Various Chinese Chirstmas Celebrations

First of all, more Chinese celebrate (or at least acknowledge) Christmas than one would imagine. By the end of the week I thought it kind of sad that they celebrate a Western holiday that really doesn't have any meaning to them. Infiltration of Western culture, blah, blah, blah.

All the Drake people (including foreign and Chinese friends) had our own Christmas celebration. A wine and cheese party! My lips and teeth got so stained from the wine it was repulsive. We had a white elephant gift exchange and I ended up getting some tea (my second choice to a bottle of wine). Good times had by all!

On Tuesday evening we went to the Christmas Banquet for Foreigners held by the municipal government. There were about 200 or so foreigners there with Chinese friends. Our Australian friend, Francis, was chosen to make a speech on the behalf of all foreigners of the city. He was "a bit tossed" (as he put it) before giving the speech. The most hilarious part of the speech was, "Sure, Shijiazhuang doesn't have the modernity of Hong Kong, the shopping of Shanghai, or the beauty of Guangzhuo, but..." and at that point I just started cracking up. Francis is one of the most obnoxious (but hilarious) people I've ever met and I have no idea why they picked him to give a speech. Anyway, they had a wonderful buffet and there were more than a few familiar faces. Megan and I also performed "Last Christmas" for the entire banquet...seemed like a crowd favorite from the foreigners' point of view! Afterwards, a bunch of us went out together.

Well, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been planning on performing at Christmas parties here in China for almost two months, and it finally came to pass. I practiced a couple of times with a British teacher named Rick. We practiced "Save Tonight" by Eagle Eyed Cherry, "Well Respected Man" by The Kinks, "All My Loving" by The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles, "Man On The Moon" by R.E.M., and "All Rise" by Blue (a British boy band). We performed two nights. The first night was at just one hotel but the second night was at two hotels. We performed on four separate stages (each hotel had an upstairs an downstairs party, the upstairs parties were for the richer folks). We played guitar and sang to the first 5 songs on repeat (with a couple of solo ones by Rick that I added some flare to) for about an hour. Then we sang "Save Tonight" and "All Rise" on stage with the actual music as background. Not only did we dance like retards and make complete fools of ourselves (as we were paid to do), but we were dressed in jeans, frilly silk shirts, and cowboy hats. The only two gay cowboys in China that I know of, haha. So after our final performance last night, Jake, Lan (Jake's boss who set up the shows), Rick, the host from our last show, his girlfriend, and I went out to a restaurant. They served some of the best shrimp I have ever eaten. Jake, Lan, and I slammed beers (Rick, having puked "through his nose" the night before, was refraining from such shenanigans) and we all had a great time. Then I met up with Angela and we had a beer together at our famed McDonald's/Foreigner Bar. What an amazing Christmas...celebrated in a way that I will never ever celebrate the same way again. Pictures will be posted soon enough.

Despite not being religious at all, it was quite an awesome week to celebrate the birth of our Lord. Haaaaaaaaah.

Updates

Here are some stories I have from the past couple weeks:

- A week or two ago I purchased some items at a convenience store. The clerk gave me my change but then he also handed me two sticks of Double Mint gum. Being thoroughly confused, I looked at him and then counted my change to make sure I had the right amount. I was missing wu jiao (essentially, fifty cents). Apparently, they did not have any wu jiaos so the clerk thought a proper replacement would be two sticks of gum. As soon as I realized this I started cracking up and left the store. I asked someone about this and they said it's a fairly regular occurrence: "If they don't have the proper amount of change, they will fish around for something to give you instead." I then lost my two sticks of gum in a bet later that night. True Romance came out in 1993, not 1994...damn it.

- The other night a group of us was eating dinner at a restaurant that we frequent. The patrons in a private room off to the side were getting particularly rowdy. As we stole glances into the room we saw the lights turning on and off, girls hanging off of guys, and dancing. Two girls would leave the room every 15-20 minutes to go to the restroom together and each time they came out they would be drunker than they were before. Each time they came out they hung off of each other a bit more and lost their step a little more. Finally, one guy in the room ran out of the room with his hand over his mouth. Rather than running towards the bathroom, he ran towards the stairs, held down his puke for a split second and then spewed it across the floor, and then again by the stairs...then I think he left (on a sidenote, the wait staff didn't decide to clean up the mess for another 10 or 15 minutes...maybe they were drawing straws?). As girls continued to leave the room we were patiently watching and praying that one of them would slip in the puke. Only after it was cleaned up (with a broom no less!) one of the girls in stilettos slipped and fell. I couldn't contain myself and burst out laughing. Having been thoroughly embarrassed the girl was helped up by her friends and they continued their drunken trek to the restroom. Before coming back into the party room. The girl who slipped and fell turned to our table and screamed (in a thick Chinese accent) "Fuck youuu!!!"

