Basically the entirety of July

Sorry about the delay dear readers. I never really got the 4th of July update up, then things sort of snowballed.

We had a 3-day weekend over the 4th of July weekend. I and 3 other friends on the program went to Qingdao. You probably know the city but by a different name; Tsingtao, as in the Tsingtao beer. For the curious, Tsingtao Brewery Group is minority owned by Anheuser-Busch. Qingdao is also a totally awesome city in its own right however. It is sort of split into two different sections that are separated by a large overpass high over a valley, but it was a great place to spend our long weekend and the 4th.

We left Tianjin as soon as we could on Thursday. This ‘as soon as possible’ was after the continuous trainwreck that is my Erhu learning experience. After our end-of-week test, several 白人 (bairen, white people) congregate to continue our assault on the noble cultural tradition that is the Erhu. I’ve already shortly described the instrument, but let’s just say that my play of it has only marginally increased. Every time I create the unsatisfying chalkboard-screech, somewhere a baby Confucius is crying plum sauce tears. And there are a lot of them.

Anyhow, we got out of Erhu class and quickly got our bags and hailed a taxi for the new secondary Tianjin train station. This one is totally out in the sticks, a 60 kuai cab ride away. It replaced the old Tianjin West station which had a history of “more than a hundred years” when we asked the cabbie how old it had been before being retired. I believe that account though; having been there last year, I can attest to the fact that it is a grotesque shithole where people sit on newspaper, benches do not exist, and all the stall doors in bathrooms have been broken off so when once happens to wander in you are glared at by 3 Chinese dudes taking dumps. But enough about last year. This time we went to a gleaming station that when we went still had asphalt being laid down for the drop-off traffic circle and as-yet-unfinished steps. This is usually the cue for me to talk about change and slave labor but I’ve already gone off about that. Anyhow, we caught a D train for Qingdao and only 5 hours later or so were there. D trains are a very fast class of train. At the bottom are the 4-digit trains and the K, which stands for kuai, fast. These trains were classified as fast a long time ago in a far away bureaucratic office. These trains are those for the migrant workers, poor, and just plain unlucky SOBs who missed out on the other tickets. These are the trains that smell awful, the trains that you do not want to be in. After that there is the T-class of trains which I have heard stand for te’bie, approximately meaning special. These are your average train. Nothing terribly sinful, nothing great. And then you have the Z and D. Z is generally for overnight express trains containing only soft-sleeper berths. The Z goes from Beijing to Xi’an a full 6 hours faster than the K, a difference of 12 vs. 18 hours. D is a similar speed of train but used for shorter distances, and tends not to have sleepers but rather just soft seats. These trains can hurtle along at up to 330km/hr. Not quite maglev fast, but these things are blazing.

Arrival in Qingdao was early-evening. We got to our hostel and discovered they had one room for two people and then 2 dorm beds in a room, and no other beds. We took them, checked in and then checked out the hostel’s common area. It was a pretty cool hostel, and had a decent bar as well as available hookah, a movie room, a PlayStation 2, and a pool table. It was here, on this glorious green velvet battlefield, that it was proven, my pool prowess. And by that I mean the 4 of us played a team match against each other in what may have been the slowest-moving most scratch-ridden competition involving the sinking of opponents’ balls ever to have resembled a game of billiards. The quality of play was terrible, but a decent way to pass one of the humid afternoons. Back to the Qingdao arrival night however; we went out exploring the nearby streets. It was here that we discovered the joy of bagged beer.

I have never before purchased beer measured by weight. In Qingdao however, on the streets next to the little kabob places and small convenience stores, were people selling beer right out of the keg. And when you sell beer to people that are walking the streets, how do you get it to them? Well you could put it in little plastic cups, but that limits you to about 16 oz per serving. In a bag however, you can double that by serving a kilogram of beer! Beer is roughly equivalent to water in density since so much of it is water, so that’s a liter of beer! More than a 7-Eleven Big Gulp! Verily, is there anything in this pioneering country that is not possible? Well, a fair judicial system probably isn’t but whatever. Let’s not get too picky shall we? Settling for cheap beer over rights, we continued to walk the streets. We discovered many seafood and produce markets, I had some meat kabobs, others had egg-and-vegetable burrito-type things, and we generally walked around getting the regular stares. After finding a place for an informal dinner and some more walking, we returned to our hostel a few hours later and went to sleep.

The next morning was brewery day. We got up at a reasonable hour and took a cab over to old brewery. It still functions as one of their several factories, though it is also a museum. It was pretty cool to see the history of Tsingtao, including both the cosmetic and real changes it went through as it was alternatively owned privately, then by the Japanese, then Nationalists, then Communists, then privately again. (It was recently privatized about a decade and a half ago.) We also got to see the bottling and canning process in live action, in addition to seeing all the machinery that they use both currently and from years past. It was pretty cool, and we got to taste a batch of their unfiltered beer (it wasn’t that different) and at the end of the tour we were given a small 1.25L pitcher to split between the 4 of us. I bought some nice souvenirs in the attached gift shop, and they were actually quite reasonably priced.


