广州

---

上个周末我去了广州旅行。我去看我的中国朋友，潇楠。两个年前她来过明尼苏达。我的飞机八点起飞。 因为我走错地铁站，所以七点半我才到北京飞机场。

到广州以后我坐公共汽车去见潇楠。她，她的姐姐和我一起去吃午饭。她的姐姐教我们广州风俗，吃饭前广州人用茶水洗洗筷子和碗。她的姐姐和姐姐的男朋友英文说得不太好。潇楠常常翻译，她翻译英文，广东话，普通话，和她的家乡话。她的姐姐喜欢模仿我的英文所以我叫了她“鹦鹉”，她很好笑。一天晚上我们做晚饭。

鹦鹉去工作，她是钢琴老师，所以Vincent，楠，和我一起去了市场。这是我的第一次去中国市场。市场有很多的蔬菜和肉。我们只买了一餐的食物。在美国我们家一次会买一个星期的食物。我做西餐：马铃薯和胡萝卜。Vincent 做中餐：虾，苦瓜和鸡蛋。楠做最好吃的凉辣黄瓜。我都很喜欢，除苦瓜。

一天晚上我们去了亚洲最大的百货商场. 一天下午我们去了KTV，以前我没有去过KTV。楠歌唱得很好听。 KTV有很多的美国歌，很有趣！

我离开的时候很伤心。Vinson叫我留广州，他很喜欢跟我聊天。 楠给我拥抱，然后我回去北京。我很喜欢广州，可是我更喜欢北京。住在广州的时候，我很想北京秋天舒服的天气。

THE END!

Ok just kidding, I will write one in English. I skipped one Chinese class to go to Guangzhou so my Chinese teacher made me write a 400 character journal about my trip in Chinese. I realize that most people who read my blog won't be able to read and of that other than "KTV" and "Vincent," but I thought I'd post it just to prove that I am doing some homework here too.

