Trips outside of Shanghai

One of my first experiences outside of Shanghai (While I’ve lived in China, it’s rare that I leave the comforts of the city) was when my grandparents and my family went to BeiJing. Which was almost a year ago (I’m also In BeiJing now, so writing about this is easy). We went around with a tour guide (tour guides here are notorious for taking foreigners to all the tourists traps and never shutting up) to a few of the sites, and the rest we visited ourselves. I could go into detail about how difficult the climb to the Great Wall or how beautiful the Summer Palace looks in spring and maybe even describe the age of the Ming Tombs. The site that takes the cake was the forbidden city on a national holiday. There must’ve been half a million people there, the whole area was filled. We didn’t even touch Tian’ anmen Square. We found the only Outback Steakhouse in China and dined there for lunch. Did I mention that this whole time we were staying in a Holiday Inn?

The next time I left Shanghai was when I went on my Habitat for Humanity trip to an area closer to Hong Kong then anything else (It was still out in the boonies). We landed at the Shantou airport and hustled onto these buses. It was rainy and the drive was long. Luckily I had the company of my friends (who in retrospect have all left or are preparing to do so). We stopped at a restaurant and the food was decent. We left the restaurant and it was dark. The bus goes up mountains and we almost fall of the side once, I mean feet away. Then we all sat silent so that the driver could concentrate and hopefully not kill us.

We arrived at our hotel (which was surprisingly an average on the Austin scale that ranges from horrible dorm rooms at the University of Central Arkansas (dripping heaters anyone) to the Renaissance in Nashville). My room mate was my friend Tim Aubrie, who hails from South Carolina. Inside the room was alright but when we woke up we had to face the breakfast, which wasn’t exactly gourmet especially since here they have lunch foods for breakfast. After we kind of ate breakfast my group went to the village, Meizhou, where we’d be working to build houses and the other group would be tourists around the area. I mixed concrete for the first hour or so and then I got called over to where some guys were shoveling this dirt into wheelbarrows and putting it on the other side of the road. The only bad part was that the tiny dirt road from the top of the mountain to the bottom was so muddy it took 3 people to move the wheelbarrow through it. I told them they needed to put 2 by 4s down, but it was still tough to get over. I just decided rather than waste three people doing this, I’d do it myself and they could help shovel or something. That plan worked well and we worked like that the rest of the day. The second day was much the same, bad food so we ate in our room. The work was the same as well, except that I had to walk around the village during the last hour so I could do the project that was due for one of the parent teacher nights. I couldn’t speak but people with me could of course. We went around and looked in different houses and asked them questions about how living in the village was. After that, our teachers decided it would be a good idea to go to the local school. At first I thought it was a good idea also. As our bus drove in the entrance we realized that we were surrounded by one huge building that rose 7 stories high. We had just driven into the space in the middle. There were tons of kids there, I think they were in seventh grade. Next got put into groups by our teachers. Mine was a Taiwanese girl (spoke perfect Mandarin of course), two Korean kids (who spoke better mandarin than I did), and your’s truly (No doubt the biggest and most bizarre looking to them). We went up to the forth floor and I let the others go first, already noticing that I didn’t exactly fit in this picture. As soon as I walked in the kids screamed and ran into their classrooms. That’s a lot of conflicting emotion there, on one hand I’m angry, on another I’m drawing a blank as to what scares them, on one side I want to show them who they’re messing with by scaring the living daylights out of them, on another I’m actually feeling a bit sad. In the end I just shut the emotions switch off for an hour or so. It sucked. Then we played tug-of-war against all the kids. That rocked, cause I own that game. That was just my first experience outside a big city, and among the things I learned were: Not everyone speaks Mandarin, no etiquette is the same here, no KFC.

I went to Hangzhou in October 2008 for my first Model UN conference. I love MUN and in about 30 minutes I need to be going back to it. This MUN was great, it had free internet, the rooms were nice and not expensive, the only drive thru McDonalds I’ve ever seen here was right outside our hotel. We had one annoying chairperson but the rest of the conference was good. The last night we rode in little rickshaws pulled by a motor-scooter from the karaoke place we were at to the the hotel. Tim decides he wants to drive so he promises the driver three more dollars if he can drive. Unfortunately the scooter has no breaks. Yeah that was fun, at least I appreciate bugs who get splattered on the windshields of buses, because I came close to it. We also went thru the drive thru in the cart.

