alive in chengdu

yay! i made it here and i venture to say that i am living the dream. but i will get to that when i describe the traffic hotel/交通饭店/jiaotong fandian.

this morning feels so far away! but i woke up in a completely empty room with everything packed up and ready to go... then went to the post office to send my main luggage to BLCU (where it will await me while i travel). i was apprehensive about sending a 60 lb suitcase to beijing, and rightfully so. the minute i walked into the post office they exclaimed that it was way too heavy, we'd have to separate it into at least two boxes. that actually turned out not to be too troublesome, minus the invasive process of overturning and examining every single one of my perfectly packed things for security purposes. the post man threw a bunch of things back at me that aren't allowed in the mail... perfume, soap, etc. i'm getting used to the fact that chinese service people don't necessarily mean badly when they yell at you or throw things at you. that's just how they do. oh, but stunning, 100 kuai or $14 to sent 60 lbs of stuff to beijing. yessssss.

after the post office, mary and i checked out of our room and chilled in the lobby with sarah and shi laoshi :) we ordered delivery from the "loving hut" (vegan chinese! our faaaavorite) for lunch. don't underestimate - it is so freaking delicious. shi laoshi laughed and reiterated the general chinese perspective that eating vegetarian is straight-up unnatural. at noon we had to say goodbye to everyone and to tonghe, our happy home :( just like that, we were on the bus to pudong airport. sad sad day.

but also very exciting day :) at pudong i checked in and then partook in one of my favorite activities, wandering around and people-watching in airports (weirdo). my favorite thing about chinese airports is how children run around and do stuff their parents would certainly stop them from at home, aka hijack luggage carts and play really dangerous games of go-carts, chicken, whatever. the plane food gave me stomach cramps (some things are the same everywhere!) but other than that, it was a pleasant flight. i scored the window seat i wanted, i was surprised to see how green sichuan was from the sky. oh, and just as hazy as shanghai, but then again it was raining.

when i got off the airport bus downtown, a bunch of moped taxis were clamoring for my business as soon as they saw my lonely planet book. i made a show of starting to walk to my hostel because (1) i sort of intended to (2) i wanted to see how low they would go. from 20 to 15 to 5 kuai... they crawled along the sidewalk next to me, and finally i hopped on one of them! because i have a death wish? sorry mom and dad. i've never ridden a motorcycle before! 5 kuai? that's 75 cents. it was funnnn but i promise i won't do it again.

YAY okay: hostel. i know i am a little, naive, loser, single traveler... so naturally i am starstruck by my living situation here. it's a huge complex of backpacker paradise. tons of dorm, single, and double rooms. a cafe with cheap sichuan hot pot and lots of english-speaking, beer drinking, good-looking rugged people. CLEAN shared bathrooms with toilet paaaaperrrrr! washing machines. amazing chinglish help at the travel desk, from super-friendly and knowledgeable young chengdu residents. best 30 kuai a night i've spent so far ($4.50). i sort of met one of my roommates as he arrived this evening. he's a chinese backpacker, but we didn't really get to talk. i think the other two are supposed to arrive tonight too.


tomorrow i shall go to the panda research center, bright and early! then have dinner with estella's family. i already feel like i could stay here longer than the time i've allowed, but i shouldn't get ahead of myself :) meh i can't post pictures but i'll try to add some later!

farewell festivities

summer program in shanghai: officially over!

it's unbelievable. last night we had a closing ceremony, dinner, and evening cruise on the huangpu river. everything was wonderful... the ceremony wasn't too long, we went to a classy restaurant, the food was delicious as always, and the river cruise was a blast because we were encouraged to BYOB/bring plenty for our teachers too! on top of it all, i simply enjoyed the company of my peers so much. this is a pretty 'motley crue,' as mishwar and i have often said. none of us seem to have much in common. but our 8 weeks here were amazingly conflict-free... and we have definitely grown close even though most of us would deny it! bottom line: fun night.

