oh, the sights that you'll see

If I was really impressive, I'd write this post in the style of Dr. Seuss, as a play on his graduation-gift-worthy "Oh, the Places You'll Go." But I'm either not that good or simply not willing to put the time into it. Not quite sure which.

I woke up this morning when it was still dark and early. That's one of the unfortunate aspects of winter here in Shenyang -- the sun no longer rises at 4:30 a.m. Which, most people might think that's a good thing. But I'm honestly a big fan of the sun coming up really early. Makes it much easier to get up early.

Walking to work this morning, I was glad I had chosen to walk and not try to take a bus -- since I was passing most of the buses along the way. The air was chilly, of course, but it's been beautiful bright sunny days for almost a week now, which means that the sidewalks are completely clean of ice (except for the one spot where the store owners wash their sidewalk daily with water, but thankfully I know to be careful in that spot by now). I wouldn't say the sidewalks are completely clean... but at least clean of ice. So I had a lovely, brisk walk to work.

You know work is going to be interesting when the morning conversation starts, "I have a question. On my way in this morning I saw traffic police with big jugs of water and toilet brushes." Indeed.

After our meeting at work, I started on my list of errands around the city. Of course, the frugal side of me thinks that paying for a gym membership and taxis all over town are a waste when walking all over town eliminates both expenses and gets the same results. As a result, my errands tend to take a while. But just think of all the interesting things I would never see or the random things I would never experience if I was always sitting in taxis when en route.

Take, for example, just today's experiences:

I saw a Buddhist monk riding in a taxi. Somehow that just struck me as funny.

I saw a 12 year old boy relieving himself in a very public setting -- on a Charlie Brown style tree decorating the sidewalk along a major road. I'm sure I didn't need to know quite that much about 12 year old male anatomy, and I'm not sure the rest of the city did either.

Not unusually, I had a random Chinese girl greet me on the street... what was unusual, though, was that she greeted me in Spanish.

I walked through Shenyang's version of "Alice in Wonderland" -- where the full-grown trees are painted white and the newly planted ones are wrapped up like presents with red, white, & blue stripes. How trees ever survived winter before us humans started protecting them, I'm not sure.

I had my newest favorite street-food lunch: a hot, steamy, freshly roasted sweet potato! To tear into one of those and let the steam heat you up as you walk down the street in below freezing temperatures is a delight beyond belief. Seriously. If you're ever in China in the winter, try it.

I also had my other favorite: a tea egg. Literally, eggs are hard-boiled in a flavored, salty tea (black tea leaves, star anise, etc), giving the eggs a fun look and an even better taste.

I almost certainly made somebody's day when I purchased 100 Christmas cards for 7.5 mao each. Given that the lady who bought a thousand cards at the same place yesterday paid only 4 mao each, I know I didn't get the best deal. But somehow I couldn't be upset when she cut her own price from what she quoted me yesterday, I only ended up spending half of what I was told I could spend for this purchase, and 7.5 mao is a grant total of 11 cents each. So merry Christmas, lady in stall 51!

I stopped by a random guy with a cart attached to his bike, filled with mugs, bowls, and plates of various sizes, shapes, & colors. I picked out two small condiment dishes that I will use for my coins and my paper clips. And for 5 kuai (about 80 cents), I have plenty of coins left over to put in the dish.

Then I made a turn. I had to go back to a store today that I had dropped something off at yesterday, but I was tired of walking down the one same road every time I go out that direction. So I turned down one street further south, just for the sake of diversity. Apparently I should diversify more often! As I was walking down the road, knowing exactly where I was yet never having walked that way before, I came upon a famous Shenyang site that I've never actually found before! The "Marshal Mansion" or the old residence of Zhang Xueliang. Who is Zhang Xueliang, you ask? Good question. I had to look it up too, because when I tried to chat with the old women standing by his statue in the outer courtyard of his mansion in order to find out (or rather, remember from all those years of Chinese history I took once upon a time where I know his name came up), they couldn't understand my (non-Dongbei dialect) Chinese. Oh well. To be fair, I had a hard time understanding them, too. But when I stood and looked at the statue, I was struck by what this gentleman must have seen in his lifetime in China -- spanning from 1901 to 2001. If you know anything about China's history, you know those hundred years encompassed a ton! Well, Zhang Xueliang himself was a leader of this northeastern part of China (once known as Manchuria) until the Japanese took it over in 1931, and he had a hand in creating the united front between the Communists and the Nationalists (effectively postponing the Chinese civil war) to fight against the Japanese during China's experience of what became WWII. 

So after that brief step into history, I completed my errands and headed for home. By this point in time, of course, I was carrying two armloads of stuff with me, and I was definitely glad to drop it all as soon as I had managed to climb those five flights of stairs and get my key into the door. Phew, all of that and it's only 2:30!

Perhaps when I go back out this evening I'll figure out what those traffic police were doing with the toilet brushes. Then again, perhaps I don't really want to know.

