Day One: April 22nd -23rd Part deux

Getting to Wuxi:

So we arrived in China, and here's where the fun really began. We lined up for customs, health check (making sure we don't have avian flu), etc. There were lines specifically for "Foreigners". They didn't move in the least. We hardly moved, and little Chinese women kept gathering in front of us in line, making the wait even longer. All these 4 foot tall aunties with the same frigging hairdo. Anyway, we eventually got moved into the Chinese Nationals line, and were put through the system in no time, despite being white. (Or maybe because we were white?)

We then picked up luggage, and my favourite part of the day occurred. I was called a foreigner and pointed at for the first time. We're not even out of the airport, and some little Chinese school girls looked at me, exclaimed "Foreigner!" (Pronounced Lao-Why - I don't know pinyin yet) and pointed at me. One of them then looked at me hopefully and said "Hello!". By the end of the day, I was incredibly used to this, and being the center of attention just for being white... rules.

From here, we took the LONGEST, most indirect path ever. We took the Maglev (levitating train, it goes over 400 km/h) to the subway station, the subway (transferred along two subway trains) to the train station, the train station to WuXi, and finally cabbed it from the train station around to the mall (Bali). The Maglev, and long subway ordeal could have been avoided had we just gotten a shuttle bus from the airport, but Jessica somehow made me think that the Maglev would've been faster. It wasn't. We were lugging around several hundred pounds of luggage between the four of us, to the point where Chris just dragged his (ENORMOUS) bag along behind him. He also tried stacking everything on top of one single bag, and pushing it like a cart. He faceplanted right into the ground within a minute of trying that one. It was hilarious.

Getting on the subway was brutal. If we were just normal pedestrians, it would've been fine, but we had a shitload of luggage to worry about. The subway trains were packed enough as it is, and we had to squeeze all these bags onto the trains, and basically crushing everyone on the train. This was where I really started to notice the staring, and the "Wow, a white person" attitude. I'm going to be such an attention whore in three months.

So we finally got off the subway, and loaded all our luggage outside, in some form of square. Oh my god, the staring. We had random Chinese people approaching us, and trying to talk to us, despite their lack of English, and our lack of Mandarin. Jessica and Chris went off to get train tickets, since they had Chinese money. Alex and I stayed back and watched our mountain of luggage, and defended it from beggars and thieves. When they got back, Jess and I went to a store to buy a bunch of snacks, since we were starving, but the restaurants she remembered were all closed. Chips are TOTALLY different flavours there. No "Regular", "Salt and Vinegar", or anything. From what I remember, there were "Fried Tomato", "Chicken Flavour", and "Beef Fried" or something along those lines.

The train ride to Wuxi was fairly uneventful. We caught an express (thank God), and the train went over 200 km/h, so we were making good time. I think everyone fell asleep during this ride. We also had a fun chat with a Chinese guy, who didn't speak English, but Jessica and Alex managed a few lines of conversation with. An excerpt of what Jessica translated for us: "Janada, Janada! (Canada). They're Canadian and clueless. They don't understand in the least! Hahahaha"