Skiing in June

Jessica and I went to Shanghai today, and joined her friend Angie. Angie grew up in Shanghai, and Jessica knows her from the last time she went to China. Angie took us across Shanghai to an indoor ski hill. I had quite a good time watching the Chinese try to figure out how to ski. It clearly isn't something they get to do often. North China supposedly has some good skiing resorts, but certainly not at this time of year. I just like to be able to say I got to ski in late June, when the temperature was 35 degrees Celsius outside.

The "snow" was actually ice shavings, similar to the excess crap they shave off the ice with the zamboni in hockey rinks back in Canada and abandon in a giant snowbank outside. It smelled like a hockey rink as well, despite the lack of sweaty players. I was reminded many times of my time playing hockey while being here. I missed Canada a lot while we skiied, as I hadn't skiied or skated in a few years. I had a ton of flashbacks.

As I hadn't skiied in years, it took a while to get used to moving around. The bottom of the hill was also filled with thick, loose ice shavings, so it was near impossible to move. At first, I thought it was just because they didn't know what they were doing, but then I saw how the Chinese ski. The majority of them have no concept of how to slow down, or turn, since for many of them, this is their first time doing any sort of winter sport. The extra crap at the bottom was to slow them to a stop since most of them just bombed the entire hill, not being able to control their direction or speed, just trying to stay standing up.

It was comical to watch, and there were a ton of collisions, but the part that struck me as surprising is that Jessica's friend, Angie, was remarkably good, and a quick study. I only saw her fall once (on her last run, at that), and by the end, she had figured out a rudimentary turning system, and knew how to control her speed. She wasn't bad, especially if that was her first time skiing.

Afterwards, Angie lead us to a nice Japanese restaurant, with terrific sushi. Despite sushi being a Japanese delicacy, Jessica and I tend to eat it a lot, since it's so cheap here (relatively speaking), and the fish is so fresh. It wasn't all you can eat, but the three of us actually filled ourselves up reasonably for about the cost of one all you can eat price (about 120 yuan). Back in Wuxi, we would've gotten fish that wasn't as good for a considerably higher amount (although I would've stuffed my face a lot more). Once back in Canada, I'm definitely getting a sushi set, as making sushi is not hard, and eating it is extremely healthy (and sooooo tasty). Wasabi!

Recovery

Today, I didn't eat, I barely drank, and I barely walked. I couldn't even think about food. I didn't have any more fun bathroom runs, but that's because my stomach was plenty empty as it was. I laid in bed all day watching Keanu Reeves movies. So here are my reviews:

A Scanner Darkly: Good, but fucked up. May be confusing if you don't pay attention. I had to explain it to Jessica, and she's a smart girl, so keep a sharp eye out for foreshadowing.

Constantine: A fun movie, but nothing terribly special. Worth one watch, unless you really like Heaven vs Hell action movies.

The Watcher: Started off good, but the end sucked. They should've done this one more like the Bone Collector (Angelina Jolie and Denzel Washington), or a Hannibal movie (Silence of the Lambs/Red Dragon more specifically). It would've been fun to watch him put together who Keanu Reeves' identity was and catch him, rather than just have it revealed in the way it was (no spoilers).

The Gift: This one gets a big shrug of the shoulders. I couldn't care less about this movie. Bad Southern accents galore, and despite the several stars in this cast, it means nothing to me and the acting was marginal. Plus, a big question as to what happens to Keanu Reeves' character in the end.

Johnny Mnemonic: A classic. If you're a geek, you've already seen it and loved it. If you're not, it's probably not enjoyable, or a one-time watch.

Oh, and as far as I was feeling; by the end of the day, I was well enough to walk around without fear of dry heaving. The next day would be ok for eating/drinking.

Expensive Muslim Food?!

The poker night last night was fun. The guys are cool, and they didn't make me feel out of place for being the new guy. I certainly didn't win, all thanks to one poor decision I made towards the end. Lee, the guy holding the tournament, was the one who knocked me out, and deservedly so. He was the only one who really put any pressure on me, and he was also the winner in the end. I was just happy to have a guy's night out, away from the apartment I live in filled with long hair everywhere, and clutter everywhere the girlfriend has been.

Just before tutoring, I also picked up my robe, which I suspect they did nothing to, and my pants, which were fixed properly. I paid despite my suspicions, simply because it was still cheaper than buying the button back in Canada. Alex and I walked around Hou XiXi, since the clothing is all dirt cheap due to some upcoming construction, kicking everyone out of their shops. They have to offload a bunch of their inventory, so I saw sweaters for 10 yuan (a buck and a half), tshirts for 15-30, basically all sorts of clothing being sold nearly at cost. Good quality too, not something that will fall apart in a week.

After tutoring, Jessica and I went out to a large Muslim restaurant. Most Muslim restaurants are little, cockroach infested holes in the walls with cheap food (Oh, how I love them). This one was a large building, complete with servers, beverages, and even an English menu and a manager that spoke some English. The food was also unlike most Muslim restaurants... it was expensive. To be fair, we ordered way too much food, so the bill came to something over 100 yuan, but even if we had ordered a sane amount of food, it would've hit 60 or 70 yuan without much trouble. The food was reasonable, and the beer was somewhat warm, but it wasn't a bad meal in the end, or so I thought at the time (explanation is coming).

I walked out feeling too full, with an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach (can you see where it's going yet?). We got home, and I assumed I had just drank too much beer, that my stomach was literally overfilled. The problem was that hours later, the feeling hadn't gone away. I went to bed with that same unpleasant feeling, and fell asleep. About 2 in the morning, I woke up, and knew what had happened immediately.

I made a rush to the toilet, and enjoyed my first case of real, bonafide Chinese food poisoning. Like clockwork, it had happened within that signature 4-6 hour range. Not knowing which end of your body is going to spew undigested food out next is an unpleasant feeling, to say the least. I know it's either the chicken or the lamb I ate, because Jessica didn't get sick. The moral of this story is: When Muslim food is expensive, you should probably be careful. I'll stick to the cheap hole in the wall I've been eating lunch at every day, thanks. At least there, if I get sick, I'm only losing a 5 yuan meal. And for the record, my cockroach infested hole in the wall has yet to make me sick in the least... and I eat from the open bowls of chili sauce and vinegar they have sitting there all day and night.

Finally! Gambling!

A few quick exciting notes for the day: First off, last night, we got Jian Hua to agree to come over later in the week to teach us Majiang. I expect it to be fairly exciting, especially for the gambler in me.

Secondly, I headed out to Fabric Land today (Hou xi xi, a street with a ton of tailors and fabric on it). I finally had my pants fixed (the button had been torn off, I couldn't do up my pants), and I had them reinforce the stitching on a silk robe for me. I'll get them back tomorrow. It cost me slightly over two bucks CAD for them to do all the sewing, as well as go out and buy the button and attach that. I'm loving it.

I knew they were small jobs, and I didn't haggle terribly hard (I was told to get it done for 10 yuan by a Chinese person), but the point wasn't to get this done cheaply. The point was that they're easy jobs, and they're cheap, so it's a good way to build a relationship with a tailor. This way, I can come back next week with Alex, and she can have her bag made, adding more rapport with the tailor. The grand conclusion is by the end of these trips to the tailor, she'll like me well enough to do a good job making my suits for cheap. The suits are the expensive part, and they're what I'll need to haggle hard on.