- We get a month and a half off for travel starting January 3rd. This is the plan so far: Angela and I are going to pick up Jon and Terri in Beijing on the 5th. We will return to Shijiazhuang until the evening of the 8th when we will go back to Beijing, spend the night there, and fly to Shanghai the morning of the 9th. In Shanghai we will be meeting with our friends Kara, Willie, Bjorn, and Hanne which is going to be amazing. We will be Shanghai until about the 15th when we will return to Beijing and have one or two days to sight see before we see Jon and Terri off again. Then Angela and I will meet our friend, Daniel (who now works in the North), in Harbin, which is known as Ice City. Harbin is in the most northern reaches of China and the temperatures are supposed to be as low as -20 or -30 degrees F. It's most famous for it's architecture (heavy Russian influence) and ice festival which essentially occurs the entire month of January. On the way back from Harbin we will hit two capital cities (can't remember their names at the moment). Then Angela will head back to Shijiazhuang to get pack up because she leaves the country January 30th. Then I will head to Luoyang, Xi'an (terra cotta warriors), and then meet Billie in Chengdu. The last part is heavily tentative but after all that I will be returning to Shijiazhuang mid-February. If this all works out...it's going to be a miracle.

- Weight. Unlike it is in the West, people more openly talk about others' weight problems. It is just not a taboo thing here like it is in America, especially when talking about womens' weight. Many of the Drake girls have gone shopping for clothes and some of them have been told they are too big or fat but store clerks (when clearly, they are not at all). My tutor told me that in high school (and even now to a lesser extent) his friends make fun of him for being "fat", but in fact he's just got some chub. They actually tell him the reason he doesn't have a girlfriend is because he's "fat." I asked, "Doesn't it make you feel bad when your friends call you fat?" He said, "No, I know they are just kidding." But obviously he has taken it personally because I see him exercise outside for the sole reason that his friends DO call him fat. Even while I was giving my final examinations this week many girls mentioned that they like to eat and that is why they are so fat, when really I wouldn't consider any of them fat. I feel like it's a huge self-image issue, but they approach really lightheartedly which makes me think it's definitely a bigger issue than they let on. Also, today during my final examination, I asked one girl to describe her father (What's you Dad like? Want to meet that Dad! haha) and the first thing she said was that he is "kind of fat." I then replied, "You must really love your father."

I'm a Man! I'm 40!

I know that it's a different culture, and every culture has different perceptions, customs, and values concerning masculinity/femininity/gender, but some here are just ridiculous!

For example, we regularly eat in restaurants next to obnoxious and loud tables of drunk businessmen. The other night we were sitting next to a table of older businessmen who drinking out of a huge jug of baijiu. All their faces were red and they were getting increasingly loud. All of a sudden one of them started yelling at another and pounding his fist on the table. I asked a Chinese girl we were with what he was yelling about and she said that he was telling the other one he had to drink more. And from what I understood, for no particular reason either. This dispute was so intense that another one of the men had to separate them and console he each one separately to calm them down. After a while things settled down again.

Drinking and smoking are basically rites of passage for men here. The more you drink the more of a man you will be. They are worse than frat boys...well...sometimes. Smoking is also perceived to be a masculine activity (although some women smoke, not nearly as many).

Another thing men do is at the gym, they will take off their shirts in front of everyone and check themselves out in the mirror. I suppose this happens in America, but this happens here when they make sure other men are around to watch them. The same thing happens when they decide to show everyone how much weight they can lift. They will wait until the gym is busy and there are a lot of other people around to max out.

I told my Chinese friend, Jake, that I had started taking yoga classes. He said, "That is so gay! Only women take yoga classes." From what I have seen thus far, that may be true, but then I asked, "What's more gay: Flexing your muscles, half naked, in front of a mirror with a bunch of other guys or being in a yoga class with a room full of women?" He really didn't know what to say to that.

The Chinese also have traditional views on masculine and feminine roles within a relationship. And by "traditional", I mean that they are still oppressive towards women. Here's a quick example:

The other day one of my students came to my office hours because she wanted help studying for her Oral English examination. This examination is huge because passing it gives the student a sort of certification which allows them more leeway when applying for jobs. My student brought into a practice book that had sample questions and answers. She wanted to go over the "Gender" section and these are literally some direct quotes from that section:

"Women have more emotional natures. Some women are very sensitive and narrow-minded."

"Most women have to choose between a successful career and a happy life. As a result most women lose enthusiasm for work once they get married, and take up full responsibility for housework and children, while their husbands pursue careers."

No joke. I was laughing out loud and my student was bewildered as to why I found it so hilarious. I tried to explain it to her as best I could, but she was of the opinion that men and women still have firmly established roles in society and in relationships.

There was also a drawing she had to describe. The drawing was a split between showing a woman stressed out at work and then showing the same woman stressed out at home trying to do housework and take care of the children. The drawing was called "The Double Burden." After laughing, I asked, "Can't the husband help with housework and taking care of the children?" She said that although that is mostly considered the work of the woman, that her parents both shared housework duties, but that that is a bit of an anomaly in China.

Also, concerning relationships. I regularly see student couples fight in public anywhere in campus. Usually, the girl will be crying, yelling, and/or hitting the boy on the shoulders or chest, and the boy, straight faced, will either be standing still or will be attempting to pass the girl. Since girls and boys aren't allowed to visit each other's dormitories, many scenes like this which would normally take place in private quarters take place in public. On the other hand, you can also see couples making out in more "private" corners of the campus.

