I got all my warm clothes on because I was going to be outside for the rest of the day (I actually didn’t put enough on, I forgot to put on extra socks so by the end of the day my feet were pretty much not responding to stimuli).

On the way to lunch and the snow and ice festival I found someone I had been looking for for a long time. In China just about everyone is the same ethnicity (Whether they actually are the same ethnicity genetically or not doesn’t matter, just about everyone calls themselves Han Chinese). So I’ve always thought that I might go a little crazy if I was always surrounded by people who were my same body shape, same style hair, same clothing, same everything. Like in the US you can find a lot more in the way of cliquey things where people from different groups will wear different things. It’s not as strong here because frankly they haven’t had enough time to get creative and try new things. The chance to actually cause divergent clothing and hair styles within generations hasn’t been taken advantage of much yet. There’s some, but it’s not nearly as strong as in the US.

So I’ve been curious as to why I haven’t seen anyone with dyed hair. They dye their hair here to be brown or dark red sometimes, but I’ve never seen anyone do like streaks of blonde or like bright green or something. Anything to make you stand out a little bit from everyone else.

Found one:

About three days later I was walking around and I saw him again. He’s a hairdresser. Hairdressers are the people I’ve seen with the craziest hair here. I guess that’s what it takes to change your hair color, you have to deal with hair every day and get super super bored with it.

Here’s another house of worship near my hostel:

So everyplace I’ve been they have people who are hired to stand outside of stores and clap. Seriously. This is someone’s job. They just stand outside the store and clap. It’s to get you to look at them and see the store. However in Harbin people have to wear gloves. This makes clapping impossible. Now how do you solve this problem?

Like this:

Actually it worked. Those were the stairs for California Beef Noodle King. Honestly I just didn’t think about buying the California Beef Noodles. My own fault. I was too hungry and not thinking straight. However I did buy this extremely delicious chicken with cucumber. It just shredded chicken, peanut sauce, and shredded cucumber. It was extremely light and healthy feeling. You could probably make this at home (and I would suggest it):

Here’s a better image of that little ice slide for kids that I still can’t go on:

I dunno I guess there’s tigers in the Motorola store. I’ve found there’s a lot more in the way of people dressing up as mascots in China. In the US I’ve only seen it once or twice. Here it’s almost so common that I’ve stopped noticing. It’s a lot of fun though:

… yyyeeeEEESSSS!!

Here’s a daytime look at Monument Square. There’s a uh… a big monument in the middle of it. Honestly sometimes there’s just no point to me narrating:

So what I need to do is cross the river to get to the Snow and Ice Festival. There are several options at my disposal to do accomplish this task.

Option 1:

Option 2:

Option 3 (walk it):

I figured out that people here really really really wanted to take advantage of the white guy. In Shenzhen they’re kind of like “eh, just pay” whereas here there’s a lot more in the way of them jacking up the prices on like everything. So unfortunately I didn’t take the dogs (all German Sheppards for some reason?) because I figured I was going to be amazingly ripped off. Also I don’t think one German Sheppard is enough to pull two people on the ice without injuring the dog. That’s not what they’re bred for. They’re bred to be used as… you know… sheppards.

So here’s the ice skating sort of area on my side of the river. This is what was right next to the massive ice slide from earlier:

I had a couple kilometers to go, so I started walking:

What’d I say about those mascots? Here’s one of the pleasant goats. I’ll link you to the wikipedia entry again:

LINK

Crossing the river:

Option 4:

On the other side of the river is a Russian village. I don’t really understand the purpose of this place. I think it’s some sort of community event holding place with art centers and so on. It’s closed during winter save for one random shop where I bought a snickers bar. It looks exactly like home sometimes:

I tried to find the HanJianMin Oil Painting Collection of China and Russian Toilet, but when I went there I just found a guy sweeping and chipping ice in front of a what appeared to be an employee cafeteria for the area. I asked him where the toilet was and he said “I don’t know.” Seriously? You work there and you don’t know where the toilet is? Rude much? I wasn’t asking anything hard, could’ve just pointed and I would have found it.

I peed on his building.

Alright, I didn’t pee on his building but I really wanted to.

Here’s evil Santa Claus:

I wandered over to a park in the Russian village to find a bunch of people that failed to attack Medusa:

All of the sculptures are made of out hollow plastic meant to emulate stone. It’s not actually stone. I was pretty impressed until I found this out.

Han Solo: Hero of the Communist Revolution:

Across this really dangerous ditch…

Was this massive wall with a story about the Chinese and the Russians. It features a woman that I’ve seen before on the school’s walls I think. I don’t know who she is, but she was sculpted the same way on the busts at my school so I assume it’s the same person. I only recognize her because I every time I saw a sculpt of her I thought she was a white woman (“Of course not!” I’m told):

Once upon a time there were a bunch of very important Chinese people that were talking and gesturing about very important things:

Then they went out and wandered across the wilderness only to find that they were accidently going into Russia and it was freakin’ cold. Soon they started taking the Russian’s vodka so they could keep nice and warm:

Then the Russians were like “Whoa whoa whoa, we don’t like the Chinese because we don’t like the idea of Emporers. Long live the hammer and sickle. Also quit stealing our vodka you jerks, we’re gonna go all Braveheart on you now.”

Then a really brave Chinese girl stood up on a rock really dramatically and the Russians were like “Whoa, you’ve got pretty girls in China.” And China was like “Chyeah we know.” And Russia said: “Okay, you turn communist and stop stealing our vodka and we’ll stop fighting” and China was like “That’s coo’; brb revolting”

Then the Russians and the Chinese were BFFs and China was like “Bros before Ho’s forever dude?” and Russia was like “Hell yeah man.” Except then eventually Russia succumbed to temptation and stopped being communist because Reagan was just too hot to handle.

And that’s the story of how China became a communist country.

Here’s a phone booth:

So I guess part of the Russian Village is still working because this is a hotel that appeared to have guests coming in and out of it:

Once again I find someone doing something by hand that would have been done by machine at home (One person with a snow blower is cheaper than five people clearing the snow back home, not the case here).

Along with Physicist, Soldier, and Senator, that is probably one of the top jobs I would hate to have. Not because of the physical labor, I’ll do that, but more because of the tediousness of taking tiny bits of snow to sculpt every path in the town to look like this:

Matryoshka doll topiaries:

Now where’s that entrance to snow world…? Oh there it is!

Snow world is pretty cool (rimshot!). Everything is made out of snow and is much bigger than your typical snow man:

Also you can actually go inside these snow houses and get extremely expensive tea. It was like 30 RMB for a single glass of milk tea (something that shouldn’t cost more than like 6 or so).

Pretty confident the ice and snow festival would be the coolest place to be a kid ever:

The perk to climbing up to the top of the big snow bowl thing (besides being able to take the snow slide down) is these hotties. I’m surprised the whole snow bowl didn’t melt from the hotness:

Chinese kid slides on his bottom:

White kid slides on his awesome:

Seriously these snow buildings are huge. Look at the size of that man at the end of the wall:

Wow check out that tiger! What is he supposed to be?

Oh:

Yes, this is flocked snow, I touched it:

Aw I must have missed a parade. A parade with more Pleasant Sheep and Big Big Wolf:

…. yyyeeeeeeeesssss:

So there was some kind of snow sculpture competition between people from different countries. I’m sure the US will have something creative and cool.

Here’s Team 1 of Korea’s entry:

Team 1 of Japan had a slightly anime feeling snow sculpture. Seems very Japanese somehow:

Wow, team 10 of Korea, stepping it up a notch:

That’s pretty cool Team of UK:

Team 3 of China, that’s way sweet. I didn’t expect it of you (and because of this I get the feeling that it might be copy of something I’m not aware of). Of course I love it; I can’t help but love robots made of snow:

Speaking of robots, a little derivative, but I’ll still accept it because you happened to choose the hardest Michael Bay style transformer to copy into snow:

Speaking of derivative, I wonder if there is a single artist in China that hasn’t made a portrait of Mao in some form? I don’t think I have ever drawn or known anyone who has drawn George Washington:

Aladdin would be proud. FYI there’s another tiger inside the mouth of the tiger, how badass is that?

This one is called “Argus Treasures”:

Okay, let’s finally see what the awesome sculpture the US team chose to make:

Janus?? You chose Janus? That is possibly the most boring thing to sculpt they could have chosen. Talk about phoning it in. Why Janus? Is there some sort of symbolism to it that I’m missing? I mean I’m sure the contest took place in January, but what could it mean beyond “this contest is taking place in January”? Does it have something to do with the 60th anniversary of the PRC? Please? Anything? I’ll take anything beyond what was clearly the most boring sculpture in the park. Why didn’t you choose an actual awesome god that does cool stuff? Why not like Tezcatlipoca or Quetzalcoatl? They’re scary as hell. Why not Zalmoxis? Why not Loki? He’s a shape shifter. You could have made one being with many faces instead of Janus who only has two faces (and they’re both the same face, lame).

Choosing Janus is like choosing to buy a shot glass half full of milk instead of a chocolate malt with whipped cream, a cherry, and the tin it was all mixed in for the same price. Weird and lame…*thumbs down*

Lets move on to something more awesome instead of dwelling on failure:

Who is this bright snowman you ask?

Minnie Mouse, Pleasant Sheep, Tigger, and a Moomintroll. I didn’t get a very good video, but watch what adults do to them:

LICK HERE TO LEARN HOW TO TREAT YOUR FELLOW WORKING MAN

None of that “make sure the kids don’t know you’re a person” garbage:

This is the back of a big snow slide. Kind of cool to see how it was made. I’m glad they used machinery instead of making a bunch of people slave over piling snow with individual shovels:

Omigosh I didn’t miss the parade!! Yes!!

Uh oh…

LOOK OUT KID!!

Aright everyone, showtime is over. The Moomins are done with this BS:

Except America is still partying!!

At least… I think it’s America… They look British. I guess blue might make them American instead of British? I’m not sure. Civil War had people wearing blue, but colonial times Americans just wore their regular clothes. Buycostumes.com is telling me that a blue outfit makes it officially colonial American. Either way I know they were American because they were playing Yankee Doodle. Also because general Custer appears to be heading to Little Bighorn in the very front… with a spear:

I doubt that’s supposed to be Birdo, but I like to think it is:

I’ve spent 6 months in China and this is the closest I’ve come to seeing a real dragon puppet. Disappointing:

It’s not often I actually get to see art with a message here, but I’m happy when I do (unlike at home oddly enough where I desire the exact opposite). No matter how subtle or unsubtle it is I’m still happy to see the effort put in. It’s called “Longjiang New Era”:

What the- what is that animal? I thought it was taxidermied until I walked past and it blinked:

Fixing up the sculptures near the entrance:

This is on the way out of the park:

“Say that’s a nice boat.”
“Thanks.”
“You name her yet?”
“You bet.”
“What’s she called?”
“The AAAAA!!!”

This is one of the little restaurants inside of the snow. I got the milk tea. I like milk tea more than regular tea. Kind of reminds me of hot chocolate (it’s more reliably good than the Chinese equivalents of hot chocolate that I’ve had):

After warming up I had to walk another few kilometers to get to the ice festival:

Seriously, one guy with a snowplow, 4 minutes for the whole street. Not only that but he could make a killing by working more people in more areas in a shorter amount of time. Inefficiency means more jobs though, so this is what happens (notice you also need a guy or two to not actually chip ice but just to direct where other people should chip):

Oh neato, an aquarium. I doubt I want to see what’s inside for fear of going “Awwww… no… your living conditions are so poor… :-(”

Welcome to Sun Island Again:

Here it is: The Harbin Ice Festival. This is the whole reason I traveled here:

… yeeeesssssssss:

Here’s a map I tried to care about, but I was too excited to just walk around and look at everything:

yeeeeeessssss

Coolest maze:

All the ice is taken from the river that I walked across. I don’t know what it is about that particular ice that makes it so perfect and clear (with not much in the way of cracks or air bubbles screwing up your view through it) but it’s pretty awesome:

Horse sculptures:

There was a big tunnel thing (that you weren’t allowed to go in for some reason) had a bunch of rainbow lights that would change colors all over the place. It was neat.

