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Published: October 6th 2008
WAL-MART
Loudi, Hunan Province, China Suuuuuuuup! So yeah, been a few weeks. Not much has happened. Been teaching etc which has been great. Been eating lots of authentic Chinese food which has been amazing. Other than that, nothing exciting really. Playing basketball etc blah blah blah. So we got to National Holiday already. I don't know what this holiday is all about. All I know is that I get 7 days vacation which I don't complain about. The bad thing was that I had to work on the Saturday and Sunday before it to make up for two lost days or something I have no idea, i'm not really given explanations for things and I don't really care anyway, teaching isn't bad. Nothing is really expected of me, all my lesson plans could just be sitting in class talking to the kids about nothing and that would be fine so long as it's in English.
So our travel plans were as follows. Bus to Loudi to go shopping at Wal-Mart and look at the city etc. Then return the same day and the next day catch a train to Guilin to see the caves. The day before we left I mentioned that it would probably
Wal-Mart Area
Just a quick snap of the area next to Wal-Mart. We didn't get to go down anywhere b/c we had too much crap. NEXT TIME! be a better idea to just go to Yangshuo and stay there for the night rather than trying to find a hotel in Guilin which we had no reservations for. This was the fun part. We got our FAO to buy us the tickets and we would reimburse her. Cept for some ridiculous reason she decided it would be way cool to just buy tickets to Guilin and to Loudi with no return tickets. This was great because we could just make our own schedule basically, but it sucked because....well.....it's National Holiday and the entire country of China is on holiday and is touring places heavily, especially places like Guilin and Yangshuo. So we were meh.
So the start of the holiday we spent at home which we cleaned our apartment really well since the floor was all nasty and crap. Then we chilled and the next day we set off for Loudi. The bus station was easy to find, like a few blocks from the school. We found the bus with no problems and after startling some kid on the bus because of our whiteness, we set off. We arrived at Loudi and were surprised to how beautiful
Shop lifting is a crime.
I cherish my future and reputation. it was. The city is obviously bigger and better off financially than Shaoyang, so it was cool to walk around there for awhile. Our first impression of the city was seeing a wedding just ending. They lit two HUGE rolls of fire crackers and ran away and they went off for like 3 minutes straight. It was deafening loud but it was awesome. After about a minute it started raining the fire cracker paper. It was pretty cool, I wish I got it on camera but the noise probably would have blown up the mic in it. It's fun tho, living in Hunan there are fireworks going off constantly every day, at all times of day. Firework capital of China, who needs a reason to blow crap up?
Finding Wal-Mart was easy, we got a satellite image of the city before we left and it was straightforward getting to Wal-Mart from the bus station. We arrived at Wal-Mart eager to stock up on random western foods like canned soups and stuff like this, but were extremely disappointed with the lack of......well anything convenient. All we ended up buying was some snack foods and this was only because we felt
Some Buildings
This is in Loudi still. These were kinda in the middle of nowhere. Might be the University but who knows, they look cool. like idiots going all the way up there for nothing real special. Although it was great to see the city and we had some great dumplings there, so we are definitely planning on a return trip there just to walk around and see the city.
The next day we set off to Guilin. While chilling in the train station we stood up because they were about to begin boarding and I turn around and saw a white guy. Now, after 3 weeks of never seeing another white person and constantly getting shocking responses when people saw us, of course, I had the same response as the Chinese. I turn to my roommate and say, "Oh my god there's a white guy!" I turned around to go talk to him. His name was Kent and he'd been in China for like 6 years or some crap teaching at universities and spoke fluent Mandarin. I was so jealous 😞 Since we didn't have an actual assigned seating to Guilin we just sat where ever there was a seat, so we sat with Kent and we talked the whole way. He gave us the low down on Chinese business and how stuff
Buildings again
Leave me alone! I took these from a moving bus! works which I had already read about for the most part but it was good to actually talk to someone face to face about this kind of stuff. He met two university students while he was in Shaoyang for like a day and he hooked us up with their e-mails so we could contact them and hopefully have someone to chill with around the city and who knows, maybe they're hot.
