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