The Mysterious Cultural Practice that is "Ka-La-OK"

I have decided that today, instead of trying to write about everything that I have done in the past two weeks in Beijing, it will probably be better for everyone if I just pick one particular experience or phenomenon and attempt to really get to the root of its cultural meaning.
Today's topic: Ka-La-OK (Karaoke)
It is very hard for a person who has never been to Asia, who has never taken part in this unique cultural experience, to understand the complex and fascinating tradition that is Ka-La-OK. Ka-La-OK in China does not resemble Ka-La-OK in the U.S. Yes, Chinese Ka-La-OK does involve singing songs off-key, but besides this one small coincidental similarity, they are completely different animals. I will explain.
In China, Ka-La-OK does not take place in seedy bars where people (usually under the influence of alcohol) embarrass themselves in front of a room full of annoyed strangers. To get an idea of the mainstream nature of Ka-La-OK, on a Friday night it is a perfectly ordinary and not at all weird for a group of friends to decide to go sing together. In fact, they think it is weird that we think this is weird.
Ka-La-OK establishments are often either themed, (Hello Kitty, House on the Prairie, A Small German Village) or decorated for the holidays, (Halloween, Christmas) and usually their employees are wearing especially interesting costumes that coincide with the surrounding decor. There are all levels of Ka-La-OK places, ranging from cheap hole-in-the-wall places that are possibly offering services above and beyond a sing-along, all the way up to really fancy expensive places that are decked out with huge sparkling chandeliers, sweeping stairways that are straight out of the Sound of Music, and beautiful well-dressed people waiting to open the door for you. These are the types of places that the rich business men go when they have want to sing. And that isn't a joke.
Once you are inside a Ka-La-OK venue, you are escorted to your own private (sound-proof) room that is equipped with your own personal big screen T.V., Ka-La-OK computer screen, two microphones, and usually either a tambourine or a few maraccas, so that even if you are not participating in the singing, you can still add your own artistic style choices. Atleast at the high-end places, your personal touch computer screen means that you have thousands of Chinese and various other language songs at your fingertips. I was particularly impressed by there English Language selection, which allowed me to sing songs such as "Cecilia" by Simon and Garfunkel, "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia, "The Piano Man" by Billy Joel, "Wannabe" by The Spice Girls, and of course "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne. Besides this excellent selection, possibly more important, was the videos that were playing in the background while I sang my heart out. To give a general idea, they usually involved average looking white people, often from the 80's, doing such exciting things as walking on the beach, going to the country fair, or driving in a car. There was an entire video of a desert. There were no people. Just pictures of a random desert while I sang "The Piano Man." This aspect of the evening really helped to elevate the experience to the next level.
Something that I haven't mentioned yet is that my most favorite Ka-La-OK outing involved my friend Yan, his mom and dad, and I. I have been told in the past that the ideal number of people to go sing Ka-La-OK with is 4-6, because if you have too many people you just don't get to sing enough. I would have to agree. I would also strongly reccomend bringing people who speak at least two languages and have an age range of at least 30 years, because it really increases the variety of songs that you can sing. For instance, you can sing Chinese Revolutionary songs , modern Chinese pop songs, heartfelt Taiwanese love ballads, and if you have an American, she might even sing you some Third-Eye-Blind.
In addition to dscussing the endless choices that Ka-La-OK presents, I think it is also really important to at least try to explain the Chinese Ka-La-OK attitude. Because this is what makes the experience truly different from Ka-La-OK in other places. Ka-La-OK is not a joke. It is serious business. Yes, it is entertainment, but the Chinese friends that I have gone to Ka-La-OK with approach it with almost an academic energy. They give it their all, they don't feel self-conscious about their less than perfect pitch, and singing without holding the microphone firmly in their hand is not an option. (and these are relatively small rooms, making the microphone not exactly necessary.)
In conclusion, Ka-La-OK in China is ubiquitous, it is enjoyed by people of all ages, and it is very serious business that is not to be mocked or questioned. Even when you are forced to get up at 8 a.m. on a Tuesday morning to go sing Ka-La-OK when the rooms are the cheapest.

Reflections

There is a lot going on in my head right now, which has made it hard to sit down and write a coherent and entertaining blog that will leave my many loyal readers feeling satisfied. I have just finished my 4 months of study in Hangzhou. I have finished exams, graduated, put on a butt-kicking kungfu performance (see above), packed up my things, said goodbye to the many good friends that I have grown to love and depend on in the past few months, and then I got on a plane to embark on my next great adventure. It is truly a case example of one of those times when your head is in many places all at once.
I am someone who loves traveling, the excitement of going new places, facing new obstacles and overcoming those obstacles. Yet somehow, everytime it is time to leave a place that I have grown to love, and more importantly, to leave people that I have grown so close to, there is that inevitable tug in my stomach. Sometimes it feels so nice to be comfortable.
It is amazing to me how Hangzhou so quickly became a home to me. When I first arrived in this foreign city after way too many hours of travel, I felt displaced and unconnected. The relationships that I made with my teachers, friends, roommate, and random people in restaurants, shops, and on sidewalks all have played a part in turning this strange city into a place that it was always nice to come back to, even after only a weekend of traveling.
The start of this program was really hard for me. I came knowing no one, with a relatively low level of Chinese. I think the most difficult aspect of the whole thing was feeling like I was losing my ability to be independent. Chinese turned me into a small child, I needed to hold my roommates hand when I crossed the street, and I often asked questions like " How do you say orange?" I did not know how to eat or what to eat or what I was eating.
At first I was afraid that I might always be a child in China, that it was just too hard, that I would never be able to do this impossible task that I had so romanticized in my mind. But somehow I have come out of this semester a happy, relatively-self sufficient person who speaks Chinese pretty well, has made some life-long friends, and has also learned an important life lesson that doesn't really have anything to do with China. I have learned that it is okay to let people help you. I don't have to do everything by myself.
I am currently in Beijing staying with my good friend Yan and his family, and I am letting them help me a lot. I am not yet sure how I feel about Beijing and I have been having a lot of trouble trying to understand the Beijing accent, as I have been studying in the south all this time. Still, I am really enjoying being here and getting to know a new city.