My last note for the day is the one I'm most excited about. I finally got in on a poker tournament. 100 yuan buy in, and the group is a bunch of white guys, so I finally get a guy's night, and I might actually pull in some cash at the same time. I haven't played poker in 2 months plus a day (today is the 2 month marker I'm in China), and I'm itching to play a hand. The poker tournament is tonight at 10 PM, and I can't wait to check out the competition.

Suzhou: A Day Trip

Today, Jessica has a day off, so we took a day trip to Suzhou, a nearby city. Suzhou seems to have a lot to do, so I will probably make another day trip later on. Jess and I were supposed to go to Suzhou and see some of the sights it has, as it is well known as Jiangsu's best attraction (Jiangsu is the province I'm in). Unfortunately, we were in different train cars, as I had to buy the tickets last minute the night before, after getting back from Hangzhou. I was excited to see some of the many things it is known for, but Jessica made a friend on the train, and so we went out with her to the place she was going anyway.

Her friend (we later named her Helen, she didn't have an English name) spoke almost no English, so Jessica spoke to her most of the time, and since my Chinese isn't nearly as good as Jessica's (hey, she did live here for a year), I felt kind of cut off for the day. I'm sure Helen felt the same when Jess and I were chatting on the bus to her mystery attraction. She showed no signs of it though, always smiling, and trying to pay for us in that Chinese hospitality way. I hate that. Why the Chinese insist on paying for everything is beyond me, it makes far more sense to split the bill, especially when they make significantly less money than we do. I make a typical Chinese monthly salary with my tutoring in about a week and a half, and I work about 1/6th of the hours. It's really not necessary.

It turned out that she took us to Suzhou's New District, to an amusement park. I was looking forward to seeing Suzhou's sights, more than just blow money on roller coasters, but it was a fun experience and I didn't want to be the naysayer, so I went with it. It was fun, in the end. The park had one roller coaster, which was really good, quite a few crappy rides, China's largest Merry-Go-Round, and the best bumper cars I've been to yet. The reason I say the bumper cars were so much fun is because in Canada, it's always some crappy ring, and it's jampacked with too many cars, so you just get into a traffic jam, and barely get to move. This was big, open, and only had 9 cars running. We actually got to drive around, get up to decent speeds, and hit each other (which is kind of the point).

We also climbed a big fake, potentially fake (it jutted out of nowhere) mountain. By climbed, I mean we took a skylift up, and climbed a small bit of stairs to the peak. We got a nice view of the city, but the best part was how we got down. We took a hang glider, suspended on a cable. You got to ride the cable the whole way down. It looked a lot faster than what it actually was, but the experience was a lot of fun.

Since the park closed at 5, as does the rest of China, we took off, and tried to find a nice restaurant to take Helen to, since she was a tricky one, and managed to pay for too much of the amusement park rides, as well as the admission. The meal was good, although fairly high maintenance. I say that because there was a lot of shrimp and fish in the meal, and they don't take apart the shrimp, they cook the whole thing, and expect you to chew the shell off, as well as the head, the legs, etc. The fish, as well, still had bones in it. Still, it was good, and I managed to pay for the meal before she had a chance to open her purse.

Since our tickets for the train back to Wuxi didn't depart until 9, and most attractions close at 5 or 6, we just sat in KFC at the train station to kill time. Jessica and Helen taught each other more vocabulary in their appropriate languages, and this is where Jessica named Helen. Once again, the wily Helen managed to buy us ice cream. We then headed back to Wuxi on the bullet train.

Hangzhou: Afternoon

Once we had left the Tea Museum, we took a bus back to the bottom of the West Lake, and stumbled upon the Leifeng temple and pagoda, across the street from each other. The temple was typical of all the others, although one of the buildings was quite nicely decorated inside. The problem with the temples is that they are very similar to each other, and you can't take pictures of the impressive Buddha statues, or anywhere inside the temple, because people pray to them. Religion ruins everything! Chris and I foreignered through some construction and made it behind the tourist barricade, and found a small pagoda that was actually legit, as well as some writing in the mountain that was also surprisingly old. The temple area used to be giant, but all that area was grown in with forest, and so most people only saw the now walled in tourist area. It's quite unfortunate, because that back area was really nice.

We then went over to the Leifeng Pagoda side of the street. This pagoda was cool. It turned out that the original pagoda had crumbled (By means of the Cultural Revolution? I don't know), and they had built a huge, new one over top of it. The original was kept in tact (roughly) and was surrounded by glass windows, inside the new pagoda. The new pagoda had escalators, and elevators (no joke). It had been built as a tribute to the old one, or along those lines. The view from the top was spectacular, and each floor had some kind of meaning. The top floor was essentially a viewing floor. The floor below it had carved wood above each door to the outside, again for viewing. The carved wood was done so it was a picture of what you could see out that door, which was cool. Again, a floor below that was a series of 3D wood carved murals, telling a story of the original legend.

The story (based off of my memory) goes as such:
Song Li (name may be slightly off, it's Song something) was born and grows up, steals some magical herb, causes a bunch of other evil things, but is then captured inside the original Leifeng pagoda. The pagoda eventually crumbled, and the Song family celebrates. It is worth noting that the Song name would be of an important family, as there are a few leaders, and a dynasty named as such. Hangzhou has most of its history take place in the Song Dynasty.

Once again, a floor below that was another viewing room, with artistic murals above each door. I couldn't figure out the meaning of these ones. Below that were three floors where you were able to see random crap they were selling, and/or the original pagoda's remains.

Once finished there, we took a walk down the street to find a place to eat. Chris was determined to find a place where he could sample another famous dish of Hangzhou's: Beggar's Chicken. It's a roasted chicken, cooked in charcoal, and it is by no means meant for beggars. It's roughly 80 yuan. So we took a walk, and bickered about which restaurant to try, and finally agreed on one. The chicken was good, but not great. I don't know what's special about it, as it tasted like just about any roasted chicken, but it was good, albeit somewhat Westernized.

After dinner, we set out for one more attraction, since we were running close to the time the bus left Hangzhou for Wuxi. The Lonely Planet book claimed that Hangzhou is known for scissors, and that it had a small scissors museum that would explain why. We got the name of the place the museum was supposed to be, and it turned out there were two shops (at least). Neither of them had a museum, and they both turned out to be small shops that sold knives and scissors. We were not impressed, and it took us forever to find a cab to get there, as well. We made it to the bus station with about 5 or 10 minutes to spare.

My final impression of Hangzhou would be that it's OK, at best. Its got way too much touristy crap, but if you look hard enough, there are quite a few interesting things in the city. Personally, I think it would be best as a home base to live in, as I am in Wuxi, while travelling out to other cities. The appealing things would be more interesting if you picked them up as a resident, such as the legends, and the easy day-trip attractions that are actually worthwhile (like Leifeng Pagoda/temple, and certain portions of the West Lake). It would also explain why Hangzhou had so many foreigners.

Hangzhou: Morning

It was Father's Day today, and I was irritated because there was a huge lack of internet cafes in Hangzhou. I decided to email Pops a day late. I seem to be bad at that. Chinese Internet is so irritatingly sparse that I've been hard pressed to send emails for special occasions, and update the blog.