Like I said before, I know it's a different culture, but some of their views on gender just seem a bit...outdated?...and hilarious.

Sorry to drop a mini-sociological report on you, I just find it interesting!


On a completely different note, many of my students have been getting sick (it's that time of year). If a student is sick, one of their friends usually speaks up for them in class and says, "(Insert name here) has a cold, he/she went to the hospital." At first I thought that "hospital" just meant the school doctor, but this kept on happening. So one day I asked, "When you say hospital, do you mean the actual hospital or the school health center?" Whoever I asked then acknowledged that it was indeed the hospital. So apparently Chinese like to go to the hospital for colds and headaches. Now I think it's just their excuse for skipping class. Pretty dramatic excuse, I should say.

Chinese Thanksgiving

On Wednesday night we went to a club that was just opening up. We know the owner through a friend of a friend. The club owner may have named his club after our Drake friend, Jason, but there is another Jason we hang out with too. In any case, I had a good chuckle when the huge sign for the club read: JASON CLUB.

This little waitress got shitfaced with us. Whenever someone would fill up a drink at our table, she would also fill up and say, "Gombei!" which means something like "empty glass." She couldn't have been more than 5'3" and she was making all the guys drink and dance with her (not that we were complaining). She was absolutely hilarious, piss drunk, and bouncing off the walls. Hopefully someone has a video of her showing me this absolutely retarded dance (let's just say I made the entire table of Drake people crack up). After going to this club, it was finally confirmed for me that the Chinese (mostly the men, I suppose) have no dancing skills at all...if only you could see what I've seen.

As the club was gradually emptying, we were all dancing and suddenly our friend, Daniel, just kind of passed out on the floor. We tried to slap him awake but to no avail so we had to carry him out of the bar. (Sidenote: This is not the first time this has happened. A couple months ago he passed out at a club in a booth and didn't wake up until the morning and a security guard had to let him out). Soon afterwards, the guy who was buying all our drinks for us ironically also passed out and we had to carry him out. Not only all this, but it was also the night of the Mongolian New Year and a bunch of Mongolians from my apartment building were there and they were also heavily intoxicated. All in all, it was quite a shitshow. Afterwards we got drunk food and I got a taxi back with the Mongolians and ended up staying up until 4:30 drinking with them. I made them try Jim Beam and they liked it. All one of them could say in English was, "Motherfuck!" and "I hate Chinese people!"

For Thanksgiving day meal the next day, Megan, Mikey, Angela, Tamara (Italian girl), Shirly (Chinese girl), Bence, and I went to Andy’s apartment. Andy is here in the window tinting and solar paneling business (if I remember correctly) and is quite well off here in China. We met him through our Argentinean and Hungarian friends Fabian and Bence. After Bence agreed to cook, Andy and his visiting friend, Justin, decided to buy all the ingredients. Bence cooked for nearly 12 hours before we were ready to eat at 8 p.m. Unbelievably, even by the last couple of hours, Bence was still dancing, headbanging, singing, and cooking (sometimes all at the same time). I would mostly credit this to Bence being quite ADHD. Apparently Angela helped out too but only at Bence's command: "Stir this" or "Taste this" but that was all the help that Bence wanted or needed. We had turkey, garlic potatoes, mashed potatoes with gravy, garlic bread, cranberry chutney (the only thing that was not made from scratch), pumpkin pie, and strawberry cake. The pumpkin pie didn't have the same consistency of pumpkin pie as we know it because we had pumpkin pie made from scratch...yea, that's right. The inside of a pumpkin was literally mashed up to make the filling. Bence said, "I didn't know what a pumpkin pie tastes like or even looks like so this is what I thought it would be" and lo and behold, it was awesome...especially with the homemade whipped cream.

On Friday we went out drinking for our Jake's birthday. Lots of the usual foreigners were out plus some new ones who I met. After wondering around for a while I came back to look for my coat because I wanted my camera. Along with mine, the pile of "foreigner" coats was missing. I became very agitated as I searched every nook and cranny of the club. Finally I was pissed off and decided to stand up on a wobbly table full of drinks (like any irrational drunk pissed off person would do) and was immediately asked to get down. Finally, after losing all hope as everyone was leaving. Someone pulled at my coat, along with two Japanese girls' coats (!?). Fuckin' A! I guess one of our foreign friends put all the coats in one fucking cubbie without telling us. Dumb bastard.

On Saturday morning we went to Handan which is only about an hour and a 1/2 away by train. I was totally hungover as balls. The Drake people that teach at Handan graciously offered to cook us a Thanksgiving feast and we, of course, accepted. This was literally the biggest Thanksgiving I had personally ever seen. Chicken, cornbread, cauliflower, green beans and mushrooms, apple pies, pumpkin bars, mashed potatoes, butternut squash soup, the list goes on and on. There was entirely too much food for the 15 of us so the Drake people that teach there invited about 20 or 30 of their students to help and there was still food left over. Amazing. I could have just laid around and eaten that food for a week and not even cared. We watched as their students performed dances and break dances for us...and we showed them the chicken dance, haha. Afterwards we went to a karaoke place, but as most people were still in a Thanksgiving coma there wasn't the energy there usually is at karaoke so we went home and watched Home Alone.

