A Virgin". And, to my joy, the bathroom had a cartoon explaining that blowjobs in the bathroom were forbidden.
Today, I went with my professor and a small group of us to a Taoist temple on the outskirts of town. It wasn't the most magnificent temple I've ever seen, but it's nestled in the mountains among flowers and lovely trees, with buildings and natural elements mingling to a lovely extent. It's nice to visit temples and parks here, because it's basically springtime and the flowers are in bloom. Walking around the temple, I mostly thought about Wash U politics. I'm amazed the extent to which this trip really has served, as I hoped it would, as a time and place for me to reflect on where I want to go and what I want to do overall. I've been thinking a lot about the big question of, if the position were to open up, would I run to be KWUR's GM again. KWUR and the issue of SU reform have, in recent years, been intertwined, often for the benefit of neither. For example, it'd probably be better for SU reform if this proposed constitutional change was sunk in referendum, but it'd do KWUR no favors to campaign against it. Additionally, the reality is that what KWUR wants is generally not incredibly significant; there are bigger issues with SU then just the fact that they cut the funding for KWUR Week. So I've been asking myself a lot, am I more interested in SU and university reform, and would I want to channel my energies in that direction? Or do I really ultimately not give a damn what the university as a whole does, as long as KWUR does alright? Or, beyond that, would it be better for me just to, as Voltaire puts it, tend to my own garden, and leave all this stuff behind? I don't know. I'm still thinking about it, though the results of KWUR's block funding initiative will certainly impact my decision.
I fear that this blog has become the kind of confessional thing I wanted to avoid. But I did say that I would talk about what I saw, and how it affected me, and is, it's affecting me a great deal. So, no mission creep, IMHO, not yet. I will soon post pictures, God willing. See you later.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Kunming, Week 1
So, I've started my studies here, and I guess I'll just let you know my thoughts on my program and Kunming, and me and China in general.
My "dorm" is really a hotel on the campus of Yunnan Normal University, complete with little soaps and towels and free tea. It's nice, relatively comfortable, but sort of a strange place to spend a few months. There's no desk, so to study, I've gone to a coffee shop or sat in an empty study abroad building classroom. Our living situation overall is kind of strange, since it's a hotel, and we have desk people who are there to take care of any sort of trouble we have, not to mention a Gomer Pyle looking PLA attache who's there to make sure we don't have any trouble. It all sort of makes me uncomfortable, since by being a foreigner, I automatically am priviledged. The Chinese don't seem to understand my basic lack of comfort at being waited on, and in a way, a lot of times, it's unavoidable since I don't always know what's happening. Other strange things about my dorm: the gates to the campus close at 1 am. No ifs, ands or buts. I didn't know that my first night, so I spent a panicked hour wandering around the campus before I finally decided to jump the fence, which I also had to do this weekend and probably will have to do again a few more times before the semester is out. Also, China has no dryers. As we speak, my clothes are hanging on the line, in the sun. The people in my program are pretty nice, and since there is just 11 of us and four or five teachers, we're pretty tight knit. Sometimes, however, I notice that I feel more alone and isolated with Americans than by myself.
Kunming is a great city, comfortable, not overwhelming, plenty to do and see. It occurs to me that it doesn't at all resemble the image of China people have back in the states. First, the weather here is beautiful, seventy and sunny everyday (although I'm told that the coming spring will mean lots of rain). Kunming is also full of foreigners, I don't quite know why, but it also often feels like a college town, with plenty of great bars and clubs with a diverse, young clientele. It's also filled with ethnic minorities. The streets are filled with Hui (ethnic Han Muslims), with their head scarves and skull caps; I even went into a mosque near the city center. I'm really interested in the Hui, how they interact with mainstream Han society, how connected they feel to the main branches of Islam. There are also tons of other ethnic minorities, in their own distinctive costumes. I'll take some pictures and show you guys, it's pretty wild. You'll be walking along, and all of the sudden, you'll see someone straight out of National Geographic in a headdress and a colorful shawl.
Another neat thing about staying in one place for a while (and eating with people who know what to order), is that you get a real grasp on the cuisine, and you get to eat absurdly well. Yunnan cuisine is very spicy. It's known for mushrooms, and rubing, a very mild, very delicious goat cheese. There's also a great mashed potatoes dish here. I eat like a pig, and feel guilty, but the thing is, since I'm spending on average about two bucks a meal, there's nothing to feel bad about. I've also been digging heavily on Muslim food here. I've had some great spicy beef skewers here for absurdly cheap off the street, and the other day, I paid under a dollar for a bowl of handmade noodles (you can actually see them stretching out the noodles), flavored with a spicy broth with just a hint of cilantro (that actually did not bother me as it does usually, but was pretty light and interesting). I feel like I might try to talk my way into the kitchen and videotape them making it, just to figure out what spices go into it, because I've never tasted anything like it in my life. It's a matter of time before these guys come to the states. They'll make Thai look like Red Italian.
My program is pretty damn intense. I have anywhere from two to three hours of Chinese, five days a week, in a four person class, starting at 9 AM. Considering that I used to consider an hour a day at 10 AM brutal, it's been quite an adjustment. Not to mention, we also have tons of homework, anywhere from two to four hours a night. My schedule during the week is pretty much go to school, lunch, check my email, do my homework, crash at twelve. It's not too bad though. I've started making tea in a thermos with dried looseleaf tea and boiled water, the way the Chinese do, and drinking bad coffee at night at local coffeshops. It's better than it could be, because my Chinese is at a level where we can have pretty entertaining discussions, and so it becomes more like a conversation class.