So we get to Guilin and need to jump on a bus to Yangshuo, so I ask Kent where is the easiest place to go for this and he takes me to the buses outside the train station and asks (in mandarin) if they were going to Yangshuo and they say yeah and then a big argument breaks out. Apparently they were trying to charge us double the price since we were some white boys. So after several bus drivers yelled at each other for a bit, we got on a bus for 15 yuan which is the right price from Guilin -> Yangshuo by bus. The bus system is pretty crazy. Basically, you just get on a bus and pay after they start moving. Doesn't make any
!
MOVING BUS! But they have lots of trees! All the schools and Universities do. Yet the students still complain about wanting more. sense but it works I guess, whatever. So we get there and it's dark outside by this time and I look out the window and i'm like ummmm looks like we're in Yangshuo. Cept the bus wasn't heading in the direction of the bus station, it was going some weird direction so i'm like wtf maybe this isn't Yangshuo. After being in a traffic jam I ask the guy next to us if this is Yangshuo and he's like yeah so we just got off the bus where we were. Since i'm so awesome I knew where we were so we walked to Buckland where we had a room waiting for us......for free wut wut!
So we get there and Owen is giving a special lecture or something. (He never gives lectures, he just runs the school which is why it was special that he was talking to the students) So we got there RIGHT when they let out and ofc all the students were super surprised and happy to see me there so we talked for awhile. Tom (Hooligan CEO) took us out to find some food at a new restaurant that just opened down the street just in time for the holiday. This is where we found out that hotels and stuff were charging like 400 yuan a night for a room in Guilin, so we are so lucky that we decided to go to Yangshuo first. After dinner we went back to the school and talked for awhile. Some British guy that was a complete nobody came out of his apt to yell at us for being loud on school campus....during a national holiday.......like this would be a surprise in China. Basically he whined and cried about how he wanted to sleep at 10pm (which was the time) and HE wanted to have the window open. ......we just kind of laughed at him and went about our business. Not like calling the police would do anything and what was he going to do? Try to fight 15 people? k
Next day we went out to West Street to look around and see how crowded with tourists it was. It was crowded, but not THAT bad. Saw too many white peoples for my liking which I hate being in tourist areas because everyone assumes i'm a tourist when i'm not dangit! I live here! So we wandered around, I asked about some prices of some things then we walked down the river. We met these random 3 girls (Chinese girls) that were on Holiday with a travel agency to see Yangshuo, so they were just chilling and enjoying the view of the river which really was an amazing view. We got to talking and ended up hanging out for like 3 or 4 hours. Their names were Phebe, Ally, and Sabrina. Good names. The more I talk to people, the more I realize that I know a lot of people all over China, and that even in China, it's an incredibly small world (More on that later). One of the Chinese guys I was with named Channy worked for a clothing manufacturer who produces the skater clothes like Billabong and that kind of crap, and one of the girls, Phebe I think did the same thing. Turns out Channy was actually a customer of Phebe and had been to her factory and all this kind of thing. Kinda random. But anyway, she was from Shenzhen which as it turns out, I actually know a lot of people from Shenzhen now which is amazing. It's amazing how many people i'm meeting that are from the same places. Ally's hometown as it turns out is Pingxian which is amazing b/c that's where my wife (Jane) is from. So apparently Pingxian is known for beautiful girls just like Chengdu so i'm gonna have to schedule a stop there sometime.
After awhile we walked them back to their bus station since they had to leave and we went back to the school b/c we were gonna have dinner w/ a bunch of students after they had class. So we got back just in time. Apparently they were celebrating one students graduation (Hebe) and another students birthday (York). So we went and ate....................DONKEY HOT POT! W00t! I was happy. So I ate Donkey, lots of Donkey. Tasted pretty excellent actually, like a very tender and delicious beef. Although i'm not a fan of Yangshuo hot pot, and it seems like that's all they have there, I was a fan of the Donkey. Yangshuo has lots of Dog Hot Pot as well, so next time we're going to go eat that. There's an alley there that you can walk down and it's a food market of sorts and they seriously have dead dogs hanging up like chickens that you can buy to eat. I'll have pics of this next time (Sorry I seriously forgot to bring my camera anywhere b/c everything was so spur the moment and it was dangerous to carry it around at that time b/c of all the pickpockets blah blah. But there is pics of stuff that other students took so i'll get those and post em soon as they send em to me).
