chinese new year shenanigans

Hong kong recap. Going to fight the urge to change the font to century gothic. Sometimes times new roman is enough. Classic and whatnot.

Chinese new year, 2011. What to do? it’s a notoriously crazy holiday, as are all national holidays in china—everyone coming/going home, diy fireworks shows, brutal traffic. This year I thought it best to get out of the mainland, so I visited my friend, jake, in his new town of hong kong. Able to leave china without breaking the bank. ‘twas rad. First impressions: super clean public toilets, clean metros, lots of southeast asian folks congregating and playing cards in public spaces, lots of rich douchebags, the same shopping options as luxury malls in china, fewer people staring and pointing at foreigners, less spitting.

Day 1. fly out at 9:10 in the pm. I had a vague idea of where I was going and what I was doing, but it would ultimately involve a lot of stops along the way in places I’d never been before with landmarks I didn’t know and streets that sounded foreign, even more so than regular Chinese ones. Because they were. It all was. I also had to fight the urge to panic prematurely at every stop. Nothing actually went wrong, but I could feel the panic lurking there in the back of my mind. But from beginning to end, it was relatively painless traveling. i had no trouble getting to the airport in chongqing. I thought it would be more difficult to hail a cab than it was, considering it was Chinese new year’s eve, but no issues.

Landed in Shenzhen, saw a student from school. we’d been on the same flight. i thought I recognized her at the airport, but there have been plenty of times when I’ve thought a kid was a student and confused the hell out of him/her by being uber-friendly, only to realize it wasn’t actually a student I knew. But she actually was from the chongqing school and her mom forced her to talk to me in the airport. Funny shit.

At this point I was still able to use my phone to communicate—still on the mainland. So I informed some peeps that I was in Shenzhen, about to begin phase 2 of operation hong kong. Step two was to take a taxi to the huang gang border. This was surprisingly easy. I was probably over charged, but I negotiated with a non-legit cab driver to take me there. After he drove me a bit in his own car, I switched over to an actual cab a few miles from the airport. Then to the border crossing. Pretty simple, I guess. Even for me. I was nervous at this point because once I crossed the border I wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone in china or in hong kong, because my phone is only for the mainland. So I was going to be in hong kong going through all these procedures and methods of transport with a pretty tenuous time frame/exact meeting point. And all after midnight without a working phone. Poor planning on my part, but it lent the whole thing the air of “the amazing race” or something like that.…

Anyhoo, at huang gang, I filled out a departure card, waited in line, then crossed the border. The hong kong version of the border is lok mau chao. There was some confusion for me when I was figuring out the logistics of crossing the border so late at night, but that sort of cleared things up for me. Huang gang/lok mau chao is the 24 hour one. So no problems. after I got through huang gang, I boarded a shuttle bus to mongkok. I was able to pay for that ticket in rmb, but was concerned about not having any hkd for the taxi that would ultimately get me to friends in hong kong. This was the first time I fought the impulse to panic. Instead decided to worry about that when I got to it, because winging it always works for me. Nervous laughter…. so we take the bus for a little bit, then have to stop and get off, again filling out more forms to cross a border. This is when my phone no longer worked. I was a little confused by all of this, having never crossed a border by bus before. But I assumed that all the other people on my bus were supposed to be going to the same place, so I’d just follow them. again, not a bet that usually pays off. we get through, get back on the bus and are on our way to the general mongkok area. I’m still on the correct timeframe at this point, which doesn’t usually happen for me, even in places I’m familiar with. But it was all pretty easy to do. so I got off the bus in mongkok, still with no hkd, and get a cab. When it came time to pay him at the Olympic metro station, I played dumb and just handed him the total in rmb. It worked. Probably better for him too since the rmb is worth slightly more than the hkd. So there I was, in the general area of where I was sposed to meet the dude with whom I had no means of communication at that point. we eventually found each other, but this was after about 25 minutes of wandering around the metro station, with no real back up plan if we didn’t happen to meet. I was in the right general area, but that general area was large and confusing, so it took a while. But It all worked out, so, cool.

Met jake’s other friends, rita and Stephen. They were visiting from shanghai. We were all staying in his tiny (cozy) apartment. So we walked back. his apartment’s on the 35th floor of a building with 48 or 49 floors. crazy. You have to take 2 elevators to get there. The first one takes you to a meeting point for all the apartments in the complex. Second one takes you to the actual apartment. There was a key card for everything and very friendly security guards who always said hello in English. It was just massive.

When we got in it was about 2 am already. I was welcomed with a giant glass of whiskey and a glass of wine. From California. Not from china. That was nice. Always been a fan of mixing my alcohols, particularly wine and whiskey.
But we stayed up until 4-ish drinking and talking. It’s been such a long time since I drank wine. Wine that isn’t Chinese and shitty. So that was cool. Stephen and rita took the bed (recently-engaged). Jake took the floor, I took the couch.

The next morning we got up and so began the next 3 days of shopping. Or window shopping for me. Chongqing, for a place so seemingly devoid of foreigners, has a lot of foreign comforts. So I never feel like there are things I can’t get. It’s nice, but it could promote some expensive tastes. i bought some small things, including a watch whose performance is questionable. I’ve already developed the nervous ocd habit of perpetual watch winding. I’d like to think it makes me look cool (or just nervous?). Not a good sign if you always need to check your watch’s time against your cell phone. Other than that, some cheap earring (we’re talking 15 hkd) and some sriracha, I wasn’t much for consumerism, other than the traditional things that can be consumed—food and booze. There’s something pretty spectacular about a lack of open container laws (korea, china, hong kong). Because riding around on a double decker bus in a city you’ve never visited is pretty cool, but doing it while sipping on a bottle of strongbow cider at 3 in the afternoon just infuses the whole experience with so much more meaning. Nostalgia is heightened by a nice afternoon buzz. And you can buy cans of Boddingtons in the convenient stores. That IS convenient!

Where we went on each day is sort of a blur. Booze and amount of time passed since I committed events to memory have conspired against me on this one. I also didn’t really plant myself in the agenda-forming process. I figured there were already 3 other people who had a good idea of what to do, best just to trust them. I think that’s why everything was so relaxing for me. I didn’t have to compromise any of my sight-seeing expectations, because I simply never had any. but we went to a lot of different districts, took a lot of different modes of transportation, ate a lot of good food, and did a lot of walking. There was a ginormo dim sum hall involved (seems like an injustice to call it a mere restaurant when we were at table 234. that’s a fuckload of tables and people in one dim sum locale), the hong kong version of times square, gratuitous ferry rides, so ho and Hollywood, the peak, causeway bay, the walk of fame (replete with Jackie chan’s star), st. john’s cathedral, a really great grocery store/sandwichery in one of the malls at a subway stop, a ginormo fireworks display over the harbor. All of these were things the 4 of us enjoyed together. Having just met Stephen and rita [properly] for the first time, I was actually amazed at how well we all got along for the next few days of complete togetherness. It was great. a surprisingly smooth group vacation. And they were just really cool people, so there wasn’t any forced camaraderie or awkward silences that usually color my interactions with other people.