COLOR CHANGING WALL

Chess. I was too cold to see if it was checkmate or not. I assume it was:

I got an American Chinese woman to take this picture for me. It was rather disconcerting to listen to the voice of a Midwestern American come out of an Asian person’s face. This is so strange because I would expect no different if I were in the US, but because I’ve been in China for so long I expect every Asian faced person I come across to have roughly the same accent. I kept hearing her speak and I would do double takes constantly. Makes me feel ridiculous because it’s totally normal, it’s just not normal here:

Ice coliseum:

“Heylo my nam iss Chen. I design te svynx. We upgrad te svynx to haffuh foouh nose like she’s- uh! Shumuh shumuh! He’s originary s’posed to. Arso we at slyte fo’ cheodren.”

So this was someone important wandering around. I don’t know who and I didn’t see many people stopping him to go “Oh man! You’re here! That’s so cool! Could I have your autograph?” I assume he was some local official. He seemed to be out with his friends and some women that I’m assuming were his wife and daughter. Could be have been different. The men here always look much older than the women they’re with (which I’m told is actually true and/or desired most of the time).

Get your picture taken with a yak! Yay! Yet another animal I thought was a big taxidermy piece until I saw it move a little bit:

Official sponsor of the Harbin Ice Festival:

This is a stairway up to a massive ice slide:

Check out that nose, I should start working as a stop sign eh? Nyuk nyuk nyuk:

Big huge zipline. I stood in line for 45 minutes to get on to that thing. I gave up, they were too slow. Couldn’t take it anymore.

So I went down an ice slide instead. Sorry, no picture of me going down the ice slide, people would have pushed me down. What I did do however was hold up the line so people would go farther down the slide. Then I took a running jump, dived onto my back, and slide down the slide. Unfortunately everyone was like “oh ha ha this is too scary, I’m gonna go slow!” so I ran into them.

It was way fun, so I went up the stairs nearby and did it again. Then a guy budged in front of me in line, right at the front. I tapped him on the shoulder and pointed out the line behind me. Then he looked at me angrily, yelled something in Chinese, and dived down the slide. Then (After making sure there were no kids around) I got to yell “Fuck you!!” at him in Chinese. Thank you Chinese class! I think I even texted my teacher because I was so excited to have cussed in a real world situation:

Awkward dance party. There was a lot of some DJ lady yelling “Come on! Come on!” and a couple of girls on stage dancing. Except it was cold so they were wearing coats. I could tell they were really trying, but it just fell flat. The crowd just stood there staring at them, not dancing at all. Just standing and staring. It was super awkward:

Here we have a cool stairway up to the moon…

And here we have a-… what the fff…?

Welcome to Hollywood!

Hollywood, home of famous faces such as…

and…

and lest we forget…

Not an activity I’ve ever thought about doing during winter, but whatever you’re into:

Another awesome ice slide:

Is it just me or am I starting to get repeats here? If Windows of the World (As seen in this LINK) is any indication, it’s like there are maybe 100 or so well known buildings outside of China. After that they just kind repeat and you see the same ones over and over again:

Some kind of broadway show featuring a white guy singing and dancing. Looked really mediocre. Also no nudity so I don’t care:

This recreation of some set of ruins was also seen at Windows of the World:

The only non-ice part of the Ice Festival (minus the rocket):

People were paying to put these very large candle/incense-like sticks in front of the idols. Also people would go down on their knees on the prayer rug platform kind of things. I didn’t have anyone to ask what was going on, so I just watched:

Take a picture with a snow fox!

……

……………….

… yyyeeeeeeeessssss:

After that I went home (using taxi drivers that were more than willing to make you pay 3 times the rate that the meter would have shown). I realized on the way home that I had been surviving on ice cold fruit and sugar for the past 14 hours or so. I was starving. So I looked around for food but couldn’t find any, everyone was closed save for one:

McDonalds is pretty much a life saver sometimes. Many people in China seem to think that westerners just love McDonalds and KFC. They think we really love the food and the atmosphere and everything about it. When I walk into a McDonalds I often see people look at me and give a “Ah ha! It’s true! I knew it!” Every time I get the chance I always explain “It’s not that we particularly like McDonalds, it’s just that sometimes we get bored of Chinese food and want to eat something else. Anything thing else. Mexican, Italian, German, anything. McDonalds and KFC is usually the closest not-Chinese option we have. Also we don’t know how to read and Mickey D’s has pictures.”

I have explained this a number of times to random students and they’re always absolutely fascinated when they find out. This time I had a new reason to go to McDonalds. They had a western toilet (always good to keep in mind who has western toilets while traveling asia) and they were open late.

Anyway, looking at the menu I figured out I wanted something really beefy and meaty. So I went for what I thought was the Chinese version of the Big n’ Tasty:

Turns out I was more right than I thought. It was the Chinese version of the Big N’ Tasty. I thought it was going to be the same recipe, but with a different name. Wrong. I was told Chinese McDonalds changes the taste of their burgers “to be more Chinese”. I had only had the Big Mac here, which seemed to taste exactly the same as home. This was different though.

It was a burger with a sweet and Sichuan hot and spicy sauce added to it. Also it had a big pile of cucumbers instead of pickles. I had not had a Chinese style hamburger before, most of the burgers I had had were attempting to be American style but failing. This was clearly an attempt to incorporate Chinese flavorings into the dish. It wasn’t bad actually. It just wasn’t what I was expecting and desiring at that moment. I might go back again later sometime so I can fully appreciate the confusion of fusion inside my mouth:

In the next post I will have the most amazing video I have ever recorded of anything ever. Stay tuned for:

“Harbin There Done That: Valley of the Tiger”

So I went into my room, settled in, and eventually went to sleep.

Next day was my wandering day. The day where I just kind of walk around and see where I’m living. One odd thing I noticed was probably this big old pipe:

In New York they have big pipes like that to keep the pressure of all the subways and sewers and stuff to keep it under control. I don’t know what they’re for here.

The first time I noticed a distinct difference from Shenzhen however, was when I wanted to eat lunch. I looked around and realized I had no idea what was a restaurant and what wasn’t. There was no English whatsoever (the usual white people in this area are Russian) but that’s not even a big deal to me at this point. The problem is that in Shenzhen it’s still reasonably warm, even in winter, so there’s people outside cooking and that’s how I know it’s a restaurant. There also might be pictures in the windows that show food on plates or a menu outside. They don’t do any of that in Harbin. It’s too cold (same temperature as Minneapolis really).

So I suddenly realized I couldn’t read any signs and I couldn’t figure out what was a restaurant or grocery store or a tea shop without walking inside, looking like and idiot, then walking outside again. It was hard to look in windows as well because a lot of it was down below street level and the windows would be covered in ads and cardboard and stuff in order to keep the cold out (because it wasn’t well insulated). The store fronts didn’t really have a lot in the way of windows anyway because they wouldn’t be able to keep the heat in, so the only places there were windows were the doors.

In the middle of me trying to figure out how to not look like an idiot, I remembered that there’s something I had read about restaurants in Harbin: they put lanterns outside to show the quality of food they have. It’s like how we have 3 or 4 star restaurants. They do the same with lanterns and they show them off out front. So I just started looking for lanterns, found some, went in, and I was right. I was so proud of myself.

I found that in Harbin they add oil to their food as a condiment? What? Why do people say Americans eat unhealthy food? I brought this up to people I met there and they were still convinced that Americans eat worse food. It’s exactly the same. At least we hide our oil in the food somewhere:

It was hard to capture a picture of this, but that was 2.54cm/1 inch (seriously) of oil and fat and grease in the bottom of my plate. Americans eat unhealthy food though, not Chinese people:

Harbin reminds me very much of Minneapolis. It’s just like it. I kept laughing because I was having these random big “home” feelings (even though it was all Russian influence, not early American architecture).

If I were to be a famous king, I would probably want to be this one:

Especially if the nearest rival kingdom was ruled by this guy:

Ah ha! So! Finally a taste of what I really came to Harbin for: The Ice Festival:

Kickass.

When I saw those Pacman ice sculptures I felt like I was definitely someplace that I should be. When I found out that those Pacman ice sculptures were spread out all over the city and were apparently some kind of city-wide theme this year, I felt even more assured.

I would have cautioned these ladies about the dangers of dealing with Ice Pacmen, but I’m sure they recognized the perilous situation they were nearly in:

I don’t know what it was about this ferris wheel that just screamed “RUSSIAAAAA!!!!!” at me, but it did:

“Look we can’t just make a clone of Starbucks, we’re better than that you guys, we have to be more creative. What’s something else we can do that’s really cool but also gives us that edgy, foreign, yet lived-in feel of Starbucks?”

Old Russian style housing architecture, a Christmas tree, Chinese lanterns hanging outside, and “Hey Jude” blasting from a set of speakers screwed into the wood. This is one of those little epitome of China moments I get to experience occasionally:

I like these things. The facemasks here are a fashion statement. In Shenzhen when people wear them it’s kind of unnecessary. There’s not a lot of point to it because it’s not actually all that polluted here. In Xi’an you need them because of the pollution (which made them into a fashionable accessory). You also need them in Harbin, but they can duplicate as just something to keep your face warm in place of a scarf. If I knew where to get them I would have grabbed one, but I didn’t want to walk into like a lingerie store cause I couldn’t read the signs:

Wow, I’ve never actually seen a mannequin that looked like a specific nationality of people. Lol Russians:

Down an alleyway. I don’t know what that sign says. I’ll assume it says something like “Free pie and fruit smoothies this way! Also cute girls and sweet motorcycles with fireworks attached to them! Bring all your friends!” instead of like… “Clothing store”:

I love these boards I see all over the place in this country. They’re so ugly and fun to look at. I can easily see a Duchampion out there being all like “This is art.” Man I don’t like Duchamp:

This is my hostel by the way; it’s a renovated synagogue. I met a couple there that went to a Jewish museum nearby and they found out from reading all the plaques and stuff that our hostel was actually the first synagogue in Harbin (and let’s face it, probably all of China). Then all the revolution stuff happened and the synagogues were burned save for a few. It’s so strange cause it’s not even mentioned in any of the guidebooks or anything, it was just an aside at the museum they happened to be at that day. Pretty cool.

Apparently Harbin had a pretty large Jewish population at one point (like 25-30%). There also wasn’t a lot in the way of racial tensions or anything. Apparently the Chinese and the Jews got along really well (When I think about it, traditional Chinese values and traditional Jewish values aren’t that far apart on their core issues). That same couple I was talking to earlier also found out that after WWII Harbin was a possible relocation option for all the Jews.

Just imagine what a different (better?) world it would be if the outcome of that decision had been made a little differently:

My room. My bed was the top bunk in the corner back there. When I first arrived the guy who slept below me was very large and wheezed a lot. As soon as I saw him I thought “This guy is going to be snorer.” Turns out I was right. The guy snored like crazy. Soooo loud. He actually put earplugs in before he went to sleep because he was so loud. Personally I think if you have to put earplugs in to go to sleep at night you might want to think about trying to separate yourself from other sleeping people. I figured out a trick though, since I had the top bunk that meant I had control over the stability of the entire bed. Every time it got really really bad I just made it seem like I was rolling over in bed and readjusting. It shook the bed enough that he would briefly stop snoring for a minute or two. I relayed this trick to my other roommates and they thanked me for it.

The Hostel is only on the first floor, there’s still two more floors above and a third I couldn’t get to. 2nd floor I think is a day care. Except I don’t remember seeing many kids coming in and out of there so who knows? Could be a massage place:

I’m going to say that the 3rd floor is a… photography studio? I don’t know. I’m waiting for my Chinese friends to read this and then correct me with the right answers:

I’m 90% confident there’s a secret passage behind that mirror. There are some blocked off stairs at the other end of the hostel’s hallway that I couldn’t get to to find out where they led. I think they went to the back of this mirror. The mirror has a really hollow sound behind it too so that only makes me feel even more like I’m a super sleuth:

Internet area:

God I LOVED these things. I took a picture of like every other one of these that I ate. It’s fruit on stick that is then covered in candy glass (which then freezes into a sweet ice). It was great. I ate them constantly. I tried to get a different one every time. This one has some kind of sour plum (I think they’re called haws?) with another kind of plum filling and peanuts. Put the sweet crunchy candy glass coating on the outside and it’s just perfection. I’m going to post like every picture I have of these over the course of the next couple blog posts cause I loved them so much. So here’s to the first one (and worst picture of one) I had ever had:

1.

