Moon Cakes in the Shizzy

This last week I got to go to Shijiazhuang (and most people can't say that so we call it the Shizzy). Turns out that's where we needed to go to get our physicals and foreign expert cards so what I had thought would only be a weekend turned into a week, which suited me just fine because all my classes were cancled, I got to hang out with the Shizzy kids longer and I got a free ride home.

So Cathy Lee and I left Chengde on the night train at 11 PM while Andrea went to Beijing to visit her friend Aubry from high school. Let me tell you; it was a small miracle that we got tickets for the right day and place so we weren't complaining... until we got into our train car and realized what we had done. In China there is usually a choice of having a soft seat, hard seat, soft sleeper or hard sleeper. For a 10 and a half hour overnight ride to Shijiazhuang you'd usually want a soft sleeper, but see, we thought we were just lucky enough to actually get tickets. This meant that we were lucky enough to have hard seats with a family of four (three of them facing us and one on our side of the bench) where we had just enough leg room for me to stratle the old man sitting across from me. Now, usually, us foreign girls are up walking around in a sea of Chinese, not crammed into a tiney train car where most passengers need to stand. In this close proximity we were like caged animals... why don't you just throw a couple of apples into a vat of gold fish... what? we didn't belong there at all. We couldn't have gotten stared at more if we were wearing show girl outfits. About 20 minutes into our trip I realized (at Cathy Lee) that this train ride was just a few hours short of our original 13 hour flight to China. YAY! "Brandon so owes us dinner", was her response. THEN about 40 minutes into our ride the 7 year old girl a few rows ahead of us crapped her pants in her sleep and continued to sleep while the rest of the train covered their noses and mouths because, though it's China and the smell of garbage is the general perfume, it's usually never this intense. DOUBLE YAY! "Brandon owes us way more than just dinner", was my response.

So we didn't sleep much. Once Brandon met us at the train station and took us back to his apartment for a nap and a shower we were much happier. The ultimate treat came when we met up with Matt, Julie and their Aussie friend Greg for Pizza Hut. Glorious day! Supreme, cheese lovers, Hawaiian, pepperoni AND parmesan cheese for sprinkling?!?!?! Plus they had some really sweet waffle fries... goodness, I could go on forever. After gorging ourselves we went to Matt and Julie's for a little MidAutumn Day Festival (aka Moon Festical) gathering. Greg brought a couple of friends from Camaroon and Lauren (from Drake) brought a small crew from her school as well. All went swimmingly until I attempted to throw Mr. Zhang's parachute inside the apartment and fell flat on my ass. To answer your question, yes, I did have a giant purple bruise on my right cheek for the rest of the week. It was at this time that everyone wanted to go to a dance club except for Cathy Lee, Brandon and I because traveling and then drinking heavily didn't really mix well with staying up late and dancing, or in my case, throwing myself on the floor.

So we hung around downtown the next day before we had to take C.Lee to the train station because, unlike Andrea and I, her school had made no mention of her needing to stay or when they would be taking her to the Shizzy for her processing at all for that matter. We did manage to get her a soft sleeper for the way home so she was pretty happy about that. Why is it that traveling always seems to produce the best stories for us while in China? Cathy Lee found herself sharing her 4 person sleeper car with only one other 50 year old man who decided to drop trou immediatly after entering. Going to the bathroom down the hall seemed a distasteful option for changing into his pajamas. He then chugged about 4 bottles of "orange juice" which then gave him gas for the rest of the trip... sorry Cathy Lee. No sooner had she arrived back in Chengde that Mr. Fan (her care taker of sorts) told her that she'd be leaving the next morning to drive to Shijiazhuang with Andrea and other people from my school. hahahahaha... aww, sucks.

And on to the physical examination portion of our story! Cathy Lee hates needles, and doctors... so it would be appropriate for her to have the hardest time while we're at the Hebei Foreign Medical Examination Center. First they took a blood sample. I actually saw them rip open a new package and take out a fresh needle so we were in the clear there, no HIV for me please. Then on to THE hallway. This hallway had about 10 rooms off of it, each specializing in one area of the exam. The woman who checked my blood pressure and height was nice, the eye lady kind of scared me, but the best was the EKG lady. Cathy Lee got to go first for that one. Not realizing that we'd have to be completely topless for her to apply the little suction cup monitors to us, Andrea and I were just waiting around in the room for our turn until Cathy Lee told us we'd have to leave. Soon the EKG lady came back out into the hallway and said something to Laura (our foreign affairs woman from Chengde). She had to ask one of us to tell Cathy Lee to relax. So I stood close to the door and said, "Cathy Lee...?" "AH! WHAT!?! I'M NAKED!" "The woman says you need to chill out dude, relax, you're heart's pumping too fast." "She keeps hitting me and pushing me around! How is that supposed to mean relax? Fine, ok, I will, send her back in..." Oh yeah, we also got ultrasounds on our abdomens. Andrea and I are baby free and Cathy Lee is happy to report that it's a boy. (just kidding) And that's about it for funny things there.

