there had been weeks of build-up to Christmas. bizarre mixes of both sacred and secular Christmas music have been on the office’s playlist. I also cameoed as a santa claus with gender issues (no mrs. claus suit). I feel this warrants slightly more than an aside. during the first Christmas party, for our really really young students, we had only planned for 1 santa. when that santa was bombarded by kids asking for gifts, it necessitated an impromptu, emergency santa. that’s where I came in. so I had these big red pants, sans drawstring, with a gaping hole in the crotch. tucked into my cowboy boots. yee haw! I think I looked pretty silly and conspicuous. the second party was the not-as-young kids’ party. I was scheduled to be a santa. I worked my way up the ranks. there was a drawstring. there wasn’t a crotch hole (heh heh). but I still had the cowboy boots, dark hair and less-than-subtle earrings. so all the kids who I actually teach kept yelling at me. it was just funny because in America it’s a big deal when kids finally realize santa claus is fake, but here they made no effort to hide the fact that it was just a foreign teacher (and a chick, at that) in a costume, who really made very little effort to conceal her identity. and holy shit, can Chinese kids eat. I’ve never seen kids eat that much food.
so yes, Christmas came, saw and conquered. probably the most fun I’ve had abroad for a holiday. and it definitely beat last year’s shenanigans (feel free to reference my Christmas blog of 2008. a skinned dog, the set of hero and southeast asian midget kickboxers).
Christmas eve began with the most boring vip student in the world. again, I was reminded why I hate doing vips. particularly with soulless teenagers. after the vip, quickly changed into my retardedly cheap mrs. claus outfit (a mere 10 rmb) and headed to tepanyaki, where I was met by other like-dressed merry goers. so we ate tepanyaki. I seem to recall eating copious amounts of salmon sashimi. always a good base for a heavy night of drinking. I tried not to do sake, but it’s sort of inevitable in an all you can drink/eat “forum.” at one point there was an actual pitcher of sake. the steam coming off the top of the plastic pitcher only added to the magic of the night.
after the ‘yaki, headed to my favorite bar, maya, where we were met by several more santas from other schools. the ringleader of that group was george. george has been dubbed “him with voice of angel and mustache of pedophile.” so now seems like as good a time as any to rekindle my love affair with the term “molestache.” george also tells great jokes. just worth a mention. anyhoo, george had song sheets of Christmas carols for everyone. he stood on a chair and directed us as best he could. ‘twas magical, indeed. after that we headed to a few more bars in the general vicinity. I was remarkably sober and bored at about 3 am. I’m not sure if I find that fact depressing or pathetic, but I have the sinking feeling that it’s a combination of the two. why bother to stay up that late if you have no hangover to show for it the next day? is this the wrong attitude? Maybe it just reflects a certain lack of resolve on my part. I’ll try harder next time. that day/binge will come soon, I’m sure.
Christmas day was met by the promise of a buffet at the Shangri-la hotel. courtesy of the school’s investor. so that was nice. I believe I ate 3 plates of just turkey. with gravy. I believe my last plate of turkey also included gummy worms. it was a whole brown/earth tone motif I was going for. I also don’t recall seeing ANY chicken feet on the premises. that’s how you know it’s a fancy deal. there was a whole cheese section. Camembert, edam, some other expensive-looking (and extremely white) cheese. holy crap. with some fancy bread—not crackers purchased from the convenient mart—and olives. it was inspiring. free-flowing wine, champagne and beer topped it all off. if there’s ever a time to indulge in some excessive comforts, Christmas is the time. that’s what jesus was all about, yo.
as a few of us were finishing off the bottles of champagne, we came up with the genius idea to go bowling. but shitballs, how does one get a taxi in the early afternoon on Christmas day? maybe the country doesn’t celebrate, but there’s some innate calibration in every Chinese person’s head that they should all be looking for taxis at precisely this time. so that’s the pickle we were met with upon leaving the Shangri-la utopia. would we be able to actualize our bowling dreams? would any of us have the opportunity to pursue the elusive turkey (not the bird, the 3 strikes in a row…). so we went to try to hail a cab. a whole gaggle of drunk peeps who weren’t really to committed to movement so much as being outside, armed with the idea of trying to hail a cab. we stood there for a while, then serina had the bright idea to head back up to the hotel to just have them call us a taxi. so she literally stopped traffic by putting up her hand and standing in the middle of the street. the two lead cars coming from either direction were cool with it. but as she was waving us across, we all heard the crunch of hot, car-on-car action. she was already on the other side of the road, but she had literally caused an accident. a small one, but a rear ender nonetheless. serina had no idea what had happened until a little while later, when she realized no one had crossed the street. very funny. so we approached both cars, told them everything was okay and merry Christmas. surprisingly, that seemed to assuage any fears of real damage. whew. but here we were, still without the vehicle required to help us actualize our bowling dreams. then a shitty, small Chinese van rolled up. I have no idea why it slowed down, but it did. so we all descended upon this van and the driver. after offering him 100 rmb, he agreed to take us to the bowling alley. so this one tiny Chinese man let 8 foreigners into his van and took us to our destination. amazing. granted, he was pretty much eye-fucking serina the whole way, but we all ultimately got to where we were going. so that’s success. bowling was good. and travis actually did get a turkey. that bastard…my game quickly went downhill after that.
so Christmas was mostly good, but there was something that was instantaneously sobering. i got a text message from the seester saying that vic chesnutt was in a coma following a suicide attempt. Found out this morning that he died. perhaps it’s self-important of me to claim any emotional attachment to someone I barely know, that seems like a fair accusation, but when I read that, I just felt gutted. I don’t know why.
I feel it’s worth mentioning a bit about the man before I continue to talk about MYSELF and MY feelings about him. it’s funny, I was just trying to think of where to start and I had this very clear memory of his show at mojo’s a few years ago. I think it was a benefit show for one of the local radio stations. anyhoo, you never know what kind of weirdos free, public radio events will draw (I mean this in the best possible way), but there was this one middle-aged hippie chick who was dancing and wiggling all over the floor. the collective embarrassment for her was palpable. vic picked up on it and sure made a lot of fun of her. but she had those annoying anklets that had bells on them. anyway, Justin west, in true Justin west form said “get it, girl.” and that’s what sticks out in my mind. j. west and vic making fun of this free-loving, aging hippie who had no idea she was the butt of so many jokes, both funny and/or mean.
there was another time when he played in Austin. chris and I were given the really cool task of chauffeuring him around. he’s in a wheelchair, so it was necessary. I’ve never had any close physical contact with someone with an obvious handicap before, so I was quite nervous. and I don’t mean this in a judgmental way, but in a purely logistical sense. how self-sufficient was he? was he a self-righteous wheelchair-er? was he weirded out by people in his close personal space? I didn’t know the answers to any of these questions, so we sort of let him wheel himself around, feeling guilty and feeling it out, but feeling guilty about feeling guilty in case it was a part of his normal life. nothing to see here. but I seem to recall feeling a lot better to have him just fucking ask us to wheel him because it was hard work. that broke the ice. chris had to actually pick him up to put him into/remove him from the car, and in retrospect I’m jealous of that intimacy. it sounds weird. I’m well-aware. I don’t know how to explain it.
I remember his sense of humor. scathing, unforgiving, bitter, sarcastic. I remember him rather succinctly knocking a lead singer that I was fond of off of her pedestal. I think he just said something like “she was a fucking bitch.” and based on the previous banter, I had no choice but to believe him. I still can’t listen to this particular band anymore without thinking of his indictment of her. and I think that’s hilarious.
perhaps unrelated, but not really. there had to have been some segue in my brain. the college student I tutored last week had a Norton anthology of American literature with him. and I thought I was going to cream my jeans. except we can’t wear jeans at work. so I thought I was going to cream my corn. anyhoo, looking through it I came across a story by Raymond carver that I didn’t think of again until right now (actually a few lines ago). “cathedral.” I guess it’s shallow to find a linking technique between one very real handicapped person and a fictitious one in a story, but I’m human. the point is, it’s a fucking fantastic story. for all my hyperbole and my nationality, “fantastic” is not an oft- [mis]used word of mine.
and I think vic was a pretty fantastic human. A depressed and bitter one, but a funny man, and a man of principles. I’m incredibly lucky to have had any sort of personal interaction with him.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
purple rain, purple rain
rurple pain. rurple pain.
it’s been a very cold string of days here in Hangzhou. bonafide winter, I tell you! I’ve been sleeping on the futon in my “office” because it’s the warmest room in my apartment. that said, I scrapped any and all ambitious plans of yester weekend in favor of staying in and watching a movie. because that’s all the energy I could muster. that said…
I just finished watching something simultaneously terrible and amazing. I’m a 31 year old American living in china and today marked my first viewing of purple rain. holy crap. that’s all I can say. I think I felt a similar confusion after watching zanadu for the first time (in korea, which was equally strange), feeling profoundly inspired by how bad it was. but zanadu actually triggered quite a bit of fear in me as well--like some altered dream state from which you can’t quite escape, set in a vaguely ’80s and acutely terrifying landscape, replete with roller skates. eek. but hey, no fear with purple rain. except, why’d prince have to go and slap apollonia around? maybe he really IS just like his father, too bold. sigh.
since the movie is fresh in my mind, I think some reflection is worthy. depending on one’s definition of worth. and since my definition includes “blog-inspiring” I’d say the film is worthy.
57:45: prince, to movie dad, offscreen, “Where are you? Where are you? Answer me, motherfucker!” keep in mind, prince’s speaking voice is actually quite high. it was a shining moment, fer shiz. and the drama sure was….dramatic, even moreso because It’s all “autobiographical.” I’ll have to wikipedia this to find out. but if I had home internet I wouldn’t have wasted my time with this movie. so the wik will have to wait another few days.
I’d say it’s no injustice that prince hasn’t appeared in more films. but you can’t deny that this tiny, gyrating man on a stage (even a movie one) is something you have to watch. particularly when he’s dry-humping the monitors (multiple pumps, he’s prince after all) or doing the bootie shake at the end of the movie, after a particularly-james brown-ish dance montage. so much rubbing and licking. question though: considering his dad had just tried to blow his brains out, right before his very eyes, wouldn’t prince have thought of different hand gestures for “I would die for you?” point to self, mime blowing brains out, quickly segue into holding up 4 fingers, then point at lover of choice. repeat. it just seemed like an insensitive oversight.
i wonder what prince wears at home, around the house. does he have sweat pants? slippers?
I had nothing better to do after watching the movie (hence this piece of writing) so I pampered myself with the other dvd of bonus features. which meant, yes, removing the original, and replacing it with another dvd. a task I wouldn’t extend to just any 80s musical sensation.
one of the segments on the bonus features is the mtv premier party. wow. thank you, jehovah, for this veritable time capsule back to a whole joke of a decade. for real. so in the film, I thought maybe peeps were stretching it a little bit with clothes, hair, makeup. but then they showed footage (recorded live) of the premier. and holy crap, that’s how people actually dressed. again, I lived through the 80s, but I just didn’t remember it being so, uh, colorful. and asymmetrical. and swooping. and tight. and geometric. I’m not sure which of these observations relates to clothes or to hair or to both. anyway, there’s a bit where this vj with amazingly curly hair (white dude with essentially a jerry curl) has 3 “celebrities” lined up to ask them about the film: little Richard, Sheila e (celebrity?), and eddie Murphy. little Richard is interviewed first. and he holds up a bible that’s he’s had specially made for prince, as well as a book called steps to Christ. a little awkward. he just wants prince to realize that all of his musical gifts came from god. no harm there. and he talks for a bit about how all these different people are versions of him for their generation—prince, james brown, etc. Sheila e is trying not to laugh the whole time. she says maybe 5 words, then eddie Murphy makes fun of little Richard, claiming that prince, james brown and little richard were actually the eddie murphys of their generation. I guess it’s just something you have to see to understand and/or appreciate.
one more nugglet. john cougar mellencamp (sitting next to a rather subdued weird al): “compared to other rock n roll movies, you know like help, it’s a far better movie than that.“ who knew lil’ ol’ johnny cougar knew so much about rock n roll movies? I’m sure he speaks for all of us on that one.
so yes, today’s been a good day so far. I need to hit the dvd shop again. the slim pickins last time are also to be credited for today’s viewing pleasure.
it’s December 22nd. which means it’s close to Christmas. which means I should feel Christmas-y. whatever that means. i think I felt a tinge of sadness yesterday after a rather serendipitous afternoon nap. I’m sure it’s probably due to homesickness or other things that tend to creep up and make me more questioning of all aspects of my life. so yeah, during these “bouts” I’m generally less fun to be around, because yes, I usually am a veritable ball o’ fun. it’s been a while since one of these waves of “badness” has approached. I’m generally happy here in Hangzhou. I think I’m just starting to realize that there are certain trade-offs when you move to a new city. duh. in jiaxing I was really engrossed in my teaching and had no social life and felt like there was this big void that needed attention of some sort (keep it clean, folks. there’s no innuendo there…), a lifestyle, a hobby, openness. now I’m in Hangzhou and I go out and I have friends and a bike and a lifestyle, but there are certain things about my work environment that leave me feeling empty or less productive than I would like. so I’m feeling lately that I traded academic standards and job satisfaction for a social life. this is not to say that Hangzhou doesn’t have academic standards, they’re just not as high or as nurtured as they were in jiaxing. I’m sure there are statistics somewhere that disprove my claims, but having worked at both places, I know how it feels to be part of a machine that’s working vs. one that feels like the wheels are about to fall off. so that’s a tough thing to reconcile. but maybe my opinions will be worth more in a few months and I’ll be able to help implement some sort of change or steps in a right-er direction. there’s a very real fear, however, that even if I should get some title of distinction here, my actual ability to help anyone or to help the school won’t be a realistic part of my job. a whole litany of ideas that will never be actualized…but I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself. found out today (December 23rd) that I might be forced to take on a roommate here in the next two weeks. me no likey. that’s what I call a dealbreaker, particularly when living alone was the dealmaker…we shall see.
back to el holiday. on Christmas eve I’m going to eat tepanyaki. dressed as santa clause. then we santa clauses shall commence to pub crawling. methinks it will be a fun night and an even more painful morning. we shall suffer as Christ suffered? there’s the link back to a sacred Christmas…but on that painful Christmas day all the ef schools are going to a fancy hotel for what I hear is a pretty expensive and spectacular brunch. the mimosas will be plentiful. and I hope there’s some good western fare. I ate jellyfish, fish balls and lotus root last night at our school’s party. and these delicacies were just okay. I also hate the inherent competition of eating in a Chinese group environment. all the dishes are communal and it’s a mad dash to get your chopsticks in before everyone else. a Chinese meal is pretty much a microcosm of any number of more frustrating societal situations that involve sharing or waiting or the vague (and apparently abstract) notion of patience.
I went to Chongqing a few weeks ago. the first time I’ve left Hangzhou (besides a few trips back to jiaxing for western union issues). I guess the reason was to celebrate jules and my birthday, but I was a few weeks too late for that. it was actually just an excuse to get out of Hangzhou for a while. and there’s absolutely no harm in admitting when you miss people. so there. I missed people, two in particular. which isn’t to say I don’t miss other people, but I don’t have the same near-instant gratification of hopping on a plane and feeling better about things.
