Owendennis.com Blog

I ate a pigeon last week.

Some friends of Quentin and I brought us out for drinks and food. We hit up a restaurant north of Yantian on the beach. It was nice place. They brought wine which was totally wasted on me. I wish I appreciated wine cause I know it was nice stuff, but I’m just no good at it. Oh well. We went out to a bar afterward where I was able to get a girlie mixed drink. I got something that was sweet, minty, and blue. They have a nickname for me, it’s “Baby”. Every time I do something even slightly childish my nickname gets thrown out there. Minty mix drinks versus fine wine? You can bet I didn’t hear the end of that.

Here’s a picture of the beach:

Anyway, pigeon doesn’t actually taste all that bad. I’d eat it again. It’s a dark meat. Kind of reminds me of goose. They were getting confused while explaining it to us as to whether it was a dove or a pigeon. We had to explain the whole symbolism behind doves and such and how eating them is a little weird. Anyway, not a lot of meat to one bird; that’s why I suggest eating a goose instead of a pigeon.

Here’s some kids playing with a remote control car:

The bus that normally takes me to my Chinese class took a different route last week!! We had to drop off the soccer team. I know this sounds boring, but that actually means I get to see new parts of China, and that’s exciting to me. I had always wanted to see what was north.

Normally I fall asleep on the way to class, but I was too excited to be going north instead of west. God I’m lame. Didn’t stop anyone else though. Look how bored they are:

I mostly wanted to include this next picture to show that gym coaches look exactly the same no matter where you go. How is it that he looks like a gym coach? What is it about gym teachers that makes them all have “that look?” I knew this guy was the gym coach before anyone even told me. I’ve also been able to pick out the other 3 coaches at the school. How is this possible?

I know the photo is awful because of my big stupid finger. I’ve never had so many photos where my finger goes over the lens before owning this camera. They put the lens right in the corner where you need to hold the camera to keep it steady and level instead of in the middle where you don’t have fingers messing about. Poor design choice. Otherwise I like the camera, but that’s really annoying.

I wasn’t going to post this next picture until I found out that the “Auto Color” button in Photoshop is actually called the “Make My Picture Better” button:

Also there’s grape cookies at Wal-Mart. I would like to try them, but they only come in huge packages. I don’t want that many, I just want a couple. If it’s chocolate chip cookies with raisins in them I don’t want them. However if it’s chocolate chip cookies with raisins and artificial grape flavoring injected into the cookie dough then hell yes I want them:

I’ve seen this ad before in the US. What is it for? It must be language learning. It’s the exact same ad with the exact same guy in the same exact placement but with different writing. I even saw a television ad as I waited for the elevator. It showed him standing in front of a blue screen talking to a twin version of himself with crazy lights and seasick shapes flowing around behind him. In fact I saw that television ad less than 20 minutes after I took this picture. One of many odd coincidences I’ve experienced lately:

I was out of peanut butter so I went to my local grocery store to see if I could find any. I had searched before, but that was before I understood how to search for peanut butter. You have to look on lower shelves, behind pillars, under potted plants, in the crawlspace under the stairs, in the trap door beneath the rug, inside the old chest in the attic, etc etc.

Luckily I found it! I’m understanding China! It’s the peanut butter section! You can have Chunky Skippy, Creamy Skippy, Bigger Jar Chunky Skippy, Bigger Jar Creamy Skippy, Chocolate and Creamy Skippy Swirl, or Yellow!

Right next to the PB is the two kinds of J section!

Pinneaple or Strawberry, your choice.

Also this made me really excited:

Hellmann’s Mayonnaise.

Not only is it mayonnaise, but it’s the best brand of mayonnaise. I picked it up, smiled happily at this prize (thus the photo), and put it in the basket. Then I took it out of my basket because my hopes had suddenly been dashed. What would I put it on? They don’t make sandwiches here. There’s no such thing as lunch meat in Shenzhen. I’m told they have it in Hong Kong, but that’s not here, that’s hours away. That’s like making a trip from Minneapolis to Des Moines for salami and cheddar cheese.