The rest of the week was just nice and relaxing. Brandon's campus is really quite lovely and much larger than ours (as is his apartment so I'm jealous). There's a nice little park with trees and walkways and a big lilly pond. Very romantic for late night, misty strolls under the big MidAutumn full moon (which was hidden because it rained for about two days straight).

Our ride home provided some more entertainment though. Laura and the other dude stayed in the Shizzy to fill out more paperwork for us while the three of us got driven home by a man we now affectionatly call "pack and a half" for the amount of cigarettes he smoked on the way. He spoke no English. 8 hours in the car never seemed so long. It could have been that he didn't feel the need to roll down the window when smoking... could have been the Chinese talk radio busting through the car speakers... could have been the awesome food stops we made. For breakfast (we left at 6 AM) we stopped at a sort of Chinese truck stop buffet where we ate what we eat for lunch and dinner every day... spicey noodles, buns and unidentifiable stuff with a refreshing bowl of egg drop soup to drink. Lunch was a different story. We sat, helpless as pack and a half ordered. As we waited patiently for our food a mangy, matted down, white cat strolled in and went through a door to our right. Minutes later our food came out of that same door... among the 4 meat dishes we decided that two of them were probably the cat; some odd tasting cold cuts and another plate of grizely light meat with carrots. Add that to your fear factor food list Brandon! We ate cat! Or so we assume...

The End

I got the golden ticket!

