China unabashed…

So I realize there are a lot of things I want to say about china and my experience there that I’m not for fear of offending someone… but what good does it do to hold my tongue? It doesn’t benefit myself. It doesn’t benefit others who are thinking of traveling there. And my friends including my American Chinese friends and my Chinese Chinese friends have encouraged me to speak my peace. So here goes…

I was shocked at the prejudice against white people. I experienced this prejudice first hand. I’m not saying that everyone was prejudice, of course not everyone is everything and in this culture, like in America, there is some of this and some of that. Being Jewish I have experienced prejudice before but not because of what I look like. I can walk down the street and no one knows I’m Jewish. In my past I’ve experienced prejudice when people find out I’m Jewish but it’s far different to be treated poorly based on what you look like, or don’t look like, alone.

So here are some of the things I experienced… the most outright form was when my friend and I were leaving China and we were at the airport. On our way into the airport they made us put our baggage through an xray machine. We noticed, immediately, even after the 16 hour flight, that they did not require the Chinese couple before us or the Chinese couple after us to put their baggage through the xray machine but I thought that was because we were coming from the US and they were merely traveling from Hong Kong. So on our way out there is no xray machine. This xray machine is for people arriving only. We follow some Chinese people out and they walk by the “in only” xray machine but we get stopped. We are told to put our suitcases on the machine. Now at this point I have 2 suitcases that are almost as big as I am and I cannot lift them at all. Yet I am motioned to do just that and put them on the machine. I struggle, alone, with my suitcases and have a really difficult time getting them on and off the machine. The “security” people there do not offer any help. While our bags go through they turn away from the monitors and they begin to laugh. That’s when it becomes obvious that they are doing this only to inconvenience us because we are white and it’s funny to them. Afterwards Jessika points out that the xray machine was not being used for anyone else who was leaving because it was a machine for arrivals only.

When I was in Shanghai I had the golden opportunity to hang out with some friends. One of them is Australian and his girlfriend is Chinese. He has lived in Shanghai for 3 years and is fluent in Chinese. We went to a restaurant that he goes to often with his girlfriend Hong. They always order the same things from the menu. This night there was a new waitress. My friend, Kristian, ordered his usual fair but the waitress got scared, genuinely scared, when she heard him speak Chinese. He would order a dish and she would get this look of absolute terror in her eyes and shake her head no and then look at Hong who would order the exact same thing using the exact same tones and the waitress would nod her head yes and write it down. This happened every single time that Kristian ordered something. I was confused and I said, “what’s going on? Hong is saying the exact same thing as you are in the same tones!” and that’s when Kristian explained “white fright” to me. And yes, it’s a real thing in China. When a white person speaks Chinese they cannot hear or understand you. I experienced it myself but thought, of course, it was me saying something wrong – but it wasn’t. I would say something in Chinese and the person would shake their head and act like they didn’t understand me and then I would look it up in my phrasebook, point to it and they would say it in the exact same tone I had used. One of my friends, Jasmin, who is Swiss and has lived there for a couple of years said that if you speak forcefully sometimes that works but who knows… I tried everything, I watched a bunch of my “white” friends try everything and most of the time nothing worked.

One night I went out to dinner with Kristian and Biggi – both white guys who speak fluent Chinese. While they were ordering and talking to the waiters the entire restaurant was watching them with their mouths hanging open as if they had never seen a white person speak Chinese before and this was in Shanghai!

And then there’s the money thing. Whitey is seen as a walking wallet. But even if you are white and speak Chinese you don’t get charged as much. For example, I bought an umbrella and was charged $3 but when Kristian bought an umbrella off the street while it was raining, and spoke Chinese, he was charged $1. When they saw me coming they would up the price 3-5 times as much because I am white. Now part of this I actually understand. It’s thought that white people have more money and even though I’m a broke student I might indeed still have more money than most of the Chinese people I encountered in China, but does that make it right?! I think not. I think if there was a level of honesty and sincerity and not “a different price depending on your color” I would have felt a hell of a lot better about paying more for something. Like in America where there are sliding scales for things – like medical expenses. I believe that most people can be trusted to be honest enough and yes I know that sometimes I am in the minority believing that and that’s OK with me.