We walked around the restaurants near the brewery but they appeared to be pretty dead. When you don’t know the restaurants in an area, and don’t have any recommendations to go by, we stick pretty well to the common tactic of ‘if there are no other locals present eating, you shouldn’t either’ so we returned to our hostel. I had a halfway decent sandwich which, like much of the Western food in China, served only to remind me of glories I am missing out on and did little to sate my desire for grease and preservatives in the same dish. After the pool fiasco and a game of hearts which involved moon-shooting by yours truly, we went out to a really awesome seafood place. Here we were able to get fresh crab, fish, prawns, and all other delights. We were also able to see the waiter absolutely smack the living daylights out of a fish after we selected it. For our second fish, the second waiter was a lot less enthusiastic and just tapped it, so it probably wasn’t even stunned when it encountered the boiling water. But it was sure as hell dead when it entered my belly, swimming in delicious juices and practically falling off its tiny bones. After this delicious-but-expensive dinner, we returned to the hostel and then walked down to the beach. I got big time déjà vu, having walked down the exact same stretch of beach and out to the exact same pavilion precisely one year ago, but it was still really cool. Last year I was only in Qingdao for less than a full day, so it barely counted anyway. After marveling at a cool phenomenon which had the ocean water we kicked up looking a fluorescent blue and observing the sketchy old men going for a swim, we returned to the hostel to turn it in. The next morning would be pretty early.

The others got up sometime around 7:00AM. I kept sleeping until I got a call from them at 8:30. They were already at “Old Person Beach,” a stretch of sand a few kilometers long and many more kilometers away from our hostel. After a pricey cab ride, I met them there and we proceeded to walk along the pretty clean beach, which is always a notable accomplishment in China. We considered hiring jet skis, but they only had 2 available and required the passenger seat to be taken by one of their supervisor guys, so we didn’t go for that. We also could have taken a boat ride, but no one seemed particularly interested in such a pedestrian activity for the cost of 100 yuan. So we walked along the beach, made fun of the Chinese for their terrible fashion sense and its extension to bathing suits, built a sandcastle, made sand graffiti, and attempted to jump over waves. Despite that short description we managed to spend a while at the beach and I got an awesome burn over my shoulders and part of my torso.

Once more we made our way to home base and basically zoned out for the afternoon. The heat and humidity was stifling, and there was no inclination by anyone to go out exploring in the sun. However in the hostel common room we met another group of 4 from our program who were staying at the next door hostel. We decided to go to dinner, and being as it was July 4th, a Mexican restaurant seemed pretty fitting.

I ordered some mediocre fajitas. Some got burritos and your other standard Tex-Mex food. We decided to cheap out and BYOB since it was so cheap and nearby. At this dinner, our waitress was wearing a shirt that declared “Free Hugs” and I found this pretty entertaining. At the end of the meal, we turned on her and demanded what her garment promised.

Now imagine you are a petite Chinese girl, probably in your early 20s, weighing not more than 100lbs and coming in certainly no higher than 5’4” but probably more like 5’2”. You have just served 8 loud Americans. You may not realize it is their national holiday, but they have been drinking. Drinking in quantities such that, were it your body metabolizing the alcohol, you would probably be struggling to stand. (No one in our party was drunk yet, we had had less than a liter of beer each.) Suddenly, without warning or apparent reason, this blonde, 185 centimeter/77kg foreign devil is approaching you, arms wide, with an oafish smile. Do you:

A) Cower and look panicked?
B) Yell for your boss and start swearing?
C) Take a shot of liquid courage and approach?
D) Cry and then kick said whities?

Sadly the answer isn’t terribly surprising or entertaining, and the correct one is A. Nonetheless, the four of us who approached got what was duly owed, and then explained to her what her shirt meant. Discussing it later, we determined it was unlikely she would wear that shirt again while working. Victory for English and America.

We walked around the corner looking for more places to eat drink and be merry. We found a happening place and asked for a few pitchers of Qingdao beer and cooked peanuts and edamame. And it was there we stayed for many hours.

I was saddened that when we saw the foreigners sitting just a couple tables away with shirts containing disparaging remarks about Ann Arbor, they refused to join us. They were Ohio State University students. We explained that we were Badgers, and could at least come together under the banner of the Big Ten and Michigan antipathy, and more importantly than any idiotic sports associations, we also happened to be citizens of the same great country when it just so happened to be that country’s birthday and we were all stuck in China. Instead they made rather inappropriate gestures in our direction. So we invited some nearby Brits to join us and they were a blast. We played a large and rather rowdy game of Circle of Death/Ring of Fire/King’s Cup with British rules. One of these was that without possessing a Jack, one is not allowed to go to the bathroom. If a player is to do it anyway, the rest of players are to come up with a punishment. This resulted in pushups, random hugs, and 2 girls from the other group we met standing on chairs singing “I’m a Little Teapot.” Also during the game we twice broke into song, once being for the national anthem, and another for God Bless America. It was truly beautiful. I am one of those saps who probably puts way too much stock into gimmicky patriotic stuff like that, but reflecting on being in China, and how much we really do have in America, it was easy to get sentimental about very concept of freedom.

