Sometimes I go and check my blog and realize that I haven't written in a really long time. Then, I try to think about what I have been doing with myself for all that time. At first, I can't think of anything that seems blog-worthy, but eventually I realize that there are about 7 different blogs that I could write about the last 2 weeks of my life.
Blog Number 1: Chinese Ultimate Frisbee is amusing, but Shanghai is a gross place.
In this blog I would describe my trip to Hangzhou and Shanghai that happened June 10-15. I got to see all of my old friends and eat at my favorite places in Hangzhou. While in Hangzhou, (a city of 7 million people) I also randomly ran into 2 people that I had not seen in a long time. The first was my friend Alyssa's "older brother" (which is China just means good friend), who climbed out of a cab right in front of me, after which, we proceeded to look at each other for a few seconds before realizing both of us were just like "what the hell? hey!". The next day, my Chinese friend Peipei led me to her favorite doughnut shop where my residential director from last semester (an American woman named Su Aimei who used to work for Dragons for about 5 years)was sitting and drinking a cup of tea with her friend. I don't know what is was about being back in Hangzhou, my home in China, that made all sorts of weird people appear miraculously in front of me.
The Shanghai tournament was really fun, despite the fact that Shanghai is a smoggy, smelly, humid, grey, and overall miserable city where it takes 2 hours to get anywhere and half of the buildings are under construction. Our Frisbee team was made mostly of people living in my city (kunming, yunnan province) but we also picked up a few other friends from other places. We are called S.W.A.T. or South West All-star Team (西南名星队）A.K.A "Colonies of Sparkle." (supported by the sparkly hats and skirts that got passed around throughout the day. Since it was our first tournament as a team, we were put in the lower pool, also known as the kiddie pool, which allowed us to win all four games on the first day. The second day we rose up to the Power pool and had one wonderful victory on a universe point against Shanghai B, before we were somewhat crushed by Singapore Freakshow (who would go on to play in the finals.) It was a really fun team to play on, so despite the fact that the sky never even got close to the color blue, I really enjoyed myself.
Blog Number 2: Homestay Family Finding Marathon of Fun
As I have talked about in many blogs before, one of my main jobs in Kunming is to organize the homestays, meaning find and visit the families that Dragons summer students will live with for a week or two over the summer. This has been a very rewarding job in many ways, as it has allowed me to be invited into the homes of many Chinese families, where I am treated extremely well and repeatedly complimented on my Chinese abilities and natural beauty. In other ways, it has been a bit bothersome, since it means that Chinese families feel the need to call me at 9 o'clock on Saturday mornings after my last call on Friday night at around 11:30pm. There is either very little common courtesy, or they just don't fully understand how much I like my sleep. It got to the point where I would be haunted by the sound of my cell phone ring in my sleep, and when I was swimming in the pool I kept on thinking that I was hearing it when I was underwater. One of the reasons for all of this telephone communication was that last weekend I host two dinners on Saturday and Sunday nights for homestay families. Each night had 15-20 people, and together we went to a fancy restaurant and chatted and allowed new families to benefit from the experiences of the families that have hosted before. I was slightly intimidated by the idea of a room with just me and 20 Chinese people (who would be all looking at me), so each night I brought a long a friend to keep me company and help me to entertain the families. It also happened to work out that the two friends who agreed to come with me are both half Chinese Americans who speak excellent Chinese. For those of you who are unaware, Chinese people LOVE half-Chinese people. They think they are the most beautiful people ever and pretty much create the Chinese standard of beauty: still Chinese, but almost white. In fact, the only group that Chinese people love and admire more than Jews are probably the halfies. Both dinners went pretty well, and I was happy when they were over and the pre-planning phone calls subsided a bit.
Blog Number 3: Chinese Pop Concert
Last Friday night I want to a Chinese pop concert with two American friends (who both weirdly happen to be Oberlin grads) and a Chinese friend. I knew relatively little about the artist performing (a man by the name of Xu Wei who I was told sang typical poppy Chinese rock music), but I was pretty excited at the opportunity to attend my first pop concert in China.
Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. (Everyone else who I went with was, but that may be because they do not appreciate absurdity as much as I do.) I was so amused by the whole thing. It was everything I could have wanted and more. This is why:
First, I was sitting by myself for most of the concert. My friends had bought their tickets before hand where as I bought my "yellow cow" (or scalped) ticket on the street a half an hour beforehand for $3 more and got a much better seat then the rest of them. This also allowed me to just observe the excited fans singing along around me and get a better view of what was going on on the stage. Basically the concert consisted of 4 parts: Xu wei singing, scantily clothed average Chinese people hip-hop dancing, quiz-bowl type competitions where random fans got up on stage and answered questions about the artist, and silly advertisement based conversations between the Shuaige (handsome man) and Meinu (beautiful woman) MC's. I should also mention that Xu wei was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, standing on a white stage, not moving at all except for when he walked from one side of the stage to another so people could snap pictures with their camera phones, and he pretty much looked like he was kind of depressed and did not really want to be there. He would sing two songs at a time and then practically run off the stage as fast as he could. When the perky MC's would try to ask him questions, he would basically just mumble three or four incoherent words into his microphone before sprinting off the stage. I had already been warned by Chinese friends that Xu Wei is not known for being handsome, but people like him anyway. Sometimes he would almost smile, when the crowd was being particularly enthusiastic, but then he would remember that he is a sad and over the hill sell-out and his somber facial expression would return. The whole event lasted about an hour and a half. They gave out glow bracelets and boom sticks. My Chinese friend brought binoculars. I really enjoyed myself. As I said before, my other friends were not as easily impressed.
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