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Friday we had 3 classes. We started off the day with our ME design lab, where we put together a pretty good list of questions that we want Caterpillar to have the answers to before we visit them on Tuesday. We followed up with your average Chinese class where all the business majors complained the class was too hard. Dr. Z lectured us on personality types and such. The highlight of the night was going to my first bar. We brought about 22 people to the Reggae Club, owned by a Chinese guy named Larry that spoke very good English. I had 2 light beers but everyone else at the table ordered a lot of shots, hookah, vodka, pitchers, you name it. It was incredibly loud and it seemed like the Americans gave the bar a lot of energy by trying to get everybody involved with toasts. They would go around and try to get all the Chinese people to stand up and toast with them without actually being able to directly communicate. The shot of the night was called Jim Bean. I watched Avery and Dylan get schooled at pool by some Chinese pros. The owner really liked our group and said he hoped that we would consider it a "second home". I can see why people have a lot of fun at bars but for the most part I was hanging back and observing. I left a little early than other people because we had to get up early the next day to catch a train. Everybody made it, so nobody got too drunk that night.
Saturday:
Got up early and caught a taxi to catch a train to catch a subway to meet with Jim Arnold, an NC State alumni who now lives in Shanghai. We went to his living place, which is this incredibly nice apartment on the 18th floor of some building. He's hella-rich. When China opened their doors to the west, his company came in and started selling turbochargers to China, Korea, and Vietnam. He ran businesses in all three countries. He worked like crazy until he was about 50, found a pretty Chinese woman, had a kid and retired. His kid speaks Chinese much better than he speaks English, so they're sending him to an international school next year to improve his English (understandably, he prefers being able to talk to his kid in his original language). He talked for a long time and the engineers took turns falling asleep, in which case the other engineers would call their cell phone and wake them up. His wife is an artist and her paintings are all over the house, and particularly prominent in the child's playroom. I doubt the child will ever have a brother/sister because of China's laws about having kids, which I think is unfortunate from an older brother perspective. Jim had a beautiful home and we thanked him for having us. We walked around Shanghai for about 2 hours, the highlight of which was going to Krispy Kreme, acting interested in the menu, and receiving free glazed donuts.
After walking around for a while we had the NC State Alumni dinner in Shanghai. Unfortunately, only 3 of the 13 alumni that were supposed to come actually came. As a result, we had enough food for 20 people with only 10 people present, and despite how hungry we were, we were unable to defeat the onslaught of incoming dishes. We met some cool NC state alumni who lived around Shanghai and Anna Lamn did a really good job of marketing our programs to them. They suggested I watch Ip Man while i'm here. During the dinner, Tan and I decided to make it our goal to take as many pictures as possible with girls and we started with our waitress. Free NC State stuff was given out, watermelon was eaten, and we said our goodbyes to end the dinner.
The night ended with us just walking around Shanghai and taking pictures. We also had some Cold Stone Creamery which was more expensive here than it is in the US! We didn't really have any destination in mind or any goal in mind, but it was still a lot of fun. Tan and I bumped our pictures with girls up to 4.
Our routine goes something like this:
Tan: "Ni hao. Ni mang ma?"
Girl: "Bu mang"
Me: "Mai nu, ichi zhaoxiang hao ma?"
*takes picture*
translated:
Tan: "Hi, are you busy?"
Girl: "nope"
Me: "Will the pretty girl take a picture with us?"
Girl: "OMG WHO WOULDN'T TAKE A PICTURE WITH YOU GUYS?!?!?!"
Sunday:
Woke up late and had Krispy Kreme for breakfast. Caught a train back to Hangzhou. Bumped our pictures with girls up to double digits. Ate at a KFC and Lazy Susan. Played 2 hours of Badminton with variations in the rules (2 birdies at the same time, etc.). Talked to swan for a while and then hit the sack.
Sorry the last one's always short. I lose interest after a while on these 3 day entries. Coincidentally, the third day is also usually the least interesting anyway. I'll try to post each day instead of procrastinating then doing a whole lot in one day. I know my dad is wondering this so i'll throw it out there:
Wo hen gaoxing.
-No Knee Mcgee
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Victor Lange
non-member comment
You sound Měimiào
....that's probably wrong....but you sound great. Love, Dad