Spring Festival Travels (Part 1)

One of the benefits of teaching for a university in China instead of a private tutoring service is the incredibly long vacation that one receives during the Spring Festival break.  And this year, we get about two months.  I’ve been back in Dalian for about a week now, and have started up a couple of part time jobs to make use of all of this free time.  But the first half of the break was spent travelling throughout China.  Well, perhaps not throughout, but we hit up a few cities.

The route:

Dalian -> Nanjing -> Zhang Jia Gang -> Shanghai -> Beijing -> Dalian  

(Kathleen’s brother is visiting, and they took an extra stop at the end to see the ice festival in Harbin.)

It felt like travelling a lot, but after looking at the path that we took around China, it actually looks as if we were on a pretty short leash.  But trust me, it felt like a lot.  We got fairly lucky and one my students helped us procure beds for the train from Dalian to Nanjing, a 21-hour ride.  We left at noon, played Magic and read our Kindles until we passed out at 10 (or at least tried to), and arrived at about 9:30 the next morning.  We promptly went to get xiao long bao (小笼包) from my favorite spot and then went to our hostel.  Xiao long bao are similar to other steamed dumplings, but they have a stickier skin and have soup broth inside of each dumpling.  They’re fantastic, and I can’t find them in Dalian.

We spent four nights in Nanjing:  one in a shitty hostel, one at Sam’s house, and two in this sweet converted-mansion hostel.  Nanjing was wonderful.  I got to see everyone that I wanted to and eat all of the food that I missed dearly.  Connor, Nick, Sam, and I got to play about 10 hours of League of Legends in a couple of different net bars around Nanjing in the three/four days that we were there.  Kathleen joined us for some of the gaming time, although it takes some fortitude to handle Chinese internet bars.  Shit.  Is.  Rough.

There were about 7 net bars, all about this size withing walking distance of my house last year.

After Nanjing, we stopped in Zhang Jia Gang to celebrate Spring Festival with one of my friends from last year.  He was quite insistent that we come to his hometown to have an authentic Chinese Spring Festival.  I was a bit worried at first about dragging Nick, Kathleen, and Connor with me to an old student’s house in (potentially) the middle of nowhere for a visit, but it all turned out wonderfully.  (Thanks to Nick and Kathleen for taking all the pictures on this trip.)

Jackie's neighborhood

The view from in front of his house

Hanging out with the fam

In front of his father's store.  Note that the store is named "正山商店" which is the Chinese equivalent of "David Smith's Store"

After refusing countless cigarettes...Nick and I begrudgingly accepted one.  (Not in front of the kids though.)

...feast.

Making dumplings with Kathleen.

I watch on as Jackie's mom packs me a tupperware of my favorite food from dinner.

"I hope they don't come back again, they smelled like cheese and bread.  Just smile and wave."

I felt pretty lucky to have the opportunity to have Spring Festival with a student from last year.  As a teacher, you makes tons of promises to tons of students that you'll see their hometown, visit their family, etc.  And it was nice to actually follow through on one of those and be able to share it with Kathleen, Nick, and Connor.

Our next stops were Shanghai and Beijing.  I'll post some pictures of that next.

Distinct Seasons (not Florida)

Since my last post was almost a year after my post before.  You can imagine a lot of things have changed.

I'm not in Nanjing.  I'm in Dalian with Kathleen and Nick.  We all teach at the Neusoft Institute of Information.  And I should change the secondary title of my blog to:  "a (somewhat spontaneous) year (or three) out east."

But either way, this place gets cold.  Not super Russia cold.  But pretty damn cold.  And to highlight that fact, I'll show you a shot of our school apartment buildings from when I got here and a couple of weeks ago.

This was taken from a tiny mountain that sits between the residential and the teaching portions of the campus.  It's a nice little walk (about 30 minutes up and down) and gives a nice view of the campus.

View of the construction site right to the east of our school...it's made disturbingly fast progress since the year started.

View from the roof of our apartment building, that hill in the distance is the one I was talking about earlier.

View of our part of town and the coast.

Those were all the happy pictures during the nice and warm summer.  Things done changed.

Snow-covered campus.

Our school has statues of famous scientists strewn about the campus every 100 meters or so.  This is a creepy Marie Curie.

I felt like I got quite lucky by taking two pictures of the campus in different seasons from almost the exact same point...so I decided to take advantage of this fact and make a little GIF showing the change.

...pretty sweet.

Convenient Never Looked So Good

Generally, one of the best parts of being an expat in China is the ability to eat out for every meal.  Eating at a restaurant is not considered a luxury here.  And it’s for this reason that I have never truly embraced cooking / eating in my apartment while living over here.  Aside from a brief stint of making scrambled eggs with soy sauce, I haven’t really explored cooking Chinese food.  I occasionally feel a twinge or regret for this decision, but I feel better when I recall my failed attempt at some 鱼香茄子 (fish fragrant eggplant).  I ended up spending more money on the eggplant and the sauce then I would have for a large, delicious plate of it prepared for me at a restaurant.

But…everything changed last week when I found myself somewhat alone in Dalian for about 5 days.  With no one to get food with on a regular basis, I knew I would have to take drastic measures.  The first drastic measure: purchase food.  The second drastic measure: cook the aforementioned purchased food.  The third and not-so-drastic measure: consume the aforementioned cooked purchased food.