Anqing was what inspired me to write this blog. Luckily that’s where I touch next. Before I launch into the story I need to explain some things that’ll come up later. My world history teacher has been all over China. He has been part of a lot of exchanges and knows a lot about the culture, he was kind of the one who organized this. The admissions director at our school was the same way, surprisingly knowledgeable about the culture (he had apparently done a whole summers worth of these trips) and could speak, at least to my ear, perfect Mandarin. I speak rudimentary chinese, like a chinese four year old knows more than I (that’s great for my ego). We left Shanghai at 10 o’ clock. Our train ride went from Shanghai to Anqing with a stop every hour. I loved it. Sleeping in a train is cool but sharing it with three people is even better. Someone was amazingly nice and brought ramen noodles for everyone. I bought us all drinks, and one guy had some Korean candy. When my relatives come this fall I will definitely recommend we use trains like those on our way to Beijing. We arrived at Anqing and met the teacher Mr. Strombeck had been in contact with. His name was Ross, and he was a really nice guy. The school had rented a bus for us to get to the school with, although we made a quick stop at the only McDonalds that was in the city. I wanted to go into the KFC across the street but a teacher walked in and was like hey, everyone left to the McDonalds, we’d be wise to follow. We were waiting in line, about 20 people craving coffee (not me, I’m not addicted to anything) when they flipped the signs over to the lunch menu. Thats how I got a chicken sandwich and fries for breakfast. We ate and then left for school. I was our school’s spokesperson, and I had to give a speech when we arrived. The school had 3,000 people. I thought I had to speak in front of 3,000 people. When we arrived we were directed to their theatre, where I only had to speak in front of 100 or so, no big deal. At least they understood what I was saying, or so I thought, someone from our school translated anyway. Did I mention that everyone was scared of me yet? Well they were, even the adults to some degree. I was amazingly used to it after the disaster of last time I was in a public school here. I got paired off with a nice guy named Tom (I think), his English was comparable to my Spanish. For those who have been lucky enough to not have overheard my communications with the kids at my old school who spoke only Spanish I can say next to nothing unless someone tells me. I have a pretty good accent, and can read it the way it’s supposed to be but my skill doesn’t go much further than Te guesta Futball? Next we had a lunch break so we went to his house. They had whipped up a feast for me, some beef, some mushrooms, I asked my partner what he did at lunch. He said he usually slept at lunch. I didn’t have much to say to that, so I just said lets walk around. Luckily after about an hour of random wandering his father came and took us to a police car. Apparently he’s a judge and here they get police cruisers. I was fine by that, as long as a teacher didn’t come along and see he in the back. We went to a temple where they had a pagoda that was 5 stories high. Right as I walked out of the cruiser, one of my American classmates showed up. She climbed to the forth floor, and then got too scared of the heights ( the barriers were 2 feet high, perfect for tripping on, not preventing you from falling.

We got called back to the school at 1:30, they had a two hour lunch break! I wouldn’t want a lunch break of more than 45 minutes, otherwise it just tugs at the time you’re at school and makes it longer than you want it. Either way the next 50 minutes were not fun. I had to sit in a Chinese classroom and learn Mandarin. Which was about as interesting as watching bacteria grow on a piece of fruit. At least that way I would’ve learned something. Even more awkward was the English class they had after that. The teacher wanted us to say things in English that we knew only because we lived abroad. She then devised a game to make it more competitive. The game was that we had to give two hints to the word that we chose. I chose a Cardinal. I said that it was a bird and also a Catholic official. I didn’t think anyone would know the Saint Louis Cardinals so I kept that out. No one in the room could guess that so I guess I won (didn’t see that one coming). After school they showed us around their museum that they built for their 100th anniversary. Mr. Strombeck showed me the portraits in their library’s foyer, the model citizens. Mao, Lenin, Stalin, and of course Karl Marx. Best guys I ever knew, all except Marx rank right up there with Hitler and Lucifer. I mean the first two caused revolutions that were overly brutal and the last inspired fear not to his enemies, but to his own soldiers. Then again Dick Cheney isn’t exactly a role model for leaders either. We got dismissed for dinner after that, and I swear we must’ve spent 20 minutes outside trying to decide where to go. We all agreed that we wanted to stick together. We also had to think which restaurant had room for 50 kids. We ended up deciding to go to a restaurant that had room for plenty and a karaoke bar on the next floor up. I ordered some spicy chicken and milk. Look at my pictures to see what sort of things came in the glass. Some people might’ve ordered alcohol, but I don’t know nuthin’ bout that. Then I tried to pay and someone was trying to tell me that my buddy would pay and I was like uh he’s not here (which was a lie, but I can pay for my own things, he doesn’t have to). I think I got away with that one actually. I went upstairs to our room at the karaoke place. I love karaoke, great stuff. I could probably do it all day. This place had great songs considering that we were the first English speaking group to ever stay in this place overnight. My buddy dragged me home after just an hour though, but whatever, he was calling the shots.

As we walked in, the parents were like ok now we’re going to the hotel (in Chinese, but I can understand that much). I was like uh ok cool. The hotel wasn’t better than their house really, the shower was a shower head and a hole in the ground. As I sat down on the bed, after taking advantage of the western facilities, I tried using my phone to check up on the rest of the family...which didn’t work. Okay, so maybe I can call someone here...nope. My American phone didn’t work either. The hotel room phone was a piece of trash. Then I noticed the room was chilly, even with the thermostat at 30 degrees celsius. Oh one of the windows doesn’t close, magical. So I decide ok I can just text my family. My dad asks me, why can’t you call. Well my phone doesn’t work, and neither does this room phone. Well get someone from your room to give you a phone, was his reply. Well sorry dad but I’m alone in here. Which didn’t sit well with him, so he called up the teacher, well Austin’s in a hotel alone and can’t contact anyone, so then the teacher from Anqing, Ross called up the parents of my buddy and asked them what was up, and apparently the house I ate lunch in was the grandmother’s. They lived further away, and my buddy lived with them. I was like, hey there’s this bed that your sister used before she went off to college is fine with me. Of course this whole time I’m like of crap I don’t want to offend these people because they’re really nice and all. But this stuff was out of my hands anyway. That resolved I went to bed.

And woke up at 6. On Saturday, when I usually sleep till 7, so I’m not effected by the lack of sleep as much as others. We went through an art museum, which was full of wooden carvings and Chinese paintings and went on to this wall that stopped the flooding of the Yangtze River during the rainy season. Now with the Three Gorges Dam they don’t have to worry about flooding, so they built a nice park where I gave out Mr. Goodbars to kids. Some mothers wouldn’t let their kids take them, much to my astonishment. Which of course sounds completely normal to an American, you don’t take candy from strangers, but if that stranger was the first foreigner you had ever seen and was offering you foreign candy that you had never tried, you might re-think that one. Then we ate lunch at their school, which was fried chicken, some sort of greens and mushrooms with cokes to drink. Afterwards we watched people play basketball while we waited to go off to the opera.