The dinner was hilarious. Everyone was drinking beers and alcohol and constantly doing gambei (means "bottoms up" it's like doing a toast) to the Hebe (the girl that graduated) and before long everyone was pretty drunk. The most hilarious gambei was by the Hooligan member Always who made a toast to one of the teachers and seriously said, "Peter, you're a great teacher and I love your class. But I have no idea what you're talking about." and that was the toast. Probably one of those 'had to be there' moments.
So afterwards we all went to KTV. My first time in KTV and i've heard some good and bad things. And all of the good and bad things were true. Too loud, couldn't have a conversation, and frankly, wasn't all that fun. I made a promise to one of the girls I was flirting with all the time that I would sing her a song to make her happy so I did. I sang As Long As You Love Me by the Backstreet Boys. It's not my fault ok, all they really have to choose from as far as English songs go are terribly poppy songs like that. Although the best part of the night...........they all got Rick Roll'd. Pretty hard.
Next day we were supposed to go to Guilin but we really didn't feel like leaving so we stayed longer to have one last lunch with everyone, then we headed out. The train ride home was amazing. Last time I wrote about how everyone was like "ooooh you're going to see the Chinese train system wow" like it was all bad. Well this time we got to see the Chinese Train System and wow was it an experience. Since we didn't have a return ticket we bought one with no problems and hopped on the train. Again we had no assigned seating so we just sat somewhere. After like 3 hours the train was packed. I mean seriously. In America once you run out of seats you stop selling tickets or else people are going to be screaming at everyone pretty furiously. Well they don't in China. So more and more people kept getting on and soon there was no place to sit. And soon after that they was seriously no place to stand. Then we were just sitting in our seats and some woman starts throwing crap at us and we're like wtf. So she says "Please go away!" Apparently we were in her seat and she just got on. Her ticket actually did say that she sat there before anyone leaves me any lecturing comments or e-mails about moving for her. So instead of letting us get out so she can get in she is standing right in front of us with mass amounts of people everywhere, so we seriously could not move. We're just like...um ok.......we would love to get out of your way but you're kind of standing directly in our way. So after squashing some poor girl and stepping over a tributary of extremities, we finally got into the aisle which was the sea of people. We looked both ways and decided the best place to go was the middle since there was less people there (not by much). There was seriously no place to move, and what made things worse is that people are so impatient they refuse to wait for anything. So rather than holding it to go to the bathroom, they HAVE to go now. They HAVE to go smoke a cigarette, they HAVE to move for no reason. So we're standing there, no place to move, or lean, and people are fighting through the sea of people to go to who knows where and then 5 minutes later are fighting to come back from who knows where.
Moving was probably the best thing to happen tho. We stumbled by a group of businessmen who A) where getting off in Shaoyang so they could tell us when to run away. B) they were Chinese and they loved us, so they protected us and yelled at a lot of people to let us through lol and C) They spoke English.....well kinda. Here's the other part of the small world story. My roommate (Donovan) is from Vancouver, a suburb called Surry. As fate would have it one of the Chinese businessman (Although he wasn't even Chinese, he was Japanese but I don't wanna confuse things) lived in Surry. In fact, he lived less than 10 blocks away from my roommate. Well, HE didn't live there, his family did and he had to stay in China to work and support them. So they were talking about all kinds of things.
After awhile we stopped at the big train station. I don't know where it was but a lot of people get on and off there. So a ton MORE people came crawling on and of course, they all had mass amounts of luggage to drag and push through the sea of people. 3 people come to our seats with the businessman and apparently.......that was their seats. So we all had to move to no where, but we had to move. And this woman oh my god seriously had a suitcase full of rocks or something. Took 3 people to lift it into the rack above everyone which was difficult because of the weight, and also because there was no room to lift it passed the people. One of the new guys that just sat down seriously just got smothered and squashed by me and another person because we were just getting pushed around by the millions of other people that were coming on and not waiting for other people to get situated. So i'm surprised that kid didn't die. But after awhile we were ok. Then one of the businessman refused to let me stand after I told him where I was from. It was kinda funny because he was making a bit scene and over exaggerating that I was from the US. He was throwing it at everyone like I needed special treatment, he was doing it out of fun but it was funny. So he demanded I sit and literally pulled me into the seat so i'm like ok w/e. Then he refused to let me stand up for whatever reason.