We woke up to no power. Yet another Chinese Brownout. This makes two trips in a row where we've woken up in a hotel room with no power. It's justifiable when you convert the prices and realize I slept in a hotel room for about 10 bucks. Besides, I had showered the night before anyway. Chris showered in the pitch black, as our room only had a fake window, letting in minimal light, and certainly none to the bathroom. I took a walk around, and bought two doughnuts for breakfast for Chris and I. Finally, Western food done right! The Chinese finally got it! The doughnuts were surprisingly good. It must be their knack for deep frying half of their food.

Eventually, we checked out, and set out for a few more sights before heading home. We headed way out to the west to see the tea museum. Hangzhou is famous for their Longjing (Dragon Well) tea. I had tried it the day before, and it wasn't bad, I'm just not a tea-drinker. Talk to me when they get coffee right. The history of the tea was interesting, and as always, was created and named in honour of some great leader.

The entirety of the Chinese history is entailed as such: This generic item/event was created/planted/begun because so and so was wronged by this evil-doer, and as such, we created this generic item/event in his honour. The actual history of China is actually quite blunderous: Someone did their job, and got punished by their superior for it, usually by execution. Later, they discover that he did his job right/well, and so they honour him with a statue or a holiday, and from then on, his superior is evil.

Example: Many people were in charge of building sections of the Great Wall. One guy spent his entire budget in order to build his section, and was executed for it. He was deemed to be overspending. Over several invasions, it turned out that his section was the only one that consistently stood, so he was honoured with a fucking statue. I'd rather keep my head, thanks.

Example Number Two: The Yue Fi Mausoleum. His leader executed him for some random reason. Since then, they realized that his standpoint on the random reason was correct. They reburied him in the Mausoleum, and erected a statue of his leader. People spit on that statue, because now he's the bad guy. They also did that whole Juniper tree deal (see two posts ago: Gradual Redemption) to insult the leader.

Anyway, back to the point, the Tea Museum was really far out, and was filled with all sorts of scams. Nearby, a tea ceremony was held, and you could join in for free. The lady on the bus that helped me find the right stop turned out to be one of the ladies that harass you to go to this place once you get off the bus. When I heard "Free", I immediately became wary, because there would be no reason for so many little Chinese women to harass tourists for free. It turns out, once I asked others, that they bring you to the ceremony, and "encourage" you to drink the tea and join in the ceremony. You can watch for free, but the moment you try the tea, you've bought the tea. It is routinely extremely expensive, anywhere from 500 to 1500 yuan. I rejoiced in my wisdom of not following the "nice lady giving directions". The actual Tea Museum was expensive, and turned out to be quite crappy, as well. 35 yuan for a tiny ass museum (although I learned a lot about the Longjing tea), but I found a few paths behind the museum which lead up the mountain. This ended up with a lot of very pretty pictures of mountain scenery and the farms where they grow the tea leaves.

On my way back, I took a diferent route through the forest paths, and saw a small cottage. I approached it, thinking it might have some importance, and around the corner came a huge German Shepherd, snarling and chasing after me. I ran from the house as quick as I could, and fortunately, the dog was on a short leash, but the thing would have gnawed on my face for a long time to come, if it had the chance. Nobody even came to see what was going on, despite the large dogs numerous angry barks, and my shouting out loud when I first saw it.

Hangzhou: Final Redemption!

Somehow, Chris and I stumbled through the bus system and made it to Hangzhou's middle city again, and set out for food and a hotel. Hangzhou being as big as it is (6+ million people), it's an expensive city, and cabs start at a whopping 10 yuan (most start their meters at 5, Wuxi starts theirs at 8 yuan, then tacks another 1 yuan on top of whatever the final fare is). The hotels were all starting their prices at about 300 yuan a person, at least. We were really starting to get desperate, and were about to settle for a double for 400 yuan, when we stumbled upon a hole in the wall. We were fortunate enough to find out it accepted foreigners, and it was only 120 for a double! I tried to keep my poker face on, as we saw the room, and it turned out to be slightly better than the last one we were in, with Jordana and Thomas. We paid, and finally, after about 2 hours of searching, we had a place to lay rest to our stuff.

Somewhere along the way, we also stopped to eat. Chris saw a place and picked it because he thought he had seen it recommended in a tourist pamphlet we had picked up at a hotel. It turned out he was wrong, and we had stumbled into a hot pot restaurant. Hot pot is really fucking expensive, so we just ordered a few small dishes. The meat dish I ordered turned out to be a local delicacy, so I lucked out in a way. It kind of sucked, though. The taste wasn't great, and it was just big gobs of beef with giant pieces of fat attached. I bit the meat off of the fat, and left the fat, since the texture made me feel... "uneasy", shall we say? I got a lot of stares when people started noticing the large pieces of fat left in a pile on my little plate. Chris got a full duck, and ended up eating brain right out of the skull. I didn't have the stomach for that one.

Finally, it was time to set off for the night market. This is easily my favourite part of the trip. It's not the shopping that I love, it's the haggling. I've got a bunch of stuff in my room that I plan on just giving away, because it's not a great reminder of the trip, but it's cool, and very Chinese, so it makes a good gift. Stuff like that is always fun to haggle over, because if I can't get a good price, I can easily walk away from it, so it's so much fun. I have a ton of little Buddha figurines and toys to give away when I get back. The basic sum of the night: I picked up a silk robe for 70 yuan (haggled down from over 200 yuan), a fan for 12 yuan (haggled down from 45), and 4 painted scrolls that are very cool. They wanted 50 yuan for each, and I only wanted one, so I started haggling for one scroll. They didn't want to sell them apart because they were a set, showing what the mountain looked like in each season. I managed to get them down to 85 for all four. I felt kind of bad, because I realized halfway through why the guy was getting so pissed off. I was haggling with his wife, and I was haggling hard, when I realized that he must be the guy who painted them. Every time I gave a cheap price, he got more and more agitated, and I realized I was essentially arguing over the price of his handiwork. I let up at 85 yuan, but I'm sure if I didn't start thinking about that, I could have gotten them for 70. Stupid morals.

The last story of the day was also at the night market. Both Chris and I had stopped at a big stall full of silk, on separate occasions, as we had split up while shopping. I had tried to haggle for a shirt that looked quite good on me, but the guy wouldn't budge below 100 yuan. I knew how cheap silk was, and the best part is I kept asking both Chinese people, and foreigners, how much they would pay for it. The consensus was about 30 yuan, no more than 50. I laughed at the vendor, but he wouldn't go below 100. I couldn't believe it, so I tried the walk. The walk is when you act discouraged by the uber high prices, and walk away from the stall. About 95% of the time, it results in the vendor yelling after you either "Ok! Ok!" and agree to your price, or them yelling significantly lower prices the further you get. It's how I got postcards from 18 yuan down to 5 yuan in Luoyang. Here, however, the walk did NOTHING. The guy was invincible, and seemingly didn't care if he made the sale. Here, I had about 5 or 6 passerbyers offering 15 to 40 yuan for the same shirt, all saying that's what it's worth. The guy even sold a Chinese girl one of these shirts for 40, and I had told him I knew that, but he wouldn't even try below 100! He was determined to get the "Foreigner Discount" out of me. Foreigner Discount being a negative discount, of course.