After a long night which involved 30*1.25=37.5 liters of beer split amongst us, as well as our share from dinner, we made one last taxi pilgrimage to our hostel. And 1 liter of water later, I was asleep. This all occurred pretty early on in the night since we had a train to catch at 7:46 the next morning. We were able to make the train just fine, though I sadly left my Say No To Scurvy shirt hanging in the hostel room. It had a good run though, and I hope it enjoys its next life being worn by a Chinese person who has absolutely no clue what it could possibly mean.

After the long weekend things settled down pretty much. The weekend afterward, our AC broke and since it was on a weekend it took a couple days to get fixed. I have still been demolishing reading material. My sandal broke as we were leaving Qingdao, which was a pretty big bummer. I have replaced the nice American ones with some crappy-quality foam Chinese sandals that have tiny little glittery plastic beads in them. They were the most manly thong-style sandals available, so go figure.

Also in the past month some of my classmates have been diligently preparing for the speech contest, held this Sunday. I elected not to participate as although I see a great value in improving my speaking skills, it is mostly about face. You probably already know the importance of saving face in East Asian cultures, and getting face is what this contest is all about. A few students are picked to represent Wisconsin in Beijing, and these students are groomed into speaking machines. Wisconsin always wipes the floor in this competition, and wants to continue to do so, so the speakers are given non-stop tutoring in an effort to perfect this one speech. I know for a fact that the students selected are great at Chinese, (half of them are good friends) and given who they selected I probably wouldn’t have been able to qualify anyway, but I didn’t want any surprises. I just didn’t see the value in delivering a speech memorized rote, repeated hundreds of times, containing vocabulary inserted by teachers.

Since the conclusion of our week break, we have also switched into new classes. I am now done with Classical Chinese and into Fourth Year. It is a thrill to be back in something that is more intellectually stimulating. I am able to pay attention in lecture, and furthermore have to in order not to fall behind. In short, it is back to how normal classes function. I am back to learning new vocabulary and grammar patterns. Classical was major-required so I don’t really feel like it was a waste, and though getting back into standard classes has made life here more rigorous, it’s still a nice change. Also, I helped myself to a magazine from the train we took to Beijing at the beginning of the break, and also one from the plane when we flew back to Tianjin. (More on the break later.) I’m a big time believer that reading real magazine articles and then highlighting new characters and grammar constructs is a great way to learn. This has also been our source for third and fourth year class as well and has probably been a common language teaching tool since the invention of the periodical, but it’s nice to have as-real-as-it-gets content to draw from and relate to. For example, one of the articles is about Culture Street, a wildly popular tourist trap in Tianjin.

A little before the break I went shopping and happened upon some glorious 100% imported Land-o-Lakes cheese. Imported stuff is a dead giveaway when it has not only the label you are familiar with from America, but has a massive sticker just pasted on in Chinese since there is absolutely none on the original packaging. I also found a cool fountain pen that draws from a real inkwell and looks super fancy. I also got a care package from America (thanks mom!) including all sorts of salted snacks including Goldfish and Cheez-It Snack Mix, which is delicious. But those are all long gone by now, and in fact have been since the break. It’s about time I actually tell you about that mythical break I keep mentioning.

Technically, it is a field trip as it involved choosing a topic and then asking questions of locals where we went. But that is boring and our report hasn’t been written yet so I’ll spare you the academic details. This thing had been in planning since even before the 3-day. From Friday to Sunday, July 17-26, it included a total of 10 days when considered generously, so it is also called the ten-day. Five of us went, and we met up with the boyfriend of one of the girls who was starting a trip to China. We quick a took train to Beijing and then caught our major one down to Guilin, a city in Guangxi. This second one was 23 hours chock full of the standard sketchy middle-aged Chinese men and broken air conditioning that seem to be part and parcel of the China experience. Between reading, sleeping, and chatting the time somehow slowly passed, and we arrived in Guilin significantly smellier but not permanently scarred. Thankfully our hostel was right across from the train station, as we couldn’t really be bothered to go anywhere. Unthankfully, they informed us that though we had booked for two nights, they only had beds available for one. Wonderful. There wasn’t much fight in us left though, and we got in, showered, and got some food. Bedtime was early, as we had reserved a tour for the Dragon Back Rice Terraces at 8:00AM.

We got up, put all our bags into the luggage room, and departed. I feel obligated by my pride to mention here that I managed to cram every single thing I needed for this ten-day expedition into a single, regular-sized school backpack. Adequate shorts, shirts, toiletries, my camera and swimswuit, my Lonely Planet and a novel, everything was made to fit within my Bag of Holding. Just thought you should know. We got on the bus for the terraces which took a while itself. It was a big bus with lots of pickups and plenty of waiting for others, so we didn’t actually leave Guilin until past 9:00 and then got there a couple hours later. We then took a minibus farther up the mountain, and ate at a restaurant that served bamboo chicken and rice. Basically, these were just cooked inside the bamboo. It was delicious however, and the rice was extra sticky and the chicken extra juicy. One of the culinary highlights of the trip. We then walked up a little bit and made it to the actual rice terraces. It was awesome.



I took a ton of pictures but a lot of them look very similar. Lots of them are just me messing around with exposure/field depth as well as saturation and contrast. It was basically like being in the Discovery Channel. We were also able to walk out to the end of one of the terraces. Again, it was just really cool and a great sight to behold. After feasts for our eyes and stomachs, we went back to the base of the mountain and walked around a village of the local minority population. Ever since it was opened to tourists in 2002, many people are basically making bank and new construction (all in the same old style still) could be seen along the banks of the little river the village was straddling. More pictures and a little relaxing ensued, and we got back to Guilin around 6PM.