My Haircut

Yesterday I had my first Chinese haircut. This may seem like a small, unimportant, humdrum event, but many weeks of thought went into this decision and many hours were spent agonizing over whether this choice would have positive or negative effects on my personal well-being (and my appearance). I eventually decided that my rats nest, broom-like, super-long hair was not going to make it a whole year without being cut. So, I figured that it was safest to take my friend Pei-Pei up on her offer to take me to the place that she gets her haircut. It was on the pricier side for China (80 kuai or $12), but I figured that it was the safest bet to go with my friend so she could help translate my hair needs.
The first part of my haircut experience was great. I got a head massage, an ear massage, I had my hair washed with shampoo (but no water) and sculped into various troll like sculptures. He went through several cylces of foaming up, removing foam, replacing foam, using foam to wash my ears, etc. All very good. Then I got to lie down while the foam was washed from my hair and then I returned to my chair for a full upper body massage. Shoulders, back, arms, hands. I also had my ears cleaned for me (a personal first), which involved sticking a long piece of cotton down into my ear until I starting laughing hysterically because it tickled so much and he stopped. I think it helps to picture the whole scene if I tell you that my Chinese friend was switching back and forth between playing her PSP and taking embarressing pictures and videos of me at various soapy-wet stages. I would try to describe the unique style of hair that the person who was massaging me was sporting, but I just don't think I could do it justice.
After about an hour of washing and massaging, I moved to another chair where the actually cutting was to take place.
My stylist was dressed stylishly, and his hair was also styled in typical assymetrical, poofy, kind of sticking up asian punk boy style. I guess this should have been some sort of warning about the type of haircut that I was about to get, but at the time I thought nothing of it. I merely sat down, tried to communicate a little bit of what I wanted, and then just let him do his thing. It's just hair right?
Everything was going fine for a while. He was really an artist, pulled my hair in all sorts of directions to achieve the layering and slanting that he desired. It felt much more like an artistic process than previous haircuts that I have had in the States (there also may have been a little bit more guess and check involved). I really felt that he was trying to create a thing of beauty. Unfortunately, sometimes Chinese standards for what are beautiful do not coincide with what I see as beautiful. This became very evident to me when he started teasing my hair in sort of an 80's punk rock fashion, hacking off random chunks of hair about two inches from my head, and pulling my hair up into a little poodle pony tail on the top of my head. Fortunately, my Chinese is good enough at this point to communicate the fact that these style choices were not okay with me, and that they must be stopped at once before I was turned into a 80's punk, poodle, female mullet, or anything equally horrifiying.
In the end, I think I have come out of this experience with a deeper understanding of how cultural our own standards of beauty are, and how even if I say that I am open to Chinese culture and traditions, this does not necessarily mean that I am ready to sport modern day Chinese styles, especially when they involve my own head.

Adventures in Shanghai

It is about 6 o'clock in the evening on the most gruelingly academic day that I have had so far and China, and I am very glad that I have gotten through it alive and with minimal injuries. Because last Thursday was Thanksgiving, they decided it would be a good idea to move our normal Friday tests to Monday. So in addition to 5 hours of normal classes, I also had two hours of testing, not to mention I had to hand in about 3,000 characters of essay today.
Okay, really, I should stop complaining, but all day what I was thinking was that I am a soft American whose relaxed work-ethic cannot keep up with the intense Chinese standards that are expected of me.
But don't think that I let the insane amount of work that I had ruin my weekend. Oh no. That would not be in character at all.
On Friday morning I had a wonderful video chat session with my family who were all gathered together on Thursday night. Then I went to Shanghai. I am only about an hour an a half away from Shanghai, but until this weekend had yet to spend anytime there. It was great. It has a completely different feel from Hangzhou, at times I felt like I was back in the states, at times I felt like I was strolling down a European street, and at times I was in Latin American. It is a truly international city, and it has a fabulously convenient subway system. On Friday night we went to a Club that has a live Latin band and dancing, something that I have been missing and craving for some time now. The musicians were mostly from Cuba, and the audience was from various far-off Spanish speaking countries. I am pretty sure I did not hear any Chinese spoken the whole night. It is really too bad that I don't speak any Spanish anymore because Chinese has taken over my brain. I'm hoping that someday maybe I can get it back.
After the music and dancing was over we ended up hanging out with some of the band members and some of them were guys who had been in China for years and years. It was really fascinating to hear about how they all got here, and the reasons why they stayed for so long.
On Saturday I got to have lunch with an old friend of my friend Kayla. Kayla lived in Shanghai for eight years and this woman knew her as a little girl. It was lovely to be in a home and eat home-cooked dishes and chat.
So I definitely had my fun in Shanghai, and then it was back home to Hangzhou, where I had piles and piles of work awaiting me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It is beginning to hit me that only 2 weeks remain in my program here in Hangzhou, and this is important because I really like the people here and also because I have a lot of work to do before I leave. It may only be two weeks, but I am expected to write thousands and thousands of characters. It is weird because most of my friends here are mentally preparing to go back to the states, they are making lists of the things that they are going to miss and wondering how they are ever going to live without dumplings for breakfast, or how they are going to ever readjust to paying more than $2 for a delicious meal. But not me. I have none of these problems because I am staying here in this lovely, strange, and fascinating country for a very long time.
While my classmates' brains are drifting back to the states, mine is already thinking about the 7 weeks of traveling that I have ahead of me, during which I will be accompanied by various and wonderful travel companions. I am also thinking about my new home in Kunming and starting over in the beautiful city where everything will be completely new again.
But really, I have no need to live in the future because right now is pretty great. I spent this past weekend spreading my time between a tea house and a jazz club. On Friday night my friends and I "won the tea house," meaning we spent seven hours there, drinking tea, eating food, playing games, collapsing on the floor of our private room in fits of laughter, until they kicked us out at 1a.m. On Saturday and Sunday we spent many many hours listening to live music and chatting with the musicians at JZ jazz bar, where the band consists of a singer and bassist from Mauricius, a drummer from Portugal, and one of the best Jazz pianists in China. Random people end up in China. We all wish that we found this club months ago, but we acknowlegde that it is probably better for our budgets and grade point averages that we did not.
This week is our last week of weekly tests. Next week we have a review week, and then the following week is finals. And somewhere in there we are expected to write thousands of characters, no big deal.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we are all going together to have a "traditional" thanksgiving feast at an Irish Pub in Hangzhou called "the shamrock."
These last two weeks will probably fly by.
Oh, and my internet in my room has decided to suddenly stop working, so if you have not had any contact with me for a while, that is probably the reason why. Having an apple computer in China is extremely mafan.