On the other hand, Chris had been dealing with him, and also couldn't get a good price on a different shirt. Granted, this shirt was better quality, and wasn't silk, which is dirt cheap, but Chris couldn't get him to go down to a good enough price. Finally, he walked as well. Chris and I both went together, and he tried for the shirt again, but because of how hard I had haggled before, and how I laughed in the guy's face so many times when he made me "special offers", I think he was pissed off. He wouldn't give either of us good deals, and I got a first time experience here. He said Good Bye to us! I had never seen a vendor use the walk on us. Normally, they're pretty desperate to make the sale.

To make my point about how cheap silk was, I showed him the robe I had bought at another shop for minimal markup. It had way more material, and way more work in it, since it was covered in dragons. He burst out laughing, and pulled out the same robe, and told me "Yeah, it sucks". He started laughing at me, telling me the robe isn't worth anything, and told me the stitching sucks. He kept laughing and saying it'll tear on me. Granted, the stitching does suck, but I was going to have it reinforced in Wuxi anyway. Tailor work is cheap in Wuxi. He said the robe was worth 60 yuan, and I shut him up by telling him that's what I paid (a 10 yuan fib). By this point, he was too irritated with me to give Chris a good deal, and we just had to leave. Frustrating, but I still consider it fun. No matter how many vendors I piss off.

Hangzhou: Gradual Redemption

The second half of the day went much better. We hit a few stops before the temple, and they were a lot more interesting than the crap on West Lake. Another mausoleum, for a guy named Yue Fei, was along the way. This place was better, but still full of tourist crap. I just liked that there were a few statues left near the tomb. And yes, the tomb was indeed "restored". Another example is just outside of the tomb, there was a juniper tree, leaning way to the left. There was a sign by it that explained: The word Juniper was symbolic to the man's name who killed Yue Fei, so to dishonour the guy who executed Yue Fei wrongfully, they planted a juniper tree crooked when they buried Yue Fei. Then the sign went on to say that during the cultural revolution (they didn't call it that, they just stated the date), they removed the tree, and this one was planted in its stead. So instead of a giant, old crooked Juniper tree with history, there was a nice little 20 year old tree planted there for no apparent reason or history. Oh well.

On our way out of the mausoleum, we got hit up by a bunch of souvenir vendors ("Come, come, buy this! You've seen it a million times! Come buy it at insane markups!"). Chris bought a silk shirt for 55 yuan. Silk is really well known and cheap in this area, so it's easy to find real silk shirts for cheap. He talked her down from over 100 yuan. I didn't buy anything, since I knew there was a night market in Hangzhou that would be more willing to haggle. I love night markets. It's also easy to find cheap silk in Suzhou and Wuxi as well, so I wasn't terribly worried.

Afterwards, we walked further towards the temple (it turned out to be way further than we expected), and we came across a botanical garden. Like I said, Hangzhou's only the prettiest city in China because it has living plants. We went in, and took a walk around. It was nice, and Chris is very fond of nature walks, as I've discovered over the last few trips, so we killed quite a bit of time there. I was still in the books of "Hangzhou still sucks, but at least they've got a few things", but it seemed that Hangzhou was slowly bringing us around. We also saw people fishing out of the ponds with crayfish, which are cheap in China. Didn't see any catches though, and the ponds were so small, it made me wonder how many fish could really be in there.

Eventually, we finally made it to the temple. The temple itself was standard tourist stuff, but the surrounding area was pretty cool. A large series of caves nearby, and a long climb up the mountain made it very worthwhile. The forested area around the caves were very jungle-like, complete with huge vines, even hanging in the way of the paths. Caution signs were everywhere, as in China, they don't make things safe for their customers, they just warn them they're in a lot of potential danger. The caves seemed genuine, and at first, we thought they were air conditioned, but I soon realized it was because the caves were so damp, they actually dripped water everywhere. The ground was wet and slippery.

At the top of the mountain, there was a small monument, looking heavily pirated. I wanted to know what it was for, so I started a brief conversation with a Chinese guy, but unfortunately, his explanation involved too many words outside my vocabulary. However, I now know that difeng means "place". So that peak was the place that something happened, according to the Chinese guy. How profound my knowledge has become! Sarcasm doesn't work well in text, does it? I later found out from an American guy with a Chinese girlfriend that reaching the top meant you were supposed to make a wish, but I never found out the answer as to why. Something about an emperor being there, or something. Translating Chinese is hard.

Hangzhou: Unimpressed

The bus ride went flawlessly, and we got to Hangzhou without problem. They had some movies playing, but no English subtitles, so I was hella lost. So far as I could tell, some girl kept miscarrying her baby, trying again, and living in shame because she kept having miscarriages. The whole family kept abusing her, and yelling at her. Lots of crying, and some attempts to kill each other, and it ended with the girl having a baby out on the street in the rain. What's really odd is while she was having the baby, it showed cops driving up towards her. I expected the cops to help her out, but that was the end of the movie! She had the kid, and the cops drove by, and the sun came out. What cop drives by a woman in labour?! Sometimes, I just don't get China.

Once in Hangzhou, we got attacked by the bajillion "Pay me to go here!" and "Taxi! Taxi!" people, as was usual. Once we pushed through that crowd (honestly, they were harassing us before we even got off the bus), we made it to the street, and figured out where we were. Apparently, the bus station was 7 km north of anywhere we wanted to be. It was an expensive cab ride into middle-city (Middle City is the exact translation of what the Chinese word is for downtown. I've become accustomed to using it instead of downtown, because it's more likely the Chinese will understand me if I use literal translations).

Once we got to middle city, we headed towards Hangzhou's biggest attraction: Xi Hu (West Lake). There are 26 or so Xi Hu's in China, all translated to "West Lake", but this one is apparently the biggest. Suffice to say, it sucked. It was all fake, touristy crap. Chris and I almost gave up on Hangzhou, but we had already bought the tickets back for the next day, and so we had to stick it out in Hangzhou until the next day. West Lake had a big island on it, with tons of tourist attractions. About half of the Lonely Planet (A traveller's guide) book's information on Hangzhou was about West Lake, and it was so boring!

There were tons of museums, but they were all tiny and fake, or about something not the least bit related to Hangzhou. The best example of this was the museum to Pompeii. Back in the days of Rome, a volcano erupted and buried the city. For some reason, Hangzhou has a small museum with a ton of this stuff in it. There were a few morbid casts (not the actual remains, but a cast of them) of people who had been buried in the ash and lava. They were all crouched down into the fetal position, and it was apparently the last pose they took before dying thanks to the volcano.

Other than that, there was a bunch of really fake and expensive crap on West Lake. A "mausoleum" to an important dead woman in Hangzhou turned out to be a mound of grass. The problem is that the cultural revolution in China destroyed everything interesting. So every time we go to see something cool, it's been destroyed, and recently (usually around 2000-2005) "restored", meaning faked. It's a very plasticky way of viewing the world. It's like sitting on a nice, big, comfy leather couch, covered by Grandma's horrible plastic furniture covers. The only old thing left in China seems to be the pagodas.

The last thing worth mentioning on West Lake was the restaurant. This was also in the Lonely Planet, and they suggested a Hangzhou delicacy. A fish, covered in a special apple vinegar. Once again... it sucked. The fish were 45 to 200 yuan (expensive!), and they were full of little annoying bones. I accidentally swallowed a tiny one, and it lodged itself in my throat, so I felt like I was going to vomit the rest of the meal, thanks to the bone hitting up my gag reflex. The fish itself, once the bones had been picked out, was average, at best, and tasted like unflavoured fish I could have cooked back home. It tasted like it hadn't been seasoned or anything. I'd dip it in the vinegar still in the plate, and it would just taste like vinegar. Easily a skippable meal.