After rita and Stephen headed back to shanghai, had one more night/day, just jake and I, before I had to head back to the direction of chongqing. So after seeing the happy couple off in the afternoon, we got some road beers and hopped on a double decker bus. Took that bus all around the southwestern part of the island. Then transferred to another bus and headed back up toward wanchai. From there we walked around a bit, amidst all the neon, and shiny gold and throngs and general commerce. It was very cool, very big city, but in a different way than shanghai big city. The douchebag contingent was less present in the majority of hong kong. There were certainly some parts with their fair share of them, but those also happened to be the places with good Mexican food. So we ended up there later, surrounded by heavily-cologned older men on the prowl and gap year kids self-consciously drinking booze, waiting for someone to call them out. but the food was good, as was the bucket of beer. Wandered around for a bit, debating whether to make it a big night or not. Ultimately decided against it—booze and a movie.

Next day we got up, packed a bag with some wine and headed to the ferry station. Lamma island was only 20 minutes away and it seemed like a nice day trip. I think I took the most pictures there. We disembarked the ferry and then tried to take a turn off the beaten path, as all the passengers from the ferry were walking en masse through the main street. It was kind of surreal and zombie-like. so we found said beaten path and wandered around for a bit, taking in the subtropical environs of a sort of remote island off the southwestern coast of hong kong. It was downright pleasant. And the whole time we were granted some perfect weather—jacket weather + sandals=goodness. Eventually headed to the beach, popped open that bottle of wine and had a good long chat.
Leaving hangzhou was really good for me, professionally, but I’m someone who hasn’t had a lot of friends in my life, having only ever really needed jules (and rory, in more recent memory). But in hangzhou I made some actual friends, people that I actually felt sad about leaving. Jake was one of those people. I hadn’t had a best friend in such a long time, and someone who was actually present in a current context of my life, and helping to develop that current context. I don’t know how to explain it. seems like when I talk about “friends”, it’s in reference to this sort of hazy past in which nothing current remains, other than the memory of those friends and some awkward encounters on infrequent trips “home.” But even the memory isn’t current, aside from the fact that it exists now, but it’s based in the past and on nostalgia and a time/place and events that become less and less familiar as real, tangible things. time doesn’t erase them entirely, just the edges. But in hangzhou, I made friends. And they are still real to me, and it makes me profoundly sad to think about their eventual/inevitable blurring. So seeing jake made me exceedingly happy, and really fucking sad before I was even gone. Because I don’t get to see him on a regular basis anymore. That sucks to realize, especially when you’re actually in the middle of one of those rare meetings. Sigh.

Anyhoo, hong kong was good. Got me thinking about a lot of things, a lot of which I won’t mention here, but one of which is where to go next. There’s still that trip to yunnan that never happened, and a course in Vietnam I’m thinking about for late summer/fall. We shall see.

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.

yowsas, i can actually post something.

with my wily ways i've managed to login to blogger. sweet! so this is from a while ago....

I moved into my new apartment this week. Woo hoo! Magically, everything I touch turns to dust! I should’ve taken a picture of my feet just from walking around in my apartment. On the first day, I believe i spent at least 4 hours cleaning, all in preparation for the cleaning lady who will come on Monday. I’ve never had a person come clean my house before. The idea of it is quite strange to me. I know a lot of people in china have an ayi who comes regularly, but I can’t wrap my brain around the idea. I have the same hands and cleaning supplies that she’ll have, so why don’t I just do it? But considering how gross my hands feel even after a shower, maybe everyone else is on to something…Even weirder is that I’ll actually be here when she comes. So not only is she cleaning my apartment, but I’ll be doing lots of other things in the same space that don’t involve cleaning, subtly rubbing it in her face. Weird…. (after the fact note: i never had a cleaning lady come. for some reason that was very difficult to coordinate, and my ability to clean trumped my desire for someone else to do it for me...)

My 22^nd floor perch looks out onto restaurants, stalled construction efforts, a ktv, the sleeping cars of a seemingly out-of-place parking lot (peeps here go underground…mole people) and drunk peeps whose voices somehow manage to carry all the way up and into my living room. And I’m surrounded by other tall apartment complexes, these seemingly compact pillars that dot any archetypal modern Chinese skyline. And to me they look like ice cube trays, with each window delineating another frozen cube on an upended tray. Some of these ice cubes go to sleep earlier than others.

I’m a gadget wizard! Well, not really, but I did a good job of faking myself out. I needed some smoove jams while I cleaned/unpacked. Alas! my speaker cables were damaged during transport—1 totally frayed, the other totally severed. I guess I should at least admit that speakers are not necessarily gadgets, but I qualify things that require a cable or a battery of some sort a gadget. So with my working definition in place, I will continue…anyhoo, the shawnky cable predicament. What to do? so I opened up the wires (one white wire and one pink wire in the “master” bundle of black), then opened up the wires within the wires. Then I sort of mashed corresponding wires together with my tweezers. Wham bam, sweet tune-age! As long as I don’t move the speakers. So that’s a pretty cool victory!

Chongqing is a beast that is quite different from hangzhou. I’ve been here for a little less than a month and haven’t really ventured too much into different parts of the city—mostly the walk to and from work—but I think first impressions are lasting, even if this incriminates my person. I’m the girl who “looks mean.” Great. Funny how little comments like that from years ago can really stick with you… “aloof”, anyone?

hangzhou was relatively flat, chongqing is not. There are certainly parts that are flat—the tops of the hills, mostly, or the space necessary to plant a shopping mall. My apartment sits on the top of a hill. My school and the monolithic sprawling ginormo awesome shopping mall in which it rests are at the bottom of the hill (h&m, where a large is a large!). Along the way there are probably 15 different hot pot restaurants, boutiques, hair salons, pharmacies, real estate offices and all other manner of commerce and foot traffic-generating things.

and you don’t even really need a store, should you want to sell something. There’s a culture of basket folk here that was largely absent in hangzhou and jiaxing. They walk around, weary-looking men and women, carrying oversized, suspended baskets on opposing ends of a long bamboo pole. The image of the scales of justice comes to mind. But that’s kind of a weird analogy for someone lacking the poetry to relay it (that would be me). Anyhoo, The pole rests on their shoulders and bobs up and down as they descend or, unfortunately, ascend the hill. These people are many and their movement is constant. And labored. They sell the usual things—fruit, toenail clippers, plants, household products that you don’t know you need until you see them all arranged in a basket on a pole. A few days ago I had a very lucky day, though. I was walking to work and I could see something different. I could clearly see two birds of some sort, but not the standard fare of chicken or duck. As I got closer, I realized that the more majestic, sad one of the two (their feet were rubber banded together) was actually a grouse. This was a word I hadn’t ever typed until a few days ago. So…how can I be so sure that that was a grouse, and why does the presence of a grouse for sale on a dirty, hilly sidewalk in chongqing strike me as newsworthy? 1) I google image searched “grouse.” Right-o! 2) it was an unusual sight for china, and that’s saying a lot. Log that shit for posterity!

