What Do People in China Call Their Good Plates?
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Published: February 18th 2011
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I have no idea what sort of depraved perverseness Mike had planned. The authorities cut him down pretty quick when he started ripping his shirt off. Chinese people love fireworks like Americans love sedentary lifestyles, remote controls and sitting down. We went to Beijing for Chinese New Year (the Koreans call it Lunar New Year) which I had heard was the largest fireworks display on Earth. I love fireworks but at a certain age they do loose a bit of their wonder so I wasn’t too pumped for this part of the trip. We landed on New Year’s Day and were immediately thrown into complete firework madness. This isn’t a professional firework show, this is every single person in the city setting off thousands dollars of fireworks on every street corner in the city for 48 hours, reaching its mind blowing crescendo at midnight. There’s no way to explain it, no
video does it justice* and you have to be there to experience it. These aren’t jumping jacks and bottle rockets, these are professional grade rockets that people are setting off on the street, shooting up and raining buildings, cars and people with sparks, for 48 straight hours. It’s no wonder that buildings all over the China go
up in flame, most famously their
nearly constructed, horribly expensive CCTV (Central China TV, the government broadcast compay) headquarters. The Chinese treat fireworks like Catholics treat confession, they are thought to wipe away
Thievery
Maria stealing a piece of the Great Wall. your bad deeds from the year before. Raped a baby? Fireworks. Beat your wife? Fireworks. Befriended a midget? Fireworks. Easy atonement in explosive form. It sure beats talking through a metal screen to someone who knows your mom.
Our giant travel group consisted of a loose alliance of teachers from Korea, all bound together by the fact that we knew Brian, the dad from Urkel-looking fella pictured below. The smaller group that I spent all my time with however consisted of myself, Maria and Racist Mike Crumblies. I’m sure you’ve heard of
Mach Speed, well we invented Mike Speed which is the exact slow speed of speech that causes people to fall over asleep or dead before finishing a sentence. He talks like a mixture of my grandpa and the
turtle from the Neverending Story.
We went to M(-utianyu) section of the Great Wall b/c it generally has less tourists and it has this
"> amazing slide down. I laughed embarrassingly hard the entire way down as I repeatedly slammed into Mike and was smashed into by Maria, I can’t recommend this too highly. I mean, who gets to slide down the Great Wall? On arriving we immediately went to the part of the
Great Wall
Derelict. wall they tell you not to climb b/c it’s collapsing and overrun with trees and such. We didn’t see another tourist there the whole day, which gave us the opportunity to take these absurd jumping pictures and mock people who love following rules, like Germans.
We also went to the zoo, Maria rode a panda while I arm wrestled one and Mike just stared at his quite racistly. I made a 25 second compilation video of our trip to the zoo, so if you haven’t clicked on any other link I painstakingly put in this blog, try
this one at least. Someone should make a zoo where you can eat every animal in the zoo. That’d take that smug look off those snow leopards’ faces.
I know this sounds like sacrilege, but if you can only visit one palace type place in Beijing I would recommend the Summer Palace over the Forbidden City in a heartbeat. Like Racist Mike said, “Once you’ve seen one palace they all look the same… like Asians.” We got to walk all the way across a frozen lake (and take jumping pictures on said lake) and get a view of the Palace you can’t get during the
Photo shoot
Mike was our 3rd wheel and photographer. summer.
Nice thing about this trip as compared to the last one was that there are less people. I know I sound like Racist Mike now, “the best part about the trip is there are less Chinese people in China” but really it’s just that the subways were not as full, the lines didn’t exist and other than one belligerent taxi driver everyone was cool. If there’s a drawback to Asia it’s the crowds, and there weren’t too many as we were there during a holiday. This also meant the markets were closed but I got my shopping in last trip anyhow.
The rest of the trip was basically us going to get massages. We got 4 hours worth in our last three days. They train the blind to be masseuses in China, which makes sense since you don’t have to be able to see to grope people. Maria’s masseuse was as blind as they come, burped like a drunk person in a cartoon and was by far the best at his job (and she totally Bogarted him the whole time). I tried to pretend my lady was blind in one eye, or at least farsighted but I know she
Awkward
Look how cute Mike is awkwardly trying to get in on the hug. could see like a damn eagle and treated my body like a bag of trash because of it. You know what was a kick ass invention if you’re deaf? Text messaging.
Oh, we did go see the Chinese acrobats one night, which is basically Cirque du Soliel without the dirty French Canadian origin and shorter acrobats. It went a lil’ somethin’ like
this. Our hostel, The Happy Dragon, was cool, it helped that our group was so big. The shower sucked though and was like being peed on both in water pressure and temperature and they tried to pull a fast one by refilling a Head & Shoulders bottle with dish soap.
If you care for a less derogatory (aka more accurate) portrayal of Racist Mike Crumblies you can access his blog
here. I don’t know why you’d bother though as his blog has never won any accolades or awards of any type. He does however give a day by day of what we did and has more pictures if that sort of thing interests you.
Anyways, I'm headed to America's Hat in the morning and then to Big Willy Strawn's wedding so I'll see some of you soon. Heart.
Movie: I've been watching the ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries. My favorites are The Two Escobars, Run Ricky Run, Without Bias, and Who Killed the USFL. I've only watched like 20 thus far. Only.
Book: I finally finished the 11th Robert Jordan monstrosity. There’s that I guess.
Youtube: I love
this and
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Creative photos
Looks like you are having plenty of fun.