Thanksgiving

What's the best way to celebrate an American holiday in a country that doesn't recognize it? I remember Thanksgiving being one of the hardest days of my time in China two years ago. In fact, Thanksgiving was much harder than Christmas, because all my foreign friends wanted to celebrate Christmas and only the very very small handful of us Americans even knew that the third Thursday of November was anything special. So this year I just wasn't going to make anything of it.

As expected, my Thanksgiving was indeed turkey-less, mashed potatoes-less, cranberry sauce-less, even (biologically speaking) family-less. But it certainly wasn't friend-less.

My American friend A and I ended up spending the entire day together as a holiday baking day. And let me just say, there is nothing quite like holiday baking done in a country that has just recently been introduced to the oven! In fact, our morning started by going out and buying an oven. And by oven, I certainly don't mean one of those convenient devices built into your kitchen that becomes a temporary home for your 20lb turkey during the hours leading up to your Thanksgiving feast. I'm not sure a 5lb turkey would fit in the kind of oven we have to work with. Perhaps that's why we ditched the turkey idea.

Perhaps also because turkeys don't exist in China and are therefore outrageously expensive to purchase. Yeah, that could be it, too.

So we went and bought an oven. We got quite a few stares as we carried this (surprisingly not-that-big) box down the street from the electric market back to my friend's apartment, but I can never quite tell if the stares are because we're carrying an oven down the street or because we're white. Could be either. I would go on to tell you now about the difficulty of getting this new oven up the multiple flights of stairs in my friend's elevator-less apartment building, but that would be a lie. The oven is so ridiculously light, it took basically no additional effort beyond that of simply climbing the stairs regularly. In fact, it was so easy that we then went to my apartment to carry our oven over to A's apartment for the day. Carrying oven #2 down the street? Definitely more stares.

Despite our early morning (okay, okay, 9 a.m. ... which in a country that is bustling by 5 a.m. every morning is not actually early at all), it was already lunchtime by the time we had purchased all the necessary ingredients and equipment (the oven being utmost among them). Being Thanksgiving Day and all, we certainly needed to eat lunch. Japanese rice bowls from the street vendor it is! Woot! Turns out whoever decided Thanksgiving should be about turkey has never tried our Japanese rice bowl place. It's definitely something to be thankful for.

Then to the baking. No day of baking is ever complete without some sort of mishap in the kitchen, but again, baking in a country that just met the oven is really just asking for trouble. Why does my brown sugar taste like ginger? Is this thing I bought actually a pumpkin or am I making an "unknown vegetable" pie? How do I turn the oven on? Why did the oven turn itself off (in the middle of baking that tray of cookies)? Will this yeast rise? Uh-oh, how do we make the yeast stop rising?!

Somehow, by the end of the day, our endeavors proved worthwhile. Nearly 75 crescent rolls, 100+ speculaas cookies, and 3 pumpkin pies later, the apartment smelled better than ever before and we were pleased! Now hopefully all our non-American, never-experienced-a-real-Thanksgiving-before friends will enjoy the goodies at our Thanksgiving/family dinner on Saturday. We might not have the turkey, stuffing, or cranberry sauce, but we have rolls, cookies, and pumpkin pies. Not bad!

A Day in the Life

In the past week, my apartment has slept anywhere from one to seven people on any given night. And that just gives you an idea of the Grand Central Station nature of my apartment.

 

I took a trip last week to visit some old college classmates in another city, a few hours from here. Tons of fun! It was a refreshing break from the routine and responsibilities of life in Shenyang. As I headed home from the train station upon arriving back in town, however, I knew I needed to be prepared… Eleven p.m. in my apartment could be anything. And I mean that quite literally. Absolutely anything could be going on, from nobody being home to having a houseful, from all sound asleep to excited dancing and screaming, from warm and friendly to tense and argumentative. Anything.

 

This time it was extra people. Two American girls here for a brief visit. I totally love meeting all the foreigners who trickle in and out of this city, and usually enjoy having the girls stay with us. I just feel bad for them that they get stuck sleeping out in the living room, which I end up traipsing through at completely ungodly hours of Saturday morning as I get ready for work. And our living room floor creaks. A lot.

 

But a creaking floor isn't the only noise that may keep the girls up tonight or in the morning. Today we have a Chinese lady and her 8 month old baby staying with us as well. The kid is as cute as can be… as long as there's no crying or screaming involved. Which, for an 8 month old, is not often the case.

Chinese kids really are cute, though. Teaching my handful of them today, I was reminded of my old eighth grade Spanish class. My teacher was quite laid back and let us get away with a lot – as long as it involved Spanish. So I remember the studious boys in the class getting really excited about looking up insults in their dictionaries so they could say the craziest or silliest insult to the next person. Not that there was any actual meanness to it. It was just fun.