Oh and wait, there’s more… the pushing thing. Not only do people push and shove in China, when you fall they jump out of your way and watch you with amusement. I fell down an icy staircase on the top of Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) and everyone jumped aside. No one asked if I was OK. No one extended their hand to help me up. No one seemed to care at all. When I was at the train station I got pushed down a staircase. Again, no one stopped to see if I was alright or stopped to help me up or anything. As a matter of fact they kicked me because my sprawling body was in their way.

So there you have it, just a few of the things I encountered during my 5 week stint in China. Of course many people were nice, especially one-on-one and I made friends there that I hope to keep for life. Many people smiled, most people stared and lots of people wanted their photos taken with us non-Chinese folks – but there is a lot of prejudice that I personally can’t overlook or ignore and why should I.

** OK I just uploaded a video of me eating a scorpion in China to youtube and the first and almost immediate comment that was posted was in Chinese - 太恶心了 – and that translates to “too disgusting”. I could not stop laughing. Is this guy serious? I ate the scorpion IN CHINA! And yes, I did open my mouth and show the ABC scorpion, which could be considered either totally gross or totally funny. But how, I ask, is that more disgusting than a culture where people are constantly spitting in the street, picking their noses in public or pooing outside of the toilet? Far be it from me to understand cultural differences or mores. One person’s poop is another person’s rose garden – oh hey, that actually makes sense – in a fertilizer kinda way… ;)

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China - Haggling (with an adjunct on eating for cheap and the 2 MUSTS to bring to China)

OK so the secret to haggling is – you can’t want it.

If you don’t want it, you hold all the cards. The best deals I got were when I didn’t give a flying F if they sold it to me or not.

Here are some examples:
I walked into a scroll shop on HaFeng Street in Hangzhou and I didn’t want to buy anything. But the sales lady was good. She had my number down, as a matter of fact I found out later that this exact sales woman said the exact same thing to many of my other friends and sold them all scrolls too. She was persistent. She followed me around the shop. I told her I didn't want to buy anything and she said, “that’s fine but if you did, what would you want to buy?” So me, with the untimely good taste, pointed to the most expensive scroll hanging on the wall and I said, “that one”. She raised her eyebrows and exclaimed that I had very good taste and that that scroll was one of a kind painted by a very famous artist. I said I understood and didn’t really want it but that it was the prettiest one there, in my opinion. She asked me how much I would pay for it. The price was $300+. I said that I could not offer a fair price and so I would rather not offer anything at all. But she insisted, she pushed, she cajoled, she was seasoned! I thought about it and decided that really all I could afford was $30 and even that was pushing it on my proposed budget. Plus, I DIDN’T EVEN WANT THE DARN SCROLL! So she laughed and said, “Oh nooooo, it is worth much more than that. And you are so beautiful, you should have that scroll. Can’t you offer a little bit more?” Yes she really did use the beautiful line and afterwards she proceeded to use it again and again and again. Plus she used the exact same line/s on my other friends who entered her shop on different days. She asked if I could pay $200. I told her I was sure the scroll was worth it (boy was I wrong and trusting) but that I could not afford to pay that much. I tried to walk out but she grabbed me by the arm. “Please make me an offer I can work with!”, she begged. Then she added more compliments. She was buttering me up but it was only my 1st week in China so I had no idea what was going on and I believed her. I kept trying to leave and she kept grabbing my arm and begging me to come up with another price. The truth was that I could barely justify spending $30 so I was definitely not going to go higher than that and so I just kept saying $30. I told her I understood that it was worth more and that I was sorry but I didn’t really want it. She kept going down in price. $150, 100, 50… Finally I laughed, shook my head and walked out of the store and she came chasing me down the street. “OK, OK, for you only I will sell it for $30 but please do not tell anyone else. This is our secret. A secret, you understand?” I said I understood. She asked me to please send my friends into her shop but asked me to promise not to tell them how much I paid for the scroll. She kept saying, “I believe you” which is the moment I realized – I’d been had…

Much later in the trip I was talking to some fellow students and one of them told me that she bought a scroll at a shop on HaFeng and got a very good deal but she couldn’t tell me what the deal was. I started to laugh and said, “you’re so beautiful, it’s our secret, I believe you.” And she turned white (whiter than she already was) and then we laughed together because we’d both been had. And I did end up walking by that shop again, since I stayed in Hangzhou for a month, and I did see the exact “one of a kind” scroll that I had bought hanging up on the wall again with a $300+ price tag.

