15 October 2009
At least, the center of beauty. I can honestly say, at the risk of losing speaking privileges with my mother, that this place was the most beautiful spot I have ever seen. I mean it’s just incredibly, fantastically, drive-you-out-of-your-gourd stupendous. Shew. But that’s a few hundred words away. Let’s begin where 54.921% of things do: the start.
-quick note: for this entry, I will be using not-quite celebrity names instead of actual ones for reasons that will soon become apparent.-
Coolio, Milly, Vanilly and I were packed and airport-bound. However, we would soon split into two factions for separate (albeit simultaneous) flights. This curious circumstance came about because of a former fiasco that leads to a future train wreck. The Baha Men decided to buy plane tickets before everyone was gathered to make a decision. However, they had not fully researched a way home from this city 1553 kilometers away from Shanghai (affectionately called “home”). They thought we could simply waltz down to the Shanghai Railway Station and buy return tickets. This is impossible. One can only buy departing tickets from the city one is departing. They also cannot be bought online, which the Baha Men would have discovered with five minutes of research. Oh well. They insisted that everything would be okay and “just knew” there’d be tickets when we got to Guilin. Yet another instance in which their lack of research failed them. Tickets go on sale ten to twenty days before the train leaves. After two days, the only tickets available are standing room only. We would be arriving in Guilin five days before leaving during the absolute busiest travel time in China. Next batter, please.
Kids, let this be a lesson to you. Research papers do teach you life skills. Always check your facts, use primary sources instead of hearsay, and good judgment is phenomenally better than a bad idea. Thank you, Magistra Tracey.
Anyways, we now had a minute crisis. Do we let the Baha Men run off to a distant part of a foreign country and get their comeuppance? Tell them to forget the 480 RMB they’d each just spent and work on cheap plans centered around Shanghai? Or, do we do work collaboratively and share the imminent lashing from the Universe? We chose Option 3 (we are such a team :D). To depainify an agonizing and hair-yanking story, we figured it out. We all found cheap return tickets for Friday, 9 October. We did not all manage to jump on the same flight there, because the Baha Men bought tickets on a flight that had six empty seats for ten full people. Coolio, Milly, Vanilly, and I would leave at 15:00 on two different planes; the Baha Men and Creed would take the same 19:00 flight. The Baha Men made one final mistake. That slip-up is only a minnow burp sized ripple at this point in the story.
Back to the airport. Coolio and I parted ways with Milly & Vanilly. Now, remember way back in September when I wrote that post about traveling here? Recall that I said if I make it through security sans hassle, the rest of the day closely resembles an abridged Odyssey? Well, security was full of hitches, but apparently the rule does not apply inversely. An over-zealous lady at the checkpoint decided that the peanut butter in my backpack was water. She was quite insistent on that fact. Her colleague simply chuckled to himself and told her to put it back. Determined to keep this poor little meiguoren in Pudong International, the lady pulled out another item. Okay, granted, I do vaguely resemble the long lost brother of Cat Stevens right now, but the item she chose shows how much she was stretching. She pulled out a stick of deodorant and would not believe me when I told her it wasn’t water. Her colleague sat there smiling incredulously at her and periodically telling her to give it back. With a sneer she relinquished her trophy and gestured me on my way. I repacked my bag, connected with Coolio, and we hiked to our gate and plopped down. We had a good amount of time, and were feeling light-hearted after I recounted my mock trial in security. Suddenly, an announcement came from the check-in desk in Chinese. There was no English translation, which seemed weird because all the previous announcements had been bilingual. I recognized our flight number so we asked the man at the desk what was going on. Our flight was delayed. Joy. He uncertainly said he didn’t know how long. We found out from someone else it was going to be at least an hour. Jubilee. Nothing to do, then, but wait. We finally boarded around 16:20. The flight was fine, except the Chinese mother and daughter next to me pointed, stared, whispered, and giggled loudly for an hour. We landed, connected with Milly & Vanilly, and got on a bus to Guilin. Onboard, met three American students who are also studying in Shanghai. We were excited until they started talking. It was as if we were watching an episode of The Hills without the pretty girls. They defecated on the English language with every sentence. Worst of all, they gorged their conversation with the word “like”. Those of you who know me well will be proud to know I didn’t backhand, browbeat, or even berate them. Milly and I just cringed in the seats in front of them and laughed at their opinions of themselves. As I said, it was exactly like an episode of The Hills sans eye candy. My apologies for the miniature rant.
The Baha Men and Creed were delayed. Their plane wouldn’t be landing until nearly 23:00. Those ripples I mentioned earlier were now bordering on tsunami level. You see, they had set the check-in time for 21:40, even though their plane was supposed to land at 21:10. Also, one of the Baha Men had booked the rooms in his/her name and we couldn’t check-in for the rest of us. Additionally, they would only hold the room until midnight, and, with this latest hiccup, the Baha Men and Creed would not be arriving until fifteen minutes after midnight. There was no other choice but to beg the concierge (or whatever you call the lady who does check-in) to wait until a few minutes after midnight. In our first stroke of luck in days, she graciously consented. They finally arrived at five minutes past. We checked-in and moved our odd assortment of almost celebrities upstairs to our posh, fully complimentary fancy shmancy suites, where we didn’t have to sleep six men to a room with three small beds. If only. We did get into the rooms, though. We laid down, passed out, and prepared for a whole new giant day.
