好久不见 (Long time no see) and Introduction

Note: There are two consecutive posts. I posted them out of order so that when viewed they would look normal to the reader.

Long time no see my loyal fans and paid audience. It’s been a few days now since I’ve been back, but I have just finished up my travels – a little shorter than expected – but I’m back and preparing for the start of our semester, March 7 (finally). Before the semester begins though and I lose all this free time I have, I figure it wise to start rolling out a few blog posts seeing how it has been a while. You are in for a real treat because over the course of a few weeks I will be releasing journal entries that I have wrote while on the road traveling. After much contemplation I have decided that I will not be making any edits to my journal entries. This is being done to keep the integrity of the original writing which expresses in the most real and raw form my experiences, thoughts, and feelings at the current time. The entries, for the most part, were written in the past tense with a narrator-like voice. Most were written in the same day that they took place, with minor exceptions. Because I do not want to flood my blog with posts for both of our sakes, I plan on releasing the posts in random and arbitrary sections; accompanying photos will be released shortly thereafter on Facebook.

There is one final thing before I begin, and to help explain it I’m going to use a quote from the movie Lord of War. To really sum up my travel experience into one theme it is this: “Selling a gun for the first time is a lot like sex for the first time. You’re excited but you don’t really know what the hell you’re doing. And some way, one way or another, it’s over way too fast.” This sentiment and quote kept popping in my head throughout my travels. And as you read the various travelogues you will see me over and over again stressing this theme of “firsts” – in regards to doing something for the first time. Now that I’ve gotten the introduction out of the way, sit back and enjoy as I take you on this magical journey to Neverland.

Final disclaimers: Because while I traveled I thought about how I wanted to present my journal to you, some things I write and do in regards to organizational work and the fact I am not editing will result in some repetition and various rough patches. Furthermore, because I am writing in the stream of consciousness there is a slight chance the censorship is at a minimum.

The Day of Reckoning (Day 1)

Mmmm! I’ve finally made it to my room after a long day of travel. First stop: Harbin; even further north than Dalian, reaching -30 degrees Celsius during winter. The flight was ok. The only snag was after boarding. Our flight was delayed for an hour as we wait on the runway. More importantly, this was the first time I’ve flown alone with no one I knew. It was different. None of that atmosphere that I’m used to when waiting on a plane getting ready to go somewhere different, like when you’re going on vacation. It felt more like a business trip then a getaway to some exotic place. It was definitely quite lonely traveling alone, more so than just hanging around campus – probably because I know the area and some of the shopkeepers. Everyone feels so stoic and indifferent with people minding their own business. Traveling alone seems like it is going to take some of the fun out of it. But I’m not gonna dwell on the things I can’t change and just live it up the best I can.

But besides the delay, everything else ran quite smoothly. One of the moments of truth came when I walked outside of the airport. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I’m not sure what I felt first: the grabbing of random people and taxi drivers trying to score or the icy chilling temperature. Like you hear about how cold it is, etc, but like you can’t really imagine what -30 feels like, and boy is it cold. But to be honest, for short-term exposure I thought that it was warmer than Dalian without the crazy wind. But after about an hour when you start to lose your senses and numbing starts to take place – well then I think Harbin takes the cake for the coldest places I’ve ever been to. However, all I wore in Harbin was the same thing I wore in Dalian and I stayed relatively warm. I didn’t go all out like the locals with like 2 pairs of long johns and heavy duty jackets and the works. One thing I did pick up on and copied from the locals was to take breaks and utilize the stores and just walk through them. Using this method one could theoretically walk an entire block inside.

