chengdu passport fun

I took a train somewhere. For the first time in what seems like far too long. When it’s been a while, you forget how you miss the little things—the smell of a Chinese train station in winter: instant noodles commingling with all sorts of Chinese medicinal root smells. Come to think of it, that’s how the office smells these days. in a train station is to be in motion. The shuffling of masses of people. in the thick of that, one can’t help but feel a palpable sense of progress. In this most overt of countries, this is one subtlety that I’m okay with temporarily suspending.

Oh yeah, and there was an old guy coughing blood into the trashcan. Seems worth noting.

I had to go to chengdu to add pages to my passport. All in preparation for my upcoming trip to hong kong. 4 days with an itinerary built (I suspect) on alcohol consumption. Feels like I haven’t partied hearty in some time. Chengdu seemed okay, from what I saw of it—highlights were bike lanes, peter’s tex mex and the subway linked up with the train station. Felt infinitely more convenient and navigable to a newcomer than chongqing does, and I’m not even technically a newcomer. But I like that about chongqing. I’ve been here for 3 months and still have no idea what the city looks like or how it’s laid out. I guess I have plenty of time.

Anyhoo, at the American consulate I was reminded of why stereotypes of Americans exist. Quite simply, it’s because douche bags exist. And those douche bags hang out at the consulate at the same time as me. I met one guy whose conversation starter was “so have you ever had to get a marriage license in china?” because obviously, all the Americans at the consulate that day were there to marry a chinese woman, just like he was! Then he went on to tell me all about “manufacturing cultures.” Yeah, I was a little thrown at first, too. But as he kindly explained, in far too much detail, he sends bacterial cultures to companies so they can make cheese and yogurt and other food items that require such things. cool. This is the same guy who 1) complained about airport security and pat downs and all other manner of unconstitutional shit that it isn’t unique to complain about; and 2) I heard refer to muslims as terrorists under his breath. Really? So we’re still stuck on that…and he was from the Midwest, just like me!

Douche bag number two made stupid comments about my cowboy boots to start his conversation. Classy. “you got a Stetson hat to go with it?” har har. It was almost like the 2 of them (dbags 1 and 2, respectively) were competing for my attention, just so they could unknowingly offend me. Dbag 2 didn’t have anything as specific as cheesy culture to annoy the shit out of me, it was generally everything about him, and his complete disregard for social cues, like the one that signals “hey, quit fucking talking to me.” he followed me out. I said I was going to get coffee, so he thought he’d invite me to metro to buy an entire bag of coffee. Because “metro has really good coffee.” Metro is a supermarket. Not a place where people trying to separate themselves from annoying people go to buy coffee that they can’t then immediately do anything with. But thanks for the thought. I guess there are just days when i would much rather be devoid of nationality, if these are the peeps I’m unwittingly lumped with.

Moving on. There’s a ktv outside my apartment. The neon lights that say ktv are constantly changing, not obnoxiously, but the light seems to make it’s way up to my floor and gently pulse its way through the curtains of my room. so my night is pulsing. And my sleep is pulsing. And I feel when I’m in this pulsing sleep like my eyes are widening in surprise with the subtle color gradation. And it’s all very pleasant, being awake and aware of this pulsing, even with my eyes closed. And I really don’t mind that it keeps me awake.

holidays and whatnot

I have the shittiest French press ever. it doesn’t have a lid. said lid resides in the bottom of a trash bin in the 3rd floor bathroom of paradise walk mall, chongqing, china. the handle of the actual press, when run through the lid—as is standard operating procedure for this model--leaves about 2 inches of space between the press and the bottom of the glass. A knowledgeable co-worker so kindly educated me: “well it’s not supposed to touch the bottom.” No shit. But in a glass that serves 1 person, 2 inches of coffee grounds make for some pretty potent shit, even by my plain black coffee standards. So yeah, no lid, just a stick coming out of a glass. Classy. the screen doesn’t actually work, particularly with finely ground coffee, the only option I could afford at the time. So I'm sitting here, drinking coffee with grounds out of a rather ghetto-looking French press. Because I’m sure ghettos everywhere have a surplus of these things.

