Amanda Came to Visit!

As soon as I found out that I was going to be in China this year, I knew that I would have a visitor. My friend Amanda called dibs on visiting the last week in March (her spring break from teaching Kindergarten). Amanda is basically the older sister I never had. We have been friends since Homecoming my freshmen year of high school when we bonded in the bathroom over the advantages and pitfalls of certain formal dresses. It was meant to be right from the start. She went to Augustana, which is the only reason that I had ever even heard about Augie, and I eventually chose Augustana. She pledged a sorority and the fact that she is so NOT a sorority girl gave me confidence to rush (and eventually pledge the same sorority). Amanda was teaching in China through the same Augie/CCNU exchange that I am now doing the year after she graduated, so she was here when I first came through on Asian Term. I even serendipitously ended up with her old apartment. She is the friend that I can see every day, or not see for a year (due to one of us being in China) and we can always pick up right where we left off. Since we went to high school and college together and worked together for a while (yay Chili’s!), we have a ridiculous amount of mutual friends. She knows, or at least knows of, pretty much everyone who has been in my life over the last decade. She is one of my favorite people to talk to and laugh with. So, when she found out that I was going to be in China, it was the perfect excuse for a vacation.

I was so excited for her to come visit! I couldn’t wait to see her and hang out and I was also excited to see Wuhan through her eyes. When we first arrived, I remember thinking how familiar everything was from when we visited 3 years earlier on Asian Term. After living here for a few months, I soon began to realize how much changes so rapidly in daily life. Stores change over and move. There is ubiquitous construction and destruction. I knew that we both had this unique experience of doing the same thing at a different time.

I took the overnight train to Beijing to meet her. Thanks to the lovely Chicago weather, she had been delayed for several hours before take-off, so I spent some quality time in the Beijing Airport (again). When she finally arrived, we headed off to the hotel and grabbed a Chinese meal of dumplings, eggplant and shredded potatoes. She was clearly in heaven as she finally got to eat the food that I am sure she had been craving for the last three years. We chatted away and made our plans for the next day. We booked a night train out the following evening, so we only had one day in Beijing. Since I had just been there with Jessi in January and Amanda had been there a few times, we didn’t need to hit all the sights. We walked to Tiananmen for some pictures, and then headed into the silk market for some shopping. Allow me to fully explain the market. Imagine a five story building with each level spliced into 8’x8’ stalls spilling over with anything you could possibly want: shirts, shoes, bags, pants, skirts, vests, jewelry, trinkets, and more. The “aisles” are so narrow that you can (and will be) grabbed by ferocious vendors on either side of you who will literally drag you into their “shop” to bully you into buying their wares. They all have essentially the same merchandise, so they try to catch you before you go to their neighbor. You are assaulted with greetings and sales pitches of , “Hello Pretty Lady”, “Bags-Gucci-Prada”, “Special Price for you”, and every possible derivative of such sentiments. I had one piranha latch onto my arm and try to pull me into her booth. I politely said “bu yao” (don’t want) and I wrenched my arm from her vise-like grip. She got really mad at me and called me rude for trying to reclaim my limb.

I was on a mission for shoes. I am typically rough on my shoes and with all of the walking that I do here, I had killed 2 of the 4 pairs that I brought with me. I decided to replace them while I was in Beijing, where they are used to catering to the big ol’ Westerners. I found a pair of fun Puma(esque) shoes that I really liked at the first stall. The woman who was helping was trying to be extremely nice, but it didn’t camouflage her pushiness. She was making all kinds of small talk and, upon hearing my nationality, told me that she loved Americans. She wanted the sale bad, I wasn’t ready to buy yet. I wanted to look around a bit first. I told her I would think about it and started to walk away. She grabbed me and pulled me back and scolded me saying that everywhere was the same, so I didn’t need to look around. Again, I thanked her for her help and told her I just wanted to look around for a while, that I would think about it, and I started to walk away. She immediately dropped her quoted price. There is a very complicated system of bargaining that takes place at these markets. You have to be very careful about how interested you are in a certain product or you are forced into the social contract of buying the item. Often, if you ask how much something is, you are engaging in the bargaining ritual that will result in you purchasing the item. The following dance involves the salesperson asking an INSANELY high price (esp. if you are clearly not from China) and the experienced bargainer throwing out an equally ridiculous low price. You need to let them know that you know they are trying to rip you off. You go back and forth in basic English and Chinese (“Too expensive!” was one of the first Chinese phrases that I learned.) They usually use a calculator to display their price, so emphatic and precise number crunching adds to the drama of the moment. There can be a fun back and forth as you try to reach a price that you are both happy with, but sometimes it is just a pain. The “walk away” is a good way to let the seller know that you won’t budge any more and that they need to give you a serious offer. Well, Ms. I-Love-Selling-Shoes-To-Americans thought I was trying to pull the walk away. I just didn’t want to buy anything yet. With each step that I took she dropped the price a little more. Then she started insulting me! First, I wasn’t nice. Then, I was mean. Finally, she screamed down the row, “I HATE AMERICAN PEOPLE!!!” I think I made a friend. J Some of these vendors have a few things to learn before the Beijing Olympics. I did end up getting not one, but two pairs of shoes from a different stall. I had to work hard for a good price there. I had three of them trying to convince me that I was getting high quality designer goods that were worth hundreds of US dollars. They were hanging on my arms and I was tempted to just pick them up and start walking away. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.