here's a picture at the restaurant - ahhhh a fabulous feast. i think my favorite things were candied dates, fungus-sesame oil salad, mouth-numbing hot frog, fried tofu with sweet sauce, steamed fish, chinese yam, and coconut jelly dessert. sue and yanan were going on about how americans eat so little... aiya! compared to this array, maybe they were right. but we are still the fat country. boo.

after dinner, we were taken by bus to the huangpu dock and boarded our vessel! it was a gorgeous, clear night (so lucky) because it had monsooned all morning and blown all the pollution out for the time being. here's a picture of the cityscape before we got going... because everything after that is quite blurry.

on the boat ride, we snapped lots of pictures, drank, joked around, presented presents to our teachers, and just enjoyed the evening. my class has two morning teachers and one afternoon teacher. we gave each of them a different tea thermos with a cute design. a bottle or cup in chinese is "yi beizi"一杯子 (1st tone). but "forever" is "yi beizi" 一辈子 (4th tone). so, you can give a bottle as a present to represent remaining friends forever, or recognize that someone will have impacted your life forever! awww. shi laoshi is the guy in the blue... with 6 pretty american girls as his class? lucky guy.

on a more lighthearted note, we also presented our teachers with plenty of bacardi breezers (china's smirnoff ice, wahoo!) here, it's 100% kosher to drink with your teachers as soon as the final exam is over. i'm not sure if that custom is worth the excessive difficulty of classes and strictness of teachers here... but that's how they do it. being american students, we couldn't help but find it hilarious to be drinking on a boat with our zhongwen laoshimen. i shared another specialty from home with sue estella yanan: a bottle of california white wine, muaha! :)

so that was friday. today, sue yanan sarah and i casually went for an hour of karaoke at like 9:30 am. that's another fascinating thing about china... kids go do karaoke completely sober. just for kicks. incredible. i grabbed a starbucks drink before we went in, my first since i arrived in china. i think starbucks is the only place i have discovered so far that is more expensive in chinaaaaa than it is at home! 4.5 USD for a frappucino. ick. will not be going back (but it was amazing. coffee jelly in a frap? best asian/american fusion ever). at karaoke, sarah and i put on an enrique inglesias marathon, and were highly impressed by sue and yanan's english skills when it comes to singing beatles tunes.

i spent the entire afternoon after that PACKING: picking the things i will take on my 16 day trip and stuffing the rest back into my suitcase to ship to beijing on monday. please god, may my things arrive safely. now i think i will go for a run (for once, the weather is mildly forgiving; plus i am working on my lung capacity for tibet! ha) and then go out to dinner with the peeps. most of us leave monday, even tho the program is finished (there is a group bus to the airport, very convenient 很方便！) zaijian.

the $2 haircut

this post definitely goes out to dave warrick and teddy lloyd.

we have a famous joke in the warrick household. in shanghai, you can get a $2 haircut! the problem is, when they are finished, your hair looks like $2. in recent weeks, my hair has gotten a little out of control... but i avoided the salons here because (1) they can be brothels, drug dens, and generally places of no-good, and (2) i fear awful haircuts in america. you can only guess my dread at the prospect of a haircut in china. but this week, my friends pointed out that i am going to be here for a while. i can't avoid haircuts forever, and when i am sweating liters each day in sichuan, it might be nice to have a lighter head. PLUS, right now i have sue, my most precious asset when it comes to these things.

of course, sue had a friend that has a salon near here. so we planned to go right after school today. like many stores in china, because labor is so cheap, there were a bunch of young guys with crazy hair styles and colors sitting around doing nothing. sue's friend was super friendly, a really funny guy with a little daughter who was playing around behind us. at first i couldn't stop laughing, because here they wash your hair while you sit in the chair! they pour a bunch of shampoo onto the crown of your head and then lather it around slowly, while adding water bit by bit, until all your hair is soapy (but somehow there is no soap on you!). it's an amazing scalp massage. also note, you bring your own shampoo. only then do they take you to the sink to rinse your hair out.