But for awhile I had actually thought I had gotten a great deal! This was before 2 of our classmates went to a little town near Shanghai called Tongli which sounds like a place that EVERYONE should visit!! So my friends were in a scroll shop and one of them bargained a scroll down to $4. YES, that’s correct – FOUR DOLLARS. I grilled my friends. What did it look like? What size was it, etc. And it was one of the scrolls I had wanted to buy as a gift for a friend.

So a few weeks later I found myself in Yangshuo, in the GuangXi provence, outside of Guilin. I was on West Street, which I highly recommend and I wandered into a scroll shop. I see the scroll that I want to buy for a friend only I realize that I don’t really like it as much as I had previously. I ask if there are any others with a similar theme. I can’t remember the asking price, maybe $30 or $50. I tell her I’m only willing to pay $6. She says “no way” but doesn’t stop helping me. She searches and searches for something unique and finally she finds it. It’s a scroll I have never seen before and unfortunately (for me) I want it for my friend and I am willing to pay for it. It is obviously hand painted and it is completely unique and I have no doubt that if there are others, they are few and far between. It is not fancy but it is exactly what I want for this person, it is perfectly right in so many ways. I offer her the $6 but now she knows I want it. She says she will “ask her father” which is something the other lady at the other scroll shop did too – it’s a tactic (good cop/bad cop). Of course her father says no (though I doubt she even asked him). “He says it’s too valuable”, she says. She tells me she cannot sell it for less than (whatever price here) and it’s more than I want to pay so I thank her and leave. Then I go into the scroll shop next door and I see the first scroll and the lady comes up to me and asks me how much I will pay for it. I tell her I don’t want it, that I’m just looking. She says, “you are in China, we bargain here, it’s part of what we do, offer something!” So I offer her $6. She laughs and says, “that’s not bargaining!” I explain to her that I’ve been in China for over a month now and that I don’t really want this scroll and that I have learned a thing or two. She thinks I’m funny and she haggles and haggles and I refuse to go any higher because I don’t really want it. I start to leave and she chases after me and says “fine, fine, I’ll sell it to you for $6.” I go back to the first place and buy the more expensive one as well. There’s something to be learned here…

So this is how I made my way through China. When I went to visit my friends in Shanghai I said, “well what does it matter if I pay $5 or $1 for a shiny bauble? If I can afford the $5?” And it was explained to me that I was being completely had. The bauble cost them .10 cents and so even a dollar is a huge profit. And if I pay $5 then the next foreigner will be overcharged too and that’s how it keeps going and it’s not fair. I am doing other foreigner’s a disservice by overpaying and not bargaining. And so that’s what I did. I bargained. I bargained a pair of socks down from .43 cents a pair to .23 cents a pair! It took close to an hour but I saved .20 cents. At first bargaining was fun and new and then it became tiring. I would want something and then I would start to bargain and I would get tired and not want it anymore. I began shopping at department stores where things were on sale (for cheap) and I couldn’t bargain. I bought coats (wool, velvet) for $10 each. I bought gorgeous dresses for $5 each and the list goes on.

My friend and I had a little game we would play. When we saw something we loved we would scowl and shake our heads no so they wouldn’t know we wanted it. I can’t say for sure that this worked. All I can say is that when they see that you really really want something they have you. But if you tell yourself at first that you don’t really care about anything and it’s all just material stuff anyway and understand and believe that having it will not change you in any way then you can bargain for things and you will have a better chance.

In the end I bought a huge new suitcase there – for $30. And I filled it up with all the shiny baubles, clothes and acupuncture equipment I could get my hands on. I came back with a new wardrobe, shoes that smell so badly like chemicals that I have to keep them outside, and tons of gifts and tea for friends. And for all that “stuff” - in the end, I didn’t spend much money after-all.