Eventually a cute university student came and sat down next to me and he immediately began messing with her about how she should talk to me because i'm from the USA and stuff. This was all in Chinese but I knew the jist of what they were saying. It was funny. So she took out her headphones and started talking to me. She went to school in Shanghai which is where the trains final destination was which is partly why it was so packed. We talked about nothing really, difference in schools here and in US and all this blah blah blah small talk. Finally it was Shaoyang so I bid her farewell and stood up. Following the lead businessman I pushed through the sea of people and got to the space where the cars connect. The most people were packed in these spaces. Some were just lying on the floor in the way and being an inconvenience to everyone. So we stood there for like 10 minutes before the train stopped and I pushed my way out of there like I was being born for the second time. Luckily nothing was stolen.
So that was the trip, pretty fun. Now we are back into teaching and I am happy to see my students and being able to talk to them again. Yesterday I spent all day playing ping pong with some girls. Trying to get my skills back up to how they used to be, some of those girls are superhuman tho I swear. My Chinese is getting better. Still haven't had any actual lessons yet, but i'm learning stuff from asking people and I feel like i'm starting to understand better. We met a Chinese English Teacher from the University of Shaoyang who speaks very good English, and he has an English Corner type deal that he is doing with his students and he has invited us to hang out with them and that kind of thing. We were supposed to do it tonight but apparently he gave us some other dudes number or I wrote it down wrong or something b/c I called some random guy that doesn't speak English. But we'll run into him again so we can figure out a good time to meet with students and just chill with them and have some older people to talk to and stuff which will be good since our students are so busy with studying and junk.
Oh. Some of my students expressed an interest in having a pen pal type deal with a students from the US. I mentioned it to my best class and they were excited about it so I investigated and as luck would have it, Westwood now has that Mandarin Chinese program! So that is just too perfect to be true. I e-mailed their teacher and she said she's gonna talk to her students to see if they would be interested in that as well. Definitely a fantastic way to teach both sides about the other sides culture, and with someone their own age and junk as well would be so much fun for my students.
I don't think I mentioned this but the strangest thing is a tradition at my school. And that is igniting fires. In our little courtyard area with the basketball courts and track there is lots of grass. And students just would out there and make little fires all over the place for no reason. It was cold a couple days last week so kids really got some fires going. It's just so random to see these little 6th graders run up and make a fire and just warm themselves on school grounds and no one cares. So weird. And last night we had kinda a scare with fire. I wasn't really scared, I was too busy being in awe at the strangeness and the stupidity. So last night my roommate is smoking in the kitchen and he says he hears the door close and looks outside and there's a fire. Outside our house is a bunch of tall grass, plants and gardens for crops. And some winner ran out and set a rag on fire or something and lit a little bench thing on fire and threw it into the weeds. Then they ran away. So my roommate looks out the window and is like "Umm Andrew I need your help." So I go out there and see this big ol fire outside our place and he's trying to spray it with the shower nozzle which is basically right there by the window. So I ran out and was just like........wow so I filled up a bucket with water and walked outside and put it out like it was nothing. But yeah, we almost died. If we didn't see it everything would have caught fire and it would have been pretty terrible. That was exciting.
As I mentioned I have almost no pictures. These are everything I have so you'll have to wait til I get some other pictures sent to me so I can post em. I also have a ok video of the little new born kittens that lived right outside our bathroom window for about a week til they moved further up the hill, so i'll try to upload that as well! So until next time!
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Uppercut McShutup
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WOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Lol I really hope you were the one doing the Rick Rolling...if not I am fully disappointed. Kudos on Chinese karaoke though, that's gotta be something. Also, I had no idea Westwood was starting a Chinese program...wankers. Why couldn't they have had that when we went there, eh?