Useful Chinese Phrases

Two weekends ago I traveled to Suzhou with two good friends and then this past weekend I went to Nanjing with about 50-60 people from my program including Chinese roommates and teachers. I have also spent time browsing at markets, eating delicious foods, and having fascinating conversations with my Chinese professors, most of whom are Chinese women in their mid-twenties who enjoy getting completely off topic almost as much as I do. While my ability to present myself in a somewhat intelligent way improves a little bit everyday, I fear that my english also gets a little worse. Or rather, every day my "chinglish" gets a little bit better.
I would like to introduce a few useful chinglish phrases that will help my friends and family to understand me when I (eventually) return home to the states, or if I happen to slip these seemingly nonsensical words into our skype conversations. My friends and I all agree that some Chinese words are just plain better than their English equivalents.
1. 麻烦 "ma fan" (mah-fahn) both a noun and a verb!
meaning: troublesome, annoying, bothersome, or to trouble, annoy, or bother; used to describe situations, people, and really just about anything.
Examples (in Chinglish): This essay is so mafan. I don't want to write it.
(an actually conversation excerpt) Boys like it when girls mafan them.
2. 比较 "bi jiao" ( bee-jee-ow)
meaning: relatively or kind of; used in basically every sentence ever
Examples: This book is bijiao interesting. That class was bijiao long. He is a bijiao good person. That food is bijiao delicious. It has been a bijiao long time since I showered.
3. 差不多 "cha bu duo" (chah-boo-dou)
meaning: literally more or less, often used to mean good enough or close enough.
Examples: When a professor asks if you have prepared well for class the answer is often: chabuduo.
So, maybe these words aren't applicable to anyone else's life except mine. But they are much more commonly used than their English counterparts and they have become integral parts of my everyday life. like chopsticks. and green tea.
A few other things of note that have happened recently:
1. I was approached by a person speaking Spanish only to discover that I no longer speak Spanish. My brain space that was previously filled with 8 years of Spanish study is now completely blocked out by Chinese. I think I am speaking Spanish, but Chinese comes out.
2. I went to a hot springs outside of Nanjing where they have a pool filled with small fish that nibble on your dead skin. It felt weird.
3. My friends and I have gotten into the habit of referring to eachother as "Mei nu" and "Shuai ge" meaning pretty lady and handsome guy. You can also call waiters in restaurants by screaming these words across the room.
That's all for now. I will try to not wait almost two entire weeks before writing again.

奥巴马！ （Obama)

First, I would like to say that following the election from China was a weird and surreal experience that definitely gave me a unique perspective on this huge event in American history. The timing was bizarre for us folks who are 12 hours ahead because I woke up Wednesday morning (which is Tuesday night in the States) and then spent the morning rushing back to my room in between classes, checking to see if a president had been chosen yet. The average Chinese person really does not care about the American President, however I did have quite a fun time trying to describe what the electoral college is to my some Chinese friends who were curious as to how the U.S. could have so few people (they mistook the electoral vote, which at the time was about 207-103, for the popular vote.) Nevertheless, the energy among the foreigners in China is mostly one of celebration, hope, and awe. I spent many hours on Wednesday reading newspapers online, and all I can say is that Obama seems too good to be true. I hope this is not the case, and when I read his speeches I am awestruck by his ability to say extremely intelligent things in humble and honest ways. I am very excited to see what he can do. I will be watching from afar. I am also excited by my ability to discuss my opinions on politics, the U.S. economy (crisis) and other important current events in Chinese.
But enough politics! It has been rainy and wet and kind of gross lately which does not inspire me to get out as much. I have also been recovering from our crazy week of traveling, which means catching up on correspondence with the outside world and with friends here. It also means lounging, reading, doing kunfu, running, swimming, making earrings, and eating...always eating. I don't know what I am going to do when I have to go back to the states and there are no vegetable and red bean dumplings at breakfast and chinese style eggplant and tofu served over delicious rice for dinner.
This Wednesday we went to a Chinese elementary school and and made some "xiao pengyou" (literally little friends). It was a really interesting experience because Chinese elementary school is very different from my own experiences. Let's just say Chinese children are very well trained, from a young age. We learned about insects with one group of students and then did a craft project and tried to talk with the students. I am not sure whether it was because they did not understand our less than perfect Chinese, or because they were intimated by us foreigners, or some other reason, but it was really hard to get them to answer our questions with more than a grunt. They were also very focused on their construction paper bug making. There were also about 8 photographers sticking cameras in our faces, which made the whole experience a little fake. However, we went to a second classroom where the children were a little older and much more friendly and silly. They performed songs for us and asked us questions in english and giggled whenever I said anything in Chinese, and made us all sign our names in english and chinese about 50 times. I think we were equally amused by eachother.
Another part of my week that I really enjoyed was my one on one class where we have fantastic and fascinating discussions about various aspects of life in China and the U.S. that usually have little to do with the topic of our reading for the day. For example, on Monday we spent quite a bit of time discussing prostitution and pornography, and on Wednesday we drifted from palm reading to body image to plastic surgery and marrying for money to shampoo and hairstyles. I think we both equally enjoy sharing the parts of our own cultural standards that we know will truly shock the other. For example, when I told her that my mom went back to work after having children and I went to daycare, she told me that you cannot do this in China. If a mom goes back to work, her parents or her husbands parents will watch the kids, because in China if you leave your children with a stranger you risk them selling your kids. Especially sons. So watch out.
One final bit of exciting news is that I have gotten an internship in Kunming, Yunnan, China for next semester and so I will be staying in China for a wicked long time, probably until August or so. I am very excited, but ofcourse I will miss all of you, so if you feel like you ever in your life might want to come visit China, this is the time. I will welcome you with open arms and help you order delicious food in restaurants.

