cheap spirits

This post is more of a preview of this coming weekend, but first I do have to say one thing about friday night. Cheapest night at a bar EVER. This place called Murals has a 12 dollar all you can drink special, and after 1:30 its all you can eat. We enjoyed ourselves.

This weekend we'll be going to visit the Three Gorges Dam. We'll actually be leaving for the flight in about an hour. We'll be spending 3 nights on a 5 star cruise ship, and returning to Fudan after that. To sum up, this is going to be beyond amazing. The TGD wont be around in a few years, so we are extremely lucky to be able to see this colossal structure before it is gone. I wonder if they have muslim noodles on the boat...They seem to be everywhere else. I'll put in some pictures and stories from friday night when i get back, but now I need a bowl of frosted flakes (yes they have plenty of that here). Happy americanizing.

Bruin's first game is 10/6 at 7PM at the florida panthers....im already excited.

The zoo, near death of an acrobat, my own personal strides and a few bits of info about China you might want to know.

Let’s see, what have I done that’s new and exciting. Last Saturday was certainly one for the record books. I rode an elephant, shook a monkey’s hand, almost saw an acrobat bite it, and began to see my life changing for the better before my eyes. How about them apples?

Let’s start with the elephant. We had to wake up in the wee hours of the morning (8:30AM) to head to the Shanghai zoo. The zoo, like so many other places here, has no rule enforcement. So you’d be surprised what you can do with bribery. We after an elephant show, which was really impressive, we paid about 2 American dollars a piece and were able to get onto a massive elephant and take a guided ride around the arena. It feels like you are being hoisted in one of those chairs that they used to carry people of importance in the old days. However, instead of a chair, it’s a writhing spine. Strange but insanely cool.

We were at the zoo for several hours, and the last stop was the monkey section. I. Love. Monkeys. The little ones would chase each other around and have mini American gladiator matches while hanging only by their tails. Better than TV, well Chinese TV anyway. We saw a gorilla and an arangatang. Both were bigger than I anticipated. The arangatang was really hairy. He had 2 foot long dreads coming out of is entire body. Might be a good look for Mo. Finally we got to the chimps. Separating you from the chimps is a wall that is about 4 feet high. Then there is a gap, then the cage. Like I said; no enforcement. We all jumped the wall and went right up to the cage. We high fived him, shook his hand waved at him and got him to wave back. We know it was a he, because he refused to put his little tiny monkey penis away. Once that was over we found the nearest sink and washed our hands profusely.

We left the zoo, went and ate lunch, and then walked around Shanghai, while we decided what we wanted to do before we went to the acrobat show. We ended up going to the plaza that the show was in, finding an arcade, getting Union to foot the bill for a VIP pass to the whole place, and proceeding to play everything in there. With the VIP pass, we were able to play all of the late 90’s video games for free, bowl, play ping pong, test how hard you could punch a pad, and pretend to be a soccer goalie, with a ball launcher and a big net.

The acrobat show was far and away the coolest thing I have ever seen. These people spent their whole lives training for this show. I guess they have a special school that has less math and science and 9 hours a day of acrobat training. They start at 3 years old or something. But let me say, it paid off. They are the best. During this one stunt, they were using this massive hamster wheel that had 3 smaller people sized hamster wheels inside of it. 3 guys would get in to the smaller ones and make it spin, while 3 more guys would get on top of the smaller ones, but still inside the bigger one and do tricks on them while they spun.

The problem came when the guys on top of the little wheels put bags over their heads and continued to do the tricks they were doing before. One of them lost his footing, managed to stay on the wheel for a second, then crashed into a pole, losing his footing and then fell, grabbed a rail, and hung over the side 30 feet in the air, fell again, took off the bag on his head mid flight, hit another pole caught it, but only for a second, and fell again and hit the floor with his upper back. The final fall was only about 10 feet, but that’s a long way. And we all just watched with horror, thinking “don’t dieee don’t die don’t die don’t diieeeee.” (There was a tune in my head to that, I’m not sure why). The show finished with a big ball, in which they put 7 motor cyclists, and had them going all different directions(including full virtical loops). Again we sang out little tune in our heads. It was an amazing show.