One part of this program that I really like is that we're matched up with a Chinese language partner. Mine is a sophomore girl here at the college from Xishuangbanna, a tourist region in the south of Yunnan famous for the Dai people and their "water throwing festival". It's really rewarding (although sometimes frustrating when I'm tired and my Chinese just falls apart), and very interesting. We're given a few questions and then we kind of just talk for an hour or so. We've discussed media censorship, the one child policy, college here and in America, and other issues. Sometimes, her views are wrong or misinformed, but I lack the vocab to debate her: for example, she seems to feel that the government's response to the Sichuan Earthquake was perfect, and while I feel it was pretty good, I know there were some problems. Talking about the One Child Policy was interesting. She thinks the policy is pretty just, and that China's population had to be controlled one way or the other. It was hard for me to get my own nuanced view across; that no government is justified in forced abortions, that while China had and still has a population problem, the one child policy may not have solved it. An interesting interaction was when I pointed out the demographic problem the policy has created. Not a problem, she explained, because in China, the young people always take care of the old. That's Chinese society, no exceptions. It's interesting to me the amount of faith that the Chinese seem to have in their own broad cultural messages.
On Friday, I went walking around the city. There's a very pleasant park within walking distance of the campus (cuihu). The blurred line here between public and commercial spaces is really something, only in China will you see the park filled with people selling stuff (one park here outside of old Kunming is basically an open air puppy market). On Saturday, we were taken on a tour of Old Kunming, which will probably be knocked down in a couple of days to make way for new office buildings/apartments/shopping malls. My ambivalence about the Haussmannization of China continues, and yesterday, I realized that it dovetails quite neatly with my own feelings about the gentrification of Brooklyn. On one hand, it's a tragedy that they're just razing those old buildings, probably giving residents little choice in the matter, and replacing them with inhuman, inaccesible big buildings. But on the other hand, those old buildings are not quite livable, and I wonder how the residents themselves feel about it, being moved to spaces that are probably much more modern than those old houses. After the tour and a long discussion at a nearby teahouse (a lovely converted family mansion with terrific pu'er tea), the professor cabbed with us to a local arts district, where we got a quick dinner and then went to a Nordic cultural center to watch the film "Songs From The Second Floor", and then discuss the film. The film is quite good, a dark brechtian farce, a little heavy-handed but very interesting and enjoyable, and it was also a downright surreal experience: discussing a Swedish film with a bunch of nice Scandanavians in English in China. I envy the Scandanavians; how I wish my government would pay for me to be a hipster around the world. I also felt a little weird about the experience. It seems a bit colonial to hold a discussion in English in China. It's a continued theme of my stay here: on one hand, I always hope to see English signs and translations, just because it makes my life easier, but on the other hand, I realize that we're asking the Chinese to go farther than we would go, and our demands are heeded because we have the economic power to make the Chinese listen.
Overall, I really feel like this decision, this journey has been worthwhile. I think China is really changing me, making me calmer, making me more humane. I feel like I'm actually making an effort to behave and to think in the ways that I've always told myself I should act and think, but never really followed through on. I also don't have that worry that I had before I came here, that this was pointless, that I probably won't even pursue Chinese when I get back. It's a joy just to be able to communicate, and to hear yourself getting better at it, and since I feel like the journey is building me as a person, I'm not worried about whether it was worth it in a meaner sense. Some days are better than others, but mostly, I'm pretty happy here, though I also certainly miss home.
I'll probably check in once a week, more often if anything particularly notable happens. My laptop is coming in the mail, and once I get it, I'll start posting my pictures, probably one day's worth of pictures, with captions, a day. I'll keep in touch, in any case.
My "dorm" is really a hotel on the campus of Yunnan Normal University, complete with little soaps and towels and free tea. It's nice, relatively comfortable, but sort of a strange place to spend a few months. There's no desk, so to study, I've gone to a coffee shop or sat in an empty study abroad building classroom. Our living situation overall is kind of strange, since it's a hotel, and we have desk people who are there to take care of any sort of trouble we have, not to mention a Gomer Pyle looking PLA attache who's there to make sure we don't have any trouble. It all sort of makes me uncomfortable, since by being a foreigner, I automatically am priviledged. The Chinese don't seem to understand my basic lack of comfort at being waited on, and in a way, a lot of times, it's unavoidable since I don't always know what's happening. Other strange things about my dorm: the gates to the campus close at 1 am. No ifs, ands or buts. I didn't know that my first night, so I spent a panicked hour wandering around the campus before I finally decided to jump the fence, which I also had to do this weekend and probably will have to do again a few more times before the semester is out. Also, China has no dryers. As we speak, my clothes are hanging on the line, in the sun. The people in my program are pretty nice, and since there is just 11 of us and four or five teachers, we're pretty tight knit. Sometimes, however, I notice that I feel more alone and isolated with Americans than by myself.
Kunming is a great city, comfortable, not overwhelming, plenty to do and see. It occurs to me that it doesn't at all resemble the image of China people have back in the states. First, the weather here is beautiful, seventy and sunny everyday (although I'm told that the coming spring will mean lots of rain). Kunming is also full of foreigners, I don't quite know why, but it also often feels like a college town, with plenty of great bars and clubs with a diverse, young clientele. It's also filled with ethnic minorities. The streets are filled with Hui (ethnic Han Muslims), with their head scarves and skull caps; I even went into a mosque near the city center. I'm really interested in the Hui, how they interact with mainstream Han society, how connected they feel to the main branches of Islam. There are also tons of other ethnic minorities, in their own distinctive costumes. I'll take some pictures and show you guys, it's pretty wild. You'll be walking along, and all of the sudden, you'll see someone straight out of National Geographic in a headdress and a colorful shawl.