Why do they even have mayonnaise? This is all the more confusing. After this episode I asked my students what they do with peanut butter and they said they put it on toast and that’s it. They don’t use it for anything else besides putting on toast, plain, with no jelly. It’s not in candy, it’s not used as a quick way to make peanut sauce, it’s not used for anything except a slice of bread (and I don’t know where they get that either). So if the only thing they know to do with a western concoction like peanut butter is to put it on a slice of bread, what do they know to do with mayonnaise? Put it on a sandwich I would assume. With what? They don’t eat cheese or sliced deli meats. Is it just bread with mayonnaise on it? Do they eat it with salad? I’ve seen one salad since I’ve arrived in China. Why even import this stuff? There must be some market for it for some reason. Clearly there isn’t a huge demand for it because they only have one kind and there’s only a couple jars, but someone must be buying it or they wouldn’t sell it. What are they doing with the mayonnaise?

I will research this further.

Free water with your Coke?

Saturday Night: A Night with a Mystery Man

So Saturday night I was feeling restless. I had figured out that downtown Yantian is actually full of life very suddenly at night, so I figured I would wait until Saturday to check it out so it would be really active. My grandmother says that shift work would explain why places are open so late at night and why it suddenly becomes so active. This seems like a sound theory. I wandered around much more easily and thoroughly during this exploration than my first one because I’m more comfortable here now. I know buses, I know how to get home, I can speak some Chinese (I’m mostly deluded on that one though). I am so slow at learning Chinese. I’m just always thinking about other things and afraid to practice on people. It’s totally my own fault though, if I try on more people I’ll learn better. I’m just nervous to do it because their accents are soooo thick sometimes so it doesn’t sound like I’ve been taught. Something that sounds like Shoo is pronounced by them like Siu which sounds like a completely different word. I can understand some of the things people are saying, but when I try to get them to repeat they usually give up and find someone else to explain or they just leave. It’s really annoying.

Anyway, tangent.

I decided to get off at the bus stop that I always see people get off at. It’s the stop just before my school. Tons of people always get off there. I found out it’s because there’s like a huge area down a little street where people eat, hang out, and buy pirated dvd’s. Wasn’t easy to take pictures though because I was highly HIGHLY out of place. People were staring hardcore. No photos. Here’s one of the bus stop though, really exciting:

My general goal of this expedition was to find another restaurant. I wanted at least one other restaurant that had pictures. So I was going not down all the alleys, but I was going down the roads that had all the seedy creepy alleys coming off of them.

A sweet coconut, tangerine, and tapioca ball drink. It was really really sweet:

I found these people gathered around something:

Turns out it was a crazy kung fu movie. I got there just as a guy leapt off a building 30 stories up jump kicking another guy out of a helicopter. It was awesome:

So while I was walking along the street I strode past a couple of guys that looked slightly out of place. Looked like a couple of off-duty guards or something hanging out together. They seemed to be looking seriously at some street salesperson’s stuff. It was a woman selling sugar cane. Then they spoke in Chinese at her and she destroyed all of it and throw it in the garbage. I didn’t understand what was going on. Turns out I can’t tell the difference between a guard and a police officer.

I saw this scene play out before me, not quite making the connection until a moment later when someone came running past me yelling “lu lu lu lu!!” (or something that sounded like that). Every single vendor on the street suddenly packed up their stuff as fast as they could and stowed it away behind them. They’ve got this trick I wish I could show you. They lay all their stuff out on what I thought were just blankets and towels, but they’re actually more than that. They’re blankets with drawstrings on either end. As soon as they see a police officer they can pull the strings and all of the things they’re selling disappear in 2 seconds and they can hide it away.

Now it’s not like they hide it very well. It’s clearly a bag full of stuff they’re selling, but the police don’t care. They’re just keeping them on their toes, they’re not actually trying to stop them from selling things. They’ve watched them quickly put things away, just as long as they don’t really see it see it. Here’s street vendors panicking and putting their stuff away super fast:

They were on a mild power trip. The people would part as they walked by. It was clearly supposed to be something just to keep people aware of their presence. Not that their presence actually matters, but that was the point of it. It’s kind of a culling of the herd. The fastest people get to continue to sell their stuff when the police leave and the slowest get their merchandise taken away:

I don’t know why this woman didn’t clear out. She could have made it. I watched the whole thing. They caught her though and made her put away her stuff:

I saw this happen again a few days ago. I was much less amused the second time however. They took jeans from an old lady. She would try to grab them back and they would just keep pulling them away. She was acting like “Oh come on, you don’t mean it do you? Give them back!” and but they were being randomly serious. They kept taking the clothes away and and out of her reach. Almost like a game of keep away. It was.. sad.