Here’s a little ice slide for kids. I wanted to try it but I felt like everyone would have been annoyed with me:

A big cool fish with dyed ice (which seems to be pretty unusual at the festival). It was cool because as the days went on and there were more sunny days it would melt and look like it was bleeding blue or red or yellow blood:

Hahaha eeeeeegh:

60th anniversary of China:

Oddly enough this movie theatre immediately made me think “Could I live here?” I could definitely live someplace with a theatre that looks like this:

At the end of the main street near my hostel there’s a big memorial statue, then some fun activities, then the river. The river is all frozen over so you can walk across it to the ice festival on the other side. However I wasn’t doing that today. Many people come to this area to do things like ice skate and buy frozen fruits, hats, and other fun winter activities:

This thing is pretty sweet. I didn’t quite understand what it was at first. Extremely James Bond hideout looking:

This sign says whatever it is costs 10 RMB to go up there:

Oh… oh yes… I’m paying for this:

This was insanely fun. Nothing like hopping onto a piece of wood with runners and going at ludicrous speeds down an ice slide without a helmet:

Only about midway down did I suddenly think “Wait, how do I stop it when I get to the bottom?” They had a big pile of sand that the sled ran into and just slowed down. It was pretty nifty:

Lol Russia:

A section of ice festival in a park nearby. It was cool to see it like this. A teaser on what was waiting for me:

The Pac-men light up at night. I guess green is a cool color to choose:

I got lost on the way back to my hostel, so I stopped in at a place that had a big street fighter character on the front door. Turns out it was a real arcade! So cool. I love arcades. No one has them in the US anymore outside of movie theatres. I was very happy. I played for awhile in there. They also had gambling machines? I thought that was only legal in some specially designated cities and I highly doubt Harbin was one of them:

Last thing I got to see as I tried to get back to the hostel was a park full of old people walking in circles backwards. It’s some sort of health thing. There are a lot of really strange things that people do here and then say “it’s for health.” I’ve never been told how they physically help or any of the science behind any of it;“it just helps.” With this one the only thing I can think of is that it stretches your tendons and calf muscles? I’m assuming that must be what it is. Why everyone would want to walk around backwards in a park as a big group is beyond me though. I guess it makes you look slightly less ridiculous when everyone else is doing it too:

In my next post I go to the snow and ice festival. There will be too many pictures to count and it was so amazingly awesome and fun. I would have included it in this post, but it’s just too immense to get it in (that’s what she said). The next post will come faster I think seeing as how I’m on vacation with nothing to do right now. So stay tuned!

One of the strongest things I have noticed is that there is a strong demand for cultural sensitivity in China (often be “culturally sensitive” just means “don’t ask questions” however). I am of course willing to give it, but at the same time I want to understand why certain things are the way they are and I will question them. I give in to all sorts of things to be polite and not insult my hosts that would never even come up in the US. US culture in general tries to be culturally sensitive to other cultures, peoples, and races. I’m even cringing a little bit as I type “they” referring to the Chinese people/culture. My culture teaches me that all people are not the same and to refer to them as such is to be insensitive/bigoted/ill-informed. Please bare with me as I explain this further however, I know they’re not all the same, but I have discovered distinct patterns and I’m pointing them out as I see them. Keep in mind please: I like China. If I hated China I wouldn’t be here.

Another thing I have noticed is that the Chinese are very curious about other cultures. Their culture is so strong and all pervasive that they really often have no clue as to what other cultures are like outside of what they see in movies or read in books (that are written by more people that are just as clueless as themselves). They often don’t know how to be culturally sensitive and assume that they are being culturally sensitive, no matter what it is they’re doing. They are curious about other cultures, but don’t know how other cultures are different from their own, assume they are the same, and often don’t respect the differences by observing them when they can (again, because they have so little interaction with other cultures they don’t know how to be respectful of them). This is why I find it so ironic when they demand cultural sensitivity but can’t/don’t know how to give it themselves.

This was not something I knew about before coming here. The curiosity is there, the yearning to understand is there, but the knowledge of how to respect cultural or racial differences is really, really not there. I have seen many many instances where they think that they understand, but in actuality do not. So I have often seen when they try to pay homage or respect and it falls flat or comes across as insulting to the culture they are trying to show honor to (though people of that culture probably won’t say anything out respect for Chinese culture of not losing face).

With this in mind, my parents and I got to witness one of the greatest examples of lack of understanding that I’ve ever seen. It’s an amusement park called “Windows of the World.” Be prepared for awesome:

This was at the entrance of the park. I’m sure you can tell how excited I am to be doing this. I had wanted to go to this theme park since I heard about it five months ago:

Here is an ad from outside the gate. Man, France looks awesome:

Here’s a picture of the main gate.

Now you know. This is a whole theme park devoted to imitating other famous places… in miniature! Just about every monument you can think of is here. It specializes in Asia mostly. The farther you get from Asia the farther your tongue goes into your cheek.

First thing we did was take the tram around the park so we could see what we got to look forward to.

If there’s anything the Chinese are known for it’s their racial sensitivity.

Lets go to Japan land!

If you frame it just right it almost looks like it’s really far away:

I don’t know what it is about coy that creep me out. I like them sometimes but something about them puts me off a little bit. I think it’s their constant desire to eat mixed with that sucking air sound they make. “Psuh slup psluh!” Plus I mean they’re just different colored carp. There’s nothing not disgusting about carp:

Mount Fuji:

Here’s the rest of Asia. I do actually have to give them some props for the craftsmanship on this stuff. It’s quite good. I mean what they lack in creativity they make up in straight up skills on making things. They’re very good at copying and producing in China, though the quality isn’t always good. However this stuff is all outside, it has to withstand the elements and people climbing on it even though they’re told not to. Pretty well made stuff and quite detailed overall. It also got me thinking of various places I’d like to visit:

Oh hey it’s Russia!

I’ve always kind of liked the design of this tower. It’s pretty cool. Very simple. I have of course forgotten the name of it even though I’ve been searching online for like half an hour. I’m impressed with this model because they copied the weathering patterns quite well with their little mini bricks:

This is probably one of my favorite churches (Sagrada Familia being my favorite I think). It’s incredibly cool looking. I’m so happy I got to stand next to it kind of:

My only regret is that I didn’t get the classic picture of me holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa… but like, I’d be a giant… :-/

Check out these sweet helicopter shots I got of the Vatican:

You know, when I first saw this I thought “Wow, a lot of teenage boys come through here…” but now that I think about it, average maturity levels on everyone here sometimes feels like it’s 7-10 years younger than the average in the US. Probably a bunch of 30 year olds or something:

Venice:

I now have no need to go to Australia, sorry Colin:

The Dutch:

A miniature golf course. Get it? Get it? Aahhhhhh…

Some of these I don’t know. They’re still pretty cool looking though. I would say this is 80’s Hollywood movie model making quality. Pack that castle full of explosives and have our hero escape unharmed while it explodes in slow motion? I’d watch it:

Yet another landmark that I recognize but I can’t remember the name or even where it is anything. The I’m pretty sure the recall ability on my brain has some inhibitor curse on it that gives it a -7 on all memory abilities:

This was one of the photos where I tried to see how many famous monuments I could pack into one picture. I got 4 in this one. It’s like Pokemon Snap but less cute and less swearing cause you couldn’t capture the perfect image of Mew:

I appreciate that they tried to replicate both Marseilles and its gardens with actual plants. I would have tried to match the scale on the palace to the scale of the plants a little more, but whatever, to each his own. Maybe they were short on time:

I’ve been to Stonehenge. It’s pretty cool. It’s very odd cause it’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s just a farm out in the country. However, you don’t get to walk around inside of it, just around the outside. Now I get to experience more than I did at the actual Stonehenge. Why even go see the original when I can see the miniature replication and actually walk around inside of it?

“Giant Baby Rampages Through Britain; Queen Saddened by Loss of Life”:

This afternoon a giant baby destroyed countless buildings around Buckingham Palace causing tens of millions of pounds worth of damage. 521 people were killed and 1400 more were injured in the attack. Survivors often took shelter behind fences and stone pillars hoping for the baby to just quiet down a little, even though they have nothing against babies:

Police tried to stop the destruction but were unsuccessful due to the baby’s openly defiant and cranky attitude.

“I don’t know, when he gets this way I kind of just let him go until he wears himself out” Mei Li, his mother, had to say. “Children have a natural curiosity about the world so I let him explore on his own. This afternoon might have gotten a little out of hand though.”

The baby eventually stopped destroying anything and everything in its path after finding a set of pots and pans in a fountain nearby. After two hours of deafening noise he started to settle down. Ms. Li was heard to have said it was probably time for a nap and took him home for beddibyes.

Parliament. If I was in charge of this park I would have had funk music playing near this one and seen how many people got it (probably no one). I would have liked it though. I love the tiny little bushes/trees:

London Bridge:

Here I am in Russia again!

I’m gonna say 5 on this one cause I got the front part of Buckingham Palace in there as well:

This is the only miniature that didn’t have a plaque saying what it was or where it was from. I did have a moment of confusion when first looking at it, but then I figured it out:

In all actuality the fake Eiffel Tower is pretty cool (as tacky as it is). I mean it’s constructed out of the same materials as the real one and it’s the same pattern of metal and all that, it’s just that it’s… you know… a little smaller. Still pretty big though and you can take stairs or the elevatop up to the top to look around.

Um what?

If there’s anything the Chinese are known for it’s their racial sensitivity:

I wonder if they know what’s in that stogie? I don’t know where to start with that one. I also can’t even comment on the white guy cause I don’t know what culture/ethnic group he’s supposed to represent. Maybe it’s white people? Neo Nazis? I don’t know. Whenever I hear about some politician in the US saying something slightly askew about race or something, I look at it with new eyes. Like really, at least most of the time with them it’s a slip of the tongue that probably only reveals a little bit about their biases. Sometimes it’s blown way out of proportion and people are a little overly sensitive, other times not. Culturally however, even among those public faces that are accused of being racist (A strong accusation to just throw around willy nilly I might add), they at least know most of the time that “whoop, that was the wrong thing to say/that was hurtful/etc.”

However, many people here really do hold those stereotypes to be true because they’ve never once been shown any differently. When they are shown something different they view that as the anomaly. Many of my students really do believe that most Americans own guns and that all black people ride around with cars that blast bass out of them. These are facts in their heads. There’s a girl in my program that’s black that I haven’t seen in a while. I talked to her earlier about what sort of effect it might have on her time here but I haven’t seen her in months. I really want to talk to her again because I’m sure she’s having a massively different experience in this country than I am.

At one point I was in Hong Kong and one of my friends became openly nervous near a guy on the street and moved away from him. I was like “What’s wrong?” and she said: “I think that maybe he might steal my money.”
“Why?”
“He is black.”
The guy was Pakistani. He was handing out flyers for a tailor shop, probably his family’s if I were to guess cause I saw some interaction he had with some other Pakistani people (see? I make stereotypical assumptions too). I was like “No he’s not. He’s just handing out flyers for a tailor shop.” However, he was black to her. Not Pakistani. She couldn’t tell the difference. All black people are criminals, so then this guy is a criminal as well. Now this a completely offensive thought in my mind because it’s so illogical that’s it’s purely based on racism. This is actual racism and bigotry, not that fluffy stuff that US politicians sometimes accidently say.

I mean 1) I’ve never been someplace where so much theft happens. We don’t have this many bars on our windows at home and the bars certainly don’t go 15 stories up. What kind of theft level must you have in a country for bars to be necessary on the windows 15 stories up? This is normal. 2) Let’s say someone steals from you. What is the likelihood, statistically, that a person of non-Chinese ethnicity is going to do it? There are 1,325,639,982 people in China and 600,000 of which are people from overseas working in China (including ethnically Chinese, but born in another country). I’ve looked at various estimates, that one was from 2000. Other estimates have put it at 460,000 as of 2004. However I assume that the numbers have only gone up, so I’m going to bump it up an extremely generous amount to 800,000 (which is likely much more than the actual number). Statistically that means you have a 0.06% chance of running into a non-Chinese born person across the entire country of China (the rate goes up a little in the city and depending on the city of course). For instance in Shenzhen, estimates say you have about a 1.6% chance of meeting an non-chinese born person.

How many of them are dark skinned? Because darker skin = someone who steals and that’s it. That’s the only requirement. From personal experience, I would say the expat population is about 45% non-European and non-Russian descent, I don’t know where to get statistics on that so we have to do it this way.