My Travels

I am sorry to all of you who are disappointed by the long lapse in writing. I really have just been too happy and busy and consumed by this place and my gallivanting about to sit down and write. But it is time to catch up. Usually I write my own journal first and then when I write my blog it is a somewhat more processed version of my thoughts, but this time it has also been about 2 weeks since I have written in my journal, so I apologize for any scatter-brained-ness that may be the result. I also just have so much to say.
I never know where to start. The last time that I wrote was the night before I left for Kunming, where I traveled with two friends for nine days which we spent eating different and interesting foods, drinking green tea, strolling through the city streets, trekking in one of the most beautiful places that I think I have ever been, laughing at each other(and sometimes at surrounding people), being attacked by hungry mountain goats, following arrows that led to nowhere and breathing in the wonderful clean air that Hangzhou is often lacking. To put it very simply, it was an amazing trip and I really enjoyed every single unreal feeling minute of it.
Kunming (and Yunnan province in general) has a very different feel from the rest of China because 50% of the population is made up of minority ethnic groups, as opposed to Han Chinese which make up the majority of the population. This definitely has visible affects on the type of place that it is, meaning it is a very culturally diverse place and in some ways a little more open of a place than the rest of China. At least this was my impression after spending just a few days there. We all agreed that it just felt comfortable, a littler older than Hangzhou, which sometimes can feel more man-made, manufactured, or tourist driven (if you don't know the right places to go.) But don't get me wrong, Kunming also has a fair number of white people (bai ren) also known as foreigners (lao wai). However, something that I found extremely interesting and that I liked a lot about Kunming was that as opposed to in Hangzhou, where people most of the time assume that I do not speak a word of Chinese, in Kunming people would just start talking to me in Chinese, assuming that I would understand what they were saying. It was a nice change to have people assume that I have the ability to communicate somewhat intelligently. Most of the time, I think that I didn't prove their assumption wrong. In Hangzhou there are a fair number of white tourists, but in Kunming the majority of foreigners who are in the city live there for extended periods of time, and I think that is the difference.
We spent two days in Kunming staying at a Hostel called "The Hump" which had a really cool international traveler atmosphere and a rooftop bar. It was filled with people from all over the world and I had a few surreal experiences that involved hanging out with a bunch of Israelis (not something I really expected to do in China). It was interesting because two different Israelis approached me assuming that I was Israeli (there goes my face giving me away again) and while I don't speak any Hebrew and I don't necessarily connect to Judaism on a religious level, it felt really comfortable talking to these familiar feeling people in a foreign land.
In Kunming I also have a college friend who is studying there for the semester and so he took us around and brought us to this really cool ethnic minorities dance party that happens every Sunday night under a bridge near where he lives. After the dance we ate delicious spicy barbecued shish kababs and had a really interesting conversation about the U.S. economy and role in the world, along with China's changing role in the world with a random older Chinese man who seemed just excited and interested as we were to be having this discussion with random white students who surprised him by being able to carry on an intelligent conversation in Chinese.
From Kunming we took a night bus (8-9 hours on a bus with beds like in Harry Potter) up to Lijiang where we met up with a tour guide from a really cool eco-tourism company and we spent two days trekking with her in a really remote part of the countryside. It was beautiful. The mountains where green and the sky was blue (these things are sadly not always the case in China.) It really did not feel like any China that we know, and we spent a lot of time saying "Ireland, that is what this reminds me of!" or "Africa! we are definitely in some part of Africa!" It is not important that none of us have ever been to either of those places, only that we felt like we were not in China. We spent the night in a rural village staying at a beautiful guesthouse and eating freshly harvested vegetables and possibly freshly killed meat. I am no carnivore, but the meat we ate was probably the most delicious that I have ever eaten. And at night there were so many stars!
We spent another two days hiking Tiger's Leaping Gorge, a slightly more developed (but still extremely uncrowded) path that is scattered with Guesthouses that you can stay in each night. For the cost of maybe $6-7 a person per night you can eat dinner, sleep in a bed with clean sheets, and eat a delicious breakfast (of chocolate pancakes and deep fried omelets), all the while surrounded by towering snow covered peaks that you can see out your bedroom window. Basically, when you are in such a perfect place all you can think to say is, "What did I do to deserve this? Is this real? and, If I wasn't me, I would be so jealous of me." It was the perfect break.
We hiked out on Friday (with a little bit of trouble because of a ferry that was hiding from us and the fact that Chinese people's sense of directions are a bit different from ours...for example they will tell you something is right over there which can mean anywhere from 3 minutes to 4 hours away.) But no problem! We got out eventually and got another night bus back to Kunming and arrived back at our hostel around 7 a.m. And I took a shower.
We spent Saturday eating our way through Kunming. and then Sunday we got up at 5:30 a.m. to go the the airport and did not get home to Hangzhou until 8:00 at night. But the lovely thing about it was that after traveling for a week and coming back it did feel like coming back home, to this place that I have been living for 2 months now, to my bed and my pictures and my roommate and my friends and teachers. It is pretty cool to feel that way about a place that not so long ago was completely foreign and unknown and scary.
Now I am back to classes and playing and a little homework every now and then, and sometimes I sleep. I have a lot more to say, of course, but I think I will stop there for now and maybe go grab some dinner so that I can digest before Kungfu class. I hope everyone out there all over the world is doing well. Happy Halloween!

