Archive for the ‘Shenanigans’ Category

Viva la resistance

September 23rd, 2009 by Johanna | No Comments | Filed in China, Shenanigans

Ah, the Internet. I love it. It just makes things so easy. You can take up serious and worthy causes without making them serious or worthwhile, just to get some lulz. I’m going to need some lulz to make it through a whole year on the Chinese Internet.

This quick intro guide provides great tips on just one way to subvert the Chinese government. The operation is called Project Cntroll, as in, China troll.

More on Datong

August 24th, 2009 by Johanna | No Comments | Filed in China, Shenanigans, Work

I wasn’t planning on writing anything for work about my mini-holidays, but I had such an adventure in Datong that I thought it’d be a pity to leave it all out. It turned out to be a little info guide for would-be visitors to Hengshan and the Hanging Monastery.

Cat and Joh’s Great Datong Ice Cream Adventure

August 11th, 2009 by Johanna | No Comments | Filed in China, Food, Shenanigans, Stories

After coming back from our big adventure to the Hanging Monastery, we rested for a bit at our hotel. We decided we weren’t very hungry but should eat anyway around 8 p.m., so we went to the hotel next door. It had a pretty nice restaurant (we had eaten there the night before). We ordered some vegetables, xiao chi and dao xiao mian (knife-cut noodleds), a regional specialty. It was very good and a lot of food. You may recall that we weren’t hungry. We stuffed ourselves silly. At the end of the meal, Catherine starts telling me about how southern Chinese people traditionally believe that there are compartments in our stomachs for each flavor and that her sweet compartment is still hungry. I told her mine was, too. It was bingqilin time.

See, the night before, Catherine and I had asked one of the waitresses at the restaurant if there was any bingqilin around the area. She said no. We walked down a few streets, and after half an hour, we decided the waitress was telling the truth and we had to settle for store-bought ice cream. We wandered into the little convenience shop on the other side of our hotel (i.e., not the side with the restaurant). All they had were the individual popsicles/ice-cream-on-sticks that are in freezers everywhere around China. Sigh. OK. I picked what I thought was a chocolate/vanilla swirl thing on a cone, which turned out to be taro and white. But Catherine hit jackpot: she got a popsicle called Strawberry Empress. Pink strawberry popsicle with vanilla cream on the inside–it looked and smelled like ice cream royalty.

Anyway, after our big dinner, we decided to go back to that shop and get us some Strawberry Empress. Except–it wasn’t there! We were like, WTF? Luckily, the side street next to our hotel was a row of little convenience stores, one after the other. We started at the first store and checked every single freezer. Shopkeepers stared and looked confused. Some of them asked what we were looking for. “You bingqilin ma?” I asked to save time. Some of them said no. Some said yes, and we were shown their stock. But no Strawberry Empress.

After 10 stores or so, we wandered into a shop with an upright refrigerator (like a normal home refrigerator instead of the industrial rectangular boxes). Catherine hesitated. “This can’t be good,” she said.

That’s when I noticed the duck! It was just waddling around outside the shop on the sidewalk. I got really excited and whipped out my camera. I started snapping pictures. The shopkeeper started making noises to try to get it to come over. “Na shi shei de ya?” I asked him.

“Wo de,” he answered.

I squealed with delight. “Jiao ta guo lai!”

He tried, but the duck was hungry and looking for food, he said. It was the cutest thing ever. Then I remembered our mission. “You bingqilin ma?”

He opened his refrigerator and pulled out a drawer. “Yao shenme zhong de bingqilin?” he asked as he started showing us his bingqilin.

“You mei you caomei de?”

He pulls one out. No, not it. Another one. We peer at it. Wait–this was it!

“Yes, zhei ge! Zai lai yi ge!”

He searches and searches. No more.

Because I hadn’t yet had the greatness of Strawberry Empress, Catherine let me buy the popsicle. It was delicious. We wandered down the street, now asking the shopkeepers if they had “this kind” of popsicle. No.

Finally, we saw another store with an upright refrigerator. It was a sign. What kind do you want? Strawberry flavored. Oh, here are some. No, this kind. But this is also strawberry. No, yiding yao shi zhei zhong de.

This kind? Oh, yes!–a Strawberry Empress for Catherine.