So here’s the statistics (which I could be doing wrong, so feel free to correct the art major):

Chinese population: 1,325,639,982
Non-Chinese population in China: 800,000
Number of “black people” in the non-chinese population: 360,000
Chance of running into a “black person” in China: 0.027%

Now those are just the statistics of running into a black person, not the chances of running into a black person that also steals (which, in China, is probably as high as a white person who steals). Granted, it also doesn’t take into account the people that were black and born here, but I’m pretty sure that’s quite a small number. China doesn’t release crime statistics or who commits crimes, but judging from the amount of bars on windows across the entire country, I get the feeling that it’s not just black people. If it were that easy you could easily pull a Hitler and move them all out. So really, with these statistics, why would you fear black people? What possible reason could there be to assume that a black person is more likely to steal than a Chinese person? There are waaaaaaay more Chinese people than black people so the statistics only go up the more people you have and the more down on your luck you are. If you’re a foreigner in China, you’re probably not that poor because you were able to afford a plane ticket over here to get a job and most of the time you at least need a bachelor’s degree. A Chinese person though? They could live their whole life on the street eating out of the trash and begging for money, but yet the black person that traveled here by plane with a degree in higher education is the one that’s going to steal from you.

This is racism. I’ve heard it from too many people here to feel that it’s only a few Chinese people that have this issue. It’s widespread.

Just to show the kind of hardline liberal teacher I am, to push the point home to the kids that there are people of other ethnicities out there (and that they’re just as capable as Chinese people at doing anything), whenever I have to show a picture of couple or someone of high power and prestige in a powerpoint presentation, I always make sure to make it a mixed race couple. I specifically try to find black men with Asian women or black doctors or something like that just because in their mind, that’s impossible. I want to put it right out in front of their face that their stereotypes are based on nothing more than their own fear of meeting someone that’s not their race. You only realize you have issues with bigotry and race when you’re suddenly confronted with one or many people that are not of your own race. Since they never have that chance, I try to make it happen. We’re going to be confronting this issue head on when we talk about dating a month from now. My hope is to encourage them to see these issues, even though every moment of their schooling they teach that the stereotypes are true. I have often heard the phrase: “No, Chinese people aren’t racist.” We’ll see how long that stance lasts when opened up to a little prodding.

Anyway, let’s move on to something a little more fun. Greece or Rome for instance:

Coolest sculpture ever. Love it. I give made props to the guy who made this thing. I hope it’s not a copy, though I’m sure it’s from a still in a national geographic or something:

Here’s a British hedge maze:

I wanted to visit Egypt, but now I don’t have to!

You too can dress up like an Egyptian and take photos in front of Egyptian stuff. This is how Egyptians dress afterall:

I don’t know what is going on here and I can’t explain it to you. I’m sorry:

This is an African mask because this is what black people look like:

See? It’s Africa! Ooga booga amirite?

They also had a place where they did live African dance. I would have given extra money to be able to see a bunch of Chinese people do African dance.

I’m sure you’ve been waiting to see what they included from America right? So far it seems there was nothing from the new world. Well here’s the history that America has to offer: The Grand Canyon.

There’s even one small group of cliff dwellers (which I have also seen a number of and recommend because of coolness):

Pretty amazing. Looks just like the Grand Canyon… or a set from a mid-90’s B-grade adventure movie.

Actually, have you ever seen the movie Congo? I watched it for the first time about a month ago. My parents wouldn’t let me watch it when it first came out, too scary. I’ve wanted to watch it since I saw previews for it in like 2nd grade or whatever though. The final part of the movie takes place in an area that pretty much looks exactly like this but with more giant killer gorillas in it:

See?

Check it out, it’s Brazil coming by on a car! Or Hawaii! They play the most obnoxious perfect music ever as well. Here’s a video I caught of them later. The first time I saw them they were dancing and yelling, the video doesn’t include that part as much. However I’m also going to point out that in the video they’ve switched from being in Brazillian attire to what appears to be Japanese Kimonos:

VIDEO OF WHAT I WANT TO DO WHEN I GROW UP

Love it. Just love it. I want that song.

Whoa look out! It’s Colombia! Also there’s like a storm or… a volcano or something!

These are the people taking photos of the “chaos”. It was kind of funny because they all stopped about 7 feet from the guard rail to watch the show for some reason. All of them. Then one person went up to the guardrail to get a closer look at one end, then from that end they all got closer, like a wave as they got more confident. Collective society at work.

Dude that car is TOTALED:

Oh… oh no:

No no no. No. Noooooooooooo. I wonder if there is a Chinese version of seppuku. There must be. I should probably do that now.

But then if I committed chippuku I wouldn’t be able to see the natural world wonder that is Niagra Falls!!

I honestly thought it was supposed to be some waterfall in the Amazon because of all the tropical plants all over the place. My bad. I should have known.

I wonder if blackface would be/is a hit in China?

So I think the concept of water rides fails a little bit here. The point is to get wet, that’s the whole reason you go on a water ride. I’ll give the benefit of doubt however cause it’s not like it’s summer right now:

This is a guy after the ride, just to make sure there’s no water on him after the water ride is over. I saw a few people do this:

I don’t know what this is for, I think it’s a ride or something, but I thought it was funny. The eyes move really slowly and I don’t understand why they move the way they do. It almost feels like a mistake, but I highly doubt it.

CLICK ME FOR LOLLING LOLS!

Okay there is actually more from the America (although almost all of it was made post US becoming a nation):

Hey it’s another mushroom like from Beijing. It has a speaker in it to plays the US national anthem and America the Beautiful. I wonder if they hide things in mushrooms in Japan. It would have a different meaning there I think.

As you can see the Jefferson Memorial has a few terrorists at the top of the stairs and lie-down protesters at the bottom:

I like the attention to detail on the change of bricks near the base of the Washington Memorial. Good eye. However there are supposed to be two windows at the top and two lights, not four windows. Close though. It’s still pretty well done.

Lincoln is even in the Lincoln Memorial. Off scale, but he’s in there:

America

The only other thing it needs is a flag and bald eagle lightly screened over the top of the image for extra cheesiness.

On another note, I’ve noticed that many people here care more about who did it first than who did it best. China did a lot of things first and I respectfully yield the floor on many things. However I’ve noticed the students like to claim other things as Chinese as well (adults less so but they still do it); best example being pizza. Chinese people made pizza first; didn’t you know? What happened was explorers from Italy came over to China, saw a dish that the Chinese have where it’s baked dough with things inside of it, then they tried to make it themselves. The problem was that they were too stupid to make it right so they ended up making pizza instead. No no no, it’s not that the Italians were testing their ovens with a cheap bread and then basically putting leftovers on it and selling/eating it so as not to waste food. It’s not that simple. The Italians stole it from China.

However I now remember one thing I can claim they didn’t do first whenever they get all nationalistic on me in class: Effin’ fly.

Oop, speaking of flying… *awkward turtle*

I know someone who went on the official tour of the park. He said that when the guides get to this part the say “The original Twin Towers in New York were destroyed in a terrorist attack; ours are still standing though.”

Here’s Jesus doin’ his thing:

I was waiting for at least a few things from South/Central America, but they didn’t have a lot. I don’t think they cover that in history class as much as we do:

Paris/Isla Nublar:

*Sigh* I knew “Isla Nublar” without looking it up. This is what’s in my head instead of names of old architecture that I like and important historical places. I don’t know how I feel about that.

Anyway I would say around the time we started getting into the Americas is about the time that the attention to detail started wearing off. In all the other cultures they really tried to copy the exact artworks, styles, etc etc. I personally really like Mayan art. I like their odd triangular heads and very line oriented work with things generally put into square shaped patterns. They were a very advanced people that had all sorts of calendars, maps, structures that aligned to specific solstices and equinoxes, plumbing, observatories, all kinds of stuff. They even were able to discover the Orion Nebula as a system of stars without a telescope. All of this done in a shorter time frame than the Chinese, the Greeks, or other cultures had because they had to spend however many years crossing the Bering Straight, migrating all the way down to Mesoamerica, and then setting up a civilization that would allow for scientific advances to occur. Very cool. Except of course the plaques would say things like “They might have had an understanding of astronomy” because as far as the plaque maker was concerned, again, the Chinese invented it. So complaints of unnecessary nationalism aside, this is what the beautiful Mayan artwork was reduced to:

Very unfortunate. It wouldn’t be a big deal to me if I didn’t believe that so many people would come through, see it, and then think that that was the truth.

Here’s some teepees from the plains Indians. As you can see the art on the side of their tents was well researched. As were the totem poles which the plains Indians all made (or didn’t, but they’re all from the same country so they’re all the same right?)

Here we have a Native American in extremely well researched clothes shooting his bow and arrow at a jaguar. As we all know, plains Indians had a lot of trouble with Jaguars (a god animal from Mesoamerica) in much the same way that the Maasai people are beleaguered with polar bear attacks or Fred Flintstone is bedeviled by a hyperactive purple brontosaurus:

I just I can’t even

Aright, lets do Jurassic Dinosaurs World instead:

Whoa look out!

They had motion-activated dinosaurs. This one had a voice and movement that I liked:

CLICK = ROAAAAAAAAAAR

This was my favorite dinosaur when I was a kid. My mom says so. I still like it. It’s original. It’s head it just doing it’s own thing:

Yeah! T-Rex eatin’ stuff! T-Rex wins!

Love the animatronics here:

LIFELIKE

More Not Snow White stuff? This amuses me because they thought it necessary to buy more than one set of Not Snow White statues (along with all the not dwarves to go along with it).
“Do you think the one Snow White set up is enough or should we move on to oth-“
“No! Get one more!”
“Why?”
“Don’t question me boy!”

Before I leave the park I had to get a picture of the statue of liberty done in an ancient Summarian art style. They did everything in that style near the front, but the Statue of Liberty really stood out to me:

Ah Windows of the World. What an unforgettable experience. You brought me joy, confusion, frustration, bemusement, anger, and food poisoning. I spent the rest of the night throwing up.

Next week I’ll talk all about Harbin and the awesome Ice Festival. It’s way sweet. You’ll like it. Stay tuned for: “Harbinthere, Done That.”

I’m on a plane to Harbin as I’m writing this (actually we’ve been sitting on the tarmac for 2 hours so far). I should probably be wearing faded skinny jeans, a shirt from threadless.com, and a scarf. The only thing that could make me more cool than using my sleek silver Macbook on the plane would be to be drinking a mocha cappuccino/chai tea/my own feces because I look like an asshole. I really do like my Macbook, genuinely, but I don’t like the snooty message it brings with it. You just can’t escape it though. If you have an apple computer you look like an asshole. I mean just go to the apple store and talk to the technicians there (Note: The official title of their job is “Genius,” one guess as to what type of people call themselves that).

Anyway, off topic much?

While we were in Hong Kong we saw Avatar in Imax 3D. It was much more awesome this time. The 3d glasses worked better and there were English subtitles! Except there were Chinese subtitles the whole time so by the time an English subtitle popped up I had learned to ignore them and I would miss them… :-/

While on the plane I couldn’t help but notice these fun images on the safety guide. I love the stuff they pointed out that needed to be banned. At home all I can think of them banning is cell phones and maybe laptops at certain times during the flight. Maybe I just have selective memory:

Dang kids these days with their Walkmans and hand held Tyco electronics.

I’m also going to point out that on the plane apparently you must be entertained at all moments. Those TV screens were on playing a mix of Chinese Top Gear, Days of Our Lives in China, and China’s Funniest Home Videos for 2 and half hours. Also keep in mind that in China there is a tremendously high number of people that turn on their cell phones and blast awful music for everyone to hear. Still fun though, definitely not the hushed “inside voices” of a US domestic flight.

So when I arrived in Xi’an I would say the first thing to greet me was the smell (oddly enough one of the first things to greet you in many parts of China). It smelled like something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was kind of like wood smoke. Then as soon as I walked off the plane and up into the airport I noticed the haze. There was haze inside of the building. Thick haze too. It was sort of a brown gray color. It was so pronounced that I figured some natural disaster had occurred nearby. Like it smelled like wood smoke and everything looked like my eyes were half closed.

The other immediate thing I noticed was that everything was covered in dust. Everything. Like walking into house that no one has lived in for 10 years, that’s how thick the dust was. You could tell how long a car had been parked in one spot due to the amount of dust on it compared to the plants nearby.