Pictures now, Stories later

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Amusing Misunderstandings

It has been a while since my last post and I am leaving tomorrow to go on vacation for 9 days, so I figure I should probably take a minute and check in with the outside world. I had midterm exams this week, which I am very happy to be done with. Don't worry, I did not let them get too much in the way of my having fun, as I managed to still get out and finally go boating on West Lake and also had my first lovely tea house experience. The tests themselves were stressful, because when it comes down to it, Chinese is pretty much impossible...but in a really fun and amusing way. Meaning it is funny for others when you mess up and end up saying something that is completely different from what you intended to say. For example, my friend Ande asked the gym attendant if he wanted to see his bathroom, when he really meant to ask if he wanted to see his student ID (an honest mistake), and another friend Guo An was confused when he was told that a restaurant was on the 8th floor of a building. When he asked how could this be, a restaurant so high up, PeiPei told him not to worry, there was an elevator. Neither of them understood why everyone else found this interaction so funny. It is also possible that it doesn't translate that well into English, but I think it really exemplifies the hilarity of cultural misunderstanding (which is the good side of cultural misunderstanding that allows us to laugh at ourselves and gain some sort of perspective).
Last weekend I also went to my first college dance in China. Yes, they have them, and they are fabulous. Words really can't describe. When my roommate told me about this dance I tried to get her to give me some sort of insight into what kind of an occasion this was. She really gave me nothing to work with. When I asked her if she usually went to these types of things, she said no, but if I wanted to go she would go with me. A few other Chinese students that I asked gave me the same reply. Obviously, I never turn down a dance party, and so we gathered a group of people together and after a brief pre-dance dance party we set off, having no idea what to expect. Truly, anything that we could have expected would not have come close to what a great and ridiculous time it was. When we got there they were playing games that involved blindfolded people and fruit and eventually involved blindfolded boys feeding this fruit to their female partners. Seriously, amazing. After the game playing was done, a Chinese boy who could dance(kind of a rarity) taught the Chinese students how to chacha. They focused so hard on learning and it was really, really amusing to watch and ofcourse stumble around trying to learn ourselves. Then, ofcourse, the techno music came on, and I have to admit that I have done a horrible terrible thing... I brought the Macarena to China. And a little known fact is that you can pretty much do the Macarena to any techno song ever. It spread like wildfire and soon there were far too many Chinese students techno Macarena-ing. After the techno, the DJ ( called Deep Breath Lovers Space) slowed it down and the Chinese male population found this an ideal time to swoop in on the unsuspecting foreigners and invite us to dance. My dance partner was very nice, although we had a small misunderstanding when I thought he told me his English teacher's name was Loser (it was Louisa) and I could not get him to understand why Loser would be a silly name. At the end of our dance we parted ways, and when he bravely asked me for my phone number I had to honestly tell him that I don't know my own cell phone number (an excuse that would not fly anywhere else because it would generally not be true.) Overall, a great dance experience, I would highly recommend it.
Tomorrow I leave for Kunming in Yunnan province where I will be traveling this week. I am really excited to explore around and not worry about work at all and see another part of China.

Things that make me happy

I am currently eating crackers that I bought because I thought that they were sesame flavored. Upon closer examination and tasting I have found them to also be sweet potato flavored. At first taste I found this weird and unsettling, having never eaten sweet potato flavored crackers before. But there is just something about them that is endearing, an unfamiliar tangy sweetness that for some reason has me hooked. [I wouldn't go as far as saying China is an unfamiliar cracker, but it's something to think about.]
This last week has been amazing because I have finally gotten over my original fear and anxiety about just getting out and doing things on school days. For about a month I would spend my afternoons in my room, kind of doing work, wasting time on facebook, and more often than not napping. It was a combination or lack of confidence in my Chinese, the unbearable heat, and feeling the pressure of school work that kept me indoors. Last week I went out and did something new and exciting every afternoon, and now I think there is no going back. Yes, I have a lot of work, but spending time out in the city is its own form of education.
Last Tuesday I had Indian food at a fancy restaurant by West Lake and ate with a fork for the first time in six weeks. It felt weird and cumbersome in my hand. On Wednesday we did not have classes because it was a National Holiday. In the morning I was introduced to my new favorite food/addiction in China. It is a big circular crepe that is covered in egg and then sprinkled with cilantro, scallions, and various brown and tangy sauces. Then it is rolled up with a crispy noodle in the middle and looks like an asian sandwich wrap.
On Wednesday my roommate also gave me her bike. Which has made my life infinitely better because biking is the quickest and most fun way to get around. On Wednesday I went biking and explored around West Lake. Not only do I love bike paths that are as big as cars and filled with bike/scooter commuters, but I also love cities that are set up on grids, and the fact that when I am biking people are unable to stare at me for quite as long.
On Thursday after class I convinced my Chinese friend Pei Pei to go biking and exploring with me. Our original plan was to go to West Lake, but as Pei Pei said, (I am going to make the joke even though it doesn't translate well) it looked more like ren hu (people lake) than xi hu (west lake). So we ended up biking around for a long time and discussing our families and disney movies and our desires to never grow up (in Chinese), and eventually we made our way to a park outside of the city called Xixi wetlands. The highlight of this trip was the large plastic balls that you can climb inside and then play in on the water. That may be a bad description, but just picture a person rolling around inside a big plastic bubble that is floating on water.
On Friday, I went with my friend Kayla, who is basically Chinese because she lived in Shanghai from age 4-12, and we went on various postcard, map, and food buying missions. We ate pizza (a neccessary evil that tasted beyond delicious) and went to a night market and just generally enjoyed this city and all of the bright lights and shiny objects.
After not sleeping nearly enough we got up Saturday morning to go on our weekend group camping trip in Anji. It was lovely, an actual hiking trail (most places in China are cement steps) and it rained pretty much the whole time. But really, take me to a beautiful place and give me trail mix, friends, and a comfortable, (somewhat) dry place to sleep for ungodly numbers of hours and I am a happy camper.
In other news, I have midterm exams next week (something that I don't really want to talk about), and then the week after is our fall break and I am planning to travel to Yunnan province with some friends. I am also interviewing with Where There Be Dragons (a travel company that I traveled with to Peru and Thailand when I was 16-17) about a possible position interning with them in China next semester. I am very excited about this possibility.
This has been a long information packed entry, so to sum up, I am really happy. I am beginning to really feel adjusted to this city. I have gotten to the place in my Chinese where I can make jokes on purpose, rather than accidentally. With the exception of the time when I confused the the words for toothbrush and toothpaste (the words are not that similar). So I spent a few minutes asking my Chinese friends for their toothbrushes (not a socially acceptable thing to share), and then it was pointed out that what I really wanted was to use their toothpaste. I got some weird looks for that one. They must have been wondering if in the United States it is okay to ask your friends for their toothbrushes. I often find myself trying to convince Chinese friends that the weird things that I do or say do not represent all American people, that most of the time it is just me being weird.