 

I'm not sure how much meanness was behind my nine year olds today, but two of the boys were definitely insulting each other and calling each other names (in Chinese) in the way that so many nine year old boys do. Now my Chinese is alright, but when it comes to insults, I'm a bit behind the learning curve. But no problem: we have a rule in our class that we're only supposed to speak English. So I avoided dealing with the actual insulting going on by simply enforcing that they had to speak English only.

 

And to that, the one boy turned to the other and said in the same insulting tone of voice: "You're a piece of cake."

 

Yup, pretty sure he doesn't really know what that phrase actually means in English! I definitely cracked a smile at that one. Sometimes it's so hard to be the responsible adult in a situation and not just laugh with everyone else!

 

So lesson learned? Next time someone is getting on your nerves, just go ahead and say it. "You're such a piece of cake."

An Ode to Little Guy

Several weeks ago, I came home from a tough day of teaching to my very first pet! "Little Guy," as he became known, was a bright blue, beautiful beta. He was special. Not only because he was honestly a very beautiful fish, nor even simply because he was mine. He was a delight because my roommates cared enough about me, knew I was having a tough day, and just decided to bless me with him. What a delight!

Coming home to a new pet was only the beginning of the adventure, though. Then came learning how to take care of a pet -- in China. Some of you know about my track record with pets in China. For those of you who don't, let's just say it involved a rabbit that wasn't even mine ending up either being dissected at the Medical University or eaten by some students. I'm not sure which. I didn't ask.

But Little Guy was mine, so I needed to learn how to care for him. So off I went to go buy him some food. Turns out, the rabbit was easy: lettuce and carrots from the local vegetable stand. Fish food in the US? Also easy: a bottle of pellets or flakes. Fish food in China? Now this is entertaining.

From what I understood (and granted, my Chinese is limited), I was supposed to go buy Little Guy some food every 5 days or so. A lady on my vegetable market street sells it, so it was easy enough to pick up whenever I bought vegetables. And at only 2 mao for a bag, it wasn't going to break the bank. (Two mao is about 2 or 3 cents.) But here's the entertaining part: what I was buying for Little Guy to eat was actually little live plankton! And every 5 days or so, I was supposed to dump a whole 2 mao worth of these reddish colored squirmy things into Little Guy's bowl, and he should have plenty.

The first time I fed him, I was a little nervous. Sure seemed like a lot of food to give him at once. So Little Guy and I made a deal that he wouldn't eat too much. It was fun to watch him go at those little reddish things, and, as he had agreed, he filled up on them and then stopped. No overeating.

Three days later? Not sure what happened. The little reddish things were still there, still squirming around, still ready to be eaten. But poor Little Guy passed away. Bad water maybe? Too small a bowl? Just sick? Not sure.

But it was fun while it lasted.

This past week, I came home from a similarly difficult day of teaching to a clean room and a little plant! My roommates are amazing. And hopefully I won't kill this one. :)

 

dead things

I remember being very concerned when I found out, as a child, that eggs are actually from a chicken and that's how baby chickens develop. Every time I cracked an egg, I feared there would be a chicken inside that was more developed than most and I would be totally grossed out. Relief, then, flooded over me when I later learned that the eggs we commonly eat are actually unfertilized eggs -- so the yolk is not actually a really young baby chicken per se and there is no need to worry about cracking open an egg with a chicken inside.

Or so I thought.

Here in China, my roommates and I usually buy our eggs from the lady on the street corner. She's really sweet and gives us a good deal on the eggs that sit in big bins out on the sidewalk. But one day recently, my roommate was at the big, fancy, foreign-owned "everything" store (like Wal-mart, except that here these kinds of stores are the expensive ones). Since she was there, she decided to just pick up a carton of eggs there for convenience sake, despite the fact that the eggs were probably more than twice as expensive as the ones on the street. No problem, she figured. At least they would be good, since cartoned eggs actually go through inspections in a way the street eggs don't.

Ah, but inspections are guarantees of nothing sometimes.

By the time my roommate got home, she realized that the carton of eggs she had purchased smelled absolutely horrendously. And as soon as she walked in the apartment, I knew it too. It was awful. So we took them in the kitchen and started to do our own inspection. Thankfully, our Chinese roommate soon got home as well and joined us in the effort.

We eventually narrowed down the smell to one individual egg. Nasty. So since our Chinese roommate is our go-to person for anything us "foreigners" are grossed out by here in China, we made her crack it open. Of course, we knew it had gone bad -- that much was obvious. So I expected some nasty red ooze or something like that.

But no.

It was a chicken.

A dead chicken, of course. The smell gave that away.

But a chicken with fuzz and filling the egg completely.

Let me tell you, that is one of the nastiest things I've ever seen. If it hadn't smelled so bad, I might have just been intrigued enough to do some science on the thing. But it reeked. So after more than a few screams at the fact that we had just cracked open an egg with a chicken inside, we quickly disposed of the thing outside our apartment. We get enough bad smells coming from our drains... we didn't need any more from the garbage can.