An adjunct – eating for cheap –
I ate off the carts on the sidewalks. I ate from the holes in the walls. People say not to but I did and it was cheap and it was good. Though I did get my Hep A and B vaccines before I went. A huge meal cost .75 cents and filled me up for an entire day. Towards the end though, nothing tasted good anymore and the MSG headache was almost too much to bear. When I went out for a super fancy meal at a nice restaurant I spent $10 and that was a lot of money to spend on a meal there!!!


****Oh and just in case I hadn’t mentioned this before the 2 most important things to pack for China are travel packets of tissues and hand sanitizer. And these are the 2 more important things to carry on you at all times as well. They have no toilet paper or soap in the bathrooms.


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China - A retrospective

Written 5/8/09

It’s been 3 weeks today since I returned from China and already so much has changed. My entire consciousness shifted during the 5 weeks I was there and I realize now that I’ve returned a different person. My initial reactions when people asked me how the trip was were very very negative. I think that in part, it was due to my circumstances there but also in part it was due to the time frame in which everything occurred. The amount of time I spent there, the amount of time I spent in Hangzhou, being in classes and clinic 5 days a week instead of being able to sightsee and meet people and not having a “real” break from school between quarters.

Since I’ve returned I’ve lost 2 friendships that were very important to me. I have a hard time losing friends. I get attached to people and as my therapist likes to say “I trust people too quickly” so I often get hurt or disappointed or both. These 2 people did not go to China with me, they were people I was becoming very close to before I left for China and people that I spoke to very frequently while I was there. When I returned a few weeks ago they both greeted me with open arms. They were warm and friendly and kind. Then one decided he no longer wanted contact with me and I agreed but the other one, his friend, just stopped returning my phone calls, texts and emails without a word. Maybe she isn’t even conscious of it but for me, it really hurt. And now, I have to let them go. They aren’t trustworthy. Maybe they will be again one day but I am trying to live in the present and for now I have to let them go.

China taught me mostly about myself. I was speaking to one of my supervisor’s last night and she said that the reason she liked China when she went there was because it was so different from anything she ever knew. And I can only agree. As one friend said to me before I went and my supervisor last night said the same thing – it’s like getting in a spaceship and going to a completely different planet. And I think I wrote that in another entry because it’s sooo true. And I felt as though I was looked at as an alien too.

I also realize that everything is about perception. As one of my friends in China says,”there are good China days and there are bad China days”. But that could be said about life in general, there are good days and bad days. In China, however, I personally seemed to have more bad days than good ones – which is completely out of character for me. I’m an eternal optimist. Even when I’m sad and down I’m smiling. I like to joke that I’m always in such a good mood that sometimes I even annoy myself. But in China this was not so. I go through life having 90% good days and happy emotions and 10% bad ones. In China, my overall experience was 60% bad and 40% good. I also like to use percentages a lot ☺

I don’t feel like I need to write why it was bad for me. Many people know, I haven’t been shy in stating my point of view, but I don’t want to harp on the negative – that doesn’t do anyone any good. Instead I’d like to focus on the positive and remember what was so incredible about China. It’s completely different of course. I could get lost in a supermarket for 3 hours looking at all the cool and weird things. I’ve noticed that when people travel we like to focus on the differences and not the similarities. We say things like, here it was totally different due to this or that or – we would NEVER do this or that back home. And I find that I’m no different. Maybe that’s what makes this all so unique, the differences… But you also get used to them and eventually they seem normal.

Like the day we arrived I was sitting in a cab white knuckled holding onto my seat for dear life!!! There is absolutely no way to explain how people drive there but there’s a great youtube video that does the job but I can’t find it but I found this one -- anyway the point is that I feared for my life for the first week or two and then, I didn’t. They didn’t drive any differently after the first week or two but my fear lifted or my comfort level increased or both.
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Shanghai - Written 4/5/09

Shanghai

There were a few things that summed up China for me today… I was riding on the underground subway and I was the only non-Chinese person on the subway. Most of the time I’ve been here I have traveled w/other white peeps or there have been a few tourists around (especially the West Lake area) but not today. I was alone and I stuck out like a sore thumb and it was really cool. I put on my earphones and listened to some music and I was in a bubble looking out, it was strange. People stared and children pointed at me and whispered to each other and giggled. I stood the entire time even though every now and again a seat or two was available. People would scramble to get the seats, they didn’t stay free for long. And then I looked around and noticed a man with one leg missing and I wondered why no one was offering him a seat. My confusion tripled when he hobbled by me and I saw that he also had a very young child strapped to his back. He was the only one on the entire subway that looked me in the eyes, nodded and smiled at me. And as he made his way down the isle, not waiting to get off the train, still no one offered him a seat. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to understand this.

