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Published: April 28th 2010
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Me with the best two ladies ever The next morning we woke up early and headed to the train station to go to Xi’an. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but babies in China don’t usually wear diapers when they are outside, just pants with a slot in the crotch. If they need to do their business they pretty much just squat on the side of the road. So there was a baby in the Luoyang train station walking around making trouble, all of a sudden she stopped and squatted. I didn’t think it was weird at first because Chinese people squat all over the place to rest, due to lack of public benches, and maybe partly due to their ability to squat comfortably (which I can’t really do). But anyway, moral of the story, baby peed on the ground. Her dad used a dry mop to smear it around, note to self: don’t put anything other than the bottom of your shoes on the floor in China.
The train only stops for a couple minutes at the station, so people rushed crazily to get to their compartments. I wasn’t too worried; I can’t imagine the train would start pulling away while people are in the process
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Xi'an bell tower of stepping on the train. Chinese people don’t really grasp that idea though so I let them push their way by me if they really thought it was necessary. As I expected, I was able to board the train with no problem.
The train ride was really pretty through the countryside, but there was trash everywhere. I’m not sure why there was so much, but I guess maybe they just don’t have anywhere else to put it other than their backyards. We passed Hua Mountain, which was amazing. I will for sure have to make it there sometime, despite the fact that it’s noted as some of the most dangerous hiking in the world.
In Xi’an nothing too exciting happened. We stayed at the same hotel as last time and got to check out the night market again, but it was raining so that kind of sucked. Lauren, Orit and I met two older ladies running a souvineir shop near our hotel. They were hilarious, they loved us. Talking to them reminded me of talking to high school girls from parts of China with not many foreigners. They were interested in everything about us, and they kept saying
I was handsome haha, I got a picture with them and as you can see they are very happy and excited. The next day the group went to the Terracotta soldiers but I stayed back with the other two people who have already been there. It was raining out so we used the internet at Starbucks and relaxed, utilizing our time to rest up a bit.
That night we were already headed off to Chengdu. Our flight was delayed so we hung out in the airport. We were the only flight in our area so we talked to some of the people who worked at the shops there, that was pretty fun. Once we boarded the plane I was sitting in the middle between a guy from our program and a girl from Chengdu who was very smiley. Since she seemed so friendly I said hi to her. We ended up talking the whole flight and she was very nice. She couldn’t speak much English so once again it was convenient to have Chinese. She was 23 and in Xi’an to plant beautiful flowers from Chengdu because Xi’an’s flowers are apparently not pretty. I don’t know what it’s called
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Our hotel in Xi'an but she is learning to design something to do with flowers, I didn’t get it completely but it sounded pretty interesting. I got her number and she told me to give her a call in Chengdu.
We got to the hotel pretty late so I originally planned on going to bed right away, but as usual on the study trip, that didn’t happen. My roommate Andrew and I decided to head out and buy some snacks. On our way out the girls at the front desk started talking to us. They were very interested in us, and very funny, so we talked to them for a while. After buying food we came back and talked to them some more. Since it was about midnight when we got to the hotel it was soon 2am and we were still hanging out. They said they wanted to buy us some food and we agreed. We went right outside the hotel and there was a man with a food stand. He had noodles and dumplings, who would have thought at 2am on a deserted street you can get tasty street food? They said he opens just for them and some other people
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Hotel in Chengdu, glass bathroom in the area that have to work all night. We ate in the lobby, it was really good, and the girls all wanted to take pictures on their cell phones of the foreigners they met, so I also got some pictures on my camera. The security guard was nice enough to help us out. Andy and I jumped into the weird picture taking habits of the Chinese by holding our chopsticks and throwing up the peace sign, which they call, “Victory!”
One thing I didn’t mention: When we were out getting the noodles we saw an old man driving a rickshaw wearing a hat that said “happy.” We thought it was pretty funny as he slowly drove by and smiled at me and Andy. However, when I walked back into the hotel by myself to ask one of the girls what they wanted to eat he came up to me. He held out a card with a topless girl on it and asked me if I wanted beautiful girls in Chinese. At first I was a little shocked, but then I realized he was what I hate most about China. Thanks to guys like him, China attracts scum from
other countries, the sexual tourists, and thanks to them the demand is growing and has resulted in rural Chinese girls being kidnapped or being told they can come to the city to work as a waitress, only to arrive at a brothel to work as prostitutes and have no way to get out of the situation. Once that popped into my mind I yelled at him to go away and he quickly got on his bike and left. Looking back I wish I would have said more, but I’m not sure anything I would have said would have affected him in any way other than the speed he left in, which is frustrating.
Back to a more positive note, the next day we went to the Panda Research Center. I had been there before but it was still a lot of fun. This time there was a whole shool there, so there were a bunch of classes walking around. Every time we walked by one of the groups all the little kids would say, “Hello!” It was really funny, and it was cute listening them get excited about watching the pandas play. I got a few pictures of the
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Girls from the front desk at 3 in the morning pandas and little kids so check those out.
Another blog coming soon...
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