In case people selling shit out of baskets isn’t cool enough, there’s another even more ubiquitous culture here. This is where the mystery that is a “bang bang” enters the picture. “bang.” literally means help. So a bang bang is a helper. They hang out on street corners smoking, wearing the same bang bang-issue green, military-inspired clothing. They carry around sticks with ropes on them and wait for someone to scream “bang bang!” and they will carry literally anything. I’ve seen raw meat, i’ve seen oversized luggage, I’ve seen electronics. This last one is probably the most depressing because it so clearly paints the disparity between rich and poor (hey, that’s china!). The same way that the bicycle taxis in jiaxing did. But you can’t let that guilt interfere with someone else’s capitalism. I could boycott these services “out of principle” but that wouldn’t really be putting any money in their pockets. anyhoo, bang bangs are cool. They add a very distinctly Chinese flavor to…china.

Also on the hill to school is a continuous flow of goo. We’ve got little kid piss (and sometimes shit, hey hey hey!), trash juice, juice juice, rain—all manner of liquid steadily streaming and converging in parallels rivulets determined by the sidewalk grooves. It’s kind of gross but completely fascinating. When I was walking to work today—via sidewalk, duh—I watched a grandpa pick up his grandkid, and spread his/her (I didn’t check out the anatomy…) legs so he/she could urinate directly into one particular sidewalk groove, to ultimately match my walking pace down the hill. Ahh, daily life. (another after the fact note: yesterday i saw a dude pulling a cart of goat carcasses up the hill. i think there were 3 of them, glorious and uncovered).

chongqing. and stuff.

Some things I never wrote about but probably should have:

-Qingdao beer festival. Awesome. Actually started a post about it with the ever-so-appropriate title “untimely qingdao recap.” At this point it’d be silly to write down all the details when there’s so much newness to cover. I logged 1 barf. Suffered some minor cuts in the process of as I leaned out the window of the taxi. Beer for breakfast. Beer in a bag. Beer all day. Babies surrounded by beer. Beer drinking children. Tanzanian beer that had a sort of fritos aftertaste. Jules also has some quality film footage of me drunkenly wailing while rory pulls my hair. Aside from booze and general debauchery, swimming in the sea was a pretty big highlight. Wasn’t too crowded, not too much gawking. So that’s that.

-One of my last days in hangzhou i saw the strangest thing of the whole year (in the context of the bike lane): dude had the telltale orange rent-a-bike and was precariously navigating in the rain. Those two facts alone: not interesting. But what made his journey all the more treacherous was that he was attempting to steer with one hand and balance a blood pressure machine strewn across his lap with the other hand. The one that you play with at the pharmacy with the emergency sleeve release button thing. It was the height of a child and who knows how heavy…And I wondered where exactly was it going. To his home? to a pharmacy? I’ve never seen one of those in a pharmacy here. I’ll have to pay more attention in the next pharmacy I enter.

-going away shenanigans in hangzhou. The highlights were the mini-kegs and protection from the elements under the circus-like tents of the moganshan fish market. That place was just cool because it was quite easy to measure the carnage of your meal--as dictated by quantity and aesthetics—because they just left all the refuse on the tables until after you left. So if you have 20 people eating bbq chicken skewers and corn, there’s going to be a shitload of kebab sticks, wing bones and corn cobs piling up. The goodness continued with the free GINORMO bottle of champage that tim, the proprietor of maya bar, graciously donated to the cause. The cause of me! Champagne accompanied by people saying really nice, genuine things about me (or maybe they were just good liars). A dude I dated briefly was also there and said that anything I ordered was on him. so I had all manner of booze coming at me from all angles, and people still wouldn’t accept “but wait a minute, I already have 3 drinks in front of me” as “no, I don’t need another drink.” That’s what I would consider a good problem to have. I decided to call it a night when 2 of the female teachers from my school got into a shouting match at the bar. If i recall correctly, the exact cue to leave came when another rather diminutive teacher stood between the two cursing, flailing women trying to separate them. I heard later that it never quite came to blows, and I’d be lying if I said I weren’t a bit disappointed by that fact. “how was jimmy’s going away party?” “great until the two broads got into a fistfight at the bar.” It just makes for good television, if that’s what my life were.

So that was hangzhou. Which was the past. Now is the future or, more accurately, the now. huh? Yeah….I’m now in chongqing, with a vacation back home in missou-rah of nearly a month sandwiched between these two Chinese bread cities (stretching that sandwich metaphor there). And speaking of sandwiches, fuck an a was it rad to eat some good food. Not that Chinese food isn’t good. It’s actually great, but I went on a pretty substantial salad binge while I was home. I know that sounds strange, I’m supposed to want burgers and French fries and all the shit that Chinese people think makes every single American citizen morbidly obese. I heart gross generalizations. But yeah. Pulled pork sandwiches. Wendy’s fries dipped in a frosty. Bleu cheese crumbles. I just like that word. Crumbles. Copious amounts of pulled pork. and, booze, sweet booze. Wheat beers, stouts, porters. Lagavulin. Shee-it! And American commercials, particularly the home grown ones. So bad that they’re good. And it was so strange, because not a single person pointed at me saying “foreigner” as I walked down the street. Fuck.

There were some down sides too. Besides the shitty flights to actually get there (fuck you, SFO and united airlines!!!!!), I was a dolt who let my license expire, so I unintentionally rendered myself immobile, aside from the good graces of my parents. But it’s weird to be 31 years old and consider yourself to be something resembling an adult, only to come home, broke and trapped. That was a very real and very depressing aspect of the whole thing. Not that I’d let a little thing like money ruin my good time. Still came home with lots of good loot (thanks, parentals) and a 3 month Chinese tourist visa acquired in a mere day. Try getting that accomplished in china.

So yes. Chongqing. With jules and rory. Living with them now, but it’s temporary while peeps hunt for my apartment (with western toilet. Thems hard to come by round these parts). So that’s cool. It’d be nice to unpack instead of just throwing everything I own around a room the size of a….chinese bedroom? Can’t really think of any sort of tangible equivalent. I’d already designated 1 suitcase “work clothes easy access location” then it actually got chilly here and I had to dig for things with sleeves again. Blah blah blah. Not important. I’m just excited about a new place and no roommate. i should mention here that I did have 2 very very good roommates in hangzhou. Just my space issues and sharing. Don’t like to share.

