2/8-2/13 The HK Experience

My days in Hong Kong was welcoming enough, if not for the variety of shops and food definitely the warm and pleasant summer-like weather. In 5 days, I managed to visit a few museums, sail the harbour and do some shopping. It felt no different than a day in New York City except strangely cleaner and everyone was Chinese and I was the foreigner.

The ballet was nice but extremely abstract in dance and kind of a novice production as I saw several dancers fall or almost drop their partners or mess up their synchronized moves. It was still enjoyable enough. Riding the bus was also challenge. I got lost a little trying to head to the Hong Kong National Museum and Art museum and the drivers didn't speak English and my Google maps app didn't quite line up with the bus schedule on the street post. Ultimately, I found these museums to be disappoinint and broad in their general appeal of history and art. It wasn't specific to China but more of a poor knock-off of the national museums in New York that accumulates art and histories from various places around the world. Or so Hong Kong's museums tried, their collections paltry.

I only rode a cab once, since they were pricey the subway being my main transport and the stations were indeed impressive.

I walked the Avenue of the Stars which was by the harbour and saw a handful of prints from the few Asian celebrities I recognized and took some photos.

My favorite part of the trip was taking the infamous Star Ferry at the harbour on a fairly warm night. The price of the night tour was a little bit more but I've always been drawn to the sea and water and the shoreline was lit up with beautiful buildings and lights. I was the first in line to purchase an 8pm ticket. I don't recall how long the trip was but there were a group of Chinese tourists who were having a blast taking non-stop photos. At one point, a woman grabbed a sign that read "Wish You Were Here" and I laughed upon seeing it. They gestured me over and wanted to take a photo with me.

This is not the first time. Often because of the rarity of black tourists, I have found people taking photos of me on the sly or asking to take photos with me if they're a tad braver.


I obliged and the woman thanked me in broken English and I went to the other side snapping photos and messaging friends and family from home.

I did a bit of shopping but not much as I wanted the experience more than anything. I bought a new purse and a new wallet. I went to buy new sneakers but they were pricey. I got some cosmetic stuff for Rose that she swore could only be found in Hong Kong and wanted me to purchase for her and which she would reimburse me for and I bought new glasses because mine were terribly old and scratched and there were many a day I didn't feel like popping in my contacts.

I had interacted with a girl from the first hostel where I only stayed for one day. She was from Taipei, Taiwan and we exchanged wechat usernames. Her name was Yi Yun Lo. She asked me the usual questions while I packed and was friendly in giving me suggestions on where to go for future vacations while I stayed in China.

The hostel at Mongkok was pretty much the same set up but the room I had with the 4 beds was significantly smaller and there was no outside window view at all which made it a bit harder to tell the time of day and get up in the morning at a decent time. The location was still decent although the building was a bit more run down and older and most of the attractions were in Tsim Sha Tsui so I kept having to take a subway 2 stops up to get anywhere. I was the longest staying tenant, most of the girls coming through didn't stay longer than a day or maybe two. A group of girls came in and also befriended me also from Taiwan. They were really into shopping as most of the female Chinese tourists were here. One girl in the group who spoke the clearest English introduced herself as Victoria (many Chinese people give themselves English names to make it easier) and asked me about my travels.

The train stations were about the cleanest things I've seen and the easiest to use. And although there were plenty of English signs, there were little that spoke English testing the Mandarin I'd been learning to its full extent. I find that even in knowing Chinese, many people got seriously nervous and sometimes even agitated when you approached them often waving their hand at you in dismissal and walking away before you could even let them know you spoke Chinese. At the hostel building in Tsim Sha Tsui, I had tried to ask a lady standing near the front desk the correct floor for the hostel (the address sent to me in the confirmation email was right but the floor was wrong). The directions were in both English and Chinese and I went to show her the Chinese directions on my phone and ask in chinese were the building was. She didn't even make eye contact with me nor looked at the phone and the security guard walked back over and said "she doesn't speak english." "That's fine," I said, "the directions are in both." He looked at it and gave me the correct floor but I was still annoyed about people's assumptions.

My days consisted mostly of walking around downtown and enjoying scenery, particularly at the harbour or browsing through the shops in the mall. I took a day to do the two museums and I ate at pretty westernized places and 1 Japanese restaurant. I was by myself, but I didn't feel lonely. I enjoyed walking along the streets and people watching, headphones on blare from the music on my iPhone and feeling for once, not so much like a foreigner, since there were many around. At night in particular it seemed like the streets were even busier than during the day and seemed more alive teeming with people still hanging around shops or talking photos of the harbour.

My last night, I went to Kebab once more where the staff there wished me safe travels but afterwards, I wanted to go to a bar and just have a decent drink or two. I went to an area known for various kinds restaurants called Ashley Road which was really a very wide one-way alley. I went into a restaurant at the end of the road that looked nice and secluded and sat at a bar. The interior seemed like a scene from a movie. The bar area was in the front of the restaurant with windows looking out onto the street. The ambiance inside dimly lit, soft yellow lights with brown and red furniture. In the center there was a long, huge, dark, wooden mahogany counter and shelves behind it that dimly lit up the names of liquor bottles. The bartender was wiping glasses in a black buttoned vest wearing a white collared button up shirt underneath. I was the only person seated in the bar area. He handed me a menu and I ordered a couple of white Russians.

After several minutes, the bartender started small talk as it was pretty dead. He asked me the usual where I was from, what I was doing in Hong Kong. He was a middle aged Chinese man, I would say in his 40's with his dark hair slightly gelled up and swept to the side which was a common style usually for more youthful local guys. He asked me if I spoke Cantonese and offered to teach me a few words, then he offered me a small bag of potato chips. Things got a little weird then. I asked for a long island which he made extremely strong. And then told me he was getting off of work soon and if I would like to join him in getting a drink later. I kindly declined informing him I had a train to catch the next day and I quickly paid the bill and left leaving the drink unfinished. I don't believe it was drugged as I visibly saw him make it but there was a disproportionate amount of liquor in it. Whether it was out of kindness (some bartenders just like to make your drink strong if you seem cool) or hopeful of creating another kind of effect, I didn't know. I made it back to the hostel safely enough and drank tons of water then set my alarm for the next morning. My train would leave in the late afternoon and I would arrive home by morning.
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My train was to leave in the evening around 8pm and get there around 8am so it was a shorter trip. This time the train was newer. Newer bunks, never carpet, cleaner bathroom and each bunk hahd a small television set. It was also better heated and they provided fruits and snack cakes free of charge. I had only wished I had this train for the ride in.

