A Hen in China

So today and yesterday I’ve just kind of stayed in the room and studied a bit. I’m glad I didn’t do a ton of research on Shanghai before I came so I won’t be disappointed in the sights I didn’t get to see. I’m going to go out for dinner later today with the others though. I really don’t like walking around and going places myself because I’m 100% Chinese (by blood anyways if not by nationality/birth) and people just assume I can speak it and I end up feeling retarded when I have no clue what they said.

It happened twice today. I was going to my first tutoring session with Zhe Ge Laoshi and some guy in a van tried to ask me direction to some place on a piece of paper. I suppose it wouldn’t matter if I did know Chinese or not because I don’t know where anything on this campus is lol. Then when I was coming back some other lady stopped me and started talking to me. I have no idea what she was saying though. I just told her, “Sorry I don’t speak good Chinese, I’m from America.” She laughed and said something to some other guy and walked away. I guess it’s good I can at least make my own excuse in Chinese lol.

Anna and I did laundry yesterday though I don’t know how much of a success that was. We hand washed stuff because we don’t want to pay for the laundry card (like 60 yuan I think for 10 loads – like we’re going to do that many loads in a month). They don’t have a dryer here anyways so it seems like a waste. Though everything we washed is taking forever to dry since its  humid and there isn’t exactly a ton of airflow in our room. I opened our window hoping that some breezes will come in and help with the drying. I was thinking of hanging them on the bars outside our window like some other people do but it just looks so dirty it seemed counter productive to do that.

I’ve also added a CAPTCHA plugin for this blog because I’ve been getting a ton of spam comments. Oh and feel free to comment if you’re following my blog. It’ll be nice to know who’s reading it and who’s not 😛

Well I meant to study today but Anna and I, along with Zhe Ge Laoshi went back to the pearl market to do some shopping for gifts for people. I only bought stuff for my sister and my mom so far. I’m not really sure what to get my friends back home. Margaret and Caroline said that in Beijing they have I <3 B J shirts and I would love to get those for all my guy friends but I don’t know if we have time to go to Beijing before we leave.

I had wanted to get a new purse today but I couldn’t really find one I liked too much so I think I will get it another time. I did get a jade flower bracelet. I don’t know if its real jade or what though. The lady wanted 35 yuan for it but I got it for 15. I think that’s a decent deal, its a little more than 2 bucks USD. Anna was really good at bargaining. I’m not because I don’t like pissing people off. There was this one shop owner yelling at some white guy as he walked out of her store going, “Your price is crazy! Impossible”.

After shopping we went for hot pot. Most of the other girls have never gone before and the table behind us was very amused. They were watching us and when the girls started talking about where to get drinks they all started pointing and one lady went to help them. Gotta admit it was pretty amusing.

So we had class today even though its Saturday. It’s to make up for the class we missed on Thursday for the World Expo I guess. After that class we had a “field trip” to the director of CEA’s home to get a look at a “chinese home” I guess. He served us a ton of food. It didn’t seem like much at first but after all those dumplings and tofu I was pretty full.

Then he made his kids perform poor things. He pretty much dragged his eleven year old daughter out in front of everyone to play her flute. She did it then ran out of there. Can’t help but feel sorry for her. Then he made her friend play the flute for everyone too. The other girls with me were laughing saying that the girl probably was thinking, “This is not what I had in mind when I said I’d come over for lunch”.

He tried to get his youngest son to show his martial arts but I think the little boy was demanding there be music or something (he’s like 6). So he brought out a Chinese violin and started trying to get people to sing. Didn’t work out so well. He wanted to bring us karaoke-ing too but no one was up for that so instead he took us on a walk around the area he lived.

His house wasn’t too shabby. It was 3 levels and pretty huge. It wasn’t exactly really clean but every kid had their own room (he had two daughters and a son). The appliances didn’t seem all that great and I couldn’t find a light in his bathroom though. I don’t know what’s considered great housing in China but his place seemed alright. The neighborhood was nice too; its like a small community and apparently there’s a mini golf course close by that we walked around.

When we got back, Anna and I had the super smart (not) idea to go to the Trust Mart to get more water and toilet paper. Of course it was like 100 degrees and crowded and several blocks down.

After that Anna wanted to go to the Puxi side of the river between Puxi and Pudong to get a picture with the skyline behind her. It was paaaccked. We had to fight our way to balcony to take a picture. For awhile I was behind this guy who kept rubbing his elbow on my chest. I dunno if it was intentional or not but I put my arms up in front of me after lol.

I think we were both tired of the huge crowded after that and got some green tea cream that Anna went crazy over (she loves the green tea stuff). While we were eating it outside we saw some mom helping her little daughter pee on the side of the road. Anna tried to get a picture of it but the dad (I think, or a relative) caught her and was like, “No, no”. She just laughed it off but we left after that lol.

And phew, if we thought the riverside was crowded, it was nothing compared to the train station. We passed up two trains because they were just so packed. I mean packed trains aren’t really anything new to me; SF Muni gets pretty pack especially during rush hour. But holy crap, I thought I was gonna get smashed getting on that train. Little old ladies were fighting to get out, one even turned back around to smack some guy that had shoved her.

I think Anna was scared for her life since she’s from Tennessee where there aren’t really super crowded places. When we finally got on our conversation went something like:

Anna: “Henrietta, are you here?”
Me: “Anna, over here”
Anna: “Are you ok?”
Me: “No, are you?” *guy smushed up next to me gives me a look like I’m crazy*
Anna: “Nooo, I don’t like this”

and then she starts taking pictures of me smashed in the crowd lol. I’ll have to get the picture from her so I can upload it later. The train we transfered too was emptier luckily; we even got seats. Finding a taxi back to the university from the station was a bit of a challenge. We couldn’t find the exit we left through last time that lead to the taxi area so we made do with waving our arms on the side of the road. Several sketch “taxis” and a motorcycle tried to get our business but we ignored those. Didn’t really want to end up somewhere we didn’t want to be lol.