Then we checked into an establishment of questionable reputability.

We got to the hotel and checked in. In the elevator we noticed there were pictures of some absolutely gorgeous girls, clad in bikinis or nothing at all, shown basically having a good time. There were also a few giving massages. We got to our rooms, and in ours there was a picture of another of these bikini girls, laying quite suggestively. The little card was “welcoming” us. It also had a phone number.

I don’t think it requires much of an imagination to figure out what was going on here. I should also note that, according to China Road by Rob Gifford, this is a completely normal experience. Usually in China I am way too cheap to stay in a hotel instead of a hostel so I can’t really comment, but I am utterly unsurprised, and have heard stories to this effect before.

The next day we prepared to go to Yangshuo but first stopped at the train station to get tickets back to Beijing. Half of us waited in line while half stood over all our luggage. It took maybe an hour for us to get to the front, an hour of excruciating sweatiness and smelly migrant workers. Thankfully no one wanted to chat us up. Then, just as our party got to the front of the line, the woman simply closed the ticket window. There was no advance warning, no invitation to step over to another line, just a curtained ticket window. This was exactly the time I noticed on the big board that there were no tickets left for our train, not for Saturday, or even Sunday. In fact there were no non-standing tickets left for this train for the next ten days. I broke the news, and after a collective sigh we basically decided that our only option was to fly. That, or an almost 40-hour K train. So we got on the bus to Yangshuo, a tiny hamlet of 300,000 people that is a major tourist destination and filled with expats. We arrived at our first Yangshuo hotel (the hostel we would go to later for 4 nights was full the first night) and ordered our plane tickets, got ripped off for $200 on a one-way domestic flight, and then went to sleep.

The next day I had one of the many Western style breakfasts available in Yangshuo. Fried eggs, toast, bacon, are all in plentiful supply there. Although not quite on par with Baker’s Square greatness, Chinese breakfast is so vile that it was divine by comparison. Another theme of this trip was the sweltering heat. Being in a sub-tropical climate in summer can have pretty predictable results. Going out for a walk would result in a drenched t-shirt. Making the hike from our old hotel to new hostel was basically walking across the town, which was also unpleasant. After that we walked around and explored the city. It has one main pedestrian drag called West Street that is filled with restaurants, bars, tour companies, KTV, and shops. It was a pretty happening town, thanks to the endless supply of tourist dollars. After grabbing a surprisingly good pizza, we walked around some more. And then the sickness started.

The next morning, the first of us fell ill. He had a basic cold and fever. The rest of us rented bikes and got out to see the countryside, including plenty of locals, and water buffalo. After a couple hours on the bikes we decided we had gone past some village famous for fans that we were looking for. I didn’t really mind and kept looking at the scenery. It was incredible. There was farmland and then massive karst peaks rising like teeth on the blade of a saw.


We turned around and biked back. In keeping with the glorious Chinese tradition of not giving a damn about safety, part of this bike ride was through a tunnel. A very, very dark tunnel with insufficient lighting that lacked sidewalks. This tunnel was often frequented by massive tour buses, regular cars, and large trucks. And they absolutely love to be insane and pass each other, completely consuming the other lane. Usually this is not a problem, as each direction has a wide lane, then shoulder, then a gravel/packed dirt side. The tunnel removed any room for error. If some bus decided to pass us (and they all did) and some other large bus was coming at them head on. We would have been made into hamburger by a quick sideswipe. And there was absolutely nothing we could do, other than pedal as fast as possible and get out of the danger zone. So that was slightly unnerving, but again, completely expected.

Bike ride over and showers done, we headed over to dinner. There I ordered some peppered beef. I asked for super spicy and it came out pretty weak. The flavor itself was still great but the spiciness was lacking. After more walking around we ended up at a bar that served 8 kuai Brandy and Coke. The owner turned out to be a cool Belgian guy who had been in Yangshuo studying, then shortly after becoming a patron rented a room above the bar, and shortly after that bought half of it. We chilled there for the rest of the night.


The eclipse (日偏食, ripianshi) happened during breakfast. It was sort of underwhelming since where we were it was just a partial eclipse. A few hundred km north and it would have been incredible I bet.
The next day we planned on going to cooking classes in the morning, but we were late to rise (maybe 9:00AM) and were all hankering for breakfast. We decided to put it off until the afternoon. Instead we attempted to watch the new Harry Potter. We bought a pirated DVD copy, but the quality was so bad it was completely unwatchable. So instead we went with The Hangover, which I must say was a really great movie. It had some pretty crude jokes, but considering how the movie was billed it is in its own way reasonably realistic, and the characters were pretty funny. After that movie we then made our way to the class.


