by jarrod

The new, non-China blog is located at http://www.interloper.me.  Feel free to update your RSS/bookmarks/Google Reader/whatever.  Or don’t.

by jarrod

These are the last pictures of my Diana film rolls taken over the course of July as well as a few from my trip to Dalian this month.  The ones with students were taken at another teacher’s post-semester party where we taught them skills essential to learning English, like beer pong and drinking card games.

I wake up tomorrow at 5am, fly to Beijing at 8:30am, wait for like 4 hours, then a 13 hour flight to NYC, wait for 6 hours, one hour to Philly, then an hour drive home.  As long as one of the planes doesn’t fall apart on the runway like my last trip home, I’ll be alright.

by jarrod

Part 2 of my two-part rip off of a Forbes article of a similar name.  Did I mention there are two parts?  This is the second one (of two).

7.  The internet

I’m a freedom-loving American, so the whole idea of the The Great Fire Wall is a great annoyance to me and my values.  It also screws with my mind.  When I first came to China, Facebook still worked but Wikipedia was blocked.  I had never realized how much I actually used Wikipedia to find out random, unimportant information.  When Facebook was blocked, I thought “how can I live without this?”  Turns out it’s pretty easy and I’m considering deleting mine when I go home.  I do understand why certain sites are blocked, but it’s hard to understand the reasoning behind the blockade of sites like Dropbox.

While I’ve been able to wrap my brain around most of the stuff GFW blocks.  The self-censorship on Chinese message boards, QQ, and sites like ChinaSmack is far more confusing to me.  ChinaSmack posts so many articles in which Netizens get so hyped up and critical over other people doing the most banal and trivial things, yet was shut down “for maintenance” during the big T-square anniversary in 2009.

8. People on the internet

When I first found ChinaSmack, I was in awe over how stupid and racist the commenters were on that site.  I’m sure the people who run that site pick the most ridiculous comments to republish just to make it a good read, but they’re really not doing the Netizens favors by translating those comments into English.

Even on expat sites, commenters are so critical of each other.  Some foreigners actually get angry at other foreigners for making observations about China (good examples on Ericka‘s article about Women’s Toilets).

I’d like to point out that when I went back to the states for a week last summer, I realized that it’s not just expats on expat sites that are jerks or Chinese people on Chinese sites that are racist.  There are dumb commenters on every site.  I realized that before ChinaSmack, I had just never read blog post comments thoroughly before.  Go to YouTube and check out that Chocolate Rain video again.  That dude is still awesome, but you’ll still find some racist idiots commenting on how chocolate that dude is.

9. Spitting

When I first came, I was grossed out by it.  I’ve even met other expats who have assumed that people are trying to spit on them or just trying to be rude.  But after a few months here I realized something, there’s nothing like hawking a good loogie now and then.

10. Staring

It’s just not seen as that rude here.  It used to really annoy me when people actually stopped what they were doing to stare at me when I walked by.  For a while, it really pissed me off.  Now it just bothers me sometimes.

It’s not just foreigners that get the crazy-eye treatment either.  I was in Dalian’s Discovery Kingdom recently with a gorgeous Chinese girl.  I assumed that people would be staring at me since it’s a touristy place and those are usually the places that have the most turned heads because the people aren’t usually from big cities with lots of foreigners.  But people, both men and women, used the same stop-and-stare technique on her and she didn’t even notice!  It made me think, “maybe people aren’t staring at me because I’m foreign.  Maybe I’m just unbelievably hot.”  Thanks for the confidence boost (and beer), Dalian!

11. Same sex physical affection

I know I’m not the only person that came to China and saw all these guys hanging on each other and girls holding hands and thought “Holy crap, there are so many gay people here!” …Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  It took some time to learn that Chinese people of the same sex are way more touchy-feely than North Americans.