Chongqing is a completely different world than Hangzhou, though. for starters, it’s massive. for a place that ultimately felt Chinese as fuck in all the right ways—the dirt and the grit and the ever-present bustle of commerce and general daily life--crossing the bridge into the city proper on the way in from the airport was surreal. this skyline of massive buildings and lights. but it’s a little hazy on account of pollution, lending it a post-apocalyptic, disastrous feel. it’s hard to explain. this wasn’t a bad feeling, just an otherworldly one. the city also has all these layers (jules has talked about that before) and hills. Hangzhou is relatively flat, hence my bike as transportation, so I think hills are cool. you walk out of jules’ old apartment, where she’s already in a high rise apartment building. and you’re on the ground floor of this particular apartment building. then you walk about 25 feet ahead and a little to the right and look down, and there’s another high rise apartment building that just sprouted out of the ground underneath the already massive apartment building. it was crazy! and also felt like another world. also, I think we ate hot pot 4 times in 3 days. so the hot pot is different from here in Zhejiang province. it seemed simpler and better in chongqing. and obviously spicier. the spoons extend out of this thick pit of ma spice and peppers. there were no green onions or little brown things that I don’t know what they are or giant chunks of ginger that trick you into believing that they’re potatoes. none of that fancy shit. and there is no way to construe this broth as “brown.” it’s red and spicy as fuck. and the animal fat that they dissolve in the pot coats both utensils and tofu with a thin, waxy layer. it sounds disgusting, but it’s awesome. this was most obvious in what was called the “happy pot.” it had metal grates in it (great!) that divided it into 9 partitions. so you could segregate your veggies for easier identification later.
another highlight of Chongqing was seeing jules’ shiny new ef school that she’s the dos of. it was just nice to see something clean and organized. and it had interactive whiteboards. I want one.
tomorrow I have to meet with a potential vip student. I say potential because he wants to meet me first to determine if I’m worth his time/money. so no pressure there. but he’s studying in America right now. the cool thing about teaching him is that he doesn’t actually need help with the general weak areas of esl learners, but he actually needs skill with writing essays for his literature class at his American university. so if this gig does happen, it will be very cool to revisit the traditional essay format. I’m a dork who gets excited by precisely this sort of situation—claim, evidence, warrant, oh my!. I hope I’m worthy. but I’ll find out after I post this.
hey, i'm worthy! met with the dude yesterday.
it’s been a very cold string of days here in Hangzhou. bonafide winter, I tell you! I’ve been sleeping on the futon in my “office” because it’s the warmest room in my apartment. that said, I scrapped any and all ambitious plans of yester weekend in favor of staying in and watching a movie. because that’s all the energy I could muster. that said…
I just finished watching something simultaneously terrible and amazing. I’m a 31 year old American living in china and today marked my first viewing of purple rain. holy crap. that’s all I can say. I think I felt a similar confusion after watching zanadu for the first time (in korea, which was equally strange), feeling profoundly inspired by how bad it was. but zanadu actually triggered quite a bit of fear in me as well--like some altered dream state from which you can’t quite escape, set in a vaguely ’80s and acutely terrifying landscape, replete with roller skates. eek. but hey, no fear with purple rain. except, why’d prince have to go and slap apollonia around? maybe he really IS just like his father, too bold. sigh.
since the movie is fresh in my mind, I think some reflection is worthy. depending on one’s definition of worth. and since my definition includes “blog-inspiring” I’d say the film is worthy.
57:45: prince, to movie dad, offscreen, “Where are you? Where are you? Answer me, motherfucker!” keep in mind, prince’s speaking voice is actually quite high. it was a shining moment, fer shiz. and the drama sure was….dramatic, even moreso because It’s all “autobiographical.” I’ll have to wikipedia this to find out. but if I had home internet I wouldn’t have wasted my time with this movie. so the wik will have to wait another few days.
I’d say it’s no injustice that prince hasn’t appeared in more films. but you can’t deny that this tiny, gyrating man on a stage (even a movie one) is something you have to watch. particularly when he’s dry-humping the monitors (multiple pumps, he’s prince after all) or doing the bootie shake at the end of the movie, after a particularly-james brown-ish dance montage. so much rubbing and licking. question though: considering his dad had just tried to blow his brains out, right before his very eyes, wouldn’t prince have thought of different hand gestures for “I would die for you?” point to self, mime blowing brains out, quickly segue into holding up 4 fingers, then point at lover of choice. repeat. it just seemed like an insensitive oversight.
i wonder what prince wears at home, around the house. does he have sweat pants? slippers?
I had nothing better to do after watching the movie (hence this piece of writing) so I pampered myself with the other dvd of bonus features. which meant, yes, removing the original, and replacing it with another dvd. a task I wouldn’t extend to just any 80s musical sensation.
one of the segments on the bonus features is the mtv premier party. wow. thank you, jehovah, for this veritable time capsule back to a whole joke of a decade. for real. so in the film, I thought maybe peeps were stretching it a little bit with clothes, hair, makeup. but then they showed footage (recorded live) of the premier. and holy crap, that’s how people actually dressed. again, I lived through the 80s, but I just didn’t remember it being so, uh, colorful. and asymmetrical. and swooping. and tight. and geometric. I’m not sure which of these observations relates to clothes or to hair or to both. anyway, there’s a bit where this vj with amazingly curly hair (white dude with essentially a jerry curl) has 3 “celebrities” lined up to ask them about the film: little Richard, Sheila e (celebrity?), and eddie Murphy. little Richard is interviewed first. and he holds up a bible that’s he’s had specially made for prince, as well as a book called steps to Christ. a little awkward. he just wants prince to realize that all of his musical gifts came from god. no harm there. and he talks for a bit about how all these different people are versions of him for their generation—prince, james brown, etc. Sheila e is trying not to laugh the whole time. she says maybe 5 words, then eddie Murphy makes fun of little Richard, claiming that prince, james brown and little richard were actually the eddie murphys of their generation. I guess it’s just something you have to see to understand and/or appreciate.
one more nugglet. john cougar mellencamp (sitting next to a rather subdued weird al): “compared to other rock n roll movies, you know like help, it’s a far better movie than that.“ who knew lil’ ol’ johnny cougar knew so much about rock n roll movies? I’m sure he speaks for all of us on that one.
so yes, today’s been a good day so far. I need to hit the dvd shop again. the slim pickins last time are also to be credited for today’s viewing pleasure.
it’s December 22nd. which means it’s close to Christmas. which means I should feel Christmas-y. whatever that means. i think I felt a tinge of sadness yesterday after a rather serendipitous afternoon nap. I’m sure it’s probably due to homesickness or other things that tend to creep up and make me more questioning of all aspects of my life. so yeah, during these “bouts” I’m generally less fun to be around, because yes, I usually am a veritable ball o’ fun. it’s been a while since one of these waves of “badness” has approached. I’m generally happy here in Hangzhou. I think I’m just starting to realize that there are certain trade-offs when you move to a new city. duh. in jiaxing I was really engrossed in my teaching and had no social life and felt like there was this big void that needed attention of some sort (keep it clean, folks. there’s no innuendo there…), a lifestyle, a hobby, openness. now I’m in Hangzhou and I go out and I have friends and a bike and a lifestyle, but there are certain things about my work environment that leave me feeling empty or less productive than I would like. so I’m feeling lately that I traded academic standards and job satisfaction for a social life. this is not to say that Hangzhou doesn’t have academic standards, they’re just not as high or as nurtured as they were in jiaxing. I’m sure there are statistics somewhere that disprove my claims, but having worked at both places, I know how it feels to be part of a machine that’s working vs. one that feels like the wheels are about to fall off. so that’s a tough thing to reconcile. but maybe my opinions will be worth more in a few months and I’ll be able to help implement some sort of change or steps in a right-er direction. there’s a very real fear, however, that even if I should get some title of distinction here, my actual ability to help anyone or to help the school won’t be a realistic part of my job. a whole litany of ideas that will never be actualized…but I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself. found out today (December 23rd) that I might be forced to take on a roommate here in the next two weeks. me no likey. that’s what I call a dealbreaker, particularly when living alone was the dealmaker…we shall see.
back to el holiday. on Christmas eve I’m going to eat tepanyaki. dressed as santa clause. then we santa clauses shall commence to pub crawling. methinks it will be a fun night and an even more painful morning. we shall suffer as Christ suffered? there’s the link back to a sacred Christmas…but on that painful Christmas day all the ef schools are going to a fancy hotel for what I hear is a pretty expensive and spectacular brunch. the mimosas will be plentiful. and I hope there’s some good western fare. I ate jellyfish, fish balls and lotus root last night at our school’s party. and these delicacies were just okay. I also hate the inherent competition of eating in a Chinese group environment. all the dishes are communal and it’s a mad dash to get your chopsticks in before everyone else. a Chinese meal is pretty much a microcosm of any number of more frustrating societal situations that involve sharing or waiting or the vague (and apparently abstract) notion of patience.
I went to Chongqing a few weeks ago. the first time I’ve left Hangzhou (besides a few trips back to jiaxing for western union issues). I guess the reason was to celebrate jules and my birthday, but I was a few weeks too late for that. it was actually just an excuse to get out of Hangzhou for a while. and there’s absolutely no harm in admitting when you miss people. so there. I missed people, two in particular. which isn’t to say I don’t miss other people, but I don’t have the same near-instant gratification of hopping on a plane and feeling better about things.
Chongqing is a completely different world than Hangzhou, though. for starters, it’s massive. for a place that ultimately felt Chinese as fuck in all the right ways—the dirt and the grit and the ever-present bustle of commerce and general daily life--crossing the bridge into the city proper on the way in from the airport was surreal. this skyline of massive buildings and lights. but it’s a little hazy on account of pollution, lending it a post-apocalyptic, disastrous feel. it’s hard to explain. this wasn’t a bad feeling, just an otherworldly one. the city also has all these layers (jules has talked about that before) and hills. Hangzhou is relatively flat, hence my bike as transportation, so I think hills are cool. you walk out of jules’ old apartment, where she’s already in a high rise apartment building. and you’re on the ground floor of this particular apartment building. then you walk about 25 feet ahead and a little to the right and look down, and there’s another high rise apartment building that just sprouted out of the ground underneath the already massive apartment building. it was crazy! and also felt like another world. also, I think we ate hot pot 4 times in 3 days. so the hot pot is different from here in Zhejiang province. it seemed simpler and better in chongqing. and obviously spicier. the spoons extend out of this thick pit of ma spice and peppers. there were no green onions or little brown things that I don’t know what they are or giant chunks of ginger that trick you into believing that they’re potatoes. none of that fancy shit. and there is no way to construe this broth as “brown.” it’s red and spicy as fuck. and the animal fat that they dissolve in the pot coats both utensils and tofu with a thin, waxy layer. it sounds disgusting, but it’s awesome. this was most obvious in what was called the “happy pot.” it had metal grates in it (great!) that divided it into 9 partitions. so you could segregate your veggies for easier identification later.
another highlight of Chongqing was seeing jules’ shiny new ef school that she’s the dos of. it was just nice to see something clean and organized. and it had interactive whiteboards. I want one.
tomorrow I have to meet with a potential vip student. I say potential because he wants to meet me first to determine if I’m worth his time/money. so no pressure there. but he’s studying in America right now. the cool thing about teaching him is that he doesn’t actually need help with the general weak areas of esl learners, but he actually needs skill with writing essays for his literature class at his American university. so if this gig does happen, it will be very cool to revisit the traditional essay format. I’m a dork who gets excited by precisely this sort of situation—claim, evidence, warrant, oh my!. I hope I’m worthy. but I’ll find out after I post this.
hey, i'm worthy! met with the dude yesterday.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
bloggy went a courtin'
hmmm, what to write about… seems like a blog is long overdue, so I’m obliged to muster up something. speaking of muster, I bought some yellow mustard. and that is really something special.
at the grocery store you have to weigh all your vegetables at a special weigh station before you go get in the real line to pay. so I was doing that, being the good foreigner who’s familiar with vegetable weighing protocol(s) in Chinese supermarkets. in between the weighing of carrots and potatoes some woman tried to worm her way in to get her melon weighed (heh heh). for a country with a long history of Confucian principles and the sense of the whole over the individual, they can sure be greedy, impatient assholes. I’m trying to think of any event stored away in the annals of my own personal experience that disproves this blatantly mean stereotype, but i’m at a loss. and the most impressive facet of all of this is that they’re oblivious to it. and yes, I know the fact that I’m living in china means I should embrace all the little cultural nuances. it’s a nice idea, open-mindedness and whatnot, but it’d just be nice to be met in the middle sometimes. I’m aware that none of these minor transgressions is executed with any real malice, there’s just no concept of it being any other way. it was like I was invisible. which is really quite convenient for the Chinese peeps in my neighborhood, that they alone (collectively?) can choose when I am and I’m not invisible. I’m stared at and given the thrice over pretty much any time I step out of the threshold of my apartment building, but at the grocery store, when it’s convenient or they want something in the hurry that seems to perpetuate daily life, I don’t exist. anyhoo, seems like Chinese people are very much a culture of “I want what I want and I want it now. I need this now so I shouldn’t have to wait.” again in the check out line with the worming. some chick tried to worm her way in front of me because she only had 1 item. nevermind the fact that the two lanes on either side of me were open. she wanted my lane and didn’t think she should have to wait, simply by virtue of her desire for lane 3. so I sort of blocked her out and pointed at the other two lanes. after she was forced to acknowledge my existence she looked like I’d punched her in the stomach, or I’d at least rocked her paradigm.
also spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get to baochu pagoda on my bike. it’s supposed to be purty. so that seemed like an easy enough excursion to undertake on my second day off. on the way though, I made the nightmarish stop in the silk market area of my neighborhood. my usual kebab joint closed down, so I had to venture a little further down the road to get the cheap eats. I was the only person at this little kebab stand, so I ordered mine. then a bunch of Chinese people came up and were given my kebabs. because foreigners can wait. Chinese people are apparently incapable of it. that shit’s annoying, yo.
anyhoo, back to that pagoda that I ultimately didn’t end up seeing on that particular day. biked all over, asking for instructions, being given different directions every time. or being patronized by old, judgmental men. “you can’t ride your bike to the pagoda. you can’t do it!” no shit, I was just trying to figure out where the entrance was. unfortunately, I haven’t learned how to say “no shit” in Chinese yet. working on it…and apparently there are 1000 baoshi roads. people kept telling me different numbers of the road: baoshi road 1, baoshi road 4. no, this is baoshi road 3, you want baoshi road 2. jesus Christ. then I’d bike for a while only to be told that I couldn’t go that way. it was disappointing, only because I ultimately had nothing to show for the day. talking about going to a pagoda and how you got lost isn’t actually as cool as making it to the pagoda. I just haven’t really been doing much in the way of exploring for the past couple of weeks. it does require some mental preparation to even venture into the bike lane. you have to prepare yourself for the [road] rage imbued in sharing a confined space with a bunch of Chinese peeps who are thinking only of themselves (this seems to be the recurring theme of this post). seriously. same deal as the grocery store. a country of bike riders and none of them have any idea of right of way or human decency in the context of bicycle etiquette. I guess that’s how it is with cars too. cars, bikes, e bikes, pedestrians, it doesn’t matter. whatever mode of transport, the only focus is on “me.” people just step into the street or the bike lane without even looking. people choose to walk in the bike lane or the street, when there’s a virtually vacant sidewalk a mere 5 feet away. they want to be in the road or bike lane at that particular moment, so they go. without looking in either direction. some engrained sense of tunnel vision. but it’s frustrating. and people are either too heavy on the horn or don’t use it at all. it’s just the very definition of a clusterfuck (I’m going to look up that word now. seems like there would have to be a reference or example related to china…).