Going through customs had been intense upon leaving. I ended up in a huge argument (or something of that sort) with the lady at the customs counter. I presented my passport at the counter and she waved me over to a counter where I had to fill out a small piece of paper I remembered filling in upon leaving HK. I tried to ask her if I still needed to do it even as a legal resident but she knew no English as this was a station heading back into mainland China, where the luxury of people at least knowing a few words of english was rare. She was abrupt, curt and rude. I went over to the counter and not seeing a pen went back to ask for one making the gesture of signing. She shoved a pen at me. I filled it out already annoyed and afterwards, I assumed I could present the paper and she would check my passport and be done.

Something went terribly awry from there.

As I headed back toward the counter which was essentially 2 feet from where the small table was that I had filled out the paper, she stood up and proceeded to rant very loudly in Chinese waving her hand towards the line screaming for a good 10-15 seconds. I stood where I was shocked trying to process what had happened. Was she telling me to go to the back of the line? Now I went from mildly annoyed to embarassed which then made me incensed. I ignored her and threw the passport through the hole. She snatched it and yelled at me to take my sunglasses off. My face was heated. I took off my glasses and if looks could have done as I had wished that second I would have burned a flaming path through her face. I stared intensely at her, holding my tongue at the very least to prevent further issue. I did not break my gaze. I did not blink. I continued my heated stare so much so that within those short few seconds of checking my passport she looked at the picture and looked at my forehead rather than my face. She made a sound when she got to my resident permit that sounded something like a soft "oh." She never made eye contact while gently handing me back my passport which I snatched from her hand still staring at her face then placing my sunglasses back on, I took my wheeled luggage and walked through the station.

And that was the last leg of my return home. Welcome to China.

2/7 Welcome To Hong Kong

The next morning I awoke and Will was gone. I assumed he had gotten off at an earlier stop. Hong Kong was the last stop so I didn't have to worry about missing it. The couple left the stop right before mine. When they left, I secured all my stuff back into my luggage and brought it out from under the bed and the overhead door shelf and seated myself on the lower bunk which I was quite angry to find had been near a small heater underneath the small table placed by the window. I had been freezing that night, wrapped tightly in layers of clothing and my blankets feeling miserable as I had struggled to drift off to sleep. The train was very poorly heated. There was also a small outlet by the heater that I hadn't seen which would've been useful so I didn't have to wait for my phone to charge in the hallway so late at night.

I griped silently to myself about how I should've taken a lower bunk while I sat at the head of the bed and looked out the window. There wasn't much to see landscape-wise. China, I found, has two types of landscapes. Really well-developed areas and cities or crumbly old buildings and really under-developed towns. And all in between lots and lots of just barren looking land. I recalled Thunk's stories about the government construction and how it was a lot to take on being such a vast country.



A train attendant came in and asked for the card that identified my room and station (they periodically checked to make sure everyone was in their appropriate bunks). I gave it to him and prepared to leave the train as I saw the last of the passengers gather their bags and head down the corridor to wait by the exit doors. I rolled my luggage out and grabbed my jacket and hat. As I waited, an old woman turned and asked me a question in Chinese. I was confused for a second but her grandson (a different kid then the one obsessed with my Pokemon game) turned and answered with a word I wasn't familiar with. I had assumed after a minute or two she must've asked where I was from and I pondered the kid's answer because it wasn't the word for American.

He must've told her I was African, I thought as I had been mistaken for African several times since I've been here. I looked up the word in my translator as we exited the train for African in Chinese and I found I had been right. He had said Fei-something on the train and the word for African in Chinese was fei zhou. The word for American was mei guo. It's amazing how confused people get in China about the fact there are black Americans. They immediately associate white faces from places such as Europe or America, projecting their own culturally homogeneous structures onto other countries, when other countries are much more diverse  and histories are much more complex in the way of immigrants. I also know that Africans also travel quite a bit. I've run into them a handful of times in Shanghai and even saw a few at the station in Hong Kong later that day so I guess it was also a fair assumption to make considering where we were heading. It's true that not many black Americans make their way to China.

I recalled an Asian-American girl stopping me at the Shaanxi Museum in Xian and introducing herself. She was from D.C. and was surprised to see me because she hadn't seen any black people in China. She asked me where I lived and what I was doing here. We talked for a bit. She was friendly but seemed rather excited. I'm not sure exactly why. I figured maybe she had some black friends at home or something being from D.C. and all she was just happy to find a face that looked familiar and reminded her of home.

It was easy enough to find customs when I arrived at the station as there were signs everywhere pointing to the subway that would take me into Hong Kong after a customs check. But first I stopped at a McDonalds for breakfast. I was relieved to find they served food that actually tasted like the McDonalds from home. Since I've been here, the meat even in the American fast food places here tastes strangely different albeit edible but the slight taste difference always bothers me.

It was crowded and much warmer in Hong Kong. To be exact, it was 70 degrees that day in early February. Back in Wuxi it was around 40 maybe 50 degrees. I stripped out of my leather jacket and other layers I had on the train and placed it in my rolling luggage and headed to customs which was actually painless enough. I had managed to stealthily cut into the middle of a long line and get through customs in about an hour or so. I figured out the money exchange as HK dollars are different currency than Mainland China. The train ticket system was very similar to D.C.'s where you select the stop and pay the fee appropriate to your destination. It was simple enough for anyone who had ever been to any major city, really. And almost all the signs were in English and Chinese.

I actually saw the stop that matched exactly to my hostel address and it was right across the street from the station stop. It was in a prime location. I had prior only ever been to a hostel once and it was in New York with a group of friends and I had lost some items in there that were eventually stolen so I was nervous about this experience. But when I got to the hostel it was beyond my expectations. I was sharing a large room with 4 girls. There were codes I had to entire on keypads to get into the hostel and then for the individual rooms.They provided toiletries such as towels, slippers, blankets, toothbrushes and provided free beverages and snacks and free laundry. There were tons of bathrooms to be used (though the toilet and shower was broken in my room there were plenty of others the owner let us use in the other rooms. There was tons of room. I had a window with a gorgeous view overlooking the city.

 It was in a perfect location right in the middle of all the shopping areas, restaurants and the harbour in an area called Tsim Sha Tsui.

Except there was one problem.

I was only at this particular hostel for that day.

I had tried to add an extra day to my trip last minute to make it closer to a week's stay and didn't realize there were a chain of hostels under the same name called Apple Inn. So I had accidentally booked at a different location with this 1 day add-on and had to leave the next day and go to the chain that was located a few stops away in an area called Mongkok where I would be spending the rest of the week.

