i went to china. also, brevity's for pussies!

whoa hoa, china grove!!!! Well, here it is. My trip to china in a long-winded nutshell.

I guess a bit of a preface here. The chuseok holiday in korea marks a solid year living abroad. I haven’t seen my family in a while. I have a twin sister who lives in weihai, china with her husband, rory. Weihai is in the Shandong province of china (famous for peanuts, I learned while I was there), and the closest city anyone’s ever heard of is either dalian or quingdao (beer city!). despite the fact that lots of folks haven’t ever heard of weihai, there are millions of peeps there. Also, last year for Christmas I went to Tibet. Spent not a lot of time in Beijing watching hbo in a hotel with western toilets and a free breakfast, so mainland china is still really a big unknown to me. there’s some background.

day one (Sunday, September 23rd):
I took a shuttle bus to the airport from ilsan. I’m stupid. That takes about an hour and a half with normal traffic. i almost missed my flight to weihai by showing up at incheon international airport during chuseok (the largest korean holiday) a mere half hour before it was scheduled to depart. Let me just mention that the last time I took a flight it was at gimpo airport, domestic flight to gwangju, and I literally showed up 15 minutes before it left with no problems. Anyhoo, this time around, my flight was at 5, and I was still standing in the increasingly long check-in line at 4:30. I asked a man to help me and pointed to the time on my little e-ticket. he laughed and let me cut in front of everyone else in line to go to the priority counter. a smug Korean woman told me it was too late, that my gate had closed at 4:10 (I think all airline check-in counter people are smug and immediately defensive. not just koreans). of course my rationale was “it’s only 4:30. I know that plane’s still here!” some crying, shaking and general scary behavior on my part ensued, which convinced the woman to get me an escort and get me on the plane. It really pissed me off though. Granted, I was totally at fault for showing up so late, but so many people in any sort of service industry force you to be complete assholes to them before they’ll actually do something. This has been true with any of my airport mishaps. I hate that the worst part of you has to be revealed to get any sort of reaction. If I had been polite and just said “oh, that’s too bad” then I would have had to take a flight on Monday. But as it was, I was a total psychotic bitch and then she responded. I guess that’s the protocol and that’s why her job requires her to be such a raging cunt.

Anyhoo, i thought they were going to send for one of those little carts you see sometimes, but nope. my escort was an asiana airlines chick in beige high heels, and we sprinted through the airport to what felt like the farthest departure gate in all of icn. i literally got on the plane and then it started taxiing away from the little arm thing that attaches to it. When the woman told me it was too late, i actually felt myself sink a little bit. I haven’t felt a feeling like that in a long time. complete panic, like my life as I knew it was ending, a family member had died or something. shaking and sweating. The thought of having to delay seeing my family. it was bizarre. compounded by feeling like a complete idiot. I should have known better. seasoned traveller i'm not, i guess...

even on the plane the whole time I couldn’t relax. Hands still shaking and chest heaving from the most physical activity—sprinting through an airport—I’ve had in a long time.

During the flight, it was really nice. There was a Korean child and his mother sitting next to me. And every time they ate gum or got a drink, they would hand whatever they were eating or imbibing to me too. And they took away all of my trash. I just smiled and said thank you. their kindness helped calm me down, I think.

It started raining mid-flight. And I remember thinking the rain looked like snow as it hit the outer layer of the 3-ply window and rolled off. I pressed my hand to the glass, expecting to feel an immediate chill. But it didn’t feel like anything. I suppose this is only noteworthy in that I remembered how the rain looked. Which means I’ve either never noticed the weather outside mid-flight, or there was no precipitation any other time I’ve flown. But that seems highly unlikely. So I guess I was supposed to remember this precipitation.

arrived in china 1 hour later (less time than it took me to actually get to the airport) to jules and roar, the tallest people in the airport receiving area. Fucking surreal. i think part of the reason I haven’t been sleeping well for the past couple of weeks has been due to the excitement of seeing someone from home. Someone actually related to me by blood. It’s strange to go without that for so long. I also remember thinking rory looked particularly tall, despite the fact that jules was towering above me in heels. a welcome sign reading "mccunt" made the whole scene a little more concrete, and rory captured it all on video as jules and i hugged and cried for a spell.