Since the weekend, not a whole lot has happened in terms of activity. I’ve come to the realization that I genuinely want to learn Chinese, and I mean to be fluent. It’s most likely going to take me a few years, as Chinese is harder than Japanese, English or just about any other language. We went out to dinner with another Union alumnus who graduated 2 years ago. He mentioned a course he took at Middlebury for the summer (9 weeks, no English whatsoever, 120 other kids with the same goal as you). He said it was great, and his description matched what I think I need to succeed in this endeavor.

The more time I spend here the more I really like what I’m doing, and the better my work ethic becomes. I started this term with the idea that I would put in as much effort as I did at Union on Chinese, and focus on seeing Shanghai as that would be something I most likely wouldn’t be able to do again. Now it’s quite the opposite. I know that I will be coming back here at some point, I still want to see shanghai, but I’m more interested in being able to communicate with the people the city contains, than really seeing the city. That’s where the real experiences come from anyway. I’ve found myself, going into shops, and having better but still broken conversations with the shop keepers about their products, not because I want to buy them(although I usually do, I’m saving money right into debt.) But rather because if their accent isn’t too thick, I can usually convey what I’m trying to say to him with words. My hand gestures are decreasing weekly and it’s a really gratifying feeling.

Now just some odd tidbits of information for those of you who have never been here.

1) Motorized scooters can ride on sidewalks. Again a complete lack of rules.

2) Chinese people love 3 things.

a. Giving peace signs in every god damn picture they take. The hippies are dead, give it up. It’s like they were just late with the trend America set in the sixties or something. They are usually only 10 years or so behind, but 50 is pushing it.

b. Honking their horns. Even if there is no one in front of them or anywhere near them for that matter. We were in a cab once, and you could see where the guy’s thumb had been pressing the horn because that section of the steering wheel was completely worn away. And if they don’t have a horn, the buy a bell and ring it till their ears bleed.

c. Wearing shirts that say english words even though they haven’t the slightest clue what it means. The best ones are the ones that make absolutely no sense. Here’s an example of one I saw today. “Honk if you love shoehorns”. Or another classic “the river =AWESOME come look Canada SEXY”…..You catch my drift, and for the record I’m not exaggerating at all, this is the kind of Engrish I see on a daily basis.

203 DVD’s I’ve come to the point where I'm going to have to figure out some way of getting all these home without having them taken at customs. To think I’ve spent less than 175 bucks on them….

Hockey season is starting on October 4th. Go Bruins! I'll be watching, there is no way im letting a massive ocean get in between myself and the NHL.

my night on my own

So last night (Thursday) we decided we'd go out because none of us had any morning classes on Friday. We went to one club, but the drinks were outrageously priced (cheap American prices) and we would have none of it, so we hopped in 3 different cabs (it was our group of 6 and a lot of Canadians).

When we arrived I noticed that the cab full of the union kids never made it, I figured they were lost but would eventually find there way in. I was wrong, they did get lost, but gave up and went home without me. Not that this is a big deal, but this was my first night out truly by myself. Beers were about 20 yuan, which works out to almost $2.50 for a beer. Good enough.

The music was all American, but the clientele was abundantly shanghainese. For those of you who don’t know yet, Shanghai has it’s own dialect of Chinese that is completely different from mandarin. In short, I can’t speak to anyone. So I wander outside with my beer, and I meet this kid from Sweden. Real nice guy, loves the house. We are chatting about anything and everything until we are accosted by 2 beautiful women who ask us “Amno ma?” (Translation: would you like a massage, I have sex for money). We shooed them away with pity. I wish I could make a lot of money some day and help these women get out of this business, its horrible to see. But such is life.

The Swede, myself, and his friends decide to go back in to the bar. I started dancing with this one girl with an amazing body, but as I look at the picture today, it was a good thing the lights were dim, because I may have actually found medusa. Seriously. It was bad. So eventually I moved along, and found another girl who was German, but born in China. Lucky for me she spoke English, German and Chinese fluently. This girl was much prettier. We ended up hanging out for an hour until she started smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke in my face. It was about 5AM at that point anyway, so I excused myself and hailed a cab back to the dorm.
I can now say that I can get around the city without any problem as long as I know where I want to go. My Chinese is very broken, but I know enough key words to now ask informed questions from cab drivers, shop owners and waitresses. Now if I could only read the damn menus.