It started out with a trip to the local market. There were plenty of vegetables, lots of butchering going on, basically everything you’d expect to find in a really authentic market. We picked up eggplant, dumpling stuffing, dumpling wraps, chives, and probably some others I didn’t notice. We went back to the restaurant/cooking school and started to make Gongbao aka Kung Pao chicken, pork and chive dumplings, and breaded fried eggplant stuffed with the dumpling mix. The eggplant thing was very rich due to the fried breading and melted like a jalapeno popper. The dumplings were alright, but I must say I make a damn fine Gongbao chicken. Now if only I get all those ingredients again and have a skilled cook looking over my shoulder, I’d be set. The lesson took us to dinner and sort of was dinner, but we elected to go for secondsies, and after that, more wandering. This night we hopped around more from a couple different places, but ended up at our old standby which by the way is named Kaya.

The next day was a nature-filled extravaganza. First we went to a water cave. This involved a couple bus rides, some off-roading, and a rickety boat that may or may not have had puke on it. This boat took us into the cave where we saw some interesting looking rock formations. They all had labels and were supposed to resemble figures or certain shapes, but for the most part they were a big stretch and just part of the touristiness of it. Then we got to the mud pool, which was really fun. There’s basically no other way to describe it. There was one pool, and it had standing, cool, soft mud that was maybe a foot or two deep, depending on where you were. Lying down in it, you float so high it’s unbelievable. Sadly I have no pictures since I wasn’t really thrilled with the prospect of taking my camera into the cave, but it was really fun. My swimsuit still has a beige tint where all the white was. And finally in the cave we got to the hot springs. The source was at the top so they got warmer the farther you went up, and it was really nice to lie down in the mini-pools and just relax. We were supposed to be timed, but we just got out when they were all filled and a line started to form.

After the mud caves, we went back to the city proper, ate lunch, and rented some kayaks. They were the typical cheap plastic shell types, and the life jackets were questionable, but it was awesome to kayak down the river, starting in the late afternoon and then ending at dusk.

The next day was just a day of rest. Others had gotten the same cold, everyone except me. And I wouldn’t get it either, but instead caught a rather nasty stomach bug. Sometime on this final full day, this day of rest (Friday the 24th for those at home keeping score) I got food poisoning. It started with some light diarrhea in the afternoon. I figured that was it, and it was gone. My stomach felt good. After dinner, I returned with the early group (those who were also just getting their share of the cold started) and after curling up in the fetal position, staggered into the bathroom, and puked. After several fountain-like heaves, I brushed and rinsed a few billion times, then went to bed. A couple hours later, I woke up, got out of bed, and visited the bathroom again. More lunch and dinner into the toilet. This then became a regular occurrence in what can only be described as the night from hell. Every hour or so, I would get up and puke. On the 3rd or 4th time, it was bile. But still it kept coming. I tried drinking little sips of water, I tried no water, I tried a liter of water. The only thing that changed was tint of the green bile. My last time puking was at 8:30AM, and then our friend diarrhea came back for a couple rounds. At this point my stomach was completely void of anything. That Saturday my stomach was still not feeling good enough to ingest anything, though I had 1/3 a cup of ramen noodles and two of the airplane snacks since I figured I should eat something. We got back to Tianjin at around midnight, and I weighed myself, clothes on, and was 73.7kg. That is less than 163 pounds. That is less than I weighed sophomore year in high school. Yes, I was very hungry.

And that is basically it. On Sunday I did see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and in theaters no less. It was awesome, even though I haven’t read the 6th or 7th book yet. I maintain that Rowling didn’t give me much of a reason after the boring, emo fiasco that was the 5th book, but now I’ll get around to those. Like I said before, we have new classes and they’re great, and both my lecturer and TA were my teachers last year in Tianjin while taking second year Chinese. This program is 2 weeks from being over, and after that I still have 1 week traveling with my friend from high school who is currently studying in Beijing. I really miss American food, and am looking forward to the start of school again though I know this semester is going to be a rough one academically.

But I’ll keep the updates coming in this time I have left! Promise!

Pains, Trains, and Automobiles The Second

Have I mentioned yet that I hate Chinese breakfast? In Penglai we were served corn porridge, fish-flavored corn cakes, and some greasy long bread. What Eric, did you just say fish-flavored corn cakes? Why yes, I did in fact. Imagine a small disc of cornbread. Now, salt it up something fierce and add fish flavor. Bam, Chinese coastal breakfast. I am convinced that it can somehow be quantitavely found that Chinese breakfast sucks more than a Western breakfast, be it bacon and eggs, cereal, or cinnamon-sugar toast. Maybe someone can do a study determing what induces more endorphins, the Western breakfast in a Chinese person or the Chinese breakfast in a Western person. I've got $50 says my side wins.