I was riding my bike home a few weeks ago. as I do pretty much everyday. I’m always coming home from somewhere and it honestly feels weird for me to walk anywhere that’s not the innards of a building. that same familiar feeling I had in Columbia, of showing up anywhere, no matter the temperature, and being very very sweaty. anyhoo. biking home and some guy on an e-bike comes up behind me and starts yelling shit at me and grabbing his dick. so I flipped him off and yelled all the Chinese curse words I could muster (hey, there’s that word again!). he rides ahead and then stops in the bike lane. I pass him again, yelling “fuck off” the whole time. then he comes up behind me again and grabs my right arm, as I’m biking. so I brake a little bit and then karate chop his arm and try to push him off his bike. he’s still pointing and grabbing his dick. I bike away. he continues to follow me, swerving his bike into mine, threatening to knock me off. so then I called a few peeps, just so he could see that I had peeps to call. ultimately a chick came and met me to help me get home via taxi. I was pretty much a wreck at that point. the taxi driver apologized on behalf of all Chinese men. seems like I got that same speech back in may…fat lot of good it did. I guess I could have called the cops, but I didn’t know the name of the street I was on. I know how to get places without necessarily knowing what they’re called. and don’t even get me started with north/south/east/west. so yeah, it’d been a while since I was afraid of anything. or at least a few weeks. it was strange though. after those initial weeks here of night terrors and having crazy, vivid, scary dreams/hallucinations, awake and asleep, I’d fallen into this relative comfort and sense of well-being about everything. and this dick on an e-bike jeopardized my mental stability. this particular situation alone doesn’t really warrant much thought, but it was less about this incident and more about the associations with the last one. living in a place that was supposed to be safe and then the shock and violence that accompanied the revelation that it wasn’t. so even things that wouldn’t have bothered me before bother me now. I guess that could be good and bad. so I guess what I’m trying to say is that nothing is innocent anymore, not even some creepy guy following you on his e-bike, grabbing his dick and trying to pull you off your bike. damn.
the space heater reminds me of home. the sound of this glowing orange box oscillating. back in my folks’ house, the noise of the glow ever-so-thinly veiled the pitter patter of tiny rodent feet trapped in the purgatory of those old, ‘70s era pock-marked ceiling panels.
I have a social life. I have people that I consider friends. I go out and do things with them, and we usually talk about things other than teaching. and more than just one friend at a time, none of whom are related to me by blood or marriage. I think that’s worth noting. because it’s been quite a while.
speaking of my social life, let’s get back to that aforementioned baochu pagoda. I ended up going drinking the next day at a nice little place called seven club. not that that detail matters. but there was a bald Chinese man there who was getting very friendly with lots of the chicks I was with. found out later that he was eventually “asked to leave.” also an unimportant detail. but it’s important not to forget the minutiae of my life. when the bar closed, I was with a friend on our bikes. I mentioned that I’d tried to go to the pagoda a day prior and failed miserably. but since the bar was on the same road, he said he’d show me where it was then. keep in mind that this was at about 2 am. so we headed in that direction. when we got to the pagoda, we were met with a huge tower of stairs. okay, not huge, but big enough to daunt a less-than-physically -fit, and more-than-drunk 30-yr. old woman in the middle of the night. we stood there debating whether or not to go up, and ultimately decided that it was probably a good idea. I mean, we’d already biked there. so why not.
seemed easy enough for me to lock my bike at the base of the hill and make the “summit’ (I want to speak as hyperbolically as possible and with lots of gratuitous quotes. it’s just “fun”). but my friend actually has a nice bike, replete with gears. gears, I tell you, gears!!! so it wasn’t quite as easy for him to just lock it up and feel ok with that decision. so he hoisted his giant giant bike onto his shoulder. and up we went. “hey, you have a job with regular hours and have to go to work in the morning, and now you’re climbing up a fuck ton of stairs with your bike on your shoulder. at an arguably ridiculous hour.” but it was the best night I’ve had in a really long time. a spontaneous decision gone right. when we finally got up to the top, there was, of course, no one there. it was now about 2:30-2:45 in the am. and here was this oddly gothic creation perched on the top of the hill, looking out over the rest of the sleeping city of hangzhou. yes, it was a pagoda. and yes, it was in china. but it felt distinctly un-chinese. so I stood there and stared up at this strange, arguably anachronistic gothic thing, lit up by a nearly-full moon. it was quite the juxtaposition of the man-made and the natural. a pillar of stability amid the racing clouds. beautiful.
the weather is changing. I guess that’s good. I would have liked for the archetypal fall to have lingered for a bit longer—characterized by autumnal hues and jacket weather. instead, we’ve got persistent/consistent rain and biting wind. ah, the first vestiges of this so-called “winter” in hangzhou.
it was beginning winter
an in-between time,
the landscape still partly brown:
the bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind,
above the blue snow.
it was beginning winter,
the light moved slowly over the frozen field,
over the dry seed-crowns,
the beautiful surviving bones
swinging in the wind.
light traveled over the wide field;
stayed.
the weeds stopped swinging.
the mind moved, not alone,
through the clean air, in the silence.
was it light?
was it light within?
was it light within light?
stillness becoming alive,
yet still?
a lively understandable spirit
once entertained you.
it will come again.
be still.
wait.
I like to imagine Missouri when I read this. not that the sentiment is particular to a tangible place, but still. at least a place where the word “field” isn’t an abstract notion. and where landscape means something devoid of buildings and clutter and all unnatural vestiges of this pesky thing called humanity.
my birthday is coming up soon. 10 days to be exact. the day after thanksgiving. and to celebrate my 31 years of life (western age, thank you very much), I’m doing something I’ve never done by myself. I’ll wait a minute so people can try to imagine a whole “grip” of things I’ve never done….i’m hosting/throwing a party! there’s no theme or required offering. if people happen to bring animal sacrifices i’m not completely opposed. but no, just a plain old house party. and that makes me exceedingly nervous. I’m not sure why. I guess it’s just issues with personal space, combined with the ghosts of mcgeorge parties past. i know high school was such a long time ago, but I’ll never forget the party we had where no one showed up. except for some awkward dude who had a boner for jules. I think we ultimately ended up going bowling. me, jules, and awkward boy. and as for all the snacks and beverages arranged neatly in bowls and containers in the candlelit dining room…abandoned.
i must mop my apartment. another first. I wish I had home internet again. then I could post this now. it’s already losing some of it’s timeliness…
at the grocery store you have to weigh all your vegetables at a special weigh station before you go get in the real line to pay. so I was doing that, being the good foreigner who’s familiar with vegetable weighing protocol(s) in Chinese supermarkets. in between the weighing of carrots and potatoes some woman tried to worm her way in to get her melon weighed (heh heh). for a country with a long history of Confucian principles and the sense of the whole over the individual, they can sure be greedy, impatient assholes. I’m trying to think of any event stored away in the annals of my own personal experience that disproves this blatantly mean stereotype, but i’m at a loss. and the most impressive facet of all of this is that they’re oblivious to it. and yes, I know the fact that I’m living in china means I should embrace all the little cultural nuances. it’s a nice idea, open-mindedness and whatnot, but it’d just be nice to be met in the middle sometimes. I’m aware that none of these minor transgressions is executed with any real malice, there’s just no concept of it being any other way. it was like I was invisible. which is really quite convenient for the Chinese peeps in my neighborhood, that they alone (collectively?) can choose when I am and I’m not invisible. I’m stared at and given the thrice over pretty much any time I step out of the threshold of my apartment building, but at the grocery store, when it’s convenient or they want something in the hurry that seems to perpetuate daily life, I don’t exist. anyhoo, seems like Chinese people are very much a culture of “I want what I want and I want it now. I need this now so I shouldn’t have to wait.” again in the check out line with the worming. some chick tried to worm her way in front of me because she only had 1 item. nevermind the fact that the two lanes on either side of me were open. she wanted my lane and didn’t think she should have to wait, simply by virtue of her desire for lane 3. so I sort of blocked her out and pointed at the other two lanes. after she was forced to acknowledge my existence she looked like I’d punched her in the stomach, or I’d at least rocked her paradigm.
also spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get to baochu pagoda on my bike. it’s supposed to be purty. so that seemed like an easy enough excursion to undertake on my second day off. on the way though, I made the nightmarish stop in the silk market area of my neighborhood. my usual kebab joint closed down, so I had to venture a little further down the road to get the cheap eats. I was the only person at this little kebab stand, so I ordered mine. then a bunch of Chinese people came up and were given my kebabs. because foreigners can wait. Chinese people are apparently incapable of it. that shit’s annoying, yo.
anyhoo, back to that pagoda that I ultimately didn’t end up seeing on that particular day. biked all over, asking for instructions, being given different directions every time. or being patronized by old, judgmental men. “you can’t ride your bike to the pagoda. you can’t do it!” no shit, I was just trying to figure out where the entrance was. unfortunately, I haven’t learned how to say “no shit” in Chinese yet. working on it…and apparently there are 1000 baoshi roads. people kept telling me different numbers of the road: baoshi road 1, baoshi road 4. no, this is baoshi road 3, you want baoshi road 2. jesus Christ. then I’d bike for a while only to be told that I couldn’t go that way. it was disappointing, only because I ultimately had nothing to show for the day. talking about going to a pagoda and how you got lost isn’t actually as cool as making it to the pagoda. I just haven’t really been doing much in the way of exploring for the past couple of weeks. it does require some mental preparation to even venture into the bike lane. you have to prepare yourself for the [road] rage imbued in sharing a confined space with a bunch of Chinese peeps who are thinking only of themselves (this seems to be the recurring theme of this post). seriously. same deal as the grocery store. a country of bike riders and none of them have any idea of right of way or human decency in the context of bicycle etiquette. I guess that’s how it is with cars too. cars, bikes, e bikes, pedestrians, it doesn’t matter. whatever mode of transport, the only focus is on “me.” people just step into the street or the bike lane without even looking. people choose to walk in the bike lane or the street, when there’s a virtually vacant sidewalk a mere 5 feet away. they want to be in the road or bike lane at that particular moment, so they go. without looking in either direction. some engrained sense of tunnel vision. but it’s frustrating. and people are either too heavy on the horn or don’t use it at all. it’s just the very definition of a clusterfuck (I’m going to look up that word now. seems like there would have to be a reference or example related to china…).
I was riding my bike home a few weeks ago. as I do pretty much everyday. I’m always coming home from somewhere and it honestly feels weird for me to walk anywhere that’s not the innards of a building. that same familiar feeling I had in Columbia, of showing up anywhere, no matter the temperature, and being very very sweaty. anyhoo. biking home and some guy on an e-bike comes up behind me and starts yelling shit at me and grabbing his dick. so I flipped him off and yelled all the Chinese curse words I could muster (hey, there’s that word again!). he rides ahead and then stops in the bike lane. I pass him again, yelling “fuck off” the whole time. then he comes up behind me again and grabs my right arm, as I’m biking. so I brake a little bit and then karate chop his arm and try to push him off his bike. he’s still pointing and grabbing his dick. I bike away. he continues to follow me, swerving his bike into mine, threatening to knock me off. so then I called a few peeps, just so he could see that I had peeps to call. ultimately a chick came and met me to help me get home via taxi. I was pretty much a wreck at that point. the taxi driver apologized on behalf of all Chinese men. seems like I got that same speech back in may…fat lot of good it did. I guess I could have called the cops, but I didn’t know the name of the street I was on. I know how to get places without necessarily knowing what they’re called. and don’t even get me started with north/south/east/west. so yeah, it’d been a while since I was afraid of anything. or at least a few weeks. it was strange though. after those initial weeks here of night terrors and having crazy, vivid, scary dreams/hallucinations, awake and asleep, I’d fallen into this relative comfort and sense of well-being about everything. and this dick on an e-bike jeopardized my mental stability. this particular situation alone doesn’t really warrant much thought, but it was less about this incident and more about the associations with the last one. living in a place that was supposed to be safe and then the shock and violence that accompanied the revelation that it wasn’t. so even things that wouldn’t have bothered me before bother me now. I guess that could be good and bad. so I guess what I’m trying to say is that nothing is innocent anymore, not even some creepy guy following you on his e-bike, grabbing his dick and trying to pull you off your bike. damn.
the space heater reminds me of home. the sound of this glowing orange box oscillating. back in my folks’ house, the noise of the glow ever-so-thinly veiled the pitter patter of tiny rodent feet trapped in the purgatory of those old, ‘70s era pock-marked ceiling panels.
I have a social life. I have people that I consider friends. I go out and do things with them, and we usually talk about things other than teaching. and more than just one friend at a time, none of whom are related to me by blood or marriage. I think that’s worth noting. because it’s been quite a while.
speaking of my social life, let’s get back to that aforementioned baochu pagoda. I ended up going drinking the next day at a nice little place called seven club. not that that detail matters. but there was a bald Chinese man there who was getting very friendly with lots of the chicks I was with. found out later that he was eventually “asked to leave.” also an unimportant detail. but it’s important not to forget the minutiae of my life. when the bar closed, I was with a friend on our bikes. I mentioned that I’d tried to go to the pagoda a day prior and failed miserably. but since the bar was on the same road, he said he’d show me where it was then. keep in mind that this was at about 2 am. so we headed in that direction. when we got to the pagoda, we were met with a huge tower of stairs. okay, not huge, but big enough to daunt a less-than-physically -fit, and more-than-drunk 30-yr. old woman in the middle of the night. we stood there debating whether or not to go up, and ultimately decided that it was probably a good idea. I mean, we’d already biked there. so why not.
seemed easy enough for me to lock my bike at the base of the hill and make the “summit’ (I want to speak as hyperbolically as possible and with lots of gratuitous quotes. it’s just “fun”). but my friend actually has a nice bike, replete with gears. gears, I tell you, gears!!! so it wasn’t quite as easy for him to just lock it up and feel ok with that decision. so he hoisted his giant giant bike onto his shoulder. and up we went. “hey, you have a job with regular hours and have to go to work in the morning, and now you’re climbing up a fuck ton of stairs with your bike on your shoulder. at an arguably ridiculous hour.” but it was the best night I’ve had in a really long time. a spontaneous decision gone right. when we finally got up to the top, there was, of course, no one there. it was now about 2:30-2:45 in the am. and here was this oddly gothic creation perched on the top of the hill, looking out over the rest of the sleeping city of hangzhou. yes, it was a pagoda. and yes, it was in china. but it felt distinctly un-chinese. so I stood there and stared up at this strange, arguably anachronistic gothic thing, lit up by a nearly-full moon. it was quite the juxtaposition of the man-made and the natural. a pillar of stability amid the racing clouds. beautiful.
the weather is changing. I guess that’s good. I would have liked for the archetypal fall to have lingered for a bit longer—characterized by autumnal hues and jacket weather. instead, we’ve got persistent/consistent rain and biting wind. ah, the first vestiges of this so-called “winter” in hangzhou.
it was beginning winter
an in-between time,
the landscape still partly brown:
the bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind,
above the blue snow.
it was beginning winter,
the light moved slowly over the frozen field,
over the dry seed-crowns,
the beautiful surviving bones
swinging in the wind.
light traveled over the wide field;
stayed.
the weeds stopped swinging.
the mind moved, not alone,
through the clean air, in the silence.
was it light?
was it light within?
was it light within light?
stillness becoming alive,
yet still?
a lively understandable spirit
once entertained you.
it will come again.
be still.
wait.
I like to imagine Missouri when I read this. not that the sentiment is particular to a tangible place, but still. at least a place where the word “field” isn’t an abstract notion. and where landscape means something devoid of buildings and clutter and all unnatural vestiges of this pesky thing called humanity.
my birthday is coming up soon. 10 days to be exact. the day after thanksgiving. and to celebrate my 31 years of life (western age, thank you very much), I’m doing something I’ve never done by myself. I’ll wait a minute so people can try to imagine a whole “grip” of things I’ve never done….i’m hosting/throwing a party! there’s no theme or required offering. if people happen to bring animal sacrifices i’m not completely opposed. but no, just a plain old house party. and that makes me exceedingly nervous. I’m not sure why. I guess it’s just issues with personal space, combined with the ghosts of mcgeorge parties past. i know high school was such a long time ago, but I’ll never forget the party we had where no one showed up. except for some awkward dude who had a boner for jules. I think we ultimately ended up going bowling. me, jules, and awkward boy. and as for all the snacks and beverages arranged neatly in bowls and containers in the candlelit dining room…abandoned.
i must mop my apartment. another first. I wish I had home internet again. then I could post this now. it’s already losing some of it’s timeliness…
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
pa sonny and some other issues
my grandpa on my mom’s side is named Jerome. actually he's my step-grandpa, as he's my mom's step-dad. but yes, his name's Jerome. he used to be a fireman, and on an unrelated note, is still an asshole. his nickname is “sonny”, or as we kids used to call him before we understood that nicknames sort of imply a generally pleasant rapport with someone (especially compound nicknames): “pa sonny.” I'm pretty sure that was his idea. how you go from “Jerome” to “sonny” is an equation I don't exactly follow, but then again, I've never been good at math. I'm sure the nickname had its origins in his fireman's background. he had a large belly, shaved his legs and slicked his hair back on the sides with some sort of old man pomade. I don’t know why I’m using the past tense since he hasn’t died yet. i like that “yet” part. a reminder that he will die, eventually. anyhoo, he used to be an alcoholic (unfortunate years during my mother’s formative years that I’m sure she recalls with nothing but fondness), but has since made the switch to the pepsi nation. there were cans of pepsi strewn all over the house. full of tobacco spit. I seem to recall him offering us some “chew” every time we visited. pretty sure i've written about this before. and he was married to nina. sonny and nina. she’s also a cunt. she wears a wig. I have a vague recollection of seeing her without her wig, and I’m sure I intended to block it from the long-term memory but, unfortunately, failed. boris karloff comes to mind. or any other image of something cadaverous and terrifying.
nina and sonny always had a garage, wherever they lived, and boxers. the dogs. they had a weird predilection for this particular breed. anyhoo, their garage had a distinct smell of tires (rubber) and dogs. I guess it smelled the way a garage would naturally smell if those two elements were the constants.