The only other time I had experienced these things was in junior high when I went to Yellowstone and there was a big forest fire nearby. So I figured maybe, as ridiculous as it sounded, there was a forest fire nearby? No way could a place be so dusty and dirty and smoggy all the time.

Wrong. Lady at the hotel desk told me so. The city is just really dirty. It’s very dry in Xi’an so there’s no rain to wash it away.

So I hitched a cab ride into the city to my parent’s hotel. We were going down the access road for the highway at like 80 miles an hour (pay a toll? Eff that). It was a little scary at first, not because I was afraid of the speed, more because I was afraid of the speed combined with the fog. The smog in the city was so thick it made a fog that , though light, still obscured vision. It was the exact kind of fog the deer LOVE. My eyes kept darting to those spots that deer like to hang out near the edge of the road. I kept expecting a deer to come bounding out of the woods and smash into our car. Forgot it was China though, there aren’t any animals here.

So then I just sat back and relaxed as we sped through the night. Christmas tree and neon lights were all over the place and the driver blasted a remix between AC/DC’s TNT and My Humps by Black Eyed Peas.

My parents chose to stay at a Hyatt so I stayed there with them. I’m not sure I’ve ever stayed at a Hyatt before. Really ritzy. Made me uncomfortable. It’s one of those places where they try to put the napkin on for you and do everything for you. Really awkward. It’s the exact opposite of the place I’m staying in Harbin tonight (lol a bunk bed).

This was the view from the window. It pretty much sums up Xi’an. The smog was a lot lighter this day than the day previous. This seems like a city that doesn’t get blue skies very often:

So the next day is of course terracotta warrior day. Can’t really go to China and certainly can’t go to Xi’an without seeing the terracotta warriors. So we went over there, grabbed a tour guy, then had him show us around and stuff. It was a pretty cool thing. Here’s a big puppet of a warrior and an innocent little girl (you can tell she’s innocent because she’s wearing a dress and her toes are pointing together):

There were also these huge copper chariots that were made for one of the emperors to ride away to the afterlife in. Pretty cool. They were made at maybe… half scale? They were buried at the foot of the emperor’s tomb about 2 miles away. Apparently these chariots unlocked a lot of secrets about the intricate details of chariot design in ancient China. Over time all the wood from various chariots decomposed so they couldn’t get a good look at them. However, these chariots were supposed to look exactly like the wooden ones, every detail the same. So they were quite happy to find metal versions. I’m pretty confident the glass around them is to make sure Jet Li doesn’t pop out and start wrecking havoc on the world:

Aright so finally: the terracotta warriors. I don’t really have a lot to say about them that hasn’t already been covered by history class (thousands of them, each has individual features, etc etc). They were pretty cool. The whole warehouse smelled like clay oddly enough. Now for some stereotypical tourist photos from slightly above where they are:

So one thing that’s kind of cool is that it’s still an ongoing archeological dig. This means you get to see them still in their various stages of excavation. It’s winter though so they’re not digging.

Oh hey it’s me and my mom! Family fun time!

This is the other section of the dig that they won’t dig up. All the crinkled looking shapes are planks of wood. All the warriors had planks of wood above them. They won’t go down further than the wood because they don’t want to oxidize and damage the paint on the warriors underneath. They noticed when the air hit the warriors that all the paint flaked off and disappeared (thus why they just look like dried out clay). It’s kind of odd thinking about the statues in Greece being painted or the warriors being painted, but that’s how they were. They had some photos of what they looked like before the oxidation process; cool, but tacky. I’m guessing that ancient Greece and the ancient terracotta army looked a lot like an ancient Las Vagas.

You too can have your face photoshopped onto a terracotta warrior!

The gardens outside of the museum. In summer they’re a little more colorful, but I kind of like it all cold and dreary and past-it’s-time looking:

This is a happy frog I liked in the gift shop:

So guess what the terracotta gift shop area has that I haven’t had in months? A Subway! Look at that sandwich being made by the skillful hands of an expert sub sandwich craftsman:

I got a foot long Sub Club on honey oat bread. It was a hard choice between that and the Spicy Italian. Also the Chicken Teriyaki. Also the Chicken Breast. As you can see I basically shut down when I was faced with so many choices laid open at my feet/mouth. I got the Sub Club with Pepperoni, Salami, and Bacon added on for extra umph. Then I got the works in vegetables. I also had them add mayo and vinegar. I’m looking forward to going home so I can add cheddar and salt and pepper as well. Whoof… I’m getting all hot and bothered thinking about this sandwich:

God that looks wonderful. I’m so hungry right now. Why did I decide to work on this post? What novice mistake.

Outside the terracotta warriors you could also buy furs from vari… ous… animals…? Are those-? Yes, yes they are. Purebred too:

Why go through all the time and expense of owning a dog when you can just buy the fur instead? No taking it out for walks in -20 weather, no worrying about a sitter when you’re away, no paying for costly food and vet bills. Not only that but it’s easy to store! Just fold it up and put it in the closet! I’m just going to point out, there were lots of shops with these. It’s not like there was only one, there were quite a few.

Next up, this is the emperor’s tomb (Qin Shi Huang, first emporer of the united China). I remember reading about this tomb in college I think. Supposedly it has a ceiling made of diamonds and rubies to emulate the stars. The floor is a vast map of China with rivers of mercury running through it. They refuse to open it up though. Oxidation fear again. They want to wait until there’s technology to do it without damaging the pieces. Good on them. They did however do a bunch of testing around the site and found really high levels of mercury (which in turn shows that the tomb contains really high levels of awesome).

View from the top:

Then we went to the hot spring bath house nearby that wasn’t really real. It was burned down in the cultural revolution and then built again in like the 70’s or something. There were some rather tongue in cheek (for westerners) moments when they were explaining various things that happened in the cultural revolution. Definitely felt as though they were leaving certain bits of information out of the placards.

There was a sweet fountain that was a dragon’s head. The hot spring water would come out of it and make steam come out as well. It was awesome:

CLICK ME FOR A VIDEO

“Take your hat off in front of the naked statue sweetie.”

Apparently you can wash your feet in one of the caves? Or something? I don’t know, I never thought about visiting someplace to wash my feet. This place is very much more of a community center than historical site. They keep adding additions on to this place that I highly doubt existed before (like a big pool full of ropes and pulleys with fireworks display areas, really well placed bathrooms that are built for many many people, a concert hall, a ballet school, etc etc.) I’m sure this place is a blast in the summer. In the meantime however, it’s mostly got a foot washing cave in it:

After that we went to another archeological area. It’s a super super old village that’s however many thousands and thousands of years old. I don’t know what it is about going on trips with my parents but wherever we go we always find someplace to look at holes in the ground:

Normally that’s all we get, holes in the ground.

“This was where the fire pit was…”
“This was a storage room…”
“This was a post hole…”

The one thing that made this set of holes in the ground so much different from the other holes in the ground that I’ve seen over the years is that these holes in the ground had people in them:

They had all these various specific ways of burying their dead. It was kinda cool. Then I realized I was taking pictures of dead bodies and got a little weirded out so I stopped.

Probably one of my favorite things about Xi’an was the city wall. It’s the one of the best preserved city walls in the world. Only fitting that the former capital city have something so cool, but it’s really only useful against trebuchets and arrows, not so much against satellite-guided smart bombs. So it’s kind of just this big ancient thing that all the traffic goes in and out of. The whole city is based around this wall and roads kind of radiate outwards from it. It’s really cool. It’s so odd because it’s just normal to everyone in the city. It’s just this big huge old thing that’s still there and doesn’t really have a use anymore, but you can’t really get rid of it, so it’s just going to stay there forever as a standing monument to a feudal past:

It’s cold enough that the motorcycle taxis have built in gloves:

When I came back the maid had folded yesterday’s clothes and put them neatly on the bed. In Hyatt’s you are clearly not supposed to just throw your dirty clothes in the corner… :-/

The hotel serves hamburgers! Not the cheap Mcdonald’s kind that is the only kind you can get in this country, but the higher upper class style (though it still used American cheese instead of like cheddar or something… also there was an egg on it?). Look how satiated I look:

Something pretty cool about Xi’an is the lights they have. Right near the entrances to the city wall they have these lights up in the trees. Everything is lit up at night and it looks really cool. One thing I will definitely give China is that even though they like to waste power on spotlights, neon, string lights, and gaudy signage, it’s still pretty cool to look at:

Each of those downward white streaks was a special kind of light that made a dripping effect. Each tree had a bunch of them and they were all synched to “drip” at the same time.

VIDEO OF LIGHTS

The city wall at night:

This is the first time I’ve ever seen Chinese people patiently wait in a single file line.:

In the center of the city there are these two big towers called the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower. They’re about one block apart. Consistent with their names they each have bells or drums in them:

This is the Bell Tower. It was built during the Ming Dynasty. It was mostly a defense-ish kind of thing. They had a bunch of bells inside the tower and hundreds of years ago they would ring the bells at specific times of the day to ensure the city dwellers that all was well. Also it warded off dragons:

Inside the tower they had some people doing traditional Chinese music and dance:

This is up on the drum tower. Inside of the tower was an exhibit full of old drums (which people just couldn’t stop themselves from hitting as they walked past).

Up on the 2nd floor of the drum tower they had an exhibit on furniture including possibly my favorite, most inspiring piece of furniture:

FYI Desk lions are as large as my torso.

In between the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower was enough space for people to set up shops and such. Apparently it was the place to sell kites. They were long looooong strings of kites, hundreds of feet long. You’re going to have look hard at at some of these pictures to see the kites. Wipe off your computer screen so don’t mistake them as dust:

Of course, not 30 feet from the kite salesmen are the kite eating trees:

This was right next to the Muslim quarter (Xi’an was the end of the silk road), so we went down to check out the markets and stuff:

Then we went back to the hotel. The room was all cleaned again, but I put my clothes away so the maid wouldn’t have to clean them. Then I threw some stuff on the bed and we went down to dinner where I had cheesecake that has now made me suspicious of all cheesecake across China. It was made with American cheese, not cream cheese. Have you ever had cheesecake made with American cheese? Nope. I have though. Don’t do it. It’s a horrible experience. I couldn’t even finish it it was too much of a disappointment:

Seriously? I was out of my room for half an hour and the maid snuck in and folded all my stuff again? Wth? How did she know? Why doesn’t she go home?

One last look at the city wall before we leave:

Next post is one to look forward to. I highly doubt you’ll expect what you’re going to see. Stay tuned for the some the most fantastic displays of face to palm action!

Haha no, I’m actually a very boring person.

Anyway a lot of stuff has happened in the past what… month? I have about 675 students and I had to test them each individually in oral English. I see each class once a week for 40 minutes with 45 students per class. Obviously this makes it a little hard to get them all tested in one class, so what I did was a spread it out over the course of 3 weeks. What I had them do was give group presentations like they were a news show. That added up to 165 performances that I had to watch by the students (and I had to try and stay neutral and fresh the whole time).

Grading each kid individually was pretty hard as well because sometimes they would forget their name tags or they would change their English name from what was on the sheet to something else (oh Yvette is now named Chocolate?). Quite difficult at times. Some of the performances were amazing though. Really funny. Obviously I don’t remember them all, but I definitely remember this one:

They’re staging a kidnapping with guns. They brought black BB guns to school (loaded) and were swearing and yelling like the police and stuff. The one on the left is threatening a baby with his handgun and the one on the right has a machine gun and it was just… it was intense. They even had like a kung fu part where they choreographed a beat down on the suspect (this once again reminded me of how 2/3rds of my students could kick my ass if they wanted to).

Anyway I was really not expecting a bunch of guns to come out in my class. After class was over I told them that in the US if they had brought a gun to school like (even a fake one, because the possibility of it being real is much higher in the US) that the police would be storming the school in all of about 4 minutes. If they’d waved it and pointed at people like they were doing, they would have been shot by the cops pretty quick. Obviously no one in China is even slightly worried about a student having a real gun because no one batted an eyelash at them having these weapons in class.

Then I took their machine gun and shot some stuff. It was pretty sweet. They also had a shotgun but not enough BB’s.

Have I ever mentioned how much the students effin’ LOVE Michael Jackson and highly choreographed dancing? There was going to be a massive school performance for the headmaster. Apparently he was coming to visit the school (he doesn’t actually go to our school, I don’t even know who the head boss of my school is, but the headmaster lives in a different city). Anyway, giving face and honor and being showy I’ve found is often more important than substance in China. They really really had to impress him so they kept canceling classes so the students could practice their performances and stuff. Personally if I were headmaster I would want to visit as a surprise and see what the school was like in action. I wouldn’t want to watch a whole bunch of performances to flatter and impress me, but whatever, to each their own I guess.

