Thursday, February 02, 2006
SHANGHAI, XINCHANG & THE YEAR OF THE DOGG
To celebrate Chinese New Years I went to Shanghai. I was supposed to be going with Jason and Maggie from the language school but last minute they cancelled and I went alone. I stayed with Jason's friend Hollie. My first day there we did a quick tour of Shanghai. Shanghai has more enormous building than I'v ever seen. There are hundreds of building at least 60 stories high. I am told Shanghai has more high construction cranes than any other city in the world. I saw the JinMao tower which is apparently higher than the Sears Tower in Chicago. it didn't look it at first but when I got close it looked gigantic.
That night (1/28) was New Year's Eve. On the way back to Hollie's we bought some fireworks then went out to party. Our first stop of the night was a dinner party with about 20 people, most Italians. We drank red wine for about 3 hours, had a homemade lasagna and started to set off fireworks. There is a good and bad side of Chinese fireworks. The plus is that all of the fireworks in the world are made in China so they're readily available and cheap. The minus is they're all made in China, which says something about their workmanship. We started with Roman Candles out of their 30th story window. Mine fizzled out and as I tapped it to figure out the problem it exploded backwards burning a hole into my shirt. Fortunately, I was fine and it was a Grateful Dead shirt. After all, what's a Grateful Dead shirt without some holes and powder burns.
At 11:30 we went outside and began setting off fireworks. for an hour we, and 16,000,000 other people set off fireworks. The already smoggy city settled into a 3 day haze while fireworks went off in all directions. You know the red-paper-wrapped firecrackers taht you se in Chinatown? Each string is 1000 firecrackers long. I myself set off 20,000 firecrackers plus the fireworks. After it was done every street in Shanghai was covered in shards of red paper. Since we were celebrating Chinese New Years, the fireworks went 24 hours per day for a week.
At midnight we welcomed the Year of the Dog. In Chinese there are a few different ways to wish someone a happy new year. Xin nian kuai le literally means "new year happy." Gong xi fa cai means "wish you get rich." The last one is Gou nian - wang wang this means "year of the dog - wang wang." Wang wang means both "get rich" and is the sound a dog makes in Chinese. Because of the wordplay, this is my favorite one. Since this is the Year of the Dog do we age 7x as fast? I think the answer is yes. In America I am 20 years old. Here I am now 22. How can that be? Simple (well, not really.) In China, you are age 1 when you are born, thus I would be 21 here. Since here, you age a year at New Years, I am now 22. It's only unofficially 22, until my 21st (real 21st) birthday, then I'm officially 22.
At around 2am, we went to Bonbon, a club in downtown Shanghai. It was full of people and we drank (wine, champagne, beer, vodka, tequilla, sanbucca) and danced until 6am. THIS PART HAS BEEN SELF-CENSORED DUE TO INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT. At 9am I went home and went to sleep.
On the 30th I took a 3 hour bus ride to Xinchang, the hometown of my writing tutor, Money. Xinchang, a town I had been told was tiny, a town no one in Shanghai had heard of was 430,000 people. For some perspective on that number, it is larger than Atlanta and Miami and would be the 40th largest city in America. Most people in Xinchang couldn't even speak Mandarin let alone English. They all speak their local dialect, Xinchanghua. About half the people I met spoke a little Mandarin and only Money and his friend spoke English. Money's family had a big house that was very sparsely furnished. They did however have Western toilets. Since Chinese New Years is a weeklong national holiday where everyone spends time with their families I was invited to join their family in the celebrations. As I arrived the neighbors stopped by to look at me and wath me eat. That night we played Majiang. They asked if I minded playing for money - 25RMB($3)/game and I said sure. I won all 4 games, beating Money's grandmother, aunt and father and winning a total of 136RMB ($17.) The money was a nice touch but I love that I could beat Chinese people at the game they invented.
Next morning I slept until 10am and had a bowl of dumplings for breakfast. An hour later we went to a relatives house for lunch. I know they feast for Chinese New Years but I suspect since I am the first foreigner they've ever met and they wanted to impress me did did extra. Lunch was for 20 people. The 12 men sat in one room while the women and children were in another. Our table had 22 different dishes plus rice whiskey and wine and beer. Since I was the guest I had to sample a bit of every dish. Most were good, such as the quail or pork. Spicy pig intestines were not. We then walked about a mile to another relative's house and had another 20 course meal. Alltold I tried about 50 different dishes - every meat from chicken to crab to dog and every part of an animal from shrimp heads to pig intestines to dog feet. We then walked 4 or 5 miles to a temple carved into granite. It was neat.
