Urban China's first impression is an affront on the immediate senses- your ears are constantly surprised by passing horns, your eyes are always catching stares as you walk anywhere, and your nose gets the worst of it all. Be it the delicious smells from passing restaurants that you want to explore or the repulsive scents that linger along the streets from the waste cans and street vendors selling cooked meat that has probably been in that cart every time you've passed this week without being changed out, your nose endures it all. Some highlights from Jiading: the wet market we visited, where many people get their produce and meat in the neighborhood; there were countless types of fish, crawfish, snakes, and eels swimming in crates of water as well as turtles without their shells on the side. The diversity of fishes struck me- more than I could keep track of. One thing has proven true about the Chinese: they eat most everything that grows in their country. The same goes for the produce section in the market- the variety made my mouth gape, as well as all of the types of eggs they eat. How could there possibly be 8 different types of eggs to eat? I never could figure out what the ones covered in mud/clay were.....
A case study illustrating the mentality of the Chinese workforce became immediately evident outside of the hotel from day one. The University we were training at had started a massive project to re-do the drainage system of the walkways around campus because they always flooded. When we arrived, most of the walkways were gone and almost none of the rebuilding had begun. Tim offhandedly said "yea, this will look nice in about a week when they're done," and I took it as a joke. Who wouldn't- the walkways in question cover most of the campus. The area they were working with was huge. But from when we got there, the crews worked non-stop. From when I awoke at 7:00 and well into the night, around 9 to 10, they worked on those walkways and drains. One aspect that surprised me is that these construction workers didn't look like construction workers. In the US, you think of ripped and chiseled young guys or weathered and tough older men. Either way, you wouldn't pick a fight with them. But these Chinese construction workers didn't look extraordinary in any way. They looked like regular skinny Chinese people and almost indistinguishable from everyone else on the street. In fact, they wore regular street clothes and regular street shoes on the job. One night as I was walking back to the hotel, I passed a woman on the crew shoveling gravel into the holes of the once-paths-and-soon-to-be-paths and she was schooling them. Working twice as fast I reckoned, and she was this short skinning Chinese woman. I was very impressed. And the pace of the workers wasn't a hurried one. They slowly plotted along, no outwardly rushed aura to them, but they worked longer than most people in the US would (they were there through the weekend as well). They had these ancient 4 wheelers that looked as if they were the prototypes for the original WW2 Jeep, and they had a big bucket mounted on the front for hauling material around the site. All day long, they puttered and spitted and backfired through campus, dripping oil and coughing black fumes like an 80 year old lifetime smoker. I wasn't surprised the couple of times I came across one with a wheel off and the axle supported by blocks, surrounded by a pool of oil. But the next day it would be sputtering along once again. Every day I would swear would be its last, but those rusty machines and those skinny workers finished the walkways in a week and a half. I was amazed. It must have been the day after they finished when the rains came. And when it rains in China, it rains hard. A deluge. And how did the new drainage system handle this deluge you might be asking? I had to take off my shoes and socks, roll up my pants above my knees, and wade through the foot deep lake that was the newly completed walkway. Shaking my head, I said to Tim and Luke as we forded the lake, "Only in China......."
I ended last time with the circus. THE CIRCUS BLEW MY MIND. I did not expect much and that probably made it all the better. I kept looking over at Luke with my mouth completely dropped (and I would notice that his was as well) and then they would do something even crazier. I can't do them justice here, except to say that it was so crazy that you won't think I'm serious. A guy on a balance board (skateboard balanced on a long cylinder) that's stacked 5 boards high tossing bowls onto his head- 5 total and then a spoon, acrobats jumping through some stupidly high hoops (should play ultimate, they'd crush Willie), then they did triple backflips off a teeter-totter that others were jumping onto, then that wasn't easy enough so one guy did it on stilts, then another on a single stilt, then 8 motorcycles driving around and around a steel sphere that should only fit about 4, a couple swinging from a long scarf high above the crowd without safety wires, and a guy spinning a very large vase on his head and catching it there as well. Again, only in China.