I bought a bike 2 days ago. from the century mart. it has a basket. my taint hurts already from two days of exertion. that sounds gross. I don’t care. more to the point (yes, there is one): every time I walk down the hall of my new apartment, where said shiny new bike is located, heading to my bathroom, it smells like pa sonny and nina’s garage. I guess the dog smell comes from the fact that it’s been raining heaps. but mostly that new tire rubber smell. and I don’t recall it with any rancor; it’s actually a neutral reminder that there are still these two people on the planet who, oddly enough, have some relationship with me (no one’s choice in the matter), who I absolutely loathe. and I don’t think it’s funny or horrible, I just think it’s interesting in a “who’d’ve thunk”, head scratching way.
yup, all that back story to segue into the fact that I bought a bike. and that was a happy day. the last time I owned a bike was back home in Columbia, mo. biking from stewart road to the asian affairs center. a fine ride if you were going to, but coming back was all uphill, and usually under the influence of the shakespeare’s bar. during the drunk rides home, it always seemed like the road was getting narrower and the curbs were designed specifically to throw me off my bike when I’d made the bad decision to wear a dress. those grass stains were hard to get out. too bad you can’t just will them away. you know what works far better than will? detergent.
the last time I road a bike was over a year ago on cat ba island during my trip to halong bay in ‘nam. a hot rock climber dude pedaled me around on his bike and then let me ride it alone. I’m 30 years old and I just used “hot” and “dude” in the same sentence. the secret to staying young, ladies. I’m going to take this opportunity to wax nostalgic about that day, even though I already did about a year ago when I wrote about it originally. after the bar and the happy water and the karaoke and the bike and the rats scurrying on the roof of the hotel, went skinny dipping in the bay. and it was on par with the first time I experienced any large body of water (fully clothed, I might add) in Viareggio, italy.
other things. I have made the move to Hangzhou and started working at the ef here. so far, I’m extremely happy with my choice. the decision to leave jiaxing was a good one, I think, and my options ultimately boiled down to three: go to Chongqing with jules and rory, go to shanghai to be a dos, come to Hangzhou with no title and just work on becoming a better teacher. so I chose the latter.
my apartment here is fucking amazing, by virtue of it being mine, even if the hot water in the bathroom doesn’t seem to last for more than 5 minutes. that might be a generous figure, too. there’s just space. and lots of it. a big bedroom, an office, a living room, a dining “nook”, kitchen, storage room, bona fide hallway and bathroom. there’s an elementary school directly behind my apartment (I can see munchkins through the fence). but this is funny because once an hour they play kids’ music or marching band music over the loudspeakers to signify recess or a class change or lunch. there also seems to be a lot of whistling going on. wind sprints, probably.
it is difficult living alone though. the terror of going to sleep in an empty, dark space. or entering my apartment alone after it’s gotten dark. of course I’ve slept in/entered hotels and things since “the incident”, but always with the knowledge that there were people close by me should anything bad happen there in the blackness. in the past week I’ve just found it really hard to turn off the lights, or actually commit to going to sleep. I’ve locked myself in my room on several occasions and placed my bike in the middle of the hallway, in case some intruder should come in, then they’d knock the bike over and I’d at least know they were coming. even if i had no way to escape since the front door’s the only way out. I also leave all the lights on. I couldn’t sleep last night because the sound of the rain hitting the metal bars on the window was, in my mind, a man trying to bend those bars (there for my protection) and get into my room to do something ultimately resulting in my death. I have a lot of dark visions as soon as I start to get tired. this impending doom and gloom. guns. the intruder opens my bedroom door and just shoots me. no struggle, no attempt at an explanation, no robbery, just there to end my life, plain and simple. and of course visions of knives and slit throats (this one usually in slow motion or sped up, but never in real time) and stabbings and being smothered and all manner of horrible ways to be murdered by an intruder in your home. or looking in the mirror. I’m just expecting someone to come up behind me and grab me. and my breath catches and I can feel these phantom hands on me. I don’t know what to do about this. I’m generally happy for the majority of my day, but when I’m not, it’s a feeling i’d never felt before this thing happened. primal fear. and shouldn’t that be gone by now? a good amount of time has passed. when does it go away? I guess it would obviously take more than a week of being alone to do it. so I’ll give it time. but in the process of giving it time and still feeling this terror, what can I do?
sometimes these death visions (that sounds like a graphic novel or something) are tempered by revenge fantasies where there’s the inevitable struggle, but I am the victor. ha ha! I beat the man with the baseball bat I don’t own. or some other weapon created in the heat of the moment by a random furnishing. my computer speakers? surely I could use those to defend myself (read: kill someone) should it come down to it. or he has a knife and I knock it away and then we have a fist fight, where I would obviously, with all my fighting experience, beat the shit out of him. or something even simpler, like someone hears me scream and the police or a neighbor or someone come to my aid. in time.
there’s this feeling any time I enter a dark space by myself, and even at jules and rory’s on those rare occasions when I was the first one home or the only one home, that even if this isn’t the time that an intruder is in my personal space, it is going to happen and I have to be prepared for it. it’s not “if” I should ever experience anything like that again, it’s “when.” which sort of sucks, but I don’t know how to make it stop.
and these aren’t feelings you really get to have a conversation about. particularly with people you’ve just met in a new city. hence the writing it down. maybe it’s not good, but since I don’t know what is good anymore, it’s worth a try.
nina and sonny always had a garage, wherever they lived, and boxers. the dogs. they had a weird predilection for this particular breed. anyhoo, their garage had a distinct smell of tires (rubber) and dogs. I guess it smelled the way a garage would naturally smell if those two elements were the constants.
I bought a bike 2 days ago. from the century mart. it has a basket. my taint hurts already from two days of exertion. that sounds gross. I don’t care. more to the point (yes, there is one): every time I walk down the hall of my new apartment, where said shiny new bike is located, heading to my bathroom, it smells like pa sonny and nina’s garage. I guess the dog smell comes from the fact that it’s been raining heaps. but mostly that new tire rubber smell. and I don’t recall it with any rancor; it’s actually a neutral reminder that there are still these two people on the planet who, oddly enough, have some relationship with me (no one’s choice in the matter), who I absolutely loathe. and I don’t think it’s funny or horrible, I just think it’s interesting in a “who’d’ve thunk”, head scratching way.
yup, all that back story to segue into the fact that I bought a bike. and that was a happy day. the last time I owned a bike was back home in Columbia, mo. biking from stewart road to the asian affairs center. a fine ride if you were going to, but coming back was all uphill, and usually under the influence of the shakespeare’s bar. during the drunk rides home, it always seemed like the road was getting narrower and the curbs were designed specifically to throw me off my bike when I’d made the bad decision to wear a dress. those grass stains were hard to get out. too bad you can’t just will them away. you know what works far better than will? detergent.
the last time I road a bike was over a year ago on cat ba island during my trip to halong bay in ‘nam. a hot rock climber dude pedaled me around on his bike and then let me ride it alone. I’m 30 years old and I just used “hot” and “dude” in the same sentence. the secret to staying young, ladies. I’m going to take this opportunity to wax nostalgic about that day, even though I already did about a year ago when I wrote about it originally. after the bar and the happy water and the karaoke and the bike and the rats scurrying on the roof of the hotel, went skinny dipping in the bay. and it was on par with the first time I experienced any large body of water (fully clothed, I might add) in Viareggio, italy.
other things. I have made the move to Hangzhou and started working at the ef here. so far, I’m extremely happy with my choice. the decision to leave jiaxing was a good one, I think, and my options ultimately boiled down to three: go to Chongqing with jules and rory, go to shanghai to be a dos, come to Hangzhou with no title and just work on becoming a better teacher. so I chose the latter.
my apartment here is fucking amazing, by virtue of it being mine, even if the hot water in the bathroom doesn’t seem to last for more than 5 minutes. that might be a generous figure, too. there’s just space. and lots of it. a big bedroom, an office, a living room, a dining “nook”, kitchen, storage room, bona fide hallway and bathroom. there’s an elementary school directly behind my apartment (I can see munchkins through the fence). but this is funny because once an hour they play kids’ music or marching band music over the loudspeakers to signify recess or a class change or lunch. there also seems to be a lot of whistling going on. wind sprints, probably.
it is difficult living alone though. the terror of going to sleep in an empty, dark space. or entering my apartment alone after it’s gotten dark. of course I’ve slept in/entered hotels and things since “the incident”, but always with the knowledge that there were people close by me should anything bad happen there in the blackness. in the past week I’ve just found it really hard to turn off the lights, or actually commit to going to sleep. I’ve locked myself in my room on several occasions and placed my bike in the middle of the hallway, in case some intruder should come in, then they’d knock the bike over and I’d at least know they were coming. even if i had no way to escape since the front door’s the only way out. I also leave all the lights on. I couldn’t sleep last night because the sound of the rain hitting the metal bars on the window was, in my mind, a man trying to bend those bars (there for my protection) and get into my room to do something ultimately resulting in my death. I have a lot of dark visions as soon as I start to get tired. this impending doom and gloom. guns. the intruder opens my bedroom door and just shoots me. no struggle, no attempt at an explanation, no robbery, just there to end my life, plain and simple. and of course visions of knives and slit throats (this one usually in slow motion or sped up, but never in real time) and stabbings and being smothered and all manner of horrible ways to be murdered by an intruder in your home. or looking in the mirror. I’m just expecting someone to come up behind me and grab me. and my breath catches and I can feel these phantom hands on me. I don’t know what to do about this. I’m generally happy for the majority of my day, but when I’m not, it’s a feeling i’d never felt before this thing happened. primal fear. and shouldn’t that be gone by now? a good amount of time has passed. when does it go away? I guess it would obviously take more than a week of being alone to do it. so I’ll give it time. but in the process of giving it time and still feeling this terror, what can I do?
sometimes these death visions (that sounds like a graphic novel or something) are tempered by revenge fantasies where there’s the inevitable struggle, but I am the victor. ha ha! I beat the man with the baseball bat I don’t own. or some other weapon created in the heat of the moment by a random furnishing. my computer speakers? surely I could use those to defend myself (read: kill someone) should it come down to it. or he has a knife and I knock it away and then we have a fist fight, where I would obviously, with all my fighting experience, beat the shit out of him. or something even simpler, like someone hears me scream and the police or a neighbor or someone come to my aid. in time.
there’s this feeling any time I enter a dark space by myself, and even at jules and rory’s on those rare occasions when I was the first one home or the only one home, that even if this isn’t the time that an intruder is in my personal space, it is going to happen and I have to be prepared for it. it’s not “if” I should ever experience anything like that again, it’s “when.” which sort of sucks, but I don’t know how to make it stop.
and these aren’t feelings you really get to have a conversation about. particularly with people you’ve just met in a new city. hence the writing it down. maybe it’s not good, but since I don’t know what is good anymore, it’s worth a try.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
chinese pencil case label
solidarity will be a tremendous, invincible, all-conquering power erupted when people concentrate their attentions to one mission in a common team.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
i've never been a cat person.
lots of anxiety about work and other things has lead to some pretty interesting dreams as of late.
the first in what is certainly starting to feel like a series was one in which my big toe on my left foot was actually made of something like shredded wheat. the jumbo kind. either that or rotting wood/particle board. i have some issues with my left big toe, simply because it's gimpy and small compared to my right big toe. actually, my whole left foot is small compared to my right, but my left big toe bears the brunt of said gimpiness, simply for its marked visibility (relative to the other lefty toes).
anyhoo, the shredded wheat bit is interesting, but more interesting (i think), is the fact that in the dream, i had a supply of shredded wheat toes stored down inside my foot. imagine, if you will (and i think you will), one of those kids' pencils that has the little bullets of lead that you can push up through the bottom of the pencil. that's the set up i had going on in my foot. but the actual chamber of these back-up shredded wheat toes was smooth like glass and conical in shape.
the point is, it was a strange dream. and therefore memorable. and worthy of mention. and stuff.
the other weird one that sticks out in recent memory involved jules, mad men and kittens. we've been watching a lot of mad men lately. so we were in our hood here in china and walking around the block for some reason. on the corner was roger sterling's office. his apartment actually consisted of box seats for the baseball stadium that doesn't exist in this city. anyhoo, it was also located above a pet store. so jules and i walked into the pet store, and the next thing i knew, she was doped out of her mind and walking across the street, dodging oncoming traffic, with a silver serving tray of stolen kittens raised above her head.
i woke up before anything too bad happened, but there were the very real sounds of swerving cars and fading horns comingling with meowing kittens. that was bizarre.
the first in what is certainly starting to feel like a series was one in which my big toe on my left foot was actually made of something like shredded wheat. the jumbo kind. either that or rotting wood/particle board. i have some issues with my left big toe, simply because it's gimpy and small compared to my right big toe. actually, my whole left foot is small compared to my right, but my left big toe bears the brunt of said gimpiness, simply for its marked visibility (relative to the other lefty toes).
anyhoo, the shredded wheat bit is interesting, but more interesting (i think), is the fact that in the dream, i had a supply of shredded wheat toes stored down inside my foot. imagine, if you will (and i think you will), one of those kids' pencils that has the little bullets of lead that you can push up through the bottom of the pencil. that's the set up i had going on in my foot. but the actual chamber of these back-up shredded wheat toes was smooth like glass and conical in shape.
the point is, it was a strange dream. and therefore memorable. and worthy of mention. and stuff.
the other weird one that sticks out in recent memory involved jules, mad men and kittens. we've been watching a lot of mad men lately. so we were in our hood here in china and walking around the block for some reason. on the corner was roger sterling's office. his apartment actually consisted of box seats for the baseball stadium that doesn't exist in this city. anyhoo, it was also located above a pet store. so jules and i walked into the pet store, and the next thing i knew, she was doped out of her mind and walking across the street, dodging oncoming traffic, with a silver serving tray of stolen kittens raised above her head.
i woke up before anything too bad happened, but there were the very real sounds of swerving cars and fading horns comingling with meowing kittens. that was bizarre.
Friday, June 19, 2009
china doesn't like blogger.
this would be my first foray into the world of the p r o x y website (see how i spaced it there, lest the chinese government search and destroy). a lot's happened in the past few months. i took the liberty of copying and pasting from my myspace blog. i get to do that. just because. reverse chronological. from really good and confusing to really bad and confusing...
