October Holiday: Beijing part 2

Ironically, my favorite thing about Beijing is not Chinese.  When I was visiting the Bell Tower I stumbled across this little American style coffee shop that looks like it dropped out of Seattle.  It has a courtyard with tables and chairs in the sunshine with a little dog running around people's feet.  The whole place had the cozy but run down feel of my favorite coffee shops like Fremont Coffee Company or Cafe Ladro.  Inside had these huge posters of old movies and bookshelves filled with old books (all in Chinese, unfortunately for me).  There was this cute little white kitten that sat on my lap for a while before jumping out the open window.

I have really been enjoying the expatriot life but I do miss living in Seattle pretty much every day. It was really good for my soul to drink hot coffee in the hot sun and pretend like I was back at FCC during finals.  Plus the cat and dog were super cute and I got some cuddle time.

The day after the coffee shop I went on a tour of the traditional historical sights of China.  First was the Summer Palace.  I met some people from Spokane to hang out with, which was awesome.

The Forbidden City was also a zoo, most of the reason why I went with a tour was because I didn't want to stand in line for 3 hours to get in, which is what would have happened had I gone on my own.

There were a lot of Chinese tour groups because it was the National Holiday and we followed this really cute group of students in their uniforms.  Chinese kids are funny and are just like American kids on tour, not paying too much attention.

I went to this place that my students all called 'snack street' and I can't remember it's real name.  However, it has two blocks of crazy things to eat on a stick.  I went with two of my new friends from Spokane who kept my company on the Forbidden City tour.  We ate some normal stuff, like pork filled buns, dumplings and chicken on a stick, as well as some pumpkin cakes which are pretty good (but better and cheaper at Sias).  This picture has some of the weirder stuff like sea stars, sea snake (ate it!), shark (ate that too!), sea urchins, silk worms, scorpions, octopus, sea horses, ostrich, deer, whole pigeons, chicken hearts, intestines, tofu and the like.

I took my dad to snack street as the first thing off the airplane.  Half way through I realized that maybe that was a pretty intense 'welcome to China' but he handled it pretty well.  We did find some pretty good kung pao chicken at resteraunt near by.

Dad and I climbed the Great Wall too, but he has the pictures from that, so maybe that will be a later post or a facebook only deal.  When I say climbed, I mean CLIMBED.  Now we are both Real Men.  Or at least that's what my students said to my dad when we talked about climbing the Great Wall and I didn't wan to be left out.  Saying that I'm now a Real Woman doesn't quite feel the same.  (Don't get angry with me, feminist friends!!)

And of course I made plenty of new friends during my time in Beijing, especially the ugly stone dragons that ward off evil spirits. They are just so ugly they're cute!!

October Holiday: Beijing part 1

My dad come to visit me during the National (October) holiday, which was super awesome.  I traveled from Zheng Zhou to Beijing by myself to meet him and them bring him back to school.  Dad actaully ended up being a couple days late, so I tooled around Beijing by myself, eating as much foreign food and cheese as I could.  (Hello Starbucks and a real latte!!!!)

The first day I was there I walked around Tianamen Square and people watched.  It never ceases to amaze me that Chinese people do things differently than Americans.  Obviously I know this to be true, but seeing it can be a totally different thing.  Of course, I made a list.

6.  Pop a squat.  Chinese people don't sit on the ground.  The ground is gross, I have said this many times.  So, the Chinese have developed a way to sit without touching the ground.  They squat with their feet flat on the ground.  Its pretty amazing.  Ive really only ever seen little kids do it in America, it requires being pretty skinny and small boned, something Americans don't always have.  This position is also required for the use of a squatty potty, and I am getting better at it.  But I still don't find it restful.

5. Umbrellas in the Sun.  Contrary to America's obession with being tan, Chinese women are obsessed with being pale.  On sunny days there are just as many umbrellas and parasols as if it's raining.  They don't understand the concept of sun bathing or tanning (Christina, don't come to China) and they often put bleach or some sort of lightening agent in lotion or soap to make your skin whiter.  Hence why I brought lotion from home.