The constant need for girls to hold hands can be tedious, though.  Especially when you’re running late for class and the three girls walking up the stairs in front of you insist on all holding hands, creating a cute, yet obscenely annoying, barricade.  I once saw four girls on bikes attempt to hold hands with each other to the point that half of them were in oncoming traffic.  I guess their need to touch each other overpowered their need to not be hit by a car.

12. Littering

A lot of people throw a lot of crap on the ground and out their car windows and it sucks.  I have no idea how a people who are generally so patriotic can not care about making their country look shitty.  The creek near my campus is filled with bottles and trash and bags.  Even at Chinese zoos, people throw their rubbish into the animal cages.

It seems like it would be an easy fix too.  Just have some PSAs with some famous dudes saying “If you love China, throw your crap in a trash can”  Then have video of Mao crying on the side of the road because someone threw a food container out of his car.  It’s done.  No more littering.

13. Ghosts

A Chinese friend of mine once told me about a building in her hometown that had to be demolished because a few people died during its construction.  It turns out that despite the fact that this was some new, architecturally interesting, multi-million yuan business center, no one would buy space in it because they thought it was haunted by the ghosts of the construction workers.  The developer was forced to tear down the building and build the exact same structure on the exact same site.  I’ve also been told by multiple Chinese coworkers that many Chinese people would refuse to buy a previously owned apartment on the off-chance that the prior resident died in it.

If I come back to China, I plan to go into the ghostbusting business.  I bet I could make a ton of money as long as my colleagues and I don’t cross the streams (or do, depending on the evilness and power of the ghost at hand).  I’ll probably end up re-animating one of those Mao statues to fight off a bunch of demonic Terracotta warriors.

by jarrod

Today I read part 1 of the Forbes China Tracker Blog article Weird Things That People Get Used to in China (a translation of a Chinese article on NetEase).  I suppose it is about things that Chinese people get used to, but since I’m leaving in soon (countdown: 4 days), I figured I’d write one based on the things I’ve learned over the past two and a half years.  Here is my own part 1, in no particular order.

Weird things that I got used to in China

1. Making friends with people I’d have nothing to do with back home

I live in Shenyang, it’s not exactly overflowing with expats like Beijing or Shanghai, so I really can’t be choosey when it comes to hanging out with fellow interlopers.  The people I hang out with here are definitely not the same kind of people I’d choose to hang out with if I was in America, in fact, I’d go out of my way to not talk to (and probably make fun of) them.  There are so many people that I’ve met that look like total douchebags (by my own standards) that are super nice and totally cool.  China has made me realize what a total asshole I am when I superficially judging people in America (though it’s not like I plan to change any time soon).

2. The world is your bathroom

I went to a pretty big party school (let’s gooooo Mountaineers) so it’s not like I’ve never seen anyone peeing in public before.  My friend Ryan once told me that he never touched anything on our campus because someone else has probably pissed on it, including him (this is a dude that drunkenly relieved himself on the total gym in our living room at one point).  But Chinese people really have no shame when it comes time to pee.  I see people, even women, pissing all the time, practically everywhere.  And I’m not going to lie, I’ve done it more than a few times after I’ve been drinking or in the woods but never in the street in mid-day.  I guess many people are just brought up like that.  Most kids don’t seem to have diapers, just some pants with a slit from the crotch to the top of the butt and parents just let them go, almost wherever they please.  When I first saw 2 Girls 1 Cup, I told myself “Well, this has got to be the one and only time I will see poop being dispensed by a butt hole.”  I was so wrong.

3. KTV

Where I’m from, karaoke is just a one-night-of-the-week thing that some bars have, it’s not the thing to do all the time.  So when I came to China, the sheer number of KTV joints and the amount of people that absolutely love going to them totally surprised me.  I even get totally confused looks when I tell people I don’t like to sing.  That’s said, I love a good night out at KTV, though my friends who have to listen to me sing probably have a different opinion.