Afterwards, we left the island, and took a long walk to our next destination: a temple. Chris and I were not impressed with Hangzhou so far, and temples don't do much to help that. If you've seen one, you've seen just about all of them. We decided to walk there, to kill some time and take a look around. Hangzhou is known as "the most beautiful city in China", so we wanted to be able to see why. I know why: It has actual living plants. The grass is actually green, and there's trees everywhere. I can see why the Chinese think it's beautiful, but green grass doesn't do much to impress me. Their architecture was all average, and it seemed like just another Chinese city to me, except in the touristy areas where all the trees were.

Quick News

First and foremost, my stomach seems to have recovered. I haven't had to worry about my appetite, or trips to the bathroom. I'm quite happy about that one. We were starting to suspect Hepatitis or parasites, so the fact that it's gone signifies many boons on my life.

After tutoring my Korean kid for two hours, I went down to the train station and got Chris and I tickets to Hangzhou for tomorrow at 6:40 AM. Chris wanted to take the train, but first off, the train is more expensive, and second, it actually takes longer. This is because we can't take a direct route on the train. The rails only go to Shanghai, and then we'd have to buy tickets to Hangzhou, wait for that train to come, and then catch that one. I wasn't going to put up with that, so I got tickets for the bus. I'm much happier this way. Parasite-free and on my way to Hangzhou. Jessica's just happy she gets a bed to herself.

Bowel Movements Continued...

I'll keep this as brief and as vague as possible. For six days in a row, I had a dull pain in my lower stomach, as well as in the kidneys. I had a fierce case of diarrhea, and had to poop at least twice a day. It was a very bizarre feeling, like I was hungry, but I had no appetite, and feeling like I had to poo all the time. I couldn't figure out how I was feeling at any given time, so I would eat when I thought I should. I was chronically dehydrated (thanks to the constant mud butt I was suffering) so I would be drinking water and juice every chance I got. The problem with that is it only resulted in me having to pee about 8 times a day as well, as if my sudden needs for the toilet weren't high enough already. It was getting to a point where I was suspecting I had gotten a parasite or maybe even Hepatitis.

My solution? After getting back from the Luoyang trip, I took some Immodium. Then I downed a bunch of milk. Then I had a mouthful of Pepto Bismol. Then for the next two days, I ate nothing but foods that were likely to thicken my stools. So how do I feel now? Well, better. The dull pain has pretty much left, my kidneys aren't bothering me, and I don't make a hundred runs to the bathroom anymore. Why am I still not happy? I don't think I'm ever going to poop again! I haven't so much as considered a bowel movement in over two days now. I think I overdid it a tad.

Trip to Henan Province: Part Six

Once we were done at the night market, we headed to the train station to kill the last hour or two before we caught the train. Thomas taught us Rummy, and a bunch of the Chinese people were watching us play - partially because we had giant oversized cards, and partially because the rules are apparently very similar to Majiang, which they all play.

Once the train started boarding, we started to get nervous, because we were trying to foreigner our way onto the train. We had bought the tickets in Luoyang, not Kaifeng, so we were supposed to be on the train hours ago, from Luoyang. We pushed our way through all the ticket checkers without problem, but when we got to the train itself, the lady had a bit of a fit, because our tickets said the wrong city. We pushed our way onto the train anyway, and pretended we didn't understand or speak any Chinese at all. Finally, the train started moving, and they were stuck with us.

They found someone who spoke English, and got him to interpret that because we didn't get on in Luoyang, they had sold our beds to someone else. We had no seats on this train, and our tickets were basically invalid. We lied and told them we did get on in Luoyang. They just got bewildered and said "No... you got on in Kaifeng". So we insisted "No, no, that was Luoyang, you guys were 3 hours late!". We had a hard time keeping a straight face, and Jordana and I were grinning like idiots the whole time. Fortunately, grinning in that situation means you're embarassed to the Chinese. So we kept insisting that the bus driver took us to Luoyang, and dropped us off there, that the train was late. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that we had been scammed by the bus driver, and found us beds.

Foreignering our way onto the train took a while, but it worked. It's no wonder Chinese people think white people are so stupid, and that they're so racist. Every time something doesn't go our way, we pretend we don't understand until it's so inconvenient that they just give us what we want. It works every time. We were on our way home.

Trip to Henan Province: Part Five

Quick Note: A tuk-tuk is in principle a cab, but isn't a car. It's a motorcycle, or sometimes a bicycle, towing a little trailer that the owner built up to be a small enclosure where the fare sits. It's usually meant for two people, although some have spots for 4. We always had to cram in, since we had four people, plus all our bags.

Once 6 PM came around, and Shaolin was closing up, we caught a 2 yuan bus to Dengfeng, the city nearest to Shaolin. Once there, we tried haggling for a price with a cab driver for a ride to Kaifeng, but they wouldn't do it for a reasonable amount of money. We were getting tired and hungry anyway, so we caught a cab to a hotel and booked a room. Getting a decently priced room for four foreigners is hard. They always jack up the prices for us, and even worse, only certain hotels are OK for foreigners to stay in. They won't let us stay in really cheap places, only the upscale ones, "for our safety".

Once that was all taken care of, we went out for dinner which was actually my breakfast. It was the first I had eaten in the day. As for why I hadn't eaten... well, see "Bowel Movements Continued...". We chowed down, and then explored Dengfeng for a while. I picked up a few Kung Fu movies, and a USB cable for my digital camera. I had forgotten to pack the USB cable with me, and I had filled my memory card in one day, so I was panicking a bit as to how I would get them off my camera so I could take pictures the next day. The cable only cost 5 yuan. That's under a buck. Staples sells them back home for 25 bucks. We walked around Dengfeng for a while longer, then went back to the hotel to sleep.

Early the next morning, we checked out (the receptionist was still asleep on the lobby couch, actually), and left for the bus station. Our cab driver the day before had promised he would meet us this morning at 6:30 to take us to the bus station, but fell through, to no one's amazement. We took a tuk-tuk to the bus station and made it with time to spare.

The bus ride was brutal. They had closed up all the windows, and relied on air conditioning, but there were too many people. The air just got thick and humid. It felt gross to be in there, so we kept opening the windows, preferring the horrible smog to the humid, sick-smelling air. One plus was that the bus had Shaolin movies playing, and they were quite good. I saw the end of one movie I never caught the name of but I do know it was done by the famous H Brothers, who are awesome Kung Fu directors. The second movie was The Banquet, which was good, but my understanding was limited by the tiny subtitles, and my broken Chinese. The plot was essentially the same of Shakespeare's Hamlet, but with cool sword fights and beheadings.

Once in Kaifeng, we headed out and saw quite a few things. Kaifeng is interesting because it's a very old city, but it never really industrialized like the other cities have over the last 20 years. It's rare to see such a large city without skyscrapers. The best I can describe it is that most large cities look like a very Chinese Toronto. This city was unique because it didn't really have any buildings over 4 stories high, but it was a big city. It also had city walls surrounding it.