4. Kids in Split Pants.  I may have mentioned this already, but kids pee on the street and little kids don't wear diapers, they wear crotchless pants.  It's always funny to see a kid in his or her parent's arm with their little bare butt hanging over the side of their arm.  Parents must get peed on all the time, though I have never seen it happen.  They do have a particular way to hold their peeing baby so they don't get splashed on.  When Dad and I were in Xi'an we took the bus to our hotel and the baby next to us started peeing on the floor of the bus.  Of the BUS! Dad nearly got off, and I am so jaded that I hardly even noticed untill the little stream of pee threatened my shoes.  Needless to say, most of my shoes are not coming back to America and are not allowed in my house.

3. Picture taking.  Chinese people, like Japanese people, are intense about their photo poses.  There is always a peace/victory sign involved, usually on both hands.  They also need to stand right next to whatever it is they are taking and point to it.  They also don't wait for you to finish your picture before walking in front of your camera.  I have had my picture taken by many people, some with me and some from afar.  My friend Jess with blonde hair attracts more attention than I do, which I'm kind of grateful for.  Though I do get asked if my hair curls naurally pretty often.

2. Purse Holding.  When couples go shopping or out together, the man always carries his woman's purse.  For extended periods of time.  Even if it's frilly and pink.  I think it's a way for him to stake his claim.  But men in the US would never get caught dead holding a woman's purse for more than 2 seconds.  For the most part.  That's something that I appreciate about Chinese culture: men are not threatened by things like holding purses or other things that would be stereotypically 'gay' in the US.  Of course it can go a little too far, like pop stars in pleather playing sparkly guitars (yes, it IS too far, Jess).  It does through off my gaydar but I don't mind.

1.  Matching Couple T-Shirts.  I have mentioned this in one of my early posts about campus, but my favorite thing that I have seen here have been couple t-shirts.  Chinese valentines day was right before I moved here so I saw a lot at the end of August, but I did find a few in Tiananmen Square.  There appears to be a rule that couple t-shirts cannot be innocuous.  They need to be a bright color (mostly purple or yellow and ocassionally pink!) and very distinctive.  I took this picture of the first couple after seeing two other couples with matching shirts and being too afraid to take their picture.  I shouldn't have been shy, I think they like the attention more than I do (which isn't too hard).  I found the second at snack street (more about that later) and asked if I could take their picture.  They got one with me too, so I guess it was a fair exchange.

The next day I went to go see the pandas at the zoo.  Needless it say it was a zoo with all the people there (get it? yeah? yeah?... it was a zoo at the zoo...?  I hear you laughing Holly Allan).  But seriously, it was crazy.  Expecially in front of the pandas.  Below is a picture of the area when you first get into the zoo and it was packed like that as far I could see over them. I fought the valient fight to get in to see the pandas and the big ones were boring.  They just slept while a thousand people took their pictures.

However, the baby pandas were freaking ADORABLE, I wanted to take one home in a basket.  They had just gotten fed so they were chowing down on their bamboo leaves and rolling all over themselves while doing it.  These were the pandas who were from Sichuan where the earthquake hit before the Olympics.

This post is turning into a beast, so I'm going to leave you with one final thought before taking a break.  That thought is: PANDA HATS.  They are amazing and I bought three.  I first saw this girl wearing one at the summer palace and I HAD to take a picture with her.  It turned out she spoke pretty good English and she told me that they were selling them all over Beijing.  I found one not ten minutes later and picked two up for 30 RMB (less than $5 for both) and wore it all day.  Amazing.  I still have it and I wore it to my first couple classes after the trip and my students thought it was hilarious and crazy that their teacher would wear such a cute panda hat to class.  It has come in handy when we sit on the roof to talk and drink beer.  Very warm and fuzzy.

61st Anniversary of the Founding of the PRC Banquet

So, Jess and I along with Jon, Jacob, Becca and Sammy went to a banquet in Zheng Zhou to celebrate the founding of the People's Republic of China 61 years ago.  I let my class go a little early so we could leave at 5.15 and so I had to teach for four hours in my banquet clothes, hair and make up. 

We got there and it was in a really nice hotel with marble everywhere.  Dinner was upstairs and we were some of the first ones to arrive.  Our early arrival was partly due to the fact that we were able to go through a checkpoint on the freeway where police men were diveriting traffic to a detour and our official banquet invitation got us through on the main road.

We sat down with Jess, Jacob and Sammy out our table as well as Julian who works in the Sias office with Becca.  There were also five Chinese people at our table, one we talked to was a lawyer and his daughter lives in San Fransisco.