3a. English KTV songs

I also had no idea there were so many English songs that were internationally popular, yet were never hits in the US.  Even if a pop song isn’t number 1 in The States, I figured I’d at least be aware of it, I used to work for a music magazine, after all.  ”Big Big World” by Emilia is a good example.  Before I came to China, I had never heard that song.  Now it’s one of my go-to jams when I sing at KTV.  Also, who knew Westlife was so popular?  Not me.  Did you know they covered “More Than Words” by Extreme?  Every time I see the song on the list, I queue it up, only to be disappointed by some lame pop version, instead of the awesome, original, hair-metal version.

4. The NBA

When young Chinese guys ask me about the NBA, they’re always surprised and confused when I say I don’t follow it.  I mean, I know who Michael Jordan is, but other than the fact that Magic Johnson has AIDS and Yao Ming is Chinese, my b-ball knowledge is limited to NBA Jam for Sega Genesis (and I always played as Will Smith).  But dudes love basketball here.  It was surprising to learn that a country of people who are stereotyped for being so short would love a sport that is traditionally reserved for the tallest dudes and Muggsy Bogues (he’s on NBA Jam).

5. Rice is essential

I see rice as a filler.  It’s like bread at an Italian restaurant, it’s good, but the main course is much better.  There are so many great Chinese dishes and when you eat out, you always order a ton of food.  Why fill yourself with rice when you could be eating something that actually has a taste?  I’ve eaten with Chinese people that have actually gotten angry and refused to eat because the rice isn’t there yet, despite the fact that all the real dishes are already on the table.  This is something I don’t think I’ll ever wrap my head around.

6. Train toilets

There’s something about the sound of the train tracks speeding by that really inhibits my bodily functions.  I’m know it’s safe, but there’s something about standing or squatting over what is essentially an open whole in the floor going at 120km/hr over gravel that makes me uneasy.  I always invision a rock bouncing up and colliding with a place that no rock should I’ve collide.

by jarrod

The last thing we did on our trip to Dalian was visit the Dalian International Beer Festival.  We met up with a couple of adult students from SIE, Tammy and her boyfriend whose name I forget.

The festival featured beers from all over the world.  For some reason, the first thing I wanted to get was Budweiser but after that we had beers from Russia, Germany, and a couple other places.  All were pretty good, though the big purple can was my favorite.  The Russian beer was the most potent, at 8% (way to live up to the stereotype).

I was really impressed with how cheap most of the beers were.  Everyone told us that the festival would be expensive and that we’d have to pay to get tickets to individual beer tents then pay for the beer.  However, almost all the tents had shops or cute girls selling beer outside and the inside parts of the tents were so loud because of the “entertainment” that we didn’t even want to go in.

The highlight of the night was the fried insect booth.  I’m pretty sure we were the highlight of the booth’s night as well since we seemed to be the only customers.  They had tons of different insects so Rael and I planned to get a tarantula and a scorpion for each of us.  That plan went down the drain when we found out that the tarantulas were 100RMB each.  The large scorpions were only 20RMB though.  I enjoyed the legs and the tail, but the meat part was a little to seafoody for my taste.

I have Diana pictures from the trip but the roll isn’t finished.  That post will probably be the last one from China.

by jarrod

I’ve found that most Chinese zoos are really depressing to me because most of them make Hovatters Wildlife Zoo (a shitty zoo in Kingwood, WV where they feed the bears popcorn and moonpies) look like a wildlife perserve.  There’s always tons of green tea bottles and crap in the outdoor animal habitats and I always see people throwing food and trash at the animals.  It’s rough.  That said, I love aquariums.  Perhaps its because everything is fully enclosed so people can’t throw shit at the animals or maybe it’s just my love of aquatic stuff (sperm whale vs giant squid sleeve tattoo, dude).

With the exception of the slight racism and the part where people tossed money on the turtles, The Polar Aquarium was pretty cool.  Our tour guides on Saturday were Nadja (another LNU student) and her girlfriend (yes, that kind of girlfriend) who spoke almost no English.  They were good guides, though everything at the aquarium was pretty much self-explanatory and in English to boot.