Last Saturday (October 24th) I went to 广州 (Guangzhou). It was kind of expensive but the opportunity presented itself and I made a quick decision to just go for it. I went to visit a Chinese friend I had met at St. John’s. Her Chinese name is 潇楠(Xiao Nan) English name: Naomi. She came with a group from China to visit our school during my freshman year. She goes to graduate school in Hong Kong so we met in Guangzhou at her cousin’s apartment. Guangzhou is a few hours North of Hong Kong; it’s in mainland China so I didn’t have to get a new visa to come back into China, which would be the case if I went to Hong Kong. My Chinese teacher helped me buy the plane ticket; it was a very weird transaction. She ordered it online, but you don’t actually get an e-ticket or pay for it online. They called us the next day and my teacher told them to meet us at Peking University. Later that day some guy on a bike with a fanny pack full of cash showed up on campus and my teacher came with me to go and pay him with cash, and it was quite a bit of cash. I gave him the money and he gave me a receipt, the whole transaction seemed sketchy to me, but it all worked out.
On Saturday morning I caught one of the first subway trains to the airport express stops, a little after 5am. I got on the airport express train and got off at the second stop. When I walked around I couldn’t seem to find where to check in. I finally realized it was because I was suppose to get off at the first train stop, I was at the wrong terminal. Luckily they had a bus that went between terminals so I jumped on that shuttle as soon as I could and by the time I got to where I was supposed to be I had less than an hour. I was a little worried because I was told to get there two hours early. I quickly got my ticket from the automatic check-in machine and got in the line for security check, which luckily wasn’t that long. However, I didn’t realize that Chinese people are a lot different when going through security checks. They don’t seem to realize that if you take the metal out of your pockets before you go through the detector, you won’t beep. Almost every person beeped when they went through, and therefore had to be searched with the little wand thingy. Unlike me, the airport personnel were used to this kind of behavior so they had plenty of wand-wielding officers ready to search people. When it was my turn I took off my belt and put my cell phone through the x-ray machine. When I didn’t beep, the other people in line gave me some weird looks, but at least I was through. I hurried to my gate and the plane was boarding, but I made it.
After I arrived in Guangzhou I had to take a bus into the suburb where Yingwu’s apartment was, Yingwu is my friend’s cousin, I’ll explain her name later. The bus ride was about an hour long. When I got off, Yingwu and Naomi were waiting there to pick me up. We walked for a few blocks and went into a restaurant. We had some clams and soup and vegetables. Before the meal, Yingwu washed all the dishes and chopsticks on the table with tea, this is a tradition in Guangzhou. After washing, the tea water is poured into a bowl on the table and the waitress takes it away. I had never seen that before so it was pretty interesting.
After lunch we went to the apartment to drop my things off. We hung out there for a while talking and resting. Naomi’s cousin and her cousin’s boyfriend, Vincent, don’t speak very much English. Because of this, her cousin often copied my English pronunciation to practice. She has a good sense of humor and after joking around for a while I decided to call her 鹦鹉(spelt yingwu, but pronounced: eeng woo) which means parrot. She thought that was funny so that became her nickname for the rest of the time.
That night we went to a busy street where street vendors were selling food and trinkets, just like in Beijing. We went to a pretty nice, slightly western style restaurant. I had a tuna fish sandwich, which was actually pretty good. I always like eating out with Chinese people because they have no problem rushing the waitresses. In China it’s not impolite to tell them to hurry up, in fact, almost every time I go out to eat with Chinese people, they tell the waitress to hurry up. After eating, we walked around the area and enjoyed the warm weather. We went to the biggest mall in Asia. It was a lot different from the Mall of America. It had a lot more vertical size than spread out size like MOA. They had many expensive designer stores, which usually aren’t popular in China but there must be someone buying things from there for that many stores to be in one place. They had a huge arcade on one of the top floors so we played a bunch of games there. It was a lot of fun, especially watching Chinese people play driving games ;-) Unfortunately I don’t have pictures from that night because, for some reason, I didn’t bring my camera out with us. After the mall we went back to the apartment. Vincent bought us a few beers, but by the time we got back we were all tired and decided to go to bed.
The next day we slept in and went to lunch at a nice Chinese seafood restaurant. I have some pictures from this one so definitely check that out. The plate of shrimp was very good, but in China they serve the shrimp whole. These particular shrimp were cooked so the shell was also edible. It is okay to spit out the shell pieces on your plate if you want, but they weren’t as crunchy as shrimp I’ve had in the US and it wasn’t a problem to eat most of the shell. The brown thin things in the picture are pieces of duck skin fried so they are crunchy. You put them in a thin tortilla with green onions and barbecue sauce and it is delicious. Vincent ordered some small cakes to go with the meal, they were delicious. One was golden and was very sweet and chewy, one was made from potatoes but was seasoned with cinnamon and sugar so it was very good, the last one was clear, it’s made out of some kind of root and it was kind of like hard sticky Jell-O. They had tanks of all kinds of seafood in the front of the restaurant, some stuff I’ve never seen at a restaurant before, like worms and turtles.
Yingwu is a piano teacher, so after lunch she went to work. We rode with her on the bus to her work, it was different than the Beijing buses because it actually had quite a few seats, and some were open. Usually in Beijing there are about eight seats, all taken, just on the edge of the bus and the rest of the bus is just open room to stand, hold on, and pray to live through the bus ride. That night we planned on cooking our own dinner, so we went to a produce market. Buying vegetables in China is nothing like going to an American supermarket. It was just a bunch of different stands with people selling vegetables, fruit and meat. They were chopping meat right next to where you walk, so you have to watch out for flying chunks. Also, the fish and seafood is all alive when you buy it, not filleted or frozen. The floor was slippery with peels and pieces of rotten vegetables and the smell was interesting. Despite all these things, I wish we had more places like this in the US because the fresh produce and shrimp was very delicious. I made potatoes, carrots and onions with garlic, it was pretty simple but very good, and they liked it so that was good. We also had kugua, which is a very very bitter vegetable, it was not my favorite. Vincent said bitter food keeps your skin from breaking out, but I don’t know if it’s worth it. We also had boiled shrimp. Naomi made cold vinegar cucumbers, which were surprisingly similar to the kind we make in the US.