I got to my hostel in Tsim Sha Tsui around 2 in the afternoon and was pretty tired from the trip but I was hungry and also wanted to plan out where I wanted to go next tomorrow, giving my arrival day up to just resting and recouping before setting out on any kind adventure.

I looked up some things to do online and booked a ticket to a ballet the next afternoon. And then I set out to go eat. There were tons of restaurants but I wasn't sure what I was in the mood for. An Arab man walked up to me on the sidewalk where he was advertising his business and gave me a flyer with Middle Eastern food on it. I asked him where his restaurant was as I saw there was curry and I was always in the mood for good curry. He walked me back to the restaurant which was strangely enough was right back in the same building as my hostel, inside of which was really just a big old commercial building. The restaurant was only a few floors below my room and I found out from the guy that there were actually lots of restaurants in my building. He rang a bell and a short, hefty, chestnut-skinned woman with long, black hair and a friendly face opened the door.

"Welcome to Kebab!" she said as I entered. There were already several customers seated and eating. The aroma was strong and mouth-watering as it wafted through the air filling it with the scents of spices and herbs and marinated meats. I was seated in a small corner and given a menu. I expressed my surprise at the restaurants location to the waitress who was also the woman who had opened the door.

"Oh yeah, there's tons of restaurants in here." she said.

I ordered some chicken curry and some garlic naan bread and a coke. Everything was clearly homemade and fresh cooked to perfection. I spoke to the waitress for a little bit. She was talkative and cheerful. She told me she was from the Philippines, Baguio City.

"Have you ever been?" she asked me.

"No, I haven't," I replied, "China is my first trip overseas."

Her eyes got wide then. "Really? Well then you should go some day, it's beautiful. And lots of tourists go there."

I commended the staff on their food and paid the bill then meandered back up to my room stuffed with curry and ready to go to bed. Before I drifted off, I browsed around on the internet looking for other things to do and see in Hong Kong off of their tourist website and  made note of a few attractions that looked interesting for my week here.

2/6 Gone to Hong Kong

I had about a day to recoup from Xian. I arrived home on the 4th of February and had to leave again on February 5.

I have 2 hamsters in my apartment who have kept me company since my arrival. A grey male one named Mushu and a golden colored one girl named Jiao. I had found out the hard way they were opposite sex and had already sold their litter to my eager, anxious students when I brought in pictures of the babies to class. It was a lot of work cleaning, feeding and taking care of 7 babies, 4 boys, 3 girls for 4 weeks before they were weaned from their mother and I definitely did not want to go through that again.  As soon as I could I bought a second cage to keep them separate. I was a bit late however as Jiao ended up having a second litter which she consumed (hamsters eat their litter if they have too many back to back which stresses them out and causes them to kill their young). It wasn't as bad as it sounds. I just woke up one day and there was no trace of them. Any of them. Not even any blood. I was a bit freaked out but I had read up on hamster litters after the first litter so I knew it was a possibility. She didn't seem bothered afterwards, smugly sitting in her nest snuggling in to nap.

It made me realize how hamsters might not really be the best pets for kids.....


When I got home that Thursday from Xian, I cleaned their cages thoroughly and created two small troughs of food for them to have while I was gone and ensured their large water bottles were filled up. My 2nd trip was going to be about a week long and I didn't want to come home to two small corpses. I couldn't find anyone to take care of them while I went away so this was the best I could do.

I did my laundry and double checked all my train ticket times to Hong Kong. I had to take 2 trains to be exact. One from the Wuxi station to the Shanghai one which would be about an hour and then from Shanghai I took a train to Shenzhen, which was right outside the outskirts of HK. From there I had to go through customs and find my way to my hostel.

A train from Shanghai to Hong Kong was almost a full day long. 18 hours to be exact. I had chosen to take a train instead of a plane because it was significantly cheaper and also I thought it would be a nice way to meet strangers and make friends and also ideally be a great way to see the countryside.

I was taking the train at about 9am and arriving in Shanghai around 10 where I would have to wait till about 1pm for the train to arrive that headed to Shenzhen.

I had come prepared electronically to keep myself entertained bringing along my laptop, my phone, all my chargers, a portable charger, tons of usb cords and also my Nintend 3DS with a Pokemon game in tow. I'm one of those people that can't go anywhere without technology. I had planned to document the entire trip as much as I could but often I would find myself lost in the moment forgetting to take pictures or make note of things.

When the train arrived, there were a few problems. A major one being I didn't bring any food with me on the train which was a mistake. There was nothing but traditional Chinese food sold on the train or in the train station itself except for a KFC. I still in my time here so far haven't been able to really fully adapt to local food and it was hard for me to order since I couldn't read menus that often they didn't even contain pictures. It hasn't been for lack of trying. Rose has tried various restaurants and ordered dishes for me I just couldn't stomach and I would often leave still hungry.

I should explain that authentic Chinese food is not at all like western Chinese food the latter of which has tons of sweet sauces, fried foods, lighter seasonings and well....cleaner meat that doesn't still have remnants of animal skin and tiny bones. It is hugely adapted for western tongues. In "real" China, you won't find General Tsao's, sweet and sour chicken, pork fried rice or beef and broccoli. I've yet to actually see an egg roll.

So I ate a chicken sandwich and soda at KFC in the Shanghai station before departure but I didn't buy anything extra to take with me. I ended up not eating very much during my 18 hour train ride as they only served a small foil tray of strangely flavored noodles, extremely bitter vegetables and a chicken leg. I bought a ton of fruit from the fruit carts which sustained me somewhat for at least a day.

The train was nice but it was an older model different than the ones I've seen on the Internet to get a feel for what it was going to look like. The carpet was dark but oily and hiding all kinds of dirt to be fore. The inside of the train corridors had small rooms with 4 beds in each room. Each train is divided into 4 different types of areas. You have hard seats and soft seats which were actually just that, seats as if you were on an airplane but slightly less comfy and imagine sitting in it for a whole day. It's doable but not the best way to travel but the cheapest. Then they had hard and soft sleepers. Hard sleepers aren't really hard, the beds are slightly smaller and less cushioned but they still had cushions. There were set up like bunk beds along the side of the corridor out in the open. They were the cheapest bed seats. I ended up with the most expensive seats so to speak, mostly because the cheap beds were sold out but I was kind of grateful. The soft sleepers had fluffy blankets and were in small private compartments, 4 beds in each compartment. I had the top left bunk which was a bit of a struggle to get to. There wasn't a ladder, just a small metal foot step attached to the side of the wall at the foot of the lower bunk. I had to step rather high, my knee almost to my chest and then while grabbing the railing of my top bunk haul my body up. It was not for the weak.