The food:
First round of 'cold' dishes:
1. Jellyfish (ate it!)
2. Duck (ate it) with an awesome brown sauce
3. Tofu noodles (ate it)
4. A black fungus that is everywhere in China. (have eaten it before, will not do so again)
5. Veggies: lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions (yay tomatoes!)
6. Sliced cooked beef heart (ate it!)
7. Little whole shrimps in a spicy rub (ate it) with their little black eyes looking at you as you eat them whole.

'Hot' dishes:
1. Roasted chainsaw chicken (when they cut up with chicken into pieces without removing the bones first)
2. Chicken soup
3. Noodles
4. Fried rice (the best!)
5. Shanghai Greens
6. Fried lamb
7. Some weird potato and green pepper dish
8. Something else I didn't recognize but had mushrooms in it.
9. Sweet red bean soup (which was pretty awesome)

Dessert:
1.Coconut mochi balls (pounded rice cakes) with seseme on the inside.
2. Fruit (watermelon, cantelope, dragon fruit)
3. Baijou.  This is infamous in China, it's rice wine that's like 40-60% proof. It can really mess you up if you drink a whole bunch at a time, but they serve little baby shots of it as an after-dinner digestive helper.

Before dinner started there were a few speeches about how much China has improved since the PRC was established and how we need to follow in the steps of Deng Xiao Ping (not the Chairman!) and how Henan is a central part of this process.  We toasted lots and lots of people, us foreigners making a special point to speak with all the other foreigners in the room (for moral support being in a country where we don't understand the language or the food).

We met some folks who were the foreign teachers at Zheng Zhou University and there are only 6 of them.  It looks like they all get along, but I can't imagine having my community that small and personalities that don't get along.  It certainly makes me glad I'm at Sias with the 120 teachers we have. 

We also met a guy named Carl who teaches at a primary school here, he and his wife and their four children have lived here for three years.  I actually ran into him a couple days later at Home Depot in ZZ when I was there on a shopping trip.  Apparently he has a motorcycle that he's been working on.

I've decided that I do like going to banquets.  It gives me something to do and try interesting food (some of it good, some of it not).  There certainly are some down sides to banqueting, like Chinese people choosing your food that ends up with things like jellyfish and tofu ten different ways in weird sauces.  But at this point the pros outweigh the cons and I'm not jaded about stuff like that.

I have a whole bunch of posts coming from my vacation, I just need time to write them!!

Random Facts About China Part One

So, having lived here for six weeks (and also from visiting before), I have been gathering interesting random facts about China and Chinese culture.  As you probably can tell, I'm a big list person, so I thought I would start one.

1.China is on one time zone.  If you look at the outline of the time zone that China is a part of, you will see the typical strip of land, with the outline of China in the middle.  Everyone is on Beijing time, which makes it weird for people in the West, who should be three or four hours different.

2.  China doesn't follow daylight savings.  Our afternoon classes have been bumped up a half hour to let people get home before dark (at 5.30 during December and Janurary.

3.  Chinese medicine is based on a totally diferent system than Western medicine.  The whole internal temperature liked to spiritual energy thing.  Apparently a lot of it really works. 

4.  Chinese people sleep on wood boxes, for the most part.  Or with a slim, hard foam pad.  I have two slim, hard foam pads.  I am on the hunt for a nice foam pad.

5.  Chinese people tend to wear the same outfit for a couple weeks in a row.  They will wash it at night, but wear the same thing.  This is less true on the college campus, and the weather has been changing so people have putting on warmer clothes.

6.  It's rude here to talk with your arms crossed.  I do this when I teach, so maybe I should cut it out.

7. Weekends are not as reverent as they are in the States.  It's common to work on the weekends and there are very few 'weekend warriors."

8. Chinese women don't shave their armpits or their legs. 

9.  The 'comfortable' air temperature for houses and airplanes is ten degrees higher than the comfortable air temperature in the States. 

10.  Whenever the foreigners are playing sports, we draw a crowd.  We played a few rounds of volleyball and we had at least 20-30 people and children watching us play.  They just had an hour or two to stop and watch us play.  We played kickball afterwards in a field nearby and the same thing happened: 15 people showed us to watch us play.  It was almost like they texted their friends and said that some laowai (foriegners) were playing a weird sport and you should come and watch.  This happened in Tai'an as well, anytime we played games with the kids outside, we drew a crowd lined up along the fence.

This is good for now, I'll write more at a later date.  They will probably come in 10 list installments as I encounter them.