I will write about Beijing later...

More Updates

- This club that we frequent has drinking competitions once a night on Friday and Saturday nights. In one of my first blog posts, I mentioned that I was coaxed into one of these drinking competitions where people are five or so people are selected to have a chugging contest. Last night when they announced that they were selecting people, I tried to make this drunk ass Chinese guy who had given me a shot earlier go up on stage. My plan backfired when he and his friend practically pushed me on stage. But I went up against 4 or 5 Chinese guys and I ended up beating them (woo!). Then they had another round with different people. There is a Canadian named Tyler who ALWAYS ends up winning these competitions. I think he can just open up his throat and he just inhales beers in about 10 seconds. So Tyler went up and won his round and so it was just Tyler and me. I have no idea where they came from, but there were some Chinese Canadians (?) who were yelling "Fuck U.S.A.!!!" And then I said, "Barack Obama!!!" and they shut up for a second and shook my hand and then continued yelling "Fuck U.S.A.!!!" Anyway, the announcer said that it America vs. Canada which only encouraged more yelling from the Chinese Canadians. I lost pretty badly. Tyler finished his beer by the time I only finished half of mine. All in good fun and second place isn't half bad.

- I began this list in an e-mail to my Grandma and parents. It is a list of American food/drinks that I have been craving:

egg salad sandwiches
milkshakes
burgers
cheese (of all types)
breakfast everything (especially breakfast bagel sandwiches that have cheese, egg, bacon, and sausage)
sandwiches with a lot of shit on them (i.e. turkey with mustard, mayonnaise, onion, tomato, pickles, etc.)
thick, creamy American ice cream
BBQ meat
the salads I made at home
smoothies
coffee
pasta
whiskey
gin and club soda
GOOD beer (the beer here are all lagers and they have as low as 1.0% alcohol percentage up to around 4.0% alcohol percentage (ugh)...I'm going to start sticking to the rice liquor...less calories and much much more alcohol)

We can get pizza here so that's not on the list. But I could really go for some cream cheese pizza from Pizza Shuttle. Do they deliver to China?

Not surprisingly, I'm sure I've been losing weight while not being able to purchase or consume any of the aforementioned foods. I've also been working out about 4 or 5 days a week. I'm usually eating fruit for breakfast, rice and vegetables or noodles for lunch, and then bigger meals for dinner. I am one healthy foreigner.

- I don't think I have posted elsewhere...and I really can't believe I haven't. Similar to how we say "uh" or "um" when searching for words, the Chinese say, "Ne ge" or "Zhe ge" (mostly the former) which literally means "that one" and "this one", respectively. They say "Ne ge" ALL THE TIME. It is completely out of control. The funny part is, which some of you may have guessed by now, is that "Ne ge" sounds almost exactly like "nigga." It definitely caused all of us some confusion when we first got here.

- This happened a while ago, but I don't think I posted this. Of all the characters I've met so far in China, the most eccentric has been a Finnish guy named Klaus. This guy is fucking balls-to-the-wall crazy and a total dick (although I will admit it was fun hanging out with him if you were on his good side). My friend Jake says his problem is that "he has more money than he knows what to do with" but I think having 5 STDs (yes, he admitted this to Jake when he was drunk) and having an unhealthy obsession with Elvis Presley at least may not contribute to any sort of sanity. Whenever we went to karaoke with Klaus we knew one of two things were going to happen: 1. Klaus was going to hog the microphone, 2. Klaus was going to sing an obscene amount of Elvis while doing a great impression of The King. One particular night myself, Jake, Erik (Drake guy), Daniel, Klaus, and two of the Belarussian girls (Diana and Tanya) went to karaoke (KTV). As predicted, Klaus was hogging the microphone and being a dick. Erik and Klaus were being dicks to each other all night. Their personalities did not mesh well. Klaus kicked Erik while he was singing, Erik purposefully broke a cigarette that Klaus had offered, etc. Finally we were on our last song and Erik and Klaus were singing together. Erik attempted to put his arm over Klaus' shoulder but Klaus pushed him away and started yelling at him. Klaus, being versed in kickboxing and having a brief stint in the Finnish Navy could have beaten the living shit out of Erik. Instead, Klaus spit on Erik a number of times and called him a bunch of names ("You fucking American pig!!!"). The only reason Klaus didn't was because he could've gotten kicked out of the country. Quite an exciting night.

- The illustrious Michael Edward Day will be visiting these shores in a week and a 1/2. He will be subjected to absurd amounts of rice liquor, Chinese stares, "Hellos!", babies peeing on the sidewalk, edible chicken feet, and subsequently probably a lot of foul digestive problems. You're going to have so much fun Mikey!

Baby, I'm A Star! And Other Updates

- For a month or so, my Chinese friend, Jake, has been hyping Christmas Eve. This is because Jake works for a production company that organizes foreigners to perform in different banquet halls around the city for some major bucks on Christmas Eve. Jake has guaranteed each of us 1000 RMB ($150) for just performing on that night! That is a little under a 1/3 of my monthly salary.

Anyway, it is looking like I'll be performing a couple. A British guy named Rick will be performing a couple of Beatles songs and "Save Tonight" by Eagle Eye Cherry with me and I might be doing a duet with my friend Angela (Sonny and Cher? The Mamas and The Papas?)