Spiders and Trust Issues

I am approximately halfway done with my 800 character essay about China's unprecedented and unthinkable change over ther past 30 years in the areas of clothing, food, housing, and transportation, and I feel like now is a good time to switch my brain back to English for a few minutes and update. It is Sunday night here, and unfortunately the Sunday night dread and the impending doom of Monday morning also exists in China...however, I am really in no position to complain because our Chinese roommates had to go to classes on Saturday and Sunday because in China when you have a holiday that gets you out of school you must make that time up on the weekend. I am appalled by this, but all of our roommates seem pretty resigned to it, that's just the way it is here.
This past week was unbearably hot until about Friday. I spent way too much time inside air conditioned classrooms and in my air conditioned dorm room beacuse it felt like walking into an oven every time I walked outside. Knowing the word for air conditioning in Chinese has become fundamental for survival. But this weekend the weather has finally reached that lovely cool autumn feel, when you are still able to wear shorts but the sun feels nice shining on your face.
On Saturday I went with a few American friends to a mountain called Moganshan that is about an hour outside of the city. It was beautiful, and a great adventure of a day, but it was also a pretty weird place. Everything felt like it had been built in the past 5 years, the architecture resembled a European village, and it had the feel of being pretty abandoned, or atleast underused. It was beautiful, but in a very landscaped way.
One of my most memorable moments was at lunch when the waitress offered to go outside and slaughter a chicken for us. Another was when the man who drove us up the mountain magically appeared in the "woods" near us (leading us to wonder if he had been stalking us all day) and was very concerned because there was no way that we could make it back to the place that he had dropped us off (leading us to wonder what the problem was if he was right here and we were also right here). After a confusing conversation in Chinese it was established that his car was at the top of the hill (a 5 minute walk away) and that we would meet him there in half an hour. Overall it was lovely to be out of the city and the view from the top of the mountain was breathtaking. There were also a lot of huge spiders. (see below)

The one thing that I struggled with during the day was trust. When traveling it is all about maintaining a good balance between being suspicious of every person that might rip you off because you are a foreigner and don't tend to know any better, and figuring out who seems like a trustworthy person whose intentions don't go beyond earning a decent living. My friends were all making fun of me because the vehicle that we agreed to get into to take us to the top of the mountain was somewhat questionable, to which I responded, "I trust this guy with my life." But I really felt like that this guy was trustworthy, and as we were climbing into the back of his little box like three wheeled taxi I was trying to justify to myself why it was that I literally just trusted this guy with my life. Was it that he was nicely dressed? that he was smoking a cigarette which I have seen exchanged between men as a symbol of guanxi (interpersonal relations)? or was it that his explanation for how we were going to get to our destination was just whiny enough to sound genuine? I really think for me it comes down to feeling like I am not being lied to or taking advantage of. Speaking a moderate level of Chinese helps. Feeling like I am a relatively good judge of character also helps. But really when it comes down to, it is very hard to explain why my gut instincts tell me to trust some and run away from others.

Being Here

I have been thinking a lot lately about being here. What this means to me, what this means to the people I come into contact with while I am here, what I want to get out of this experience, how I want to behave here, and really thinking about who I am in this place. Because, when you take a person out of their habitat, away from all of the people that you know and feel comfortable around, and most importantly, take away the ability to speak a language in which you are able to freely express yourself, I think that you are given an unique opportunity to take a moment and think about who you are outside of any reasonable and logical context.
It is a very exciting time to be in this country, for a variety of reasons that the U.S. media discusses on a daily basis. But really, being here, it is more of a feeling than anything else. Because I like to be as ambiguous and say things that can be interpreted in a number of ways. Also, because some things are difficult to describe in words, English, Chinese, or otherwise. I am taking a One on One class that involves a professor and I sitting for an hour and a half twice a week and discussing how much China has changed over the past 30 years. It is really beyond my ability to comprehend what China looked like 30 years ago, and before. I would certainly not be here studying if it were thirty years ago. I would not be fumbling about with the hardest language in the world spewing from my mouth, trying to discuss philosophical and cultural differences, as well as favorite American T.V. shows and movies with endlessly patient Chinese people (they are not all endlessly patient, but the ones that are I am very grateful for).
Sometimes it is too easy to lose these feelings of awe and bewilderment in the face of endless hours of homework that involves infinite and monotonous character writing. I am actively trying to remember as often as possible. Everytime I am understood, and everytime I am written off because I cannot understand, and everytime I walk down the street.
I am here, I am small, confused, sometimes frustrated, often misunderstood, and always completely and utterly fascinated by a life that overwhelms me everyday.