But the good news, for those of you who can relate to the concerns I had as a child, is that I highly doubt you'll ever just crack open a regular egg and completely unsuspectingly find a chicken inside. Unless your nose has absolutely no sense of smell at all, the smell will certainly give away that there's something weird about the egg.

As if finding a dead chicken in an egg isn't bad enough, the next week I was walking by a trash collecting area, where people from a nearby apartment complex come dispose of their garbage. It disturbed me greatly to see a rat by the garbage. Not that I don't see rats by garbage fairly frequently here, and usually I'm okay with it. Seems relatively natural, and I certainly would rather see rats by garbage areas than in other places. But what disturbed me this time was to see a dead rat by the garbage. Any garbage that is potent enough to kill the rats is pretty disturbing!

Adventures from Home

I love living in China. Every moment is an experience, every activity an adventure. Even the annoying things are entertaining in their own way. You know, things like stepping over piles of smelly garbage to get to my apartment. Annoying… but good. It’s home.

Speaking of home, my apartment is a great example of how the “made in China” jokes that float around the U.S. are equally valid here. One morning our water heater went out. Just stopped heating water. Not the most pleasant thing in the world, but I will say I was thankful the cold showers were just for a few days during the heat of summer… not during the freezing Shenyang winter. (Although I might could have gotten away with not showering if I hadn’t been sweating so much…) The day after it broke, we dutifully called a repair guy. But of course, living in a foreign country is all about maneuvering the miscommunications. In this case, the guy never showed up. Not sure what happened, but I was really bored sitting at home all day, that’s for sure. Day three we finally got a different company to show up and replace the broken piece. We all took extra long showers that night.

The day after the water heater was finally fixed, my roommate ran into the sliding glass door that goes into the kitchen. We never close that door, but we had a guest sleeping in the main room and she was cold so closed the door. Middle of the night run to the bathroom? My poor roommate definitely ran right into the door, and it shattered. Not pleasant. But the entertaining nature of the entire situation increased exponentially as our guest spent not one, but TWO days sitting at home waiting for a repair person to come. And she’s Chinese! I’m starting to doubt anything that comes from a repairman’s mouth, at least when they say they’re going to come.

So by the time issue #3 came around, we took a different approach. This one was totally my fault. Lightswitches in China aren’t quite the same as those in the U.S. It’s more like a button that you have to push up or down. Well, one morning when I went to the bathroom, I apparently pushed a little too hard, and perhaps at the wrong angle… I pushed the lightswitch completely into the wall. Oops. Three days of no light in the bathroom. Entertaining, to say the least. But we learned our lesson… Instead of calling up a repair guy, we grabbed a screwdriver and some other tools and went at it. Impressively, we now have light again. And nobody was electrocuted.

At least, no one was electrocuted fixing the lightswitch. We won’t talk about the lack of safety standards that result in plenty of electrical cords just hanging in the bathroom, sometimes touching the metal windowsill. And I’m not going to bother passing along the multiple stories my roommate just told me today about her experiences with electrical incidences in bathrooms in China.

So we move on. As of today, the apartment is pretty much functioning normally. You know, door handles fall off when you use them, but besides that everything is fine. Good thing, too, since we’re stuck inside today. It started raining about five o’clock this morning, and in every Chinese student’s favorite expression, it is raining cats and dogs. Glad we live on the fifth floor, since we’re flooded in about two steps deep. My roommate and I went down this morning to see how bad it was, and this was from three steps up at the entrance to our building.

I just wish pictures could capture smell, too. That green thing you see out the door is the lid to the garbage bin, which is dug into the ground. Convenient, usually. Not so convenient during a flood, when all that water is now steeped in garbage. Yuck.

Gotta love it.

Trains

Last week I returned to my favorite mode of transportation: the Chinese train. Any of you who have traveled in China by train will understand what I mean and must certainly have your own stories to share as well. So here are a few entertaining thoughts from my train trip to and from Changchun, China, a wonderful city about 3 hours by regular train and 4 1/2 hours by slow train from where I live.

First, no train trip is complete without the awesome period of waiting at the station beforehand. Perhaps Chinese people don't see the joy in this period of time, but for any of us non-Asian foreigners, this part is always adventuresome. Especially when traveling with a group of 30+ foreigners. So our train out was to leave at 3:48 p.m. Since security is nearly non-existent at Chinese train stations, it's usually safe to arrive at the station about 20-30 minutes before departure... and even then you may have to sit around a while. But we had a big group, and a group not particularly known for its promptness, so we were told to meet at the station at 2 p.m. Fair enough. Thankfully, it was a beautiful (read: hot and muggy, but at least not raining) day, so we could hang around out front of the station to greet everyone as they trickled in. (Impressively, the last one of our group showed up at 3:20... no running to catch the train!) Big group of white and black foreigners standing outside the train station? Definitely the center of everybody's attention. Also, the center of the cell phone cameras' focus. I'm half expecting to some day travel out to a small town or village in the middle of nowhere China and find my picture on people's walls or on advertisements. But we played along, even smiling and posing for a few pictures. And starting up conversations that we may or may not be able to finish because of our limited Chinese ability. Ah, the joy of being a superstar.