I decided that perhaps I didn’t need to be so dramatic.  And considering I have no pan, no pot, no wok, and no oven; my options were quite limited.  All I had to work with is an electric kettle and a microwave.  I came to the conclusion that instant noodles were my only option.  However, choosing a type of instant noodle is not so easy in China.  The only way I can accurately describe the experience of choosing a brand of instant noodle in China is to draw up a scenario that you can relate to back in the States.   

Imagine, for one second, that you have never purchased cereal.  You decide to go to Publix or Walmart to purchase some of this cereal to enjoy in the comfort of your home.  You look down the aisle and are confronted with, as you well know, an overwhelming set of choices.  Do I want crunchy?  Or flaky?  Do I want healthy?  Or sugary?  Or healthy parading like it’s sugary?  Or sugary parading around like it’s healthy?  (I’m looking at your Raisin Bran Crunch.)

But anyway, you get it.  This is the equivalent of China’s instant noodle aisle.  And like most people, I relied on the advertising of multi-billion dollar conglomerates to make my decision for me.

I’m not sure if it’s the purple packaging.  Or the glasses.  Or the chic facial hair.  But I wanted some of that purple stuff.

 The packaging gets an A+ for sure, but I wasn't amazed until I laid eyes upon the contents.

Not one, not two, but THREE packages for maximum flavor potential.  The silver package contains bit of dried vegetables and the standard MSG mix that comes with most instant noodles.  The red package contains an oil and spice mixture.  And the purple package contains the secret ingredient for these particular noodles:  the pickled vegetables.

Added some boiling water using my fancy electric kettle, and allow them to sit for about 2 minutes.

...I added the sausage bits myself.  ::shhhh::

Absolutely, hands down, the best convenient noodles that I have ever had.  And upon consumption, I could completely relate to this commercial

I figure at some point in the future, when I’m in a country in which the financial balances are tipped in the favor of cooking at home, I’ll try my hand at Chinese cuisine.  But until then, I plan on staying true to restaurants near my house, and perhaps the occasionally bowl of the purple stuff.

Somewhat Of A Failure (and the cutest thing in the world)

The words "too little too late" come to mind as I write this entry.  In my fantasies, I imagined writing a post every day, and instead it has slowly petered out to once a month.  And with two months left, it seems futile.  But as much as I wanted to start a blog for family and friends, I also wanted to remind myself of this journey and experience.  The memories fade...they always do.  But I thought if I could at least write some of them down, it would jog my memory in the future.

Why didn't I keep it up?  There's a lot of things that I can blame, but perhaps the biggest contributor (aside from my own laziness) is the internet.  Connecting to Blogspot requires the use of a VPN which makes already painfully slow internet even worse.

I also like to think that it might be a reflection of how good of time I've been having out here...or how busy I've been.  However, this probably isn't the case since I've still managed to develop a slight (and I'd like to think perfectly healthy) obsession with League of Legends.

But I'm not going to let it die...even if I only make posts when I'm prodded by people on Facebook.

But check out the cutest thing that I've purchased in China.

I think the cuteness of it is compounded by its compete lack of necessity.  The space in which it occupies on the table is just as suited for a phone to sit.  But not nearly as cute.

Celebrity Status

What do all of these men have in common?

Well, there's two things they have in common.  The first being that none of them look anything like me.  And the second commonality is that a healthy portion of the Chinese population is convinced that I look like a grotesque hybrid of these three gentleman.

At one point I was even explaining to a group of Chinese people of how hilarious I think being compared to Brad Pitt and Chris Jericho is...and one cuts me off to say that I actually look more like David Beckham.

Do I find it flattering?  I think initially yes, but then the true absurdity of the situation turned my feeling of flattery...into one of  amusement.  And the types of attention certainly very in China, generally depending upon the age and gender of the person staring at you while you walk down the street.

It doesn't make me angry.  How could it?  I know that I stand out.  But, I think it bothers a lot of foreigners (particularly Americans) because we can't imagine staring at a foreigner in the same fashion back in the states.  But if you really think about it, we have absolutely no frame of reference considering our incredible amount of racial diversity.  Even the areas in the states many would consider to be virtually homogeneous are practically grand melting pots compared to any city in China.

Adorable kid that walked into the hair salon while Sarah was getting her hair did.

As for the stares...well...after dealing with it for a while I've noticed a pattern.  Everyone stares.  But those ages 10-60 will avert their eyes when you look back. Anyone younger or older just keeps that eye contact with a "what the fuck are you gonna do about it" look on their face.  Okay, well maybe just a look of innocent confusion.  It depends on what kind of mood I'm in at the time.

Perhaps my favorite moment of picture taking / staring occurred when I was working out in the gym with my Rwandan friend Felicien.  He's spotting me on the bench press when I finish and glance to my left.  Outside are probably 12 security guards (for the complex that we live near) just standing and watching.  A few of them have cameras out, but the rest just stand slack-jawed.  To them, it was like watching aliens from two different worlds helping each other in the equally foreign enterprise of picking heavy objects off of racks...just to put the back again.

But I digress.  In America...I'm not Brad Pitt.  I'm not even the homeliest of the Backstreet Boys.  So I have no qualms about soaking up the attention, because this is the closest I'll ever have to paparazzi.

Not staged...I just told them if they were going to take pictures of me...I could take one of them.

Kathleen In China - Part 4 (More Beijing!)

Kathleen In China - Part 3 (Beijing!)

Some videos of us in Beijing!!