140 DVD’s and counting.
Its the TV seasons that getcha.

HANGZHOU

Where do I begin, my internet hasn’t worked in about a week, so this is my first chance to do anything on it.

Let me start making up for lost time with this….China is amazing. Not like a really fun night out amazing, more of a life morphing amazing.

So the first full week of classes was last week, and its going to be hard, but I can already see improvements in my Chinese that I never saw at Union. Conversationally that is. I can survive at restaurants, order drinks at bars, and talk with great difficulty to women…(the last but most important piece of the puzzle)

On Friday afternoon, we went to the American consulate in Shanghai to meet a Union alumnus Jonathan Heimer. He is a large part of the reason that I’m absolutely positive I will be coming back here. The talk we had on the roof of one of the multitude of skyscrapers was extremely motivating. I’ve decided that Chinese is going to play a bigger part in my academic life than it ever has before. I’m determined to learn as much Chinese as physically possible over the next 10 weeks or so, and continue to retain it while I go through 2 terms of less efficient teaching. I plan to come back here on my own and live here for a while teaching English. I’m not sure when, but we’ll see.

On Saturday morning, we left for the Shanghai train station where we would depart for Hanghou. Hangzhou is another big city, with about 4 million people in it, but less actual space, so it seems just as or more crowded than shanghai. The train ride was boring and fairly uncomfortable as Jeff and Pye display here.

We went to this 900 year old pagoda, there’s not really much I can say about it, because that’s all it was. There was nothing inside besides stairs to the top. There were some pretty nice views from there, but nothing to scream about.

We then went further up the mountain, and into this hillside village. Here we washed our hands in a “lucky” 1000 year old well, and got to pull up our own buckets. This well was discovered by this guy with the same first name as me “long” which means dragon. So it is known as the dragon well. They claimed it gave their tea a special touch. The tea in this area is known as the best in all of china. The tea is shipped directly from this village to all government locations, because they refuse to drink anything else. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. We all got to drink several small cups of it, and I bought some to take home.

We then took a little boat trip on the west lake, and went out for the best Chinese meal we’ve had since we arrived. I took the chopsticks with me as a souvenir; I believe they are made of bamboo. We also got to see a water fountain show that was choreographed to music. Sweet. We went back to the hotel (we were only propositioned for massages with happy endings twice), and go to bed.

This is where the trip took a turn for the surreal. Most of us went to bed that night, however Jeff and Pye had actually slept the night before, and decided they would have a look around. I was asleep by 11, but at 11:30, there is a banging on my door. At first I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t stop. I made Sam get up and open it and Pye sprints into the room and leaps on the bed with me. He’s bouncing up and down, declaring that we need to come with him right now, because we would never believe it if he told us. Always up for an adventure we put on our clothes as fast as we could and headed down to the lobby. When we got there I asked Pye where we were going, and he said “back up!” confused I continued to follow. We got in another elevator and he pushed the button for the top floor. Pye began to explain what they had found as the elevator kicked into gear. On the 40^th floor, there was a club. At this club, there were dancers (not strippers), and they were the prettiest women Pye had seen in his life. Not only that, but the bar was full of women of which none were below an 8.

We waited anxiously in the elevator like it was Christmas morning. The doors open and we all but run inside. My first image is Jeff, sitting at the bar, with this look of a combination happiness, intoxication and disbelief on his face. We sat down next to him and ordered a round of drinks. 4 dollars a beer maybe less for a 2 ingredient drink.

The dancers were indeed inhumanly beautiful, and much to our double happiness (Chinese expression) so were the bartenders. Jeff admitted to me that he had never been attracted to a single Asian before but now he was attracted to 11 of them. So we order maybe 2 or 3 drinks, chatting up the bartenders in our best chinglish that we can manage, and we notice this other guy at the bar who has put about 500 American dollars worth of bills in a cup in front of him. We decided to make friends. He Buys us a round, and then another. We made friends with the guy on the other side of us too, and he bought us a round as well.

All of us are in prime form now, and the best parts are yet to come. We ask if we can get up on stage, and they say that we can. The next thing we know, is all 4 of us (Sam went to bed and I don’t know where John went) are on stage, and demanding that they play the Numa Numa song.