The train station experience before the trip home, however, was even more entertaining. People from our group were just trickling out of the hotel and grabbing taxis together to the train station, so I got in a taxi with three others and off we went. We were having a great conversation with the driver as well as sharing with each other about the great things that we had experienced during our time in Changchun. We even got the driver to plug our mp3 player, playing P&W music, into his car's stereo system so we could all listen to it -- including him. Pretty fun! But I started to get a little nervous when we passed right by the train station without even slowing down. Where on earth are we going? Finally, the driver stopped on what seems like a little side street, with no clear indication of where we were or why we were there, except that he said we had arrived. What? Arrived where? There were little convenience stores and restaurants along the street, but definitely not a train station! But he patiently pointed to a little alley on the other side of the street and told us to go in there. Sure enough, there was a little sign that read Train Station Waiting Room and had an arrow pointing in. Turns out our driver knew the back way into the lowest-end waiting room, which was ours since we were taking the slow train home. So not only were we two white girls, an Indian, and an African walking together on the streets in China, about to take a train far below most foreigners' standards, but we were heading to the worst of the waiting rooms and taking the workers' route to get there. Quite an entertaining site we must have made. At least, all the workers taking that route certainly thought so!

Yet the fun of waiting at the station must come to an end when the train is finally about to arrive. Theoretically, the Chinese have the system all figured out and timed exactly to know when they need to open the gates for people to start going out to the platform so they can all get on during the short window of opportunity while the train is stopped. Theoretically. Unfortunately for us, we were nearer the end of the crowd of people going through the gates when we were heading home so by the time we got through, all the security people started blowing their whistles and telling us to hurry up. Also unfortunately, the gate put us out at car #16 and we were sitting in car #3. Of course, you can only get on at the door of your own car. So while we weren't late in arriving at the station, we definitely did have to run to make the train. Amazingly enough, though, we all made it on. And I think by the time we reached our destination, we had all regained our normal breathing patterns, too. :)

On the train ride up to Shenyang, a group of six of us decided to play Uno (the card game). Now the three Americans in this group all knew how to play, although each with slightly different house rules. But we had the great fun and privilege - and challenge! - of teaching the Africans. Perhaps the funniest quote from the train ride up: "Who knew playing Uno cross-culturally could be so hard?"

The trip home had a different feel. One of the Ghanaian guys managed to have his guitar out on the train (which is impressive when so many "no seat" tickets had been sold... meaning people just stand in the aisles the entire way), so we started up a great P&W jam session. I absolutely love the pick-up P&W with the Africans here, but it was definitely a new experience to have that on the train! I'm pretty sure the entire car was standing up and looking at us, trying to figure out why there were so many foreigners on their train, much less why we were singing. But nobody seemed bothered, and in fact we got a lot of smiles and support. Not only were we occupied by giving Him glory, but I think we managed to entertain a lot of other people too!

Ah, trains. I'm already back from my trip to Changchun, but I'm certainly looking forward to the next opportunity to take a train here in China!

a picture is worth a thousand words...

... so this post must be worth several thousand words. I thought I'd save you and me both time by posting some pictures rather than typing out all the thousands of words. :)











































1. I had to laugh the first time I saw the "2 kuai" store near my apartment. Something like a dollar store, except that 2 kuai is only 29 cents. But I REALLY had to laugh when I saw that the 2 kuai store had been one-upped... here's the 1 kuai store!!

2. Pick-up game of basketball/keep-away with the kids in the complex. I live through the door behind my roommate's shoulder.

3. Wedding! Cameroonian groom, Chinese bride, and American pastor.

4. At my friend's graduation from the Medical University. Definitely a cross-cultural experience.

Ah, China

It has come out of my mouth countless times in the two weeks I've been here. "Ah, China."

 

This is a country that is developing and changing rapidly, so eleven months makes a big difference. The statistic is apparently 400 new cars on the road every day in the city of Shenyang alone. Sure, it's a city of 8 million people or so… but 400 new cars a day?! Times eleven months of being gone, and it's something like 132 thousand more cars on the roads now than when I left. Needless to say, traffic has gotten significantly worse. Significantly.

 

Ah, China.

 

Another change I noticed upon coming back: oreos with green cream are available at the average convenience store now! One of my friends and I used to make trips all the way across the city to the one store that sold mint-flavored oreos, because they were so good yet so hard to find, so I was excited to see the green packages all over the place when I got back. Finally, mint making in-roads into the Asian tastebud! Or so I thought… I decided to splurge and pick up one of these nice packages of green cream oreos. Never thought to actually read the label before making the purchase. I definitely got home not to mint-flavored oreos but to matcha-flavored oreos. Matcha, that incredibly potent green tea powder from Japan that can be used to flavor ice cream or bubble teas, is delicious in the right context. Oreos, when I'm expecting then to be minty, is not the right context.