-to be continued-
Won’t be any more posts for a week after this. Sorry! Good news, though: the family will be visiting me in SHANGHAI!! Be excited for me, people. Enjoy yourselves.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
General Update
30 September 2009
No big stories this time; it was a pretty lazy week on our part. We started our second round of classes last week, though.
Let’s begin like I did, with Chinese History and Culture. We started the day off on the wrong foot: at the wrong building. Directions for anything thus far have been scant at best, leaving us poor Meiguorenmen to fumble around as virtual mutes. We eventually made it to class about ten minutes late. Imagine our shock when the first thing we hear is the teacher posing a vote to the class! We took our seats, still slack-jawed. As it turns out, the vote was merely about class time. After the two sides were explained, the whole class unanimously voted for an earlier end to class with shorter breaks. We share the timeslot with roughly forty other students from Finland and Germany. There are two Russians, but they’re shlupping around with the Fins. Jiang Laoshi realigned our jaws by starting the class as we had originally imagined it: with oodles of facts surprisingly aligned with the views of The Party. For example, in China, there are 23 districts, including…Taiwan. Interesting. There are also eight parties besides the ruling one (which has held power for 60 years tomorrow). Upon further questioning by a skeptical German student, the teacher gave a circuital admission that they cannot vote and have relatively no power. She did reassure all of us, however, that their voices are heard. Big sigh of relief from the whole room. The whole three and a half hours went on in this fashion. Imagine our exhaustion by the end of it. I believe I had two detailed, lengthy doodles involving Atlas Shrugged/Ayn Rand in the works, and one finished. This week was hardly any different, and didn’t even include a vote. Sad.
Thursday afternoon brought our Chinese Economics course. For those of you I didn’t enlighten, this is the course I have been dreading. I find economics to be a pedestrian, pedantic, and all-around podiatric study. Feet aside, the class turned out to be a blast. Granted, it was four hours long, but I was a big fan of the professor. He challenged China’s positions, plans, and ideas on many different issues and ended the class with a 30 minute critique of the Government’s focus on the GDP and its seeming apathy with respect to internal corruption. He even went so far as to say the Government needs more accountability to the people (that means actual elections). This guy had guts, saying what he did. Occasionally he would talk in circles, but the general tone and content was laudable. This class will be the easiest by far, as he doesn’t take attendance, there are nine total classes, and our final exam is an 800 word paper expanding one aspect of one lecture. Not a raw deal by any means. We also share this class with the previously acknowledged Europeans.
We ten Americans are officially on break for the next eight days. We leave Saturday evening for Guilin and Yangshuo in the Quanxi province (southwest China). It’s supposed to be among the absolutely most beautiful places on Earth, including one very secret spot that I will write about when we get back. It has the name of a fable. I’ve only told one person outside China what its name is so don’t go asking around. You’ll just have to wait until the next post. That one should be up on Monday or Tuesday, 12-13 October.
My best to you all,
Si ma jian (my Chinese name)
No big stories this time; it was a pretty lazy week on our part. We started our second round of classes last week, though.
Let’s begin like I did, with Chinese History and Culture. We started the day off on the wrong foot: at the wrong building. Directions for anything thus far have been scant at best, leaving us poor Meiguorenmen to fumble around as virtual mutes. We eventually made it to class about ten minutes late. Imagine our shock when the first thing we hear is the teacher posing a vote to the class! We took our seats, still slack-jawed. As it turns out, the vote was merely about class time. After the two sides were explained, the whole class unanimously voted for an earlier end to class with shorter breaks. We share the timeslot with roughly forty other students from Finland and Germany. There are two Russians, but they’re shlupping around with the Fins. Jiang Laoshi realigned our jaws by starting the class as we had originally imagined it: with oodles of facts surprisingly aligned with the views of The Party. For example, in China, there are 23 districts, including…Taiwan. Interesting. There are also eight parties besides the ruling one (which has held power for 60 years tomorrow). Upon further questioning by a skeptical German student, the teacher gave a circuital admission that they cannot vote and have relatively no power. She did reassure all of us, however, that their voices are heard. Big sigh of relief from the whole room. The whole three and a half hours went on in this fashion. Imagine our exhaustion by the end of it. I believe I had two detailed, lengthy doodles involving Atlas Shrugged/Ayn Rand in the works, and one finished. This week was hardly any different, and didn’t even include a vote. Sad.
Thursday afternoon brought our Chinese Economics course. For those of you I didn’t enlighten, this is the course I have been dreading. I find economics to be a pedestrian, pedantic, and all-around podiatric study. Feet aside, the class turned out to be a blast. Granted, it was four hours long, but I was a big fan of the professor. He challenged China’s positions, plans, and ideas on many different issues and ended the class with a 30 minute critique of the Government’s focus on the GDP and its seeming apathy with respect to internal corruption. He even went so far as to say the Government needs more accountability to the people (that means actual elections). This guy had guts, saying what he did. Occasionally he would talk in circles, but the general tone and content was laudable. This class will be the easiest by far, as he doesn’t take attendance, there are nine total classes, and our final exam is an 800 word paper expanding one aspect of one lecture. Not a raw deal by any means. We also share this class with the previously acknowledged Europeans.
We ten Americans are officially on break for the next eight days. We leave Saturday evening for Guilin and Yangshuo in the Quanxi province (southwest China). It’s supposed to be among the absolutely most beautiful places on Earth, including one very secret spot that I will write about when we get back. It has the name of a fable. I’ve only told one person outside China what its name is so don’t go asking around. You’ll just have to wait until the next post. That one should be up on Monday or Tuesday, 12-13 October.
My best to you all,
Si ma jian (my Chinese name)
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