Hang-zhou Let’s Go!

This week was the mid-autumn festival in China. This means a three day vacation

September 22-24 for teachers and most 9-5 workers. For Kenny, it meant September 22nd off. It also means moon cakes everywhere and little fake strings of fall leaves tied around the poles in trust-mart (the Chinese version of wal-mart). Now I LOVE MOON CAKES! But, most Americans don’t seem to. Kenny thinks they are gross as do most of my friends. A moon cake is this pastry item about the size of the palm of your hand. It is filled with a very thick substance that can vary from red bean paste to coconut paste to mung beans to almonds and nuts to duck eggs (that are supposed to represent the moon) to Haagen Daaz ice cream! I haven’t tried the duck egg or haagen daaz ones yet, which I am not happy about… but I will. They also have Chinese characters on them that I can’t read but from what I understand are well wishing expressions. Anyway, I’ve been eating a lot of them especially over the past few weeks. I hope they stay on the shelves in convenience stores. I would be sad if they are seasonal.

Anyway, the mid-autumn festival also meant “let’s travel!” to Kenny and I. For the past few weeks we have been meaning to go to Hangzhou. This is mostly because my friend Qing from graduate school grew up there and gave us a list of suggested places to visit, and because it is only an hour and a half away from Shanghai by train. Plus, it is a very green outdoorsy place and in Shanghai grass is something you sort of start to miss seeing. So Monday I told the other music teachers that Kenny and I were planning to go over the break, and they said they would help me buy tickets online. The only issue was that by the time we

It’s my first train ride!

got around to buying the tickets it was too late to buy them online. I guess they mail the tickets to you, so you can’t pick them up at the station. Thus, on Tuesday afternoon I biked down to the railway station with a notepad that said “2 tickets from Shanghai Nanjing (south railway station) to Hangzhou on 9.22 at 7:10am” written in Chinese characters hoping for the best. So this is how it went…

First of all, let me tell you the railway station is a big place that encompasses the bus station, the train station, and the subway station all in one  – and so to find the proper line is quite difficult. But I found it and got in line. I was pretty nervous about interacting with the man at the front counter. I knew how to say “I want two tickets” and “tomorrow morning” and I had my little Mandarin book handy, but interaction is always a gamble when you first move someplace. That and when I wander around by myself everyone stares at me… A lot. The man at the window seemed to understand what I wanted and I even saw him pull up the correct tickets, but then he rambled some things in Chinese I didn’t understand (I think he was pointing out that they were standing tickets) and I said tingbudong (I don’t understand) when I should’ve said duay (right, yes) and he sent me to this English speaking line.  I got to the front of the line and didn’t have enough cash to pay so then I had to wander around and find an ATM and get in line again until I finally got the tickets. Phew. So we were set to go the next morning! Hooray!

That night, we went to BeerMaster.. a bar owned by a man named Steve who I think is drunk there every night and who used to live in Britain. He microbrews three beers that are pretty tasty so when we get tired of Tsing Dao we go there. More importantly… on the

I don’t think Bella will like me

way home we found a friend! A hedgehog. Now, Kenny and I have both owned hedgehogs before and have been looking for a pet, so at the time we felt quite lucky! We picked him up and put him in our shower to determine his outcome on another day. I will tell you 3 days later he is still with us. And today Kenny was talking about how we are going to bring him to America so I have a feeling he is staying with us for a while at least. No name yet! Let me know if you have a good idea. It is hard to top Hoggle.

The next morning we gathered our things and got to our bikes only for Kenny’s bike pedal to fall off (for about the 10th time) splattering the egg sandwich he had in his hand to the ground and delaying our travel to the train station. We biked to the gate, got in a taxi, and ran to the train, boarding it with 3 minutes to spare.

It turns out that this was Kenny’s first ever train ride! And we didn’t even have a seat 😦 But we chose one of the fast nice trains so sitting on the floor near the window was pretty tolerable. When we got there, our first mission was to buy return tickets so that later in the day we wouldn’t get stuck in Hangzhou if they

were sold out. This meant another difficult communication attempt with the people at the box office. So we went over and again they had to yell for an English speaker because apparently our Mandarin is awful.  But again we were very close to getting the tickets without assistance!  Still, the attendant seemed more comfortable making sure we were properly serviced. We happily walked away with the tickets until we realized that they were for the main Shanghai railway station not the south railway station. So we got back in line and got new tickets. We double checked that they were the right station and they showed us they were for 7:50 so we were set.

Next we stopped and ate some Bibimbop… a Korean dish that comes in a hot bowl that is kind of like a fajita plate, it still sizzles. There is a raw egg on the top and a bunch of veggies and rice. You mix it up and it cooks the egg in front of you and then you eat the deliciousness. Now that we had lunch at 9:30 in the morning we set off for West Lake (Xi hu).