I’m staying in the middle of downtown, so no need to deal with taxis and close enough to the ice festival sites which I came to see. I had to pay a little extra to do so, so I’m staying at a 4-star hotel – by Chinese standards – don’t think they would pass Western standards. My room is quaint, not what I expected for 4-stars, so I’m sure this would just be considered average in America, but at least it’s something I can and exaggerate on back home. The service was just like in the movies though, a bell boy came and took my bags and showed me to my room. Besides for the perfect location, they also serve Western-style breakfast buffet. Now doesn’t that sound delicious? Not to lie, but I’m quite excited to see how it so. I haven’t had Western-style breakfast in forever; I hope I’m not disappointed.

Well after arriving a few hours behind schedule and finishing all that check-in business it was basically dinnertime. Initially, I wanted to go to the ice festival sites in the afternoon so I could see them in the daylight and then again at night when they were lit. But instead I will now only be able to do the latter.

After eating, I went out to see the sites. I took as many pictures as I could. But fighting the bitter cold at night is extremely difficult. Even my camera was having trouble; because it was so cold the battery stopped functioning properly – freeeeezing. What made it was worse was that because my gloves were too bulky, I couldn’t press the buttons on the camera meaning I couldn’t take pictures with my gloves on.

After what felt like the coldest and longest night in my life ever, I decided to call it quits and return to my hotel room and take a very long, hot, and steamy shower mmm. Tomorrow I plan to check out the Russian district – no prostitutes I promise. After that it’s back to the airport for my flight to Xian. Just a short stop to one of the coldest places on Earth.

The Oasis in the Desert

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s been awhile. In the beginning of January, it got hectic with Chinese finals and papers to write. But it is now January 21, 2011. What have I been doing since then? This post will be slightly different than most, because I actually have a focus on what I want to write about and I will touch upon all four topics I have written down on my piece of paper and of course there will be my asides and random strains of thoughts that have been ever present throughout this blog.

So starting with the most recent…I got a haircut. It was…interesting to say the least. For 15 yuan, approximately 3 USD they washed my hair with shampoo, cut my hair, then washed my hair a second time. A pretty good deal if you ask me. You would think that asking the hair stylist what I want would be difficult, but actually it was quite simple – I did cheat a little. I first told them I just wanted a haircut and I wanted it shorter. Then I showed him a picture to aid him. What the stylist gave me wasn’t quite what I wanted, but after second looks it sufficed. I also didn’t have the heart to ask him to make it a little shorter. For the most part he once used scissors, no razors - tedious to say the least. It was, however, an enjoyable experience. US saloons could probably learn a thing or two from them about service. Like come on, they washed my hair twice – not just the squirt squirt from water in a bottle.

But moving on…I ordered KFC delivery. Yes, KFC deliveries. Pretty sweet, right? It was fairly simple, when you call there’s an English line, if you can’t speak Chinese well. I used that option, but attempted to speak as much Chinese as possible to ease the troubles on the receiving side. Now, I must admit, KFC in China is awesome and delicious, definitely compared to KFC in the US. I highly recommend if you come to China to go to KFC at least once and try their spicy chicken burger. I don’t understand what’s up with fast food in China. But it seems that both KFC and McDonald’s are shortchanging us Americans. Let me explain. They offer much better food than in the US. For instance, no spicy chicken burgers in the US; no curly fries in the US. What gives? However, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves; we are in China for the Chinese food though.

Let’s see a little aside on Chinese food. Suggestion of the post: do not order suan cai, it is disgusting. It is sour soup with vegetables – which makes sense because English transliteration is sour vegetables. And when I mean sour, I mean like really sour. I guess if you like extremely sour foods, then order it, but for the rest of us normal people this is a don’t.

Moving on to a little more dangerous and interesting…I have used the black market for the first and probably not the last time. I was exchanging money from CNY to USD. A friend took me to see a guy who he uses to exchange money. The money broker works out of the Bank of China and we actually exchanged the money in said bank. We used the bank’s currency exchange rate of the day, exchanged money, and bam it was done. Instead of waiting on line for what looked like an hour wait. The entire situation was pretty ironic to me. We were exchanging money illegally from the institution I was suppose to exchange money and everyone saw and knew and yet ignored it like it was normal and common – which it is.