Another neat thing about staying in one place for a while (and eating with people who know what to order), is that you get a real grasp on the cuisine, and you get to eat absurdly well. Yunnan cuisine is very spicy. It's known for mushrooms, and rubing, a very mild, very delicious goat cheese. There's also a great mashed potatoes dish here. I eat like a pig, and feel guilty, but the thing is, since I'm spending on average about two bucks a meal, there's nothing to feel bad about. I've also been digging heavily on Muslim food here. I've had some great spicy beef skewers here for absurdly cheap off the street, and the other day, I paid under a dollar for a bowl of handmade noodles (you can actually see them stretching out the noodles), flavored with a spicy broth with just a hint of cilantro (that actually did not bother me as it does usually, but was pretty light and interesting). I feel like I might try to talk my way into the kitchen and videotape them making it, just to figure out what spices go into it, because I've never tasted anything like it in my life. It's a matter of time before these guys come to the states. They'll make Thai look like Red Italian.
My program is pretty damn intense. I have anywhere from two to three hours of Chinese, five days a week, in a four person class, starting at 9 AM. Considering that I used to consider an hour a day at 10 AM brutal, it's been quite an adjustment. Not to mention, we also have tons of homework, anywhere from two to four hours a night. My schedule during the week is pretty much go to school, lunch, check my email, do my homework, crash at twelve. It's not too bad though. I've started making tea in a thermos with dried looseleaf tea and boiled water, the way the Chinese do, and drinking bad coffee at night at local coffeshops. It's better than it could be, because my Chinese is at a level where we can have pretty entertaining discussions, and so it becomes more like a conversation class.
One part of this program that I really like is that we're matched up with a Chinese language partner. Mine is a sophomore girl here at the college from Xishuangbanna, a tourist region in the south of Yunnan famous for the Dai people and their "water throwing festival". It's really rewarding (although sometimes frustrating when I'm tired and my Chinese just falls apart), and very interesting. We're given a few questions and then we kind of just talk for an hour or so. We've discussed media censorship, the one child policy, college here and in America, and other issues. Sometimes, her views are wrong or misinformed, but I lack the vocab to debate her: for example, she seems to feel that the government's response to the Sichuan Earthquake was perfect, and while I feel it was pretty good, I know there were some problems. Talking about the One Child Policy was interesting. She thinks the policy is pretty just, and that China's population had to be controlled one way or the other. It was hard for me to get my own nuanced view across; that no government is justified in forced abortions, that while China had and still has a population problem, the one child policy may not have solved it. An interesting interaction was when I pointed out the demographic problem the policy has created. Not a problem, she explained, because in China, the young people always take care of the old. That's Chinese society, no exceptions. It's interesting to me the amount of faith that the Chinese seem to have in their own broad cultural messages.
On Friday, I went walking around the city. There's a very pleasant park within walking distance of the campus (cuihu). The blurred line here between public and commercial spaces is really something, only in China will you see the park filled with people selling stuff (one park here outside of old Kunming is basically an open air puppy market). On Saturday, we were taken on a tour of Old Kunming, which will probably be knocked down in a couple of days to make way for new office buildings/apartments/shopping malls. My ambivalence about the Haussmannization of China continues, and yesterday, I realized that it dovetails quite neatly with my own feelings about the gentrification of Brooklyn. On one hand, it's a tragedy that they're just razing those old buildings, probably giving residents little choice in the matter, and replacing them with inhuman, inaccesible big buildings. But on the other hand, those old buildings are not quite livable, and I wonder how the residents themselves feel about it, being moved to spaces that are probably much more modern than those old houses. After the tour and a long discussion at a nearby teahouse (a lovely converted family mansion with terrific pu'er tea), the professor cabbed with us to a local arts district, where we got a quick dinner and then went to a Nordic cultural center to watch the film "Songs From The Second Floor", and then discuss the film. The film is quite good, a dark brechtian farce, a little heavy-handed but very interesting and enjoyable, and it was also a downright surreal experience: discussing a Swedish film with a bunch of nice Scandanavians in English in China. I envy the Scandanavians; how I wish my government would pay for me to be a hipster around the world. I also felt a little weird about the experience. It seems a bit colonial to hold a discussion in English in China. It's a continued theme of my stay here: on one hand, I always hope to see English signs and translations, just because it makes my life easier, but on the other hand, I realize that we're asking the Chinese to go farther than we would go, and our demands are heeded because we have the economic power to make the Chinese listen.
Overall, I really feel like this decision, this journey has been worthwhile. I think China is really changing me, making me calmer, making me more humane. I feel like I'm actually making an effort to behave and to think in the ways that I've always told myself I should act and think, but never really followed through on. I also don't have that worry that I had before I came here, that this was pointless, that I probably won't even pursue Chinese when I get back. It's a joy just to be able to communicate, and to hear yourself getting better at it, and since I feel like the journey is building me as a person, I'm not worried about whether it was worth it in a meaner sense. Some days are better than others, but mostly, I'm pretty happy here, though I also certainly miss home.
I'll probably check in once a week, more often if anything particularly notable happens. My laptop is coming in the mail, and once I get it, I'll start posting my pictures, probably one day's worth of pictures, with captions, a day. I'll keep in touch, in any case.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
2/12/09, Kunming
So, here I am, finally, in Kunming. Not a terribly eventful day today, just travel. Here's my route:
View Larger Map
Pretty much just woke up and went to the airport. I had to pay out the butt because my baggage was overweight, and this irritated me even more because it probably wouldn't have been had the signs not talked me into checking one of my carry-ons. It was also a laughably byzantine procedure. I had to get a ticket from one desk, and then give it to another desk, and then pay at another desk. Other than that, air travel is pretty much the same misery everywhere, and if anything, this trip was nicer than its American equivalent would be. I drank canned coffee, snacked on disgusting hard candies, and mostly slept on the flight, though I did get a lunch, even though it was only three and a half hours. The woman next to me kept frantically pointing at her wrist, wanting to know the time, which sort of pissed me off, because she could at least try to talk to me in Mandarin.