So we saw the Iron Pagoda, which was cool, but surrounded in all sorts of pirated crap. It was an unusually tall pagoda, and wasn't actually coated in iron, but was covered in dark brown tiles that look like iron, hence the name. Chris actually climbed up the whole thing for an extra 10 yuan, but regretted it later. We do enough walking as is, I didn't need MORE fucking stairs to climb. Besides, the pollution was so bad that you wouldn't be able to see anything worthwhile anyway.

We also saw another pagoda, the Fan pagoda. This one was the oldest in Kaifeng, dating back to the 11th century, and was covered in little (also beheaded) Buddhas. What's cool about this one is that there was 108 different carvings of him in the pagoda. I took a lot of pictures of them, but there was no way I was going to get all of them. It wasn't nearly as tall as the other one, and was actually built in a manner reminiscient of Mayan temples. It was off in the back alleys of Kaifeng as well, so it was deep in a poor area, as if to hide to the pagoda. You never would've known it was there if you didn't ask to be sent there.

We killed a large portion of the day in a large market, like a giant Nan Chan Se back in Wuxi. It was largely all the same shit, so I wasn't terribly impressed, but the others had a great time clothes shopping. I feel like I'm missing out on a large part of the fun in China, because I don't like clothes shopping, and I can burn DVD's myself, so all the fun of cheap clothing and movies are lost on me. I'm sure I'll be all giddy once I finally have my suits made.

The final bit of fun in Kaifeng was the night market. This was really cool, and finally got me over my funk of being ripped off the day before. Finally, a market with different stuff in it! There were different forms of food everywhere, going from typical barbeque to screwed up barbeque (you could eat silk worms) to fully plucked ducks with their heads still attached, to random desserts. All sorts of really messed up foods. The off streets were filled with lots of souvenir like stuff, as well as more clothing, and everything. I picked up a few Buddha things, and an awesome Chairman Mao poster, and the best part was I didn't even have to haggle or feel ripped off. The prices were mostly set, with no budging on the price, but they were fair prices. I was ecstatic.

Trip to Henan Province: Part Four

Unfortunately, I also had my first genuine "I hate China" moment in Shaolin. It made me bitter for the rest of the day, and I had no more patience for the hagglers, and annoying little women who constantly bother you to buy something, and have incessant high pitched chatter. These are the ones who assume you're an idiot, and talk about you in Chinese in front of you. This one really pissed me off.

It started when Chris and I left the Shaolin temple, but Jordana and Thomas were still looking around (buying shoes). We stopped at one stall, selling stamps. The stamps looked pretty cool, and the guy would carve your name in English and Chinese in the bottom, thus creating the stamp. I asked how much, and he gave us a ridiculous price, so Chris and I talked him down to a decent price. Originally, he wanted 50 yuan for my stamp, and 100 for Chris' (it was bigger). We got both of them for 70 (20 for mine, 50 for Chris'). The first pisser was that he started carving away my name, then suddenly pulls out a second price on us, AFTER he had started carving. He suddenly tells us that English carving is free, Chinese carving is 50 yuan! Well, Chris and I told him to stop, as we didn't want to pay that much, so we got pissed off. The guy wouldn't stop carving, so finally, I put my hand out and said stop again. He stopped briefly, and we said the Chinese was too expensive, so he lowers it to 30 yuan. Chris told him he didn't want any carving in his, since he was happy with it as a paperweight, and I just succumbed to 30 yuan for the Chinese name, despite the fact that I didn't want to pay that much. I felt bad because he had already started (the tricky bastard).

It gets worse. Not only did he spring the extra cost on us, but once finishing, the guy springs a 110 yuan bill on me. He wouldn't even sell the stamp to Chris, because he wasn't getting extra money for the carving. Now, we start protesting, and Thomas and Jordana had gotten back. The guy had pulled another one on us: it wasn't 30 yuan for the Chinese carving, it was 30 yuan PER character! So 20 yuan for the stamp, and 30 * 3 for the carving! This was horseshit, so we walked, making it audible and clear that he tried to rip us off.

So now, his wife starts chasing after me, and yelling that my name is already in the stamp, that I have to buy it. She was even hitting me in the elbow with the stamp (it's a large, hard object), and finally, since she wouldn't stop hitting me and yelling incessantly, I stopped. At this point, I was pissed off, and I started yelling at her. Chris and I started looking up different words for "Liar", "Cheat" and "Thief", and since there were other vendors around, she started getting more attention than she would've liked.

At this point, she started haggling with me, and I started walking again. She started at 80, then 70, then 60, all the while, Chris and I were yelling 50 yuan at her. She was as furious as I was, so it wasn't going well, and she kept hitting me in the arm. She wouldn't budge past 60 yuan, and I refused to spend any more than 50, since it was already the jacked up price anyway. The problem was she wasn't going to let me leave. So after standing there, and making a big scene for long enough, she gave up and sold it to me for 50 yuan. I suppose it's a victory of sorts, but I would've preferred to have not given them any cash, since they tried to rip us off so bad. The worst part is, now this stamp doesn't represent Shaolin to me anymore. Instead, it brings up bitter memories of the first time I got swindled in China.

Trip to Henan Province: Part Three

Quick Note: Shaolin is a style of Kung Fu. It's where all that "Crane Stance" and "Tiger whatever" stuff comes from. It's also super old, and the same style Bruce Lee knew. I never got it clear enough to know if it's true, but I believe this was also the birthplace of Bruce Lee.

Once finished at the Grottoes, we had to make our way to Shaolin, but to cab back to the main city, then catch a bus would've taken a while. Time was not something we had to spare, since the three others had to work on Monday, so Thomas haggled a cab down to 200 yuan to take us to Shaolin. Expensive, but that's because it was an entirely different city. A bus also would've taken a lot longer. The cab ride was only about an hour, and total cost was about 80 yuan more than the bus. It wasn't so bad split four ways.

We got to Shaolin, and once again, before even getting into Shaolin, we were harassed for buses and whatnot out of Shaolin. We largely ignored them, but once again, a few ladies followed us in, and bothered us while we got tickets into Shaolin. One really, really, really positive thing (really!) about this place was that they had lockers. What a godsend! The Grottoes were exhausting because of the sheer weight we had to carry around (especially myself, with the laptop). Now we could walk around unburdened.

Shaolin was amazing. There were 12 year old kids that could have kicked my ass. They were all doing all sorts of flips, and there were several shows on a day. I have a 3 minute video of one of the routines. What is unfortunate is that this whole Shaolin area became such a tourist attraction. It's now filled with all sorts of fake crap, and some of the monks were clearly fake (I saw one secretly buying cigarettes off of a tourist off in a corner). It used to be a school, where they would train and learn all the time, but now, it seems like it's more of a "Learn what looks cool, so we can make more money". China is excellent at taking their oldest parts of history, and either destroying it, or covering it in so much fake, pirated crap that it is now unrecognizable, and has been stripped of most of its historic value.

Anyway, we saw several very cool things, like the 1000 pagodas (a forest filled with literally 1000 pagodas - although small), the Shaolin temple, which was impressive, but a lot of it, you had to question the legitimacy, and the training center, where the students actually practiced. We watched towards the end of the day, when the place was about to close to the public, so we got to see more training and less tourist-y crap. Out in the fields, they had huge lines of Shaolin students all marching and yelling out soldier-like responses. It was a lot more authentic feeling as we left.