In preparation for this, some of us went to a photography studio last night to get promotional photos taken. I brought my guitar and struck a number of poses ranging from pensive, introspective, fun-loving, and hey-I'm-an-extremely-attractive American-who-will-drive-your-daughters-crazy look. Actually I felt mildly uncomfortable and I'm unsure whether or not any of my photographs turned out that well. It was slightly intimidating having three Chinese men telling me how to pose when I couldn't understand them. Luckily, Jake was there to translate. I've never taken press/promotional photographs so I really had no idea what was going on.

While my shoot took about 10 minutes the girls I came with went all out. They applied different layers of makeup, changed clothes, and did multiple shoots. A couple of the Belarussian girls I came with have done modeling before so they were much more comfortable in front of the camera than I was.

Besides Christmas Eve, I guess I will also be playing a show in a couple of weeks so I need to start learning these songs (God, I hate "Save Tonight", someone shoot me). Not sure how much I will get paid but it should be decent.

Hopefully I will be able to get these photographs from my "press shoot" and then I can post them here.

I'll try to not let all this stardom go to my head...hah.

- I recently got a job teaching Neurologists English. I will be teaching them for the next two weeks because, apparently, they have a doctor from Israel visiting them (I have no idea why) so they want to improve their English so they can better communicate with him. They are paying me 200 for 2 hours a day (which is absolutely amazing) plus some extra dough for the taxi rides. These doctors have a great sense of humor and are willing to learn so I don't think it will be bad. One thing I have noticed is that hospitals in China are not nearly as clean as they should be. I saw many nurses leaving the elevator with trashbags full of hazardous material (I can't think of a better word for it...but it includes dirty syringes and bloody bandages...medical waste...? I think I'm losing a lot of my vocabulary here...) and one of the trash bags literally had blood leaking out of the top of it. Not only that, but the nurses were not wearing any gloves. In fact, no nurses in the entire hospital, even when peering into patients' rooms, were wearing latex gloves. The bathroom they led me to was more clean than my restrooms I've been to in China, but there were definitely several flies flying around and the smell wasn't so pleasant.

- Halloween Night! I've been watching an absurd amount of Trailer Park Boys in my free time (for those of you who don't know, TPB is a Canadian show about...you've guessed it...some guys who live in a trailer park and it's one of the funniest shows ever) so I decided to be white trash for Halloween. I also decided to find the most white trash bottle of whiskey that I could find which ended up being Black Velvet. Throughout the week before Halloween my Norwegian friend Bjorn kept on asking me what I was planning on being for Halloween and I also asked him. He said, "I really just want to find a huge teddy bear that I can put over myself." I seriously thought he was just joking, but sure enough, when he came into the apartment we were pregaming at he was wearing a humongous teddy bear costume. You had to lift the head of the bear to see Bjorn's face. It was absolutely ridiculous and photographs will appear here as soon as they surface elsewhere. Anyway, it was like foreigner-palooza at my friend Sable's apartment. There were about 30 of us: all the Drake people, two Italian girls, two New York girls, a couple British dudes, the Norwegian friends, Bence (the Hungarian metalhead), Fabian (Argentenian dude), and a gaggle of our Chinese friends. We went to karaoke and I think the highlight for me was singing "Can I Play with Madness" by Iron Maiden with Bence while standing on a table making metal poses and faces. I blacked out before we went to the club. I haven't been that drunk in a long time. Alissa, who has known me since freshman year, said in Beijing that I had calmed down since college...but I was sick while I was in Beijing and barely drank at all. However, the day after Halloween, Alissa said that I was stumbling around and swaying back and forth and was "the old Josh she knew in college." I'm glad that the old me is a stumbling, stupid drunk. Anyway, I woke up the next morning, realizing I had lost my phone and had drank nearly the entire bottle of whiskey by myself...

- (Most) everyone here is very excited that Obama is our new president. We celebrated a bit last night but I did not stay out too long because I had to teach the Neurologists this morning. I had to restrain myself from laughing out loud but one of the Neurologists was very excited to talk to me about Obama.

She said, "It is the first black president you have had in a long time."
I hesitated, "Well...actually, Obama IS the first black president."
she replied, "Abraham Lincoln was not black?"
I said, "No, he was definitely white."

- This really has nothing to do with my adventures in China, but it's mildly amusing especially considering one of my friends from Drake is Polish but was raised in Indonesia (Hi Piotr!). Especially look at the photograph of the writer in the left hand corner: http://www.indonesiamatters.com/1680/how-to-get-a-bule-man/

"China smells like poopy." - Nick Strandell (for those of you who don't know him, he is a friend of mine from Drake and that is a direct quote)...thanks Strandeezy

Mountain Man (Sports Weekend Part 2)

On Saturday morning all the foreign teachers from my school left to go to a mountain three hours outside of our city. There were five Drake students from this year, one from last year that is teaching again this year (Shirly), a Canadian couple (Noelle and Norman), a Japanese teacher, and two Ukrainian teachers (one teaches Russian, the other teaches piano) along with our waiban Zhang and his family. The name of the mountain is Zhangshiyan. On Saturday we hiked to a couple locations. One was to this large concave part of the mountain which was perfect for echoes. The other was led to a temple that overlooked a dammed pond. A very ideallic scene, indeed. You can see it in the pictures.