 

Ah, China.

 

Turns out matcha-flavored Sprite is not the right context either. Another new item failed.

 

Ah, China.

 

I was having lunch with my Ghanaian brother the other day and was telling him about the place I'm currently living. Last time I was here, he and I were in the same building – the "home for foreign friends" at the university. The dorm has adopted some pretty ridiculous rules, so he has actually moved out into his own place off campus. And I've been to his place; it's pretty nice. It's a new complex, with everything that means: beautiful façade of a building, nice landscaping on the grounds, etc. These new complexes are going up everywhere, but it's only the growing middle class who can move in to these comparatively expensive places. So I told him about where I am and how much I am enjoying the authenticity of my experience living not in a dorm for foreigners or even in one of these new, middle-class complexes, but in a "real Chinese place," as I put it. "You know the kind of place I mean," I told him. "I have to step over piles of smelly garbage to get out of the complex. I love it!"

 

Ah, China.

 

But no experience living abroad is ever complete without the fun and adventure of grocery shopping – which, in many countries, is done in the farmers' market style of buying fresh produce on the streets, but unlike in the U.S., these street vendors are the cheapest way to go. An actual grocery store? Way too expensive and less flavor in the produce. So I was picking up some tomatoes and cucumbers from the street on the way home. Dodging the muddy puddles from the overflowed fish tanks, moving past the rows of raw meat, skipping over the baskets of every size and color of egg you could ever imagine… no big deal, until I almost tripped over the live chicken just wandering his way through the street with me. Not quite like shopping at Safeway!

 

Ah, China.

 

I love just about every minute of it.

a whirlwind of fun

It is just now the beginning of Day #6 for me here in SY after arriving safely last Wednesday, but it has been a whirlwind of a few days! This journey has been all the fun of moving to a foreign country with the added bonus of already having an extensive network of friendships. So here's the relatively brief version of the first five days, which have already included both a graduation and a wedding!

Wednesday morning I landed, bought a sim card for my Chinese phone so I could figure out how to get to my new home, and hopped in a taxi. Being the experienced traveler I am in this city, I even knew to go upstairs and pick up a taxi that was just dropping people off -- they will use the meter rather than bartering with me (i.e. ripping me off) like the taxis that line up at the arrivals section. So I got myself into town for 67 kuai instead of the typical negotiated rate of 100 or more.

My incredibly generous friend R has allowed me to come live with her and her roommate A, and R was even there to help me lug my heavy suitcases up the five flights of stairs to her apartment. I obviously knew R and A before, and had been to their apartment, so needless to say I was quite surprised to find out they had moved into a larger place in the same complex. Pleasantly surprised, mind you, since the new place is on the 5th floor instead of the 6th, and has three bedrooms instead of the two at the old place. So I am incredibly blessed to have my own room in an apartment with two amazing girls.

Speaking of amazing girls, I have the best of both worlds in this situation. R is an American, so we can totally relate and understand each other with the various adjustments or complications of being an American living in China. A, on the other hand, is Chinese, and when R is not around even talks with me in Chinese! So it looks like I'll be able to improve my Chinese, learn to cook real Chinese food, and just understand this culture in a deeper way through living here. Couldn't ask for a better arrangement!

Okay, skipping over a lot of details... Wednesday evening R and I headed up to LiaoDa, my old university here in SY, for their midweek fellowship. I had called to get the info on the meeting, so two people knew I was coming, but it was so much fun to surprise everyone else! The best reaction? A guy enters the room, sees me, and exclaims "It's a miracle!" Reaction or no reaction, though, it was so good to be back in that place and see some old friends as well as meet some new.

Thursday I spent most of the day with a couple of Chinese (English speaking) friends of mine, a married couple. They treated me to a delicious meal with a big, fancy fish. Yum! It was a bit entertaining to me that they kept trying to get me to try acupuncture... I'm not sure what symptoms I'm supposed to be getting treated, but they kept telling me that it "really works!" and so obviously I should go. Don't think I'll be doing it anytime soon, but that's okay. :)

Friday I had the great joy of attending the graduation ceremony of two good friends from China Medical University. When I booked my tickets to come, I had assumed this graduation would have been in May or early June, so imagine my surprise and excitement to find out I would be here in time to go! On the down side, R and I dutifully arrived for the 10:00 a.m. ceremony, assuming that was the one we should attend. Turns out that one was all the speeches... more than a dozen speeches, all in Chinese (and formal Chinese, so I couldn't even understand it very well), for over an hour and a half. R literally fell asleep for a while. But it was all okay when we got to go down and see our friends after that ceremony, take a bunch of pictures, grab some lunch with several of them, and then be back for the 1:30 p.m. walking ceremony when the graduates actually got to walk across the stage and get their diploma. Good Chinese fashion, though: no names were called, but six people would go up at once and stand intermittently with the three important people on stage, pose for a picture, then walk off and let six more go on. And also in good Chinese fashion, nobody actually sat to watch the entire thing. It was just a picture opp. Once the first few rounds of people had gone through, everyone was up and mingling as the line for walking across the stage just continued to trickle through. Certainly made me glad the foreigners were the first group!