When I went to a friend’s house and he made me lunch, I helped him cook – my first home-cooked meal in China! And when he gave me my bowl of food I waited to eat it but he said, “go ahead and start” and I said, “no I can’t, that’s not polite, I’m waiting for you”. He laughed as he sat down with me saying he has been here for so long he had forgotten that, the politeness factor. Another friend commented on the same thing as I waited for him to get his coffee. He said, “why don’t you go sit down with the others?” and I said, “that’s not polite, I will wait for you” and when the group of us sat outside talking… Duncan is from the UK, one of the other guys is from Barcelona and Biggi is from Iceland… Duncan commented on how he’s been here so long – over 20 years – that polite has left his vocabulary and radar completely.

It was so nice to hang out with friends. Sam let me stay in his home for 3 nights. I was supposed to stay for 2 but I’ve been having such a good time with these guys that I wanted to stay an extra day to sight-see. And that’s what I did today.

Yesterday I spent getting to know people and hanging out with them talking. I found out today that we were in the French Concession and I was ga ga over the area but didn’t know where we were. There was a really cool bookstore where the books were in English. At night Biggi and I met Kristian for dinner and the place/food was fantastic. We got out too late to see the lights down people’s square to the bund plus it was pouring rain but they were troopers and walked me all the way to the bund anyway. It was too late when we got there and too overcast/hazy to see anything.

This morning I decided to sight-see and Sam wasn’t feeling well enough to go with so I went on my own. I wanted to see old architecture and ended up in the amazing part of the city where the architecture and the feel and look and the life was exactly how I imagined it would be only more so. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was shocked and amazed and awed. I absolutely loved it. And these were old, poor areas… I wandered further, looking for Yuan Gardens, which I thought were actual gardens. It took me 3 hours to find the place which was fine because I saw some amazing sights along the way. Once I got to the “gardens” the architecture was “rich” old and amazing, the palace look. I stood in the middle of the 9 turn bridge with my headset on for an hour and just watched the throngs of people and the madness. I’ve never seen anything like it. And that’s when it all started getting to me. I called my friends and Kristian and his girlfriend Hong met me for dinner. We had traditional Hong Kong style food. I will say the food in Shanghai is much better than the food in Hangzhou with the exception of “hot pot”. Everything I’ve had here has been fantastic and not super expensive like I was told. I even ate from a stand today in old town and the food was great and fresh there too without lots of oil and no msg.

And speaking of… since I LOVE food – I was thrilled to walk through old town and find and buy freshly made “biscuits” of hei zhi ma, watermelon on a stick, durian and warm freshly roasted chestnuts. I was in food heaven!!! I even had to buy a new purse/bag (my only non-edible purchase in Shanghai) just to carry all the food I bought.

After dinner Kristian and Hong took me to the bund again to see it in all its glory. And it was PACKED with people. On the roadway there, people’s square, apparently a thief unzipped my bag to steal from me. I had my new bag with my food slung over my shoulder, not minding it because there was nothing of importance in there and I had my bag with money tightly held and watched in front of me. So the thief unzipped my food bag/purse – which has a few zippers (the other pockets were empty) and the only thing he could get was my hair clip which rested on top of the food so he took that. Kristian says he probably would have taken the food too but it was wedged in there pretty tightly.

It’s funny… after 3 days in Hangzhou I felt as though I’d been there for three weeks but after 3 days in Shanghai I feel like I just arrived yesterday and am sad to go. There is something magical about this city and I know it has a lot to do with the people I’ve met here and their hospitality and love.

Hangzhou China - Installation #2

Written - Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

The weather has been fantastic!! It’s been around 60 degrees both day and night!!!