Some dogs outside of a pirated DVD shop:

A country where not everyone owns a cell phone:

I remembered that on google maps I had seen a symbol that looked like a little piece of movie reel film. I figured there must be a movie theatre down there somewhere so I walked the direction I thought it should be. Turns out there was in fact a theatre, but I wasn’t sure what it really was.

I was thinking “okay it’s either a strip club, a movie theatre, or something I don’t understand.” There was a group of older guys hanging around outside. I went over and asked them what it was. Of course we didn’t understand each other. They put their hand up in the air and shook it around and moved their hips a little. I was like: “With girls?” and they kind of shrugged. I was like “Ohhhh… so it is a strip club…” I didn’t want to go into a strip club because I felt like nothing would make me a bigger target for like everything than being a white guy in a Chinese strip club in a poor part of town. I walked off past the theatre to go see what else there was along this strip of street.

Mid-way down the block it suddenly clicked with me. They have different mime gestures for “dancing” than we do. Where we might imitate dancing to rock music or maybe ballroom dancing. They mime out what I would generally call exotic belly dancing, only it’s not exotic here. I remembered that in Yangshuo older couples had danced by putting their hand up in the air and shaking to the beat.

I walked back to the theatre and watched who was entering and exiting. I saw some kind of skeezy looking guy with a kid walk in, I figured it could be an anomaly. I’m in a poorer part of the city, could be that he couldn’t find a babysitter and doesn’t care if his kid sees strippers. He was skeezy looking. Then I saw a group of women go in. That was enough for me. Clearly everyone was cool with going in there and clearly I must be a little sexist if that was what made it okay. I walked up, paid my 15 RMB ($2.20 USD) and entered the movie theatre. This is the first thing that I saw:

That guy was spinning underneath a pot balanced on his head that was sitting still.

I had stumbled into a Chinese vaudeville. I’m guessing it works like these people give some money to the theatre owners to give them a chance to perform, and then they get a small cut of the profits. I sat down near the back so as not to draw attention to myself. Didn’t matter. Within 2 minutes of my arrival I had a group of Chinese people standing around me trying to talk to me. Basically they all sat really close to me and started asking me questions.

There was one girl who was there, she said she was 19. She was able to speak very basic English. She was the only one who could speak English. Everyone else knew “Hello” and that was it. There was also a guy that was there was insanely interested in me. He was like “I want you to be my friend! We’re friends now!” (In chinese) and I was like “… k…”

The stage changed to some older woman (mid-40’s?) who was singing Chinese heavy metal and dancing and stripping (PG stripping). The group that had gathered around me was like “Is she pretty?” and I was like: “I guess? Not really? I don’t know.” Then the 19 year old was like “Oh! You should go have a one-night-stand!”

“What?”
“A one-night-stand! You should go do that with someone.”
“No that’s okay.”
“Why not?”
“Not into it.”
“Oh, well you should try it. There’s lots of people nearby to go do a one-night-stand with.”

Then the guy that wanted to be my friend really bad was like “Come on! Let’s go talk to the lady singing! Then we will go have sex with her!” and I’m like: “Nnnnnnnnnah I don’t think so…” Anyway there was a lot of people talking to me and trying to get me to do things with them. The guy who wanted to be my friend kept inviting me out to go get a prostitute with him. I kept refusing. He kept offering me different things. Drink? Have you eaten yet? Cigarette? All things that I refused. He didn’t want to lose my friendship though so he thought of something else to do with me. He finally hit on something I would be willing to do: he made a billiards motion with his hands. I was like “Sure, what the hell. Let’s go.”

As he and I left the theatre the owners and some patrons gave him some quick words in Chinese and what appeared to be knowing looks. This made me uneasy.

We jogged across the street and up a little alleyway. There was a cool little oasis of fun things tucked away up there. There was a medium sized crowd of people, a food stand, five pool tables, and even a roller skating rink. The pool tables were full of people. He walked up to one of them, and told them to leave so he and I could play pool. He got a big group of random strangers to stop playing billiards mid-game so we could play. Who is able to do that? Either they stopped because they were interested in seeing me play pool or this guy has some odd amount of local power. I was afraid he was going to try and hustle me in all honesty. Let me win the first game, put money on the second, and then completely wipe the floor with me.