Chongqing’s a whole lot different than hangzhou. Duh. And yet both places are still very very Chinese. Hangzhou’s known for being a pretty rich city in zhejiang province (perhaps the richest). And now I work in a school in a mall for uber-rich people. I don’t know where these rich people are, because everyone I see in the mall looks as poor or not-poor as the next person. It’s very much a nouveau riche scenario. I think jules described the new money here pretty well and in a more familiar cultural context. Imagine a convenient store worker in middle America winning publisher’s clearing house. Or maybe a rich relative dies. So here’s this financially naïve dude with a shitload of cash. What to do with it? Buy a monster truck? Buy all the things that a shitty job couldn’t,. because just having the option of frivolity is a luxury in itself. Finally the permission, really, to substantially take part in the consumerist culture you’ve been on the fringes of your whole life, despite it’s ubiquity in the media—clothes, gadgets, stuff! No investing or anything sensible. Right here, right now. And that’s what it’s like here, only their monster trucks are the real Gucci bags to replace the already excellent fake ones. But it’s still interesting to watch. Not the same as the [quite] pervasive materialism of korea. It was vulgar there, but not here. It’s more like it’s cute. A word I don’t use. “aw, shucks. You finally got enough money to buy shit you don’t need. That’s cute.”

Anyhoo, the drive from the airport was good. I’d visited this city twice before as a tourist, but it immediately felt new even when I took the same route I’d taken those two times prior. My first day as a resident! Woot woot. i’m not visiting, I live here. It’s cool to be aware of your mind weighing that significance as it happens. Not in some reflective, abstract way, but in the exact moment that it dawns on you in a dirty taxi, with a driver who has a different dialect. And even that is familiar but new.

Chongqing is a dirty, polluted city. I like the word “gritty” and it’s the grit that makes this city cool. And despite this grit, things are green and wet. the humidity contributes to all that. Despite the smog, life is sustained. Skies can be blue. Clouds can be delineated. these facts are amazing.

On the school end, things are a lot calmer. This is a good thing. The school is clean. The kids are polite. Everything is organized. The office is quiet and productive. There aren’t that many teachers there aren’t that many female teachersthere’s no drama. And this, this I is very like.

One last thing. h&m. holy shit. The grand opening of h&m chongqing was on Wednesday. It’s below our school in the mall. I could leave the office now and be in h&m in 30 seconds. That’s crazy. This day was crazy. We entered through the men’s section, and it was a zoo, but we were still able to get in. it wasn’t until jules and I had been in the store for a while that we thought to look out the window. There was literally a mob trying to squeeze through the bottleneck of the main entrance escalator. They had set up the metal barricades like the check-in line of the airport to corral the peeps, but it was insane. When girls finally made it to the top of the escalator, some of them were crying, some of them were fist-pumping, and all of them were elated. Truly. I’ve never seen anything like it except on tv. And that’s saying a lot for china.

I could ramble some more, but I’ll save some typing for another time. Hot pot is good. I had a welcome dinner that was also good. And there was no near-catfight. Generally speaking, things are good.

new ink

been feeling kind of homesick lately, so in honor of my midwestern roots (that feel very distant here in the asia), i decided to commemorate missour-ah by committing it to my wrist. yup. i'm now the proud owner of a sweet new wrist tat.

some other peeps at my school had gone and gotten some shit done, and i liked the idea of getting a tattoo in china of my home in america. so a group of us went by the "parlor" after a late meal one night, only to find that the place had just closed. shee-it. so we made some tentative plans to come back the next day.

when i got up in the morning the next day i was in a weird, anti-social mood. which, at this point and with such frequency, isn't actually weird at all. i guess i just think it should feel weirder. anyhoo, i didn't call anyone, i just went by myself. so i navigated the bike lane of my busy main street and headed down to the shawnky chinese tattoo parlor.

speaking no english, i just showed the dude with an asymmetrical haircut, odd dress shoes and a koi fish tattooed on his left shoulder the outline of my state. he asked what it was in chinese. i responded in chinese and he smiled. then he tried to put it on upside down, unfamiliar with what's north, south, east and west on my blob of unfamiliar geography.

15 minutes later i walked out with a new tattoo. it was funny though, he was just starting to put together his "portfolio" so even my little crappy outline was photographed to be added to his book. also of note, the bottle of ink that just said "tattoo ink."

anyhoo, i like the idea of geography and of place and what that means physically/mentally/emotionally/blah blah blah. and to be reminded of where you come from. that in this whole planet of abstract shapes on skewed maps there is 1 little dot that you actually came from (aside from the 2 little dots who are your parents). but if people ask me about it, i just like to say "it's just my state." or as i've been saying in broken chinese "it's my place in america." which also sounds kind of poetic.

cicadas

shit. The cicadas are here.

I wake up every morning to the deafening sound of millions of them, the collective chirping of the masses somehow worming its way through the screen, glass and curtains of my windows, through my room, under and around the ear plugs [and residual wax] and into my fucking brain. and of course this on a regular basis for the past few weeks is bound to stir up at least one anecdote of yore.

Insert random fact that I just learned: “cicada” comes from latin and means buzzer. So there you go. I learned that from wikipedia. Where, if the sound of the mass of them waking a person up every morning isn’t real enough, you can also find a sound clip. And the sped up molting of a “dog day” cicada in ohio.

So yes, I was reminded of another time when cicadas were taking over the world. the last time I recall them appearing in such startling numbers was in columbia, mo. I was then working my second ice cream/frozen yogurt job, at the tcby on 9th and cherry. I was just thinking how appropriate it would have been had the intersection been at 9th and locust, since people commonly [and mistakenly, I might add] refer to cicadas as locusts, which are actually more closely related to grasshoppers (again with the wikipedia), but I suppose that’s someone else’s pretty boring anecdote. Seems like there were a lot of them then, but they were much bolder than this year’s batch. So much so that you found them in your clothes and hair, swarming you when you left the relative safety of a building. On several occassions people managed to carry them into the yogurt shop in their clothes, unawares. And on fewer than several occassions, these creatures made their way into people’s ice cream. So that’s always fun.

But they were too big for anyone to actually ingest them. Not that that wasn’t possible, it just was impossible not to see something that large and alive moving in your food.

Nothing much more on that subject. It just reminded me of white chocolate mousse and watermelon sorbet mixed together, sans insects. Oh, and sucking the gas out of the whipped cream in the walk-in cooler. That was a lot of ruined cream.

In the vein of random, i’m going to take this space to share another anecdote. Completely unrelated to cicadas, but relating to china, so that’s enough. About 5 months ago another teacher and I helped the school district with some recordings for middle school tests in the province. So we went to this expensive studio and wore headphones and read very slowly from a script into fancy microphones.