 The foot hoist for the top bunk

 The top view from my bunk

 View of door and bottom bunk across from me

 My bunk

There was a small shelf next to my bed, a reading light at the head of it, and then another shelf over the door at the foot of my bed for me to put any extra bags. I followed suit with the one guy who was also in my compartment. He put his suitcase under the bed and upon seeing my confusion, gestured and helped slide my suitcase under the bed. I thanked him and then hauled myself onto my bed and laid down and played a mandarin lesson on my iPhone while I waited for the train to get ready to depart.

As I waited, the guy on the lower bunk below sat on the edge of his bed and I noticed he kept looking up at me. I was used to puzzled looks of curiosity but he looked like he wanted to say something. Finally, I turned down my headphones and finally looked at him and smiled.

"Hi." he said.

"Hi"

"Where are you from?"

I told him in Chinese I was from America. I asked where he was from. He mentioned a city that started with a 'W' that I wasn't familiar with.

He started to speak faster, but I then told him I only spoke a little mandarin. He told me in broken English his name was Will and he was heading to Shenzhen for something work-related. He asked me a little bit about what I do and what I was doing. We had some difficulty communicating, him in English and me in Chinese so we would use our phone translation apps trying to speak the other's language. After about 15 minutes or so a young couple walked into our compartment. All four bunks were now officially taken. They placed their stuff on the top bunk and later shared the bottom bunk together (thank goodness no funny business happened between them during the trip). About an hour later, I was hungry and asked them in Chinese where to get food. The boy of the couple walked me to the food car but the staff told me they weren't serving dinner till 5pm and our train was to take off at a quarter to 2. Later, that was when I found out about the lack of western food but I ate what I could stomach from the foil plate when it came around dinner time and decided to read a book on my Kindle.

The train was cold and poorly heated. I threw on my warmest hoodie, a blue and white Penn State one I bought which was perfect for those terrible winters in the mountains of Pennsylvania. I stayed huddled in bed till my phone was about to die and then sat outside in the corridor to charge it where there were a couple of outlets everyone was huddled around waiting to charge their devices. There were only two seats that folded out from the side of the wall. I managed to score one after a time and brought out my Pokemon game while I waited for my phone to charge so I could set an alarm to get up in time before my stop. We were to arrive in Shenzhen at around 8:30am.

As I played my Nintendo, there were children running up and down the corridor, many of whom had never seen a game console. They stopped and stood right in front of me staring at the game. One kid practically placed himself between my legs watching me. There is no concept of space in China for a reason. Because they're such a communal society, think of it as sharing space with your very large extended family. But you like...actually like your extended family. Again, individualism, being by yourself is very rare. Their grandmother eventually came along, probably thought I was uncomfortable and chased them off but they came back. She tried a few more times and then gave up. I'm usually really uncomfortable around little, little kids but I was amused despite my personal space being invaded. One kid asked me if I was American in Chinese. I answered him. They all couldn't have been older than 7 or 8. The kid near my legs probably 5 or 6.

Gaming was banned in China so video game systems are almost non-existent. The government banned it in 2000 and lifted the ban just last year. Consoles are just trying to get a foothold in the market here. Most Chinese do mobile games from their phones. So the kids probably never seen or heard of Pokemon unlike the little kids in the states.

It was around midnight and I was pretty exhausted. My phone charged slowly but once it got to around 90 percent, I unplugged it, set the alarm for 8 and passed out. I was nervous about how the customs would work out since it was a holiday month and getting lost. I would find it'd be easier than I thought the next morning.

2/4 A Day of Chinese History

My second day of the tour believe it or not was the one I was most excited about. Yes, I was excited about the Terra Cotta but I really wanted to get a huge crash course on a broader aspect of Chinese history.

This day we would go to two museums (one history, one art) and a famous Buddhist pagoda temple, the Wild Goose Pagoda.

Thunk picked me up at the lobby and we greeted the driver as I entered the van. It was a beautiful day slightly warmer than the day before. We headed into the Shaanxi History Museum (Shaanxi is the district in which the city of Xian resides; think of districts as the equivalent of states in the US and Xian is a major city).




 Me posing at lion statue at entrance into Shaanxi Museum

Thunk explained the most important relics, he pointed out the significance of the pottery and stoneware before me. He advised me when to take pictures of things that were rare. He explained the history of the silk road and the story of Zhang Qian, the first from China to be sent out by Emperor Wu to establish the Silk Road. I witnessed the beginning uses of colored and glazed porcelain in the Tang Dynasty and heard a story on why during Tang's rule all the women were plump (his wife was plump and so women thought it was a sign of attractiveness). I saw incredibly detailed sculptures and chariots and weapons. It was a lot to take in. Some of the things I knew that impressed Thunk such as the Warring States period, certain battles between dynasties, and some geography all which I learned in my short book of Chinese history that I read.

"Wow," he said, "you know a lot."

Actually, I knew very little and recalled the vaguest facts but the fact he said that showed how few people he had met as foreigners that knew a lick about the country.


                Life-size statue of Zhang Qian
We left to go to an art museum where I learned to paint calligraphy horribly and was shown different works and styles of Chinese painting. A young girl in her late teens, perhaps early 20's showed me around. It was clear it was a family owned place and they sent her to me because her English was best.

"You're traveling alone?," she asked at one point, the question I've gotten many times since I've arrived here and would encounter even more often in my vacation travels.

"Yes, just me." I replied sheepishly. I never had a problem going out on my own doing things before but in China it's popular to always travel in groups of friends so it's unusual to them and even though I know this the question still always makes me self-conscious.

"Wow," she said, "You are very brave." Another usual reply.

"We came upon two paintings. One abstract black and white with bamboo sticks, the other a man on a horse riding through nature. My phone died at this point so I was unable to take photos but both were stunning.

"Which one do you think was the hardest to make?"  my guide asked.

"Well, I want to say the one with the guy on the horse, but you'll probably tell me I'm wrong because it's an obvious choice."

"This painting, if you make a mistake," she pointed to the nature-y one, "you can paint over it and fix it. You see with your eyes and you paint.

But this one," she pointed to the black and white bamboo its black poles with white splashes indicuating quick and intricate brushstrokes "It is  harder because you have to feel it. You have to see the bamboo, be the bamboo," she said, "and  when you feel it, you paint. That is why this one is harder."

If ever a moment felt so beautiful but so cliche of all the films I've ever watched on Asian mysticism I felt like this was that cinematic moment.

We left the art museum and suddenly I was starving.