Turns out he wasn’t hustling me. We played two games of pool (I figured out he wasn’t hustling because I won both and he let me leave free without ever mentioning betting). I had to get home. He asked me one last time whether I wanted to go get a prostitute with him. I declined. He was cool with it though, he had a one waiting for him anyway.

We walked over to the bus stop where I found out that the buses had stopped running. We waited there a moment and he was like “You should take a cab” (Again, everything he ever said was in Chinese, I only understood because of gestures). I said I would wait for the bus and he left. After a few minutes waiting for the bus with some other guy, this other guy turned to me and said “There are no bus probably”. I was like “aaaawwww shit…” Then he jumped in a random car that stopped by and drove away. It was a gypsy cab. As I stood there for another couple of minutes, my old friend showed up at the bus stop again. This time he was much more adamant that I should take a gypsy cab to get back home. Once more I was just like “Aright fine, let’s do it.”

I hopped in the gypsy cab and he sat next to me. They drove me up to the school. We argued over who would pay for the cab (as is Chinese tradition). I paid for it, so now that officially means we’re friends I think. So… Whoever that guy was I’m kind of glad I met him. If everyone down there knows who he is then that’s probably good person to be friends with. He pointed out where he lived and gave me his name and phone number. If I ever go back down to the vaudeville stage I’m sure I’ll see him again and that he’ll want to make it into a whole big party night.

Oh and I forgot to mention, I never found another restaurant with pictures.

I thought I would point out these things that they sell in stores. I wasn’t sure about eating them because it seemed so gross. They’re actually not that bad as long as you’re okay with processed meat. It’s like a sweet sausage that you just eat straight out of the package, no heating or anything:

Here’s some things I saw on the way to Chinese class last week. These kids were practicing their B-Boy dancing, I missed the nun-chucks yet again. Sorry. I’m going to get a picture of them using nun-chucks as part of their dancing at some point. I just keep missing it:

Inside the building where my chinese class is there are lots of classrooms. They often have some sort of seminar next door to my class. It often seems to be a class on business English and doing business in the US (from what little I can understand listening to their lecturer). There are often a lot of young 20’s and 30’s business professionals in there. What I don’t expect when I see them is for them to act exactly the same as my high school students:

I honestly thought they would just grow out of it eventually. I’m rather impressed with how wrong I was:

Here’s one of the nice restaurants near my class. Every time I leave class and start walking to the bus stop I see the staff getting their daily talk. I’ve seen the menu out front. The most expensive food item I’ve ever seen in China was about 120 RMB. The average will be anywhere from 5 to 48 depending on niceness of the restaurant. This place has things that sell for 1000. I don’t know if that’s just for a couple of their dishes or if that’s some kind of deal for a group of people or what. It’s still pretty impressive when I see it though. I’d like to try it just so I can understand why it’s so expensive:

I went out to eat with Quentin and two foreign teachers from the junior campus (the German teacher and the Japanese teacher). They took us out to a restaurant nearby. God I love eating out. Now that I have a job and I can afford it I would like to go out for some nice food occasionally. I’ve decided to start learning characters for various kinds of food. I’m tired of choosing restaurants based on pictures, I know I’m missing out on so much stuff because of this handicap. Anyway we went out to eat and then Quentin and I went to Huaquang Bei (the electronics district) to catch the bus. He knew of a bus we could catch where we didn’t have to switch buses and we could sit down for the whole trip instead of standing with our arms above our head for an hour and half.

I’m going to that street again during the daytime because I want pictures of the massive department stores full of transistors and motherboards and all kinds of junk. This is a photo from the bus stop. It’s a really cool place. Lots of lights and activity and stuff:

Here’s people shoving onto a bus, it was better a moment before the video because they were running:

BUS SHOVE

Also I found out at this bus stop that there’s such a thing as gypsy buses. It’s just a bus that someone bought and then they would pick people up and take them places with their own bus route. Who knew? The bus goes to various bus stops around the city and then a lady leans out the window and yells for passengers to get on.

“We’re not going to kidnap you! The bus is safe! Please trust us! 5 cents a ride! We accept credit cards!”

Zaldor the Cockroach Takes the Kitchen

Look at this cockroach:

Look at him.

Look at him!

Look at how dead he is.

I did that.

I killed him.