We got a taxi and explored the area for a while, took a nice little boat ride and bought A qipao dress. Hangzhou is supposedly really good at tea and silk so I felt I should buy those two things there. In general, it was just really nice to soak up all the green and walk around without an agenda. Throughout the day we were photographed at least a half dozen times for being white, we had trouble finding toilet paper for the squat toilet bathrooms, and we saw a bunch of neat flowers and fish. It was not raining most of the day, but it was chilly compared to the 90 degree heat we’ve become accustomed to in Shanghai, and there was a steady mist of rain throughout the day. The area around West Lake is enormous and you could probably spend a week just getting lost walking around it looking at temples, pagodas, museums, mountains and parks. In general, Hangzhou is not considered to be a large city in China but when you look at the skyline it is no Pittsburgh, that is for sure. Apparently the population is somewhere near 8.5 million.

Finally we tired of the West Lake area and decided to either look for a tea house or to find the Lingyin Temple (it was on our list provided by Qing). So we walked down Lingyin

road for what felt like forever failing to find a tea house or the temple! Finally I coerced Kenny to get on a bus that seemed to be going to the temple and ta da! we were in the vicinity in moments. At this point we were very hungry and a bit tired so we looked for food but found a lift going high into the mountains instead. Kenny said that we had to go to this temple so we bought tickets and up we went. Let me just say I was scared out of my pants going up this thing. Not only am I a little untrusting of Chinese engineering, but it was rainy and windy up on this mountain. The lift would randomly slow down and speed up. Kenny was telling me about a dream he had where we fell really far and kept talking about whether we would survive if we fell.

I was happy to get off the lift. 🙂

At the top was a Buddhist temple. It was unfortunate it was so foggy and misty because the view from the top probably would have been very beautiful, but instead it appeared we were in heaven. Buddhist heaven. Who knew Buddhist heaven existed. I guess not everyone can be reincarnated. Anyhow, the temple itself had some cool statues. I don’t know why the one statue had a lot of offerings of briefcases. There were also a lot of homeless people missing arms and begging for money up there. Kenny and I were pretty confused how they got there.

We returned to the ground safely, and searched for a taxi to get dinner on Hefang street with absolutely NO LUCK. We walked to a bus and took the bus to an area with more taxi’s. Two taxi’s pulled over for us but refused to take us to Hefang street. Confused and frustrated, I talked to a Chinese university student that could speak a little English in an attempt to figure out the problem. She tried to help and called the taxi line but was unable to solve the riddle either. The driver’s just showed us a sign with Chinese characters we didn’t understand. We are pretty sure they get a dinner break at about 5pm and they avoid taking customers before their break. We got one more to pull over for us but this time Kenny refused to get out and flashed the driver 100 RMB. ($15 USD) The driver definitely told me in Mandarin that Kenny is crazy, but he was good humored and laughed at the crazy Mei guo ren (American people). As a cultural thing he wouldn’t take the 100 RMB when we arrived, but we gave him 50 for the ride anyway.

Hefang street was very pretty and had many restaurants. It was hard to choose one and after asking for the cai den (menu) at like seven of the restaurants (which by the way were all very poorly translated… even worse than in Shanghai, I would say), we decided to just go in one. The restaurant forgot to bring us our chicken so we had to try to communicate that to them and by the time we got it we decided it was probably cat anyway and were pretty full from dumplings and cucumber and duck. We wandered around and bought a few little things in the area and then caught a taxi back to the train station.

When we arrived at 7pm we looked at our tickets and discovered that in fact our tickets were not for 7:50, but 6:24. I was in a

panic but Kenny held it together quite well. We headed back to the ticket window again and were very fortunate. There were tickets for another train that evening, and we only had to pay the difference in price not pay for the tickets again. It was excellent. When we walked away we noticed that they were not for the south station again and they were not for another hour. While walking around looking for Haagen Daaz moon cakes we saw a baby pooping on a KFC plate in the middle of a crowd with his mother patting his back making sure he was okay. This was disorienting… and we decided to go back to the ticket booth one last time to see if they had tickets for the south station. They did not. So we got a burger at BK, bought a pack of cards, and boarded the train. Again our tickets were standing tickets but we found two seats and played cards and napped.

train troubles

Probably the most amazing thing was the feeling when I stepped off the train. The stress of traveling diminished immediately because I knew I was in my hometown again. I knew where I was and how to get places and even had options. I could’ve taken the metro or a taxi and either way I knew I’d get home safe. Not that I haven’t felt like I am at home here on Bai Se Lu, but this moment was significant. As I got in the taxi and looked at the buildings I felt like I was home. I could see the difference between these buildings and signs from the ones in Hangzhou; they belonged distinctly to Shanghai and I recognized them. It was a great day that represented all the things that I’ve come to know about China; struggle and confusion followed by gratification and satisfaction with a boatload of memories.

I could be stubborn or insane.

I have tried to write blogs in the past and have consistently failed to continue my work. I will write in it for about a week and then become distracted by the next big project that comes along in my life. Let’s hope that for this portion of my life I can keep it up!

So to be entirely honest, the day before I left for China I was basically scared out of my wits. Scared I would forget things or be unable to get to things I wanted or needed once I got here. Scared of how the move would effect Kenny and I’s young and healthy relationship. Scared of missing my family or being unable to pay bills or that the visa situation would get messed up. Scared it would be really difficult to find a decent modestly priced place to live. Scared of the health check once I got here and scared that I wouldn’t be able to take on a full time music teaching job. Scared about my father’s recovery from his very recent surgery.