If anyone has seen the family guy episode where Peter and his friends play journey at a karaoke night, you’ll understand what happened here. Everyone in the world knows this song, not just college age Americans and Europeans. As we were Rocking out on stage (we each had our own microphone) everyone in the club sang along with us and people outside began coming in to join the ridiculousness. We were rock stars. We exited the stage and were greeted by another 10 beers that a few people had chipped in to buy for us. We did not however decide to start our own band.

Things settled down as we continued to enjoy the night. One bartender who was absolutely breathtaking, was having a little too much fun, and drank a little too much and became belligerent. Mike ordered 2 drinks and she took his 100 kuai note and pocketed it right in front of him and wouldn’t give him his drinks. This snowballed and began to involve 3 of us and more bartenders all fighting with this first bartender. The inebriated bartender finally put the 100 kuai note back on the bar, and told the barback to get the drinks. Mike had had enough and just snatched the note for himself and told her he didn’t want the drinks. “BU YAO BU YAO”. Now of course, the bartender wouldn’t just let this stand, oh no, she was going to put up a fight even if she didn’t know what it was for. She started accusing him of stealing the money, and in her rage took one of my unopened beers and smashed it on the ground. Then she took a swing at one of the other bartenders. (She’s 5 feet tall tops) Eventually she ended up stomping off in a huff. I don’t think they planned on letting her back in the next night but who knows, I was going to be in shanghai again at that point.

As the night wound down and we continued to drink, we managed to get up on stage one last time to dance along to Gunther. The highlight of this was picking up confetti off the ground and blowing it out of our hands all over the bar. We were greeted by more drinks when we returned to our seats. Some other crazy stuff happened but I don’t feel like writing it all down so you’ll have to ask me in person about it.

Eventually we decided we should leave (we needed to wake up in 4 hours) and we went to bed and were asleep by the time our heads hit the pillow.

The rest of the trip involved a Chinese breakfast (our first), a short lecture on the site of a palace that doesn’t exist anymore. (Hangzhou used to be the capital of china before Beijing was. At that time Shanghai was nothing more than a small fishing town.) Following the lecture which was really interesting that all of us fought viciously to keep our eyes open for, we went on a hike to the town/ forest where the temple/palace used to be located.

Taking the cab out of Hangzhou and walking through a poor town then into the woods, was a very strange transition. It’s easy to believe when you live in a city like Shanghai, that there are no more forests anywhere. The hike wasn’t too hard, but it was scenic and full of stairs. Felt the burn. We got to see a 20 foot tall Buddha that was carved into a rock face, and climbed up him and sat on his lap. We finished the hike, and threw caution to the wind. Enough with China! We are going to Pizza hut! Pizza hut is called Bi Sun Ke or something along those lines. The characters that make up the name literally translate to Succeed above expectations. Many parents of Fudan students take their children out to Bi Sun Ke before exams in hopes of boosting their scores. However I guess that 200 other people decided the felt like pizza hut at the same time, so the wait was over an hour. We settled for McDonalds and dumplings.

We got back on the train at 4ish and headed home, we played Rummy 500 the whole way, but with 4 people, it took forever. I ended up winning with a score of 365. We dropped our stuff off in our rooms, and went out for Italian food. After we returned it was around 930, we were all exhausted and still needed to do our work. That grindstone will be dust when I’m through with it.

I've got close to 70 new dvds now. Someone stop me.

I've been a little under the weather for the last few days, and I haven’t really felt the muse on my shoulder to write another one of these posts until now. Needless to say la douzi is no laughing matter.

The academic side of this trip has started to kick into gear. One of our three classes we are going to be taking is a Chinese culture class. So far it is really interesting. This week and the last

week it will be taught by professor Xie, but for the rest of the other weeks in between, we will have several different teachers. The first class focused on the basic facts of China, and any questions we had about it. Over 90% of 1.3 billion people live in the coastal cities in high-rises like the ones pictured here. These buildings are everywhere and go on for miles and miles in every direction. It’s insane.

