Mountain Man (Sports Meeting Weekend Part 2)

On Saturday morning all the foreign teachers from my school left to go to a mountain three hours outside of our city. There were five Drake students from this year, one from last year that is teaching again this year (Shirly), a Canadian couple (Noelle and Norman), a Japanese teacher, and two Ukrainian teachers (one teaches Russian, the other teaches piano) along with our waiban Zhang and his family. The name of the mountain is Zhangshiyan. On Saturday we hiked to a couple locations. One was to this large concave part of the mountain which was perfect for echoes. The other was led to a temple that overlooked a dammed pond. A very ideallic scene, indeed. You can see it in the pictures.

On Sunday, we climbed the largest part of the mountain. I don't think any of us knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into. We took a lift up to one location and then we ended up going up what seemed like a myriad of stairs. It was hilarious though, because at one point it seemed like whoever constructed the stairs in the rock stopped caring because the stairs gradually started becoming just footholds. Some spots got really steep. It took us about an hour and a 1/2 to get up the mountain but it was well worth it and we explored the peak for about another hour and a 1/2. One of the Ukrainian teachers has to be at least 60, but she didn't faulter at all! She's one tough old bird.

On the way back to Shijiazhuang, our driver hit a number of bumps in the road without slowing down. Some of these bumps literally forced us out of our seats. After one such bump, the engine gradually stopped running. The driver attempted to turn over the shuttle a couple of times but to no avail. Each time there was a clicking noise, and from my limited knowledge of cars, this means that there is an electrical malfunction. Our driver opened up the compartment holding the battery and knocked some things around with a wrench. I thought "Oh, well that will help." Eventually we all got outside of the shuttle and the driver asked us all to push. We pushed to get the shuttle going at a good speed until the driver tried to turn it over (just like Little Miss Sunshine). We tried this three times to no avail. Finally, the driver opened up the fuse compartment in the passenger side, reconnected one of the fuses, and everything was just dandy.

Not too many other funny stories to tell besides that. It was just a really satisfying weekend.

One funny thing though: On Saturday evening when we had dinner, our waiban asked us what we wanted to drink. He said, "Would you like to drink...ALCOHOL?" and as he said alcohol his eyes got very large. Maybe you had to be there.

Also, when we asked our waiban what time we were having dinner when we got back from hiking he said, "Later, later." This is his usually his answer to questions concerning what time events will take place. We said, "Well...we would just like to know whether we have time to rest or take a shower." He said, "Ok, 10 minutes." haha. I think his notion of "later" is anywhere from within a few minutes to a couple years from now.

Blitzkrieg on Beijing (Sports Meeting Weekend Part 1)

Well, I'll begin with the most recent adventures. This last weekend, all the colleges in my city had what they call a "sports meeting" which essentially a time for the student teams to play each other in different sports. Because of this, we got Thursday and Friday off from teaching. Normally, I have Thursdays off and only one class on Fridays so it wasn't that big of a deal to me. I had every intention of viewing at least a little bit of the sports meeting, but this is what happened...

During lunch on Thursday afternoon I got a call from Jake who asked me if I wanted to go to Beijing with him and these Belarussian girls we're friends with....in two hours. I have enough money and had no plans so I said, "Why not?" I got home, packed, and met them at the train station. The tickets for the 4:00 train were sold out so we had to get tickets for the 7:15 train...which were standing only tickets. (Sidenote: In China, they "overbook" trains so that after all the seats are sold out, you can still buy tickets. The kicker is that since you don't have a seat, you have to stand where there is room.) This was a little disappointing, but we knew we would still arrive in Beijing for prime time party time. We ate and came back to the train station only to find out that the train was delayed until 8:45 so we waited it out for another hour and a half or so. The train was packed. Jake said he had never seen a train so full of people. There was literally barely enough room to carve out your own space to stand or sit. Not only this, but employees attempted to roll carts with food and other refreshments through the overly crowded aisles. This was met by anger, both passive-aggressive and aggressive-aggressive, by those passengers trying to get what sleep they could in the aisle. Their anger was met by anywhere from cold indifference to annoyance from the employees. I'm not the type of person to complain and I knew I would look back and laugh about it so I just solved some sudoku puzzles, drank beer, and talked with my fellow travelers. The highlight was when someone suddenly came into our car with a box of packaged goods, and started talking very loudly, waking up many of the passengers. He was a salesman trying to sell a really odd assortment of goods, the only two I remember are foot paddings and socks that were supposed to be impossible to rip. He was right in front of me so I made funny faces at him while he was trying to give his schpiel. Most of my faces were exaggerated feigns of interest which not only made Jake and the girls laugh but also the salesman. He definitely got tripped up a couple times during his schpiel from laughing at my faces. Despite the terrible time we had standing on a hot, crowded train for three hours, I would have not felt right about leaving China without having experienced the standing only train.