But before any of that happened there was a commotion. We were waiting for our escort to the studio at some big warehousey type place. So while we were waiting we wandered. on the 3rd floor there were lots of road cases, the kind that touring bands use to lug all their shit around, and men moving them.

We went downstairs and waited some more. While we were waiting a man ran down the stairs and out the doors, clutching his hand to his chest while blood ran through his fingers and down his shirt.

A few minutes later another man came down the stairs. He wasn’t running and showed no outward signs of being in a hurry. He was holding essentially a woman’s handkerchief. And in the handkerchief was a man’s finger. Presumably belonging to the man who had run down the stairs a moment prior.

Finally another group of people made their way down the stairs. Then everyone squeezed into a car, clown style, and drove away. So it was an interesting scene before we got to the actual recording. We figured it had been one of the men moving the road cases around, with the top of the case shutting on his finger and severing it.

And finally, from bad to worse….another pretty gruesome nugglet that affected me secondhand. I have a roommate now. not a british dude, but an american chick. Pretty chill. From colorado. Anyhoo, she’s been here for about a month give or take a few days. I found her on Sunday in the bathroom sobbing. Sobbing and shaking. So I hugged her awkwardly—I’m not necessarily very good at comcforting people. Sat her down on the couch to get to the bottom of all this shock.

She started by saying “I just saw the most fucked-up thing.” She had been biking home on our street when she heard a loud “thud.” a guy, maybe in his mid-20s, had just fallen or jumped out of his high rise apartment building and landed on the sidewalk next to her. She was the first person to see it, besides the hairdresser whose shop he landed in front of.

She got off her bike. Walked over to the guy, whose limbs were all contorted and bloody. There were bits of blood and viscera scattered around him. a crowd started to gather and no one appeared to be doing anything. Her sister’s a nurse back in colorado, so she’d actually been cpr trained. So she took his pulse but there was nothing. Then she left him to the curiousity of the chinese crowd as the ambulance approached.

I didn’t really know how to comfort her so I opted to open a beer.

effigy...there's a word i don't use very often

been hitting the sauce pretty hard this past week or so. and i mean that with regards to both booze and actual sauce--delicious korean red pepper sauce, to be precise. i'm dipping a very large vegetable in it right now! heh heh. anyhoo, the weather has been nice, besides today's showers, which means there are outdoor places to drink, which means i spent 3 days in a row at maya, which i was actually okay with. the last visit included a shot of the top shelf baijiu with a snake in it. i'm not sure if what i drank came from the large snake vat or the medium snake vat. i guess at that point, snake size really doesn't matter. i've also eaten at a particular korean restaurant near my house 3 times in the past week and a half. the wait staff seems as excited as i am about that figure. got some free soju during one visit and have consumed a lot on subsequent trips. i think my 3 day headache reflects this.

in an effort to counteract the mini-binge, i decided to venture out and do something touristy on my pseudo-weekend. the outcome of this has always been 1 of 2 things: 1) foreigner in a tourist attraction becomes the tourist attraction and ultimately regrets the fact that he or she decided to venture out in the first place or 2) foreigner in a tourist attraction is so engrossed in the beauty of said tourist attraction that he/she is able to tune out the claustrophobia that accompanies being in an "open" space in china (i know, sounds like an oxymoron, but it ain't) with people pointing and staring at you.

my destination: lingyin temple. my mode of transportation: bike. my technology that would have been nice to have but that i forgot to bring: camera.

got a bike tune up (an anecdote in itself…later), headed out. when i got there, it was definitely a case of "hey, look at the foreigner." this usually only makes me feel uncomfortable if i'm already uncomfortable or unfamiliar with my surroundings. and then it feels like everyone's laughing at me. It’s fair to say i have some mild social anxiety issues. since i had only managed to purchase an ice cream cone and not a ticket, i was still feeling vulnerable and irritable. on my way to buy a ticket, i felt a hand on my arm (big fucking no no in my book). a woman was gesturing to me that she wanted to take my picture. i guess because i was the only foreigner on my own (not the only foreigner, saw several large tour groups of old[ish] europeans) she felt like it was fair game to accost me. so i saw what she wanted, shook my head and flipped her off. which might mean something to a chinese person, or it might not. but she didn't get her picture. and i felt vindicated.

note to people who feel like harassing foreigners (tourists or otherwise): it's all about the approach. i, for one, appreciate subtlety. If one doesn’t adopt a look-at-the-foreign-monkey manner or an i-wonder-what-happens-if-i-poke-it-or-touch-it manner, then maybe i'll oblige a photo. but there seems to be so much aggression and mockery that accompany what could otherwise be an easily granted request. or if people are taking pictures of you out of some sense of appreciation--tattoos, for example--i'm okay with that. whatever, i eventually was able to procure a ticket, relatively unscathed. woot woot.

a few years ago i went to tibet and saw a crapload of temples. Perhaps using “crapload” “tibet” and “temples” in the same sentence could be construed as sacrilige. But I guess I’ve never been very religious. Anyhoo, all of said crapload of temples were beautiful and awesome and, yes, mystical. i've been sort of underwhelmed by temples ever since then. korea had some. eh. china has lots. eh. but lingyin temple is the first temple since tibet that has actually managed to inspire any sense of calm or reverie or calm reverie. it was unexpected, and much needed. massive. teeming with people. but i was able to tune everything out. greeted by the big incense pits--fire and grime and red wrappers--these microcosms of activity, piety refined by flames.

i traded in my judgement of people for wonder instead. after tibet i wanted everyone at a temple to look like a scruffy, devout pilgrim, prostrating him/herself, bundled up in colorful rags, ruddy-faced and windburned. this time i was able to marvel at the mix of people, tourists and religious types together. women (okay, just the 1...) in stiletto heels and latex dresses kneeling next to old men sporting baseball caps. and toddlers being gently prodded to model the actions of those around them, oblivious to content or context.

went to a few other smaller temples around the area. didn't manage to make it to the cable car/peak, but it definitely warrants another trip.

'twas a good day.

the day before my excursion i ate at a new thai restaurant in town. capped it off with maya. I’m so predictable. when i got home later that night--maybe midnight—I was greeted by a vehicle blocking the only path in the parking lot. Curiosity trumped annoyance, which I thoroughly appreciated in retrospect. i could just make out people shuffling along the side of the van, pushing something. Then the back of the ambulance opened, establishing a small perimeter of light. Enough for me to see the paramedics and a gurney. They shoved the loaded gurney in, where a calm, masked woman was waiting to pin the pulse clip thing onto a motionless older man’s finger. He was still, but i thought that if he was wearing his glasses, there couldn’t really be anything too wrong with him. I was struck by the fact that he was surrounded by medical personnel, but there was no sense of urgency guiding their movements and no family members buzzing nervously/chaotically around him. it was odd and calm.

the next day, again, after maya, I biked home. there wasn’t a vehicle in the parking lot blocking my way, but there was a fire and a crowd of people. I hopped down off my bike to push it through the crowd. And as I wove my way through these people whose solemnity was becoming apparent, I got a clear view of the fire’s source: it was an effigy of a man who had died. a chair was rather stably erected on top of a pyre of broken and/or disassembled furniture. The chair had a man’s casual button-down shirt stretched over it and a hat placed on top. I could only assume that it was in remembrance of the very man I’d seen the night before. Unfortunately, I didn’t make this assumption until I’d already disturbed the peace somewhat. But to say anything (particularly when I wasn’t sure how) would have just drawn more attention to me. So I tried to shuffle through as inconspicuously as possible. And I felt sad. but I also had some highly insensitive questions running through my head, the biggest being: “was he already dead when I saw him yesterday?” I’m not sure how either answer to that question would have made me feel. Maybe something. Maybe nothing.