Once here, I was picked up and brought to the university by one of the professors, and my friend Nick from Wash U. It's good not to be alone again. I do have a roommate, and my dorm room is kind of odd; basically, it's just a hotel room, and has similar warmth (and similar single serving soap). I'll have to be a night showerer, since we only have hot water from 8 to 12 AM.
A nice English guy named James took me and the Duke kids from the dorms out to a local restaurant. James is good people, speaks excellent mandarin and has been studying here for a year or so, starting in the north, in Dalian. That's hardcore. Eating with him, I felt silly and envious. He bargains the check, and knows what to order and reads the mandarin, not-for-tourists menu. Meanwhile, I've been wandering around the country, poking and mumbling and stumbling around.
Finished the night off in a nice bar in what's called foreigners street. Kunming's a sweet little town, what I've seen so far. Weird in that it's got an active nightlife that I can see, and it's full of young people, really does feel like a college town. Very pleasant.
Ok, not much to report so far. I'm going to stop posting for a little bit, because I have to study and take care of things, and anyways, I actually have things to do at night now and am getting sick of the internet cafe routine. I'll chime in every week or two, let you know how things are going. Any questions, email me, if you know my email. See you around.
View Larger Map
Pretty much just woke up and went to the airport. I had to pay out the butt because my baggage was overweight, and this irritated me even more because it probably wouldn't have been had the signs not talked me into checking one of my carry-ons. It was also a laughably byzantine procedure. I had to get a ticket from one desk, and then give it to another desk, and then pay at another desk. Other than that, air travel is pretty much the same misery everywhere, and if anything, this trip was nicer than its American equivalent would be. I drank canned coffee, snacked on disgusting hard candies, and mostly slept on the flight, though I did get a lunch, even though it was only three and a half hours. The woman next to me kept frantically pointing at her wrist, wanting to know the time, which sort of pissed me off, because she could at least try to talk to me in Mandarin.
Once here, I was picked up and brought to the university by one of the professors, and my friend Nick from Wash U. It's good not to be alone again. I do have a roommate, and my dorm room is kind of odd; basically, it's just a hotel room, and has similar warmth (and similar single serving soap). I'll have to be a night showerer, since we only have hot water from 8 to 12 AM.
A nice English guy named James took me and the Duke kids from the dorms out to a local restaurant. James is good people, speaks excellent mandarin and has been studying here for a year or so, starting in the north, in Dalian. That's hardcore. Eating with him, I felt silly and envious. He bargains the check, and knows what to order and reads the mandarin, not-for-tourists menu. Meanwhile, I've been wandering around the country, poking and mumbling and stumbling around.
Finished the night off in a nice bar in what's called foreigners street. Kunming's a sweet little town, what I've seen so far. Weird in that it's got an active nightlife that I can see, and it's full of young people, really does feel like a college town. Very pleasant.
Ok, not much to report so far. I'm going to stop posting for a little bit, because I have to study and take care of things, and anyways, I actually have things to do at night now and am getting sick of the internet cafe routine. I'll chime in every week or two, let you know how things are going. Any questions, email me, if you know my email. See you around.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
2/11/09, Shanghai Art Museum/50 Moganshan Art Complex/Lu Xun Monument/Night on The Bund
Wow oh wow, this is it, the last day of my grand tour. Here's my route for the day:
View Larger Map
Before I forget again, two things I forgot to write about yesterday. 1, regarding the CCTV fire, don't say I didn't tell you so. When this blog eventually gets written up in the NY Times, I want "prophetic" to be the key descriptive word. The great thing is that they even have terrifying Cartoon PSAs about fireworks here, as if the problem is not just that people are lighting up fireworks in densely populated areas without the slightest hint of caution.
2, yesterday, at the Hangzhou train station, just as the train was about to arrive at the station, a little kid next to me gestured to his mom that he had to go to the bathroom. The anxious mom looked all around, and finally fixed on a potted plant in the corner. She brought the kid over to the plant, pulled his pants down, and let him do his things. Me and the other people in the waiting room laughed and exchanged "that's China" glances. Pretty awesome.
I woke up in the double digits today (so sue me, it's the last day of my vacation), had a few crab meat meatballs for breakfast (a famous shanghai snack)and headed over to the Shanghai Art Museum, which was right by my hotel. The building is beautiful, but the art was not so hot. One exhibit was by a painter named Wu Guanzhong. His oils are pretty disposable (knockoff cezannes), but his inks were not bad, combining the Zen ink tradition with abstract expressionism in a way that reveals a certain age to what we think of as recent, and illuminating how we construct an image. There was also an exhibit by a former culture minister who's retired to cut Chinese seals, and despite my new found interest in Chinese seals, it got to a point where I just wasn't up to checking out another seal commemorating the "reform and opening" policy.
Pretty bummed (and surprisingly, feeling decaffeinated - I think that tea yesterday, weak as I might have thought it was, gave me a big buzz), I went to Starbucks to plan the rest of my day. I figured out that it wouldn't be as much of a schlep to go to one of the contemporary art districts as I thought, so I headed over. 50 Moganshan is a huge place, just a big concentration of contemporary art, dozens of galleries filling an old factory and lining the streets around it. The art, as it does anywhere good, varied. Some of it was great, a lot of it was just ok, and some of it was just plain awful. A lot of Chinese artists fall into an old Chinese artist trap, producing political kitsch and art they think Westerners want to see or will buy, "Chinese art". One gallery was even titled after a quote from Confucius, "what a joy it is to welcome strangers from afar!" Indeed, I actually kept running into a couple from DUMBO - small world. It was nice, however, to see some good contemporary art. Being here has helped me to figure out things I enjoy and things I don't enjoy, and seeing new art is something I definitely enjoy.
