Absurd Chinese Bars

The past week or two of my life has been a nice mix of class, work, frisbee, making new friends, reading books, and eating delicious (and often times way too spicy) food. I have also gone out to a few loud and smoke filled bars, and have been thinking about how interesting it would be to study Chinese Bar/Club culture in more depth, since it is a very bizarre thing. It is a relatively new phenomenon, in which extremely wealthy, young Chinese people go out to dark, sleek clubs that have a lot of neon lights and music that is so loud that it actually physically hurts your heart (and soul) and kind of bounce around to the music and look uncomfortable. The really high rollers get their own private booths (you have to buy a certain absurd amount of alcohol in order to earn this right) and the music is generally somewhere on the "techno" spectrum. What I am describing is the "Chinese" club atmosphere. Meaning, these places are usually filled with mostly Chinese people. However, recently a lot of these clubs have created racist policies where they give free alcohol to any foreigners who show up, because they think that having white people in their bars is good for business and makes them look cool. My friend who is half Chinese and grew up in the states thinks that bars that have this type of deal are racist (white supremacist) because she is just as much of a foreigner as anyone else, but she doesn't look as much like one, and therefore the deal does not apply to her.
I am still not really comfortable with being treated like a celebrity in China (having small children point and stare, having old men greet me on the street and tell me that I should find a Chinese husband, having people ask to take my picture and having random strangers tell me that I have a really nice nose, eyes, hair texture) and so in the bar environment I try to attract as little attention to myself as possible. It is ironic though, because I know that when I go back to the states and there is no one saying these things to me or paying attention to me and yelling "hello" on the street I will definitely miss it. In the states I won't be special anymore, I will just be like everyone else.
But going to Chinese bars is a really interesting study in the surface relationship between Chinese and Foreigners. The first time that I walked into a bar with a few other white girls in China and we were given a complimentary fruit plate and a special booth just because we were foreigners, it really made me think; about what these young Chinese people think when they see a group of young white women and about what I may or may not be doing to reinforce or change their preconceived notions about who I am and what I am doing here.
A lot of the clubs are so loud that you literally have to pretty intensely scream into a persons ear in order to be heard. Speaking Chinese in such situations is hard, and can lead to some interesting misunderstandings. However, there is a "dice game" that people play that I happen to really like that doesn't involve any speaking, you just hold up different fingers and it is a fun way to bond with new Chinese friends.
I am not really sure what my point or message is in talking so extensively about the Chinese clubbing scene. I usually don't go out more than once a week, but every time I do it is generally a worthwhile, entertaining, and ridiculous experience. I am learning that dancing to techno can be fun and that people in Kunming are friendly and interesting. Plus, I never make any new friends if I just stay home.
For example, this Saturday night I went to a Purim Rave at a club across the street from Kunming's art college. It was pretty weird, in an entertaining way of course. The place had the feel of a drafty warehouse with creepy surrealist paintings on the wall, there were glow-stick Jewish stars hanging from the ceiling, Israeli flags over the walls, a bunch of Israeli men running the bar, and eerie music playing. Many people were in costumes and it was an interesting mix of Chinese and foreigners, mostly non-Jews. My favorite part of the evening was when an Israeli guy got up on stage and told the story of Purim in Chinese, especially since his Chinese was spoken with a Hebrew accent. Most of the people I was with didn't speak much Chinese and did not know the story of Purim, so they could not fully appreciate the absurdity of the situation, but I loved it.
Let the absurdity continue. In two days my brother will be here to share it with me, and I hope that by the time I send him home he will have a few bizarre stories of his own to share. Of course, they won't all be about going to bars.