Dinosaurs were a big part of the decor of the aquarium for some reason, which is cool I guess.  I mean, dinosaurs are pretty awesome, but for some reason there were a bunch of cavemen riding them in most of the sculptures.  They weren’t really cavemen though, they were just big-nosed black people in loincloths.  Also, dinosaurs living in some polar region?  Pick up a science book, dumbass.

To me, one of the most impressive things about the aquarium was one of the PSAs before the dolphin show.  It was an anti- Shark Fin Soup commercial starring multiple Chinese celebrities.  Shark finning is a disgusting practice but the soup is seen as medicinal here so I was pretty surprised to see a PSA against it.  After watching The Cove, dolphin shows are a waste of time to me, so I didn’t really pay attention to the rest of the show.

As we left the dolphin show, a bunch of dancers ran past us so we decided to stick around and check out the performance.  There were a bunch of different styles of dance and oddly dressed dancers.  There were hip-hop dancers, clowns, some Filipino people dressed like cavemen and more.

After the aquarium, Nadja and her girlfriend took us to some curry restaurant (which had the best strawberry milkshake I’ve ever consumed) then we went back to the hotel to rest up before the beer festival.

by jarrod

After lunch on Friday we made our way to the Discovery Kingdom, frequently referred to as Dalian’s Disneyland, but it’s basically your standard amusement park more along the lines of Six Flags.  Nathan, like a lot of Chinese people I’ve met, had a real issue noticing signs that he should be looking out for so we got a little lost even though we passed multiple road signs and an enormous arrow that said “DISCOVERY KINGDOM LET’S GO” in English and Chinese.  Once we turned onto the main road, we passed the parking accidentally so we kept driving for a few minutes and found a beach to check out before we turned around.

Despite the students’ warnings of oil in the water, I still waded in which was a bad decision since it meant I had to walk around for the next few hours with sand in my shoe.

Discovery Kingdom was impressive, but the lines were excruciatingly long.  We only went on two rides.  The first ride was some 3D haunted house that seemed like it would be pretty scary because half of the girls that we saw left in tears.  I guess the Chinese and Western ideas about what’s scary and what is just plain tedious are different because the 3D glasses just made it impossible to see in the dark.  For Rael and I, it was just a dark maze with skulls on the wall.

I guess the cool thing for kids to do at Discovery Kingdom is to dress up like you’re some kind of Asian offspring of Michael Jackson.  Adults did it too.

There was a huge techno dance party near the exit of Discovery Kingdom, complete with scantily clad Russian dancing girls.  The music was pretty crappy, but everyone seemed to have a good time.

by jarrod

Friday morning we met up with Grace and Nathan (another student).  Nathan offered to be our Short-Round for the day since he has access to his dad’s work car.  We went to like three different beaches and even though it’s peak tourist time for Dalian, not many people were swimming on account of the oil spill off the coast.

Our first stop was Xinghai Square (which is actually a circle), the location of the Dalian International Beer Festival (more on that later).   We walked around the beach there for a while and checked out the various amusements and sites.

One of the main attractions at the Square is this giant half-pipe thing.

After Xinghai Square we were off to Tiger Beach, which is kind of a misnomer since the main attraction there is birds.  The beach part is pretty correct, though.  We walked around for a bit then jumped over the fence to head down to the shore.  Grace wasn’t enthused about jumping the fence and climbing down rocks since she wasn’t exactly dressed for action, but she begrudgingly followed us down.

As with most touristy attractions, there was a ton of stuff for kids.  This was by far the creepiest though.  Even the kid didn’t know what to think.

After the beach, Nathan treated us to lunch at the Shangri-La Hotel.  It was one of those places that is so fancy and upscale (and expensive), I end up feeling weird and out of place.  The food was fantastic though.  Grace ended up canceling her diet for the day once she saw the dessert section, though we were all confused as to why she needed to be on a diet in the first place.  She ended up getting like three plates of cakes and other sweet stuff.