Before I left, quite a few people were trying to make lists of DVD's they wanted me to bring back for them. Apparently the Chinese government has been cracking down on these bootleg sales, and they are much harder to find. Xie laoshi did however point us to one store that still sold them by the truck load. (Yes they are sold in real stores). I picked up 10 for about 7 US dollars (68 Yuan) so far Pirates of the Caribbean was the only one that worked well. A lot of them look and sound perfect, except you can't hear the voices. It’s pretty strange.

The next day for lunch, we found this place that had some American food, and dying to get away from the Chinese standard, we went and had burgers and pizza. The burgers were ok but the pizza wasn't really pizza. The chicken in it had bones, there were several vegetables that didn't belong there, and the crust was this super buttery pie crust, it was pretty strange.

The dining room (which is a lot like a star bucks) is connected to the kitchen by a window. When the cook was done with a meal, he would ring a bell. At that moment every server employed would drop anything at all that they were doing and make a bum rush for that

window, sometimes elbowing their fellow servers out of the way. We coined it the rat race. Also we ordered some flavored beers, but instead of being brewed with flavor, they took coffee syrup and put it in the beer. Mint and hazelnut were gross. Jeff jerked so badly after tasting the mint, he poured it all over himself.

We had our placement exam for the Chinese class that same day, and it went as expected. My character recognition has gone down significantly, but I can respond decently when asked simple questions.

Yesterday afternoon we went on our first field trip of sorts. We went to the downtown area of Shanghai. Shanghai is split by a river known as the Huangpu River. On one side is the older section Fuxie, and on the other side is the newer section, Pudong, that has completely been put together in the last 15 years. Before that it was all farm land, which is ridiculous considering you can't find grass anywhere now.

The majority of the afternoon we spent in Pudong. My haggling skills were honed considerably

in this area. I managed to by a Rolex watch originally priced at 45 dollars US to about 12. It was a lot of fun pretending to walk away, while they scream at you to come back, and then ask you to name your price. I was offered countless dresses and women's items, but I’ll pick those up on a later date when we come back, as I’m sure all the ladies in my life will want a lot of really expensive (wink wink) shit. John modeled in some clothes for us; I almost wet my pants laughing at the whole situation. He had a bottle of water and was just barely not snarfing it while we were taking pictures and the women selling the clothing thought we were very serious about buying these ridiculous luxury robes or strange expandable hats. Besides my Rolex, I did manage to pick up a mini Buddha and a pair of these heely type skates.

We stopped for a few dumplings to give our legs a rest at a tea house. I had a glass of tea that looked like they had poured hot water in a glass and then just dumped flowers in it; it was strange but pretty cool. Our table was actually a gold fish pond with a thick sheet of glass over it.

After that our day was still not nearly finished. We set out to climb (take the elevator) the TV tower. The views from the top were pretty insane, it also really showed how much smog there really is in shanghai. It is never sunny here. Ever.

The sun poked through for about 20 minutes like this but that was the most we've seen












from there we went to a mall that makes any and all malls in the US seem like mice. It was 7 floors and instead of having just stores lining the hallways, they had store communities. You would go inside and all stores of a common theme would have things to offer.

Finally we took a ferry over to another boat that would give us some intense views of Shanghai from the water. This is the TV tower again from the boat. I’m still having a tough time grasping the idea that Im on the opposite side of the earth from everyone who is reading this blog.

After we finished the boat ride, we went off to get dinner, and I ripped my jeans wide open right at the crotch. The zipper was still intact, but there’s nothing holding it together right next to it. I had to walk a very long way, have dinner and take a taxi home with everyone who passed me able to see my smiley face boxers.

Clutch.

We found another American restaurant, the crazy tomato. I hope it’s good, I want more HAMBUGAH(if you say it with a loose enough mouth it sounds like you are speaking Chinese)



Haha you are all trying right now aren’t you?

2nd day's impression

Well here I am, i have arrived in china, and its my second day. I just got my internet working about an hour ago, otherwise i would have made this post yesterday.

Day 1:
For those of you who havn't been this far from home before, let me recount the past 2-3 days for you. The night before I left, my anxiety got the best of me, and i only managed 1 hour of sleep before my 4AM wakeup call to leave for the plane to chicago. over the next 20 or so hours, i didn't sleep more than 15 minutes. and considering my second flight was a 15 hour flight straight to shanghai I find that fairly impressive and disturbing. The flights themselves were great.