The "charter fishing" expedition was not what I thought it would be. We got in an extremely rickety looking boat and pushed off from the beach. A one-paddle system was used, and it basically involved rotating the oar on a knob while it was out of the water then giving it a quick jiggle while in. It's hard to explain without a picture or drawing, and not really worth it either. Suffice to say that this exact same technology was likely in use several millennia ago. Anyhow, as we boarded our boat with a few "crew" members, we started out to the sea and what I thought was going to be a short trip out to one of the powerboats anchored off shore. Well, we got to them, then went past them. On the way we ran into a rock that was just inches below the water. It made a most satisfyingly movie-sounding grating noise, just like you would imagine if a wooden hull were splitting open. If we had been going any decent sort of speed it might have done just that, but since our top speed was never more than a couple knots (a knot is 1.15 landlubber miles per hour) it was not a significant threat. In case you were wondering, there was absolutely no form of life preservers on our vessel. To give you an idea what our brave ship and its motley crew looked like, I give you this picture:
The girl standing in the top left seemed to operate the restaurant where we ate all our meals, and the guy squatting may or may not be related to the woman who owned the house/hotel place we stayed at, but he certainly worked for her. The man chilling in the boat might have owned the boat or something, he was just along for the ride. The front right is Shino probably looking at a starfish (海星, literally 'sea star') or one of the various other sea creautres we captured. Here you can also sea basically how most of the day was spent; Shino and I looked for cool things to play with as described in the last post, while our hosts took the time to fish. The older guy sat looking contemplative for much of the time.

Here is also where we get to the "Pains" part of the title, the Trains and Automobiles having already been covered. I didn't wear sunscreen. Well, I put it on well after I was burnt. Oddly enough though, I actually tanned. The burn wore off quite quickly and I tanned a reasonable amount, finally getting in both a true farmer's tan and sandal tan. Shino got a tan too, which turned out to be a major bummer for her. Here, the lighter and whiter the better. Thanks to cultural imperialism and the power of the marketing department, America has already won the hearts and minds of young Chinese. Not only is McDonald's everywhere, the proportion of white people in advertising to the amount living here is ridiculously high compared to all minorities in America featured in ads. After a couple hours frying in the sun and harvesting creatures, we returned to dry land. After a nap and dinner, we returned to the beach. We held a funeral for animals so unceremoniously starved or suffocated to death by burying them a few inches deep in some sand. Once again I tried out some night photography, and was pretty happy with how this one turned out. I still need to get better at manipulating the angle of the camera, both for snapshots and long exposure pictures, but oh well. I suppose that just means I need to take more pictures and practice. In continuing the trend of getting very little sleep, we were once again forced to go to sleep early to make the 5:00 AM wakeup to be out of our room by 5:30 and make the bus at 6:00 that would take us to Qingdao.

We got on the bus and there were only 2 other people on. We left at a few minutes past 6 and there were at most 10 on. We pulled out of the station, and hit the open road. Sort of.

As soon as we got to the main through street we slowed to not more than 5 mph, probably slower, and just sort of idled along. I asked Shino why this was, and she responded quite matter-of-factually that the driver was trying to pick up more passengers, like some sort of long-distance taxi. The thing is, this tactic was wildly successful. We picked up half a dozen more people before getting to a highway. Once traveling, we kept getting more people every so often. Just people who were headed to Qingdao and wanted to hitch a ride (for the regular ticket price of course) flagging down our bus. It did add a small amount of time to the ride, but for a minibus like we were on, I think it worked quite well as a system. It is also not the same as making a Greyhound pull over because while we were on a 'highway' this was closer to the Wisconsin roads labeled Conty K that never have a limit higher than 55mph and you frequently have to go slower because of all the small towns scattered about. This was not some hitchhiking hippie hopping a bus blazing down I-90. Also on this ride, the bus driver was actually kind enough to give us some entertainment, putting on two movies, the first being Police Story 3: Supercop featuring Jackie Chan and the other was of the Governator's best ever, True Lies. I Mystery Scienced the first half of Supercop much to Shino's delight. She, in addition to my tutor, some teachers, and quite possibly a majority of Chinese youth believe that English is genuinely a pleasant-sounding language. I have tried to convince her otherwise, including using some French, but to no avail.

Perhaps I have not stated it here, but traffic in this country is crazy. That over-quoted Pirates of the Caribbean line about guidelines is genuinely true here. After arriving in Tianjin Monday morning, by the time we got a taxi it was 4:00 AM. As usual, the city was pretty bright, the ambient light mixing with pollution to give a sense of constant sunrise. (Did you know that even our sunrises are as brilliant as they are because of pollution? Rewind a few hundred years before the Industrial Revolution, and with only natural particles in the sky, the brilliant oranges and purples would have been less common. The reason has to do with the tiny pieces reflecting light or something, I read it in my Physics textbook freshman year.) While we were in the taxi on the way to my dorm, we stopped at a red light. A car across from us approached and also stopped. Then, 3 cars--all vacant taxis and all in quick succession--flew through the intersection. They came from behind, left, and right, and thankfully at different times. This was also not anything like aggressively running an amber and gunning it to beat the light. The light was as red as a commie and was not going anywhere soon. Still, 60% of all the cars that came to the intersection simply blew straight by. Yes, it was 4:00 AM, but still, if they had come at exactly the same time, it would have been game over for someone. These were two fairly main roads intersecting. In addition to this, some genius decided that it would be awesome to program lights to give a green dot and green arrow in both directions at the same time. Now, obviously human restraint keeps from rush-hour pileups, but it is still rather suspect. Honking is quite standard and lanes are wimps. So when I tell you that our bus nearly rear-ended a car while arriving in Qingdao, don't be too surprised. The bus stopped short and started choking up, and everyone was jerked forward into the seat in front of them. In accordance with true non-OSHA standards, the 'co-pilot' of the bus, basically the ticket collecting guy that worked for the company, was standing up in the mini-stairwell at the front. Like any bus, the windshield was one giant piece of some sort of clear plexiglass or plastic. And because corners were cut on every aspect of production, this was not the sturdiest windshield. I think you can see where I'm going here. He did not quite smash through the windshield. Rather, he headbutted it and it cracked in a quite impressive fashion.