So here’s the students practicing, I wasn’t going to be there on the day of the performance because I had a Chinese test (thank goodness, cause they told me the day before that I was apparently also supposed to give some kind of performance? Like a skit? Or singing? Barf):

I was reading about music emergence in China the other day, I don’t remember where, but I found out an interesting little tidbit about this whole Michael Jackson thing. Apparently in the 80’s they wouldn’t allow Michael Jackson to enter China and give a performance because he was doing morally corrupt things. No, no, not socially unacceptable closeness with little boys, I’m talking about the crotch grab. They wouldn’t allow him to perform here because he would grab is crotch on stage. He was the cutting edge and really pushed the boundaries of obscenity.

Not only that, but Michael Jackson is basically China’s Buddy Holly but with the popularity of the Elvis. Like China was just opening up to Western influences by the late 80’s and if you look at who was hot at the time and who would be going overseas with their music, well… that’s Michael Jackson. That’s why they have what I would consider to be such an odd assortment of musical tastes that are extremely modern (yet slightly behind the most modern of modernity) and don’t seem to go to any time period prior to about 1984. That’s the extent of their rock and roll music history. It all starts with Michael Jackson. This is why they don’t know who the Clash, Ramones, Led Zepplin or any of the earlier rappers or anybody is. Oddly enough I haven’t even heard people here sing songs by the Jackson 5, just Michael Jackson. That’s how abrupt I would say the cutoff is around 1984. Very odd time warp kind of feeling sometimes, but I’ve come to understand a possible reason why it may be the way it is. So because of this I’m quite interested in when hip hop is going to be mainstream here. Right now it’s out there, but it’s not a dominant force by any means, just like in its early years in the US. I’m also interested in knowing if or when they will start making their own brand new styles of music that become popular among their own people and branch outward to other countries. I’d certainly be interested in hearing some kind of Asian infusion with reggae or something. That’d be pretty bizarre and new.

Click the capital letters for a clip of some Michael Jacksoning:

CHOREOGRAPHY? I CRAVE IT!

Here’s a scene the kids are reenacting from Forrest Gump:

However, what really got me from the performances was this couple. I was sitting there, completely baffled and amazed by what I was listening to. I was concerned that maybe I was listening to a recording and they were singing over it or something, but I wasn’t, it really was just these two girls being absolutely stunning:

I FORGOT THE NAME OF THIS SONG BUT THESE TWO GIRLS WIN THE PRIZE

On the day that the headmaster finally came, the students had to do extra special morning exercises. This was them running out to get to their designated spots on the field. I had a number of students quite upset about having to do these things to impress the headmaster. They felt it was unnecessary and was conflicting with what they were always told (study is most important etc etc). They saw no reason to do it and it was only making them behind on their homework. Still it was cool for me because I got to see this:

O FORTUNA

At the end they normally file back inside, but this time they filed along lines painted on the ground so they could have extra perfection:

Aright now for a little while I’m going to show a bunch of random kind of images that don’t really have a strong narrative element to them, they’re just related in that they happened in between about New Years and today (practically the end of January now, jeez).

I don’t know if I’ve shown the school buses that all the kids get on to go home at the end of the week. I thought it was a little silly that they’re all packed into these huge cross country buses (air conditioned I believe). I think it’s because they stay here for a 5 days so the need to bring more stuff than we do in the US.

But whether that’s the case or not, what the hell? We get crappier buses in the US than they do. Bench seats, sometimes three people to a two person seat, plus we’re all wearing our winter clothing which makes us 1.5-2 times larger than normal. Also the bus drivers in the US pull over and yell at us like “Don’t get into fist fights!” and “Don’t smoke pot on the bus!” and “Don’t make flame throwers out of spray deodorant!” etc. Darn kids these days don’t appreciate nothin’:

pbbbfffhahahaha

This is my Chinese class after it’s been pared down over the course of a semester (except obviously the girl taking the picture and our usual Australian guy who couldn’t come the last day). It started with like 12 or 13 people I think? Maybe? The average by the end was around 6. Not because Jade was a bad teacher, she’s awesome (I mean look, we’re drinking beer in class), more just because people are lazy I think. I think they want the afternoon off instead of going to class. Not that I blame them, it’s a pretty big hassle for some of us to go to class. Also a lot of people thought it was too far to go to class so they just opted not to. I’m trying to practice my chinese so as not to look like an idiot in front of Jade when I get back to class next semester.
“You were gone fo’ three months and you never practiced!?”
“Sorry!”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know!”
“You are a bad student ah! No mo’ action movies!”

Do you remember my post a long time ago that had the group of people dancing all odd? The first time I caught this phenomenon was in the post “INVESTIGATING THE LIBRARY AND THE CURSE OF THE GREEN HAT” (click it for the link, the video is in a link just below the Kumon picture). There was that group of people in the class next door to mine that was doing some kind of crazy dance. I want to know what this song is called. It’s possibly the most annoying song in the world, I want to be able to listen to it and finish the song. It gets stuck in my head all the time and I don’t know the words or what it’s called or anything so it just repeats forever and ever and I can’t finish it. This is the second or third time I’ve caught a company using it plus it’s accompanying dance to try and make their employees get all team oriented and pumped up for the day:

AGAIN WITH THE DANCING

So one day I was sitting in the office and a loud honk happened outside. Then the honk just stayed continuous for about a 3 minutes. Just one big loud hoooooooooooooooooooonk. It eventually stopped, but I was curious so I walked out to see what it could have been. Turns out a semi took a corner too fast and rolled over. This is why I don’t like walking around near my school. It’s hella dangerous:

Oddly enough, traffic jams of shipping containers are kind of colorful from above:

There’s a secret teacher room near the cafeteria that I had always wished I could go in (purely because I wasn’t allowed in). I remember numerous occasions where I would always see tons of teachers go back there and they would laugh and sing and have a big party but then never invite us. It had been like that for months. Helen reassured us “oh don’t worry, it’s the same food as the cafeteria.” but it didn’t matter. I still felt all left out. Finally, finally one day we (Quentin and I) saw all the teachers go back into their special secret room. Then we got our own food in the regular cafeteria. Helen and May came to eat with us. Then a teacher came out (I don’t remember who) and was like “What are you doing?” and we were like: “Eating?” “Come on and eat with us in the back!” I was soooo happy. I was going to get to see the secret back room where everyone goes to have a good time! Yessssss!

So we went back there and it like a little restaurant with a big round table and stuff. They didn’t serve the same food as the cafeteria at all, it was a slightly better (Helen… what a liar…).

Long story short I got to have a new food back there that I hadn’t had before. The food in the center bowl is “Gou Rou” . Also known as “dog”:

None of the other teachers wanted to eat it and in fact wanted to send it back to the kitchen, but Quentin and I insisted and took the opportunity to finally take the plunge on officially eating dog. It’s kind of like roast beef, but more tender. It’s was really really tender actually. My enjoyment of it was a little difficult however because I mean… you know… it’s a dog. Dogs are to Americans what cows are to Hindus; they’re sacred. Not sacred in a religious manner, but still pretty much sacred. So putting it in my mouth and eating it was a bizarre experience. I don’t think I ever need to eat dog again, but now I can chalk that up to one more odd food under my belt.

Anyway moving on to something a little more appetizing.

I found cheddar cheese at the import store (Land O’Lakes, but beggars can’t be choosers), some sort of decent brand of sliced deli ham, sliced bread, and I even found mayonnaise! Therefore it was time to make a sandwich.

I was soooo excited to eat this sandwich. I melted the cheese a little tiny bit, spread the mayo, sliced it in half (diagonally of course), then I sat down to watch Demolition Man. What could be more wonderful?

Nothing.

Except once again the Chinese added sugar to something that’s not supposed to have sugar in it: Mayonnaise. AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh I can’t win! They do it to hot dogs, popcorn, bread, even mayonnaise! *Sigh* What a letdown.

I’m joking, in actuality I liked it well enough. It tasted exactly like Miracle Whip. I don’t really like Miracle Whip, but the fact that it so perfectly emulated Miracle Whip was still a strong feeling of home. It’s just that it was less like “Ah yes, this reminds me of the good times back home” and more like “Ah yes, this reminds me of when something on the menu says it comes with mayonnaise but they actually mean Miracle Whip and they think you can’t taste the difference…” which oddly enough makes it feel more like home than the other way around.

You win this time China.

Here is the least appetizing picture of nachos ever taken:

Please google image search the word “nachos” to see what they’re actually supposed to look like.

At the import store I found some reasonable tasting salsa so I made Helen and May some really simple nachos. Just the cheddar, salsa, and chips. They loved it. I was so happy. I wish I could introduce them to the loaded nachos they serve at Mexican restaurants with sour cream, olives, guacamole, lettuce, beef or chicken, and tomatoes and stuff, but I don’t have the abilities.

Also I forgot that there was a microwave in the school, so I microwaved them in my room and ran half a mile down the stairs and through the school so I could serve it to them hot. Stupid me. Next time I’ll do it right.

For any Chinese person reading this that wants to make nachos (and you do) here’s how to do it. Everyone else can skip on to the next picture. Note: It’s not as hard as it sounds, I just had to be extra descriptive sometimes to try and counter all the problems I’ve seen people have before (I never thought they would be problems because I’m from a western society where we have all this stuff and know how to use it):

1. Go to Olé.
2. Go to the chips section. On the bottom shelves you will see corn chips. Get “La Tapatia Tostaditas Corn Tortilla Chips”. They have a red bag with yellow chips inside. If those aren’t there find some other kind of corn chip. It has to be a corn chip, not a potato chip or any other kind of vegetable. It must be corn. Also not a blue corn chip, make sure it’s white or yellow.
3. Go to the jarring section. Find “Master Foods Tastemaster Medium Salsa Original Dip!” It’s a medium sized jar that has a tomato and a pepper on the outside of it. If they have a “Hot Salsa” version, get that instead.
4. Go to the cheese section. Buy Land O’Lakes Sharp Cheddar Cheese. If it says “mild cheddar” don’t get that, that doesn’t have any taste. Get regular or sharp. Sharp is best.
5. Spend too much money buying these things at the checkout counter.
6. Go home; hopefully this doesn’t take you 3 hours.
7. Cut some slices of cheddar that are no more than 1 cm thick. The way you cut cheese is by holding the block a very specific way. Hold it in your left hand like you’re looking at the wide side of a building, now turn it 90 degrees on its side and place it on a cutting board like that. Now place the knife’s blade onto the top of the block of cheese 1 cm in from the right side. Now press down as straight as you can with the majority of the pressure being on blade in the cheese, not on the handle of your knife. Don’t saw back and forth! That will screw up your cut and make it harder for the cheese to melt later! Also don’t push down too hard when cutting or you will screw up the cut again and it will also mess with your melting later. You should now have a slice of cheese. Make 12 to 15 of these slices
8. Get a microwave safe plate and put a handful of chips on it. Try not to crush the chips as you do this.
9. Put a few slices of cheese randomly on the chip pile.
10. Add another handful of chips to the plate.
11. Put a few more slices of cheese one the pile, preferably not near where the other slices were
12. One more handful of chips on the plate.
13. Take a teaspoon and get 5 or 6 spoonfuls of salsa on top of the chips. Drip it all over as much as you can.
14. Put the rest of the cheese on
15. Put it in the microwave for about 3 minutes or until the cheese is completely melted.
16. Try to eat it hot, while the cheese is still all melty and liquidy.

Congratulations, you made and ate nachos, a classic Tex-Mex (Texas/Mexican) traditional food.

Trust me, you want to do this, you’ve never tasted anything like this before and I can guarantee you’ll enjoy it. I would love for this to become a hit in China. That would be very funny to me and make me extremely happy. Mostly because I like the idea of some American coming here after me going “Wth? How did nachos get here?”.

Next Up: We were taught that if a Chinese person puts something on your plate, you have to eat it or you will be insulting them. A seafood restaurant is probably the worst place for me to go with that rule being so important:

All the English teachers went out for a big lunch at a seafood place. I went with for a number of reasons: 1) I like going out to eat. 2) I want to be accepted and respected as a teacher by the other teachers and the school (something the administration tries its damnedest to make sure doesn’t happen) and 3) I figured there would be more than just seafood for people that were allergic etc. Turns out that was a western assumption. Mr. Yao bought some food specially for me because they found out I don’t like seafood. Very nice to take me into consideration (though I was begging them not to treat me differently). It was some really good food though.