While the graduates and a few of their friends went off for a party that evening, R and I headed off for our regular Friday night meeting with people from the fellowship. It was such a blessing to be back, and again fun to see the surprise on people's faces when they saw me.

Saturday I spent all day with my "brother" from Ghana. After enjoying lunch at our favorite Muslim restaurant, he showed me a couple of the new hangout places near the university. I also got to meet his new girl and spend some time with a whole group of Africans. But I realized that the downside of living on the other side of town and having roommates is that I now have to pay a bit more attention to the time I leave to get home. So I missed out on the late-night African dinner (which was just starting to be cooked at 7:30 p.m.), but he promised to cook for me another day.

Finally, Sunday. Probably my favorite day of the week. I went alone to the Chinese fellowship I used to attend every week, and enjoyed it thoroughly. And to no surprise, the woman there who for whatever reason absolutely loves me was the first to see me and welcome me back. She always has new advice or health tips to give me, so yesterday she had a bottle of something to drink and made me take some. Not quite sure what it was, but it hasn't killed me yet anyway!

Usually after that fellowship I stick around in the same room to attend the English one, but this week the English fellowship was meeting at our Friday location at a hotel on the southern side of the city because we got to celebrate a wedding! A guy from Cameroon married a Chinese girl, so in order to have her family attend, we had to change the venue. But it was wonderful -- and so much fun! The first ever wedding at the international fellowship was a success even if there were a few hitches... such as the groom showing up an hour late and the rings not showing up until after the [first of several] closing[s]. As I told the groom later, it just means they will have plenty of stories to share and laugh about from their wedding day for years to come!

As R and I got home from the wedding last night, there were a bunch of kids from the apartment complex playing in the courtyard. We enjoyed a fun pick-up game of basketball with them. (Or perhaps it was really a game of keep-away, since there are no hoops for scoring.) Although this is my fourth time here in China, it's my first time living literally surrounded by Chinese people. R and I are the only foreigners in the complex (at least as far as I know). The kids, their parents, and everybody who passed by thought it was awesome to see two foreigners playing with them like that. I think I'm really going to enjoy living here and building relationships with my neighbors.

And so it is now Monday. Phew. My plans for today involve writing on my blog, going to the bank, and finding a store to buy some essentials... such as food. But then again, my plans for the past five days only involved trying to see people. Things always come up here. So we'll see what actually happens today!

[A brief aside: I have an impressive number of pictures already, given all these fun events. Once I can actually get on this website, I'll post some. With my current maneuverability online, I can only post script here on my blog. I also can't "accept" your comments to make them show up for everybody, but if you comment I do get them. So comment away!]

Korea

The first official post from China in this chapter of my blog! Welcome to China, everybody!

I have been here in Shenyang now for less than two days, and I have enjoyed every minute of it, but it has really struck me that my dad was right when he visited this city a year ago: China is a place of over-stimulation. So having been over-stimulated by everything that's happened since arriving here, and not knowing quite how to process things enough yet to write something coherent for you, I've decided to stop delaying on my blog and just tell you about my night in Korea while en route here.

But don't worry, you'll get to hear more about China itself soon enough.

My travel itinerary took me from Seattle directly to Seoul, South Korea, where I had a 14 hour overnight layover. Bright and early the next morning, I got on a second plane that flew directly into Shenyang. I've done this exact itinerary before, while en route to Shenyang two years ago, and that night in Korea made for a good story... For those of you who haven't heard that one, it involved getting on a bus to go to a hotel in the center of town, missing my stop since I know a grand total of 2 words in Korean (hello and thank you -- neither of which were the name of the stop I needed), and having the bus driver eventually stop the bus, come talk at me in a completely foreign language, look at my printed out reservation form with the address of the hotel, and walk me off the bus to grab me a taxi and tell the driver where to take me. Very kind of the nice bus driver, since I don't have any idea how I would have figured out how to get there otherwise!

But that's an old story. I have now officially spent not one but two nights in Korea, and this second one was far more exciting than the first! A friend from college, who I actually studied with in Beijing for one semester, is currently living in a city two hours from Seoul. When she heard I would be in Korea, she offered to take a train up to Seoul for the night to see me! Of course, no way I was going to turn something like that down!