The other day, Monday I think it was, our fellow students arrived. There are about 18 of us I think. They are staying elsewhere, more towards downtown in what I refer to as “real China” and we (Jessika and I) are staying ½ a block from the West Lake in what I refer to as “fairy-tale land”. Real China is cool to visit but I personally wouldn’t want to live there. It’s industrial and crowded with no scenery. They do have an awesome market at the end of their block, lots of great food stalls and things are cheaper there! I got an entire dish of noodles and vegys to go (enough for two on a hungry day) for .75 cents. And because of the language barrier, things seem to take a long time here, for us foreigners. It took me 3 days to find a phone card. Who knew you had to buy them from the newspaper guys on the corners who had them stashed out of sight in their fanny packs?! Luckily I ran into a guy who spoke a tiny bit of English at “Chinarget” and he personally took me to fanny pack man.

So, onto “Chinarget”. After school orientation on Monday a few of us (Michelle, Ally, Kathyrn, Jessika and myself) decided to find what Johnson promised us was like a “Target” in China. We figured since it takes so long to buy each thing at a specialty store we could hit one place and get everything we needed. The walk there alone was a challenge. At first we walked by a man who was carrying 2 sheep dog puppies by their paws across the street, like one would carry a chicken or duck. They looked dead. He placed them on top of a cage. The cage had 2 others in it and the ones he carried across were alive but looked drugged or something as they didn’t move much. We realized they were for food. We also saw some mystery meat curing in open air, hanging from a sign a bit further on. **Update: today, Friday – 2 of the puppies were gone and the 1 week smog air cured mystery meat has been removed and is perhaps being served in the store that it was hanging from?!...

There is so much high fashion here. Each woman has a cuter outfit than the last. And mixed in with the industrial jungle is gorgeous scenery. Like waterways (streams) and mountains or a pagoda on a hill or a park nestled among the concrete. We stop and take pictures and the people stop with us to see what we are taking pictures of. They are curious, they don’t understand. They ask us and we show them but they still don’t understand. Most everyone is nice though, putting up with our idiosyncrasies as we try to overcome our culture shock.

When we finally come to “Chinarget” which is really called Century Mart we split up to find all we need. Michelle, Kathryn and Ally decide to meet back in 40 minutes. It takes Jessika and I almost 2 hours to get out of there. We are lost in a maze of delight and confusion. Everything I have ever dreamed of is sold here at Chinarget. Everything! There’s that adorable glass tea mug I’ve always wanted that a few teachers and students at our school have and whenever I’ve asked them “where did you get that?” they say “China” and here they are, and they are like six bucks or less!!!! Those cool bamboo hangars that you dry stuff on, those cool teapots with the tea candle warmers below, super cute electric herb boiling pots, chopsticks of every variety. Even the forks and spoons are cute!!! Not the boring moderny ones we have back home… but ones with cranes and flowers and even happy faces on the handles. And each costing a few cents. We spend hours here because we can’t leave any sooner. We are swept up in the shopping frenzy. Plus we have no idea where anything is and try using our Chinese phrasebook to find out. My first stop was to buy a mobile phone but after 20 minutes of trying I finally gave up. I couldn’t understand how to get the service or how many minutes of talk time I would have and it was all too confusing to go on. I spent the next hour and a half looking for a phone card, among other goodies.

The bottom floor of Chinarget is a market. Here they had my favorite thing in the world, pickled stuff!!! Everything pickled!!! Jars and jars and jars!!!! Some of it might have been cat eyeballs for all I know but it was pickled = yum!!! I finally bought a mangosteen and it was delicious! We also found scrumptious apples and other fruit. Each piece of fruit was weighed and tagged before you get to the checkout counter which was interesting and time saving really. I mean Chinarget was packed with people yet the checkout lines were nil. We waited maybe 1 minute behind 1 person to check out and this is because they minimize the stuff the checker has to do. And they encourage you to bring your own plastic take out bags by charging you for bags there! What a good idea!!!