Lessons I learned from this excursion? If I want to be treated as an equal I should not put myself in situations where I’m at a supreme disadvantage (such as overcoming my gag reflex at the thought of putting crustaceans in my mouth). Look at these things. They’re like a foot long with big spiky mutant shells that aliens have! I don’t even know what kind of animal this is and I ate it:

Some shots of the place where we ate and the port:

When I see two small children playing with blown up plastic bags on strings and thoroughly enjoy themselves, I get a little disgusted with some aspects of consumeristic values. Not that I’m not totally a hardcore consumer or that I preach anti-consumerism or that I think kids need to grow up in the woods living off the land or anything. I need this computer I’m on, I love movies, I love my Wii, and I like processed Oscar Mayer hot dogs with Heinz Ketchup. Also it’s not like I’m a parent so I really don’t have a lot of room to judge. It’s just that I when I see this and think of the parents who absolutely need to buy their 4 or 5 year old kid gigantic stuffed animals or a talking robot dog or other toys that only have one single use and completely limit imagination, I can’t help but feel a little… I’m not sure. I don’t know if there’s a word for it. It’s like ashamed/sad/disappointed/disgusted/hurt/something else I can’t put my figure on.

Wǒ de Bàba he Māma

My mom and dad came to China. It pretty much nervoused me out cause I kept thinking about my complete crap filled experience trying to get used to this country in my first couple months. How to use the bus, I could speak zero Chinese, no teachers in my school would look at me, I had no real support system built in yet, taxi drivers refused to take me to my school (still don’t, but now I can swear at them), etc etc. Horrible awful experience in the first couple months. Now I’m all good. It’s just that all I could think about was my parents experiencing the same thing, me losing them in a crowded market, and then them not being able to get home.

Of course, that was a rather ridiculous thing to think. It’s just that living in a port tends to skew your perpective of how easy it is to get from place to place in a city and how many people in the rest of the city actually speak English. If you’re someplace that has anyone my age instead of, say, a bunch of crusty old truck drivers and mechanics, then you’re a lot more likely to find someone that can help you out a little if you get stuck. If you live somewhere that taxi drivers believe they can get a fare nearby, you’ll also be fine. So I freaked out a little, though I found it was unnecessary after spending a few days with them.

So when they arrive in China they get a driver from Hong Kong to take them out to Da Mei Sha beach nearby(ish) where I live. I hopped a bus and went over after class.

“No Spieeing, No Littering, Uttermost Penalty ¥200″

I assume that the word “spieeing” applies to all the people I see spitting and peeing in public all the time. I’m sure these signs will act as a helpful reminder that spitting, peeing, pooping, and littering anywhere you want is a public health concern and brings the overall quality of life for everyone in China lower and lower.

Lol yeah right:

This is Da Mei Sha beach. I showed it once way back when I went to that Russian party in a club nearby. I finally have some photos of what it looks like during the day.

Just going to point something out, everyone in China seems to really love going to the beach (though not as much right now because it’s winter). Why is that?

Most Chinese people hate the sun because it makes their skin “turn black.” Before coming to China we were warned that almost all Chinese skin products have bleach in them so anyone who had issues with that (allergic reaction, indignation, etc) should bring their own.

Now, going on the idea most people in China seem to want to be more white, we can rule out that they go to the beach to sun tan. So why else do you go to the beach? To swim of course!

Except on average people here don’t know how to swim. I’ve had people mime swimming to me and they mime the doggy paddle. If they don’t know how to swim and they don’t like sun tanning, why do they go to the beach? I don’t know. Quentin had some white-foreigner-centric ideas of “white people do it and say that’s what you’re supposed to do on vacation; so that’s what we’ll do” but I’m not sure how much I buy that. Could just be that they really like all the fresh air or something. I honestly don’t know. I don’t understand this one yet. I’ve even asked my students why they like the beach and they said they don’t really know… :-/

People wanting to take their picture with white people at the beach isn’t helping the counter argument to “White people do it” however.

“Victory! I got three of ‘em!”

Emporer Palpatine’s summer home:

My parents and I walked around and found what appeared to be an abandoned/not yet fully completed, “Greek” themed outdoor shopping mall:

Hahaha what am I twelve?

This is Da Fan, the oil painting village. It’s like the art district basically. If you ever want a perfect copy of Starry Night or Napoleon Crossing the Alps you can find it here.

Seriously, they do a lot of Napoleon Crossing the Alps.

Also they do copies of family photos if you want that instead. I didn’t take a lot of pictures because I wasn’t sure how the artists would feel about me walking around taking photos of their stuff.

I think it’s very good idea to centralize all the artwork like that. It’s like the MCAD art sale but permanent. Art is a hard business because it’s hard to get your name out and so on and people don’t always need you. If you have a central location that everyone goes to for all their artists you’ll have a much much better chance of getting noticed and getting business.

The only problem was that all of it looked exactly the same as each other. There were very few people that were being truly creative and trying new things with their work. 98% of everything I saw was either ancient Chinese style or classical European (mtly European oddly enough). Very boring. I felt bad because the few artists I saw that were actually trying something new or different no one was in their store. Everyone just kept going over to the sofa paintings and hotel lobby pieces. Probably because it was more safe. Not many people in the world trust their own artistic tastes. This is why people would rather buy a print of a painting at Wal-Mart or Target than buy an actual original, sometimes less expensive, and wholly unique piece of work. If other people go “yes this is good artwork” by putting it in a store for you to buy, and you’re not confident in what “good art” is, then you’re more likely to buy the pre-approved piece than find your own. It’s just easier that way. Which is unfortunate but true by my observation.

What saddened me though, is that the arts are supposed to be creative. That’s the fun of them. Yet here I was staring at more copying. I understand they’re working artists and that’s where the money is here, but if you’re just doing what you’re told and not making your own things to also try and sell (so that people will come to you for your individual touch instead of just technical abilities) how are you any different from a mechanic? Or a plumber? Or a construction worker? Unfortunately it seems they will forever be craftsmen, not artists. It’s like they don’t even aspire to be the car designer, the city planner, or the architect. It’s a highly unfortunate set of circumstances and I really hope that those little glimmers of creativity I saw in there aren’t extinguished.

After the oil painting village we went to the Shenzhen Museum. As much as I complain about learning about history, I still like learning about it. Language, writing, art, culture, things like that. Here’s a cool wooden bowl. It was for holding flower petals I believe:

I’ve seen this style of bat on a couple of Chinese things. It’s a cool style, I like it, really curly. Different than usual ways I see them with their wings completely splayed all the way out:

“YAAAAHH!! *Dinga Dinga Ling!*”

If I had to be a member of any religion, I’d probably choose buddhism. I mean who wouldn’t? Siddhartha is a little uptight I guess, but I mean look at Budai, he just can’t stop laughing he’s so fat and happy!

These women make me smile as well:

“Hmm…”

“Hmmmm”

“HMMMM”

Okay now I’m not sure you’re ready for the natural history section of the museum or not. All of the taxidermy seems to have been done with around turn of the 20th century technology.

Let’s start things off easy with the vampire deer:

Now let’s move on to the crazy part.

“YEAH!”

Clearly I burst out laughing when I walked into that room. Man I love life.

Here’s a big horrifying monster:

The last part of the trip was room with some different contemporary paintings that were done in a ancient Chinese styles. This painting is of Shenzhen. The red and yellow building is a big landmark here. Either the museum didn’t pick up on the extremely obvious message, or China is getting much more open to hearing people speak. I like to think it’s the latter, but some news reports in the last few months suggest otherwise. All the other images in the room have those tall pretty mountains with mist in them, this one not so much:

Then my parents came over to my school. I had to hire a gypsy cab to do it because I tried 5 different taxis and none of them would take us (It really really sucks to get to my school). I was very proud of myself on being able to negotiate a black cab. I’m now not really afraid of them taking advantage of me cause I can hold my own with them. It’s really cool. Learning Chinese feels exactly like having a super power. Suddenly I’m able to do things I was never able to do before and people think that I can’t do. Gives me a lot of leverage, especially when negotiating prices.

I showed my parents around the school, kids popped out of windows and complimented me and tried really hard to see my parents. It was very cute. I remember one class two girls left to go get water, happened to see my parents and me standing there, then the rest of the class suddenly became very thirsty (in pairs). Quite funny. Then they met Helen and we dropped them off at their hotel. The next day they flew out to Xi’an, I was going to join them in 2 days.

Here’s kind of a cool picture of the construction going on next to my apartment at night (lots of yelling and waking me up every morning):

The next day I went to Hong Kong with a bunch of teacher friends and we had a good time. We went out for morning tea (which is dim sum, this region is the region to get dim sum, it comes from here). This is all of us in Hong Kong Harbor; you see why Chinese clothes don’t fit me?

So Hong Kong Harbor has it’s own Walk of stars like Hollywood. It’s called the Avenue of Stars.

Here’s me being a super huge dork:

I know everyone sees Bruce as the master, I understand his impact. People also think that Jet Li is really badass and cool, I agree. However, when I was young, I watched Jackie Chan. He was something I watched quite a bit of in my early teens. He’s funny and when he was young he was amazingly fast. He’s definitely gotten slower as he’s aged, but I’m rewatching his early stuff currently and am thoroughly impressed by him. His choreography is amazing. I’ve been studying the way he makes everything that every stunt man is doing absolutely important. He’s always moving and fluid and I only appreciate it more as I age and feel non-plussed by current action movies full of wire-fu and slow motion. So personally, seeing the star for Jet Li was cool and the one for Bruce was cool, but getting to put my hands in Jackie Chan’s often burned and mashed hands made me feel sooooooo nerdily happy.

On a side note, his ring and middle finger are really long:

Chinese Toys R Us:

“Wo Pung! Restock the Jenga Shelves!”
“*grumble* I’m so @%&! tired of restocking the Jenga shelves…”

Massive tree growing out the side of a building?

One thing that’s kind of cool that I kept noticing in Hong Kong were these gullies. They built these little channels that would go underground, down the stairs, sometimes running next to the sidewalk. It’s pretty cool. They would sometimes have water going through them. Like little underground man-made creeks:

Check it out, it’s a little bit of stereotypical Hong Kong:

So I’m gonna sign off now. I’ve still gotta talk about Xi’an but there’s not as much to talk about. This is what happens when stuff builds up for a month. My bad. Anyway tomorrow I leave for Harbin. I’m going go see the Ice Festival and (hopefully) stay in a really cool hostel.

Peace out!

Click the picture see it more clearly:

So when December started decorations appeared in stores and on buildings. If were to own a building I would make sure to turn it into a giant tetris game with Christmas lights as well:

It took me a long time to understand why people were celebrating Christmas here. In fact I thought it was awfully cute. There’s so many things to like about Christmas because it’s just such a fun holiday. The Chinese also think it’s a fun holiday, it’s just that they like it in an entirely secular way (like my family), so I was actually quite accepting of it. It felt very much like the whole country was like “Owen! Do you miss home? It’s okay, we’ll help you out!”

When I saw all these decorations in stores I was having a lot of trouble trying to figure out what was different about them from home. It’s the same. Everything is the same. They have fake sprayable snow, they have lights, garlands, christmas trees, holly, etc etc. The don’t have much in the way of wreaths I guess. Also they have no yard decorations like light up deer, plastic candy canes, or giant inflatable Santas. That wasn’t what was different though. I just couldn’t put my finger on why it all seemed slightly askew.

After talking about seeing decorations in the stores with some other people from my program, one girl happened to mention that there was nothing having to do with Christ in the stores. Ohhhhhhhhh. Now I get it! Secular christmas in the stores as well as at home! No angels, no nativity scenes, nothing like that. That’s why I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, I wasn’t looking for Jesus stuff cause I just never think about it. Christmas has absolutely no religious connection here, it’s purely commercial and fun and they make no qualms about that. I’m guessing only about one in every four hundred people would even recognize what’s going on in the nativity scene. Therefore there’s no reason to include any biblical referencing decorations in the stores because they won’t sell.