China is fucking hot and humid. Just thought I’d make a note of that. In all the pictures I took, we all just look sweaty and dirty. It was sort of liberating to not really have to worry about appearances though. Especially after having just come from korea, the vanity capital of the world.

after shaking a little bit and crying a little more, got ourselves on a shuttle bus to weihai. Let the eating and drinking tour of weihai begin! it was then that jules revealed her new "jamie" tattoo to me—featuring my name on a banner and lots of drawings/doodling I used to do when I wrote notes to her in high school (and yes, even in college). i'm soooooo not worthy. she must really like me, i guess. made me think i need to start drawing and painting more. I’ve been sort of lazy about that.

anyhoo, got off the bus somewhere in weihai, then caught a taxi in the deluge. China’s not fucking around with their rain. headed to jules and rory’s dorm room and their school. Both were actually a lot nicer/bigger than i expected. high ceilings made their dorm room appear bigger. nice squatter toilet. we exchanged gifts and they showed me all the cool things they've picked up along their travel—kites, fans, jewelry, just mysterious eastern things.

china is bizarre. there's a real tangible sense of history to it, probably due in part to the fact that so much of it is far behind other modern societies. Conversely, korea really isn't too much different from america in a lot of respects. Regular toilets for the most parts, vestiges of western influence dotting every street, hip fashionable people. the one glaring difference between korea and china is that korea doesn't seem to have so many poor people. and that was a huge difference between korea and china. And sometimes you need to see how the other half lives, I guess, in order to truly appreciate all that you have. I couldn’t help but feel like a big, rich American the whole time I was there, abusing the city with my vulgar amount of spending money. With regards to poverty, the poorer parts of weihai didn’t seem too much different than some parts of Tibet that I saw. And that’s what made china’s lack of modernity more tangible to me. I thought Tibet was like national geographic, but the reality is that a lot of china is. And this is the world’s next superpower? I find it hard to believe when the gap between the rich and poor is so deep and wide, becoming more so every day. But then again, I’m a chick who doesn’t really know too much about global economics, poverty, or anything, really. But I can sure quote a lot of random poetry that doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. uh … moving on.

got settled in a little bit and then went and ate hot pot with rebecca, julie and rory's chinese co-teacher. live crabs and a crapload of veggies and other meat just thrown into a boiling pot. Video is up in my video section. ate and drank for a long time. there was a surprise bottle of champagne. Everything was delicious. A nice change from the Chinese food I had the last time I was there. Let’s just say it’s not nice to have stomach/digestive issues in a country with lackluster sanitation. went back to the dorm, i got my own dorm room for less than $2/night. now that's cheap lodging! crashed.

day two (Monday, September 24th):
shopping!!!!! went and got fitted for a traditional chinese dress. jules got a long robe with dragons on it. i still can't believe that i own something hand tailored. it cost so little and fits so perfectly. Mine is blue and has little village scenes on it. I’ve always entertained the notion of going to a tailor, so why not go to one in china.

we went to lots of other random stores. Ate japanese food that was great. drank beer and sake in an extended lunch. talked about girl shit while rory was at work. In a lot of ways it was no different than how jules and I used to spend time at home. But this time instead of shopping at maude and drinking blue moon beers at teller’s before biking home, we’d been custom fitted, the beer was Japanese, and a little car with three wheels was taking us “home” to a dormitory in weihai, china.

went back to the dorm, chilled for a little while. got purtified to go eat meat skewers at a place we had planned to eat at the night before, but didn't because of the rain. these peeps were expecting me, so that was cool. ate outside on a patio, for all the people to stare at us as they walked by. long side note here: in korea people stare and point and whisper at/about me all the time, which gets really annoying because there are soooo many foreigners here. there's no way i'm the first foreigner they've seen. but in china, jules and rory are probably the only foreign people some of these folks will EVER see. so three of us together is quite a sight. this dinner was also my first run in with baijo. Honestly, I was expecting worse. Which is not to be confused with me liking it. I was just expecting something more like mao tai, and it wasn’t like that at all. Can’t remember if this was the night we drank the liquor made with animal penis extract in it or not. But with liquor comes the need to use the bathroom. Which, at this restaurant, included a sink and a drain in the floor. So yeah, squat and piss on the floor. One thing I learned from my bathroom experience in china, is don’t wear anything with long pant legs, unless you have a desire to mist said clothing with your own urine. And footwear is a calculated effort too. Perhaps that’s too much information, but I’m just keeping it real, yo. Anyhoo, after dinner, went to some different area of town with night vendors and street stalls and strange street food lined up. chicken heads on skewers. Mmmm. met their british friend simon. Didn’t really get a chance to form an impression of him.