After shopping, we grabbed a duck dinner before heading back to the hotel to freshen up before the train ride. We were a 5-minute walk from the station, so we gave ourselves about an hour to go find our gate and not rush. We got into the station and looked for our train number. It was nowhere to be found anywhere. After a few minutes, I checked my ticket and realized that we were at the wrong station. We were at the East Station and we were booked to leave out of the West Station. That would have been good to know. We turned around and started booking it toward the taxi queue (think Home Alone style running with baggage bouncing everywhere…) We found a driver who said that he thought we would just make it if we hurry. We piled into the cab, agreed on a fare that was too high because we didn’t have the time or energy to talk him down, and we were on our way. Amanda and I have a history of missing trains, so this was a very familiar feeling. However, missing the 12:20 Metra train into Chicago means that you have to wait an hour for the next one. If we missed this train to Wuhan, we would have had to wait until the next night to leave, which would be a much greater hassle. The entire taxi ride was spent convincing ourselves that we would be fine. We SPRINTED through the entire station, up and down stairs until we finally got onto our train, and flopped onto our beds in our compartment. After we caught our breath and cooled down a bit, we had a pleasant ride back to Wuhan.

We wasted no time in getting out and about. We got back to the apartment and immediately made plans to meet Sarah, Alexes, Maggie and Jo for lunch and a trip to Wuhan University (commonly known as WuDa) to see the cherry blossoms. The campus is fairly famous in the area for having an incredible display of the blossoms every year. We were a bit late to catch everything in full bloom, but it was beautiful, nonetheless. I am a little bit biased, so nothing compared to walking through the Augustana quad at night while the flower petals fall from the trees like snow.

After WuDa, we decided to continue our outdoor adventure since the weather was so beautiful, so we went to East Lake. East Lake is a big lake in the area that is also known for its “attractions”, which are really a haphazard collection of defunct games, rides and general oddities. My favorite part was the creepy water ride. You climb into these old metal boats and float though a building in a dank and musty moat. It is supposed to be…scary? As you clatter and bang your way along the banks are lined with animals, skeletons and other figures all painted with day-glo neon paint. You hear screaming, crying and other noises played on old scratchy recordings. The animatronics are just simple pulleys and springs that catapult figures toward you. It is like Halloween decorations gone wrong and left to rot for a few decades. Jessi and I went on it and we laughed so hard we were crying. At the end, there was a woman who halfheartedly waved her hand at you at the end to scare you. This time, there were people throughout the ride that jumped out and/or grabbed us. It totally got me. We screamed and almost tipped our boat. Good times. J

On Tuesday, Amanda came to my classes with me. She was blown away by the improvements to the classrooms. When she was teaching here, there were no computers in the classrooms and the students had old, small wooden desks. Between classes we grabbed a bite to eat and went DVD shopping. After class, we went out to dinner with the big group (minus Laura because she and her family were in class and plus Katie’s mom and sister who were also visiting).

Wednesday was our day trip out of Wuhan. We took a 3-hour bus ride to Mulan Mountain to see something new. My friend Maggie has a friend who is a travel agent, so he helped set us up with a bus and everything. We got up bright and early to meet up with our group. We were joining a group of college freshmen on a class trip. They clapped when we got on the bus and they sang us a song to welcome us to their group. After a series of way-too-loud karaoke songs welcoming us, they asked US to sing them a song in English. That is quite a big request for 8am. We politely declined. One would think that college students would be able to enjoy a simple bus ride, but they were like caged monkeys jacked up on Mountain Dew. They were running around and screaming and giggling. I’ll just say that it was a loooooong ride. It was worth it once we got there. After learning when and where we needed to meet the group to leave, we took off on our own. The whole area reminded me of Devil’s Lake in Wisconsin. Water, nature, hills. We hiked up and down and around trying to avoid the throngs of people clogging the more popular routes. We had lunch along the side of the path. I don’t know what we expected to find at the summit, but I was not expecting a zip line and a grass slide (sledding without snow). Oh, China. Thankfully, on the way back to campus the students were a bit tuckered out, so they weren’t as squirrelly as they were on the way there. We were exhausted from the hiking, so we went to bed early.

Thursday was another early morning. We met my friend Jo to go to Breakfast Street. Breakfast Street is a series of streets that serve traditional Chinese breakfast foods. It was amazing! There were so many delicious dishes and things that I had never had before. My favorite was a bread dumpling filled with rice covered in a black pepper sauce. It reminded me of biscuits and gravy. Mmmmm. On our way home from Breakfast street, we stopped at a Taoist temple. After the temple, I was pooped. Amanda managed to avoid any kind of jet lag, but I was suffering from Amanda Lag! Since I don’t teach until the afternoon, I normally stay up late and sleep in. With Amanda in town, we both wanted to see and do as much as we could, so we were up early and in bed early. I went home and took a nap while Amanda walked around and took some pictures. We relaxed until dinner with the group and a night out at Vox, our favorite bar.

We woke up on Friday to find a gray and rainy day. Our only plans for the day were to do a little bit of shopping and eat some more dumplings (jiaozi). Amanda was bummed to find out that her favorite restaurant had been replaced by a hotel. I took her to our favorite jiaozi restaurant and I was excited to find that it was the same place that she loved! We just happened to find where they had moved! After stuffing ourselves on jiaozi, we did a bit more shopping and then headed home so she could relax and pack up before catching the train out back to Beijing.

It was an action packed, amazing week. It was sooooo good to have Amanda around. I love being able to share this experience.

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