Thursday 3/19 – 12:27pm
Right now I’m sitting outside of our hostel at the outside restaurant next to the coy pond awaiting some soup but I have no idea what it will taste like or if I’ll even be able to eat it. I have found if there are no pictures, you have no idea what you’re getting here. Yesterday Jessika ordered grilled chicken, and it did not say milk or cream sauce on the menu but it was on the dish. She cannot eat milk or else will get extremely ill but they wouldn’t take it back or refund her. So now we ask, no matter what. We have circled (I am allergic to dairy and gluten) in our phrasebooks and I showed them this before ordering the onion soup so we shall see. Yesterday I got the tomato egg drop soup and the hot and sour potatoes, both were fantastic and way too much food for me. Today I just paid $2 for enough onion soup for 5 people.

Oh and the dinner last night, wow, that would take a whole 7 pages to write about, it was just hysterical. The menu boasted things like “sweet beans of three men” and honestly other things that were so funny I can’t possibly remember them so I took pictures. Lots of seafood and they did have a tank in the back where they were getting their supply. I am posting pics because other than “spicy bullfrog” I can’t remember much…

Friday march 20th – 8pm
I realize I can’t possibly write all that I want to each day. There is too much happening here and I don’t have enough time to download and process it all, let alone blog about it. So instead, I’ll just do what I can.

Today I finally got to my clinic shift and saw acupuncture in China!!! YAY!!! It was really great and mind blowing too. I would go into detail here but I realize that those of you who might be reading this and aren’t in acupuncture school will not only not understand but it might deter you from getting a treatment in the US – which is totally not like the treatments in China. And since acupuncture is one of the best healing arts in the world I would never want to deter anyone from having it.

We then had a class on 9 Palace Needling which was more of an intro lecture on the I Ching trigrams, working us up to the 9 Palace class 2 next week.

China is still absolutely blowing me away. I love the way everyone walks down the streets holding hands or arm in arm. 2 women, 4 women – all in a row. 2 men. It’s the cutest thing! However the way the cars drive up on the sidewalks while you’re walking on them gets unnerving at times.

Last night Jessika and I went to the night market and it was a crazy experience. There were stalls and tons of people, packed in tightly with vendors selling everything from fake designer handbags to antiques to underwear. And everything was pretty darn cheap too. I am sure I overpaid for a bauble and so then bargained the hell out of my next 5 purchases. We even bargained the sock lady down from 43 cents a pair to 29 cents a pair. In one way it was really fun but in another it was oh so tiring. I wanted a hair clip and just didn’t have the energy to bargain for it so I didn’t buy one.

Before the night market we took a tram thing around West Lake because I needed some city downtime for a bit and that was awesome. The lake is amazingly beautiful. And the tram even went up and down stairs (actually there were stone rails for it built into the stone staircases). There are pagodas after pagodas here and by the end of the hour long ride I was saying “look, another pagoda!” At first I was saying “look a pagoda” with enthusiasm and I’m not pagoda jaded at all but pagodas here are like Starbucks in the States, there’s one on every street corner. They’re a lot prettier than Starbucks though ;)

So yeah, I’m still loving China. I don’t love the constant cigarette smoke or the smog or the crowds (we found them!) but I love the energy and the amazing variety and the difference – it’s different from anything I have ever known!

I think I forgot to mention Hafeng street where they sell live scorpions and then fry them in vats of oil in front of your eyes and you eat them. A man tried to buy me one but I decided to wait a couple more weeks before eating one but then Jessika and I are determined to do it. They also had a very large jar with a dead snake in it and a spigot for some fresh dead snake juice. As a matter of fact, there is hardly anything that I don’t say “what the f…. is that?” here – food wise. They seem to be really into duck heads, they sell those everywhere and I’m just not sure where the meat is on one, nor will I find out. I did have my first soy sauce egg today (even though I don’t eat soy sauce) and it was fantastic. As a matter of fact, almost everything I’ve eaten (and who knows what half it has been) has been fantastic tasting.

So here we are, in a crazy land, doing crazy things and absolutely LOVING it!!!! Everyone should come to China!!!

** - update – it’s funny reading back because I’ve been really negative since returning and telling people I had an awful time. I realized then and now that much of my difficulty was not being around people who were clean/sober and not being able to find that in China. I felt very alone in this department. It’s not something I can even write about here but those of you in the “know” can ask me about it privately if you choose and I am thinking it will probably be a good and important thing to start a separate blog about those experiences.