I had feasted on McDonald's mostly since I had arrived because I could not find a restaurant that served menus that weren't in Chinese writing and at least had pictures. I had went to one restaurant one afternoon that was in a building and it was called American Restaurant but when I went in the staff at the door all fidgeted around and stared at me and giggled nervously trying to figure out what to say, till I asked in Chinese "Can I not eat here?" They then found someone that spoke a little bit of English to seat me and he asked me a few short questions and I answered in short, terse Mandarin answers enough to make him think I was apparently fluent because after he took my order he walked back towards the staff and said "She speaks Chinese" in Mandarin. The food was great and indeed was western-style, but it was pricey as most western-style restaurants are and I didn't want that uncomfortable feeling again.

Before I had left a teacher at my school asked me where I was vacationing and tried to take down some information for me to help my travels. Information that came in useful such as how to talk to the hotel staff and say things "I'm checking in," "I'm checking out," "I have a reservation," "what is my room number?," "I'm paying with....." (which my notebook came in EXTREMELY handy when I found out the description of English speaking staff at my hotel was false) and also traditional Chinese dishes. I asked Thunk about this dishes. One was cold noodles (Liang Pi), another was Chinese hamburger (Rou Jia Mo) and the last was mutton and soup (yang rou paomo). The last at which Thunk grimaced.

"That is a really heavy dish. I haven't even had that and I am native [to Xian]. It is a traditional dish but I wouldn't recommend it. I don't think you'll like it."

We then decided to go to a place for the Chinese hamburger and some noodles which was delicious and filling and we headed to the Wild Goose Pagoda.

The Wild Goose Pagoda is basically in the midst of a Buddhist temple. I saw monks and devouts walking around bowing. Thunk explained the history of Buddhism, the concepts of Tao both of which revealed to me that he was a Buddhist as he kept saying "We believe" and "We do this." There were beautiful golden figures of the many faces of Buddha which he explained to me what each one meant. The roads smelled of fragrant, powerful incense. It smelled so nice when we passed a shop selling it, I inquired about perhaps purchasing some to take home.

"You can't do that. You have to burn it here," Thunk said. I then realized that it's the equivalent of Catholics lighting a candle in front of the cross at the altar and someone asking to take one of the candles home and suddenly felt kind of silly....



There were many murals on the wall telling the story of Shakyamuni, a Buddhist monk responsible for bringing Buddhism to China from his exploits in India.

 

A piece of his skull was being held in one of the temples in a small golden framed glass container. I saw a Chinese tour guide talking to a group of Chinese tourists. An old man asked a question and was answered. He walked up to the fragment and kneeled, bowing multiple times before it. I felt odd as moments before I had just taken a photo of it like it was some fascinating object but to these people it was a seriously holy thing to behold.


       The fragment bone of Shakyamuni's skull
 

                  Close up of fragment

We finally came upon the giant pagoda itself which Thunk told me it was empty because of an earthquake that happened many years ago. The building actually split in half and then was brought back together with a crack down the middle and was in one piece.

We walked to the North section of the area where there was an area of water fountains and children splashing about in the streams shooting up from the ground. The area was decorated with red and gold decorations for Chinese New Year and people sat and sold tourist items.


      Me posing with a statue of Shakyamuni                     Me at the water fountain in north section of WGP

After that we headed back to the car and I was driven to the airport to catch my flight. Thunk asked me questions about my gate and flight which I answered. I tipped Thunk graciously when he dropped me off at the ticket counter.

"Thank you so much. I had a really incredible time." I said. "If you don't mind, may I take your picture? For when I write about this moment, I want to remember everything I did."

"Of me?" he said shocked and flattered, "Sure!"

This is Thunk.

Later as I waited for my flight, I got a text about 20 minutes before my flight was supposed to depart.

"Hey, this is Thunk! Just to let you know your gate number changed. You probably already know but just wanted to be sure you didn't miss your flight."

It was unexpected. He had my number in case there was anything wrong with the booking or tour schedule from the agency but once he dropped me off he was under no obligation to help me further in getting home. I was grateful as I had my headphones in and did not realize the gate had changed and they were just boarding when I got to the correct gate.

I couldn't respond then as my phone was too low on money to respond and would only let me receive texts, but when I refilled it the next day I text him a nice thank you to which he replied "Nevermind, (the Chinese say this often to mean "don't worry about it" which took some getting used to) I'm glad you got home okay. If you ever come back again to Xian I would be happy to be your guide again!"

What turned out to be somewhat disappointment when I first arrived to this city judging it from its outwardly appearance then turned out to be the best experience I had since I got here once I got to know it's heart. And so a little piece of me will always love Xian.

2/3 Xian Tour Day 1: Terra Cotta Army of the Great Emperor Qin

A LOT has happened since February. It's March now and above I've made note of the dates in the title on which these events happened. So let me catch up.

I awoke at around 8am in my hotel room in preparation for a tour I booked. It was a much brighter, much more beautiful day. Cold but clear. Today, I would be visiting some attractions first on the list of course being the Terra Cotta Warriors of the great Emperor Qin Shihuang, uniter of China. All I knew of Qin was from a fictional Jet Li movie called Hero where Jet Li was a hired assassin to take out the Emperor Qin who used extremely violent tactics (as one can imagine) to unite the many states of China into one. That was probably likely the only fact that was true in the movie, the rest of it revolving around physics-defying martial arts and beautiful digitally-altered scenery and landscapes.

I had brushed up on a very short book that went through major point periods of each dynasty from the Xia dynasty, the first dynasty of China in 1600 BC, to President Xi Jinping's rule of today. It was a cursory summary of all of the dynastic periods. I wanted to know a bit of the history rather than walking around completely ignorant of what I was looking at though I'm sure the tour guide would fill in some of the blanks.

I walked down into the hotel lobby and saw my tour guide. Being I was the only American in the place, he recognized me faster than I him. He was a rather tall guy, slightly husky wearing a blue bubble jacket that seemed a popular style in China and jeans. His hair stood up every which way and he had a rather bewildered look about him. He had thick black rimmed glasses and a round face. He wore a backpack. He looked like a book nerd that the wind blew in and he was confused as to how he got here.

"Are you Rasheeda?" he asked in crisp, clear English with just a hint of a Chinese accent.

"Yes," I replied.

He shook my hand. "Hi, my name is Thunk. I'll be your tour guide today. Our car is just right outside."

We walked out. "I was wondering if I had the wrong hotel. The staff doesn't speak any English here. Are you here at a convention for work?" he asked.

"Oh no, I'm here by myself." He seemed surprised. I explained to him how I was really an English teacher on holiday for the Chinese New Year and just wanted to travel.