So we asked the shopkeeper to take a picture of us with our popsicles. We are still pretty certain we bought the last two Strawberry Empresses in Datong that night.

Qingdao ahoy!

August 8th, 2009 by Johanna | 1 Comment | Filed in China, Shenanigans, Stories

Actually, there isn’t anything ! about Qingdao. Wait, no, there is one thing, and here it is:

The one good thing about Qingdao: I found an ice cream place that serves ice cream on a waffle cone—three delicious scoops for only six kuai! And on our last night, I tried to get some for dessert, but the place had already closed. Devastated, I loitered around for a few moments. The really sweet guy who worked there noticed me, and perhaps even remembered me from a couple of days before, and said he can still get me some ice cream on a waffle cone if I wanted it. He was all smiley and happy to serve me, too. It was the cutest thing ever, and it made my night.

Besides that, Qingdao was full of potential greatness, but we were let down repeatedly. Perhaps it was because we had absolutely no idea where Qingdao was, what it looked like or what to do there, no plans and no time to think about any of these things. But I was still expecting something exciting.

The road to Qingdao: It started with the bullet train. After the 14-hour ride back from Dandong on a hard seat, Chris and I were looking forward to the clean, modern and sleek bullet train. And it delivered: the backs of the seats reclined a good bit and even the seats themselves could be adjusted forward. We settled down in comfort until we realized how many people kept walking back and forth, rustling in the aisle, talking loudly and generally doing annoying things. And then the kids! Some stupid little girl kept running up and down the aisle all the way to Qingdao. It was a miserable six hours. I just wanted to sleep!

The hotel search: Then, we arrived in Qingdao, ready to find us a hotel. We had no idea where in Qingdao we were, nor where a good hotel might be. The nice hotels close to the beach front were pricey ($120 or more a night). We started looking for hotels farther away from the shore; they seemed a little dicey. This guy started hassling us, trying to get us to look at hotels. We could not shake him off! It didn’t help that a lot of the more reasonably priced places wouldn’t take foreigners (not exactly because of local racism, but because a place needs to get government permission to house foreigners). A lot of times they would see Chris and say, No rooms available. After looking at four or five places, someone flagged us down on the road and told us her hotel had rooms available for 220 kuai a night. We thought it was worth a shot and went to look at the room.

The Qingdao Tian Cheng Hotel: Our room was tiny. The beds were wooden. The bathroom was the size of a large shower and doubled as one. There were no slippers. Our air condition broke our last night. The Qingdao Tian Cheng Hotel is no Crowne Plaza.

The bathing beaches of Qingdao: So we put on our bathing suits and headed down to the beach. Bathing Beach No. 1 was so crowded that crowded seems inadequate to describe it. There were no free spaces available on the sand. There was no free space in the water. The water was dirty with litter and seaweed. People didn’t lay out on towels; they just buried themselves and each other in the sand. I did not see a single bikini on a girl, but I saw men in tight shorts or Speedos and naked babies everywhere. Bathing Beach No. 2, which was a ways down the shoreline, was an exact replica.

Qingdao redeems itself: Qingdao is actually a cute little city that reminded me somewhat of San Francisco because it has a lot of one-way streets and hills. The German influence did not seem German, but the architecture was not Chinese, either. It is definitely one of the Chinese cities being revolutionized by the Chinese economic miracle. Run-down apartment buildings are being demolished so modern high rises can take their place. On the other hand, decent-looking facades line the sidewalks, but breaks in the walls reveal dismal living conditions on the other side.

Friends-turned-extortionists: Chris and I got lost wandering around the city, and just when we were about to hail a taxi back to our hotel, a guy sitting outside a small corner restaurant shouted at us: “Hello! Welcome!” He was waving us over. It was 5 in the afternoon, so Chris and I decided what the hell and joined him. He seemed to be friends with the restaurant owner, who brought us some cold bottles of Tsingtao and peanuts. This guy knew about 10 words in English and had no idea how to form English sentences, so there was a lot of pointing and gesturing. “You! Mah firrriend-a! Look-a look-a! Ship-a! Tomorrow! OK!!!!” “You! Tsingtao beer! OK!!! Me, Laoshan beer.” Somehow, I gathered from him that there was a shipyard in the direction behind the restaurant, and this guy was saying he and the restaurant owner had the pass to enter it so they could take us to go look around. A couple of beers later, the restaurant owner pulls up his SUV, and we are on our merry way to what turned out to be the Port of Qingdao. It was the coolest tour ever. There were billboards with these Communist slogans everywhere. There was a “butterfly garden,” which had statues of butterflies, giraffes and zebras. The restaurant owner drove us around the port and then back to town, straight to the heart of the tourist area. Finally, we were back at a familiar place. Chris and I say thanks and hop out of the car, but restaurant owner and mah fiiirrriend-a guy starts saying something about 200 yuan. I look at them quizzically, and it sounded like they said something about how other people would charge us 500 kuai.