After that, I headed over to Lu Xun Park, to see Lu Xun's tomb. Lu Xun is widely considered the founder of modern Chinese literature. The park was really nice. For once, I didn't feel like I was entering a national monument; I was just walking in a nice park where people went to relax. Unlike most of Shanghai, this park felt more Chinese, and lacked foreigners. It was nice to see the Chinese doing their thing. One thing I've noticed: I rarely see a solitary Chinese person. They always seem to be doing things with other people, whether arguing or playing Chinese chess or Badminton. Lu Xun's tomb was very simple, very nice. If I become a good enough writer that people care about me, I want to be buried in a nice-smelling park where people are playing games and talking and sitting. Incidentally, a story idea came to me today, or the beginnings of one, and that's always a good, hopeful feeling.
I then dragged myself, half-starved, over to what was billed by the guide book as a food road. It wasn't particularly, and I decided at random to sit in a restaurant where I saw a lot of people. Dinner today was a real wild card: I just had the waitress pick my dishes. I got two dishes, which was way more than I needed, but swallowed them down anyway. One was a pretty mediocre glass noodle, beef and mushroom broth, but the other one, beef with snow peas and potatoes in some sort of sauce, was killer. I really bolted them down. After that, on a whim, I went into a convenience store and indulged in the simple freedom of buying a half liter of Qingdao and drinking it as I walked to the Bund to take some night time pictures. Because, after all, here in Shanghai, not only am I of age, but there apparently (according to the shop keeper) is no brown bag law. Nice.
Incidentally, while the Chinese don't really give a damn about alcohol, what they do care about is pornography. A sign in my hotel (along with vaguely warning me to use the internet respectfully - eek) warns strongly against bringing pornography in, and on a street where you can clearly see prostitutes plying their trade, you won't ever see even a scrap of a nudie mag. Odd country, where you can get crunk on the street but can't enjoy a gentleman's magazine in the comfort of your own hotel room.
The Pudong and Bund are lovely at night, and I only realized today I didn't walk the whole length of the Bund. A photo vendor in Huangpu Park inexplicably played a Conway Twitty song - strange. The Chinese, also, hustle like crazy. I am constantly mobbed in Shanghai by people selling trinkets, photos, rolexes, girls, drugs, whatever. Today, as I was walking, a particularly aggressive hawker followed me down the street for a block, asking, "Boy want DVD? Boy want watch? Boy want T-shirt?" After I said no to each offer, exasperated, she asked, "What does boy want?", as if there was something wrong with me for not wanting anything. I had a laugh at that one.
So this is it, the end of my travelling for now. Tomorrow I fly into Kunming. It's been quite an experience, to say the least. Overall, top sights:
1. Taishan
2. Great Wall
3. Summer Palace
4. Suzhou
5. Beihai Park
Cities visited, from fave to least fave:
1. Shanghai
2. Suzhou
3. Hangzhou
4. Tai'an
5. Beijing
6. Chengde
Overall, it's cost me (excluding air fare, which I didn't pay for) around a thousand bucks. China is not a dream cheap world, though you can certainly do it for cheaper than I did. If I had a lot of money, I probably would live the same as I do now, but I'd travel a hell of a lot more. For me, it's worth it. I love to travel more than anything.
It's been a heck of an experience. Although during the middle of the trip, I had sort of a freak out about the stupidity and foolishness of the trip, I have to say, although I keep saying I'd do it differently if I had to do it again, the way I did it went pretty well. Actually, only one thing didn't work out according to plan: I didn't get to visit Qufu, which is regrettable. I saw some stuff and had some experiences that I probably wouldn't have if I had done things differently, and I feel like I really did get to know myself better. I'm generally kind of a solitary guy, but that's one thing and this is another. I've gotten to really analyze who I am and what I want and what makes me happy, and what I need to get along.
Damn, I'm talking about this trip as if it's already done. It still hasn't sunk in that I'm due to spend another four months here. Already, I miss my family (go figure) and my friends and America in general. Eh, I'll be back soon enough. I'll try to post tomorrow when I get in with my initial impressions of Kunming. In general, expect the postings to slow, since I'll be actually studying. I'll probably post once a week or so, general wrapups, or when something significant happens. Once I get my laptop, I'll post all the pictures I've been taking.
While climbing Taishan, I realized that, in a way, the Taoist quest for immortality represented by climbing Taishan is somewhat similar to this trip. Tao immortals do not find some secret potion to become immortal; they simply realize that life has no limits, and therefore they cannot die. This trip, also, has served to show me that my life has fewer limits than I thought, that I'm more capable than I thought. And while I'm not immortal (not by far), I'm certainly a lot more durable now than when I started.
Till tomorrow.
View Larger Map
Before I forget again, two things I forgot to write about yesterday. 1, regarding the CCTV fire, don't say I didn't tell you so. When this blog eventually gets written up in the NY Times, I want "prophetic" to be the key descriptive word. The great thing is that they even have terrifying Cartoon PSAs about fireworks here, as if the problem is not just that people are lighting up fireworks in densely populated areas without the slightest hint of caution.
2, yesterday, at the Hangzhou train station, just as the train was about to arrive at the station, a little kid next to me gestured to his mom that he had to go to the bathroom. The anxious mom looked all around, and finally fixed on a potted plant in the corner. She brought the kid over to the plant, pulled his pants down, and let him do his things. Me and the other people in the waiting room laughed and exchanged "that's China" glances. Pretty awesome.