At least I assume I did. It is this assumption that lets me sleep at night. It all started a couple weeks ago as I ate a peanut. I opened up the shell and one little nut bounced across the floor to somewhere I didn’t see. I glanced around for it thinking “I should probably find that or it’ll attract bugs or something…” I didn’t see it and I didn’t really care that much, so I just continued on my way.

A week later I was up late and I had to go to the bathroom. I was watching some movie, so all of the lights where out. One of the perks about living by yourself is that you get to be naked as much as you want and you can leave the door to the bathroom wiiiiiide open as you do your business. It’s fun.

So as I sat there, doing the non-talk-aboutable, I noticed something near the doorway. It was a big black shape. “What is th- OH MY GOD IT’S HUGE!” A gigantic 3 inch long cockroach had found the peanut. It hadn’t seen me yet, but my heart was racing. That thing was enormous. I was finally going to have to confront one of these ridiculously large Chinese bugs and of all the bugs it had to be, it was a cockroach. Why couldn’t it have been a 3 inch long wooly bear? Maybe a butterfly perhaps? Anything except my least favorite bug in the world? I would have been more comfortable moving a scorpion. Probably not a centipede, I guess that would been worse, but uuuuuuugh I hate cockroaches. I was more creeped out because I had bare feet and I had walked over it to get to the bathroom. What if I had stepped on it in the dark? eewwwwwegh.

So I built up some nerve and pulled up my pants.

I stepped over it again to exit the bathroom, hoping that I wouldn’t startle it into running somewhere. Zaldor was too absorbed in the peanut to notice me. Now that I was out of the bathroom the battle was on. The cockroach had the kitchen, I had the rest of the apartment. It was lodged up against the lip of the floor between the bathroom and the kitchen, so I couldn’t easily smash it because the brunt of my smashing motion would just land on the lip instead of the roach.

The next idea that I had was to take a plastic bag, put my hand in it, then crush it inside the bag with my fingers. So looking around, I found a bag, turned it inside out, put my hand in it, and stood within striking distance of the cockroach. Then I lunged out toward the cockroach. About 1/4th of a second after I started my strike, about a million thoughts went through my head. One of the most prominent ones was “Oh wait, I’m going to have to crush it with my fingers through one little layer of plastic. What if it doesn’t work and he chews through the plastic and goes up my arm? No that’s ridiculous that’s not going to happen. Wait, I’m going to crush it with my fingers? oh GROSS! They never die and it’s going to be all gooey and crunchy and squirmy! EW!!”

I faltered and missed.

It was startled and ran toward the next darkest thing, the black New Balance shoes that I was wearing. I leapt backward yelling and screaming like a little girl up onto a chair. Zaldor scuttled under a box. One of my top least favorite things about cockroaches is that the word “scuttle” applies to them in so many ways. Scuttle is not just a descriptor of how a roach moves, it’s the attamattapeia of the sound a roach makes when it moves. Say the word “scuttle” a bunch of times and that’s what a roach sounds like running at 50 miles an hour to hide under a box.

I sat crouched up on the chair in my Super Mario underwear and black sneakers for a long time. I grabbed a stick and started beating at the box, but it wasn’t under there anymore. There were too many hiding places in my apartment. I figured he had found a hole and left. I picked up everything off the floor that wasn’t near where I suspected Zaldor of making base camp. I also picked up the peanut. I then lay down on my bed and talked to people online about the big horrible scary cockr- THERE IT IS AGAIN!

It ran out from the box I had beaten and ran into the kitchen and bathroom area, I chased after it but it disappeared. Then it ran out from under a crack and ran under my bed? NO!! Not under my bed! I leapt onto my bed and picked up all the dirty clothes from the basket I keep them in near the corner. I got down on my hands and knees to see if the roach was under there somewhere, but I didn’t see him.

I slept with the lights on that night. I hoped to freeze it in place because it’s fear of the light. The next day I bought roach killer and sprayed it on every hole I could find in my apartment, around the door frame, and down the drain in the bathroom. A few days later I found a giant roach, dead, it’s legs still kicking, outside on the steps.

LOOK AT HIM AND HOW DEAD HE IS:

YEEEEESSSSSSSS

I didn’t get to everything I wanted to get to with this post, but never fear, it will be mentioned next week. Stay tuned for the chapters entitled: “How to be a Judge” and “You March like a Nazi”.