Thursday, June 18, 2009
more stuff
i met with the police 2 days ago. my school decided it would be a good public relations opportunity to have a 'thanks for doing your job' ceremony. i was wary of that, simply because it seemed a little bit like taking advantage of a crappy situation and had very little to actually do with me.
i was wrong.
went to the school and there were flowers for me to give to the chief of police and a plaque that expressed the gratitude of myself and the other foreigners for the police keeping us safe in our home away from home. so yes, i thought this was all a little strange and opportunistic.
then the police showed up. they ate some of the fruits nicely displayed on the table. and the first thing that happened was they dumped the contents of this police envelope onto the table--my camera, my vietnamese money, my chinese money.
what the fuck. they got my stuff back. that's crazy.
apparently, the migrant worker who had robbed me (25 years old, 184 cms, in case you wanted to know) had sold the camera and already spent some of the money. so the cops made him retrieve the camera and his family had to come up with the money. the vietnamese money he had tried to exchange, but when he realized how little it was actually worth, he just kept it. doesn't seem like a smart move.
there was a break in my case when he robbed another woman in jiaxing. he didn't hurt her, just took some money. but that's how they got him. he confessed to everything and said he'd been scoping out people who were fashionable or who looked like they had a lot of money. that was the creepy part, that homeboy had been watching me for a few days before he actually attacked me. but fuck. whatever. it's done. closure. all that.
the medical examiner was also present and was taking pictures of my scars and measuring my range of motion on my hand/fingers. that info will come into play for the sentencing part of all of this. initial word was that dude would get at least 10 years in prison.
that was two days ago. and i have absolutely nothing but love for the police of jiaxing, china. this is not to say i have nothing but love for china or chinese people. but these specific chinese people in china have impressed the hell out of me.
Friday, June 12, 2009
cool beans
police came by my school yesterday (gotta love unannounced work visits by the police) with another picture of a suspect (grand total of 4 at this point). he looked the most like the bad man (this is my graded down english teacher talk) out of any of them.
got the call this morning that the cops had arrested this dude. so it's been nearly two months.
so that's good news.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
i don't like surprises
i've been working on my right brain, sung to the tune of either gnr's "night train" or seger's "night moves". your choice.
things i am now able to do with my left hand (however shoddily):
type
use chopsticks (provided they're wooden)
cut/mangle paper as long as no real precision is required
write on a whiteboard (not on paper. it tends to move)
fasten a front-closure bra
open a beer
open a bottle of water (this is cheating since i use my teeth)
apply eyeliner
so yes, these are the things i've been working on. some context is probably required, as i didn't just take it upon myself to explore my right brain. small disclaimer: i'm not writing any of this to try to coerce random peeps or non-random peeps into expressions of sympathy. i tend to only feel human when i'm communicating, however directly or indirectly, what's going on in my life and my head. also, a great purge seems entirely necessary and the only thing i seem able to do with any real proificiency is type. so that's that.
jamie, why do you have a partial cast on your right hand and nasty looking fingers with the skin peeling off like flesh paint chips?
well, those are very good questions. i'll tell you why...
once upon a time (a little over one month ago) a fair maiden (me) lived in a beautiful palace (a police precinct/apartment complex) in a faraway land (jiaxing, china). i had been out drinking with a friend on a friday night. came home around midnight. opened the door to my dark dining room. i was reaching for the light and kicking the door closed behind me when i felt a hand over my mouth and a person holding me very tightly. my initial reaction was that it had to be jules or rory in my apartment trying to surprise me. then the person started speaking chinese in what i guess was a "menacing" tone. that's when i realized that this was a bad dude who probably intended me harm in some form or another. incredulity and terror merged for that single second of recognition. capable of summation with a single word: fuck!
so i screamed. i was able to get off one full-bodied howl while we were struggling against each other, then he got a firmer grip over my mouth so they were only partial screams. i continued to struggle until he sort of wrestled me to the floor. i was laying there with this dude on top of me in total darkness, but at least we weren't fighting anymore. that's when i felt blood dripping on my face, which i assumed was mine. i don't remember getting cut, but that's when i realized that this man had the power to hurt me. he continued to talk to me in this put-on tone, then i started speaking in broken chinese: i'm sorry, i don't understand. i kept repeating it. then his tone of voice changed. i don't think he fully understood that i was a foreigner. so then i said "chien" (money). and he said "ok ok." there was a brief moment of relief there because i was certain that i wasn't going to be a victim of an even worse violation. that was a very, very good moment of clarity.
so we stood up, i said "there." he sort of pushed me along into my bedroom, where i turned on the bedside lamp and got my first glimpse of my hand. lots of blood and a big hole on my knuckle that looked like it should have an eyeball popping out of it. anyhoo, i reached into a drawer of my computer desk and pulled out 4,700 rmb, which was my flight reimbursement from my school. approximately $685. awesome.
at this point i still hadn't seen him because it had been dark and he'd been behind me the whole time.
then he sort of sat me on my bed and proceeded to tie up my ankles, my wrists and tie a sock over my mouth. he did a pretty shitty job of this, i might add, because i was able to use my hands to move the sock to talk to him. this was also the first time i saw him. tall dude wearing sporty-ish clothes and pantyhose over his head. this was when i freaked out a little bit and started crying very loudly and shaking. he told me "shh" and showed me the knife again. then he laid me down and covered my face with my comforter.
he left and fiddled with the door for a while, then he came back and asked for my keys. so i was able to use my tied hands to reach into my pocket for my keys. i don't know why he thought he needed keys to leave. i waited about 5 minutes to be sure he was gone. untied myself. turned on all the lights. called jules and rory while pounding on my neighbor's door. they let me in and a very old woman and her granddaughter called the police. they also tended to my hand and gave me water.
my apartment supervisor showed up, along with cops and jules and rory and a local teacher to translate everything. the cops drove me to the emergency room. minor hand surgery ensued. and when i was finished there was a whole waiting room full of people to see me (and a can of coke). in a bizarre turn for understatement, seeing those people was pretty amazing.
long story short, i've moved in with jules and rory. on vacation now, which i think has helped tremendously. gone back to work (that would be the frustrating part, but i'll save the emotions for another blog). the cops turned my apartment into csi but never caught the guy. he also stole my camera and my change. and i had already bought that camera twice.
so that's that. i feel slightly better, full disclosure and all that. my cast is sposed to come off today, but i'm away from my doctor. i wonder if i can just take it off myself....
Thursday, June 18, 2009
more stuff
i met with the police 2 days ago. my school decided it would be a good public relations opportunity to have a 'thanks for doing your job' ceremony. i was wary of that, simply because it seemed a little bit like taking advantage of a crappy situation and had very little to actually do with me.
i was wrong.
went to the school and there were flowers for me to give to the chief of police and a plaque that expressed the gratitude of myself and the other foreigners for the police keeping us safe in our home away from home. so yes, i thought this was all a little strange and opportunistic.
then the police showed up. they ate some of the fruits nicely displayed on the table. and the first thing that happened was they dumped the contents of this police envelope onto the table--my camera, my vietnamese money, my chinese money.
what the fuck. they got my stuff back. that's crazy.
apparently, the migrant worker who had robbed me (25 years old, 184 cms, in case you wanted to know) had sold the camera and already spent some of the money. so the cops made him retrieve the camera and his family had to come up with the money. the vietnamese money he had tried to exchange, but when he realized how little it was actually worth, he just kept it. doesn't seem like a smart move.
there was a break in my case when he robbed another woman in jiaxing. he didn't hurt her, just took some money. but that's how they got him. he confessed to everything and said he'd been scoping out people who were fashionable or who looked like they had a lot of money. that was the creepy part, that homeboy had been watching me for a few days before he actually attacked me. but fuck. whatever. it's done. closure. all that.
the medical examiner was also present and was taking pictures of my scars and measuring my range of motion on my hand/fingers. that info will come into play for the sentencing part of all of this. initial word was that dude would get at least 10 years in prison.
that was two days ago. and i have absolutely nothing but love for the police of jiaxing, china. this is not to say i have nothing but love for china or chinese people. but these specific chinese people in china have impressed the hell out of me.
Friday, June 12, 2009
cool beans
police came by my school yesterday (gotta love unannounced work visits by the police) with another picture of a suspect (grand total of 4 at this point). he looked the most like the bad man (this is my graded down english teacher talk) out of any of them.
got the call this morning that the cops had arrested this dude. so it's been nearly two months.
so that's good news.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
i don't like surprises
i've been working on my right brain, sung to the tune of either gnr's "night train" or seger's "night moves". your choice.
things i am now able to do with my left hand (however shoddily):
type
use chopsticks (provided they're wooden)
cut/mangle paper as long as no real precision is required
write on a whiteboard (not on paper. it tends to move)
fasten a front-closure bra
open a beer
open a bottle of water (this is cheating since i use my teeth)
apply eyeliner
so yes, these are the things i've been working on. some context is probably required, as i didn't just take it upon myself to explore my right brain. small disclaimer: i'm not writing any of this to try to coerce random peeps or non-random peeps into expressions of sympathy. i tend to only feel human when i'm communicating, however directly or indirectly, what's going on in my life and my head. also, a great purge seems entirely necessary and the only thing i seem able to do with any real proificiency is type. so that's that.
jamie, why do you have a partial cast on your right hand and nasty looking fingers with the skin peeling off like flesh paint chips?
well, those are very good questions. i'll tell you why...
once upon a time (a little over one month ago) a fair maiden (me) lived in a beautiful palace (a police precinct/apartment complex) in a faraway land (jiaxing, china). i had been out drinking with a friend on a friday night. came home around midnight. opened the door to my dark dining room. i was reaching for the light and kicking the door closed behind me when i felt a hand over my mouth and a person holding me very tightly. my initial reaction was that it had to be jules or rory in my apartment trying to surprise me. then the person started speaking chinese in what i guess was a "menacing" tone. that's when i realized that this was a bad dude who probably intended me harm in some form or another. incredulity and terror merged for that single second of recognition. capable of summation with a single word: fuck!
so i screamed. i was able to get off one full-bodied howl while we were struggling against each other, then he got a firmer grip over my mouth so they were only partial screams. i continued to struggle until he sort of wrestled me to the floor. i was laying there with this dude on top of me in total darkness, but at least we weren't fighting anymore. that's when i felt blood dripping on my face, which i assumed was mine. i don't remember getting cut, but that's when i realized that this man had the power to hurt me. he continued to talk to me in this put-on tone, then i started speaking in broken chinese: i'm sorry, i don't understand. i kept repeating it. then his tone of voice changed. i don't think he fully understood that i was a foreigner. so then i said "chien" (money). and he said "ok ok." there was a brief moment of relief there because i was certain that i wasn't going to be a victim of an even worse violation. that was a very, very good moment of clarity.
so we stood up, i said "there." he sort of pushed me along into my bedroom, where i turned on the bedside lamp and got my first glimpse of my hand. lots of blood and a big hole on my knuckle that looked like it should have an eyeball popping out of it. anyhoo, i reached into a drawer of my computer desk and pulled out 4,700 rmb, which was my flight reimbursement from my school. approximately $685. awesome.
at this point i still hadn't seen him because it had been dark and he'd been behind me the whole time.
then he sort of sat me on my bed and proceeded to tie up my ankles, my wrists and tie a sock over my mouth. he did a pretty shitty job of this, i might add, because i was able to use my hands to move the sock to talk to him. this was also the first time i saw him. tall dude wearing sporty-ish clothes and pantyhose over his head. this was when i freaked out a little bit and started crying very loudly and shaking. he told me "shh" and showed me the knife again. then he laid me down and covered my face with my comforter.
he left and fiddled with the door for a while, then he came back and asked for my keys. so i was able to use my tied hands to reach into my pocket for my keys. i don't know why he thought he needed keys to leave. i waited about 5 minutes to be sure he was gone. untied myself. turned on all the lights. called jules and rory while pounding on my neighbor's door. they let me in and a very old woman and her granddaughter called the police. they also tended to my hand and gave me water.
my apartment supervisor showed up, along with cops and jules and rory and a local teacher to translate everything. the cops drove me to the emergency room. minor hand surgery ensued. and when i was finished there was a whole waiting room full of people to see me (and a can of coke). in a bizarre turn for understatement, seeing those people was pretty amazing.
long story short, i've moved in with jules and rory. on vacation now, which i think has helped tremendously. gone back to work (that would be the frustrating part, but i'll save the emotions for another blog). the cops turned my apartment into csi but never caught the guy. he also stole my camera and my change. and i had already bought that camera twice.
so that's that. i feel slightly better, full disclosure and all that. my cast is sposed to come off today, but i'm away from my doctor. i wonder if i can just take it off myself....
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
i'm no good with titles.
i've had a random quote in my head for the past couple weeks now, and i can't remember the source. i know it's a russian poet. or at least i think i know it's a russian poet.
"nightly
birds come and pluck from our eyes
dreams of sunflower kingdoms."
the spacing's all wrong, but i'm pretty sure those are the words. anybody know who wrote that? it's from some dusty, thin hardcover that i stumbled upon in acorn books a long time ago during my obligatory half hour break from ye olde pizza place. i wonder what happened to the little troll-like acorn books man. not really. i guess i just remember him and that somehow translates to a sense of "curiosity." anyhoo, i tried to google the poem, but no luck. this book along with so many other vestiges of a seemingly past life currently reside in a storage unit off the highway between columbia and jefferson city, missouri. it's strange how many material possessions i at one point deemed worthy of keeping that i now have no recollection of. i do miss my books though, and my stein, and a really nice-fitting pair of gap jeans...all of which i can (and have) live[d] without. that's just weird.
i was reading a story earlier today that spoke of a man, diogenes the cynic, who lived in a barrel in athens sometime in the 400s bc, shirking material possessions and the notion of "custom." sort of an admirable position to give up all worldly things, i suppose. but maybe that would piss off the people who never had the opportunity to acquire things to give up. the point is (if i must attempt to make one, which i guess isn't required), i have a bunch of shit in storage, but i've made great efforts to replenish my supply of useless shit, ensuring that it surrounds me wherever i go. none of which yields any genuine happiness. simply being here (geographically speaking, not metaphysically. not trying to blow anyone's mind just yet) comes pretty close to my notion of happiness, despite my perpetual and [sometimes] obtuse complaints about my current situation, which i would rather categorize as slightly subjective observation. seems only natural, as this is my life.
i should mention that i've made some small day trips in the past few weeks. jules and rory were on vacation, thus removing my social pool from my entertainment equation. what's a girl to do? leave jiaxing and head for the more commercial/literally greener pastures of shanghai and hangzhou, respectively. which leads me back to the pointless accumulation of things. shanghai was largely characterized by an expensive trip to h&m. my consumerism took on a variety of forms in my 24 hours in that large city, highlighted by german beer, french food, starbucks and a subway sandwich. and then i returned from shanghai, back to my comparatively dirt mcgirt jiaxing. frogs and snails for dinner. home sweet home.
the next weekend i went to hangzhou. dubbed the venice of china by people who maybe haven't ever been to venice. i also haven't, but i would guess that it's a little different. there is water in both locales, so they have that in common. hangzhou's highlight is west lake. not full of canals, but one giant lake. and the tourism of hangzhou is probably not the same as a romantic gondola ride with a festively-clad italian, maybe some wine involved. i'm sure it's equally romantic to be steered around by an old phlegmatic chinese man who provides the option of a warm, piss-tasting beer. all shit-talking aside, hangzhou actually was quite nice. i was wandering around at about 5 in the afternoon, sans gawkers, amidst fields of flowers and wide open green spaces. you forget how much you miss wide open spaces when they're just suddenly not an option anymore. and it makes me miss my backyard and other places i never knew i was taking for granted in my "past" life.
stayed in a very nice hostel with 3 incredibly gassy and small men. perhaps the highlight of the trip was the juxtaposition of the train station with the glossy commerce of a tourist destination. to go from the money of westlake to the disparate near squalor of a public transit hub in the most populous country in the world. people spitting everywhere. mothers wiping their babies' shitty asses in full view of everyone. blowing snot directly by closing off one nostril and aiming at the ground. and all walks of life--suits to pajamas. people carrying their whole lives in strange, disproportioned denim or plaid bags. and everyone eating and carrying on, staring at the foreigner who somehow, by existing, manages to be more interesting than all this other activity.
in a few weeks i'll be heading to beijing to meet a friend from my hometown. i will finally see the great wall. i say finally like i've been here for more than 7 months. which i haven't. anyhoo, it will be great to see her. to talk about something other than work. to do something other than go to work or leave work. to drink copious amount of alcohol, for no other reason than i can, because i won't have to go to work. daily routine: work sleep wake up work. i actually left the school in the middle of the day on sunday. it's weird to see people in daylight, and for them to see me in the full glare of an early afternoon sun. i felt exposed and somehow more startling/startled than in the early morning or early evening hours in which i'm used to being outside. it wasn't a bad thing, it was just different.
that said, we'll have some new teachers starting at work in the near future. new faces always make things more interesting, even if only until their newness wears off.