I quickly discovered that the bulk of Chinese beer is Utah rated 3.3% alcoholic beer that does more to hydrate you than have its other desired effect. But it makes for a refreshing anytime of the day in the hot and muggy weather. The plus side to being in Shanghai was that real beer wasn't impossible to find. Stuart, one of the teachers who came to Pengshan with us, had his birthday on the second week and Stuart likes the fine things in life. Stuart also likes drinking, being the recent college graduate he is. So, Stuart wanted to go drink fine beer for his birthday, to which we all happily obliged. He found this brewery in downtown and after a communication mix-up and Stuart taking a taxi across town to the brewery we were at (the thought that there could be multiple Boxing Cat breweries completely slipped us) we were drinking double IPA. It was easily the best beer I've had in a long time. And we ate our first western food in China, making it a double delight. All were merry, Stuart got Breezed twice (Ices don't exist in China,but Bacardi breezers do) and became impressively belligerent and we all missed the last train back. Good thing an hour long taxi ride only costs 140 yuan ($22 US). On the last day of our training,
-Hold that thought one moment. Remember last post when I said that even when its sunny in Shanghai, the sky isn't blue because of the pollution? Well, I just walked outside to the balcony here in Pengshan, far to the west of the coast, and was immediately struck by the blue of the sky. Its blue here! Yahoo! Not Alaska blue, which I didn't know was a unique blue until now, but far closer and warmer than the big city. It turns out my pollution indicator is the color of the sky...
Back to the last day of training: Luke and I walked down to the big supermarket and found some very special beer. Very, very special. Black and gold PBR! It was PBR in a black can with gold printing for a very steep price of 8 yuan. What made this most exciting for me was the memory that in college, Rose once got a 12 pack of black and gold PBR from California that was Pabst's Genuine Draft- PGD. The Chinese PGD, it turns out, is Pabst's Stout. It was the perfect celebration beer and I was thankful I bought 2. Too bad there isn't any here in Sichuan. I wonder if China PGD would be a hit in Crested Butte....
The rest of the time on Shanghai was spent eating, studying Chinese, and a little teaching. My second class was holidays and it went better than the first time. It even boosted my confidence about teaching, which was a welcome effect. I was very thankful for that aspect of the training; I can't imagine going into the classroom here for the first time without that practice. Eating: my favorite snack quickly became Shao Kao (pronounced like an excited kung fu chop), the street side BBQ stands that appear as the sun sets. Choose what you want from the fridges of ingredients on a stick (lamb, sliced potatoes, green beans, and onion stalks are the favorites now) and then they get grilled with spices, oil, and MSG. Delicious after a night of KTV. Another favorite was the street-side soup shop along food row where you picked out your ingredients (more options than you had guesses) from two large fridges and they boiled them all together for your soup. Usually 9 yuan for more than you could eat.
And slowly, ever so slowly, my Chinese got a little better. The main breakthrough came when I arrived to Sichuan, when one day I realized that the noises that people were making actually were sounds I could hear and distinguish as distinct instead of the stream of nonsense that I had been surrounded by for the last two weeks. This realization gave me a lot of hope. Our teacher in Shanghai was named Peter, an Australian who'd lived in Shanghai for a long while. He was really comical and entertaining and taught us a basic toolkit to get us through the essentials in China; namely eating. The way he ran the class was new to me- a language class dominated by him talking and us reciting select phrases. One memorable day for me was one when I sat on the end of the tables. At first glance, this would not seem folly, because it is just the end of the table; there is no difference from the middle in regards to foot space or table space. But the key point is that Peter began reciting from the ends, and this day he favored my end, and this day was a day of very long sentences. Chinese had never been so hard. I remember one in which he said it twice and then pointed to me; to which I just threw up my hands and said “pass”. Not a chance. But everyday gets a little better, especially with Luke’s help. I’m thankful for his patience- I can’t imagine how annoying it is to be asked how to say _____ in Chinese over and over and over.
All for now. More to come soon- that’s all of Shanghai; next is journeys to and around Pengshan, Sichuan, China! Miss you all from Zhong Guo. And bacon and good coffee. But you all the most.
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