went to a bar called the tomato bar. drank a guiness. There was a live band playing. Hotel California. headed to this crazy, neon dance club called seven. sexy, scantily clad chinese dancing girls (rumor has it, they rented their clothes from the club. These weren’t even elaborate costumes, just jeans and bikini tops), midgets, and many whole beers drank in one gulp. fucking crazy. like so much of china. don't really remember going to sleep that night. but it sure felt early when jules woke me up the next day.

day three (Tuesday, September 25th):
watched 3 of julie's classes. chinese children are so cute. it's pretty interesting to hear the difference in the chinese english accent and the korean english accent. The first two classes were great. Little Chinese and Korean bodies earnestly dancing and singing these english songs projected on a large screen at the front of the room. And they were all so eager to please Julie. Opening the blinds, turning on lights, moving chairs. jules' last class was full of Korean students, who were all shitheads, used to getting what they want as the rich kids on campus. so i said mean things to them in Korean and generally tried to make them feel bad. I hope it worked. after that we watched the group calisthenics that the whole school does together. i'll be honest, i was pretty hungover. went to do more shopping. but i couldn't really function well because i had to make myself barf all day in the disgusting public toilets of weihai, china. let's just say it didn't take too much to make me blow chunks.

went back to the crib, watched part of knocked up. Took a nap, then went out again. we took a taxi drive along the coast, stopping at all the beaches. Beautiful. tranquil, not bustling like any beach in korea would be. we weren't sure if the weather would hold up enough for me to actually go to the beach the next day or not, so that's why the taxi. It was also a very visible tour de classes in weihai. Around the beaches were all the rich, fancy buildings and restaurants, but as soon as you got away from the water, it’s the styx again. There were constant reminders of that. Jules’ school, for example, was out on the very edge of town, so to get to it you really got to see the poorest parts of town, farming areas and villages. And then there’s this gated monolithic, imposing structure (their school), a very visible emblem of everything to which the poor people will never have access.

for dinner this time it was pizza and then we visited the same street vendors we saw the night before. went to another bar similar to seven called 2046. sexy dancers, but no midgets. Damn. it was cool, we were just all tuckered out. went home and finished knocked up. watched lots of youtube funniness (from snl: macgruber, a letter to my sister, astronaut jones. I highly recommend all of these. Also the Michael showalter showalter), ate cheese and drank beers. just like old times. Sigh.

day four (Wednesday, September 26th):
more shopping! i got a winter coat and lots of souvenirs for my co-workers. ate breakfast at mcdonalds. that was cool. the first western toilets in 3 days! woo hoo! Not that I’m really that particular. after mcdonalds walked around to more vendors and different areas of downtown weihai. then we made our way to a really awesome,organic restaurant out in the middle of nowhere, nestled at the foot of some mountains. little did we know this would turn into a full on afternoon drunkfest. This restaurant was so cool. Unlike any place I’ve ever been. There was a room you went into, full of meats, vegetables and bugs on shelves. You just point to your items and specify how you’d like to eat them—in a soup, fried, stir fried. There was also a dead wolf on the floor that they’d killed to serve up to anyone willing to fork over the cash. There was a little drop of blood near the wolf’s body. after eating donkey dumplings (yes, i'm serious), were invited to some other room of taiwanese and chinese company workers. lots of one-shots and photos ensued. told some guy i'd be his third wife. he said i was too pretty for him. ha ha. i also have no dowry to offer. Uh, bad joke. taiwan doesn’t require a bride price, I don’t think.

went back towards jules' hood, bought some baiju and a purse i don't need. picked up our dresses from the tailor. The woman stripped me down my under things to try the dress on. Modesty’s usually the name of the game for me, but I couldn’t really object, so I just went with it. She liked my tattoo and called the other woman working in the shop over to look at it. Yikes. As long as we don’t start calling people in off the street, I guess it’s cool.