it was easy to explain that i didn't want any layers, just a trim. 剪头发！i showed him what length and he began working very quickly, all the while joking with me and sue, interrogating me as to whether she has a boyfriend right now or not. when he was finished, he started blow drying my hair, but we both agreed it was way too hot for that so stopped short.

et voila! 15 RMB or 2 USD later... i am happy as a clam

study break

tomorrow's final exam will cover every lesson studied over our two months of intensive chinese instruction. ick! i am not actually too worried about the test, because i have tested well up to this point, and this grade goes to GW as pass/fail. i think it would take some major effort to fail, so there is no use in stressing out. but i'm me, and i've been reviewing and rewriting characters for the last three hours. time for a study break! and time to record some other fun study breaks taken this week.

on monday night, sue took me with her friends (who i had met before at the SUFE night-food market) for dinner in the korean area of fudan. since fudan is considered the best university in shanghai, it's naturally chockfull of korean students. there's a particular intersection nearby that is all korean bars, restaurants, clothing stores, and apartment complexes. we ate at "ing," a favorite of her friends'. considering that i grew up 5 minutes away from cerritos, i have no excuse for my lack of korean-food knowledge. i have just never eaten the stuff! obviously, one try and i was in love. surprisingly different from japanese and chinese food, but everything was delicious (plus sue can order like no other: rice noodles, beef with difference sauces and lettuce wraps, a hot-pot version of fried rice). i am giddy to know that i can go back to orange county and have equally genuine korean cuisine there. anyway, korea is all-things fashionable to young chinese people. clothing, food, whatever. afterward we went to helen's; sue's friends chilled, chatted, smoked cigarettes (more common in average college students here, i think). i really like all of them!

also on monday, i had the wild and crazy idea of introducing sue to mexican food. i realized there was no chance she had tried it before... and since i knew cantina agave was amazing, i decided to take her there tuesday! she got really excited because i explained that mexican food is america's "sichuan food"... really flavorful, spicy, and not too expensive. californians can't live without it. so on tuesday we took the metro all the way down to the french concession along with michelle perdomo (a spicy latin mix herself!) and her chinese roommate estella (zhouying). we ordered chinese style- a bunch of things for everyone to share... taco, enchilada, burrito, nachos, salsas, and various flavored margaritas. they were stunned. then they started raving. my favorite quote might be "this is called mexican food but it is surely magic food!" all the better for my plan to convince sue to come to the west coast for grad school rather than the east.

because i was raised in a chinese family, i already knew that food is the way chinese people show they care about one another. but being here, and experiencing it with a peer, is pretty fun and endearing. tonight sue wants to take me with her friend yu "fish" to a yunan restaurant because i have never tried the cuisine. fish is by far my favorite of her friends, she's hilarious, eats everything in sight, and actually writes "Fish" on the resumes she sends to english-speaking companies. so tonight, the three of us will go to wujiaochang, and feast once again (i don't even want to talk about how many miles a day i am running in this heat to make up for my chinese social life). there, sue's also going to help me pick out a host gift for estella's family in chengdu, because i will be visiting them for dinner one night. food and relationships (关系 guanxi)... that's what china is all about :) can't wait!

adventures with travis

catching up on the weekend - slowly but surely! i left off with friday night so i will begin with saturday morning. i woke up well rested from my night in with sarah, and hoped to check a few last tourist destinations off my list that day. i was getting ready to go when who but TRAVIS HOLLER called me up and asked if i wanted to go to people's square! (i met travis at GW but he grew up in orange country too and graduated from huntington beach high school. so we have lots in common! he was studying in shanghai with a gw program for just 3 weeks) it was perfect: his last day in shanghai, he wanted the visit the urban planning museum, the fake market just outside people's square, and the propaganda museum. i had already been to urban planning, so i told him i would visit the chinese textile museum on east nanjing road while he did that, then we could shop and see the propaganda together.

we met up and took the line 10 metro to east nanjing road, which is a pedestrianized shopping street that resembles china's take on paris's champs elysee. we feasted on mcdonalds for lunch - nothing tastes quite like home. oh, but note in the picture below, instead of apple turnovers, china has TARO turnovers... to my immense delight. after lunch, we took our time strolling toward people's square. travis got a cute expo shirt with the haibao mascot on it!