"nightly
birds come and pluck from our eyes
dreams of sunflower kingdoms."
the spacing's all wrong, but i'm pretty sure those are the words. anybody know who wrote that? it's from some dusty, thin hardcover that i stumbled upon in acorn books a long time ago during my obligatory half hour break from ye olde pizza place. i wonder what happened to the little troll-like acorn books man. not really. i guess i just remember him and that somehow translates to a sense of "curiosity." anyhoo, i tried to google the poem, but no luck. this book along with so many other vestiges of a seemingly past life currently reside in a storage unit off the highway between columbia and jefferson city, missouri. it's strange how many material possessions i at one point deemed worthy of keeping that i now have no recollection of. i do miss my books though, and my stein, and a really nice-fitting pair of gap jeans...all of which i can (and have) live[d] without. that's just weird.
i was reading a story earlier today that spoke of a man, diogenes the cynic, who lived in a barrel in athens sometime in the 400s bc, shirking material possessions and the notion of "custom." sort of an admirable position to give up all worldly things, i suppose. but maybe that would piss off the people who never had the opportunity to acquire things to give up. the point is (if i must attempt to make one, which i guess isn't required), i have a bunch of shit in storage, but i've made great efforts to replenish my supply of useless shit, ensuring that it surrounds me wherever i go. none of which yields any genuine happiness. simply being here (geographically speaking, not metaphysically. not trying to blow anyone's mind just yet) comes pretty close to my notion of happiness, despite my perpetual and [sometimes] obtuse complaints about my current situation, which i would rather categorize as slightly subjective observation. seems only natural, as this is my life.
i should mention that i've made some small day trips in the past few weeks. jules and rory were on vacation, thus removing my social pool from my entertainment equation. what's a girl to do? leave jiaxing and head for the more commercial/literally greener pastures of shanghai and hangzhou, respectively. which leads me back to the pointless accumulation of things. shanghai was largely characterized by an expensive trip to h&m. my consumerism took on a variety of forms in my 24 hours in that large city, highlighted by german beer, french food, starbucks and a subway sandwich. and then i returned from shanghai, back to my comparatively dirt mcgirt jiaxing. frogs and snails for dinner. home sweet home.
the next weekend i went to hangzhou. dubbed the venice of china by people who maybe haven't ever been to venice. i also haven't, but i would guess that it's a little different. there is water in both locales, so they have that in common. hangzhou's highlight is west lake. not full of canals, but one giant lake. and the tourism of hangzhou is probably not the same as a romantic gondola ride with a festively-clad italian, maybe some wine involved. i'm sure it's equally romantic to be steered around by an old phlegmatic chinese man who provides the option of a warm, piss-tasting beer. all shit-talking aside, hangzhou actually was quite nice. i was wandering around at about 5 in the afternoon, sans gawkers, amidst fields of flowers and wide open green spaces. you forget how much you miss wide open spaces when they're just suddenly not an option anymore. and it makes me miss my backyard and other places i never knew i was taking for granted in my "past" life.
stayed in a very nice hostel with 3 incredibly gassy and small men. perhaps the highlight of the trip was the juxtaposition of the train station with the glossy commerce of a tourist destination. to go from the money of westlake to the disparate near squalor of a public transit hub in the most populous country in the world. people spitting everywhere. mothers wiping their babies' shitty asses in full view of everyone. blowing snot directly by closing off one nostril and aiming at the ground. and all walks of life--suits to pajamas. people carrying their whole lives in strange, disproportioned denim or plaid bags. and everyone eating and carrying on, staring at the foreigner who somehow, by existing, manages to be more interesting than all this other activity.
in a few weeks i'll be heading to beijing to meet a friend from my hometown. i will finally see the great wall. i say finally like i've been here for more than 7 months. which i haven't. anyhoo, it will be great to see her. to talk about something other than work. to do something other than go to work or leave work. to drink copious amount of alcohol, for no other reason than i can, because i won't have to go to work. daily routine: work sleep wake up work. i actually left the school in the middle of the day on sunday. it's weird to see people in daylight, and for them to see me in the full glare of an early afternoon sun. i felt exposed and somehow more startling/startled than in the early morning or early evening hours in which i'm used to being outside. it wasn't a bad thing, it was just different.
that said, we'll have some new teachers starting at work in the near future. new faces always make things more interesting, even if only until their newness wears off.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
froggie went a courtin'
i woke up in shanghai and had a 12 inch roast chicken breast subway sandwich for breakfast. i got back to jiaxing and ate snails and frogs for dinner. what a difference a 40 minute train ride makes.
i actually killed a frog for someone else. the woman at the restaurant/beer garden was pulling frogs out of a bag and just hurling them (ever so gently) at the ground. 4 beers in, i thought it only appropriate to ask if i could try. i am now burdened by the weight of one frog murder.
i actually killed a frog for someone else. the woman at the restaurant/beer garden was pulling frogs out of a bag and just hurling them (ever so gently) at the ground. 4 beers in, i thought it only appropriate to ask if i could try. i am now burdened by the weight of one frog murder.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
things of note of late
these shall be mentioned in reverse chronological order, so as to skew everyone's sense of time and not just my own.
1st (which actually means second), i am the voice of the local supermarket. my super smoove (and oh-so velvety) vocal stylings were recently called upon by the resident rt mart. also know as the most accessible supermarket here in town with the best/most varied alcohol selection. it's like the chinese equivalent of gerbes. i heart gerbes. or i hearted gerbes. we're paying a lot of attention to past tense verbs at the ol jobby job these days, so i need to be a little more conscientious. anyhoo, said mart enlisted the services of ef and i was the lucky broad chosen to pepper their chinese supermarket soundtrack with bursts of my painfully neutral midwestern american accent. each nugget started with "dear customers" and ended with [what ultimately ended up being more emphatic than is naturally possible in my register] "thank you very much." the computer we recorded the "tracks" on was even crappier than my free computer and i had to yell to be heard, all while surrounded by uniformed staff members gawking at me like the zoo creature i've been reduced to. the first mic sucked, so the guy left and came back with a brand new one. easy, right? he works in a supermarket. it took me 5 months here to end up with a mic for my computer.
it was quite interesting to see the inner cogs and wheels of a chinese supermarket though, especially one that was as bustling as this one. i never saw the innards of an american supermarket, but i would guess that there's not that much of a difference. the most striking thing about the whole scenario was this giant bookshelf full of individual tea thermoses (thermi?) back in the "employees only" sector, all with pieces of further yellowing masking tape denoting rightful ownership. they were all exactly the same model--hundreds of them. and why wouldn't they be, they came from the tea container aisle in the store below.
there are so many images that i'm bombarded with on a daily basis which are laden with a pungent authenticity, and yet it was this particular random thing that firmly planted itself in my memory. tea containers trump large plastic tanks teeming with turtles in the fish and meat section. turtles replete with mysterious wounds. actually, this is pretty weird too. now seems like a good time to wax tangential. the first time i saw all of them, the actual physical existence of a tank full of turtles so readily available for purchase and subsequent human consumption wasn't as disquieting as the fact that these little creatures that were so green had such red blood. it was fascinating and i wasn't quite ready for it. it's not like they were gushing blood, but i suppose battle wounds are to be expected when your existence is comprised of living in a pit of your own kind at a chinese supermarket and being forced to crawl all over your kinfolk in order to procure some air.
secondyfirst i went on a date with a chinese dude. this was actually quite a while ago, so the fact that it is far in retrospect will only contribute to any embellishment on my part. the idea of me on a "date" is funny enough. add in that other small fact that he was chinese and something far short of hilarity ensues. or ensued, since this was about a month ago. again with that past tense. on new year's eve when it was a fucking nightmare trying to get a taxi, this nice dude offered to share his with me. i humbly accepted. i gave him my digits (or rather, rory's digits since i had just lost my phone). we texted back and forth a few times. me feeling ridiculous and sort of dirty all the while for reducing all communication outside the vein of ef to text message exchanges with a relative stranger. there was definitely something unsettling about that. my world is so insulated right now that i have a hard time interacting in any capacity with those who aren't regulary immersed in my routine.
anyhoo, we hung out once and drank copious amounts of tea. that was fine, we talked about all the fun things we would do the next time we hung out, all of it buzzing with the feigned innocence of 13-year olds not fully in charge of their hormones. hmm. it's just feels really bizarre to explain this whole exchange. it was so adolescent. anyhoo, it was really hard for me to decide whether or not i was attracted to him. seems like that should be something you just know. but my sense of attraction and/or attractiveness has been all out of wack since i've been here, with rare opportunities to manifest (this isolated human being the only opportunity in damn near a year. that's a nice way to refer to it, an "opportunity"). i was attracted to the idea of being attracted to someone. again, it's been a really long time. anyhoo, we eventually went out again. it was very strange to wake up on that particular morning, knowing that ultimately, in 12 or so hours i would be in the unique position of obliging or denying the sexual advances of a chinese man quite a few years my junior. and when i woke up, i knew this was a fact. it was somehow comforting. if i chose to succumb to lust (whether motivated by desperation or something else), i had a sure bet. it's just never been that clear-cut before.
so we went out and drank some beers. me with the hope that alcohol might coerce me into shirking this rampant strain of rationale and responsibility in me and allow me to do something crazy and inarguably stupid for once (enough of this wishy washy shit, let's make some overtly bad decisions!). and i marveled at how attractive he was. and the simultaneity of how unattracted to him i actually was was the overriding thought for the next few hours. and still, i let him walk me home, knowing it was going to end in an acutely awkward manner. and it did. get this: i hugged him first. i'm 30 years old and i hugged my "date." yup, now's where it's appropriate to mention that i didn't go to my senior prom. probably a reason i wasn't pursued for that. so i marveled, audibly, at how awkward the whole situation had become. and then we kissed and i just stood there like a rock (albeit a rock with a tongue), images of the dirty dishes in my sink and the lessons for the next day relaying through my head in a swirling and anti-libidinous manner. he started to get handsy, so i just pushed his arms aside and said ok. please get out of my apartment. and that was it. i guess he went to sri lanka for a job. but as he was leaving i said i'd call him. and i didn't. and that's the only time in my life that i've ever used a line like that fully aware of the fact that it was a line like that. fact of the matter was, attractive or not, he was still chinese and he was still significantly less physically formidable than i. the cavewoman in me still likes her dudes to be more intimidating (physically or otherwise) than she.
i suppose this is all for now. the reality is, the past few months only generate 2 nugglets. so i owe it to myself to stretch and distort my stories in order to make my life in hindsight a hell of a lot more interesting than mere fact alone reflects.
oh yeah, in a few months, me and my backpack get to hike through a gorge. hooray, nature.
1st (which actually means second), i am the voice of the local supermarket. my super smoove (and oh-so velvety) vocal stylings were recently called upon by the resident rt mart. also know as the most accessible supermarket here in town with the best/most varied alcohol selection. it's like the chinese equivalent of gerbes. i heart gerbes. or i hearted gerbes. we're paying a lot of attention to past tense verbs at the ol jobby job these days, so i need to be a little more conscientious. anyhoo, said mart enlisted the services of ef and i was the lucky broad chosen to pepper their chinese supermarket soundtrack with bursts of my painfully neutral midwestern american accent. each nugget started with "dear customers" and ended with [what ultimately ended up being more emphatic than is naturally possible in my register] "thank you very much." the computer we recorded the "tracks" on was even crappier than my free computer and i had to yell to be heard, all while surrounded by uniformed staff members gawking at me like the zoo creature i've been reduced to. the first mic sucked, so the guy left and came back with a brand new one. easy, right? he works in a supermarket. it took me 5 months here to end up with a mic for my computer.
it was quite interesting to see the inner cogs and wheels of a chinese supermarket though, especially one that was as bustling as this one. i never saw the innards of an american supermarket, but i would guess that there's not that much of a difference. the most striking thing about the whole scenario was this giant bookshelf full of individual tea thermoses (thermi?) back in the "employees only" sector, all with pieces of further yellowing masking tape denoting rightful ownership. they were all exactly the same model--hundreds of them. and why wouldn't they be, they came from the tea container aisle in the store below.
there are so many images that i'm bombarded with on a daily basis which are laden with a pungent authenticity, and yet it was this particular random thing that firmly planted itself in my memory. tea containers trump large plastic tanks teeming with turtles in the fish and meat section. turtles replete with mysterious wounds. actually, this is pretty weird too. now seems like a good time to wax tangential. the first time i saw all of them, the actual physical existence of a tank full of turtles so readily available for purchase and subsequent human consumption wasn't as disquieting as the fact that these little creatures that were so green had such red blood. it was fascinating and i wasn't quite ready for it. it's not like they were gushing blood, but i suppose battle wounds are to be expected when your existence is comprised of living in a pit of your own kind at a chinese supermarket and being forced to crawl all over your kinfolk in order to procure some air.
secondyfirst i went on a date with a chinese dude. this was actually quite a while ago, so the fact that it is far in retrospect will only contribute to any embellishment on my part. the idea of me on a "date" is funny enough. add in that other small fact that he was chinese and something far short of hilarity ensues. or ensued, since this was about a month ago. again with that past tense. on new year's eve when it was a fucking nightmare trying to get a taxi, this nice dude offered to share his with me. i humbly accepted. i gave him my digits (or rather, rory's digits since i had just lost my phone). we texted back and forth a few times. me feeling ridiculous and sort of dirty all the while for reducing all communication outside the vein of ef to text message exchanges with a relative stranger. there was definitely something unsettling about that. my world is so insulated right now that i have a hard time interacting in any capacity with those who aren't regulary immersed in my routine.
anyhoo, we hung out once and drank copious amounts of tea. that was fine, we talked about all the fun things we would do the next time we hung out, all of it buzzing with the feigned innocence of 13-year olds not fully in charge of their hormones. hmm. it's just feels really bizarre to explain this whole exchange. it was so adolescent. anyhoo, it was really hard for me to decide whether or not i was attracted to him. seems like that should be something you just know. but my sense of attraction and/or attractiveness has been all out of wack since i've been here, with rare opportunities to manifest (this isolated human being the only opportunity in damn near a year. that's a nice way to refer to it, an "opportunity"). i was attracted to the idea of being attracted to someone. again, it's been a really long time. anyhoo, we eventually went out again. it was very strange to wake up on that particular morning, knowing that ultimately, in 12 or so hours i would be in the unique position of obliging or denying the sexual advances of a chinese man quite a few years my junior. and when i woke up, i knew this was a fact. it was somehow comforting. if i chose to succumb to lust (whether motivated by desperation or something else), i had a sure bet. it's just never been that clear-cut before.
so we went out and drank some beers. me with the hope that alcohol might coerce me into shirking this rampant strain of rationale and responsibility in me and allow me to do something crazy and inarguably stupid for once (enough of this wishy washy shit, let's make some overtly bad decisions!). and i marveled at how attractive he was. and the simultaneity of how unattracted to him i actually was was the overriding thought for the next few hours. and still, i let him walk me home, knowing it was going to end in an acutely awkward manner. and it did. get this: i hugged him first. i'm 30 years old and i hugged my "date." yup, now's where it's appropriate to mention that i didn't go to my senior prom. probably a reason i wasn't pursued for that. so i marveled, audibly, at how awkward the whole situation had become. and then we kissed and i just stood there like a rock (albeit a rock with a tongue), images of the dirty dishes in my sink and the lessons for the next day relaying through my head in a swirling and anti-libidinous manner. he started to get handsy, so i just pushed his arms aside and said ok. please get out of my apartment. and that was it. i guess he went to sri lanka for a job. but as he was leaving i said i'd call him. and i didn't. and that's the only time in my life that i've ever used a line like that fully aware of the fact that it was a line like that. fact of the matter was, attractive or not, he was still chinese and he was still significantly less physically formidable than i. the cavewoman in me still likes her dudes to be more intimidating (physically or otherwise) than she.
i suppose this is all for now. the reality is, the past few months only generate 2 nugglets. so i owe it to myself to stretch and distort my stories in order to make my life in hindsight a hell of a lot more interesting than mere fact alone reflects.
oh yeah, in a few months, me and my backpack get to hike through a gorge. hooray, nature.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
when life gives you lemons, make mustache-ade
the winter course cindy of whom i spoke. she showed up about 2.5 hours before her class started. so i decided a mustache (afixed with double-sided tape) was in order.
sock puppets!!!!!!