Let me tell you a grand tale of a toy master and his friends. Sit back children and relax, it's going to be a bumpy mountain ride... LITERALLY!
We'll start at the begining. Last night, while enjoying our usual meal of dumplings and pijiou, I was listening to Cathy Lee rant about how her students don't believe in God, when the doorbell of Andrea's apartment rang. We all paused, confused, looking around as we realized that our entire social network was already sitting in the room. Who could it be? Why, a 13 year old boy and his poofy haired father of course! (I might add that he had the best Asian hair we've seen thus far.) Aaaaanyway, these two very excited visitors were extatic to find, not one, but three foreign teachers in the apartment. The son has been teaching himself English for many years and is fairly proficient. He explained that he and his father become friends with all the foreign teachers and then dropped a few names like (crazy) Andrew and (cracked out) Jamie, both of which were teachers at Cathy Lee's college. I guess this father and son team work very closely with CCTV, the English channel in China. After many disjointed sentences and furrowed eyebrows we determined that we would meet them for lunch the next day and then slide down a mountain. I know what you're thinking; possible abduction senario. But no, Mr. Zhang gave us his website (www.ofo21.com) where there is a picture of him popping up from behind some lovely bushes and quotes him as being one of China's top toy makers. Yes, we met the Asian Willy Wanka of toys, and we got the golden tickets my friends. Now, this qualifies our situation with this man as completely viable and rock solid as far as Chinese standards go. So as we're looking at this website (where you will see a picture of crazy Jamie in bib oberalls) and the doorbell rings again! By now Andrea is too afraid that they heard our histerical laughter through the windows as they left, so I step up. I don't even open the door all the way when Mr. Zhang snakes his arm through the crack and thrusts a green plastic bag in my hands. It's large and heavy... and appears to be a watermelon. In shock, I only have time to mutter xiexie (thank you) before he slams the door back closed and skuttles off. WHAT? The girls are still in the other room wondering what happened. I can't speak, I can only shuffle back into Andrea's room, bent over, about to wet myself laughing at what has just happened and soon all three of us are gasping for air. Our hostess decides that it would be best to hack into the melon with one of her three (yes three) cleavers, and we gorge ourselves until it's time for bed.
This morning I went to class as usual and spoke to my parents for the first time in over a week. After hearing about my plans to eat lunch and slide down a mountain with China's own Willy Wonka, my mother's first responce was, "don't take your clothes off Stephanie". At quarter to noon I went over to Andrea's and nervously waited for our lunch date with my other two partners in crime. Mr. Zhang showed up on his motor bike, wearing a tarp in the rain, and ushered us into a cab that took us to a restaurant near C.Lee's school. Walking into our private room we found little Zhang and two CCTV journalists; one woman who spoke a little English and one who spoke none. We proceeded to eat some Southern style food which set our mouthes alight, though very very good and left in a couple cabs for the mountain.
The "slide" looked like an individual bumper car on a track. Who was going first? Do you really need to ask? Me. So I get strapped in and my car is pulled, halfway up the mountain, but I'm disappointed to find out that I have to stop and get out at the top. Our group all lands on solid ground and trecks over to an open area where there are over 200 enormous buddah statues all from different areas of the world. Holy hell, I didn't realize we'd be getting cultured on this mountain slide trip as well and I'm impressed. I guess this whole attraction was built only two years ago and not many Chengde residents even know it exists. But looking at the buddahs is not what we're here for. We're here to play with Mr. Zhang's toys. The CCTV women pull out their cameras as we get an incredibly elaborate lesson in how to set up our personal, mini parachutes. Andrea sends hers off first with flourish and practically throws it over the side of the mountain. I send mine off directly up, the right way, and Mr. Zhang replies encouragingly that I am very sexy. Perhaps he didn't mean that he thought I was baby making material, but just an English expression to please. After playing for a while, we were told that it was now time to climb the mountain. 1,482 stairs later, hearts pounding, we reached the top and saw Chengde city in all of her foggy glory (remember it was raining lightly all day). Andrea's afraid of heights, so on this made the treck down a slow one, which was fine with me considering my legs were jelly by then. We then got our ultimate reward: the bumper car express down the second half of the mountain! You can control your own speed by pushing or pulling on your break stick and the non-English speaking CCTV employee infront of me does not exactly like to live on the edge. So I could not enjoy rocketing down as quickly as I had hoped and Cathy Lee angrily followed me, screaming profanities that I should hurry. Grandrea brought up the rear a good twenty minutes after we all finished. The first thing she said after getting off was, "wow, I went really fast!"
The end.
On a side note, we have extended our social circle this evening after meeting up with 5 other foreign teachers. These are the people we've been praying to meet since our arrival here. They're just great. Smart, funny, entertaining people with great advice and travel sense. You'll be hearing much more about them in blogs to come for I foresee us hanging out a lot. Helen and Ginger are the 50 year old surrogate mothers of the group. Jimmy is the 30 something token male of the group who speaks pretty good Chinese (thank you Jimmy). Tricia and Kier are two recent college grads from the states who seem to have a lot in common with us three. We're very excited to have met them and they us.
My world is expanding. Thank God. And C.Lee and I are escaping to Shijiazhuang this weekend for some Pizza Hut, Moon Cakes and Drake interaction.
On cloud nine,
Stephanie