The last thing I wanted to touch upon is my travel plans. I have decided to do a little traveling around China and hopefully into a few other countries in the Southeast of Asia. So the bad news first, this is just to let you know that you probably won’t see another post for quite some time as I will probably not have a vpn to post on my blog while I travel. Now the good news, when I get back I will have some awesome stories/posts and some amazing pictures hopefully. Because of the sensitive nature of my trip and for security reasons I will not be publicly disclosing my travel plans. If, however, you would like to know because get in connect with my parents for further information.

Again, sorry I haven’t been posting as frequently as I should and sorry that there won’t be another post anytime in the near future. But at least you have something to look forward to. A happy early Chinese new year to all of you reading this 新年快乐。

Oh yeah, a few closing comments. I am the only American in my dormitory. Out of the other two Americans staying the full year, one is off traveling and the other has returned to America with plans to return sometime in February. The new students for next semester won’t arrive until March. Let’s see…the school is deserted because everyone is heading home for break and Chinese New Year’s. They even closed one of the main gates, meaning I have to hop the fence or walk to a different gate to get out of the school. I guess I know what it must feel like for our international students who don’t go home. I think that’s it for now.

Black Wednesday

22 December 2010,

Today we suffered the worst loss thus far. We lost three companions today to the American-istis disease. We lost one a week ago and another yesterday. Making our death toll five. We have another in the sick bay. I doubt he'll make it through, he'll probably be a goner by tomorrow. Leaving our home land with ten fellow adventurers, today we're down to half. I wonder how the rest of our expedition will go. We received word that reinforcements are coming, but they won't arrive for a fortnight's fortnight so we'll have to make do without.

Without our musician and our drunk it has been quiet camp. The eerie silence before the climax. On top of that, to keep our mind's off our losses we've devoted ourselves to our remaining work; which has isolated ourselves from each other.

It seems a fellow Kensei is convening a Samurai Council Meeting. I must take my ado.

Daimyo 梅

On a more serious note, it was really sad saying good bye to a few friends. Like the above section mentioned, it has gotten really quite. Everyone who is left has been buckling down preparing for their finals or writing their final papers or both. Today there was definitely a different atmosphere. For half the day it felt like I was the one going home. I just had that air of excitement, like you're about to do something new - similar to the experience of the drive from the airport in Dalian to our dorms. I wonder if that's what it'll feel like when it happens for real. Eventually it'll just be me, because everyone else is going back to the US and I've opted to stay in China over break. It's late, I'm tired, good night.

SEVERE WEATHER ADVISORY

*crackle* crr crrr *crackle*

We interrupt your usual broadcast for an emergency weather announcement.

The government has issued a severe weather advisory.

There is a impeding snowfall that will take place over the course of the day.

We advise everyone to remain in their houses.

As usual, the Chinese government announced that they will not shovel the snow to the best of their abilities nor will they salt.

We repeat, they WILL NOT use salt.

If you must leave your house, we advice everyone to take precautions so you don't slip and fall or worse break your head

That is all. We now return you to your usual broadcast.

Thanksgiving with some sides.

As promised, a post on Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of sides – pun intended. We had Thanksgiving on Wednesday, so two days ahead of everyone in America. It wasn’t the most traditional Thanksgiving, but nonetheless it was a delicious one. Danny’s apartment is comparatively large for China; however it isn’t really adequate to fit 15-20 people around a dinner table. Therefore, we all ended up eating in chairs, on the sofa, or on the floor with our plates in our hand. But the food….oh how delicious American food can be sometimes. We ordered the food from some a five star restaurant that cooked a Thanksgiving meal for Americans. Even still, I wasn’t completely confident it how well the food would have turned out. So I must admit that when we saw the food – and ate it of course – it came as a surprise that the food was delicious. They had all the staple foods: turkey, mash potatoes, gravy, etc. I took some pictures. As an aside, I promise that some sort of pictures will be up later this evening. But I think that my favorite dish had to be marshmallows and sweet potatoes yummy. They were home cooked and the marshmallows came from the US of A. They were cooked by some friends of Danny’s, people from Texas – as hard to believe as that is – who have fairly good Chinese. They are actually living in China and are semi-retired.