I like weekends

Kunming has been really windy lately, and it rained on Sunday for the first time since I moved here at the beginning of February. It rained for maybe 15 minutes, I was playing frisbee at the time, and it was really fun, except for the slight problem of not having cleats and therefore not having any grip at all on the slippery wet grass.
On Friday I finished two big projects that I had been working on all week long. It was very satisfying. My boss also was preparing to leave to go back to the states for 6 weeks, so it was kind of a crazy day. I also went out on Friday night, which is always an absurd, silly and extremely amusing thing to do in Kunming. There is always techno music, many people creatively dancing mostly with themselves, cheap Chinese beer (大里啤酒）， and just a lot of interesting characters. Kunming is bursting with people who make me laugh. Of course, often times they are not trying to be funny. But that is not the point.
The other thing about going out in Kunming is that the "metaphorical party" does not start until midnight or so. Leaving me to always have that moral dilemma around 11:45pm when I am faced with the decision of going out or going to bed. However, interesting things tend to happen when I leave my apartment, and so I try to remember this fact when sleep seems too tempting. On Saturday I met up with a Chinese friend who I met when I was registering for my class. He is a really interesting kid. He is half Han Chinese and half Bai minority, one of his grandfathers is Russian, his parents are both artists, and he is studying Spanish. Also, each time we meet up he brings along another interesting friend for me to meet. On Saturday I met his half Chinese half Thai friend who is studying English and loves Hannah Montana. Most of the day was spent with them speaking English and me speaking Chinese. Which is nice because it puts everyone at a disadvantage, everyone sounds silly together, and therefore everyone is on an even playing field. They both speak English really well though, and like to use corny English sayings like "Know yourself" (认识自己). We also spoke some Spanish, which made my brain hurt. Some German was thrown into the mix as well. My very very limited Thai is also pretty rusty, so I embarrassed myself a fair amount with that. Then there is the local dialect of Kunming (kunminghua) which basically sounds like Mandarin that has been put through a food processor. Also, when my new friends pick up the phone, they greet eachother in Japanese. If you are curious what this sounds like, it is something like "mohshy mohshy" where the 'oh' sound is similar to the sound that seals make. I can't think of any other (possibly less offensive) way to describe it.
So all in all it was a very interesting day. We sat in a smoke filled coffee shop for many hours (nearly every male in China smokes along with the girls who think that they are particularly cool) before venturing down the street to eat some Kunming specialty "across the bridge noodles." There is a cute story about a girl carrying these noodles across a bridge to her husband who was working on the other side. They are also a fun and interactive eating experience because you are given a bowl of boiling broth, a bowl of cold rice noodles, a plate of raw meat and vegetables, and a little thing of spices and then you mix them all together yourself. They are delicious and 12 yuan (less than 2 dollars).
On Saturday night I slept 12 hours. I just wanted to brag about that.
On Sunday I played Frisbee pickup in the rain and then we all went to eat dinner together, which is so much more fun than eating in a small group, because you order lots of dishes and eat all together and you get lots of variety of deliciousness.
Now it is the work week and I am getting up early for class and running errands and getting stuff done.
Soon my brobro will be here. Who votes that I put him on a 15 hour overnight bus ride? What about a 40 hour hard seat train ride? Oh the possibilities!

Long Time No Blog

Why has it been almost the entire month of February since I last wrote? Well, there is really just one reason: and that is that I have been sick. Generally my blog is the place where I get to brag about how much fun I have been having, how much I am learning and experiencing everyday, and how phenomenal and thought-provoking China can be. Unfortunately, when you are sick, life is slightly less exciting. I spent a week lying around, watching movies and sleeping 18 hours a day, annoyed by my own weakness and sickness, but feeling unable to do anything about it. After a week of gastro-intestinal distress, I finally faced the fact that I would have to make a scary trip to the scary China hospital. I don't know how many details of that trip my more squeamish readers can handle, but I will just say that America has a pill based medicine culture, and China has a needle based medicine culture. Another important cultural difference is that Americans value privacy, wanting to see their own doctor in their own private room, without five or ten other sick strangers standing over them. China is not this way. In China, there are too many people to care about privacy. All sorts of doctors were touching my tummy and asking me about my poop (which I can now discuss in Chinese!) in the middle of crowded rooms.
But I survived! I am feeling much better now, and I promise that my next blog will not be about Chinese Hospitals. In other news, I have started class at the Kunming College of Eastern Languages and Culture. My class is every morning from 8:30-10:10 and has five students. Three of the students are Japanese men in their sixties and seventies. There is one women who is kind of from Canada, but originally from Egypt, who is in her thirties, I think. Then there is me. It is a very interesting educational environment. My job is also going well, I am not sure if I have bragged about my bilingual business cards yet, but they are sweet, and make me feel like a big kid. My daily duties generally range from running errands to making photo copies and organizing readings that will go into collections for semester and summer programs. Soon, I will also start screening homestay families, which means going to the homes of Chinese families, having dinner with them, asking questions about the family, and answering the questions that they have about Dragons and hosting foreign students. I am excited to start meeting families. I am sure it will be really good for my Chinese. Although, the Kunming accent is really hard for me. I am not used to it, and I have made silly mistakes like not understanding numbers and giving a shopkeeper 3 yuan when he just told me I owe 12. On top of the accent, Kunming also has its own language which involves saying "ga" a lot. That is about all I understand right now.
After not really being able to eat for a week, I am pretty excited to start delving deeper into the amazing world of Kunming food. So much good food. Tonight I ate Xinjiang (Muslim influenced region in Northwestern China) noodles for the first time and they were amazing. Some other local specialties are deep fried red beans, stir fried broccoli and goat cheese, and spicy mashed potatoes. There are a lot of ethnic groups in Yunnan Province, and this means lots of interesting food that is very different from the rest of China. And, since it is warm and sunny all the time, the tropical fruits and fruit juices and the spicy cold noodles dishes are amazing and refreshing. I can't wait to feed my brother, who is coming to China in less than 3 weeks!