I woke up in the double digits today (so sue me, it's the last day of my vacation), had a few crab meat meatballs for breakfast (a famous shanghai snack)and headed over to the Shanghai Art Museum, which was right by my hotel. The building is beautiful, but the art was not so hot. One exhibit was by a painter named Wu Guanzhong. His oils are pretty disposable (knockoff cezannes), but his inks were not bad, combining the Zen ink tradition with abstract expressionism in a way that reveals a certain age to what we think of as recent, and illuminating how we construct an image. There was also an exhibit by a former culture minister who's retired to cut Chinese seals, and despite my new found interest in Chinese seals, it got to a point where I just wasn't up to checking out another seal commemorating the "reform and opening" policy.
Pretty bummed (and surprisingly, feeling decaffeinated - I think that tea yesterday, weak as I might have thought it was, gave me a big buzz), I went to Starbucks to plan the rest of my day. I figured out that it wouldn't be as much of a schlep to go to one of the contemporary art districts as I thought, so I headed over. 50 Moganshan is a huge place, just a big concentration of contemporary art, dozens of galleries filling an old factory and lining the streets around it. The art, as it does anywhere good, varied. Some of it was great, a lot of it was just ok, and some of it was just plain awful. A lot of Chinese artists fall into an old Chinese artist trap, producing political kitsch and art they think Westerners want to see or will buy, "Chinese art". One gallery was even titled after a quote from Confucius, "what a joy it is to welcome strangers from afar!" Indeed, I actually kept running into a couple from DUMBO - small world. It was nice, however, to see some good contemporary art. Being here has helped me to figure out things I enjoy and things I don't enjoy, and seeing new art is something I definitely enjoy.
After that, I headed over to Lu Xun Park, to see Lu Xun's tomb. Lu Xun is widely considered the founder of modern Chinese literature. The park was really nice. For once, I didn't feel like I was entering a national monument; I was just walking in a nice park where people went to relax. Unlike most of Shanghai, this park felt more Chinese, and lacked foreigners. It was nice to see the Chinese doing their thing. One thing I've noticed: I rarely see a solitary Chinese person. They always seem to be doing things with other people, whether arguing or playing Chinese chess or Badminton. Lu Xun's tomb was very simple, very nice. If I become a good enough writer that people care about me, I want to be buried in a nice-smelling park where people are playing games and talking and sitting. Incidentally, a story idea came to me today, or the beginnings of one, and that's always a good, hopeful feeling.
I then dragged myself, half-starved, over to what was billed by the guide book as a food road. It wasn't particularly, and I decided at random to sit in a restaurant where I saw a lot of people. Dinner today was a real wild card: I just had the waitress pick my dishes. I got two dishes, which was way more than I needed, but swallowed them down anyway. One was a pretty mediocre glass noodle, beef and mushroom broth, but the other one, beef with snow peas and potatoes in some sort of sauce, was killer. I really bolted them down. After that, on a whim, I went into a convenience store and indulged in the simple freedom of buying a half liter of Qingdao and drinking it as I walked to the Bund to take some night time pictures. Because, after all, here in Shanghai, not only am I of age, but there apparently (according to the shop keeper) is no brown bag law. Nice.
Incidentally, while the Chinese don't really give a damn about alcohol, what they do care about is pornography. A sign in my hotel (along with vaguely warning me to use the internet respectfully - eek) warns strongly against bringing pornography in, and on a street where you can clearly see prostitutes plying their trade, you won't ever see even a scrap of a nudie mag. Odd country, where you can get crunk on the street but can't enjoy a gentleman's magazine in the comfort of your own hotel room.
The Pudong and Bund are lovely at night, and I only realized today I didn't walk the whole length of the Bund. A photo vendor in Huangpu Park inexplicably played a Conway Twitty song - strange. The Chinese, also, hustle like crazy. I am constantly mobbed in Shanghai by people selling trinkets, photos, rolexes, girls, drugs, whatever. Today, as I was walking, a particularly aggressive hawker followed me down the street for a block, asking, "Boy want DVD? Boy want watch? Boy want T-shirt?" After I said no to each offer, exasperated, she asked, "What does boy want?", as if there was something wrong with me for not wanting anything. I had a laugh at that one.
So this is it, the end of my travelling for now. Tomorrow I fly into Kunming. It's been quite an experience, to say the least. Overall, top sights:
1. Taishan
2. Great Wall
3. Summer Palace
4. Suzhou
5. Beihai Park
Cities visited, from fave to least fave:
1. Shanghai
2. Suzhou
3. Hangzhou
4. Tai'an
5. Beijing
6. Chengde
Overall, it's cost me (excluding air fare, which I didn't pay for) around a thousand bucks. China is not a dream cheap world, though you can certainly do it for cheaper than I did. If I had a lot of money, I probably would live the same as I do now, but I'd travel a hell of a lot more. For me, it's worth it. I love to travel more than anything.
It's been a heck of an experience. Although during the middle of the trip, I had sort of a freak out about the stupidity and foolishness of the trip, I have to say, although I keep saying I'd do it differently if I had to do it again, the way I did it went pretty well. Actually, only one thing didn't work out according to plan: I didn't get to visit Qufu, which is regrettable. I saw some stuff and had some experiences that I probably wouldn't have if I had done things differently, and I feel like I really did get to know myself better. I'm generally kind of a solitary guy, but that's one thing and this is another. I've gotten to really analyze who I am and what I want and what makes me happy, and what I need to get along.
Damn, I'm talking about this trip as if it's already done. It still hasn't sunk in that I'm due to spend another four months here. Already, I miss my family (go figure) and my friends and America in general. Eh, I'll be back soon enough. I'll try to post tomorrow when I get in with my initial impressions of Kunming. In general, expect the postings to slow, since I'll be actually studying. I'll probably post once a week or so, general wrapups, or when something significant happens. Once I get my laptop, I'll post all the pictures I've been taking.