Trip to Henan Province: Part Two

I was woken up just before our stop, and spent most of the time leading up to the stop looking out the window. Everything had changed drastically overnight. The soil was a different colour, there was a ton of poor housing, the land was all farmer fields, and the air... oh, the air. I thought it was foggy out. Good Lord, was I wrong! The smog was so thick in this area, your view of buildings less than 100 metres away was obscured. All my pictures from this trip look like I was taking pictures of things from far far away, but they were way closer than they appeared.

Once we left the train station at Luoyang, we were immediately harassed for tourist trips, buses, etc. This was a recurring theme on this trip. One man wanted to take us on a bus to the Shaolin temple, which was on our agenda, but not until later. He followed us to the ticket office, where we bought tickets to return to Wuxi on Sunday, and followed us back, continuing to harass us and tell us we need to get on the bus or we won't ever be able to get there (they're a little drastic in their sales approach - a now or never sales pitch). We made our plans over his voice, and headed off to the Grottoes.

The Grottoes were all in a mountain in Luoyang, and were essentially little man made caves all with Buddha carved into the rock. The carvings were so intricate and detailed, but largely very similar. I have a lot of pictures from that day, and I'm sure a lot of the Grotto pictures look very similar. What was interesting though, was that almost all the Buddhas had no head. This was because during the Cultural Revolution in China (See: Chairman Mao), anything discovered to be Buddhist (among other things) was destroyed. So because the Grottoes were all carvings of Buddha, they smashed the head off of each of the Buddhas (except the really big ones, as I would imagine it's quite difficult) so they now all have no face. However, apparently, the Europeans have many of these heads, mostly serving as paperweights. I guess they were a big touristy souvenir back in the day.

Once we had walked for hours, and we were all exhausted, we headed back. On the way back, we had come across a few interesting things. We stopped at a temple, which featured two memorable sights: A large bell, and a pond. The bell was huge, and had a hanging log used to hit it with. You were allowed to hit the bell, and apparently the number of times you hit it meant something. 3, 6 and 9 hits all meant different prophecies for you. I believe 6 was for long life, and 9 was for wealth. Most people hit it 9 times. The unfortunate part was that the bell had clearly become nothing more than a tourist attraction, as they had slapped all sorts of gawdy Chinese crap on it (cheap poster like Chinese Characters, etc) to the point where it looked more like fake pirated shit than a historic bell. You can never be sure what's a real attraction, and what's fake and unimportant here.

The other cool part was the pond. Once again, who knows if it's real or fake, but the Chinese love to throw money away for luck, so it's at least plausible. It was a pond full of fish and money, and you were supposed to throw in bills. If your bill floated, it meant long life. If it sank, it meant wealth. I don't know why they're mutually exclusive, but they were clearly popular. The weird part is it was full of coins as well. I'm not sure why, since it's quite clear that coins will sink. I don't think it's much of a prophecy, but what do I know? I'm just old whitey.

Also on the way back, we stopped at this little area, for lack of a better word. I'm not sure what to call it, but there was stairs leading down to water, about waist high, and a small tunnel, leading to who knows where. I don't know the purpose of this thing, but there were a bunch of boys playing there. They were mostly wet, and spraying water at each other. They also had a bag of crabs that I assume they had gathered from the tunnel. What was funny was that a few of the boys were swimming in the water, and they were butt naked. We hung out with the kids a bit, and Thomas was snapping pictures of everything he could. If it didn't cost so much to get into the Grotto grounds, I would have assumed they were very poor kids, as they were dirty, and showed all the signs of beggar children. They did hit us up for money eventually, but that's because Thomas was taking so many pictures of them. Thomas eventually let them take his bottle of juice, by telling one of the boys asking for money to take the bottle out of the side pocket on his bag. They all grabbed for it and started yanking on him as much as they could, like vultures over a carcass, until the bottle got loose and they all ran off.

Trip to Henan Province: Part One

This was a busy trip. Even just getting started was hectic. It all started on Friday morning. I hadn't even woken up yet, and Chris called me. Jenny had backed out in the last minute on a trip that she, Chris, Thomas and Jordana were going to take to Henan Province. Chris told me I was going to take her ticket. It was great news, because I had wanted to go with them before, but didn't want to be the fifth wheel. People have a tendency to pair up when they're hanging out together, and I didn't want to be the odd one out, so this was great news. There was a catch though. The train left at 7:10 PM. I tutor my Korean kid from 5 to 7. There was no way I was going to make it from New District to the train station in 10 minutes. I told Chris I'd call him back if I could do it.

After a lot of phone calls and Chris' peer pressure, I finally arranged it so I tutored my Korean kid from 4:30 to 6:30, and all was settled. It didn't help that the phone number I had for the kid was wrong, but when all was said and done, the matter was resolved anyway. When I got to the Koreans' apartment, the mom was very eager to chat with me about the trip, and actually interrupted the grammar lesson (thank God, because that shit is mind numbingly boring) to chat with me more. She even let me leave a bit early, and told me to be safe on the trip, because she finds me very interesting. I thought that was cute, and I was very grateful.

I had my cabbie book it to the train station, and he made it in record time. I didn't think he even understood what I meant when I told him I had very little time in broken Chinese, but he made it to the train station in far less time than I ever thought possible. Chris, Jordana and Thomas all made it in a bit later, and it turned out we still had plenty of time.

Once on the train, we settled in, and looked for a power source for my laptop. I had brought it for the train ride, and no other reason, so we could watch movies. Turns out this train didn't have one. So now, I essentially have a six pound paperweight in my backpack I have to lug around on the trip. I wasn't terribly impressed. We watched half of The Jacket (good movie), then went to bed. I had a hard time sleeping, as I'm normally a night owl, and it was only 11 PM, so I was pretty much just looking around the car from the top bunk. At one point, I saw the biggest cockroach ever. It was the only cockroach I had seen on the train, and you get pretty good at picking them out in China, because they're everywhere. This one was different, because it was HUGE. About the length of my index finger, and about twice the width. It was crawling along the wall right over Jordana. I debated whether or not I should wake her up, but decided against it, since I figured she'd just freak out. It eventually crawled away, and then fell onto the floor. I didn't sleep too well that night.

Hanging With Li Bin Hui

Last night, we were at Soho, and Li Bin Hui told me he was free the next day, so we made plans to meet today. As I stood at the meeting place, I happened to spot Chris, so I hijacked him as well. So when Li Bin Hui and I met up, we all went to HL-Mart, which is a supermarket, and Chris bought a few groceries. We then headed back to Chris' place and Chris made us some sandwiches. Afterwards, Chris and I took Li Bin Hui out to a giant market, consisting of several giant buildings, all filled with hundreds of little shops selling all sorts of random crap.

Li Bin Hui knew the place, I had never been there before, and before long, Alex called us to meet up with us because she was bored. We had to get Li Bin Hui on my phone, talking to some random Chinese guy on Alex's phone, just so we could find her. The place was that huge. We shopped around quite a bit, and kidded with Li Bin Hui a lot. He seemed to have the idea that he had to help us as much as he could, despite our insistence that he just relax. He kept taking over any haggling with the shopkeepers which kind of sucked, because I don't bother with their cultural habit of "saving face", so I think I could've gotten a better price for some things. However, he was incredibly helpful with a lot of it.