Here’s a restaurant I always walk by to get to the bus after Chinese class. They’re always educating the staff for that night’s rush or whatever. It’s an awful, awful picture, but it shows how everyone gets into this Christmas thing here:

This is the Christmas tree in front of a Wal-Mart downtown. That logo at the top is the Chinese Coca-Cola logo (Ke Ku Ke Le). When I talked about Christmas with my students I enjoyed dropping the bombshell in the first 4 minutes of class that Santa’s coloring is directly because of Coca-Cola.
“Do you know why Santa is red and white?”
“No. Why?”
“Because of Coca-Cola”
“eeewWWWHHAAAA????”

Then I explain the old ads with coca-cola and how red and white wasn’t invented by coca-cola, but it was heartily solidified by them etc etc. When they find out about it they are completely baffled and oftentimes saddened and confused. It only seemed to make them more curious about other Christmas related things however so that was good.

I received two packages during Christmas week. One from my grandmother and one from my mom and dad. My grandma’s arrived first. Thanks Grandma! It is follows:

I decided to share some of it with my friends. They apparently don’t know about candy canes here and Reese’s straight up don’t exist. I gave them some of each. I even took the chocolate chip cookies, microwaved them, and brought those to them so they could be warm. They’d never had a warm homemade chocolate chip cookie before. They loved it. Helen crunched down and ate her candy cane, then saw that Quentin and I were just sucking on the ends and got all indignant so I gave her more so she could eat it properly:

My mom sent a bunch of christmas cookies. I also shared these with people. It was so much fun. The look on Helen and May’s faces as they ate real homemade christmas cookies was absolutely priceless. They really were discovering it for the first time, something I sometimes take for granted I think. Helen would often eat one and then say “I am such a bad mother.”

I had to specify what order to eat things in and I would introduce them to different foods. Like “This is homemade carmel… This is candied orange peel… this is a cordial cherry…” etc etc. Here’s me opening the box after I recieved it. I didn’t get any photos of May and Helen singing “What’s This?” in their heads unfortunately:

Here’s another another gift from Mom and Dad:

Space Invaders and Wire Way are pretty fun. Marker Man is… actually… one of the worst games I’ve ever played. The controls don’t work. While I was playing I was just getting more and more frustrated because the game wouldn’t do what I told it to. Not very relaxing. The other two are fun though. Thanks for the gifts Mom and Dad!

I also got various gifts left on my desk throughout the week left by different students. This is one by the twins:

This is a bag of “New York Style Bagel Chips” which just so happens to be one of my favorite foods back home. Good choice:

A bunch of kiwi from a teacher friend and a letter from student:

The school didn’t officially decorate anything, but the students and the cafeteria workers did. This is the teacher’s cafeteria:

This balloon makes me laaaaaaugh:

After it deflated a little I’m sure you can figure out at what two points on the balloon the extra latex started to poke out.

Hahahaha!

Here’s the medical office cat. It’s not christmas related but I thought I would show it anyway:

“Merry Xmas Mother Fucker”:

Christmas Eve was much more important to the students than Christmas day because it was a Thursday. They all go home on Friday. So all the Christmas celebrations they wanted to do took place on Thursday. During the day some students were allowed by their teacher to go play some christmas games. Quentin and I were invited down to participate so we did. I almost lost one of the games which would have meant I had to sing. Luckily I got second to last.

This is a game where you have to have like 50 people to play it. It’s like duck duck goose. There’s a bunch of lines of three forming a circle. Then there’s one left over. They run to try and get at the end of a line, when they make it there they’re safe. If they get tagged by the leftover person then they’re the one that’s “it”:

They also gave me a Santa hat:

So the school’s UN group had a big ending get together. Only certain students were allowed to attend and some teachers. You had to have a ticket. I tried to sneak in a couple students, but the kids guarding the door would have none of it. It reminded me very much of the slightly stuffy adult parties that I’ve had to go to with a little bit in the way of controlled fun activities. It was fun though. There were a few tables that were selling their representative country’s goods. I couldn’t find the America table, I don’t think there was one. I remember one student asking me before class “What sort of traditional clothes Americans wear?” so that she could represent the US better.
“I dunno, normal clothes?”
“But like what?”
“Like the same things you wear. Our traditional clothes are also our contemporary clothes.”
“Oh…”
“I mean… we didn’t invent jeans, but they could probably be seen as traditional american clothing.”
“Oh! Yes! That is very good!”
“Also T-Shirts and baseball caps.”
“Oh yes yes! This is very good!”
:-/

The Africa table. I’m sure you can tell that by the various african animals set up:

I was given food pretty often:

Now every student on stage says “Merry Christmas” individually…

…and then they awkwardly dance like only high school students could do: by holding their partner as far away from themselves as humanly possible.

Earlier I said I tried to sneak in a student or two. I did this because I was in the hallway talking with one of them. Apparently all the students had to be stuck inside, doing homework, as they got to hear this invite only party going on in the gym next door. Loud music, cheering kids, classy dress, all of that was going on. Meanwhile they had to do math. That sucks. So after hearing this story I tried to get her into the gym with me so she could experience those pictures above. They didn’t let her in though. I tried the same with a boy from another class. Still didn’t work.

So you have a whole school listening to a classy party with people in suits next door. Compare that to what all the students in the rest of the school decided to do as soon as the clock struck 8:30:

CLICK ME FOR THE FIRST VIDEO

CLICK ME FOR THE SECOND

Yes… YES!! That’s what I like. A little bit of chaos. Awesome. There were kids running everywhere. It was basically 15 minutes of anarchy. I saw some teachers that were standing quietly in the middle of it and others that were crushing themselves up against the wall as much as possible. Meanwhile I ran out into the middle of it and ducked through the human tunnels and got sprayed with snow and foam and silly string and febreeze and had a great time. I told them to do that more often the next day. Loved it; I couldn’t stop smiling about it. It was just so much fun after all the “study hard, work harder” stuff they’re constantly inundated with. I was happy I got to participate and I was really happy for them that they got to release for a little while, even if it was just for 15 minutes.

On Christmas night I went out with Helen, Quentin, May, and Charlotte to eat dinner. We went to Mix City which is a big shopping mall. Everyone in my program always references it like “oh yeah just go to Mix City and you’ll find such and such or so and so” and I’m always like: “What the hell are you talking about? What is this place?” Yantian is in the middle of nowhere. I think now might be a good time to point out that the place I live in Yantian is also referred to by some as “The place where no birds will poop.”

This is the fabled Mix City. It was like some kind of heaven:

Here’s a guy on stilts I guess:

Some live music:

Everyone in Mix City was dressed really nicely. There was lots of food and non-knock off shops. There were even girls there that were my age that I got to check out as they walked by. It’s like I was home but… like surrounded by Chinese people.

We went to a grocery store that carries all kinds of import foods. They seemed to have the American prices directly translated into RMB so they were quite expensive. They even had Sun Chips, olives, and various kinds of real cheese. Like real cheese. Not always the best brand of real cheese, but I really really didn’t care at that point. They even had Feta and Gouda! I now have a block of Land O’ Lakes Extra Sharp Cheddar in my fridge, some corn chips, and mexican salsa. The other day I made some nachos and watched District 9. I was nonstop giggles from happiness. I’m going to make nachos for Helen and May next week I think. It’s important.

Here’s something you won’t get in a US-style “family values” run Christmas: a Santa handing out Christmas Condoms:

Now how often has American Santa given you useless toys versus tried to save your life? Exactly. Chinese Santa 1, American Santa 0.

After getting cheese and stuff we went to upstairs to a southern Chinese food place. It was pretty good. We ate all kinds of stuff. I even had jellyfish for the first time. Jellyfish is exactly like pickled cabbage. I wouldn’t have known it was jellyfish if I hadn’t been told. No picture though, it just looks like shredded cabbage. That’s all. Here’s some lotus root I really liked:

I like this photo because it was taken right when everyone was in the middle of doing something. It’s like a really unimpressive baroque painting:

A more posed version: Helen, May, Quentin, Me, Charlotte. I apparently can’t even put down the chopsticks for one photo:

Charlotte spilled this brown powder stuff on the last piece of watermelon. It’s like 5 times sweeter than sugar. I don’t know what it’s made of, but eaten straight it’s so powerfully sweet it can make you gag. I’ve never had the feeling of gagging from sweetness before this powder:

Apparently Mix City even has an ice skating rink. I don’t know how they keep it cool when it’s constantly mixing with the open air from the rest of the mall, but they do it somehow. I know ice skating ice has a higher freezing point, but wouldn’t have thought it was that high:

After eating we wanted to go to a bar but that didn’t work out. So we went to a KTV called “Party World”. I’m not singing though. No way. I don’t know why it is that Chinese people love to sing so much, but they LOVE it. Everyone here sings all the time. The KTV we went to was basically a hotel, but each room was tiny and only consisted of a couch and a TV. You rent out the room for your party and then sing and order drinks and stuff. An entire building devoted to this, and this isn’t the only one. This city is able to support multiple buildings that are based purely around renting out a room with your friends so you can sing together. I mean I guess we have the game Rock Band in the US, but I don’t think many people actually want to be the singer. Everyone wants to do the drums or the guitar.

I think that in the US we care the most about melodies and how the sound makes you feel versus China where they care more about the lyrics and how the words make you feel. Anyway I don’t have many pictures of it. Basically imagine a hotel hallway and make love ballads blast from every room:

This is me in the lobby. It’s past my bedtime:

It was a good time though. I’m growing more comfortable with KTV’s, I just don’t want to sing. It’s going to take a lot of drinks and a lot of convincing to get me to sing.

One of the things I did for christmas week with my students was explain the history. I talked about Mithras, Rome, Jesus, Pagans, etc etc. I also talked about my own family’s various traditions and showed them pictures. I also played them my favorite Christmas song: “Christmas in Hollis” by Run-DMC (because they only know a small handful of songs made pre-1960 of course). They liked it a lot. They had never heard Christmas music like that before. I had one class that started playing it again as soon as I walked out. I had another girl that came to me after class to make sure on the name of the song. Her parents apparently really wanted to hear it.

Anyway I had them write down the various words they didn’t know while listening and then I would explain it. They didn’t know who Jack Frost was, or egg nog, or the yule log. They also didn’t know that after Santa comes down the chimney he eats cookies, drinks milk, and reads your Christmas list (thus why he’s so fat). They thought he just came down, put presents under the tree, then went back up.

All of those things were totally understandable. The thing that got me the most however was that they apparently didn’t know what mistletoe was. This caught me by surprise and made my class much more fun. I drew mistletoe up on the board and called up two students. Then I asked them to kiss. Of course the whole class is then like “WHOOAA NOOO AAAAHHH HAHAHAHA!!” and it was funny and good. I would then tell them about how sometimes boys in school in the US might carry mistletoe around with them, find a girl they liked, put the mistletoe over them really quick and kiss them, then run away.

One boy in my class was diligently taking notes when he found out about this. After I told about sneaking mistletoe around with you and I was ready to move on he was like: “Wait wait, where do you get mistletoe??” I was like: “I dunno. Just draw it on a piece of paper or something. Go for it. You might get slapped though.” “Okay okay!”

With another kid I asked: “What about you? Sound fun? You wanna try?” and he sat and looked at me very seriously with his arms crossed and said: “No. That is not allowable. If someone did this to me I would punch them.” and I was like: “… k……. moving on…”

I also had them describe to me what exactly China was going to do to make Christmas more Chinese. One student drew this:

It’s Santa on a horse carrying money in a sled behind him. Here were some other answers I heard from students:

There were two things I like most about these statements. The first is that these same ideas occurred in just about every class. The second is what would happen when the dragon/phoenix thing came up. This exact conversation happened a couple of times:

Student: “Maybe Santa will ride a dragon?”
Whole class: “Whooooaaa noooo, no, uh uh!! NO!”
Student: “Or a phoenix, or a phoenix!”
Whole class: “Oh okay.”

What? The dragon is just too crazy and unbelievable, but a pheonix? Okay, that’s more acceptable.

Anyway have a belated merry Christmas and happy new year. Also it’s called “Twenty ten”, not “two thousand and ten”. Did we say “one thousand nine hundred and ninty nine”? No. If I’m going to live in the future I want to speak like I live in the future. Saying “twenty ten” is way more fun and cool to say than “two thousand and ten”. Join the movement or we will be stuck saying it the long lame way for the next 90 years.

Xīn nián kuài lè! (New Year Happy!)