On Sunday, we climbed the largest part of the mountain. I don't think any of us knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into. We took a lift up to one location and then we ended up going up what seemed like a myriad of stairs. It was hilarious though, because at one point it seemed like whoever constructed the stairs in the rock stopped caring because the stairs gradually started becoming just footholds. Some spots got really steep. It took us about an hour and a 1/2 to get up the mountain but it was well worth it and we explored the peak for about another hour and a 1/2. One of the Ukrainian teachers has to be at least 60, but she didn't faulter at all! She's one tough old bird.

On the way back to Shijiazhuang, our driver hit a number of bumps in the road without slowing down. Some of these bumps literally forced us out of our seats. After one such bump, the engine gradually stopped running. The driver attempted to turn over the shuttle a couple of times but to no avail. Each time there was a clicking noise, and from my limited knowledge of cars, this means that there is an electrical malfunction. Our driver opened up the compartment holding the battery and knocked some things around with a wrench. I thought "Oh, well that will help." Eventually we all got outside of the shuttle and the driver asked us all to push. We pushed to get the shuttle going at a good speed until the driver tried to turn it over (just like Little Miss Sunshine). We tried this three times to no avail. Finally, the driver opened up the fuse compartment in the passenger side, reconnected one of the fuses, and everything was just dandy.

Not too many other funny stories to tell besides that. It was just a really satisfying weekend.

One funny thing though: On Saturday evening when we had dinner, our waiban asked us what we wanted to drink. He said, "Would you like to drink...ALCOHOL?" and as he said alcohol his eyes got very large. Maybe you had to be there.

Also, when we asked our waiban what time we were having dinner when we got back from hiking he said, "Later, later." This is his usually his answer to questions concerning what time events will take place. We said, "Well...we would just like to know whether we have time to rest or take a shower." He said, "Ok, 10 minutes." haha. I think his notion of "later" is anywhere from within a few minutes to a couple years from now.

Blitzkrieg on Beijing (Sports Meeting Weekend Part 1)

After requests and threats from some of you, I have finally got around to writing another post. Either my blog is awesome or you guys have nothing better to do (maybe both?) Really guys, it's only been two weeks since my last one.

Well, I'll begin with the most recent adventures. This last weekend, all the colleges in my city had what they call a "sports meeting" which essentially a time for the student teams to play each other in different sports. Because of this, we got Thursday and Friday off from teaching. Normally, I have Thursdays off and only one class on Fridays so it wasn't that big of a deal to me. I had every intention of viewing at least a little bit of the sports meeting, but this is what happened...

On Wednesday night I went out with my Chinese friend Jake, Scottish friend Daniel, this Canadian named Tyler who is kind of a dick, Angela, and Sable. Daniel had just had an amicable breakup with his girlfriend, but he was still real down about it...and had every intention of getting piss drunk. The funniest part of the night is when we left the club and Daniel downed the rest of the beer and threw it on the ground right in front of the club smashing it to pieces...all right in front of the DJ who was just leaving. Tyler and Jake left but Daniel and I ended up staying at a barbeque drinking until about 3:30 in the morning. When I came back to my place I had to wake up the door man. He came to the door and said, "So laaaate!" I apologized and drunkenly explained to him that my friend and his girlfriend had just broken up and I just came back from consoling him. I'm not sure if he understood...

The morning after I didn't feel like doing a whole lot but went out to lunch with a few people. During lunch I got a call from Jake who asked me if I wanted to go to Beijing with him and these Belarussian girls we're friends with....in two hours. I have enough money and had no plans so I said, "Why not?" I got home, packed, and met them at the train station. The tickets for the 4:00 train were sold out so we had to get tickets for the 7:15 train...which were standing only tickets. (Sidenote: In China, they "overbook" trains so that after all the seats are sold out, you can still buy tickets. The kicker is that since you don't have a seat, you have to stand where there is room.) This was a little disappointing, but we knew we would still arrive in Beijing for prime time party time. We ate and came back to the train station only to find out that the train was delayed until 8:45 so we waited it out for another hour and a half or so. The train was packed. Jake said he had never seen a train so full of people. There was literally barely enough room to carve out your own space to stand or sit. Not only this, but employees attempted to roll carts with food and other refreshments through the overly crowded aisles. This was met by anger, both passive-aggressive and aggressive-aggressive, by those passengers trying to get what sleep they could in the aisle. Their anger was met by anywhere from cold indifference to annoyance from the employees. I'm not the type of person to complain and I knew I would look back and laugh about it so I just solved some sudoku puzzles, drank beer, and talked with my fellow travelers. The highlight was when someone suddenly came into our car with a box of packaged goods, and started talking very loudly, waking up many of the passengers. He was a salesman trying to sell a really odd assortment of goods, the only two I remember are foot paddings and socks that were supposed to be impossible to rip. He was right in front of me so I made funny faces at him while he was trying to give his schpiel. Most of my faces were exaggerated feigns of interest which not only made Jake and the girls laugh but also the salesman. He definitely got tripped up a couple times during his schpiel from laughing at my faces. Despite the terrible time we had standing on a hot, crowded train for three hours, I would have not felt right about leaving China without having experienced the standing only train.