Look at me!

Some more pictures to drool over:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?
aid=2025812&l=83340&id=19402752

My Crazy Chinese Life

It has been over a week since I last wrote, and people are beginning to whine to me about how their lives lack meaning when they can't read my blog and how they get depressed everytime they press the refresh button on the browser only to find that there are no new tales of adventure to brighten their day. To all of these people, I am very sorry, I will try to be better.
The last week or so has been very interesting. I feel like I have reached a certain comfort level in Chinese. This does not mean that I am good at speaking or that my vocabulary has grown greatly, only that I don't think about it so much anymore, I just speak, and continue speaking until I am somewhat confident that what I am saying has been at least partially understood. (although there are those times when you try and try and understanding does not seem like a possibility and at those times you can pull out such life saving phrases as "suan le" (forget it) and "mei guanxi" (don't worry about it.) For those of you who enjoy playing charades, I think you would like China a lot.
Last weekend I ended up getting the best of both worlds. I traveled with 3 other American friends to a beautiful lake not far from Hangzhou and had the perfect mix of getting to know these American strangers and going off by myself and exploring. It was great to get away from all (ALL) of the school work for a couple of days and see some of China. The lake was nestled in between beautiful green rolling hills and there were not too many tourists around. Last Sunday was Zhong Qiu Jie (Jong Chee-o Jee-eh) which is the Mid-autumn festival, when you are supposed to eat moon cakes and look at the moon. I discovered a new favorite food, red bean (often put inside a moon cake) , which if you have not tried, you must because it is delicious.
This week has been good as well. Classes are pretty intense, but all of the teachers are helpful and it is really just a lot of work and memorizing and there is no way around that. However I did seem to find some time to go to West Lake with a friend one afternoon to stroll around, as well as attend my gongfu class, which is a blast.
The last 24 hours have been kind of challenging and emotionally draining because my roommate decided to move out yesterday. There are a variety of reasons behind her decision, (none of them being that I am a smelly/creatively clean person) and in the end she has to do what she thinks is best for her, but I am very sad to see her go. The resident director Su Aimei is in the process of finding me a new Chinese roommate, but in the meantime I am enjoying my single and looking forward to exploring Hangzhou with some friends this weekend.
Love you and Miss you all...please contact me by comment, email, facebook, actual mail, etc and tell me what is going on out there in your world.

China China China China

Right now I should be studying for the two tests that I have tomorrow morning, or perhaps writing some of the many hundreds of characters that I need to write for next week. But, I need a break, so this feels like a relatively good use of my time. The pictures that I posted last week are from my weekend trip with my roommate to her home town of yongkang. It was a very nice trip, it was great to meet her family, and we went on a beautiful hike up to an temple in the mountains. The one slight problem with this location was that they did not speak Mandarin, but a completely different dialect, so I spent a fair amount of time being quiet, listening but not understanding, asking my roommate vital questions like "where are we going?" and "what did those people who just pointed at me say?" Apparently, according to my roommate, they thought I was either Russian or Malaysian. When I asked her if this was better than being an American, she said no, it's about the same. This week classes have been pretty intense. I am taking four Chinese courses, which means that I am expected to memorize about 3,000,000 characters a day, write several 400-800 character essays (by hand, no computers allowed) and then there are the tests. I am pretty sure my country of origin did nothing to encourage me to develop the work ethic that is expected here.
It is also difficult to study when there are so many places I want to go out and explore. However, I also really need to step up my Chinese a notch so that when I go places I can communicate with people in a more meaningful way. This week I have tried to find time to just got off campus and walk around. I also went swimming in our school's pool for the first time (it was very crowded), and started taking a gonfu (kunfu) class that meets twice a week. I will be beating people up in no time....just kidding, it is really difficult.
This weekend my plan is to go travel to Qiandao Hu, also known as the Thousand Island Lake (apparently the first episode of Survivor in 2007 was filmed here, or so Time.com told me). The program that I am on really encourages us to go traveling alone so that we can learn to figure stuff out for ourselves. It should be beautiful and I am both excited and nervous. Wish me luck!

Photos

A link to some photos for those of you that do not have facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid
=2025427&l=8071e&id=19402752