Before the second flight, I met one of the kids from Union college who is in the same program as me, and it turned out we were in the same flight to shanghai. Once we arrived (around 2:20 PM), we pooled what little verbal chinese skills (none) we had together to get through the 3 stages of customs. Dispite being in a foreign country for the first time and not having spoken the language enough in the last 2 months to remember anything worth while it went fairly smoothly. Pudong aiport is as massive as i have ever seen or imagined. You could have fit 2 professional soccer fields with stadium seating in the area that housed the baggage claim. Once the we had passed through the last gate of customs we began looking for our teacher. We were tired(he hadn't slept any more than i had) we were hungry and carrying close to 100lbs of luggage wasn't helping. Xie laoshi (teacher Xie) had sent us an email saying that she would be holding a white sign with our names on it at the exit, seems simple enough right? well apparently 5000 other people had the same idea. Xie turned out to be the last person in that line.

The Three of us piled into a van with sqeaky brakes and an A/C unit that was on its last legs. Oh yeah, and there were no seatbelts. neither Xie nor the driver seemed too concerned about this, even when the traffic widly ignored the dividing lines and made some of the riskiest driving moves i've ever seen. Call it culture shock if you like, i prefer the phrase "heart attack".

The drive was about an hour to Fudan University, the school I will study under for my duration here. Fudan is in the Top 5 Universities in china, the requirements for getting in are fairly insane. Lucky me. We arrived, checked in and went to our rooms. I was impressed. Everyone from Union was going to have a single. Each room was air conditioned, contained a tv with cable, and had its own private bathroom, that being said, lets talk about the drawbacks. Imagine going to a hotel, and walking into a room with anything beyond furniture in it. that means no sheets, pillows, toilette paper, towels or anything. However, i was delirious with fatigue, and didn't really notice much of this till the next morning. Professor Xie had her follow us to a classroom building where we pulled bikes for our use out of a storage room. From there we took the bikes to be serviced (they hadn't been used since last fall) and then off to dinner.

I had flown close to 8000 miles, leaving my half of the globe and the culture that goes with it, and can you guess what my first meal was? Nope you're wrong, it was baked ziti, tomato soup and some sort of custard dessert. The restaurant we went to was known for its western style food(and it was really good). I guess our professor didn't want to push us too far incase we were picky.

Once dinner was finished, we needed to go shopping so we would survive the night in our rooms. (sheets, comforter etc.) We used our new bikes to go to a chinese mall. it had a full size grocery store on the first floor and the department store on the second floor. Very efficient. I also picked out a tube of crest toothpaste which i swear is green tea flavored and a bottle of shampoo which turned out to be conditioner. I suppose this happens less once you know the language, but theres no real way to be sure. We came back to fudan and passed out immediately. It had been close to 48 hours since the last time i had had more than a 1 hour nap.

Day 2:

The day started at 10 when we met Xie laoshi in the lobby of our dorm. We set out to take the rest of the bikes out of storage, meet John, another Union student who had arrived after I had fallen asleep the night before, and get some food.

Today we dove right into the chinese food, and went to a hunan restaurant. Hunan is either an area or city in China notable for place of birth for the founder of the peoples republic of china, and spicy food. this lunch was not lacking in the latter, and it was amazing. we ordered up a feast, 90% of which was food i had never layed eyes on before. We ordered 4 entrees and 4 appetizers, and the bill came to roughly $20 American after conversion...For all 4 of us. I love China.



When i woke up this morning, I started looking around my room for things I was going to need during the rest of my stay here, and made a list that was as long as a fully stretched hand. some of the highlights were "trash can" " toilete paper", etc. So after lunch, we went shopping again. We bought 2 new bikes, so that everyone in the program would have one to use at their disposal. I claimed one of the new ones through seniority. Back of the line youngin'. a bike costs about 15 dollars american. sure the brakes are iffy at best and it only has one gear. But hey, you get what you pay for.

Pictured here is proof that i have now eaten a chicken's foot.

2 more of the union guys should be arriving tonight and we'll be going out for dinner with them, both of them are good guys i like alot, so im excited to see them. Thats all for now, I'll fill in more as i go.

Eat a cheese burger with extra pickles for me