by the time we reached the urban planning museum i had convinced travis that it's really not that interesting (truth) and i could show him my pictures of the $6 million model some other time ;) so we continued on to the infamous fake-brand market on the corner of chengdu and nanjing xi lu. the place was a scene... stacks of "marc jacobs" wallets and "diesel" jeans, people screaming and haggling, policemen occasionally busting in, and to top it off, the most westerners i had seen since arriving in china. now i know where they are all hiding. since it was travis's last day, he sort of went all out. 2 northface backpacks, 2 tory burch wallets, 1 pair of ray ban sunglasses. i would hate to be haggling with that boy.

after we could shop no more, we hopped in a cab through the french concession to some random apartment complex, in the basement of which is the propaganda museum. could have fooled us! it is literally a private property in a residential area, but this old man (who was a college student during the cultural revolution) has millions of dollars worth of communist propaganda stored or on display in this basement. admission is a modest 20 kuai ($3) and the collection is great. he divides the posters by era and explains the political conditions and various upheavals corresponding to each. he also translates many of the captions into english, which is hugely helpful. here are people all over the world rising up with the chinese against their colonial oppressors:

while travis was buying some poster souvenirs (they are all original) i had an interesting ching-lish conversation with the proprietor, who vividly remembers propaganda posters on his school campus, as well as big character posters written by his colleagues (which would either earn the approval of the CCP or quickly get them into hot water). he says he still sees them in his sleep 60 years later! he never spoke a negative word about the communist party, but he is openly fascinated with mao and the use of communism to "make the country crazy." he has a historical perspective... why did the taiping rebellion never go as far as the communist revolution? what made mao so persuasive? these are actually the ideas he wanted to share.

travis and i were proud of ourselves for being so productive SO we treated ourselves to mexican fooooood in the french concession! tacos, salsa, and frozen margaritas to die for at "cantina agave." i swear, i do not know how such authentic mexican food made it to china. maybe it's deprivation, but i would say agave is better than any mexican restaurant i have been to in washington dc (not saying much, but still!) the owners were also very nice and happy to hear that california people loved their food. travis had a quesadilla and i had a salsa verde taco with tons of mango/black bean salsa fresh off the salsa bar.

after dinner we walked through the gorgeous, leafy french concession area to the metro, and came back up to the fudan area. in the evening, we went out with a few of my friends from tonghe (some alliance, some BU). we began at helen's, as all good tonghe students do. in the pic below, we are paying respects to the american table there! alas, the helen's servers are becoming way too familiar with our faces and drink choices. from there we went to "angelina's pub" for the first time, because a friend was celebrating his bday there. a rather authentic chinese bar, but serious lack of a dance floor, so soon we wanted to go to M2 (moreover, i needed to show travis M2 because it's the largest, and probably the most famous club with foreigners in china). M2 was crowded and the music was pretty good, but the air con was not happening... big no-no! we were out of there pretty quick. last quick stop was G+, per andrew clark's request that travis not leave shanghai without seeing it.

the cab ride back was gloriously air conditioned and we realized how exhausted we were... but not too exhausted for 4 am street food back at tonghe. xinjiang roasted chives, chicken, and mantou (chinese steam bread) are tonghe rites of passage. in his three weeks here, travis hadn't eaten an ounce of street food! thank goodness he made it here... and loved the skewers!

on sunday, i saw him off with all his new goodies. his plan was to take the famous maglev (magnetic-levetation) train from downtown shanghai to pudong. this insanely high-tech train goes across one of china's largest metropolises in 7 short minutes. THAT is because it's going 430 kilometers/hour (about 270 mph). for more info on the technology, see website http://www.smtdc.com/en/gycf3.asp.

needless to say, i was worried sick, but happily received a text message that he arrived safely at the airport an hour later. and what did i do sunday? ab-sol-ute-ly nothing. everybody needs rest, right? i guess i prepared more for my trip and my final exam friday, if i really had to make something up!