Pretty depressing holiday season, this one. That said, I’m not actually depressed, maybe just disappointed. But I guess I wouldn’t be me if that wasn’t always the case. Perhaps that should be a more sobering declaration than it actually is…

I’m not quite sure why, but thanksgiving, birthday, Christmas new year—they’ve all been remarkably underwhelming. Which is strange, because I’ve been magically reunited with a significant portion of my family in this particular oriental city. That should make things better, right? i’m not sure what it is. I think I didn’t have the energy to suspend disbelief this year. To convince myself “I’m not in china, I’m in a place where these western holidays and traditions mean something.” It should have been easy to do—chongqing had more Christmas bling than any other city I’ve lived in abroad—but I guess I never actually tried to convince myself. What is the Christmas season anyway for people with no religious leanings? Family time? But I had a lot of my family here—I see them pretty much every day. I guess it’s just always been my nature to invest so much hope in the possibility of life-affirming goodness in one concentrated chunk of the year, which always nicely coincides with thanksgiving/Christmas/new year time. So I don’t know what’s more depressing, to have high hopes that are ultimately crushed by the non-events of actual daily life, or to not invest any hope at all and to not be surprised by expectations being met.

But enough about that. On Christmas eve we had a big, exhausting party in the mall where the school is. so the teachers worked in shifts in the atrium of the mall (4 floors where everyone can look down onto the stage area where we were). We set up tables with color by number santa claus and all other manner of christmas craft, just something for peeps in the mall to bring their kids to for a spare 15 minutes or so. There was also Christmas karaoke set up. nothing quite like singing “rockin’ around the Christmas tree” to a thousand or so shoppers who have no idea what the hell they’re listening to.

After that, took a bus over to the other side of town to the one foreigner bar I know of. I remember how much ‘research’ on such locales I did when I first arrived in hangzhou, but now it’s quite nice to take a break from the booming social life I had there. I really like being alone in my apartment. I’m sure I’ll grow out of this, but right now I have a hard time trying to make myself feel guilty for never going and seeing anything. I feel guilty for not feeling guilty.

Anyhoo, foreigner bar. Went and drank a few, think I left before or slightly after midnight. Bus to the hood, then a motorcycle taxi home. 1 aspect I definitely enjoy here, just the ubiquity of the motorcycle taxi. Not necessarily any cheaper than an actual taxi, but a hell of a lot cooler and with fewer attempts at chit chat. I appreciate that.

Christmas day was spent at the marriot buffet. definitely made me miss some of the western food options I had in hangzhou. But the Chinese food here is so good that I rarely even miss western food. But yes, overeating was a very Christmas-y thing to do, so I indulged. Lots of cheese and lots of turkey. But no free booze. rory had pneumonia, so the whole day kind of felt shitty—got to hang out with jules, but her dude was at home coughing up chunks of goo. So yeah, as much as my holidays sucked, I’m sure rory’s experience trumps mine.

New year’s was the same sort of deal. Went to the foreigner bar. There are actually some funny anecdotal moments to be reaped from that night. Took the bus again, with a co-worker and her Chinese cop friend. I had a bunch of beers in my bag, because what is being a passenger of any transportation in china, if not a chance to drink alcohol? So I opened my first beer and accidentally sprayed the person sitting next to me. Whoops. We get to the bar and I buy the first 2 beers for me and Chinese friend of co-worker.

I buy us some nice british beers (young’s chocolate stout, to be precise). Homeboy talks about how he’ll get the next round and keeps saying how great the beer is. cool. The whole time I’m talking to him he’s overusing idioms and colloquialisms. Random shit thrown in here and there are cool, but his conversation seemed to be a strategy in how to link them together one after the other. So imagine having a conversation with a dude who says shit like “actions speak louder than words” or “2 wrongs don’t make a right” all night. that shit gets old, yo. He actually said to me “if could rearrange the alphabet, I’d put u and I together.” Good gad.

I finished my beer significantly earlier than he did. He goes ahead and buys himself this nice german beer after the waitress takes away our two empty bottles. We go to cheers and I don’t have a beer. Thought that would be his cue to make good on his promise of the next round, which he’d already covered for himself. And he notices (‘you don’t have any beer!’ not a question, just the observation), but doesn’t offer or do anything. So I get up to go buy a beer. He intercepts me and says “hey, I’ll buy your beer.” So he buys me a shitty-ass tiger. Thanks, douche.

After the countdown, sitting and drinking and I start talking to an American couple at the table next to me. Probably in their 40s. looked very much like a normal couple who would sit at the bar at shakespeare’s. they both worked for ford. I asked how long they’d been in chongqing: 4 weeks. Did they like it: nope, they hated it. so that was a good first impression. Continued to talk to the dude, who kept saying “you’re really funny.” Okay, thanks. By the end of the night he had invited me home with them on several occasions. His wife looked on, sort of like this wasn’t an uncommon thing with him. I politely declined the middle-aged threesome. Maybe next year.