dinner that night was at a place close to their school. good eats. I was very surprised that i didn't have any problems with my stomach over the course of my vacation, despite the fact that i was eating Chinese food (that has given me problems before), was eating more meals than I usually do, and was drinking more beer than i have in a really long time.

at this point it had started to rain really hard once again. Part of me wanted my flight to be cancelled the next day due to rain. But it wasn’t.

day 5 (Thursday, September 27th):
the next morning, got up super early to take a bus to where taxi’s would actually be. Then went on the craziest, most dangerous, most exhilarating taxi ride I could ever hope to have. Don’t get me wrong, it was kick ass, but if I never have a driver like that again, it’s probably a good thing. For one thing, it’s pouring down rain. Plus people don’t really use the crosswalk in china. Herds of people just sort of wander, lane to lane, across the busiest lanes of traffic in the city. So it’s raining, visibility is low, these people are meandering in and out of traffic, dude’s FLYING through this rain. At one point we were behind a bus that slammed on its brakes, going full speed, another car in the passing lane. But instead of us slamming on our brakes, dude sped up to within inches of the now stopped bus and then swerved over into a tiny opening on the left hand side. Perhaps the closest call I’ve ever been in. but the driver just had this triumphant smile on his face the whole time. ok, it was cool. i was convinced there was no way my flight would still be taking off, on account of the rain. it's not that it rains more there than in korea, but there just doesn't seem to be any drainage whatsoever. it rains a lot in korea, but someone thought about drainage. another backwards about china. they have all these ideals of modernity, but it gets lost in the details. but hey, it’s charming. these great 4 lane roads, but no one thought about where the water can go when it rains. so more standing water on the roads than i've ever seen.

jules and i chilled for a while drinking tea in the airport café before i had to catch my flight. let's just say that's the saddest I can recall having been in recent memory.

I sat in the weihai airport, waiting to board the plane, sobbing uncontrollably (inconsolably) into cheap Chinese tissues. jules and rory live in a totally fucked up, backwards country, but I’m completely jealous. Because china gets to have them, not korea. and they have each other. i'm here, and I have some acquaintances, but i don't really KNOW anyone. So this is what that independence I so fervently craved feels like. Great. The people I communicate with the most frequently fall into the 8-14 yr. old age bracket. And jules and rory’s backwards country is still affording them this sense of glitter, something I lost a long time ago. i don't like things once the shiny outer coating wears off. be they cities, boyfriends, jobs, etc.. This, on the heels of several blogs lauding ilsan’s merits. I’m nothing if not wishy washy.

on a more positive note, i was thoroughly impressed with jules and rory and just how well they've adapted to their surroundings. something not as obvious to them, because it's their daily life. but to me they're these giants, conquering china, speaking survival chinese and just living in a reality that is so far removed from and lacking the basic, easily overlooked comforts of the one I live in. every day for them has to yield this huge sense of accomplishment, simply because it’s not as easy as korea. I covet that feeling. So fuck yeah, i was proud of them.

So that’s that. A great trip. But also terribly sad as soon as it began. As soon as I saw her in the airport, it was tears of joy, but also of impending sadness.

“I felt happy—or some weak, pretty feeling centered in my stomach, brought on by beer—at the sight of the fading blue sky tormented at its edges with heat lightning, and at the crickets and the shouting over the water, and by Jackie Wilson on the radio, but it was a happiness so like sadness that the next moment I hung my head.” That’s pretty much how I felt the whole time (minus the Jackie Wilson, and beach setting). there was a tragedy in seeing my family, just to have to leave them again. And the uncertainty of when I’ll see them—or anyone else who truly knows me—again is devastating. The post-vacation doldrums are that much harder when you’re leaving your family. I guess I’ve cried more in the past 4 days than I have all year. But I guess It’s nice to feel every once in a while. Sometimes I think I forget how to do that with my life in korea being so simple and easy. I also wonder when I’ll ever return to a sense of normalcy. And what does “normal” even mean. And if I knew what it meant, would I actually want it anymore?
So, this is long. These details are for my personal record-keeping, and there’s a lot of emotion to sift through after going a whole year without seeing anyone who really knows you. I used to think that admitting I was homesick or lonely was admitting defeat, or weakness, or some other noun with a decidedly negative connotation. But I guess the bigger picture is that it’s more about honesty, which is never a bad thing. So I guess this was me trying to be honest.