one week left

...and i am in a state! although it's not because i am leaving shanghai. sorry teddy!

first of all, i am caught up in anticipation of my trip across western china :) aside from class, homework, and bopping around shanghai with friends, one of my daily activities has become scouring tripadivsor and lonely planet blogs for places of interest, transportation tips, foooood, etc. sponging up all this information makes me less nervous and more nervous at the same time... but always more excited. in sichuan the weather will be hotter than shanghai, and the food will be hotter than the weather! i am most looking forward to climbing e'mei shan, staying overnight in a monastery, and hiking down by sunrise the next day. in lhasa, i can't wait to see the potala palace and eat yak momo. in xian... obviously the terra cotta warriors, but i think the highlights will be staying in the muslim quarter, eating lamb in every possible form, and biking the 14 k around the city, on top of it's ancient wall!

back to the present, i am simply distraught with my internet situation. today's (and last week's) post have no pictures because i am sadly using some inadequate french proxy site to access my blog, rather than the optimal george washington university VPN. needless to say, i can't get to the wall street journal, wikipedia, the weather channel (?), facebook, or google translator! on top of that, my gw-mail account is down so if anyone is trying to reach me... email me at the same username at hotmail.com. anyway, i really need to work all these issues out before i leave on my trip so i can be as in-touch as possible from these rather remote locations.

and finally, this weekend's activities. on thursday night, michelle, sam, john and i went to zapata's for nachos and a happy hour special until 11 pm. zapata's reputation for attracting "older expats" proved true, so we were out of there pretty quick. we stopped by mural and it was empty as well (despite the thursday 50 kuai open bar deal - thats 7.5 USD for all-you-can-drink cocktails, imported beer, whatever). shocked, we were walking back to zapata's and i noticed lots of people going into a place called soho. none of us had ever been so i suggested we just check it out... turned out to be by-far the most authentic chinese club we have been to yet (aka, the weirdest, but also the most entertaining). at one point, girls in neon avatar-esque suits kicked us off stage for their choreographed dance... and lucky you, finally i can post pictures. observe green people getting on stage... then sneaky picture taken while security guards try to make sure no flashes go off!

非常奇怪。really freaking weird. sooo anyway, on friday morning we had no class, just a little party and skit performances. i am only half joking when i say that my class's skit was the best. who can beat a chinese translation of lady gaga's "bad romance" plus a heart-wrenching story of seduction, betrayal, and disposable chopsticks? our teachers also did a cute little performance of talking about their students in their various regional dialects (guilin, yunan, shanghai, etc). it's easy to forget that mandarin (汉语，普通话，中文） isn't any of their native languages either.

friday afternoon, michelle and i went back to the spa where karen and i got facials for the first time, two weeks ago. we are in love with this place - it's clean, air conditioned, quiet, and the ladies are so friendly and funny. they are super gentle with your skin, always take their time working, and make a minimal effort to upsell you on other services or products. they don't speak any english, but hey, it's great practice. it's 15 USD for a basic facial (GIRLS. are you reading this?) and 40 USD for an intense treatment that they'll only let you do twice a year. it involves a japanese magnetic machine that pulls black ooze out of your pores. we were stunned. i suppose only in china can you have such an amazing service, but only in china would your face be visibly clogged with air pollution!

on friday night sarah and i got bailey's milkshakes and watched crouching tiger hidden dragon on my laptop. thank you andrew! by the time i come home in december i would love to be able to watch and appreciate the film without subtitles... but i know that goal is a little too lofty.

i want to write about my adventures with travis on saturday and sunday and post lots of pictures from the cool places we went! but (1) i can't post pictures (2) i really need to write this weekend's essay. so i will be back to do that as soon as possible. xo.