After that it was back to Money's house for an evening party in my honor. About 40 people showed up - all Money's family and neighbors and we started the party. Before the party we took part in the favorite national pasttime of the Chinese - gambling. We started playing a dice game, where you role 3 dice and try to roll certain things or the highest dice and bet money on it. One person at the table is the bank and it rotates. People were betting 10RMB per roll at the beginning and I lost about 100RMB. Then I understood the game. Bet low when you're not the banker, roll well when you are. That, coupled with the fact that I am extremely lucky won me 1600RMB($200) in an hour.
The the party began and they would ask me questions about America and I would answer (with Money's translation.) This was interspersed with my singing and children playing traditional instruments. We made it into game where after their question they could pick a piece of paper and win a prize. Some had nothing, others were things like candy and the big prizes were American cigarettes, a Philadelphia deck of cards, a few American Dollar bills and some Chinese money. There were questions about who I was, what I thought of China and America's relations with China. My favorite question was "Why do Americans wear clothes once and then throw them out?" It caught me off guard but I rebounded by pointing to my jeans which had been sewn about a dozen times and have some holes.
After the party we went back to gambling. At Money's suggestion, I placed 1000RMB in my room as winnings just so I wouldn't lose it all. I went downstairs again and started with 600RMB on the table. An hour and a half later I was up to 3400RMB($430) on the table. As my pile grew, so did the size of the bets people were making - 100 or 200RMB ($12 -$25) per person per hand. They were all compulsive gamblers and I am very lucky. At this point I started feeling bad. They were by no means poor, but winning $550 was ridiculous. Money informed me that his parents had lost $200 and I decided it was time to give some back. I made it very clear this was my intention and started laying out 300RMB at a time. 1 won 6 consecutive roles and near bankrupted almost everyone at the table. It took 2 hours but I finally managed to lose all the money I had at the table. I was cheering as much as they were when they won and trying to lose the RMB and it still took me 2 hours to do. I'm not one to usually give out money but I left up 1000RMB and everyone left happy, instead of feeding me to the wild dogs, so I guess it was a win-win.
The next day I went with Money and his friends to Da Fo Shan, a big park in town. The first thing you see by the entrance and wooden houses and platforms from Kung Fu movies they've filmed there. Next to that there were some carnival games. Enticed, I shot balloons with a bb gun. The guns were crap and I hit 6 of 10 balloons so I won a Buddha bracelet, supposed to bring me riches. We'll see if it's effective. We then walked through caves and saw 100ft high stone carvings of Buddha and traditional Chinese imagery. What Buddhist rock park would be complete without dinosaurs? As we walked into the petrofied forest there was a dinosaur moving around. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on, but the best I can tell, to accentuate the petrofied wood they placed robotic dinosaurs that make "real life" sounds around the area. They even carved "fossils" into the rock. Anyone who will wonder why there is a picture of a dinosaur between my Buddha pictures, now you'll know why.
I have a Chinese stalker. His name is John, he is 15 years old (17 in China) and he calls me 30x/week. A student in one of my English classes, at the Xmas party he asked if he could "be my friend." An innocent enough question (for someone who speaks little English,) so I said yes. This last week I've gotten 60 text messages from him asking me where I am, what I'm doing, do I like Mickey Mouse, do I think Adidas is good and will I come to his house for dinner and meet his family. I was going to - but the fact that I've told him not to call me that much (or at all) in 3 languages, yet he still does - makes me not want to see him. If I don't pick up my phone he'll dial it every 5 minutes for 3 hours (has happened multiple times.) I'll turn off my ringer and see I missed 15 calls. Apparently he has also stalked Jason and Maggie at the school. I hope he will go away but it's been a month and a half so far. At least as far as stalkers go he's completely harmless, just annoying as hell.
I'm now back in Kunming, ready to study and do my think for a few months. I'm rapidly approaching five months into my trip. The original plan was to stay for 6 months. I know I want to stay more than another month, but I'm not sure how I should divide it up. At most I'll be here five more months, most likely four. I know I want a month or two of travel to Southeast Asia. I'm thinking about doing a month of service with the NGO I worked with in November. I still need to learn more Chinese. I think I might study 4 hrs/day until April, do a little time with the NGO then travel. I welcome any thoughts, comments or suggestions on my plan.