I do wonder how death is different here. Not in any sort of afterlife context (not a subject I want to creep into my blog. Yikes.), but just in the context of culture and mourning. Is the sadness the same as it is in western culture? what does a cline of sadness/mourning look like? yes, a horrible idea, but valid if you’re one who makes a distinction between the death of a pet and the death of a family member. if a young person dies, is it more tragic because chinese families usually only get one child? All the emotion funneled into one source that is then taken away. Or in a country with so many people in it, does sheer volume of humanity minimize the emotional trauma of one person’s death? i know these are stupid questions, but they exist[ed] anyway.

Moving away from death, and on to my most recent mini-vacation, yay! I went to chongqing for the may holiday. My school actually closed down for a month, so all the east school teachers had to move to the north school (still here now). Which means a lot of cancelled classes and a lot more arguably free time (hence this blog, typed on a very official and imposing desk in the north school teacher’s office. Somehow sitting behind a computer screen—however “compact”—translates to diligence.). part of that meant a few extra days off that some teachers were owed anyway around may day. So I had 5 days to spend in chongqing. Of course I like hangzhou (or at least most aspects of it), but it’s still nice to get to eat good food and to see people who I don’t feel I need to explain myself to or feel guilty about hanging out with. These things are viable in hangzhou, just not as viable. And that was chongqing last time too—respite from hangzhou. I know it’s not challenging to be with people who agree with you all the time, but it’s also nice to be with people who don’t turn everything into a point of contention. that seems to characterize a lot of my current relationships, work or otherwise. And it’s exhausting.

I could spend time writing about a very cute 5-year old at a bike shop. But one could probably gather from those minute details that I had a fun time with her and her few english words while I waited to get my bike fixed. Yup, that’s pretty much it, but it made my day memorable, the first in monday’s chain of events.

And now back to cleaning up all the music files on my external hard drive. Tedious, but space-freeing. I have entire discographies of people I’ve never heard of…

recent

I had a very chinese day on wednesday (she says, eyeing her bowl of spaghetti with chopsticks jammed in it). Hmmm…I live in china, so what could have made this day even more chinese than usual? Well, I decided it was the most opportune time to lug 5 couch cushions home on my bike. In the rain. I guess I didn’t have to, but I went for it. I tend to do things more out of novelty these days than out of any overriding practicality. So yes, I needed the couch cushions, but the idea of affixing them to my bike and how difficult it would probably prove to be was ultimately what motivated me into action. It seems to always rain ‘round these parts, so I figured that one rainy day was as good as any to strap a bunch of subtle, orange couch cushions onto the back rack of my bike, with an inappropriately/inconveniently stretchy piece of elasticized rope. Seems like that would be a tough sentence to say if I were going to read it out loud. guess that’s why this is written.

and to top it all off—quite literally—was an oversized blue rain poncho. Making the whole endeavor look dodgy as shit. Maybe that’s why it seemed so distinctly chinese! I should have been smoking and talking on my cell phone too. With my surplus of arms…anyhoo, me pushing my bike in the road, one hand awkwardly twisted behind me, clutching this looming wet blue mass of plastic with bits of orange poking through. This was after I had attempted to actually ride my bike, with said jury-rigged rope fastened around my waist. Perhaps you can imagine how well that worked out. Hence the pushing of the bike. I could only think of my dad as I was attempting all of this. And goddamnit, somehow he would have made it work. He would have been able to ride the bike home, and probably done something else amazing while he was at it. Like rescue someone from a burning building or administer cpr to a random, dying stranger. Because those are things he does on a regular basis…

My apartment is an aged (pronounced a-jed) piece o’ shit. the couch I currently have (that isn’t broken) was one that was brought home from school a while ago. So it had old, gnarly cushions—the color of a heavy smoker’s teeth—with no covers. But a former occupant’s parents were kind enough to steal some airline blankets on their way across the globe, and those had been attempting to serve as bona fide cushion covers. What the fuck? I’ve never really had nice stuff, furniture-wise, and I know I shouldn’t expect new things, but as a 31-year old professional teacher, it was a mite insulting to be awarded this decrepit thing as an excuse for a sofa. College life and the shitty accomodation that accompanied it were things I've tried to put in my past, having picked up this little thing called a career. But this argument seems to fall continually on deaf and/or overly beaurocratic ears.

Not too much other news. It’s a sad day when the most noteworthy life nugget is in reference to couch cushions. sigh. Long day.

Oh yeah! i went to a show on Sunday. Neil halstead played at the traveller bar. I had a very distinct association with him prior to seeing him play. And it had nothing to do with his beard or his music (the latter being exactly what any serious musician wants to hear, I’m sure…) Jules used to work at streetside records back in columbia, mo. So every once in a while she would bring home posters of new albums/artists and whatnot from work. So the sleeping on roads album cover is what I think of when I think of neil halstead. Swishy waves and the bursts of orange. I seem to have found the theme of this post: orange!

It was my friend’s birthday, so we thought we’d have a chillaxed evening with some nice acoustic music. Hangzhou is a pretty foreigner-friendly town, and I assumed that other western peeps would be as eager to see/hear someone real (I seem to lack the words to adequately express my actual sentiment here…) playing as I was. I guess I was wrong. We got to the venue and were the only foreigners there. And I couldn’t imagine how that must have felt. To look out into a crowd of people who all looked the same, in a country where you can’t speak the language. I guess maybe it’s a very concrete, tangible reminder that you’re on the road or something that plants you firmly in a unique, arguably life-affirming time and place. I seem to recall maybe feeling that way when I first got here. And I’d like to think that he felt something comparably positive when he looked down from the stage. But I think it would be different playing in south america or in some non english-speaking european countries. Just because china is so homogenous and closed-off. Somehow only obnoxious pop music has been able to permeate the thick membrane of the country. I just had to say “membrane.” I have a plant cell diagram [planted, ha!] in my head right now. Mitochondrion and cytoplasm and whatnot.