While climbing Taishan, I realized that, in a way, the Taoist quest for immortality represented by climbing Taishan is somewhat similar to this trip. Tao immortals do not find some secret potion to become immortal; they simply realize that life has no limits, and therefore they cannot die. This trip, also, has served to show me that my life has fewer limits than I thought, that I'm more capable than I thought. And while I'm not immortal (not by far), I'm certainly a lot more durable now than when I started.
Till tomorrow.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
2/10/09, Hangzhou
It's the end of another nice relaxing day here, and I'm ready to just have a beer and coast on to Kunming. Definitely feeling like things are winding down. Here's my train route:
View Larger Map
And then my in-city route today:
View Larger Map
Another really easy train ride, direct hour long shuttle from Shanghai South railway station (only very recently rebuilt) to Hangzhou. I don't know if it's because I'm an American and they assume I want soft seat, or just that the routes and the times they want are all served by cushier, more expensive Z class trains, but here around Shanghai, I've been travelling really well. Walking around Hangzhou today reinforced for me how much more affluent and cosmopolitan the mid-southern regions are than the north. The odd thing is that stereotype has existed for centuries. It was the Han cultured heartland in Hangzhou and Nanjing versus the Manchu barbarian seat of power in Beijing.
Today was one of my easiest days, blisfully unplanned and at a lovely pace. I really didn't have any specific things I wanted to see in Hangzhou, just a general desire to see the famous city (considered by many expats and by Marco Polo to be the most beautiful city in China). I basically just took the tourist bus (I learned my lesson from yesterday and coughed up the extra yuan) to the south of Hangzhou's famed West Lake, where the was a pretty set of paths over goldfish filled lakes. Took a ferry from there to an island in the middle of the lake, and then from that island to the north of the lake, where there is a gorgeous, pleasant little park, and a famous willow lined pedestrian causeway dating back to the Song Dynasty. And that was more or less the bulk of my day, three hours or so, just walking around.
Before that, however, I had another encounter with typical Chinese everyday madness. The ticket office in Hangzhou was a mess, and I had to wait in line for about half an hour to book my return leg. I got there at 10:50, and at 11:10, I nervously noticed that the window I was in line for shut down for lunch at 11:30. Luckily, I was able to get my ticket, and then had to search for the buses near the crowded train station. After maybe fifteen minutes, I found the silliest looking buses I've ever seen, done up like old street cars. Tourist bus indeed.
Hangzhou is a lovely city, and I mean that with the specific weight and connotation of lovely. It's not overpoweringly beautiful, like, say, Taishan or the Great Wall, but it was just pleasant to walk around in, especially with sunny weather in the sixties today. It even smelled nice, which made me regret not visiting in the spring. Of course, keep in mind that I only saw a small part of Hangzhou, the more tourist friendly part, so I'm making my judgment on that, which would be like judging NYC on the basis of Central Park. I would like to spend more time there, however.
An odd thing about Hangzhou: they pump this really sappy, elevator type music through many of their parks, which was just silly. I burst out laughing sometimes, just because the music was too much.
I had another conversation in Mandarin in Hangzhou, prompted by a really fashionable looking guy who called me over. I think he might have called me over because I might have looked at his girl too long, which I actually didn't think I did, but I do tend to stare. He told me that my Mandarin must improve (duh), and then we discussed the relative merits of Hangzhou and Shanghai, and then Chinese and American girls. I told him I preferred American girls. He said, "But they're so big! You must like big butts!" It was a pleasant conversation.
After walking for a few hours, I took another tourist bus (which was so empty it might as well have been a taxi) to a teahouse I had read about in the New York Times. Hangzhou is famous for its tea, Longjing (dragon well) tea, a special green tea made with water from the uh, Longjing. This place was a bit of a tourist trap, and a bit expensive, but impressive nonetheless. It was old school, with waiters in Qing era costumes, a nice calm decor, and even free snacks on the table. The thing this place is known for is trick pouring. The waiters have special longstemmed teapots and do all of these elaborate trick pours, like behind the back and over the shoulder. It was pretty cool and I got a picture, although I felt like a super tourist. Tea actually seemed a bit weak to me, but hey, what do I know. I paid a ridiculous amount (so much that, although not an over the top expense, it was an absurd amount for what I got even in American dollars) for a little bit of Longjing tea. Ehh, I don't buy many souvenirs and I love tea; might as well put out for the best.
Which reminds me, I haven't been haggling much here, maybe not as much as I should. Mostly, it's because I don't buy much, and what I do buy is in places where haggling is not done (restaurants, places with visible price tags). I just feel odd about it, because more often than not I'm happy to pay full price, so it just feels like a weird, unpleasant little game. I feel like it's as if someone said that Americans often whip each other with wet towels, and then every tourist who came to America started whipping us randomly with wet towels. It may be a cultural practice, but why would you do it if you're an outsider and there's no reason to?
For dinner, I sampled a Hangzhou delicacy, Dongpo Pork, which is slabs of pork cooked in Shaoxing wine. Pretty good, rich, stewy tasting, slightly aromatic. In typical Chinese style, a slab of pork meant a slab of pork, from meat to fat to skin. I was counting the hairs on this sucker. As far as food goes, this hasn't been an insane trip, the way I thought it might be. I often feel like I get the wrong thing, although I get some great dishes, and I just don't feel like I can really judge how good something is. Real Chinese food is to American Chinese food what Italian food is to Red Italian: more varied, more subtly flavored, with some stuff you can't find in America and without some stuff you can find everywhere in America (no Crab Rangoon, thank you). Hopefully, when I'm going with people who know what they're doing in Kunming, I'll do better.