We got to Beijing at 12:30, got to our hostel and actually went out to the bars and clubs at 1:30 in the morning until about 5. The part of Beijing we were in had a couple bar strips (not strip clubs, those are illegal), so we just went out, danced and had a good time. Met a man from Kazakstan (and I was not even tempted to do Borat impersonations) and a New Yorker that we hung out with for a while. The hightlight of the night was going to a club and seeing about half the hipster Chinese guys in the club were wearing black-rimmed glasses. It was pretty hilarious.

The next morning we woke up at 8 and went shopping. We went shopping in the Silk Market (this huge "mall" with pretty high quality clothes with reasonable prices you can haggle down). Not only did the Chinese merchants speak perfect English but they would practically grab at you as you walked by.

"Be a good boyfriend and buy this purse for your girlfriend!"
"You need some new shoes don't you? Want some New Balance shoes?"

While we were walking around we saw these two short, stalky Indian men talking to this Chinese girl about the price of a shirt. In a very thick accent, one of the Indian men pointed at the girl and said, "Are you crazy?! Do you have a temperature or something?" and held the back of his hand against the girl's forehead. Another time I was walking with Jake and a merchant shouted out to us, "Hey, you!" Jake looked around. Then the merchant said, "Not you! The white guy! Hey white guy!"

Jake and I decided to leave the girls for a while and go to Tianamen square. Not much else to say about that except that it was big and awesome. We watched a communist propaganda film in a shop near by. I'll put up some pictures later.

After a while Jake and I started to make our way back to the train station for our train that was leaving at 4:00. The girls call Jake and tell him that they didn't leave the Silk Market until 3:20...and it takes at least 30 minutes to get form the Silk Market to the train station...after a lot of stress, the girls arrived at the last minute and we hopped on the train.

BLITZKRIEG ON BEIJING!

Khaaaaaaaaaan!!!

Well, we just retruned from Inner Mongolia. Inner Mongolia is a "province" of China that was essentially annexed, but the history is pretty long and involved (like Tibet for instance). We visited the capital city which is Hohhot (pronounced hoo-hot). There were eight of us that went plus a Chinese woman whose English name is Eileen. Eileen teaches at the same school that our Drake pals Sable, Amit, and Angela do.

We visited a mosque along with some Buddhist temples, went shopping (ugh...), and took in the sights and sounds of the city. Plus, we ate some Mongolian barbequed goat. Here are a few of the stories we brought back with us:

By far, the highlight of the trip was when we ventured an hour and a 1/2 outside of the city to the grasslands. Like Native Americans had teepees, Mongolians had gerts (pronounced yurts) which they were able to set up and dismantle with relative ease. We thought we were going to stay in a real gert but we ended up staying in a touristy area that had concrete gerts. Despite that, we had a lot of fun. We rode horses for a couple of hours on the great grasslands and saw some traditional dancing wrestling, and horse racing. The highlight was during wrestling when four Chinese men demonstrated how Mongolians wrestle which involves trying to trip your opponent. When they call for volunteers, our friend Megan enthusiastically raises her hand, but they pick three guys before they finally pick her. One of the guys doesn't realize he is going to wrestle Megan so when he sees Megan, she gives him a "strong man" pose and his eyes widen and he kind of steps back momentarily. Keep in mind Megan is about 6'0" with an athletic build and this guy was probably 5'8" or so and scrawny. Megan ends up taking this guy down to the ground and the guy is totally embarassed while his girlfriend laughs at him. But Megan ends up shaking hands with him and took a few pictures. This Chinese woman came up to me insisting she was a doctor because Megan had scratched her knee, but like any badass Megan refused medical service.

Before we came to the grasslands, we estimated that riding horses would cost us each 100 yuan or so (which is under $20) but they wanted to charge us 200 yuan (which is still not much, except that we are paid in yuan, not U.S. dollars) so we tried to haggle with the guy. This guy ends up getting furious. He picks up a stick of the ground and hits it against the board that shows what our options are for the horse riding while he yells at us. Poor, little Eileen still tries to haggle with him but to no avail. We acquiesce and pay 200 yuan. His mood immediately made a 180 degree turn. The money made the man very happy and he lead us towards the horses. With his fist thrust in the air, he yells, "LET'S GO!!!"

I cannot describe to you how sore our asses (and in general) were the day after riding horses. Not only from the horses but in our gert we slept on hard wood floors. The stirrups were really high so it was really hard to stand up on them.
Needless to say, it was funny to hear everyone, hungover as balls, grunt and moan in the morning and walking all funny. That and everyone expressed a slight pain when sitting down for the next day or two. Also, I think I am officially unable to conceive children now. Despite all our complaining, riding horses was a lot of fun. We stopped a couple places while we were riding. One to admire the grasslands, one to come to a prayer site, and the other to drink milk tea and eat some Mongolian snacks.

