So, I want to retire in Shanghai

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I had the most incredible day today (and its still going on!). It started at 6:30 am, when I woke up because I had to meet at Zhongshan Park (the park right down the street from our apartments) at 7am to do a project for my Communicative Chinese class. I learned that I've been missing SO MUCH by not waking up early every day while I'm in China. By 7am, the park was PACKED with "old people" (laoren) who do their exercises early every morning. According to the principle of yin and yang and the laws of fengshui, the early morning is the best time to exercise. At that time it is believed that the weaker spiritual energy, the yin, of the night is turning into the stronger spiritual energy, the yang, of the morning, and through early morning exercise, people can fill their body with strong spiritual forces. I think it's actually possible that what I witnessed and experienced this morning may have been the coolest thing that's happened to me since I've been in China. There were tons of groups of old people practicing Tai Chi, which is basically slow motion fighting? (although it's done for relaxation) to loud music. When we entered the park, we were even greeted by a man we assumed to be a "tai chi master," who was dressed in full Tai Chi garb. Our assignment was to interview at least three old people, and ask about their life after retirement, or their early morning exercise routine, or their relationship with their children (I chose the last one). I was really nervous as I made my first rounds around the park. By now I've gotten pretty used to being stared at as a foreigner, but it was a whole other thing to walk up to people staring at me and start a conversation in Chinese. And I also knew beforehand that none of these people would understand a word of English, so my communication skills had to be good enough to carry on a pretty substantial conversation with real people in the real world. And I would have to be able to understand enough of each of my conversations to give an oral presentation on my findings in class on Tuesday. What made things even more difficult is that many of the old people in the park did not even speak Putonghua (Mandarin), but only spoke Shanghainese, which means we would be basically incomprehensible to each other.
I first encountered numerous groups of Tai Chi-ers, and I wasn't planning on disturbing any of them since they were actually in the act of exercising. A little ways into the park, I saw a pretty large group, made up mostly of old women, who were practicing some form of Tai Chi using swords! It was incredible! All I could think about was that they could be my grandmother, and probably the last thing I could ever imagine is my grandmother wielding a sword in the park to loud music at 7am. But I was amazed to think what a great lifestyle old people must lead in China. A bit further on were a bunch of couples dancing to more music, another really popular way to exercise early in the morning. And there were tons of other things going on too; I spent a few minutes watching an old man write Chinese calligraphy on the ground using a huge water paintbrush. I know that 7am is early, but I'm seriously gonna have to come back to the park to experience this again at least a few more times while I'm here.
When I actually had the guts to start interviewing people, well that was another experience too. I first approached two old women who were chatting, and I got off to a good start with them. They seemed to be so excited that I was talking to them, and we could understand each other pretty well. It was actually such an exhilerating feeling! Despite all of the instances when I feel like Chinese people are rude, they are almost always so receptive if you try to talk to them. It must be the same curiosity thing. As we were talking, more and more people started gathering around us, and if I didn't understand something the woman said, others would try to say it in another way for me. It was so funny! After I finished speaking with them, I approached an old man in another part of the park. I had a real hard time understanding his Chinese - in fact, its possible that he only spoke Shanghainese, but as soon as I tried to explain to him what I was doing, a man who was around my dad's age came over and asked in broken english if he could help me. In the end, he ended up translating for me a lot of what the old man said, and he asked the old man repeatedly to speak slower for me. We had attracted another large group of people, and at the end the man who served as my translator gave me his phone number and email address and wrote my information down in his address book, and said that he was a fabric dealer near by, and pretty much wouldn't leave until I promised I'd call him and bring my friends to his fabric store.
I then approached a few other people, and they all basically turned me down - some said no (very nicely I might add), others said they only spoke Shanghainese, and because my targets were old people, a few also pointed to their ears and said they couldn't hear or had a hearing aid. I also figured that my experience interviewing the women was a lot easier than interviewing a man, so I decided to stick to women from then on. I ended up interviewing 4 people all in all. And actually their responses to my questions about their relationship with their children were really interesting. The man I interviewed said he was unhappy with his relationship with his children because his son didn't live at home. He didn't seem to care much about his daughters, but said he would only be satisfied if his son moved back home and helped take care of him. On the other hand, the last woman I interviewed said she had a 28 year old son who still lived at home and wasn't married, and she was unhappy about that, and would have been much happier if he got married and lived on his own.
After I was done with the assignment, it was about 8:30 and a group of us went to Starbucks for coffee. I couldn't stop smiling, and I was wired with so much adrenaline, the whole experience was so interesting and so much fun! I just absolutely love my Chinese classes here!

I'm leaving in about an hour cause tonight we're taking an overnight train to go on our first weekend trip. I am BEYOND EXCITED. We're going to a place called Tai Shan (shan means mountain), and it's one of the holiest mountains in China. It's also the home of Confucius's (alleged) birthplace. Our train arrives tomorrow morning, and an hour after we get there, we're gonna spend the entire day hiking to the top of the mountain. I think it's supposed to take something like 8 hours, there and back. My guidebook says that the Chinese believe that if you climb to the top of Tai Shan, you're supposed to live to be 100.

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