Beijing: the city of romance and Mao Zedong

Before I go into our recent trip to Beijing, I'd first like to mention my visit to the local witch doctor. Now, somehow I managed to get some pretty gigantic redish purple welts on my legs. I could only assume they were bug bites, which really freaked me out. After I sprayed down my whole apartment with the deadliest bug killer you'll ever see, and almost killing myself in the process, I had Laura, our foreign affairs officer, take me to the doctor. We were on our way home from the police depart (to get our visas extended) when I asked if there was a smaller, clinic type place she could take me instead of something so serious like the hospital. She paused, looked around, and pointed to a random door around the corner. Above said door was a red and white, medical looking cross, so we walk in. Behold, the creepiest place I've been so far while in China. It was a tiny room where 4 people were... "working?"... to the side were 3 cots, one of which was occupied by a sleeping man wearing a blanket and an IV. Needless to say, I felt pretty good about it. Laura said something in Chinese and then told me to show them my leg. They chatted a bit. I girl disappeared and came back with a little yellow and red box. They told me to put it on my bites 2 or 3 times a day. It cost 50 cents American. Who in their right mind is satisfied by medicine they just got for 50 cents? I got home, opened the box and found a little bottle of "Red Dragon Oil" inside. Luckily there were English directions letting me know that Red Dragon Oil can cure everything including; chest pain, abdominal pain, neck pain, rheumatic pain, aching back, sprains, bruises, injuries from exercises, and bites from mosquitoes and bees... oh, and excessive bleeding. Whatever, I guess my bites are looking better...
Aaaaaanyway. The girls and I decided to get the heck out of Chengde this weekend and get some Western style back in our lives by going to Beijing. Brandon, Matt and Julie (Drake students teaching in Shijiazhuang) met up with us too. We got a hostel booked for Saturday night, but there weren't any trains leaving Chengde that would get us to Beijing at a reasonable time, so we decided to take a bus. Since taking this bus, the girls and I have made up a new game called if ________ could see me now, their reaction would be _________. I think of all the people I know, my mother's reaction would have been the best. Mom, if I do somehow convince you to come visit me, we will NOT be taking a bus anywhere. Holy hell, this bus was a piece of work. 45 yuan a piece got us a seat that I could just fit my legs into. We were all packed in like sardines and just when we thought we could fit no more, we would randomly stop on the side of the road to see if anyone else wanted to go to Beijing too. A woman that sounded like the famed Ms. Swan from Mad TV made the bus driver stop at one point so that she could pee in a corn field, and the man directly behind Cathy Lee and I belched for four and a half hours while our bus took bumps in the road about as well as it could considering it had no shocks. The end of our journey brought us to an unknown bus station in Beijing where the best thing we could do was find a cab and point to the address of our hostel. All was well when we finally arrived finding our Shizzy group who had gotten there only 20 minutes before we had.
Food was first on our list, so we hit up the McDonalds. After almost two weeks of dumplings, rice and noodles that was easily the best double hamburger with cheese I've ever had... ever! The highest class item we saw there were the Micky D's jeans that all of the workers were sporting. I'm thinking they're going to be the next hot fashion trend and you'll all be getting some for Christmas.
Next was Tienanmen Square where I bought a Mao Zedong wrist watch featuring Chairman Mao waving his right arm in a way that made me almost wet myself. Bartering from 100 to 25 yuan, I figured it was an ok deal. After putzing around the Forbidden City for a few hours we were forcibly removed as the government was trying to set up for the 60 year anniversary of China resisting the Japanese invasion during WWII. So we went back to the hostel to freshen up, met some Polish guy and a Canook studying feminism in China, Rita... she was a peach and a half, and went down the street to sit on some midgy chairs and eat the spiciest food I ever hope to eat. As an appetiser, Brandon and I romantically shared a pile of spicy snails and then ate this crazy basket of fried... stuff. The mushrooms were ok, the fish balls were a little odd but hands down the most startling thing was the spinach which completely engulfed my mouth in flames. For serious, I was glowing. After downing several rather large bottles of 2 yuan (aka 25 cent) beers we all took a few cabs to club row where we drank a few more outside before going into any of the bars. This is where we met a little Chinese boy we named Mogley for his shirtlessness and tiger print boxer shorts. He was cute enough clinging to my legs and counting to 10 in English until he asked me for money. After I said no he started lathering up some spit in his mouth. I pried him from me, telling him that if he spit on me I would punt him... so he turned around and hocked a big one at Cathy Lee, hitting her squarely in the thigh. There was no punting because we held her back, but she got pretty close.
Blah blah blah, we all had a good time, went to bed, woke up with big hangovers, nursed ourselves back to health and then went to a huge antique market. Coolest stuff ever there. We all want to go back once we get paid and can actually buy things. Later, Brandon escorted the girls and I to the train station to catch the 10:30pm train that would get us into Chengde at 4am, but there was no room. So we got tickets for the following morning, and though I was going to miss one of my classes, Laura understood our troubles and we were happy to spend another night in Beijing with our friends. The highlight of our second night was the crazy vodkas we found down the street. One had snakes in it, one had big ass lizards and the crowning glory was the one with tiger penis in it. Very exciting. Normally I would have been all for disgusting stuff like that, but I had a few moral issues with the tiger penis vodka. This wasn't a problem, however, because women aren't allowed to drink it anyway. Apparently my sexual prowess would have been severely messed up as it was a male aphrodisiac... whatever, Brandon and Matt got drunk off two shots because it was so strong and I just giggled at them as they tried to make friends with the bartender who didn't know a lick of English.
In all, it was an entirely refreshing trip. All homesickness was cured after some Western food and interaction with familiar faces. We figure we'll need a trip like that every once in a while to keep us sane (being some of the only foreigners in Chengde) so we're going to the Shizzy in a few weeks for the Moon Festival. Moon cakes all around and some home cooked meals from Matt and Julie... I can hardly wait.