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
lunar new year and stuff
today marks day 5 of my vacation for the lunar new year here in the china. a near week characterized by nothing short of over-consumption: food, drink, battlestar galactica (feel free to roll your eyes, naysayers!). gluttony totally rulezzzzz!
i should also note that there have been some annoyances, for what is a blog of mine if i don’t complain about something. there’s a well-founded stereotype about the chinese and their fireworks. you can buy fireworks pretty much anywhere. we’re not talking just bottle rockets and sparklers, though those are in abundance. but anyone can walk up to the convenience store, or any number of little stalls set up along the street, and purchase the fuck-off big ones, a la jefferson city, mo’s “fire in the sky.” the shit they launch from the barges on the river. anyhoo, you might be saying to yourself “hey, large, fuck-off fireworks are cool!” and yes, i agree with you, but it sucks to hear these arguably minor explosions 24-7. you buy them, you can light them whenever and wherever you want to, including the wee-est of morning hours. great.
funny thing, fireworks remind me of my old dog, lobo. they used to make him shit instantaneously; those and the start gun for the little olympics. you need only make the mistake of taking a large alaskan malamute with shaky bowels to a public fireworks display one time. i seem to recall bahb handling it a lot better…
the other annoyance would be my water. on day 1 of vacation, some random water pipe of mine broke. i live in a ginormo apartment complex, and MY pipe chooses to break at the beginning of the biggest, most important holiday of the year. people don’t work during this time. daily life ceases to exist, rippled metal doors concealing each and every vibrant shop front. taxis? gone (funny story here, though. i was at the grocery store, arms full of various sundries. a taxi rolled up and i was nearly tackled while a man carrying nothing raced in front of me to steal my taxi. so that was cool. and not uncommon). people? gone. the logistics chick who handles these sorts of inconveniences for the foreigners from our school? gone. but she could still text message! ha ha! the point being that i couldn’t use the bathroom, shower, wash dishes, cook, do laundry for 4 days while I waited for anyone to avail themselves on the complainy chick’s behalf. but yesterday morning, my landlord showed up. he was wearing a nice suit and shoes that appeared to have been recently shined by one of the many women shoeshiners (sp?) along my street (apparently they still had to work). he gave me about a half an hour with limited water flow to wash dishes, take a shower. neither of which i did. it was a nice gesture before he turned the water off again so the plumber could come fix things. so the plumber banged away for a while, then he left. i walk out to see the landlord, in his nice clothes and shiny shoes, tiptoeing around, mopping my laundry area and cleaning the outside of my washing machine, ever so tenderly. so that was part of my day yesterday.
this vacation comes in the middle of ef’s winter course, a “beast” i had been conditioned to fear months prior to its commencement. so all the teachers at the school had prepared extensive lesson plans for the droves of new students said course would garner. the day comes and i have one new class with 2 new students in it. that’s it. ultimately, i worked less last week than i have the whole time i’ve been here.
i am reminded of a year ago in korea and our winter intensive session. 12 hour days, editing many an essay. drinking in gangnam and having to take the 5:00 am subway to make it back to work in time in the morning. group lunches at the japanese restaurant 2 storefronts away. judy eating seafood fried rice everyday. me eating number 23 every single day. the shrimp, tuna and salmon sashimi appallingly consistent. and i hated it all while I was in the middle of it—the inefficiency of my days, hours spent just waiting to leave, simply for the sake of everyone working the same 12 hours; the city itself and the lack of anything to do besides consume in various aspects (back to that thing about gluttony earlier. throw in some mindless shopping for good measure. i seem to recall having much more money to waste on pointless trifles); a general dissatisfaction with absolutely every aspect of my life. the irony is, with everything i think i hated about various stages of my life, in retrospect it’s quite easy to only consider the good bits. this is true of columbia, of austin, of columbia again, of suncheon, of ilsan. for each of those locales, there were things i hated enough to motivate a very physical separation from them, but it’s been maybe too easy to romanticize things as my [also] physical perspective has changed. at this point i will refrain from inserting any number of proverbial clichés, but I would be remiss not to mention that a number of them would lend themselves quite well to my ruminations. you heard it here: all my epiphanies are indeed wholly unoriginal.
on the flip side, i have this tendency to be nostalgic for things that aren’t even gone yet. what would you call that? pre-nostalgia? but the inevitable and impending fleetingness of these miniscule and/or arguably grandiose things makes me sad anyway. it’s a sadness that hovers so close to happiness. therein lies a big problem of mine: difficulty in separating the tragic from the beautiful, the mundane from the significant. prime example: the winding concrete path that leads to my apartment. there’s a row of scooters haphazardly parked on the left to denote the last bit of light i’m usually overtly granted. and so i shuffle slowly along, knowing precisely where the concrete raises and dips, where the ratty particle board covers one particularly depleted manhole. there’s usually just enough of a residual glow off of distant buildings, or the moon. and so the cold, ugly grey concrete of the daytime hours is transformed by this little bit of light that deigns to grace my path with its presence. and this is one of those things for which i’m already nostalgic. the montage of ugly concrete, particle board and the transformative nature of the moon.
but back to that winter course and my two new students. they’re starters, which basically means they’re very young and have little to no english language. I’m teaching them phonics and things from their coursebooks. I got to name one of the girls. she has been deemed cindy. I think it sounded relatively close to her chinese name. the other girl is katie. katie always has her hair in two pigtails crafted by someone with a poor grasp of fractions. besides the less than equal halves, one “tail” is always significantly higher than the other. at first, katie believed it was possible to practice the short ‘a’ sound while stuffing bits of chocolate muffin into her mouth. and who am I to dissuade that gumption? not a good multi-tasker myself… she eventually figured out that, contrary to various studies, chocolate muffins do not actually aid in speaking or language acquisition. and then we have cindy. cindy has a bit of a wonky eye. this eye waters and drips continuously. cindy adores me. i’ve never experienced such unfailing, unconditional love from a complete stranger before. and a chinese kid, to boot! cindy spent the majority of last week holding my hand and kissing it, while her wayward, wonky tears rolled down her face and onto my skin. so these two girls are pretty much amazing. and i get to teach them. so i don’t hate or fear ef’s winter course. not one bit.
probably other things to report, but i’m spent.
oh yeah, i'm reading a story about the unabomber from a collection of mcsweeney's stories. is that strange?
i should also note that there have been some annoyances, for what is a blog of mine if i don’t complain about something. there’s a well-founded stereotype about the chinese and their fireworks. you can buy fireworks pretty much anywhere. we’re not talking just bottle rockets and sparklers, though those are in abundance. but anyone can walk up to the convenience store, or any number of little stalls set up along the street, and purchase the fuck-off big ones, a la jefferson city, mo’s “fire in the sky.” the shit they launch from the barges on the river. anyhoo, you might be saying to yourself “hey, large, fuck-off fireworks are cool!” and yes, i agree with you, but it sucks to hear these arguably minor explosions 24-7. you buy them, you can light them whenever and wherever you want to, including the wee-est of morning hours. great.
funny thing, fireworks remind me of my old dog, lobo. they used to make him shit instantaneously; those and the start gun for the little olympics. you need only make the mistake of taking a large alaskan malamute with shaky bowels to a public fireworks display one time. i seem to recall bahb handling it a lot better…
the other annoyance would be my water. on day 1 of vacation, some random water pipe of mine broke. i live in a ginormo apartment complex, and MY pipe chooses to break at the beginning of the biggest, most important holiday of the year. people don’t work during this time. daily life ceases to exist, rippled metal doors concealing each and every vibrant shop front. taxis? gone (funny story here, though. i was at the grocery store, arms full of various sundries. a taxi rolled up and i was nearly tackled while a man carrying nothing raced in front of me to steal my taxi. so that was cool. and not uncommon). people? gone. the logistics chick who handles these sorts of inconveniences for the foreigners from our school? gone. but she could still text message! ha ha! the point being that i couldn’t use the bathroom, shower, wash dishes, cook, do laundry for 4 days while I waited for anyone to avail themselves on the complainy chick’s behalf. but yesterday morning, my landlord showed up. he was wearing a nice suit and shoes that appeared to have been recently shined by one of the many women shoeshiners (sp?) along my street (apparently they still had to work). he gave me about a half an hour with limited water flow to wash dishes, take a shower. neither of which i did. it was a nice gesture before he turned the water off again so the plumber could come fix things. so the plumber banged away for a while, then he left. i walk out to see the landlord, in his nice clothes and shiny shoes, tiptoeing around, mopping my laundry area and cleaning the outside of my washing machine, ever so tenderly. so that was part of my day yesterday.
this vacation comes in the middle of ef’s winter course, a “beast” i had been conditioned to fear months prior to its commencement. so all the teachers at the school had prepared extensive lesson plans for the droves of new students said course would garner. the day comes and i have one new class with 2 new students in it. that’s it. ultimately, i worked less last week than i have the whole time i’ve been here.
i am reminded of a year ago in korea and our winter intensive session. 12 hour days, editing many an essay. drinking in gangnam and having to take the 5:00 am subway to make it back to work in time in the morning. group lunches at the japanese restaurant 2 storefronts away. judy eating seafood fried rice everyday. me eating number 23 every single day. the shrimp, tuna and salmon sashimi appallingly consistent. and i hated it all while I was in the middle of it—the inefficiency of my days, hours spent just waiting to leave, simply for the sake of everyone working the same 12 hours; the city itself and the lack of anything to do besides consume in various aspects (back to that thing about gluttony earlier. throw in some mindless shopping for good measure. i seem to recall having much more money to waste on pointless trifles); a general dissatisfaction with absolutely every aspect of my life. the irony is, with everything i think i hated about various stages of my life, in retrospect it’s quite easy to only consider the good bits. this is true of columbia, of austin, of columbia again, of suncheon, of ilsan. for each of those locales, there were things i hated enough to motivate a very physical separation from them, but it’s been maybe too easy to romanticize things as my [also] physical perspective has changed. at this point i will refrain from inserting any number of proverbial clichés, but I would be remiss not to mention that a number of them would lend themselves quite well to my ruminations. you heard it here: all my epiphanies are indeed wholly unoriginal.
on the flip side, i have this tendency to be nostalgic for things that aren’t even gone yet. what would you call that? pre-nostalgia? but the inevitable and impending fleetingness of these miniscule and/or arguably grandiose things makes me sad anyway. it’s a sadness that hovers so close to happiness. therein lies a big problem of mine: difficulty in separating the tragic from the beautiful, the mundane from the significant. prime example: the winding concrete path that leads to my apartment. there’s a row of scooters haphazardly parked on the left to denote the last bit of light i’m usually overtly granted. and so i shuffle slowly along, knowing precisely where the concrete raises and dips, where the ratty particle board covers one particularly depleted manhole. there’s usually just enough of a residual glow off of distant buildings, or the moon. and so the cold, ugly grey concrete of the daytime hours is transformed by this little bit of light that deigns to grace my path with its presence. and this is one of those things for which i’m already nostalgic. the montage of ugly concrete, particle board and the transformative nature of the moon.
but back to that winter course and my two new students. they’re starters, which basically means they’re very young and have little to no english language. I’m teaching them phonics and things from their coursebooks. I got to name one of the girls. she has been deemed cindy. I think it sounded relatively close to her chinese name. the other girl is katie. katie always has her hair in two pigtails crafted by someone with a poor grasp of fractions. besides the less than equal halves, one “tail” is always significantly higher than the other. at first, katie believed it was possible to practice the short ‘a’ sound while stuffing bits of chocolate muffin into her mouth. and who am I to dissuade that gumption? not a good multi-tasker myself… she eventually figured out that, contrary to various studies, chocolate muffins do not actually aid in speaking or language acquisition. and then we have cindy. cindy has a bit of a wonky eye. this eye waters and drips continuously. cindy adores me. i’ve never experienced such unfailing, unconditional love from a complete stranger before. and a chinese kid, to boot! cindy spent the majority of last week holding my hand and kissing it, while her wayward, wonky tears rolled down her face and onto my skin. so these two girls are pretty much amazing. and i get to teach them. so i don’t hate or fear ef’s winter course. not one bit.
probably other things to report, but i’m spent.
oh yeah, i'm reading a story about the unabomber from a collection of mcsweeney's stories. is that strange?
Friday, January 09, 2009
chinawood. unabridged.
chinawood. christmas party finished on a monday evening. had to deal with over 200 chinese men, women and children in a room with an extensive buffet (including a whole table of gummy treats). golden corral it wasn't.
in my chinese lonely planet, it actually mentions the fact that the whole concept of waiting in line really only made it's way to china about 10 years ago. mayhaps that seems ridiculous to people who've never been to china, but once you're here, the reality of that sets in. and it's still consistently shocking. so a room full of people who just paid a crap-ton of money for a christmas party, replete with buffet, has the very real potential for absolute chaos. but things went relatively smoothly. at any rate it eventually came to an end, which is all anyone wanted anyway. no more stupid dancing in lieu of actual work, no more logistics to become gross oversights.
ok, the party wasn't that bad, especially now that that was a full two weeks ago. makes complaining about the past tense shitty road trip that followed it seem sort of pointless, but i don't really care. the only way i'll feel better about my worst christmas ever is to complain about it. funny how that works...plus, i already alluded to it, so i have forced my own hand.
met bright and early monday morning at the school where there was a bus waiting to take the teachers and the sales staff of the school on a trip together. that immediately sounds like a good idea, particularly when it's been rocky with these chicks since the get go. thinly-veiled contempt and an ever-so-faux comraderie from both sides, based on gross conflicts of interest and delusions of grandeur ("i'm a chinese sales rep now, BUT.... i used to be a teacher.").
so after leaving later than planned, with some of the chicks missing the bus, the 3 hour bus ride to hengdian, aka chinawood, commenced. there was even a tour guide for us! there was even ktv/karaoke on the bus! and neither of these things were in english. so it was immediately apparent that this trip that had been "awarded" to us all for doing such a good job actually only served to alienate those peeps who were actually deserving of the sentiment behind the trip. it's always fun to realize early on in any endeavor that your role is that of pretense alone. cool! and then you spend the whole time being the person with the never-fun responsibility of "doing the right thing." i hate that role. where does that skewed sense of obligation come from? anyhoo...
after 3 hours of overt bus segregation, we arrived in hengdian. en route to the hotel i saw a whole, skinned dog hanging by its ankles (do dogs have ankles? what about cankles?) in front of a restaurant. just like in the real hollywood!!! i'm not easily shocked, and i've even been to restaurants that serve dog, but i've never actually seen something that graphic with my own eyes. and during my christmas vacation. that's the worst part. on any other day, seeing a skinned dog would have been cool, but during my christmas vacation it just seemed like a sacrilege. ted neeley wouldn't skin a dog! but teg nugent...different story.