grilled cheese

i believe some people would call this a "great american day" in the tonghe international apartments. this evening, sarah and i fixed a fabulous american feast of grilled cheese sandwiches, campbell's corn chowder, and jello chocolate pudding for our precious chinese roommates, sue and yanan. needless to say, finding the ingredients for this meal was a little bit of a quest, since none of the items are found in a normal chinese kitchen. but the search was totally worthwhile, on account of our precious roomies, who we are going to miss like CRAZY when we depart in a week and a half.

i truly believe that sarah and i are the luckiest out of the entire alliance bunch, 对不起 other roommates! sue and yanan are best friends, in their junior year together at the shanghai university of finance and economics. they have been so warm and excited about us from the start. at the welcome dinner, yanan pounced on sarah and gave her a huge hug (we weren't exactly sure about physical contact in china but there it was!). within the first two weeks, they took us to fudan's best xiaolong bao restaurant and showed us what to order since there is no english menu. yanan also took sarah to the SUFE pool to swim one afternoon, and skyped with her parents. "happy birthday xiaoxue mother!" is perhaps one of the most endearing things i have ever heard.

sue and i have had our share of adventures too. she came with a bunch of us on our day trip to the zhujiajiao river town and saved our souls in countless ways. she took sarah and i to the SUFE night market for amazing xinjiang roasted meat skewers and half-watermelons eaten straight with a spoon. she are both busy but usually catch up in the room every couple days, and often run errands at the mall together, coming back with a huge bag of sugar-roasted chestnuts to share. like with any good girl friends, i think the best parts of our relationship are food and gossip. we love to chat about the kids in our program, our own activities, and differences between life in china and america (most often, differences between college student male/female interactions! ha). i feel so lucky that she takes the time and energy to have those complex conversations with me - it has to be like talking with a 4 year old. she is great at speaking slowly and clearly and using words that i will understand. and she tries to only laugh at my pronunciation when she knows i am laughing too ;) like when i told her that i was craving "locust noodles" or my "chair hurt" all day *see below.

it has also been a pleasure to learn more about sue - her family, background, hometown, etc. sue's parents are from jiangsu, an eastern coastal province adjacent to shanghai. but they moved far inland, to western guizhou, where she was born and raised. sue explained that her parents, like many successful people from the most developed eastern provinces, moved west to be part of that region's development. so her mother works in the hotel industry, and her father works for a defense company that does contracts with the chinese government. it was hilarious to tease sue while she tried to explain that her father's work is confidential, but he doesn't have a "license to kill!" obviously, sue is an only child. but we often talk about her younger cousins, because they play the role of her brothers and sisters. i pointed out, and she agreed, that later generations after the one child policy do not even have cousins their age to interact with.

anyway, that is sue. back to grilled cheese :) the girls LOVED it. and to my delight, they liked it even better with ketchup, which is my fave. sarah and i loved watching them because they had clearly never seen so much cheese at a time. cheese is not really big here. yanan is so cute too, she came after we had finished cooking and assumed that we had made corn chowder from scratch. girl, we are americans. can + soup concentrate + water = dinnertime. last but not least, the girls died eating the jello chocolate pudding. they were stunned by the chocolate flavor... chocolate is another thing that you rarely see here, and if you do, it's a watered down form that americans don't really enjoy. in fact, the jello pudding can't even be purchased here. apparently some american student's parents sent the powder by care package last semester, and they never got around to making it. so it was just sitting in michelle's office. ahhh, the delights of cultural exchange.

it was a dream evening, and now i am writing this ridiculously long post to avoid studying for two exams tomorrow and preparing for a presentation the next day. but the memories are worth recording, right?! tomorrow's morning test is an exit exam, to compare our language level at the placement exam with our level after 7 weeks of intensive study. the afternoon test is our pm class final exam, yikes! friday's presentation is a song and skit by each class, performed for everyone and 王老师，the head teacher. our's features a chinese rendition of lady gaga's "bad romance"... it should be highly entertaining.

if i did not have an epic, cross-country journey to look forward to on the 9th, i would be freaking out about leaving shanghai in less than two weeks! but right now, i am indiscriminately excited. until next time, 再见！

* maja = locust = majiang = sesame
weizi = chair = wei = stomach