"I found the hotel on a site called C-Trip and it actually said they had English speaking staff. So imagine my surprise when I came in and no one did. We managed to communicate through phone translation apps," I explained with a laugh.

"This is in a great location. It's a really good hotel. Usually most tourists are outside of town and we have to go kind of far."

I took pride kind of realizing I accidentally stumbled upon a native favorite.

As we drove, Thunk asked me the usual questions about myself and then explained where we were going and what we'd be doing that day. We would start off at the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit followed by the Cave Dwelling and then the Xian Great City Wall then the Muslim Quarter and The Great Mosque.

I signed up for a two day tour so the next day would be 2 museums followed by a rather famous Buddhist temple/pagoda.

Thunk also pointed out famous buildings and sites along the way and told me a little about the city and himself. He was newly married and from Xian originally. He had been working as a tour guide for 7 years and had been pretty much everywhere in China but returned to Xian for good once he got married. He told me about the rich, long history of Xian. It was the oldest city in China and marked the beginning of Chinese history. It had held in this small city, 13 dynasties, over 72 emperors and had contained only 2 intact Emperor tombs. Qin and another one actually being an Empress whose name escapes me.

Xian was also originally the capital before Beijing because it was placed in an area surrounded by mountains to protect from nomadic tribes from coming in trying to conquer it. Because of it's location by a water basin and the addition of the current air pollution problem, there are only 100 sunny days in Xian, which explains the overcast, kind of dirty feel the city had when I entered.

One of the reasons I had really wanted to come to this city was because of the deep roots of Chinese history it had. Since I've arrived in China I was really excited to dig into the historical aspect of its culture.

Thunk did not disappoint as a tour guide. We talked about native foods (I had found out some popular dishes from a teacher back in Wuxi that did some research for me) where he offered to have me try some later and he explained some of the development Xian was undergoing in terms of construction. One of the most interesting points Thunk pointed out was the housing market.

"A lot of the old homes are being renovated by the government. People will buy up  a lot of the houses and not live in them. So you have entire towns with lots of homes but no one lives in them. It's like ghost towns." Thunk explained.

As China developed more areas people would buy extra properties while it was cheap and then sell when the area market got hot. Because of this the government started limiting property ownership which then affected the marriage rates. If you were married you were only allowed to have 2 properties between the couples but if you were not married you were allowed to have 3. So people would get divorced just for the sake of buying more properties and then remarry so they could keep the properties they had and sell off more.

Thunk explained how this made it more competitive to be a bachelor in China.

"Because of the 1 child policy, the ratio of men to women is 160:110. And a lot of women won't marry you if you don't have a nice place," he explained, "And before you marry, you have to buy a new place or the girl's mother usually won't let you get married. I had to buy a new place before I got married so I could get my wife's family's approval."

"Basically, the mother-in-laws control the housing market," he joked.

We pulled into Qin's Mausoleum. It was cold and slightly crowded with mostly family and kids.

"You came at the best time," Thunk said, "Usually the lines are really long and it takes a long time to get in. This is off-season so it's perfect." He said the peak seasons usually occur in May and October/November and that approximately 10 million tourists come through Xian each year.

We would enter into 3 parts of the tomb. The first being more popular because it contained the most soldiers and usually where people took photos.

The 1st of the tombs

Terra Cotta Archer

2nd tomb with high ranking officials

The detail of the soldiers was amazing. Thunk explained from the first day of each emperor's rule, statues of his staff are immediately made. Each statue takes approximately 8 months to create by hand. Emperor Qin's tomb itself was never found. The staff of Qin had melted tons of incredibly potent mercury and poured it into the tunnels where Qin's tomb was buried. It's rumored Qin is still floating around somewhere in this hot riverbed of mercury underground. Archaeologists think they found the area he may be burried as the soil tested really high in a particular area for mercury content, but it is too dangerous to dig up as the mercury is 200 times its usual potency and no one can figure out how they made it so potent.

Qin actually died around the age of 50 and while his oldest was supposed to be next, his advisers killed the oldest and kept the youngest so as to easily manipulate executive decisions and rule through him. Qin was also the first to create the first Chinese currency which was a round gold coin with a square hole in the middle.

Thunk explained that in Chinese culture a circle means 'heaven' and a square means 'earth'.

"If you ever looked at chopsticks do you notice how the tip is circular and the top is square?," he asked.

 I said I did.

"That's symbolic of heaven and earth," he explained, "Heaven and earth are connected."

Other interesting facts Thunk revealed were things like drilling a hole in an empty turtle shell, placing lit paper inside and using the heat cracks to tell the future and if it was a good time to engage in war. The coating of oxidated chromium they used to preserve the sharpness of their weapons is something archaeologists still don't know how they were able to obtain such a metal in ancient times. And also how the ancient Chinese also built pyramids very similar to the Egyptians but the two cultures never met nor crossed paths.

We went on to the next two tombs that had less as they were being still excavated. The last one being the least touched as the paint on the soldiers was still intact. They were waiting on better technology to be able to preserve the paint on the statues as it becomes damage and flakes off once the statues are dug up and are exposed to the air.

We left to go to a cave dwelling which is an actual home of a real person rooted deep into a steep hillside. It was a well-insulated area where a woman and her child came to live during the winter time. The one bed in a small room had a small furnace actually underneath it to keep it warm. It had been in the woman's family for 100 years and over 5 generations. She was a frail woman, thin, middle-aged with long, black stringy hair and bony hands. She was smiling proudly of it as Thunk explained how such dwellings are still popular. The dwelling was two rooms, the single bed with 1 bed and the second room was a stony area with just a desk with a picture of her family. It was even warmer back there and it was already a cold day about 40 degrees. It was the warmest I'd been as the terra cotta exhibit was mostly outside.

 Bed with small wooden door aka furnace

 back of cave dwelling 2nd area

We went to lunch afterwards at a touristy hotel where I had beef and broccoli and some mushroom soup and delicious tea called Guangyin which Thunk says the best of its tea leaves are on the summit of a a mountain that only trained monkeys are able to reach.

"I don't know if that's true or not." Thunk admitted.

I often hear tales from natives that seem like fiction and after the tale is relayed, often the storyteller admits not knowing if it's truth (it usually isn't). There is a constant blur between folklore, beliefs and truth. I take most of the tales with a grain of salt.

There was a wedding reception going on that Thunk pointed out. He explained how there's usually a lot of waste at such receptions. There are 8 hot dishes and 8 cold dishes for everyone (8 means wealth and is good luck in China) and most people obviously can't eat 16 dishes.