the rest of the city was, metaphorically speaking, bombed out and depleted. and we were stuck here for the next 24 hours. the comic irony of all of this made itself known far far too early in the trip. which can only mean one thing: beer. lots and lots of beer.
so we arrive at the hotel and there's some issue with the fact that none of the foreigners have their passports. in china if you're a foreigner and you plan on staying in a hotel, bring your passport. however, as the trip had been arranged by our school (with the foreign staff in mind?), we assumed that accomodations had been covered. nope. so there was a glimmer of hope that we wouldn't be able to get a hotel because we were 8 foreigners with no passports, but no luck. damn.
eventually things worked out, so we checked into our room and took a brief breather. when we entered the hotel's adjacent restaurant about 15 minutes later, all the chinese staff had already started eating. we waited around for them to actually show up to begin the trip, but they couldn't wait for us to begin eating. so what did we do? we acted like complete children and sat at another table, pounding beers, making the gap between staff (and culture) even more obvious. so then it was the chinese staff's turn to pretend like it upset them. again with that pretense thing. great. hey, let's go to some tourist traps 'cause we're in fucking chinawood!
i guess chinawood is what the city's actually affectionately called. but the movie 'hero' was shot in some big reconstructed palace type thing there, along with some other movies featuring chinese actors that are sort of famous. forgive my apathy, but in order to get to all the arguably cool shit, we first had to go to this ghost town place that was just a copy of all the cool stuff that we could have seen in "real" china. the best part was the haunted house they use for some tv show. i don't even know how to describe it, but the lights were turned out and we were sprinkled with water. but it was scary water. i guess it's hard to be impressed or even startled by things nowadays, considering how advanced special effects have become. so this haunted house sort of felt like it had been created by a 15-year old. granted, a 15-year old who had a lot of free time on his/her hands...
i should put in a note about the face of tourism in china. it's that of a group. usually it involves some sort of prop to signify membership in this elite tourist bunch. we had little pins, but i saw many a bright orange hat floating around some of these places. so you wear your pins and you are herded like cattle to different stops along the same tourist route. and you don't get very much time to do anything. not only do i not want to be here, but i am constantly being told to hurry up. why even get off the bus?
after that we headed to some acrobats show. which was actually pretty cool. i'll attempt to upload video somewhere at some point. and that's something resembling a promise.
after drinking beers atop the fake great wall, hopped back on the bus and headed to the 'hero' movie set place. the scope was actually quite impressive. it looks like the real deal--sizewize and everything. where 'everything' includes a goat-drawn carriage ambling and bleating around the grounds. i think that's what gladiators used back in the day. you could also be lead around on a horse, bang on a drum (but they made the mistake of charging a foreigner in our group double. our tour guide chewed the drummaster a new asshole for that. also video footage of that that i will probably never manage to upload) and take pictures in old timey chinese clothes. just like at the lake of the ozarks!
we watched some strange 3-d movie thing and then hopped back on the bus to go back to the hotel and eat dinner. dinner meant the free meal that came with the hotel. same place we had lunch. no thanks. lunch was fine, but if you're in a city you'll probably never ever go to again in some remote chinese locale, do you really want to eat at the same restaurant twice? we didn't. it just seemed like a waste of valuable time we could have been exploring the city en route to some other restaurant. so we opted for hot pot and wandered around a bit getting there. played some drinking games at dinner which displayed some short and/or frayed tempers. just a frustrating day of being treated like children and thus acting the part.
after dinner we stumbled into a ktv place. it took a while to get set up, so we drank a lot. after some time waiting, rory declared: "I have to dance." rory dancing is always funny. i don't know how, but there are times when i manage to forget the early days of he and jules' courtship--80s night at shattered. and yeah, dancing machine. anyhoo, rory heads out into the main bar area where there's some sorry excuse for a dance floor (a little larger than a twister game mat) and starts sexing up the dude singing there. the guy gets off the floor and rory starts rolling around on the floor, losing his glasses for a second and ultimately making the entire day seem a lot better. that was some funny shit (*in shanghai, rory got up on the bar of some ex-pat drinkery and started dancing with one of the bartenders. it's just what he does...).
after that, made our way back to the hotel. then decided to do more ktv. i bailed out on that because we had to get up at the crack of dawn again the next day for another excruciating day of tourism.
so this brings us to christmas eve. if it doesn't really sound like a horrible christmas, just try to imagine spending 2 days with people you loathe and having no way to get out of it, add a freezing hotel in a dirt mcgirt town and that's what i was working with. dysfunctional families and associated psychodramas aside, this was the exact antithesis of christmas.
anyhoo, woke up early. some of the other, smarter foreigners (including jules and roar) had tried to get out of going to some village. two reasons for that: raining and late night ktv. so i went downstairs for my free breakfast at the hotel restaurant, but i didn't have some little piece of chinese paper that i apparently needed to get the meal. yet another oversight. i like free shit. one free breakfast could have potentially changed my entire attitude about the trip (which was also free, i should graciously note...). but no. that was also never mentioned to me. so no free breakfast. fuck me!
eventually the gang all congregated, because it was mandatory that we leave the hotel. so all the foreigners went to a "western style coffee house" while the chinese staff traveled on in the rain. the best part of this is that it's christmas eve, on our christmas trip (a christmas present), 2 days after our christmas party. again, christmas, a decidedly non-chinese holiday. so what does our tour bus do? it drops us off in front of the coffee shop that didn't open for another 15-20 minutes. in the rain. at 8 something in the morning. i guess the alternative was equally bad: sit and wait on a heated bus. with all those women. gross.
played pool in the rain (duh, there was a pool table set up on the sidewalk) until the coffee shop opened. the coffee shop proved to be the highlight of the trip. confined quarters with people who actually usually like each other, combined with copious amounts of food (sunny side up eggs, spam, bread came free with the coffee) and coffee. we stayed there for about 3 hours. i took a nap in a nice heated room and drank a beer with my coffee. because that's something i would do on christmas. and at least i had the luxury of 2 of my family members being there. anyhoo. this private room also happened to have a computer. at some point we were all mesmerized by a youtube clip of 2 midget kickboxers in thailand or cambodia or something. anyhoo, it was amazing. 9 people huddled around a computer at a coffee shop in some remote city in china, on christmas eve, united in midget kickboxing.
but the good times had to end at some point. and they did when the bus came to pick us up a few hours later. on to yiwu for shopping. i like the idea of shopping, but i don't necessarily like the reality so much. particularly being a larger chick in china. big feet. big body. doesn't bode well in the shopping realm. so we travel for about an hour and spend the majority of our allotted shopping time trying to find shit that doesn't suck. and we never found it. i could dwell on this more, but it was pretty similar to all shopping trips that suck, but this was just on a much bigger scale. they had shuttle buses to take people to different sections of this ginormo shopping compound.
that's all. my first christmas in china was colored by midgets and rage. both firmly planted in my memory.
in my chinese lonely planet, it actually mentions the fact that the whole concept of waiting in line really only made it's way to china about 10 years ago. mayhaps that seems ridiculous to people who've never been to china, but once you're here, the reality of that sets in. and it's still consistently shocking. so a room full of people who just paid a crap-ton of money for a christmas party, replete with buffet, has the very real potential for absolute chaos. but things went relatively smoothly. at any rate it eventually came to an end, which is all anyone wanted anyway. no more stupid dancing in lieu of actual work, no more logistics to become gross oversights.
ok, the party wasn't that bad, especially now that that was a full two weeks ago. makes complaining about the past tense shitty road trip that followed it seem sort of pointless, but i don't really care. the only way i'll feel better about my worst christmas ever is to complain about it. funny how that works...plus, i already alluded to it, so i have forced my own hand.
met bright and early monday morning at the school where there was a bus waiting to take the teachers and the sales staff of the school on a trip together. that immediately sounds like a good idea, particularly when it's been rocky with these chicks since the get go. thinly-veiled contempt and an ever-so-faux comraderie from both sides, based on gross conflicts of interest and delusions of grandeur ("i'm a chinese sales rep now, BUT.... i used to be a teacher.").
so after leaving later than planned, with some of the chicks missing the bus, the 3 hour bus ride to hengdian, aka chinawood, commenced. there was even a tour guide for us! there was even ktv/karaoke on the bus! and neither of these things were in english. so it was immediately apparent that this trip that had been "awarded" to us all for doing such a good job actually only served to alienate those peeps who were actually deserving of the sentiment behind the trip. it's always fun to realize early on in any endeavor that your role is that of pretense alone. cool! and then you spend the whole time being the person with the never-fun responsibility of "doing the right thing." i hate that role. where does that skewed sense of obligation come from? anyhoo...
after 3 hours of overt bus segregation, we arrived in hengdian. en route to the hotel i saw a whole, skinned dog hanging by its ankles (do dogs have ankles? what about cankles?) in front of a restaurant. just like in the real hollywood!!! i'm not easily shocked, and i've even been to restaurants that serve dog, but i've never actually seen something that graphic with my own eyes. and during my christmas vacation. that's the worst part. on any other day, seeing a skinned dog would have been cool, but during my christmas vacation it just seemed like a sacrilege. ted neeley wouldn't skin a dog! but teg nugent...different story.
the rest of the city was, metaphorically speaking, bombed out and depleted. and we were stuck here for the next 24 hours. the comic irony of all of this made itself known far far too early in the trip. which can only mean one thing: beer. lots and lots of beer.
so we arrive at the hotel and there's some issue with the fact that none of the foreigners have their passports. in china if you're a foreigner and you plan on staying in a hotel, bring your passport. however, as the trip had been arranged by our school (with the foreign staff in mind?), we assumed that accomodations had been covered. nope. so there was a glimmer of hope that we wouldn't be able to get a hotel because we were 8 foreigners with no passports, but no luck. damn.
eventually things worked out, so we checked into our room and took a brief breather. when we entered the hotel's adjacent restaurant about 15 minutes later, all the chinese staff had already started eating. we waited around for them to actually show up to begin the trip, but they couldn't wait for us to begin eating. so what did we do? we acted like complete children and sat at another table, pounding beers, making the gap between staff (and culture) even more obvious. so then it was the chinese staff's turn to pretend like it upset them. again with that pretense thing. great. hey, let's go to some tourist traps 'cause we're in fucking chinawood!
i guess chinawood is what the city's actually affectionately called. but the movie 'hero' was shot in some big reconstructed palace type thing there, along with some other movies featuring chinese actors that are sort of famous. forgive my apathy, but in order to get to all the arguably cool shit, we first had to go to this ghost town place that was just a copy of all the cool stuff that we could have seen in "real" china. the best part was the haunted house they use for some tv show. i don't even know how to describe it, but the lights were turned out and we were sprinkled with water. but it was scary water. i guess it's hard to be impressed or even startled by things nowadays, considering how advanced special effects have become. so this haunted house sort of felt like it had been created by a 15-year old. granted, a 15-year old who had a lot of free time on his/her hands...
i should put in a note about the face of tourism in china. it's that of a group. usually it involves some sort of prop to signify membership in this elite tourist bunch. we had little pins, but i saw many a bright orange hat floating around some of these places. so you wear your pins and you are herded like cattle to different stops along the same tourist route. and you don't get very much time to do anything. not only do i not want to be here, but i am constantly being told to hurry up. why even get off the bus?
after that we headed to some acrobats show. which was actually pretty cool. i'll attempt to upload video somewhere at some point. and that's something resembling a promise.
after drinking beers atop the fake great wall, hopped back on the bus and headed to the 'hero' movie set place. the scope was actually quite impressive. it looks like the real deal--sizewize and everything. where 'everything' includes a goat-drawn carriage ambling and bleating around the grounds. i think that's what gladiators used back in the day. you could also be lead around on a horse, bang on a drum (but they made the mistake of charging a foreigner in our group double. our tour guide chewed the drummaster a new asshole for that. also video footage of that that i will probably never manage to upload) and take pictures in old timey chinese clothes. just like at the lake of the ozarks!
we watched some strange 3-d movie thing and then hopped back on the bus to go back to the hotel and eat dinner. dinner meant the free meal that came with the hotel. same place we had lunch. no thanks. lunch was fine, but if you're in a city you'll probably never ever go to again in some remote chinese locale, do you really want to eat at the same restaurant twice? we didn't. it just seemed like a waste of valuable time we could have been exploring the city en route to some other restaurant. so we opted for hot pot and wandered around a bit getting there. played some drinking games at dinner which displayed some short and/or frayed tempers. just a frustrating day of being treated like children and thus acting the part.
after dinner we stumbled into a ktv place. it took a while to get set up, so we drank a lot. after some time waiting, rory declared: "I have to dance." rory dancing is always funny. i don't know how, but there are times when i manage to forget the early days of he and jules' courtship--80s night at shattered. and yeah, dancing machine. anyhoo, rory heads out into the main bar area where there's some sorry excuse for a dance floor (a little larger than a twister game mat) and starts sexing up the dude singing there. the guy gets off the floor and rory starts rolling around on the floor, losing his glasses for a second and ultimately making the entire day seem a lot better. that was some funny shit (*in shanghai, rory got up on the bar of some ex-pat drinkery and started dancing with one of the bartenders. it's just what he does...).
after that, made our way back to the hotel. then decided to do more ktv. i bailed out on that because we had to get up at the crack of dawn again the next day for another excruciating day of tourism.
so this brings us to christmas eve. if it doesn't really sound like a horrible christmas, just try to imagine spending 2 days with people you loathe and having no way to get out of it, add a freezing hotel in a dirt mcgirt town and that's what i was working with. dysfunctional families and associated psychodramas aside, this was the exact antithesis of christmas.
anyhoo, woke up early. some of the other, smarter foreigners (including jules and roar) had tried to get out of going to some village. two reasons for that: raining and late night ktv. so i went downstairs for my free breakfast at the hotel restaurant, but i didn't have some little piece of chinese paper that i apparently needed to get the meal. yet another oversight. i like free shit. one free breakfast could have potentially changed my entire attitude about the trip (which was also free, i should graciously note...). but no. that was also never mentioned to me. so no free breakfast. fuck me!
eventually the gang all congregated, because it was mandatory that we leave the hotel. so all the foreigners went to a "western style coffee house" while the chinese staff traveled on in the rain. the best part of this is that it's christmas eve, on our christmas trip (a christmas present), 2 days after our christmas party. again, christmas, a decidedly non-chinese holiday. so what does our tour bus do? it drops us off in front of the coffee shop that didn't open for another 15-20 minutes. in the rain. at 8 something in the morning. i guess the alternative was equally bad: sit and wait on a heated bus. with all those women. gross.
played pool in the rain (duh, there was a pool table set up on the sidewalk) until the coffee shop opened. the coffee shop proved to be the highlight of the trip. confined quarters with people who actually usually like each other, combined with copious amounts of food (sunny side up eggs, spam, bread came free with the coffee) and coffee. we stayed there for about 3 hours. i took a nap in a nice heated room and drank a beer with my coffee. because that's something i would do on christmas. and at least i had the luxury of 2 of my family members being there. anyhoo. this private room also happened to have a computer. at some point we were all mesmerized by a youtube clip of 2 midget kickboxers in thailand or cambodia or something. anyhoo, it was amazing. 9 people huddled around a computer at a coffee shop in some remote city in china, on christmas eve, united in midget kickboxing.
but the good times had to end at some point. and they did when the bus came to pick us up a few hours later. on to yiwu for shopping. i like the idea of shopping, but i don't necessarily like the reality so much. particularly being a larger chick in china. big feet. big body. doesn't bode well in the shopping realm. so we travel for about an hour and spend the majority of our allotted shopping time trying to find shit that doesn't suck. and we never found it. i could dwell on this more, but it was pretty similar to all shopping trips that suck, but this was just on a much bigger scale. they had shuttle buses to take people to different sections of this ginormo shopping compound.
that's all. my first christmas in china was colored by midgets and rage. both firmly planted in my memory.
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