Climbing Hills

What to say, What to say. Life has truly been a rollercoaster. I keep saying this, but I can't think of a better metaphor, since it has been a week (yes only a week) of amazing highs followed by pretty intense lows. I don't think it is a coincidence that the lows usually coincide with me having to go to class, for these are the times when I realize how little I know, and how steep of a hill I still have to climb, and how quickly they want me to climb it.
On the other hand, the most well spent afternoon that I have had was yesterday when I spontaneously ended up going hiking near West Lake with an american friend. It was incredibly beautiful (whoever says China's environment sucks should see this place). We hiked around and explored and got attacked by mosquitos and miraculously found our way back to the correct bus stop. We spoke Chinese the whole time and both realized how ridiculous we must have sounded to all the people we passed; two sweaty american girls, wandering in the woods, speaking Chinese to eachother as if this is a perfectly normal thing to do.
Tonight my roommate and I went to Tesco (le gou), which is basically a British version of Walmart, and spent an incredibly long time wandering through the isles. The main objective was to buy some snack foods to eat for lunch on the train tomorrow, since we are going away for the weekend to my roommates home in the southern part of zhejiang province...but ofcourse we got sidetracked. I ended up buying a lot of mysterious food (meaing the labels are mostly in Chinese.) I also laughed out loud many times at the English that is written on clothing, notebooks, food packages, etc. It is really difficult to explain to a Chinese person that these are not "normal" (meaning American) advertising strategies. For example, my roommate often wears a T-shirt that says in large letters:
TOOL. Not the band. I am just a tool.
The notebook that I bought declares:
This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into. You will feel like writing with it all the time.
My golden fibre candied dates assure me that:
When it is severed, its fiber will still be connected, It features fresh flesh, delicious taste... and richly many kinds of trace elements which needs including the human body, actually old and young all suitable leisure food.
With advertising like that, how can you resist?
I love translation, and I also love how pretty much every T-shirt in China declares its love for me. How can I be unhappy when so many inanimate objects love me?

太陽出來喜洋洋！愛

The sun came out which makes me very happy!

Today is day four of my Chinese life, and my last day of summer before classes start tomorrow, so I figure I will do one last post before I have to start studying Chinese all day every day and going to class and doing homework. But don't get spoiled and think I will be writing so often, I am just taking advantage of the fact that I now have internet access in my dorm room, which right now feels like a huge luxury.
For four days I have just been eating, speaking, and absorbing, as well as adapting to small changes, like new smells. I never realized before how much weight I put on how things smell. Certain things are comforting smells: the smell of my house when a fresh challah has just been baked, Jenny's baby lotion smell, Zoe's slightly cat-like odor. In Hangzhou, while I feel like I am adapting relatively well to the huge change of speaking a different language all the time and only understanding half of what is going on around me, it is the smallest things like the smell of decomposing sewage in the street, the lovely smell of car exhaust, and even the smell of unfamiliar foods that really gets to me and makes me think about the fact that I have entered into a completely different world. You wouldn't think that something as small as smelling the soap that I brought from home would make me feel better, but it does. (For those of you who like to joke about my non-fictional aversion to showers, this must be a shocking fact.)
I also realize that in this blog so far I have talked a lot about myself and less about China itself. The school that is the host institution for my program is called Zhe Jiang (the province that I am in, of which Hangzhou is the capital) Gong Ye Daxue, meaning Zhe Jiang Institute of Technology. This means, as it means at any Institute of Technology (and especially in China) that the boys far out number the girls (a fact that when I brought up with my roommate today made her hit me). It has 30,000 students and a very enclosed campus with three main gates. The city of Hangzhou, which has almost seven million people, pretty much engulfs you as soon as you step out of a gate. It is loud, filled with many motorized and just as many man-powered moving machines all rushing to get somewhere. There are restaurants, street vendors, small animals, markets with fruits, meats, bread, teas, and pretty much anything else that you might want to buy. It has also been cloudy and kind of smoggy, but today the sun came out for the first time and that was a wonderful thing (and I learned the word for sun in Chinese).
People have been asking about what news I have gotten about Mccain's VP and the outside world in general. My answer is not much. But this is just because I have not sought it out, not because it is not accessible. There is an English language newspaper that I have yet to read, and soon when I am drowning in characters I will probably procrastinate by going to NewYorkTimes.com or something to catch up with the English speaking world.

Ni Hao, Wo Jiao Lin Ke Xi!

For those of you that don't speak Chinese, and I don't know why you wouldn't because it is really a fun language to speak, the title of this post says...Hello! My name is Lin Ke Xi...that is my name here. I am slowly getting used to it. After about 27 hours of travel on three planes, two cars, and one bus I arrived in Hangzhou, a city in China's southeast near Shanghai on Wednesday night around 9:oopm. Since then it has been a rollercoaster with me at times feeling like this was the best thing that I could ever chosen to do and feeling really confident in my ability to communicate, and other times thinking, how could have a chosen to do this, what have I gotten myself into, I don't understand anything that is going on around me. But overall, at this moment I am really happy to be here. My Chinese roommate is great, she is very patient with me and takes care of me and makes sure that I don't get hit by buses, taxis, bicycles, or motorized scooters. It has only been two days but I feel like it has been much much longer. We have had a few orientation meetings (at which we are allowed to speak english) but otherwise it is Chinese all the time. No english music allowed, no english movies, not even english Karaoke...this is serious business. Today we split into teams and what on an extremely long scavenger hunt all over the city and then we had a performance tonight where we sang Chinese pop songs, recited Chinese tongue twisters, and reenacted funny skits from the day. We have two more days of orientation and then classes start monday.
It's crazy to be here, but at the same time I don't even have time to think about that because I am too busy trying to communicate and understand what is going on around me and not embarrass myself anymore than necessary. I have also been eating a lot of rice. Meal times are confusing, I usually don't really know what I am eating, but that is part of the fun. Also, my chopstick skills are getting better at every meal.

Goodbye World

In less than 6 hours I will leave my house. I will go to a place I have never been before and meet completely new people. I will live in a place that is foreign to me in every way and I will try to communicate in a language that is generally accepted to be the hardest language in the world. I am (really) scared. But mostly, I am excited to see how I do in such circumstances. I have never done this to myself before and while I know it is going to be nearly impossible, I am going to do it anyway. So there.
Thankyou to all of my family and friends that have been so supportive over the past few months (and throughout my whole life) as I have prepared myself for this journey. It really means a lot to know that so many people are pulling for me. I will think of you all often.
This blog is going to be my main means of communication with the 'outside world.' While I will try to write in it as much as I can, my travel/life philosophy (be where you are) might make my entries less than what some of you anxious readers out there might want. But don't worry. I am fine. I am happy. I am learning. I might be out eating bugs.