To celebrate Chinese New Years I went to Shanghai. I was supposed to be going with Jason and Maggie from the language school but last minute they cancelled and I went alone. I stayed with Jason's friend Hollie. My first day there we did a quick tour of Shanghai. Shanghai has more enormous building than I'v ever seen. There are hundreds of building at least 60 stories high. I am told Shanghai has more high construction cranes than any other city in the world. I saw the JinMao tower which is apparently higher than the Sears Tower in Chicago. it didn't look it at first but when I got close it looked gigantic.
That night (1/28) was New Year's Eve. On the way back to Hollie's we bought some fireworks then went out to party. Our first stop of the night was a dinner party with about 20 people, most Italians. We drank red wine for about 3 hours, had a homemade lasagna and started to set off fireworks. There is a good and bad side of Chinese fireworks. The plus is that all of the fireworks in the world are made in China so they're readily available and cheap. The minus is they're all made in China, which says something about their workmanship. We started with Roman Candles out of their 30th story window. Mine fizzled out and as I tapped it to figure out the problem it exploded backwards burning a hole into my shirt. Fortunately, I was fine and it was a Grateful Dead shirt. After all, what's a Grateful Dead shirt without some holes and powder burns.
At 11:30 we went outside and began setting off fireworks. for an hour we, and 16,000,000 other people set off fireworks. The already smoggy city settled into a 3 day haze while fireworks went off in all directions. You know the red-paper-wrapped firecrackers taht you se in Chinatown? Each string is 1000 firecrackers long. I myself set off 20,000 firecrackers plus the fireworks. After it was done every street in Shanghai was covered in shards of red paper. Since we were celebrating Chinese New Years, the fireworks went 24 hours per day for a week.
At midnight we welcomed the Year of the Dog. In Chinese there are a few different ways to wish someone a happy new year. Xin nian kuai le literally means "new year happy." Gong xi fa cai means "wish you get rich." The last one is Gou nian - wang wang this means "year of the dog - wang wang." Wang wang means both "get rich" and is the sound a dog makes in Chinese. Because of the wordplay, this is my favorite one. Since this is the Year of the Dog do we age 7x as fast? I think the answer is yes. In America I am 20 years old. Here I am now 22. How can that be? Simple (well, not really.) In China, you are age 1 when you are born, thus I would be 21 here. Since here, you age a year at New Years, I am now 22. It's only unofficially 22, until my 21st (real 21st) birthday, then I'm officially 22.
At around 2am, we went to Bonbon, a club in downtown Shanghai. It was full of people and we drank (wine, champagne, beer, vodka, tequilla, sanbucca) and danced until 6am. THIS PART HAS BEEN SELF-CENSORED DUE TO INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT. At 9am I went home and went to sleep.
On the 30th I took a 3 hour bus ride to Xinchang, the hometown of my writing tutor, Money. Xinchang, a town I had been told was tiny, a town no one in Shanghai had heard of was 430,000 people. For some perspective on that number, it is larger than Atlanta and Miami and would be the 40th largest city in America. Most people in Xinchang couldn't even speak Mandarin let alone English. They all speak their local dialect, Xinchanghua. About half the people I met spoke a little Mandarin and only Money and his friend spoke English. Money's family had a big house that was very sparsely furnished. They did however have Western toilets. Since Chinese New Years is a weeklong national holiday where everyone spends time with their families I was invited to join their family in the celebrations. As I arrived the neighbors stopped by to look at me and wath me eat. That night we played Majiang. They asked if I minded playing for money - 25RMB($3)/game and I said sure. I won all 4 games, beating Money's grandmother, aunt and father and winning a total of 136RMB ($17.) The money was a nice touch but I love that I could beat Chinese people at the game they invented.
Next morning I slept until 10am and had a bowl of dumplings for breakfast. An hour later we went to a relatives house for lunch. I know they feast for Chinese New Years but I suspect since I am the first foreigner they've ever met and they wanted to impress me did did extra. Lunch was for 20 people. The 12 men sat in one room while the women and children were in another. Our table had 22 different dishes plus rice whiskey and wine and beer. Since I was the guest I had to sample a bit of every dish. Most were good, such as the quail or pork. Spicy pig intestines were not. We then walked about a mile to another relative's house and had another 20 course meal. Alltold I tried about 50 different dishes - every meat from chicken to crab to dog and every part of an animal from shrimp heads to pig intestines to dog feet. We then walked 4 or 5 miles to a temple carved into granite. It was neat.