My New Life

It has been a while. Since I last wrote, my parents and I went on a week long trek through the Yunnan wilderness, during which time we faced such challenges as hungry goats, less than sanitary bathrooms, and unidentifiable foods. However, we also enjoyed phenomenal views, spent time in minority village homestays, and met other interesting travelers. About a week ago I put my parents on a plane (very early in the morning) and sent them home. It was great to have them here, and it was kind of a cool role reversal where I got to be the parent and my parents got to be the kids for a bit. I got them places, ordered them food, and held their hands when we crossed the scary China streets.
As soon as they left, I moved into my new apartment, which I am sharing with another Dragons semester instructor. It is gorgeous. It is probably the nicest apartment that I will ever live in. It is in a complex with a pool (although I just tried to swim in it and I was forced to buy a ticket, and then the pool was frickin' freezing...which considering my tolerance for cold, means it was take your breathe away, hypothermic shock cold). This past week I have spent settling in, buying a bike, signing up for classes, renewing my Visa, and running errands for the Dragons Instructors, since they have all been busy preparing for the new semester program, which starts today. I also played in a frisbee tournament this past weekend, the first annual Kunming hat tournament, which just happened to be perfectly planned for the first weekend that I arrived in Kunming. It was really fun, a great opportunity to meet interesting people in the community. The weather was absolutely beautiful, not to mention my team won the entire tournament (there were four teams).
So things are good. I am slowly learning my way around and trying hard to slowly acclimate to the local accent.
The weirdest thing that has happened to me in Kunming was that I had to go have a foreigner medical exam in order to renew my Visa for another 6 months. The exam was like nothing I have experienced. Chinese Hospitals have a reputation (among foreigners) for being terrible places, and up until this point I have been lucky enough to avoid them. However, there was no way around this one. Basically, the exam involves a variety of seemingly random tests that involve inflicting emotional and physical pain, while at the same time demoralizing the patient in bizarre ways. It was all very Chinese.
The first test that I had to submit to was an EKG. I am not even exactly sure what that is supposed to test, but I do know that it involved putting many circular suctions cups on my chest and clamps on my wrists and ankles while the woman administering the test told me in Chinese to relax. The second test was an ultra-sound. In my experience ultra-sounds are for pregnant women, but in the context of the Chinese foreigner medical examination, they are given to men and women of all ages, in order to look at your insides. This test may have inflicted the most emotional distress, because the ultra-sound gook was cold and slimy, and because I am ticklish, and because she kept telling me to stick out my tummy. It was all very weird. Then I went into the X-ray room, where I stood in the middle of this big machine and put my feet where the foot marks were, and then the man closed the door and the machine did god knows what, and I didn't ask any questions, because I did not want to know. Test 4 was ordinary: height, weight, and blood pressure. Test 5 I am pretty sure was to check if I was colorblind (there were green numbers in the middle of a red background), but for me it was more a test of my ability to recall how to say Chinese numbers under bizarre circumstances. I also got to hold a wooden spoon over my eyes one at a time and do the whole "the E is facing this way" eye test. All of these tests were on the first floor. Little did I know what was waiting for me upstairs.
Okay, I kind of knew because it was written on my examination sheet in English and Chinese, but I definitely was not prepared for it. At the first window a bored looking women silently thrust an small empty plastic cup at me and pointed to the sign for the bathroom. The Chinese government wants my pee. Okay. No problem. They even supplied me with the choice between western and squat toilets.
The last test involved a person taking a lot of my blood. Four vials to be exact. I do not know why they needed four vials, or why they needed to have a glass window between me and the blood taker, with only a small hole through which I had to put my arm so they could prick it with a needle and suck out all they needed. They must have tested me for every disease known to mankind. Unfortunately, they underestimated my blood flow, because when they told me I could remove the pressure that I was holding onto the spot where I had just been sucked dry, my blood continued to flow. Oops. Don't worry though, I got a band aid, and everything was all better. What I really could have used at that point was a sticker, but they were no where to be found.
Three days and 326 RMB (about $50) later, I have my very own Chinese Health I.D. and I can now apply for a Visa extension which will allow me to stay in China for another 6 months.

Chinese New Year in Kunming

My parents and I are currently in Kunming, where last night the Chinese New Year was celebrated through the setting off of fireworks, launching flaming Chinese lanterns into the air, and of course the traditional Chinese custom of drinking lots of beer. My parents got to feel young again (whether they wanted to or not), which led to us all not sleeping as much as we would have liked. Today it was kind of cloudy and overcast, but definitely warmer and less polluted than Beijing. We did some walking around, weaving our way through the crowds. I am pretty excited because tomorrow I get the key to my new apartment and can start moving some of my stuff in. I am looking forward to having a home in one place for a while after a lot of moving around over the past two months or so. On Wednesday, my parents and I set off on our week of trekking. We are hoping that it won't rain on us too much while we are in the woods. We have been eating well.

