Day 13: May 5th - Mountains in Xuzhou

We eventually got out of the museum, way earlier than expected, and still had about 4-5 hours to kill. We were too indecisive to know which of the other two attractions we wanted to see, so we walked way down the street to find a restaurant. It took forever to find a restaurant, which was weird because the whole street smelled of food. We sat down and had some soup, then started heading back. This is when I found out how cheap ice cream was. We got back in front of the museum, and couldn't decide if we wanted to cross the road to walk along the mountain and/or take the lift to the top, or if we wanted to do something else.

In our indecisiveness, and Jessica's slow progress on her ice cream, the rest of us wandered into a nearby souvenir shop. Chris was snapping pictures of everything, which I gather pissed them off, but the ladies running the shop never actually confronted him, so he got away with it. There was some cool stuff in there, as well as a lot of jade stuff, but I wouldn't dare buy jade from a souvenir shop because it's easy to fake, and I wouldn't want to buy some expensive jade piece and find out it was, like everything else, pirated, and therefore worthless.

However, a nice yellow candle holder thingy (I have no idea what to actually call it, but I know its purpose) caught my eye. It was tall, and hollow on the inside to hold candles, and since the piece was translucent, it would glow if the candle was lit. It was covered in Chinese dragons, and anyone who knows me, knows I'm engrossed with dragons, so I was immediately drawn to it. It was 135 yuan, though. Now, I know I'm getting used to the Chinese values, because I considered that “expensive”, when it's still only 20 bucks CAD. I managed to talk her down to 100 yuan, thanks in part to Alex helping me by acting as the "Don't pay that, let's leave" cheapskate woman (A classic negotiation ploy), but I think I still got taken for a bit. I would've like to have paid about 80 yuan, but I still consider it a victory for my first Chinese haggle.

Finally, after all was said and done, we finally decided to go up to the mountain. This was interesting, because the majority of the entrance was nothing but cheap crap and beggars trying to get more money out of us. Alex and Chris got pulled into some shooting competition, where you had an air rifle and tried to shoot balloons, which was fun, but afterwards, despite both of them popping 4/5 balloons, there was no prize. Mildly disappointing, but whatever.

More cheap crap for sale as we went up the mountain along the stairs, and we stopped, both for Jessica being lazy, and so Alex and Chris could have a smoke. At this point, some other Chinese tourists on the mountain started yelling and pointing at us, and took a billion pictures with us, just for being white. It was mildly irritating, but they were funny in their ecstasy anyway, so I went with it. As we progressed through the paths, we saw them again, and once again, they took a million pictures of us, posing with us, etc. Chris and I started taking pictures of them taking pictures to make fun of them, but they completely misunderstood, and started posing with the girls. I laughed and just kept taking pictures, because of how unusual this all was.

We ended up not taking the lift, or going terribly far, and left out of a different exit, since half of us were exhausted, and the other half had to pee. We went back to the train station and killed the rest of the time waiting at McDonalds. We caught more people trying to take pictures of us, and we're starting to think of starting a Facebook group dedicated to pictures of other people taking pictures of you. It's hard to catch, because they're always trying to sneak pictures of us, rather than ask. By the time my camera gets out, they've already snuck a few, and go back to pretending they're not looking at us.

I also had a weird experience in the washroom. The smaller the town, the less exposure these people get to white people, so overall, the foreigner effect was higher in Xuzhou. They were much more excited to see us, and we had many more people approach us. Unfortunately, I got this in the washroom. While waiting for a stall, someone else (also waiting for a stall) starting chatting with me. This was just plain awkward, and I think he knew it, but the foreigner effect was too strong for him to resist. He just had to have a conversation with me. It was easily the most awkward, and bizarre conversation I had in Xuzhou.