ASIAN MAN USES HEADBUTT ON THE WINDSHIELD! IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE!

The too-fragile bus got us to Qingdao before noon and our train did not depart until after 8:00PM. We had almost 9 hours. The first course of action however was to eat a delicious delicious lunch at the McDonalds less than a block away from where we were dropped off, and literally across the street from the beach. I have already extolled the virtues of the food here, but there is another thing which contributes to their trendiness here; they are in premier locations and extremely large. I have not yet seen a McDonald's which does not have 2 stories. Almost all of them have been located on major street corners, with the second floor having an entirely glass wraparound wall, so you can sit and watch the city outside as you eat. The exact same applies for KFC. It is simply a classier experience here. One difference however is the size of the drinks. The large ("upsize" on the receipt) here is a medium in America, and the small here is a kid's size, which is basically the same as a small. For anyone curious, McDonald's does not actually serve a drink called a "small" in some locations, though a kid size is always available.

After the quick refueling, we went to the waterfront, where many Chinese were milling about on a sort of balcony overlooking the beach. In the 30-yard walk over, I see a little kid holding his dad's hand with a t-shirt on it and lettering. For a split second, I can see YA in collegiate block lettering in an arc, red letters on a gray shirt. Yale, I'm thinking. I guess someone's dad got a good American education. It says YAMP. On the actual beach, thousands of volunteers had gathered to clear away a massive algal bloom in the harbor where the Olympic rowing events are to be held. Thousands of volunteers, and that one earthmover I previously mentioned. The video is up and you can see the sea of workers grabbing and bagging the stuff, as well as one of the backhoe doing one full removal. In the video of the volunteers on the beach, there is actually a second beach with a few hundred more volunteers that extends beyond the natural sort of pier that juts out. After marveling at the sight and taking in the scenery for a couple minutes, we walked over to the pier then back, bought some shells that might make for some nice tacky jewelery for my sisters, and finding some shade on the beach for yet another nap. (Detect a theme here?) This time I wore sunscreen. This all took a surprisingly long time, and when I came to, it was almost dinnertime. Naturally, this meant more seafood. Only this time, it was a dumpling place so it was slightly more tolerable. By the end of dinner it was time to hail a cab to get to the train station, which is where I took the movie I have on my webspace. This was not as crowded, and was a little less dirty than the Tianjin West station. Well, not the bathrooms. I have had the unfortunate experience of taking a leak in a Chinese train station, and there is really not much to say, it's all about smell. Just entering it was enough to make a small child pass out. Once I did, I held my breath as long as I could. It was like someone decided it would be a great idea to take all the latrines in all the summer camps in the US, put them in the same place, then never clean or empty them. Furthermore, privacy is apparently not too important to some people. On my way to a stall (the urinal trough looked suspect, though I later regretted not choosing it) I passed an occupied stall. In it was a man, clearly using the stall for the intended purpose of going no. 2, to put it delicately. Now, how do I know this? Well, it would probably be because he did not close the stall door and was staring out as he was squatting over the toilet. Yes, he looked at me. It was rather unnerving. He had a frown on his face, though I think it may have stemmed from the fact that he happened to be in that foul-smelling place, or because he saw a white man, or because well... yeah... Anyhow I booked it out of there. I planned on giving my hands a thorough scrubbing at the sink, until I discovered there was no soap. And it's a wonder I only had to take one vaccination shot according to the CDC's recommendations for this country.

With ticket in hand and methane in lungs, I boarded the train. We found our seats. Now I stated earlier that a hard seat is something like purgatory. Allow me to elaborate. You have a seat about as wide as an airplane seat, and half as comfortable. You are sitting directly opposite from a frowning middle aged Chinese man who when he sleeps is snoring, nose straight up in the air. Also, if we both sat at perfectly right angles with knees directly toward each other, they would touch. If you are lucky (I was) you are on the side of the train with two columns of seats instead of 3. There is a tiny table attached to the side of the train, which most people use as a pillow anyway. I found the 13 hour flight from Chicago to Beijing infinitely more enjoyable. The lack of space creates pains in aches in entirely new muscles in your body. Before I could settle into all the glory of this authentic experience however, Shino pulled out her purse and said "I'm going to tell you a secret." Oh wonderful I'm thinking, she is going to show me some ridiculously cutesy thing she bought me or maybe we actually got upgraded to sleeper class as we had tried to do.

No such luck. What followed was one of the most confusing five minutes of my life. This was about as jarring as when the Camp Anokijig waterfront staff start doing a massive waterfront manhunt for my sister because they think she drowned and they gather the entire camp into the cafeteria to take role while you try not to cry. Not as sad, but about as shocking.

Shino opened her bag, and unzipped an inner pocket. She pulled out a shiny and very official looking card.

Cool I thought, a passport? "这是什么？" What is this, I ask her. I can read the last of the three biggest characters, and it alone basically means ID card. I have no clue what the first two are, or what the bottom line means.