Now to the pun. I have a bunch of random topics I’m going to throw in to this post. The order of the topics will follow from least serious to most serious.

Seeing how I was just talking about food, I’ll continue that strain of thought. Two words: Brooklyn bar. The Brooklyn bar or an American consulate as we like to call it is well…a bar, to be exact an expat bar, but it also serves American food. When we went, I ordered a cheeseburger and that burger was probably the best burger I had in like four months. I gotta say, I sure do miss American food like a lot. But of course it is an expat bar so it was damn expensive. Burger 50 Yuan, cheese 10 Yuan, milkshake 35 Yuan, a good time and some good food priceless. 95 Yuan isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things (less that 15 USD), but when you usually get dinner for 5 Yuan, that’s a lot of money.

What I want to move to next is the weather in Dalian. It is freaking cold here…like really cold…like negative degrees cold…in Celsius of course. At the time of this writing, it is -3 degrees here, so like 26 degrees Fahrenheit. But what’s worse is the wind, recorded at 18 mph at this current writing. It was so bad, that walking back from dinner was difficult, we were having trouble putting one foot in front of the other and walking straight. Ugh, on another aside, I think that my main light just died.

This post has taken me a lot longer to write than expected because of work constraints, so I’m going to stop here. However, I would eventually like to cover North Korea and the wiki leaks debacle.

Very Robust Guanxi 101

So I must sound like a broken record when I say I’ve just been so busy that I didn’t have time to write a blog post lately. And yes, I know I promised to write more often – I’m working on it. It’s no matter though, because I was unsure of what I wanted to write about anyways until recently. What I want to touch upon is the notion of civility in China. Speaking in general, you can’t trust the average Chinese person - at least those you don’t know. That’s because every Chinese person is out for their own self-interest and they don’t truly care what happens to you if they don’t know you that is. Take for example this situation that I was in. I was walking down the street to get lunch and I hear screaming. I look around and in front of me there is this little girl being crushed by a table that accidently fell on top of her. All the other Chinese people just kept walking past her minding their own business. Luckily I was there and rushed and picked up the table. That is my own personal example. Danny has plenty of similar examples, but I think you get the picture.

This brings me to something that happened quite recently to me. It was raining outside and it was early on a Saturday morning, I figured most people were asleep so I decided to go out and get something to eat on my own. Once I arrive at the cafeteria, I order food, then sit down and wait for my food to be cooked. Eventually, my order is called so I get up – but I leave my umbrella on the table – I get my food I turn around and my umbrella is gone. Now to be honest, I was simmering with anger. I left my umbrella unattended for maybe a minute at most and someone had the courage to steal it. And of course, the week before Danny was lecturing to us about civility in class so my initial thoughts were damn Chinese Guanxi (relationship) culture.

I finished eating, still angry that I didn’t bring my umbrella with me, and was getting ready to go until one of the cleaning staff came up to me talking in Chinese – so for simplicity, I didn’t really understand what she was saying – she eventually gives up and tells me to follow her; I do, and we walk towards a pillar. At this pillar was my umbrella, apparently she thought someone forgot the umbrella and she set up her own lost and found box. This made me feel good inside. Because for all the rhetoric about how China is corrupt, selfish, etc, it showed me that there are some “good” people in China and that everything must be taken with a grain of salt.

On a different note, I’ve uploaded more pictures to facebook. The pictures continue in album one: China1; and then moves into album two. And think, in less than a week it’ll be Thanksgiving. Even though we’re in China, we’ll still be celebrating. Next post will be on Thanksgiving dinner. Peace.