Certainly, this girl is American and doesn't speak fluent Korean either, but she can get by just fine. So after meeting up in the airport (which involved having my name called across the loudspeaker! woot!), we took the subway out into town a ways and grabbed a delicious meal -- pieces of meat cooked at the table and then eaten wrapped in lettuce with garlic, onions, and a sauce of red pepper paste mixed with something else. Yum yum! Definitely beat the street food I managed to purchase for myself the first night I was in Korea, which I threw away after one bite because it was disgusting. Still don't know what that was, actually...

After dinner, we went to a jjimjjilbang or bathhouse. I have heard of this phenomenon in Korea but never expected to experience it since, again, I don't speak Korean. But it was wonderful! For 8,000 won ($7 or $8), we could shower, enjoy several different sauna rooms, sit in a variety of hot baths, and finally sleep for the night. Sure, the sleeping is on a mat on the floor in a room with other people sleeping, but that certainly beats any amount of sleep I might have gotten in the uncomfortable chairs at the airport! (And since I spent two years sleeping on the floor in DC, I felt quite at home.)

So it was the absolute best layover I have ever experienced. In fact, it didn't even feel like a layover. It was relaxing and refreshing to enjoy the saunas and spa, fun to sleep in a famed jjimjjilbang, and most of all incredibly encouraging to catch up with an old friend and have her be just as (or more) excited as me that I will be back in China for a while.

All that said, it was also great to get on that second plane to come back to China. As soon as my plane hit the ground in Shenyang, I was flooded with excitement and joy. It is wonderful to be back, and awesome that the journey over could be as encouraging and fun as it was!

Bathroom stories

No trip to a foreign country - especially if that foreign country happens to be in Asia - could ever be complete without plenty of stories concerning bathroom experiences. I don't mean to gross anybody out, but I think anyone who has ever spent time in the Far East will agree with me. This is so completely true, that I'm not even in China yet and I already have a story!

Actually, I'm sitting in the airport in Seoul, South Korea, after a ten and a half hour flight from Seattle. The flight went smoothly enough... most of the time. Unfortunately, "smooth" and "turbulence" don't really go together. And now you see where this is going.

At the 7 1/2 hour mark, the stewardesses dutifully came around offering scrumptious meals of beef & rice or pasta. Not being particularly interested in eating a meal in the middle of Korea's afternoon, nor in the undoubtedly mediocre offerings developed by the airplane food association, I refrained. Instead, I enjoyed a tasty apple from Albertson's in Seattle. Yum.

It never fails. Immediately following the second meal on any flight from the US to Asia, the skies get rough. It almost seems like they plan it that way, but what a weird thing to plan. Give everybody food that is already going to take a little extra effort to digest properly, and then churn that all up with turbulence. Bad combo, in my opinion. Which is why I have learned to not eat that second meal.

I'm not sure if it was the apple or the two glasses of acidic fruit juices that I had with it, but it turns out that wasn't the best combo with the turbulence either. So despite the fact that it's the middle of the afternoon in Korea, and therefore I ought to have been awake and doing something, I sat back and rested, trying to calm my surprisingly upset stomach. Yup, that almost worked.

For the first time, I had to get out of my seat while the seatbelt sign was lit and rush to the bathroom... and by rush I mean, stumble into and hope I don't pass out along the way. Weirdest - and possibly scariest - feeling. Thankfully, my story doesn't get much grosser than this... I managed to refrain from seeing that apple again. But I did have a nice long stay on the airplane bathroom floor, alternatively sweating hot and shivering cold. Besides thinking, hoping, that my body would somehow be able to stabilize itself despite the continued motion of flying (since I didn't think the pilot would take too highly to me asking him to "pull over" for a minute), my main thought was that I am certainly grateful it was a Korean Air airplane bathroom floor and not the bathroom in the hard seat compartment of an overly full train in China!

So optimistic, aren't I? :)

But seriously, the random (though freaky) sickness subsided and the rest of the flight went well. The stewardesses didn't even yell at me for not having my seatbelt fastened.

All that said, I certainly hope to not be visiting the bathroom on tomorrow's airplane during the hour and a half flight to Shenyang!

A New Chapter

How can one write on a blog called "Life in the Middle Kingdom" from a metropolitan area in the United States? For those of you who may not be aware, "Middle Kingdom" is the direct translation of the Chinese term for China -- the Middle Kingdom of the world, the great nation whose neighbors would send emissaries to kowtow and pay honor to the Emperor and whose history goes back some five thousand years. Life in the Middle Kingdom is life in China... so for those of you who have been following my story can understand that this blog has been post-less for a year now.

And for those of you who haven't been following me, I have been in Washington DC for the past year, finishing up some coursework towards my masters degree in Asian Studies.

This, then, is the beginning of Chapter 2: The Return to the Middle Kingdom. Yes, next week I will be moving back to China. I am incredibly excited to return to the city I called home for a year, the place deep and long-lasting friendships were developed, the part of the world that has gotten into my blood and become a part of who I am.

For those of you who are interested, this blog will be the best way to keep track of me, hear about my adventures, and join me in this new Life in the Middle Kingdom.