Next was the Xian City Wall, the Muslim mosque and market all of which were close together. Muslims in China are one of the larger minority groups in China. With over 93% being Han Chinese and the rest split between minority groups.

China is big on walls as it was a huge defense against nomadic tribes and invaders. So almost every major city has a wall or some semblance of a wall and being that Xian was a capital at one point, you can imagine the importance of one. It was put up in the Ming Dynasty. It was a bit hazy but made for a beautiful eery quality.

We looked out beyond the wall and Thunk pointed out the buildings outside of the wall were taller than the inside buildings which were much older and where older citizens still resided in the small homes. A lot of the homes, however, were being bought out by the government for renovation. Thunk talked about how much Xian has changed even within the last 10-15 years.

His father's salary was 100 times that then when he retired as a laborer then when he first started working for the company which at the time the rate was only about 40 yuan a day.
"Years ago when my dad was younger it used to be 1.5 yuan for a Chinese hamburger," Thunk said, testifying to the rapid growth of China, "Now it's 15 yuan."

We meandered through a marketplace and came upon a beautiful temple. It was somewhat strange seeing Chinese dressed in traditional Muslim garb but it was beautiful. Thunk explained the traditions, how they pray facing Mecca and showed me a Confucian structure which he said is a traditional fixture for all temples and how those who applied for statehood positions and passed were greeted on these structures.

 Muslim mosque

 Muslim Mosque

 Confucian structure to reward new state officials

The marketplace was filled with foods and music and shops with Muslim cooks and shopkeepers shouting out to passerbys to sell their wares. Thunk pointed out the exotic foods and told me what they were and how they were made.

 Muslim Quarter Marketplace

After the tour, I later headed out that night and the market place was even beautiful as you would see there were lights strung all across the market streets where it was even more crowded with tourists and locals. The smoke wafting from outdoor grills clouding the night air slightly with the smells of hot meat. From the street are two structures, the Drum Tower and Bell Tower which look beautiful at night.

 Bell Tower

 Drum Tower

 Souvenirs in Muslim Marketplace

I purchased a few terra cotta trinkets and a small makeup bag for my mother and a few friends and headed back to the hotel in preparation for day 2 of the tour.

Xi'an: A Crusted Gem

I am a person who has always been able to endure high levels of discomfort. I can stay away from home for long periods of time, withstand incredibly hot temperatures, deal with dirt and sweat and crowds and rude people. But China has tested me on all these limits.

This morning as I boarded the plane to Xi'an, I found myself miserably squeezed into a small window seat with my long green down jacket folded in my lap and my carryon laptop bag and purse beside my cramped legs. The man behind my seat kept coughing loudly hocking up phlegm into his mouth and then doing God knows what with it since there was no place to spit. This persisted for 3 hours (my flight was delayed in addition to this hell) and I dared not turn around. The man to the right of me kept open mouth coughing and would turn once in a while towards me to watch outside the window, our elbows fighting over a slim shared arm rest. A female flight attendant came to make sure everyone's seats were upright and when she came to me, she mumbled her English and I kept thinking she was saying seat belt. I pointed to my seat belt several times nodding to assure her it was fastened before she glared me down and finally reached over and pushed the button snapping my seat up back into place. After that, any time she came down the aisle giving instructions, she would repeat them in hostile English towards me. I eventually gave her such a stare that she desisted with her attitude.

I couldn't help but think of people back home in which this situation would likely break them. My mother in particular who has short patience for heat, big crowds, germs and hostile people.

I recalled one of the teachers named Delia who participated in my adult ESL class telling me something poignant about myself over a group discussion we had on QQ, a IM app popular here in China. While discussing with other teachers about blood types being linked to different types of personalities and disorders, I told them that mine was blood type O. They told me based on that I have a lot of patience and can endure a lot of discomfort.

"But this is bad because your type doesn't tell when you have a lot of discomfort or pain," Delia said, "Make sure you tell us!" I was touched by their caring but also amazed by their insight.Without knowing me personally, she was right. I hold things in. Bottle them. And I was slowly stewing in discomfort, frustration and anger today as I ventured out to a territory that was even less foreigner-populated  than Wuxi.

It seems in the land where I am the foreigner I found myself being treated as most Westerners treat immigrants. I am met with exasperation or impatience, people ignoring my attempts to speak the language, fast food restaurant cashiers already whipping out their behind-the-counter picture menus before I even start to speak, people not listening or sometimes half-listening to when I request something in what I'm usually sure is something that is actually in perfect Mandarin and then when someone "translates" for them it turns out it's exactly as I said it. I get eye-rolls and overly exaggerated what I call "gestures-for-dummies" over simple universally understandable things and intimidating stare-downs from passer-bys.

The irony here is I actually love immigrants and foreigners back home. I am for more lax immigration laws and many of my friends are immigrants. Whenever I encounter anyone with a language barrier, I am patient to explain things and smile and sound friendly. The look of relief on their faces is extremely gratifying. It seems, however, in China that karma has not paid out any of this kindness on my behalf.

That aside, I finally arrived today in the city of Xi'an. The sunny afternoon clouds instantly turning into a dark, husky grey as we landed.

I hate flying. I hate heights but I insist on the window seat every time like a crazy person because once we level out and reach peak altitude, the surreal feeling of seeing clouds and not being able to actually see the ground beneath transcends the realization that I'm up in the air as the sun shimmers off the wings that cut through the clouds like a hot knife through butter. I unrealistically think this will one day break my fear. It doesn't. I sweat bullets every time...

As I exited the airport, I grabbed my bags at the baggage claim and headed towards the taxi area. My taxi driver was friendly but curt, speaking here and there trying to ask me a question or two about the trip and hotel. But he grew quiet eventually as all the drivers do with foreigners becoming more hesitant and unsure of how far my grasp of his native tongue went.

Me being an "Asianophile" and a history addict, I had immediately placed Xi'an as the first trip for my holiday while my program colleagues hit up Hong Kong, or Beijing, or the more exotic farther areas of Southeast Asia first. I read up on the popular Tang, Han and Qin dynasties on the plane and listened to more audio-lingual lessons to catch up on all I was about to see and do. I saw no foreigners at the airport nor on the streets. Xi'an's ancient history goes far and deep; a hidden historic gem placed near the center of China that many a tourist overlook often vying for the "bigger, more exciting" cities (and likely more foreigner friendly).

Xi'an is a very old but dirty city with half-constructed buildings, cracked streets and sidewalks, dusty shops with crooked signs and bad traffic. Smells from the street filled my nostrils as I exited the cab and passed the crowded streets bustling with street food vendors; some of the food smells pungent, some sweet, some spicy, mixing with the smells of garbage and people and pollution which was bad today. It is hard to believe a city so old and filled with rich history seemed so damaged and polluted and unappreciated but I had read China was quite bad at preserving historical areas, even big chunks of the Great Wall have been left to crumble.