And here is a crappy photo of me in Puxi trying to take a good picture. I don’t think my camera does all that well in the dark. I probably should have used the flash. I tried to edit it to make it lighter but now it’s just grainy:

Today we went to some Pearl Market. It was pretty cool. It’s a 3 level building, where the first first floor sells stuff like clothes, bags and shoes. The 2nd floor is completely pearls and other jewelery (3rd is more expensive stuff that we didn’t look at). I got some earrings for 35 yuan but I think I probably got ripped off since I didn’t really bargain much. I probably could have gotten them for maybe 20. We’re going to go back on Sunday to get some other stuff. I’ll probably get some gifts for friends there. I don’t know if I will get jewelry for people though since I’m not really sure if the metal is real silver or not. I Zhe Ge (may be spelling that wrong) Laoshi if she knew how to tell if it was real silver and she told me if she just looks for the number 925 on it. I think it says that on my earrings but its hard to tell. She also said to just wear them for a few days and if they don’t get infected/turn my ears green then I can assume it’s real. Not really the best way I want to find out they’re fake but I guess we’ll see.

I think I will get a new purse and mini backpack when we go back. There is a lot of Harajuku bags there as well. I’m not a huge fan of Harajuku (a lot of times it feels like wannabe Japanese) but there are a few designs I like so I may bargain a bit if I find a bag I really like.

We also tried this noodle place for lunch. It was one of those places were you take a basket and fill it with veggies and meat from the fridges then they cook it for you. Anna didn’t want to try it but the rest of us did. It was pretty good, though a bit spicy. I was a bit scared to eat the meat since refrigeration here doesn’t seem all that great but I figured it was well boiled and my stomach seems to be holding up so no problems. I admit I didn’t really want to eat my meat that was pinkish red once it was cooked (which I’m sure was suppose to be chicken).  The rest was good though and only 5.5 yuan which is less than 1 US dollar. I’m really loving these cheap meals.

Pictures linked at the bottom.

So today I went to the world expo today. The university arranged a field trip there for the international students there and provided a bus for us. It came a bit after 8am and we got into the expo around 10am maybe. It wasn’t too hot today compared to the last few days but still pretty hot for walking around. I have no idea how they found all this space for the expo but its huge. Its on both sides of the Huangpu River in Puxi and Pudong.

We only went to a few of the pavilions. A lot of them had some huuuge lines with 6 hour waits. None of us really wanted to wait in those in this heat. They told us that some of the countries were letting their citizens cut go in earlier if we showed them a passport so we went to the USA pavilion. The guys told us they weren’t doing but then asked us what states we were from. Since three of the us were from states that apparently helped sponsored the pavilion (Tennessee, Texas and I think Colorado) they let us cut in, skipping like a good 100 people.

Can’t say the US pavilion was all too impressive. There were three rooms. In the first one this guy did an introduction in Chinese that I couldn’t really understand too well (the English translation didn’t seem nearly as long as the Chinese speech so eh).  Then there was an introductory video where they started with showing a bunch of people in the states trying to say welcome and hello in Mandarin. It was pretty funny I got to admit because the people were like “Hu– you want me to say what?”.

The next room was another video where it seems like what they mostly talked about what how caring children are and something about that. Obama got some good face time and there was a lot of children in it. The next room was cooler but still pretty corny. It was a short about this girl in a dingy neighborhood with a “vision” for a garden on this patch of dirty ground in the corner in front of her window. She starts by trying to plant one flower but it gets trampled, then tries again with the same result. Then an Asian lady comes and plants a flower too. Then another neighbor. Then she goes around showing people the picture of the dream garden she drew to get more help and at the end the dingy neighborhood is all colorful and pretty and everyone is happy. The whole setting of the place was cool but the whole thing was pretty corny lol.

We saw Chile’s pavilion as well since the line was moving pretty fast. They had a pretty good pavilion. It was really big and they actually showed stuff about their country. I really liked this one spot where they had an upside down room on the ceiling and then this area that was like a balcony only it was dark and the floor, sides, and ceiling outside the “balcony” were all mirrors so they reflected the view that was facing in front of you – which was a display of windows as you would see on a side of a building. So when you looked around it looked like a building that stretched all the way up, down, left and right.

There were a few “walk through” pavilions that don’t really have a line. You just go in and its divided up into sections for different parts of the country or for restaurants and stuff. These were like Africa and the Caribbean. We went to the Philippine’s one as well but it was a pretty big disappointment. It was pretty much just a room that sold a bunch of stuff. They had one corner with some posters about their country but that was it.

We ended up just walking around and looking at the outsides of the buildings instead of waiting in lines. Our teacher (the one in charge of our daily living) went to Spain’s pavilion and she must be super determined because I think she was in line almost the entire time we were looking at other stuff. I don’t know how people can do that in this heat. Though most line areas are shaded and some of the countries had misters and fans on there (US’s did).

It was pretty amusing to see everyone had those little fold up chairs, though I’m not surprised. I know if it were my parents, they would have one for everyone. There were also people sleeping on benches and stuff. The others were pretty amused by that but I’m not surprised by that either lol.

Well anyways, I’ve uploaded the pictures from the Jade Buddah Temple, the acrobat show and the World Expo:

Temple + acrobat show

World Expo