Last night at around 2 AM, I noticed that outside was once again bathed in the orangy-pink glow of prosperity. I was so taken by it that I got out of bed, found my camera, and put it on the TV. I set it to a 20-second exposure with the lowest possible f-stop, and got this:
Unfortunately, the tilt is fairly pronounced. I was going to fix this by wedging a little toilet paper under the right side and trying again. Again, unfortunately, my roommate started sleep talking in gibberish and moving around in his bed. I am not sure if I in any way contributed to this little restlessness but I didn't want to actually wake him, so I let it go.
Last night was completely un-blogworthy but I figure at least to tell you why. First, I have been spreading Baldur's Gate 2 to a couple guys from across the hall. I have no clue if they like it at all but I feel I have done my solemn duty nonetheless. Sometimes it is just nice to take a break and play a game of Age of Empires 2 and kill a lot of digitized people. It's certainly fun. So I started playing a game at around 10 PM and a few hours later realized the time. For anyone curious, I was the Teutons. They are awesome.
Also, I spent half an hour or so last night doing some very informal research on potential cities to visit during our "field trip" July 18-27. After arbitrarily deciding on Inner Mongolia, I Wikisurfed and looked through my Lonely Planet and eventually decided that the only city worth a damn was the regional capital, Hohhot. It is fairly close to Beijing (I trust your ability to find it on a map) and by train (铁路 which literally means iron road) is only 10 hours. Trains themselves are supposed to be quite an experience, and I guess I will be partaking. The weeklong break is in theory supposed to have some academic merit, but I'm sure I'll be able to spin something about the Chinese treatment of minorities, how they are being turned into tourist attractions, etc... Really though, if completely ditching English for a week and relying solely on my feeble Chinese abilities isn't enough of a challenge though, I don't know what would be. This plan is entirely subject to change and is still early rumination. Train tickets for any long ride however, are supposed to be booked 25 days in advance. We'll see about that.
Today was a return to Culture Street, the place we went on our first day where I took some pictures, including one of a statue of some guy with a bunch of characters behind him. At culture
street, I loaded up on plenty of crap to haul back to the US. I got a set of coasters for 15 kuai, 10 pairs of chopsticks for 15 kuai, a couple basic embroideries of 2 of the fuwa for 2 kuai each, and a couple dozen photos. One of the shops was exploration and ship themed. They had some naval stuff (all way too big, sorry dad) and some globes. Like me though, the Chinese only got 9/10 on their map quiz.Shortly after witnessing this monument to the Chinese educational system, a suspicious looking man approached Ricardo (my roommate, if I haven't mentioned that yet) and I. He greeted us in English, with a heavily accented "Hello!" We get that from time to time, strangers starting up conversations in touristy areas. Well this man opens up with that then asks us where we are from. I tell him in Chinese that we're Americans, living at Tianjin Normal University, taking classes at Nankai. He then launches into a chat with me, in Chinese, about god knows what. I comprehended perhaps a half what he said, using the time-honored smile and nod strategy. This man however, was no standard Chinese interested in practicing his English and meeting a foreigner. This was a businessman, though his dress would not belie such a fact. A picture's worth a thousand words, but that's 3-4 pages of 12-point Times New Roman so I'm only going to give it a couple hundred here. He was wearing massive square sunglasses, the same kind old people in Florida wear. His pants were khakis, remarkable only in the stains on them--food stains, with grease and food crumbs still caked on. His shirt suffered the same fate, with several darkened splotches nearly hidden by the pure ugliness of the design; horizontal stripes of faded pink, white, and steely blue in uneven widths that may have been the result of his flowing folds of fat. Forrest Gump once said you can judge a lot from a person by their shoes. That may be true, unfortunately I did not think to take in more of this creature than necessary. My assessment of him may seem harsh, and it is, but this man was up to no good. After chatting me up for a few minutes, he asked for my phone number. This set off every alarm bell and nervous impulse in my brain. It was almost exactly like receiving one of those c!4li5 4 U bi gg3r 5cRe w HOT ch! x 2nite! emails except in person. I immediately responded to his digits request with an emphatic Why!, then collected myself and told him that I did not have a phone here in China. Only moments later he said that if I wanted to "meet" or "talk" to some "pretty girls" I should call him. Maybe he runs the local rotary club? Either way, he wrote down his name and number on a scrap of paper and handed it to me though I have absolutely, positively no intention of giving this man a call. If you are feeling bored and want to pull an expensive international prank, by all means go ahead and call 13116025241. The phone country calling code for China is 86, and you'll need to make sure you dial 011 to get to international calling. Happy hunting.
Finally, today I went to a cafe that served hamburgers, steak, and other things holy. I had a steak and fried shrimp, which like most other food items in this country, was disappointingly small. It was also way over peppered, and only left me hungry and hankering for a true, juicy steak with a steamed baked potato and a few buttered green beans on the side. I wouldn't say I'm homesick, but certainly countrysick. We have a quiz (小考) tomorrow just as we do every day, and I need to study some 25 characters in preparation. So I will leave you with this sign that was in front of a jewelery store.
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