“Wait, you want us to pay you 200 kuai?” I asked, not sure if I was understanding them through their Shandong dialect. And with perfectly serious faces, they were like, Yes!

I told them we had no money, and of course, they didn’t believe me. After this back-and-forth a few times, they popped the door open and told us to get back in the car because they will take us to an ATM. I was like, No, we’ve already caused you so much inconvenience, and Chris and I walked away. We watched our shadows just in case they were to hop out of their car and chase after us. I’ve never been so glad to be near a crowded Chinese tourist area.

The Americans: Chris and I walked along the tourist walks and then went to McDonald’s to recover over some fries and soft serve ice cream. On our way out, we ran into a couple of white guys, one of whom had been drinking a lot since that morning. They turned out to be part of some program at OSU and were studying at Qingdao University for the summer. We decided to get a beer, and I tried really hard to like the drunkard, but he was too pushy and borderline violent. He started an argument about Afghanistan and the Iraq War when Chris said he had been in the army. Then he kept trying to get us to go to a disco club called Feelings, which even his friend didn’t want to go to. His friend went home, and he kept saying how it would be awkward to end the night without going somewhere. Chris and I said we could have one more beer, but we didn’t want to go anywhere. He ended up wandering away randomly, and I couldn’t have been more relieved.

In a way, Chris and I have come full circle. We got into trouble the first weekend we were in China, so it figures we would get ourselves into trouble again on our last weekend together in China. Miraculously, we managed to stay out of it the whole time in between.

Heading for the home stretch

August 5th, 2009 by Johanna | No Comments | Filed in China, Reflections, Shenanigans, Work

It’s hard to believe that my summer in Beijing is nearing the end. I leave a week from tomorrow. It’s already August, but I have had no concept of time here. It doesn’t feel like I will be going home soon–probably because I can’t fathom that I’ve already been here for 10 weeks. These weeks have flown, and it seems like I just arrived. And yet, it feels like I’ve been here for forever.

I don’t want to dwell on this too much because it’s making me really sad.

I have been super-uber busy these past couple of weeks. I caught a minor cold a few weeks back and have been recovering since. Chris and I took a long weekend to Dandong, and I just found out yesterday that my uncle has been staying there for the past month or so. We came back, did our last burger story, wrapped up the internship with an evaluation-presentation, celebrated our last day with some coworkers (including a new one, with whom Chris is infatuated), then took off for Qingdao for another long weekend. (More on Qingdao later.) Chris and I returned yesterday evening for his final dinner (hotpot) in China, celebrated in the company of our closest work friends, and then a few rounds of beer. Now he’s gone, and it hasn’t quite hit me.

Tonight, Pang Li and I will try to get tickets to see Up, which just came out here.

Tomorrow, I’m off to Datong with Catherine, the last remaining intern. We plan to come back Saturday.

Catherine heads back to the States on Monday.

Meanwhile, I still have one more hamburger story to write for work and perhaps some stuff on Dandong or Qingdao. I have many, many pictures I need to post.

More firsts

June 14th, 2009 by Johanna | No Comments | Filed in China, Reflections, Shenanigans

What a weekend! Work kept us busy with all these fun activities. Thursday night was our karaoke/office “Idol” competition (First #1)—which I am proud to say, my roommate has made it to the final round based on his performance of Stray Cats’ “Stray Cat Strut.”