We got to Beijing at 12:30, got to our hostel and actually went out to the bars and clubs at 1:30 in the morning until about 5. The part of Beijing we were in had a couple bar strips (not strip clubs, those are illegal), so we just went out, danced and had a good time. Met a man from Kazakstan (and I was not even tempted to do Borat impersonations) and a New Yorker that we hung out with for a while. The hightlight of the night was going to a club and seeing about half the hipster Chinese guys in the club were wearing black-rimmed glasses. It was pretty hilarious.

The next morning we woke up at 8 and went shopping. We went shopping in the Silk Market (this huge "mall" with pretty high quality clothes with reasonable prices you can haggle down). Not only did the Chinese merchants speak perfect English but they would practically grab at you as you walked by.

"Be a good boyfriend and buy this purse for your girlfriend!"
"You need some new shoes don't you? Want some New Balance shoes?"

While we were walking around we saw these two short, stalky Indian men talking to this Chinese girl about the price of a shirt. In a very thick accent, one of the Indian men pointed at the girl and said, "Are you crazy?! Do you have a temperature or something?" and held the back of his hand against the girl's forehead. Another time I was walking with Jake and a merchant shouted out to us, "Hey, you!" Jake looked around. Then the merchant said, "Not you! The white guy! Hey white guy!"

Jake and I decided to leave the girls for a while and go to Tianamen square. Not much else to say about that except that it was big and awesome. We watched a communist propaganda film in a shop near by. I'll put up some pictures later.

After a while Jake and I started to make our way back to the train station for our train that was leaving at 4:00. The girls call Jake and tell him that they didn't leave the Silk Market until 3:20...and it takes at least 30 minutes to get form the Silk Market to the train station...after a lot of stress, the girls arrived at the last minute and we hopped on the train.

BLITZKRIEG ON BEIJING!

KHAN

Well, we just retruned from Inner Mongolia. Inner Mongolia is a "province" of China that was essentially annexed, but the history is pretty long and involved (like Tibet for instance). We visited the capital city which is Hohhot (pronounced hoo-hot). There were eight of us that went plus a Chinese woman whose English name is Eileen. Eileen teaches at the same school that our Drake pals Sable, Amit, and Angela do.

We visited a mosque along with some Buddhist temples, went shopping (ugh...), and took in the sights and sounds of the city. Plus, we ate some Mongolian barbequed goat. Here are a few of the stories we brought back with us:

By far, the highlight of the trip was when we ventured an hour and a 1/2 outside of the city to the grasslands. Like Native Americans had teepees, Mongolians had gerts (pronounced yurts) which they were able to set up and dismantle with relative ease. We thought we were going to stay in a real gert but we ended up staying in a touristy area that had concrete gerts. Despite that, we had a lot of fun. We rode horses for a couple of hours on the great grasslands and saw some traditional dancing wrestling, and horse racing. The highlight was during wrestling when four Chinese men demonstrated how Mongolians wrestle which involves trying to trip your opponent. When they call for volunteers, our friend Megan enthusiastically raises her hand, but they pick three guys before they finally pick her. One of the guys doesn't realize he is going to wrestle Megan so when he sees Megan, she gives him a "strong man" pose and his eyes widen and he kind of steps back momentarily. Keep in mind Megan is about 6'0" with an athletic build and this guy was probably 5'8" or so and scrawny. Megan ends up taking this guy down to the ground and the guy is totally embarassed while his girlfriend laughs at him. But Megan ends up shaking hands with him and took a few pictures. This Chinese woman came up to me insisting she was a doctor because Megan had scratched her knee, but like any badass Megan refused medical service.

Before we came to the grasslands, we estimated that riding horses would cost us each 100 yuan or so (which is under $20) but they wanted to charge us 200 yuan (which is still not much, except that we are paid in yuan, not U.S. dollars) so we tried to haggle with the guy. This guy ends up getting furious. He picks up a stick of the ground and hits it against the board that shows what our options are for the horse riding while he yells at us. Poor, little Eileen still tries to haggle with him but to no avail. We acquiesce and pay 200 yuan. His mood immediately made a 180 degree turn. The money made the man very happy and he lead us towards the horses. With his fist thrust in the air, he yells, "LET'S GO!!!"

I cannot describe to you how sore our asses (and in general) were the day after riding horses. Not only from the horses but in our gert we slept on hard wood floors. The stirrups were really high so it was really hard to stand up on them.
Needless to say, it was funny to hear everyone grunt and moan in the morning and walking all funny. That and everyone expressed a slight pain when sitting down for the next day or two. Despite all our complaining, riding horses was a lot of fun. We stopped a couple places while we were riding. One to admire the grasslands, one to come to a prayer site, and the other to drink milk tea and eat some Mongolian snacks.

During this trip I finally got the courage to say "kan shenme kan?" (what are you looking at?) to some Chinese. Except...it was two little boys, haha. I didn't say it very threateningly, but after I said it they both looked at each other with wide eyes and then looked away from us. I also said it to some women who were staring at us in a shop and a bunch of teenagers...so I think I got it out of my system now.

I'll add more stuff later as I think of them...