Ramie and Steve!

It has been quite a while since I last wrote. I have been many places, and like always I am not quite sure where to start in trying to explain it all. Meaning, I will probably ending up writing about it all in the most non-sequential, rambling, and confusing way possible. I will also probably embarrass myself by showing how I have lost the ability to speak English correctly, or even to realize when I am not speaking correctly. So, sorry. I am going to start actually saying something now.
My parents are here! They are actually here, in Beijing, in our hotel room, in their beds, sleeping right now. It is really bizarre, but also really fun to have them here. They got here on the 20th, which was a crazy day. Sarah and I made good use of our morning, eating two solid meals, going to a temple and a park, and doing some last minute bargain-shopping before I sadly had to bring Sarah to the airport. A quick run-down of some of Sarah and my last week's highlights include visiting the Terracotta Warriors, hiking to the biggest Buddha in the world that is carved into a mountain, being treated to a dinner of beef and yak butter tea by a Tibetan Monk, and of course...feeling our hearts melt at the sight of snuggly baby pandas. I was really sad to see Sarah go. I wanted to force her to stay by confusing her by making her agree to things in Chinese, but I didn't.
Within an hour of Sarah's departure from my life, my exhausted, overwhelmed, but also smiling parents emerged from the magical arrival gate at the Beijing International Airport. I allowed them no down time before I swiftly shoved them onto Chinese public transportation, then forced them to drag their suitcases up many flights of stairs, and finally shoved them into a taxi where they were exposed to their first taste of Beijing opera music...a genre that to the western ear is somewhat less than melodious. But they did great. They have proved themselves adaptable and hearty, especially since Beijing has decided that it is a good idea to be so cold that being outside is kind of like hiking through the arctic tundra. We have eaten a lot of good food and I think my parents have already learned the difference between Jiaozi (dumplings) and Baozi (steamed buns). I am very impressed.
We have seen the sights in Beijing and tomorrow we make a quick trip to the Great Wall before getting on a plane to Kunming, where I will be living for the next six months. From Kunming I take my parents trekking through the beautiful wilderness for a week. I think it will be great, as long as my dad can deal with no ESPN and my mom can deal with no western style toilets. Even faced with such huge adversities, I think it is amazing that they are here and that I can show them around in this country that I have come to feel pretty comfortable in over the past five months.

The Adventures of Sarah and Lexi

So much has happened since my last update, that I am not even sure where to start. I was in Beijing until the 1st, when I said goodbye to Yan and his family, and spent one final night in a really cool hostel right near Tian'an men Square. The next day I went to get my wonderful friend Sarah, who magically appeared at the Beijing airport on the 2nd. Every since, we have been taking on China together, and thoroughly enjoying ourselves. It is really fun for me to see everything again through Sarah's eyes and to think about how far I've come in terms of the things that she thinks are really weird, and must have been really weird for me in the beginning too, but are now so normal. She is constantly asking why, questioning the logic behind the bus, train, taxi, subway, hostel systems...and generally my response is just, "well that's the way it is." So far we have traipsed our way through my hometown of Hangzhou, visiting my favorite teahouse and jazz bar one last time, roaming around West Lake, hanging out with my good friend Peipei, and of course eating the amazing and cheap food at the back gate of my school. Then we were in Shanghai for a few rainy days, where the highlights included the enormous Shanghai Museum, friendly tea shop people, buying beautiful art that was either done by Beijing art students or really skillful con-artists, ascending to the 88th floor of the tallest building in China, and eating a lot of delicious food. Then we got on a 20 hour train to Xian. We had bought the cushy-est beds, which made our 20 hours very enjoyable. Our compartment-mate was very nice and helped me to acclimate to the Xian way of speaking Chinese, as he was returning home to Xian to celebrate the Chinese New Year with his family. So far I really like the feel of Xian. The buildings are smaller and the roads are narrower, and their are a lot of people. We are staying in a hostel right in the downtown area, and we are close to the Muslim area, where all of the good food is. After Xian, we will head down to Chengdu for a couple of days, and then back up to Beijing. Everything has been going really well, despite a few inevitable travel snags that are the result of traveling in general, aggravated slightly by the impending Chinese new year, when everyone travels home.
We have also been complimented on our noses a lot. People in China seem to think that we have perfectly sized noses. An old lady on a bus told us this, and several other random passerbyers. Also, people generally think we are either Russian, from the eastern part of China called Xinjiang, Middle Eastern, or basically anything but American. An old man today was so vehemently sure that we were not Americans that he asked for some identification. We declined pulling out our passport in a crowded train station, but it was pretty funny anyway.