"It's my identity card. I'm in the army."

Oh hey, that's cool I mean it's like the reserves or something right? I open it up.

Hmmmm. I can read her birthday, sex, name, ethnic group, and home location. Some of the stuff I can't read. Mostly, it's the important things I can't read. I'm very nervous; this looks very, very official. I start looking for any chance it's forged, look for a phony photo, but the emobssing is real and as far as this untrained eye goes, everything is in order. I start talking quickly, and asking lots of questions.

Do they pay you? Have you been through basic training? What rank are you? Some others too, I can't remember them anymore. I reiterate the pay question a couple times, and reassure her I don't want to know how much, just if she's paid or it's like a loyalty-to-your-country type deal.

She tells me she pays the army. I think: this is most unusual. Where is this going?

I don't know if she understood the other question or just decides to tell me: "Do you know what level I am? Do you know what this is?" She points to the bottom right box.　上尉. The first character, 上, is a prefix or suffix in tons of words, and often means above, higher, etc... I have never seen the second character in my life. She goes to her cell phone and looks it up.

上尉
Captain

My friend is a captain in the People's Liberation Army. "Shit, Eric, you are very dumb." is all I can think. Her mom and dad both work for the army. Her dad was an officer on a ship and was part of the Second Artillery. Her family is set. No wonder she's in the army. In China Road the author talked about how now it was the best and brightest being encouraged to join the Communist Party. Was the same true of the army? Was it a bad idea to look up the word for "propaganda" on your cell phone and ask her what she thinks of it? While you were at her house no less? And why did you have to drop in unsubtle references to voting while there too?

She presses on. "Do you want to know what I do? What my job is?" I think I said yes. She doesn't know how to say it, and pulls up her cell phone again. I'm not looking at the character this time, just the English definitions. There are at least half a dozen. I'm looking at a few.

intelligence agent; emissary; spy; espionage; covert

Blown away only begins to describe it. I just kept looking at the ID, and then looking at the cell phone. I look at her. She is smiling, I think. I don't know what is going to happen. For the first time ever, I am paralyzed with fear. I know I can't run, I'm on a moving train and hundreds of kilometers from everything I have on this continent, in this hemisphere. She literally knows where I live. Up until this point, the CCP, Red Army, and secret police had all been jokes. Sitting in the seat, I am slowly beginning to consider the possibility that at the very best I will be deported. I get other thoughts too.

The smile gets bigger.

Finally, she says two magic words: "It's fake." I immediately believe her, because I so desperately want to. I ask her why she has it, and she says that it is in case she ever gets into a "situation" where she needs it, and it also lets her into some places like some parks for free. I ask where she got it; she borrowed her aunt's uniform for the photo. Her mother has a friend in the clerical office. It was easy. The next five minutes are spent in quiet relief. We then get on to more hangman (she actually beats me once) and sleeping. The hours pass quickly for the first half,then the second half turns into a mental fight to try to sleep, and stay sane while awake. I also have something from the window poking my side.

We finally arrive close to 4:00 AM. We have to walk a few minutes to a main road so as not to take one of the "seedy" taxis hanging around the train station. I get back to my dorm at 4:15, knowing I have to get up in less than 4 hours. Incredibly, I beat my roommate back by only 15 minutes, as he walks in while I'm still awake. It turned out his train was delayed 3 hours. I successfully wake up in time for class, and along with a few other students sleep through most of lecture perhaps not to the surprised of anyone, teachers included.

A good weekend, and I'm back to being only a week behind in updating now!

Wangji hen zhongyao!

Local holiday here in the Golden Bridge International Hotel as internet (网际) has been restored. The weekend was pretty fun, and mostly consisted of invading a bar or club as a large group of American students. This will probably shock no one, but I can confirm that American songs are still the song of choice for any place catering to young people. Bon Jovi, Linkin Park, Smashmouth; if it is less that 15 or 20 years old and in English it's basically popular. 99 Red Balloons also got a play, as well as some Spanish music. Another nice thing is that since Chinese people absolutely LOVE having English on their t-shirts, it automatically boosts the classiness factor of my wardrobe by 100%. In America, you would probably get weird looks for wearing a regular red t-shirt that says "Wisconsin Football" with a little football design on it to anything more formal than well, a football game. In a fancy hotel bar though, I don't think anyone (Chinese) cared. It may have even earned me bonus points.

I already discussed how milk is fairly expensive here (compared to everything else), but pure services with no associated material resources are ridiculously cheap. A massage, for example: 70 minutes of genuine Tianjin Korean-town massage for $8.50. According to my parental units, a massage of that length will run you at least $70 in the States, and that is apparently for a cheap one. This country is giving me anti-sticker shock at every turn, and it's awesome. A taxi ride, by the way, is never more than $2 from within the city to within the city. I have yet to spot gas prices but will be on the lookout.

No new pictures, but a sweet Engrish line from a pack of Mentos I bought. It's not just word order and grammar, they are pulling up really old-school words. The Mentos I bought are labeled as CHEWY DRAGEES. I'll let you look up that word yourself.

Final word - aforementioned Internet reliability here has been downgraded from awful to Detroit-based-AOL. It went out for more than 30 hours.