Anyhoo, I had a very acute pang of nostalgia while I was watching this man play a guitar on a stage. There was a part where he forgot the lyrics to one of his songs. And we’re sitting in this bar with lots of wood and it’s quiet and it’s just him up there in front of everyone. And it reminded me of so many times in austin at the hole in the wall with chris playing and forgetting his lyrics. So it was weird to have this very specific time and place in a seemingly long gone past life summoned up by this bearded english man (what can i say, i like beards...)playing an acoustic show in my current chinese hometown. Afterwards we had some drinks with him and the most random thing happened. Someone from the second floor of a now nearly empty bar threw a stool over the railing, hitting neil halstead’s “handler” in the head. So that was…strange. There was a rush to get her some ice. And the dude who pitched the chair was promptly balled out by the bar owner. Bizarre shit. I heard talk of some money exchanging hands too. And I was again reminded of an incident in my past. A pitcher of water smashing on my face at the blue note. The drummer had been waving it around and the handle broke off, sending it in my very precise location. i was bloody and soaked. that’s rock ‘n’ roll.

It was a cool show. A bittersweet reminder of what used to be a big part of my american life.

my friend's birthday last night, but i'm incredibly broke right now. still wanted to see her, but the bar was uber-expensive. i opted for the smuggled beer/whiskey-in-purse option. so i said happy birthday then spent the majority of my time sitting at a nearby bus stop drinking lukewarm cans of beer retrieved from my purse. which actually wasn't nearly as depressing as it sounds...

My school is getting ready to shut down for a month. Taking another sabbatical to chongqing to visit the fam. Then I come back and begin the sweaty, sticky hangzhou summer. I think I’ve got about 3 or 4 more weeks of make-up and arguably straight hair before the humidity begins to sabotage my attempts at beauty. aah, summer.

well hell's bells...

it’s been a while. no harm in starting with a statement of the obvious.

these are the points I’ll touch upon in this post (copied verbatim from an ef-emblazoned post-it from about a month ago:

-bike
-english tea
-beer games
-stuck in the rain
-electronics market

so that’s what the list has, but there are some other things I should probably touch upon, like my tb3a student who drew a cock with wings and a cd player in the base of it. they were supposed to draw and describe their invention. and his was this butterfly cock that could “make your emotions good” that shot water out the top when it was happy. perhaps I’ll even attach a photo of said rendering. perhaps not.

my bike was stolen. I came home from a Korean restaurant in the afternoon some months ago and my bike was nowhere to be found. so I tried to convey to the security dude who sits right there that my bike wasn’t there. I think I failed.

I went up to my apartment. stewed for a while. then went back downstairs to just see if I was an idiot who had simply overlooked my rather large/cumbersome material possession. no such luck. nowhere to be found.

I didn’t have any money to buy a new bike and wasn’t really looking forward to hoofing it around town for the week or so until payday.

woke up in the morning and my roommate at the time’s girlfriend said she had good news. the security guard had my bike. huh? I’ve been strangely lucky in having stolen shit returned to me. so I have good enough karma to have shit returned to me, but not quite good enough karma to not have it stolen in the first place. hmmm.

apparently the security guard had caught the dude in the act of stealing my bike. bad man was punished somehow. the deets were sketchy there. my bike was confiscated and waiting in the office of the adjacent apartment complex. so I was missing my bike for approximately 15 or so hours, depending on the exact time its theft was attempted. the kickstand was gone, but I replaced it for 7rmb. sweet ass.

so that’s the first bullet point. I guess it’s not technically a bullet. I’m not sure how to make an actual bullet point. the first dash.

second. English tea is good. here I’ve been drinking it bitter and unadorned the whole time, never knowing there was this other realm involving the magical fairy-like ingredients of sugar and powdered milk that smells like babies. the office brits commented on my stereotype that the English are quite particular when it comes to their tea. and yet no one has disproven the stereotype…

at the 7 club a few months ago they hosted a beer games night. I went to said beer games. it was 100 rmb all you can drink to play beer pong, flip cup and some other stuff that I ultimately got too drunk to realize were viable drinking game options. that said, I actually fell down once in the bar, then barfed in/around my toilet as soon as I got home. I haven’t yakked the night of drinking in a very long time. and I have absolutely no shame in having ended my streak of not barfing on the same night. or in relaying this information to the general public.

I went to the electronics market for the first time 2 months ago. my homie serina wanted to buy a camera for vacation. I was in pursuit of a remarkably elusive mp3 player cable for my phone. it was raining. a lot. we ate lunch at a noodle shop to dry off. then came the horrible time of 3 pm. Hangzhou is very very strange with taxis. they have this weird shift changeover time, and never thought to make 2 shifts overlap. so between 3:30 and 4:30 every fucking day, it’s impossible to get a taxi, unless you happen to be going in the direction of the taxi driver’s house. and if it’s raining, this changeover time starts at 3, or basically any time you need to get a taxi. it’s just bizarre, and something you can only find out by getting screwed over consistently. a man at a milk tea stand filled me in on this phenomenon when I first got to Hangzhou.

anyhoo, serina and I were stuck in the rain. but this woman from the noodle shop ran out to try to help us find a taxi. she had originally lent us an umbrella, but then saw we were having no luck with taxis, so we waited with us and risked life and limb, throwing herself upon oncoming taxis that might take us somewhere. no luck. so then she started trying to flag down random cars to convince them to shuttle two strange white women to their respective homes. no luck. but there was something poetic in this tiny asian woman, in full tea-shop regalia, hair pinned up, running in the rain, her uniform and stockings soaked and sticking to her. it could very well have happened in slow motion. and she did this all for 2 women that she’ll probably never see again. it was a surprisingly profound moment in an otherwise dreary day.

in other news not alluded to in the list, I’m now the senior teacher at the east Hangzhou school. so that’s pretty cool. I realized today just how much paperwork that entails. let’s hope that somehow translates to a focus on academic standards in some way. whatever academic standards are.

I went on a mini-vacation a month ago to celebrate the lunar new year. me jules and rory had initially planned to meet up in yunnan province to soak up some near-tropical scenery. turns out that those flights were nearly as expensive as a trip to bali at that time, and equally unaffordable. so we opted instead to go to Guiyang, the capital city of the poorest province in china. so there was inherently going to be something cultural and interesting there by virtue of that fact.

what I noticed immediately was that everyone was trying to rip me off. of course it’s to be expected with taxis and shops and most things chinese. I think anyone who comes to china should probably be informed that airport taxis are a rip off. that’s why I took the bus! so that’s interesting. to take the airport shuttle bus with absolutely no idea where the fuck it was going to drop me off in a city I’d never been to. but it all worked out.