All in all, we all picked up a few things. Chris got a remote control helicopter, and while we were at that shop, I saw the same one I have for only 150 yuan. I was so frustrated, because that's only about 20 bucks CAD, and I know my parents got me mine for far more. On a side note, Chris ended up breaking his propellors within the day. Oh well. Anyway, Alex finally got speakers. She had been looking for cheap speakers since we got here, and never found a price she liked. She finally found some for 25 yuan.

I picked up Majiang (finally!), and this is where I really owe Li Bin Hui. The guy offered it to me for 150, which was right out. I wasn't going to spend anywhere near this. Li Bin Hui chatted a bit with him, and suddenly the price was 80, and I got him down to 70. If I had been on my own, I wouldn't have gotten it nearly as cheap, so I owe him big for this one. We never did find a good price on dice though (China for me is all about the gambling/drinking games), so I'll keep looking.

Finally, the one thing I really prized, even though I know I spent too much on it, was a shot glass stand. China doesn't really have shot glasses, they're all clear, with no labels at all, and they're few and far between at best. I got two from Soho, thanks to Li Bin Hui and Andy (Alex's bartender), but that's it. This stand came out of nowhere. I was really excited. It's a large plexiglass wheel, and it has two levels of holes to hold shot glasses on. It spins, so you can pull out shot glasses from either of the two levels, from any direction. I love it, and I know I got ripped off, but they wouldn't budge in the least! They wanted 150 yuan for the whole thing (plus a full rack of shot glasses), but the shot glasses were all just typical glass shot glasses, so I asked how much for just the stand. I ended up paying 80 or 90 yuan for it. I know full out that it's not worth that much, but I couldn't find it anywhere else, and I've never seen it anywhere in Canada or China, so I consider it worth the extra cash. I expect it to be a big hit at the next party we have back in Canada.

Afterwards, Alex, Li Bin Hui and I all went back to my place to drop off the stuff (Majiang weighed about 20 pounds!), and we took him to Mario World - an arcade. None of us seemed terribly into it, and I even walked away from a game that was still going. I suspect we were all just too tired to make anything of it. We left after killing about 10 yuan between the 3 of us, and walked Li Bin Hui to the bus stop.

As we left, we said goodbye to Li Bin Hui, and I shook his hand with the bus far in my palm to pass it off to him, but he spotted it. So we wrestled for a bit, trying to leave the other person's palm up so they would have the cash. It was only two yuan, but Li Bin Hui had insisted on paying bus fare for Chris and I earlier, so I wanted to get him back. After a bit of wrestling, I got him to give up, and Alex and I took off to sleep. The shopping had easily exhausted us.

Some Written Chinglish:

This is a short list of some fun Chinglish I've seen around. Most are from T-shirts. Essentially, they view English words on t-shirts similarly to how we view Chinese as a tattoo. It's cool, because it's different. The problem is, no one speaks English, and apparently no one proof reads it:

"Caivin Klein": This is what brand my belt is. I like to refer to it as my "Authentic" CK belt.

"Ulgy Girl": This is another one of my favourites. This was on the shirt of a girl walking around downtown in big block letters. I love it because it's a double whammy, not only is it spelled wrong, but it insults the wearer.

Other T-shirts:
"Favorite Stove Ranges"
"2% Hommie"
"Foppery"
"Biella Italia"
"Yourng Blood"
"Fairy Fox Sports"
"RNA Sweat: I wanna be your dog"
"Electric Snow"
"Love is in the fish"
"Egoist"
"How many flapper..."

Lastly, this was all on ONE t-shirt. The girl sat facing me on the train to Xuzhou:
"Sport Girl OK Stripper Androgynou"
"To Da Break of Dawn"
"All Starz"
"Girl OK"

Here's the kicker. All of the shirts from Ulgy Girl to this line here were seen within hours of each other. All are spelled as they were on the shirt, and if I didn't write it down in time, I didn't include it. I've seen all of this Chinglish in a matter of about 3 to 4 hours, before getting on the train. Now extrapolate that to the month and a bit I've been here... I'm amazed my English hasn't gone in the John.

One last one, this is from Carrefour, the french-owned Chinese Walmart department store. It is a sign on the door into receiving:
"This door merely supplies to the exigence must keep it very expedite"
Not a single typo, I swear. You figure out what it means.

Chinglish Speech:

I've noticed a few patterns Chinese people follow when learning/speaking English over the past month and a bit. These are little things you pick up and are caused by poorly translated (usually direct literal translations) words from Chinese to English. I felt like listing a few:

"Oh, I know, I know!"
This means they don't know. Invariably, if a Chinese person says they know, they don't. They probably have no fucking clue what's going on or what you're saying. If a Chinese person says this to you, ask them in Chinese if they understand ("Nee ge dao ma"). Because they don't.

Example:
Me: Where are my friends?
Li Bin Hui: Oh I know, I know!
No, no he doesn't.

"Hello!"
This means they are excited that a white person is near them. If you say Hello back, they will giggle. A lot. Forever. Saying Hello in Chinese (Nee Hao) makes them smile, but it secretly disappoints them because you won't speak English to them.

"Nice to meet you!"
95 % of the time, this will be butchered to the point where you don't understand it. Almost identical to "Hello!", it is mostly said to get an English answer out of the weird foreigner. If a Chinese person you know says it, they actually mean "Good to see you again", or "See you later".

"Ahhhh-mell-ee-kan"
Usually uttered by small children, since they are taught more English right from the start. They think you are American. If you answer "No, I'm Canadian", even in Chinese, they will become terrified and run away because the demon in white skin is looking at them.

"OK?"
This actually means OK, but is often used gratuitously. "I am going to help you, OK, OK?" or "How are you, OK?" are common phrases. When said to you, you will often feel that they do not actually know the meaning or usage of the word OK, but that they have memorized where to say it, along with the rest of the sentence, and just think it should be there. When Asians study, they don't learn, they memorize. So the entity "HowareyouOK" is inseparable to them.

"I speak little English"
This means you're about to have the same conversation with this guy as everyone else who has memorized this sentence. I will now show you this conversation:

Him: Hello! *awkward stare*
You: *Uncomfortably* Hi...
Him: I speak little English
You: *Dreadfully* Oh?
Him: Where you from?
You: Canada
Him: Ohhh... Janada, Janada, Janada... Why you here? Bidness?
You: No, not business, I am on vacation
Him: Ohhh... Vay-Cay-Shun. You student?
You: Yes, I study computers *demonstrate typing with hands* in Canada
Him: Ohhhh... Janada, Janada, Janada... How long you here in Wuxi/China?
You: One month.
Him: Ohhhh... How long you stay here?
You: 2 more months
Him: Ohhhh... I know, I know (see above for what he actually means)

This is where the conversation fails. It will always fail here. I have yet to have a conversation longer than this. Sometimes, just sometimes, someone will start a continuation of the conversation if you sit around in awkward silence long enough, and ask you if you have seen a certain city. If you say Yes, they have nothing to say to you. If you say No, the city is always beautiful, and often turns out to be their hometown.

This conversation is set in stone, and will not vary. You will have it in the most awkward of places (IE: Waiting by a urinal, waiting for your turn in the stall, or even while using a urinal.) I am nice, and so I always see the conversation through, but you will eventually tire of this conversation, and learn to make it as efficient as possible so it ends sooner.