A Hen in China

The others were craving pancakes today so we went to some restaurant called Kabb in Xintiandi where they have American style brunch. I have to admit I wasn’t too keen on paying 70 yuan (that’s like 11 bucks) for an American breakfast but I just went along with it since I could use a break from the grease as well. I ordered french toast but I kind of wished I had gotten an omelette instead as even I can only handle so much sweetness.

Afterwards we went to Tiandifang which is this little artsy sort of area. There were a lot of places to buy photography, paintings, prints and stuff as well at little touristy things. I didn’t buy anything since most of the stuff was overpriced.

Oh, but we went past this store where you could design your own pill (I think it was a pill) doll and they had this huge one out front. All these people had written and drawn stuff on it and on at the top someone had written, “Save Cantonese!” lol I thought it was great.

While we were walking past this gate suddenly this old lady with a bucket of water came out yelling something and tossed the water all over the ground. It splashed a bit on some girl walking by who started yelling at the old lady. A screaming match proceeded and I have no idea was it was about. I suspect the lady doesn’t like so many people around making noise near her home. When we came back down that way later the lady was still standing there yelling.

When we got back Anna and I did laundry. There are no dryers here so we hang stuff around the room to dry. The washer gets most of the water out though so it dries pretty fast compared to if we hand wash stuff. Unfortunately that also means we can’t reshrink any of our tshirts or leggings that get stretched out while wearing or in the wash. So now some of my shirts are baggier than I would like them to be lol. I also found that my new coat was the source of the funkyness in my closet. It totally needs to be aired out for a few days before I pack it in my suitcase. I don’t want all my stuff to be funky when I reach SF lol.

A week ago I ordered a fitted peacoat and today I got to pick it up at the fabric market. I’m pretty satisfied with it. It’s a long peacoat and I’m really glad I found one that has a hood. Just sucks that I have to wait until winter to make use of it. Well maybe it’ll be cold in SF when I get back and then I can use it lol.

I also got a pretty good deal on some stuff for gifts for friends. I won’t say what incase they’re reading this but it was funny how we got the deal in the first place. Anna and I were walking around and we just happened to stop at this one booth and she touched one thing when a lady came around and asked if we liked it. Anna asked how much and she said 80 yuan, which was waaay too much compared to another booth that had it for 35. We said no thank you and that we were just looking and then started to walk away. But the lady chased us and said 35, then 30 and I told Anna that if she dropped to 25 I was going back because that was the priced I wanted it for. We ran into our friend Theo and seeing that we had stopped the lady came back up to us and said she’d give us 2 for 50, 25 each since there were no customers today and I was like, “I’ll buy for 25 each!” I wanted to get 4 of them so I thought getting them for 25 each would be an easy way to get some gifts.

Lol, someone Chinese just called my cellphone, probably looking for the person who had this number before (I rented a cellphone).

Today Anna and I visited the Yu Yuan Gardens. I liked it better than the garden we saw at Suzhou mainly because it was much emptier inside. When we were at the one in Suzhou I think I was up against people 70% of the time. I really like the old Chinese gardens. It’s amazing how much art goes into them. I think all the doorways cut from the stone walls are suppose to be like picture frames so that when you look through them you see a picture on the other side.

Getting to places is always fun. We took a bus to the subway and from the subway took a taxi. I wasn’t really sure how to say Yu Yuan Gardens in Chinese to the driver and the guide book we were looking at didn’t have the name in Chinese so I told him “Yu Yuan huayuan” since huayuan is suppose to be gardens. Only I think saying “Yu huayuan” would have been better but he got the message. While stuck in traffic he turned to me and went, “You, China?” Which I guess was his way of asking if I was Chinese; I told him I was American and that seemed to satisfy him. It’s great that telling people that I’m American gives me an auto excuse for not knowing Chinese when I look so Chinese.

After the gardens we looked at all the shops outside the garden in the Yu Bazaar. Most of it was just tourist stuff and over priced as well. The shops inside the garden were worst lol. I saw a slightly bigger version of a hand embroidered scene being sold for over 1000 yuan whereas I got mine for 50. Fans were being sold for over 100 where I’ve gotten them for as cheap as 10 yuan. I also doubt much of the jade was real but who knows.

Today in class we were doing family introductions and stuff in Chinese. When the teacher called on one of the Thai guys she suddenly said something like, “I have a Thai girl as one of my students in one of my classes and she told me its very very hard to get a good boyfriend in Thailand. She said that there are a lot of girls but not that many guys.” Then she went on to say that some guys there are just so so beautiful that they are prettier than the girls and that a lot of guys become girls or that there are a lot of those people who aren’t neither male or female. Then she goes, “It is a culture thing” and all 3 of the Thai guys go, “Bu shi culture! Bu shi culture!” (not culture!). The class was cracking up lol. I guess they didn’t want their culture to be known for that haha.

It’s the 3rd week of classes this week and I’m kind of amazed at the amount of people who cut. Only maybe half or less of the class has been showing up for both sections today my teacher said the class next door only had one student show up. I just don’t get how people will pay so much to come here and not even attend the classes. I’m even more surprised that it’s the Asian kids who are cutting since I figured Asian cultures always put a lot more emphasis on education and attendance than we do lol.

I didn’t blog yesterday mainly because all I did was stay in the room and study lol. I’m up to over 240 new vocab words and I don’t know if I will have them memorized before next Friday. Just not possible since we don’t do any review at all and plow through another 30 words every day. Not to mention we didn’t even get this weekend to study since we were in Suzhou.

Anyways, today we went to the Shanghai Museum. We made it about 3 minutes before they stopped letting in visitors. We only got about an hour in there though so I didn’t get to see all the rooms. I only covered a floor and half out of 3 so I guess I only saw about half of it. It was pretty cool, though like I saw in my last post I’m not much of a museum person. I liked the calligraphy and painting exhibits the best but they started booting people out while I was in the painting one so I didn’t get to see half of the room.