I had to do it though. After all I’ve been through to get to this point, there was absolutely no way I could turn back.

The flight was long and stressful…. but seriously, tearing myself away from my mom and Kenny’s family was pretty difficult. And then the plane ride went well.. but I was nervous about meeting the representatives at the airport and finding our way around and such.  Thailand it was doable because I could just follow trusty Gary Coutu 🙂 The movies on the plane ride were really random. Xmen played, and some weird French film, and like three classic Chinese movies. But it was sweet that on the back of the chair in front of me there was a plug for my computer! Awesome. I always wanted a plane like that. And the drinks and food were free (unlike American flights) so I had a beer and special vegetarian meals that were actually tasty: Cheese and spinach ravioli! Mmm. But again, Kenny and I did have several panicky conversations, and it was impossible to sleep comfortably. I wish I had pictures of how inventive we were in trying to position ourselves to sleep.

Eventually… we arrived! We went through customs where Kenny had to go through a random security check which was terrifying… and then our luggage didn’t show up on the conveyer belt!  Hooray. At the time that was very scary as well considering one of my bags was my Euphonium, an expensive instrument. Nevertheless we met Dan, the representative from my school, as well as a slue of foreign teachers that were actually on the same plane that we were and hopped on a school bus home. Everything kind of had that glow of something new and foreign.. my psychology teacher would insert here that it had something to do with the heightened emotional reaction in my medulla oblongata making me remember this experience so vividly… thanks Dr. Klein.. but maybe it was the palm trees or the long flight or who knows what but the ride home was memorable. Shanghai looks a lot like Bangkok in the fact that it is so spread out and mixed with areas of extreme bright light and areas of entire darkness, residential districts and fancy commercial buildings, and seemingly floating highways that bypass the entire thing.

When we got up to my 5th floor dorm and looked around, 50% of my worries immediately fell away. My dorm is no one room facility for two people like at West Chester. It’s an apartment. And it’s free. It has three rooms and was from the start at least semi-furnished. Despite the fact that my campus was previously the home of some interesting Communist Party activity, and there are cameras everywhere that make sure I’m on time for work, and that I have to get a VPN for my internet to truly work, and that it’s about a half hour south of the Bund, I actually really like it.  There is a gate around the whole thing that makes me feel safe, it’s pretty and doesn’t smell bad like much of Shanghai does, from my balcony I can see the Pearl Tower when it isn’t too humid and hazy, I am about a ten minute bike ride to the metro/railway station, and the general population surrounding the area is mostly Chinese.  The district is not overly international (apart from the 80 foreign teachers at our school) so it feels more authentic.

Anyway, the next day we had planned to meet up with Qing and Sara and possibly go to the expo. But, they were planning to go at about 9am and we didn’t get into our dorm until late and were trying to get our internet set up in order to communicate with them or try to dial out of our dorm room or something…. until Chad *the foreign liaison who lives in my hall* came around and let me use his cell phone! So we said we would go get cell phones in the morning and then meet up with them.  Well, we missed out on Qing (a friend from graduate school) which I am very sad about 😦 but at least we got to see Sara! Who was very very helpful in giving us tips and the basics of the language. ( I am eternally grateful) I probably learned more that day than I have since! And she brought us to our first Hot Pot restaurant thank goodness. Wish she were still here.

Since then its been a whole lot of random exploring as just Kenny and I or with random friends that we have made here at the school. As much as we came here to travel, it has become abundantly clear that this experience is largely about work and growing in our career.  The thing Kenny was most worried about – getting a job – worked out just fine. He took a job at the Boxing Cat Brewery, an American restaurant near the French concession. Whether it is exactly the job he was looking for or not is debatable, but it is an excellent starting point. Especially because the working (Z) visa situation is as follows: once you get one, you get a little booklet that makes it easy to transfer from job to job. Most chef positions here prefer if you already hold a working visa. So, once he gets the visa from the Boxing Cat, he can quit in a few months if he doesn’t like it and easily get a different job.  And in the meantime he is practicing his Mandarin language skills in the kitchen.

As for my job… it’s fabulous. I feel extremely spoiled because I work in probably the prettiest office on campus with all Chinese teachers.  And about four of them speak English moderately well.  They help me learn Chinese, I help them learn English. They are outgoing and like interacting with me. They steal my music worksheets a lot because they like my work and they prefer to make power points (they say PPT’s only and get confused if I say power point). I give them English lessons and they always like to pick up the strange words the most. Like, I was trying to describe Mozart’s personality to them and I used at least a dozen adjectives and the one they keep repeating is “goofy.” They asked me all the ways to say “how are you?” and I gave them about six different ways, and they’re favorite is “What’s shakin’?” Anyway, they make me feel better about how Chinese people are always laughing at how I say things because I can’t help but laugh when they mispronounce things like “mink” instead of “milk” or “French Hor” instead of “French Horn.” I haven’t taken a picture of them yet, but I will soon.

And, I will write more soon. But I need to plan for my voice class this afternoon! More later.