After that it was back to Money's house for an evening party in my honor. About 40 people showed up - all Money's family and neighbors and we started the party. Before the party we took part in the favorite national pasttime of the Chinese - gambling. We started playing a dice game, where you role 3 dice and try to roll certain things or the highest dice and bet money on it. One person at the table is the bank and it rotates. People were betting 10RMB per roll at the beginning and I lost about 100RMB. Then I understood the game. Bet low when you're not the banker, roll well when you are. That, coupled with the fact that I am extremely lucky won me 1600RMB($200) in an hour.
The the party began and they would ask me questions about America and I would answer (with Money's translation.) This was interspersed with my singing and children playing traditional instruments. We made it into game where after their question they could pick a piece of paper and win a prize. Some had nothing, others were things like candy and the big prizes were American cigarettes, a Philadelphia deck of cards, a few American Dollar bills and some Chinese money. There were questions about who I was, what I thought of China and America's relations with China. My favorite question was "Why do Americans wear clothes once and then throw them out?" It caught me off guard but I rebounded by pointing to my jeans which had been sewn about a dozen times and have some holes.
After the party we went back to gambling. At Money's suggestion, I placed 1000RMB in my room as winnings just so I wouldn't lose it all. I went downstairs again and started with 600RMB on the table. An hour and a half later I was up to 3400RMB($430) on the table. As my pile grew, so did the size of the bets people were making - 100 or 200RMB ($12 -$25) per person per hand. They were all compulsive gamblers and I am very lucky. At this point I started feeling bad. They were by no means poor, but winning $550 was ridiculous. Money informed me that his parents had lost $200 and I decided it was time to give some back. I made it very clear this was my intention and started laying out 300RMB at a time. 1 won 6 consecutive roles and near bankrupted almost everyone at the table. It took 2 hours but I finally managed to lose all the money I had at the table. I was cheering as much as they were when they won and trying to lose the RMB and it still took me 2 hours to do. I'm not one to usually give out money but I left up 1000RMB and everyone left happy, instead of feeding me to the wild dogs, so I guess it was a win-win.
The next day I went with Money and his friends to Da Fo Shan, a big park in town. The first thing you see by the entrance and wooden houses and platforms from Kung Fu movies they've filmed there. Next to that there were some carnival games. Enticed, I shot balloons with a bb gun. The guns were crap and I hit 6 of 10 balloons so I won a Buddha bracelet, supposed to bring me riches. We'll see if it's effective. We then walked through caves and saw 100ft high stone carvings of Buddha and traditional Chinese imagery. What Buddhist rock park would be complete without dinosaurs? As we walked into the petrofied forest there was a dinosaur moving around. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on, but the best I can tell, to accentuate the petrofied wood they placed robotic dinosaurs that make "real life" sounds around the area. They even carved "fossils" into the rock. Anyone who will wonder why there is a picture of a dinosaur between my Buddha pictures, now you'll know why.
I have a Chinese stalker. His name is John, he is 15 years old (17 in China) and he calls me 30x/week. A student in one of my English classes, at the Xmas party he asked if he could "be my friend." An innocent enough question (for someone who speaks little English,) so I said yes. This last week I've gotten 60 text messages from him asking me where I am, what I'm doing, do I like Mickey Mouse, do I think Adidas is good and will I come to his house for dinner and meet his family. I was going to - but the fact that I've told him not to call me that much (or at all) in 3 languages, yet he still does - makes me not want to see him. If I don't pick up my phone he'll dial it every 5 minutes for 3 hours (has happened multiple times.) I'll turn off my ringer and see I missed 15 calls. Apparently he has also stalked Jason and Maggie at the school. I hope he will go away but it's been a month and a half so far. At least as far as stalkers go he's completely harmless, just annoying as hell.
I'm now back in Kunming, ready to study and do my think for a few months. I'm rapidly approaching five months into my trip. The original plan was to stay for 6 months. I know I want to stay more than another month, but I'm not sure how I should divide it up. At most I'll be here five more months, most likely four. I know I want a month or two of travel to Southeast Asia. I'm thinking about doing a month of service with the NGO I worked with in November. I still need to learn more Chinese. I think I might study 4 hrs/day until April, do a little time with the NGO then travel. I welcome any thoughts, comments or suggestions on my plan.