So, tomorrow is my last day travelling. I'm ok with that, and am ready to just settle down and get to work. It'll be relaxing, with me just staying in one city for once, sleeping in just a bit late, checking out some of Shanghai's art galleries, possibly the Lu Xun memorial, and then nighttime visits to Pudong and the Bund. Hell, I might even study (gasp!). I'll check in with you afterwards. Till tomorrow.
View Larger Map
And then my in-city route today:
View Larger Map
Another really easy train ride, direct hour long shuttle from Shanghai South railway station (only very recently rebuilt) to Hangzhou. I don't know if it's because I'm an American and they assume I want soft seat, or just that the routes and the times they want are all served by cushier, more expensive Z class trains, but here around Shanghai, I've been travelling really well. Walking around Hangzhou today reinforced for me how much more affluent and cosmopolitan the mid-southern regions are than the north. The odd thing is that stereotype has existed for centuries. It was the Han cultured heartland in Hangzhou and Nanjing versus the Manchu barbarian seat of power in Beijing.
Today was one of my easiest days, blisfully unplanned and at a lovely pace. I really didn't have any specific things I wanted to see in Hangzhou, just a general desire to see the famous city (considered by many expats and by Marco Polo to be the most beautiful city in China). I basically just took the tourist bus (I learned my lesson from yesterday and coughed up the extra yuan) to the south of Hangzhou's famed West Lake, where the was a pretty set of paths over goldfish filled lakes. Took a ferry from there to an island in the middle of the lake, and then from that island to the north of the lake, where there is a gorgeous, pleasant little park, and a famous willow lined pedestrian causeway dating back to the Song Dynasty. And that was more or less the bulk of my day, three hours or so, just walking around.
Before that, however, I had another encounter with typical Chinese everyday madness. The ticket office in Hangzhou was a mess, and I had to wait in line for about half an hour to book my return leg. I got there at 10:50, and at 11:10, I nervously noticed that the window I was in line for shut down for lunch at 11:30. Luckily, I was able to get my ticket, and then had to search for the buses near the crowded train station. After maybe fifteen minutes, I found the silliest looking buses I've ever seen, done up like old street cars. Tourist bus indeed.
Hangzhou is a lovely city, and I mean that with the specific weight and connotation of lovely. It's not overpoweringly beautiful, like, say, Taishan or the Great Wall, but it was just pleasant to walk around in, especially with sunny weather in the sixties today. It even smelled nice, which made me regret not visiting in the spring. Of course, keep in mind that I only saw a small part of Hangzhou, the more tourist friendly part, so I'm making my judgment on that, which would be like judging NYC on the basis of Central Park. I would like to spend more time there, however.
An odd thing about Hangzhou: they pump this really sappy, elevator type music through many of their parks, which was just silly. I burst out laughing sometimes, just because the music was too much.
I had another conversation in Mandarin in Hangzhou, prompted by a really fashionable looking guy who called me over. I think he might have called me over because I might have looked at his girl too long, which I actually didn't think I did, but I do tend to stare. He told me that my Mandarin must improve (duh), and then we discussed the relative merits of Hangzhou and Shanghai, and then Chinese and American girls. I told him I preferred American girls. He said, "But they're so big! You must like big butts!" It was a pleasant conversation.
After walking for a few hours, I took another tourist bus (which was so empty it might as well have been a taxi) to a teahouse I had read about in the New York Times. Hangzhou is famous for its tea, Longjing (dragon well) tea, a special green tea made with water from the uh, Longjing. This place was a bit of a tourist trap, and a bit expensive, but impressive nonetheless. It was old school, with waiters in Qing era costumes, a nice calm decor, and even free snacks on the table. The thing this place is known for is trick pouring. The waiters have special longstemmed teapots and do all of these elaborate trick pours, like behind the back and over the shoulder. It was pretty cool and I got a picture, although I felt like a super tourist. Tea actually seemed a bit weak to me, but hey, what do I know. I paid a ridiculous amount (so much that, although not an over the top expense, it was an absurd amount for what I got even in American dollars) for a little bit of Longjing tea. Ehh, I don't buy many souvenirs and I love tea; might as well put out for the best.
Which reminds me, I haven't been haggling much here, maybe not as much as I should. Mostly, it's because I don't buy much, and what I do buy is in places where haggling is not done (restaurants, places with visible price tags). I just feel odd about it, because more often than not I'm happy to pay full price, so it just feels like a weird, unpleasant little game. I feel like it's as if someone said that Americans often whip each other with wet towels, and then every tourist who came to America started whipping us randomly with wet towels. It may be a cultural practice, but why would you do it if you're an outsider and there's no reason to?
For dinner, I sampled a Hangzhou delicacy, Dongpo Pork, which is slabs of pork cooked in Shaoxing wine. Pretty good, rich, stewy tasting, slightly aromatic. In typical Chinese style, a slab of pork meant a slab of pork, from meat to fat to skin. I was counting the hairs on this sucker. As far as food goes, this hasn't been an insane trip, the way I thought it might be. I often feel like I get the wrong thing, although I get some great dishes, and I just don't feel like I can really judge how good something is. Real Chinese food is to American Chinese food what Italian food is to Red Italian: more varied, more subtly flavored, with some stuff you can't find in America and without some stuff you can find everywhere in America (no Crab Rangoon, thank you). Hopefully, when I'm going with people who know what they're doing in Kunming, I'll do better.
So, tomorrow is my last day travelling. I'm ok with that, and am ready to just settle down and get to work. It'll be relaxing, with me just staying in one city for once, sleeping in just a bit late, checking out some of Shanghai's art galleries, possibly the Lu Xun memorial, and then nighttime visits to Pudong and the Bund. Hell, I might even study (gasp!). I'll check in with you afterwards. Till tomorrow.
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