That night there was a huge dance party and I tried showing some Singapore dudes how to crip walk. In my excessively drunken state, I'm pretty sure I just made a fool of myself while they laughed. But we ended up hanging out with them for a while and went to a bar with them after the dance. We all danced and got involved in some big circle where everyone held hands and danced around the stage. Pretty awesome.

One conversation at one of our dinners was dominated by the topic of swear words in Chinese and English. I now know how to say fuck you, bitch, and dammit in Chinese. Eileen was confused when we explained the word, "shit" and that more appropriate synonyms are "crap" and "poop." Later, Eileen came up to me and asked me, "Is poop what you lay on your bed to sleep on?"
After I got my laughter under control I said, "No, those are sheets." Then she told me that the word for "improvised bed" in Chinese is something that sounds like poop so then I understood why she was confused (kind of).

During this trip I finally got the courage to say "kan shenme kan?" (what are you looking at?) to some Chinese. Except...it was two little boys, haha. I didn't say it very threateningly, but after I said it they both looked at each other with wide eyes and then looked away from us. I also said it to some women who were staring at us in a shop and a bunch of teenagers...so I think I got it out of my system now.

I'll add more stuff later as I think of them...

Updates...

- My friend Angela had been wanting to find a Chinese phrase that is the equivalent to "Who do you think you're talking to?" It is kind of a long story explaining why we wanted to learn this phrase. If you want the story, it is below, but if not, you can skip the next paragraph.

In the Lost in Translation DVD, they go behind the scenes while filming. Bill Murray has a phrase book entitled "Making Out in Japanese" that is for people who are college-age. The only Japanese Bill Murray learns is the phrase "Who do you think you're talking to? Eh? Eh?" Which he aggressively, but jokingly, says to all the Japanese workers on the set.

The other night, while talking to our Scottish friend, Daniel, he told us that a phrase he uses when people are staring at him is "What do you think you are looking at?" It is phonetically pronounced "Khan shuh-ma khan." I haven't used it in public yet (I am waiting for a group of teenagers to stare at me) I have been using it around Chinese people I know. I walked into my class the next day and everyone became quiet and looked at me like they always do. So I looked back at them, squinted my eyes and said, "Kan sheme kan? Eh? Eh?" and then the entire class erupted in laughter.

My students love when I speak Chinese. They think it's the funniest thing in the world. Not that my pronunciation is that bad (well...maybe), but they just think it's funny to hear foreigners speak their language.

- We've been hanging out with a lot of the other foreigners recently. One that just arrived is a Scot named Mike.
When I introduced myself I said, "Hi, my name is Josh."
He said, "My name is MAKE!"
I said, "Mike?!"
He said, "MAKE!"

Supposedly, he is teaching English, but by the way he talks, I have no idea how the students understand him. I can only imagine the twisted and confused expressions on their faces as he talks about how rugby splayers are all "wankas" or how politics is "complete shite." I think the English department at his school collectively put their heads in their hands when they met him face to face.

- There is a bar not far from my campus that we affectionately call the "Foreigner Bar" or the "McDonald's Bar" (being next door to McDonald's). Last night I brought out these two Norwegians, Hanna and Bjorn (and yes, Colin, I talked about black metal with them), and told them it was the Foreigner Bar. Lo and behold, we walk into the bar, the only people there are all the Drake people and many of the foreign teachers as well. Bjorn exclaimed, "This IS the foreigner bar!" Bjorn and Hanna are very soft spoken and a little reserved but they had fun. Especially with all the obnoxious U.K. people yelling out lines from Braveheart (making fun of Mike) or having a dancing competition in the middle of the bar. At the end of the night, they asked, "Are we going out again tomorrow night?" haha.

- I have one really obnoxious student who calls himself Larry. He was looking at this practice test for English students. I'm not sure, but I think it was the final test for English major seniors. He wanted me to fill out portions of it and I refused saying, "I'm not going to do your homework for you". But then he insisted that there was an answer key in the back and he just wanted to see how well I could do on one section of it. He claimed one of his professors said that even native English speakers do poorly on this section. He made a bet with me: if I got 18 out of the 25 questions right he was going to buy me lunch. How could I refuse? I must say that some of the parts had to be grammatically incorrect, but I ended up just missing one. He put his head on his table in defeat and said, "I owe you lunch!"

-This next week is another Chinese holiday so we get the entire week off. We are going to Inner Mongolia (which is considered a province of China). Maybe we will ride horses on the great plains of Mongolia? All I know is that it's going to be really cold and Mongolians drink a lot.


The end of this post will be dedicated to all the crazy things that my students and other Chinese say to me. So check back regularly:

"Mr. Gaston, call of nature." - my student T.T., it took me a minute but I started laughing before he left to go to the bathroom

Des Moines Friendship Garden

I can't believe I've forgotten to write about this until now.

Last Monday, everyone had the day off from school because the day before was the Mid-Autumn Festival Day, the national holiday I wrote about in a previous post. Anyway, a bunch of us went to this huge amusement park type place that also had a very large area dedicated to vegetation (not exactly gardens, but you know...just plants and trees.) We see a sign for the Des Moines Friendship Garden because Shijiazhuang is Des Moines' sister city.


The pictures tell the rest of the story.

We were all slightly embarassed, but very amused.