Then Friday afternoon, we boarded a bus to Hongluo Mountain for a work retreat (First #2). We were also given 170 kuai to spend at the hotel, which bought me two games of bowling, a round (?) of archery (First #3) and a 30 minute back massage (First #4), with almost 40 kuai leftover. That doesn’t include the joy of having my coworkers’ company nor the joy of making new friends with the folks at the railway bureau in the Song and Dance Room. Now they knew how to do karaoke.

The next morning, we began ascending the mountain bright and early. There is also a Buddhist temple near the foot of the mountain and a Tian Men (Heaven’s Gate) at the very top. Rather stupidly, I was ill-prepared. I should have known Chinese mountains (First #5) are not like American mountains. There are no cutbacks and footpaths; rather, there are stairs more or less straight to the top. St. Peter wasn’t there to greet me when I made it, either.

But the real adventure was coming down the mountain. There was an “Alpine Coaster” about half-way up the mountain, and the name pretty much says it all. They strap people into these individual cars and then link the cars together to form a train. A guy in the first car works the breaks, and luckily for us, our driver’s breaks were broken. It was like a real roller coaster!

Today, Chris and I checked out the Silk Market and South Chaoyang District. We got badminton gear and played some pick-up badminton (First #6) at The Place, which was actually a really cool place to be. The Place is a shopping mall, I think, with mostly Western clothing stores; I saw a Zara, Guess, Jack n Jones, Mango and French Connection. But there are these three or four giant LCD screens covering a huge open plaza where kids and their parents were throwing these big disks. Essentially, each of these discs is made of plastic balloon stuff wrapped around a hoola hoop with a little bit of air inside. A grand staircase overlooking the plaza provided a great place for couples and friends to sit and people-watch. Also, a Juice Avenue stand had really kick-ass Hong Kong-style boba. It was a great night at The Place.

That’s another thing about China that I love: People go outside and hang out at night. Not at a bar or a friend’s house, but just outside—on the sidewalks, in the hutongs, on the outdoor plaza of some shopping mall. They’ll throw around some cheap toy, play pickup badminton or a game a chess, or just talk—in Chinese, they call it liao tian (聊天), or chatting the day away. It’s a sense of camaraderie and of simple pleasures that completely erases all notion of an earlier time when business and brusqueness ruled the day. It’s where you discover the heart of the Chinese.

Quick Takes: Observations on the Chinese Way

June 5th, 2009 by Johanna | 1 Comment | Filed in China, Food, Reflections, Shenanigans
  • In China, it is possible to lock someone in the house. This happened to me the other morning, as in, my roommate locked me inside our apartment. I thought I was going crazy, forgetting how to open the door. Fortunately, I was not losing my mind. The door doesn’t unlock from the inside if it is locked from the outside.
  • The scariest few moments of my life occur when I am opening the door to a bathroom stall. I am afraid it will reveal a really filthy squat toilet. Or just a squat toilet in general.
  • The crosswalk between the Gongzhufenbei bus stop and the Gongzhufen subway station entrance is the funnest crosswalk to cross ever. It’s a melee of taxis, buses, cars and cyclists traveling on the side road of Sanhuan Dajie (the third ring) spilling out onto a traffic circle with exits on the left and right. Pedestrians who are thrown into this mess trying to get to the subway station simply take steps wherever there is not a vehicle. It’s a lot like playing Frogger.
  • I feel like God is making up for all those unfulfilled Chinese food cravings I had back in Chapel Hill. But now I just really want a Krispy Kreme original glazed donut, and the nearest Krispy Kreme is in Korea. Other things I miss: Ben and Jerry’s. Good Internet. My pillow.
  • My roommate recently informed me that I’ve been sleeping with a towel. I thought it was a blanket, but now that I know it’s a towel, it definitely feels like a towel. And it’s towel-sized. I’m still using it as a blanket, though.
  • Back home, people treated me like an American: always speaking to me in English, not recognizing that I’m Asian. Here, except for the people at work, everyone speaks to me in Chinese like I’m one of them. It’s a great feeling, and I love talking to people in Chinese with the little Chinese I know. I’m getting the Beijing accent down. “Wei? Ni hao. Zherrrr shirrr shei-ah?” “Qing dai women daor Huar-yuan Qiaor, xibei bian…dui, zai Xisanhuanr.” And I’ll be walking down the streets, seeing all this great food. “Oh, this guy’s selling jiaozi! Oh, he says that’s some yang rou on a stick! Dofu! Ooh, a huoguo dian! That restaurant has Beijing kao ya!” I love being part of the club.
  • Of course, I’m not part of the club. When I came here with my family, I got a few inquiries about where I was from. This time around, I think it’s pretty obvious. Being with Chris gives it away. I’m not quite sure what Beijingers think when they see us together, though. Guys gawk at me a lot and glare at Chris, but every once in a while, people will glare at me, too. I heard they are more cliquish here than in other cities, so I wonder if they think I shouldn’t be hanging out with the whities.