After dinner Vincent and I had a couple beers. Every time I’ve had beer with Chinese people, they always have to be eating peanuts at the same time. The spicy peanuts I like are actually called “drunken peanuts.” I usually just eat them without drinking, but I think someone told the Chinese that you have to eat peanuts when drinking beer. Vincent turned red after just one beer, this seems to be common for Chinese, any alcohol in their system and they glow red, we call it the “Asian glow.” Vincent and I also played some video games. They have a video game system that was definitely made in China. I had never seen it before but the games you put into it were just computer chips, no fancy cover like my old games. It was from their childhood, it was similar to Sega Genesis. The cool part was that when you put in one of these computer chips, a list of about 20 games popped up on the screen. With their five computer chips they definitely had more games than I’d ever seen in one place, and the games were from all the old systems, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Genesis, even some popular arcade games. That would never fly in America with all the copyright rules.
The next day we slept in again. We got up and Ying Wu took us to the city to see Vincent at work. He works at some kind of investment firm, I never figured out exactly what he did because Vincent didn’t speak very good English and I couldn’t understand the Chinese brochures at his company. It was interesting seeing a Chinese company. There were a few people there that tried to talk to me in English, but pretty much all they knew how to say was hello, how are you, my name is___. After visiting Vincent’s work we went to lunch at a western-style café. It had Chinese food but was still pretty western, and pretty good.
After lunch we had a few hours to kill because both Vincent and Ying Wu were working. We decided to go to KTV, which is karaoke. It was just me and Naomi, but it was pretty fun. It was more relaxing than I thought it would be. It was basically a big hotel, but the rooms had booths to sit at with a big TV on one side and microphones sitting on the booth. We were able to just hang out and put some music on and sing when we felt like it. They had some very inappropriate songs and videos from MTV, I was surprised that they allowed that in China. They had 3Oh!3, Snoop Dogg, and some others that surprised me, since they can’t even use YouTube in China. After our three hour KTV session, Vincent picked us up and we went to dinner. It was my last dinner in Guangzhou, and it was very good. We had some very spicy meat with bean sprouts, some more duck, giant fried dumplings and good tea and rice. Vincent taught me the tradition in Guangzhou is to tap the table with your finger when people pour tea for you, it means thank you.
That night we just hung out at the apartment and talked. Vincent told me I shouldn’t go back to Beijing and shouldn’t go back to America, but stay in Guangzhou with him. He really enjoyed hanging out with me, teaching me Chinese, and learning English. The next morning wasn’t too exciting. I got up and had breakfast and had to go catch my bus to the airport. I got there in plenty of time so I had about half an hour to kill once I got to my gate. I studied some Chinese and got on the plane. I fell asleep for a while which was good. I was amazed at how many flights went to Beijing. There is a flight about once an hour from Guangzhou to Beijing, and they are all big, double aisle planes.
By the time we landed in Beijing airport I was ready to be back in my dorm. We had to wait on the tarmac in Guangzhou for half an hour because of air traffic control so the flight was pretty long. Once in Beijing I had to take the airport express train to the subway, and then take the subway all the way to campus, which all together took about an hour and a half. It was also pretty crowded, even though it was pretty late in the evening. When I got off the subway I wanted to walk up the stairs and get back to campus, but I couldn’t. Chinese people always seem to be in a hurry, they never stop, whether it be on a bike, car, driving a bus, whatever. They only stop the instant before they crash, or they just crash, I’ve seen both many times. They don’t always stop at red lights, and pedestrians don’t stop at crosswalks, they just walk. However, apparently the exception to this rule is escalators and moving sidewalks. Since Chinese people for some reason don’t believe in taking stairs, if it’s busy, the line to get on the escalator usually blocks the actual stairs, which is very frustrating. I had to push through the line to get on the empty stairs as all the Chinese people stand crowded together on the escalator. I finally got back to my room and could finally relax for a bit before going to bed.
Although there are a few things, like escalators, that bug me about China, overall I have loved it. I love it so much, in fact, that I’ve decided to stay for the rest of the year. I’m coming back next semester to take immersion Chinese. I haven’t announced that on my blog yet so I thought I’d let everyone know if you don’t already.
For Halloween we went to “Baby Face”, which is a club, with a group of Chinese students. We usually don’t pay when we go to clubs but we did this time and it was very fun. We got our own booth with people there who waited on only us the whole night. I didn’t really sit in the booth much though; it was more fun to dance. I met some new Chinese friends there who I have seen a couple times since then. Last Sunday it snowed! It was very pretty and I have a few pictures up from that. Apparently the Beijing government controlled the weather again and made it snow a lot more than it would have naturally. I guess it’s good because of the drought conditions in Beijing, but more snow here means less snow in the countryside, and they also have very water. On the snow day my language partner took me too a fancy Chinese “brunch” buffet. She wore shorts with tights, and complained she was too cold. She also had an umbrella, which most people had. At one point she was walking with her umbrella down and totally ran into another girl doing the same thing coming the other way… I haven’t been counting but that was probably about the 549th collision I’ve witnessed in China. The two girls pretty much bounced back like bumper cars, gave each other a dirty look and kept going their separate ways. Although it was brunch time it wasn’t what Americans think of as brunch. It was all Chinese food, mostly seafood. They also had sushi which was very good, probably the best sushi I’ve ever had. I also got another language partner; she is Zach’s language partner’s cousin. Last night she and her friend took me to a Sichuan restaurant. Sichuan province is famous for very spicy food, so I loved it. I ate frog…it was very good but since they pretty much chop up a whole frog and throw it in a pot, it had quite a few bones. I’ll try to get some pictures of my Chinese friends up as soon as possible.

Well my blog is finally up to date. Tomorrow I’m going with the program to the 798 art district, it should be fun.

I hope everyone back in the US is happy and healthy, I’m excited to see everyone in December.

Peace and God bless

---

Photos

DSC00284
duck skin

DSC00285
lunch the second day...probably the best place we went to...delicious!

DSC00290
bee larva and earth worms...i didn't try them

DSC00296
the wrinkly green one is kugua...it means bitter melon, it's like a super bitter green pepper

DSC00297
vincent in the chinese market

DSC00304
before...see about 10 pictures later for after

DSC00309
"suburbs" of Guangzhou