I’ll post the rest of the photos tomorrow.  It’s past my bedtime.

by jarrod

This weekend marked my final trip in China.  On the 17th, I head back to the states for a few weeks before I hit the KSA.  I’ve wanted to visit Dalian basically since I came to Shenyang, but for some reason I haven’t made an effort to go there until now.  It’s definitely my favorite of the cities I’ve visited in China and if I end up moving back here at some point, I will totally live there.

After having a horrible time trying to get a taxi in the rain on Thursday, we made it to the Shenyang Train Station with only about five minutes to spare.  The train was freezing and our soaked clothes didn’t really help the situation.  Once we got to Dalian, we met up with Grace, one of my students from LNU.  She helped us to the hotel and then took us on a tour of the various parks and fountains of downtown Dalian.

Dalian surpasses Shenyang in virtually every way (with the exception of population and general dirtiness), and its more western than most of the other cities I’ve been visited here.  Apparently they even have an Olive Garden.

The main thing we saw on our first night was this fountain.  It was pretty impressive.

I took tons of pictures over the weekend (all better than this crappy set), so I’ll spread them over a few different posts.

by jarrod

My trip to Dandong last weekend went pretty well.  Each day, the weather was either rainy or overcast or hazy or a bit of all three so it wasn’t great for taking pictures, but hanging out with Hermes is always fun.  Dandong is a pretty small city by Chinese standards, even though the population is something like 3 million, you can get across town in a taxi in like 5 minutes.

The first day we did the touristy stuff.  We went to the Korean War museum and monument first.  It was interesting to see something dedicated to the opposite side of the war.  There were all kinds of paintings and sculptures depicting the evil, imperialist Americans.  There was a good one of the Chinese soldiers with a few African-American hostages with huge smiles on their faces.  The text underneath explained how well the American hostages were treated during the war.  I was the only white foreigner in the museum, but there was a Korean tour group there as well.  Hermes and I debated on which Korea they came from.  She argued that no one from South Korea would be interested in a museum dedicated to the Northern side of the war (a reasonable point).  I said that they had to be from South Korea because they had digital cameras and name brand clothing (a more reasonable point, in my opinion).  We never reached an agreement.

The Korean War Monument was a lot less fascinating than the museum.  We had to climb ten floors of almost vertical, rusted staircases to get to the top.  Each floor had some photos of soldiers or descriptions of the war from various people.  Each time we encountered any pictures or descriptions of dead people, Hermes would tell me “This is about the people you killed,” or “You killed these guys.”  Also as we got closer to the top, each floor smelled more and more like piss.  I started to notice bottles of urine when we got to the seventh floor and on the ninth floor, there was a huge stain on the wall where various dudes had decided to relieve themselves, how respectful.

After the museum, we went to the Yellow River (which is actually more brown than yellow).  Across the river is the thriving bastion of hope that is North Korea.  There are 1.5 bridges that span the river, one is real, half of the other was destroyed (by me, according to Hermes) during the war and is basically another monument.  In the picture, you can see a ferris wheel in the background.  Apparently it’s just for show and never moves.

Saturday was Hermes’s friend’s birthday so we went to “the countryside” and had a BBQ with her crew.  It became apparent early on that the guys had never set up a BBQ before because they piled the coals so high that the grate to cook on just teetered on top.  The food still tasted good though.

I never did make it to the area along the NK border where those journalist got picked up last year.  I think Hermes knew that I would try to jump over the line just so I could say I’d been to North Korea and considering a recent event in which four Chinese dudes got shot by NK border guards even though they were on the Chinese side, she was probably right not to take me.

I had planned to hit Dalian this weekend but since the Saudi embassy has yet to return my passport, I can’t really make the trip.  Since I stayed with Hermes last weekend, I didn’t really need it.  But its a necessary document when staying at a hotel.  I’ll probably hit it up next weekend.