I should add, I did not end up in a "bad area" by accident. I am in the square where most of the hotels are so this IS the tourist area. But I am tired and it has been a long day and broken communication, long rides, cold weather (it snowed here yesterday) and poor directions.

I will have more for you all tomorrow as I explore the city a bit on my own and go out on a tour on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Thanksgiving in China

I didn't plan anything this Thursday but a chicken dinner, some wine and maybe a cultural movie to make myself feel like I was doing immersion when really I was trying to forget the fact I wouldn't be having a turkey dinner.

My lesson plan the week of Thanksgiving consisted of teaching the students a brief history, making some artsy hand turkeys and watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. It was a laid back lesson as I've been doing because I find drilling vocabulary all the time into the students was way too heavy handed and they pretty much got that all day from their Chinese English teachers. I was told by the previous girl who worked as a foreign teacher here that not only were cultural lessons better because the students were more receptive, but they were easier to make. She couldn't have been more right. I haven't given a single test really except for one time when the senior class pissed me off with their incessant talking and lack of attention during a vocab lesson. Then half of them cheated and I made the cheaters retake a harder test. They fell in line more after that.

Thursday though was unbelievably mellow. I taught my lesson, went home and cleaned up and a student visited me. Her English name was Sandy. Sandy is a shy 17 year old sophomore girl who loves American pop music (in particular Avril Lavigne), reading books, shopping and she is extremely interested in traveling abroad. So she visits my apartment every week to chat and try to practice her English. It's endearing. I've had students grant me small favors of kindness but since we're all awkward introverts, well it just makes things delightfully awkward and as much as I try to force myself to be outgoing sometimes I'm just stuck for conversation topics. I'm not the exciting, bold, boisterous American they probably expected but I'm generally liked and somewhat popular despite this.

After Sandy left, I organized some school papers, half-heartedly listened to a Chinese lesson, downloaded a movie and grabbed my leftover KFC dinner that was soon to be my "turkey" dinner. As I nibbled my first bite around 6pm I got a message on my messaging app WeChat from Rose. "Hey what are you up to? Happy Thanksgiving! Do you want to grab dinner!"

Rose is a local Chinese English teacher who speaks incredibly fluent English at an international learning school across the street from my school. She loves taking selfies, talking about herself, American boys, shopping, and talking about all her outfits she bought for the day. 

Our dialogues mostly consist of "how do you say <insert garbled English word here>?," "I want an American boy," "I want a RICH American boy," "I want to go to America," "Can you take this picture of me?" and "What should I wear? Do you like this?"

Needless to say, I can take her in small doses and luckily she is not a clingy friend. Yet her westernized attitude about sex and relationships, frustration with her traditional Chinese family (she's 28 and unmarried and her mother pairs her up on blind dates with older, unattractive Chinese men) and her mulling over her silly encounters with boys and what she wants to do when she gets to America kind of make for a strange, bizarre entertainment. 

At the same time, Rose can also be generous often treating me to dinners, paying cab fares, introducing me to friends (she has many both Chinese and foreign), being a tour guide and loaning me helpful advice on getting around and/or Chinese culture.

It beat eating leftover KFC in my house watching Hulu so I took her up on the offer.

I met her at the school where she was wrapping up a lesson with a bunch of young children aged 9-11 and she was teaching them tourist places in Beijing. Yvette and Lisa were the two most outspoken. Yvette, a small frail girl in a white little sweater over a blue dress her hair in a ponytail, asked me if I could speak Chinese. "Not really," I replied. "Why don't we practice?" said Rose. She staged a introductory Chinese dialogue and then had them ask some questions in English directed towards me about the reading they were doing ie "Do you like to travel?" "How do you travel?" It was actually sweet and the kids spoke incredibly well. Actually , better than most of my high school students. 

"They speak so well," I said to Rose after the class was over. 

"REALLY?," she said. It was enough to stroke her ego into talking about how she's selective with the kids she chooses to stay in her class and her frustration with less qualified (as compared to her) teachers botching kids pronunciations of words. Also, her desire to not confuse them with American/British dialogues (the textbooks they used were British, as are most in China).

"What do you want to eat?" she said as we entered the cab. 

"I don't know. I'm up for anything really."

"Do you want to try some traditional Chinese food? It'll be cheaper than the Mexican restaurant we went to the other day."

I hesitated. I actually since orientation in Shanghai had not had any local Chinese food.  Each region has specialties and Wuxi is known  fish as it is a town surrounded by water, rivers and lakes. I am usually a huge fan of seafood but the way fish is prepared here in China usually doesn't whet my appetite. Perhaps it's the smell as it is particularly strong but also somewhat pungent. In terms of looks, the meat gray and the bones are left in. Despite all that, I thought it would be nice to break my custom and try something that actually would immerse me more into the local culture....at least try. I had only had the cafeteria food at my school and even the staff here hated the school food. Perhaps in a restaurant it might be different.

 This is Rose. Here's her taking one of her many selfies of the night. Her many, many, many selfies (btw she wanted me to take this picture of her taking a selfie...yeah.)

 This soup is a specialty here in Wuxi. I really wish I could remember the name. But it was fish, some octopus and and some greens. It actually didn't taste bad, a bit salty, but the texture was kind of gluey and the fish smell was kind of unbearable. I mustered and braved through a half a bowl.

 This was fried octopus and it was probably the best thing I've ever had here in my life. The sauce over it was kind of slightly tangy and sweet. It kind of also had a sandy texture to it but it was great. I love octopus.

 This was a seafood assortment with leeks and carrots on a seashell. Rose didn't explain it any further than "seafood." I ate it anyway and asked no questions. Sometimes that's best when it comes to Chinese food...something will often look good till I realize what part of the animal its from.

This was actually duck and inside (you can kind of see poking out) was rice but it was a special kind of rice usually put inside buns. It was a sweetish rice, with fatty duck mean, and a sweet grounded up powder to dunk it in on the side. It was ok, I think the duck was mostly fatty parts than meat and it was near the end of the night so I don't think they put as much love into it as they should have.

Needless to say it was a lovely time. We went shopping where she bought some hand lotions and we looked out at the beautiful city lights as we walked around cobblestone alleyways littered with small shops selling food, clothes and beauty products making our way back to the street to take a taxi home.

It was a different, but lovely Thanksgiving.

Hope yours went well.