Vacation’s almost over

May 31st, 2009 by Johanna | No Comments | Filed in China, Shenanigans

Today, being God’s day, I decided to make it a lazy Sunday. Roommate and I were feeling a little beat from all the excitement of the past week, I think. Yesterday we took another walk, this time around our neighborhood, and I discovered a nice strip of shops the next (very large) block over with a bakery and cafe that sells boba. And then there was also last night, which lasted into early this morning. It was a real shame because I finally had conquered my jet lag the day before.

The night started at about 10 p.m. when on our way out, one of the students from Penn State called to confirm our meeting time and place. They had suggested earlier the Sanlitun area, which is directly on the other side of town from where Chris and I live, also on the third ring. Neither of us had ventured out that far yet, so Matt from Penn State told us to meet them at the subway stop. He informed me that he was a tall-ish white guy, which in my mind, seemed enough for identification. Alas, when Chris and I finally got to the other side of town nearly 45 minutes after the appointed time, the subway stop was deserted and there was no tall-ish white guy named Matt from Penn State. Taking a gamble, we grabbed a taxi to the Adidas building Matt had mentioned. Sure enough, there was a street lit up by bars. After wandering up and down yelling “Matt” at every possible foreigner we passed with no luck, we plopped down at an outdoor table and ordered a couple of Tsingtaos. Chris continued to mention Matt in some nonchalant way every time a tall-ish white guy walked by. No one even paused. And then—success!

“Matt from Penn State?” we asked in a rush of excitement. Did our plan work? Was it a small world after all?

No. This Matt was from Britain.

So while we never found Matt from Penn State and his friends, we did meet some other fine Americans. There was Jeff of the FDNY, who was touring China with his father. He had brought his Chinese-English dictionary, and as we were talking, several of the bar waiters borrowed it. Every once in a while, they would snicker, and pretty soon I found out why:

“How do you say this word?” one of them asked Jeff.

“Oh. Orgasm.”

Another waiter entertained us all night with his knowledge of the differences between Western and Asian cocks, Western and Asian women’s preference of cunninlingus and nasty pick-up lines. His command of English on these topics impressed me, but then again, he did tell us he was the “motherfuck P-I-M-P.” Fo’ realz. I think he knows more Jay-Z and dirty rap lyrics than I do. Ironically, toward the end of the night, a real pimp came up to our tables. He very adamantly referred to himself as a “ladies’ manager,” though.

Sorry for the blur.

Sorry for the blur.

Time flew by. By the end of the night, we had collected a large table of Americans from all over the country, each here in Beijing for a different reason. Ryan, who now lives in Shanghai teaching English to elementary school kids, was hosting some old college friends. Some other guys, whose names I can’t really remember now, were here for a friend’s wedding. It was almost 4 a.m. by the time we left and got a taxi, and the sun started rising on the ride home.

It was a great night, but Chris and I definitely paid for it: we had 10 Tsingtaos altogether, and it left us broke. Chris had to withdraw money from the ATM to pay for the taxi. Bottled beer, like most everything else, is hella cheap here, only a few yuan. But by virtue of being at a bar frequented by foreigners at night, we had to pay 15 times that. I offered a lower amount, but no go: 45 yuan a bottle, which is even more than what they cost in the States. So be warned: Stay away from tourist-y bars in China.

Tomorrow is my last day of vacation. It’s been nearly a month since my last final exam, and I’m actually looking forward to having something to do again. I need the structure that work (or school) provides. I would be starting tomorrow, but someone on my flight just had to have the A/H1N1 virus. Chris and I were told to stay away from the office, but we were still allowed to roam the city and ride the crowded subways. Go figure.