I spent the majority of that day sleeping. or trying to sleep. sometimes it feels like you can never get a good night’s rest unless you leave your city and bed to do it. some of the best sleep I’ve ever had has been in hotels. but perhaps that’s giving too much credit to sleep at any point during lunar new year/fireworks season. I brought ear plugs.

met up with jules and rory later that night. I’d forgotten my lonely planet and had absolutely no idea what Guiyang might be known for, besides a waterfall a few hours away. but they came armed with a list of restaurants. Guiyang was famous for a fish soup. so we went on a quest for this soup that night. we ended up seated in an outdoor restaurant place where you sit around the stove, gloves on, while your food cooks in front of you. there was a bombed out and depleted tent over our heads and it was fucking cold. but charming and Chinese as fuck. which is what we were going for. so rory asked how much the fish was, and they said it was free because of the lunar new year. woo hoo! so we ordered a bunch of other crappy dishes to complement our fish soup. to kill the fish, they just threw it on the ground. I don’t think there was much force involved, so it wasn’t the throwing that was intended to kill it. which seemed weird for china. now that I think about it, it’s probably more humane to just smash something on the ground than it is for it to just slowly choke and die after a bunch of exertion. but what do I know about killing things besides frogs (and that one was in a quick, violent burst).

so the soup came. beers were consumed. general merriment was had by all. then it was time for the bill. keep in mind that homie had actually told rory (he and jules speak quite a bit of Chinese) that the fish was free and that we were eating around a stove with a ratty tent over our heads. but he said the bill was 600 rmb. there are only 2 places in china that we’ve eaten where it cost that much, and they were both western restaurants with Boddingtons and other nice beers.

So we sort of flipped on the dude. Played the “racist” card. That’s actually a new one for me. Which is really surprising since there seems to be so much blatant xenophobia. The “ignorant” excuse can only go so far before it just gets really fucking old. There are days when it’s very difficult to leave the house, because so much of it involves endurance and perseverance in the wake of remarkably mundane events. But said minutiae is exhausting, because I’m not Chinese. And everyone else in the entire world is. Or at least that’s what they make you feel like. But, as I’ve said before, it’s the same things I hate about china that make it life-affirming on a near-daily basis.

Some guy who thought he spoke English better than he did took it upon himself to “help” us, by condescendingly informing us that there seemed to be something “lost in translation.” But that’ s only if you don’t understand what the person is saying to you. And we did. There was no lost in translation. It was lost in rip-off-the-foreigners-tion. But that’s the story of our collective lives here. So first day in guiyang left a bitter (and expensive, and yes, deliciously sour and spicy) taste in our moufs.

The rest of the vacation was spent drinking, eating pizza that was delivered to whatever ktv we decided to frequent on that particular day, and marveling at how dirty and backwards everything was in guiyang. Again, these were still valuable observations, and I wouldn’t have changed my vacation. I came back to hangzhou extremely well-rested and grateful for my position in the cycle of Chinese life, both physically and metaphorically.

I’m sure there’s other crap to report, but this is already far more longwinded than the content actually deserves.

One last note. I bought a sit-up bench. It reminds me of home. I’m hopefully buying a laptop in the next few days. I will then [officially] be an adult. But let’s not jump the gun….

ease on down the road

I moved into a new apartment. this happened a few days ago. my shit was all moved on new year's eve eve, but I still clung to my squatter's rights in my olde quarters. two nights ago was my first sleep in my new abode. also the first time since Columbia, MO, USA that I've lived with a real deal “roommate.” but it's weird. I don't want to leave my room. a lot of that had to do with the fact that I've had all this shit to unpack. but it also has to do with knowing that there's someone else in this space. and if I listen hard enough through the wall that connects our rooms, maybe I can hear him breathing. that's right, it's a him. and a british him. and maybe british hims are different than other ones. but I sort of don't think so. at least not in the fact that they breathe. particularly when living.

how I came to live with another human is a long, dramgedy (get it, I combined drama with tragedy!). the drama comes from the fact that I wouldn't even be here in Hangzhou if living alone had never been promised to me in the first place. gotta love the verbal contract in china. no matter who makes the promise, get it in writing. even if it's just a fucking text message. and even if the promiser is from the same continent as you. the tragedy is that my other place was so much cooler. and not just because it only had one person in it. my bed was bigger. my shower had hot water that lasted for longer than 5 minutes (I'm back to that retardedness here in the new place. sigh.).

a red line came up under retardedness, which I still have no intention of changing. however, I right-clicked out of curiosity. the suggestions were many and varied: beardedness, beardedness', retardates, retardants. ok, only 4. but I was pleased. anyhoo, I feel like I've complained about my current living situation enough (here as well as in the real world), which hasn't made it one bit better. not one tiny bit. we'll see how this seemingly large defeat affects my overall mood for the next few months. I'm curious to see what perspective this “stepping out of my body to self-monitor” will afford me. if it's not a lot, I'm going to be totally pissed with both moody me and omniscient me. but homeboy will be heading back to en-guh-lund in a little while, so then I'll be back to living alone. until people further manipulate words/promises to suit their own agendas. pretty sure I can count on that. and yet I'm the one who has to have “principle” and “do the right thing.” “barf.” which apparently means letting people (rather, person) bully me to cover her own arse.

if I want to find nice things to say about it—and oddly, I'm inclined to do so right now—I can say that the view is better. for starters, i'm on the 10th floor, so I actually have a view. I can also say that the neighborhood is cooler than where I was. besides main road, there are little roads that wind past bakeries, cigarette stores, cafeterias and all manner of strung-up clothing. so it's definitely got a more Chinese feel to it. I should mention that here my actual apartment is not adjacent to an elementary school. so the gleeful and joyous sounds of small children no longer wakes me up. thank god. them shits were loud, yo. there's sposed to be a nice noodle joint around too, so that could work in my favor while I'm on the cheap this month. only 26 more days until payday. heh heh. nervous laughter. about that being on the cheap…

since it's the new year I've (of course) adopted a resolution, which I actually copied off someone else. I have to buy a very expensive plane ticket out of Hangzhou for spring festival. along with all the other people who live in china. and there are a lot of them. anyhoo…that resolution: I'm not going to drink beer for a month. or eat a subway sandwich. this is not because I believe I have a problem with either of these things, specifically in the area of over-consumption. this is just to save money. and a small part of this is to prove that my life can still have meaning without said items. it's worth pointing out that I only said “no beer.” whiskey and/or other spirits are totally acceptable, provided someone else does the providing.

listening to kunek right now. flight of the flynns. and I just wanted to get it down for posterity that this album, more than anything else, represents korea for me. particularly my year in ilsan. so many subway and bus rides into the gangnam area of seoul. and this is what I would listen to. it's a good memory, just because I can still pinpoint exactly how I felt. not necessarily happy (actually, I'd have to say closer to very unhappy), but happy to be on a mode of transportation that signified [quite literally] movement. even if events in my life didn't reflect the same metaphorically significant parallel of forward motion.

feed the world. let them know it's christmastime.

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.

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.