Catching Up in Xiaoshan- June 6th

Day 9 – June 6^th

Happy Duan wu day! Dragon Boat festival is today but I did not get a chance to go out to XiXi Wetlands to watch any of the races nor did I eat any Zhong Zhu..? But since I ate some the day before I think that makes up for it. 

Spent the day with Drew and Yasmina. Raining again. But at least we got to the National Tea Museum of China. It was really fascinating. Seeing all of the pottery/ceramic work really made me miss my time in the ceramics room back in high school. I need to go visit Mabes Babe when I return to Ohio. Whenver that is…

Anyway when we were in this one room we played with an interactive camera that would take pictures of you in front of a green screen (of tea fields in the spring, summer, fall, winter, or random other tea related scenery). While we were doing this one of the information/museum ladies/attendees asked if we would like to try some tea for free. Clearly there’s a catch at the end of this tasting but we figured why not. She ran us through the rest of the museum and then up some stairs. On the stair well we saw a massive tea cake (compressed tea leaves to make shapes or other such sometimes with Chinese printed onto them) it covered the wall and was probably about 8 feet long. Or the diameter may have been about 8 feet at the most 12… My sense of feet is terrible… Anyway it was huge.

After our little rush we stopped to a small room with a long dark mahogany? Table and a lot of chairs around it with a lady sitting on one side. She had a pretty fascinating set of stuff set in front of her, fairly small tea pots, glass and ceramic, little animal things that were a dark almost forest green color, and tiny tea cups. The tiny tea cups were the 3^rd best thing in this array of stuff. Oh and tea canisters duuuuh, 

We first tried green tea of the local area, then black or pu’er tea, jasmine, and finally ginseng oolong. /////watching the flower bloom in the jasmine was awesome and the sweet after taste of the ginseng oolong was amazing. I quickly learned that the latter is my favorite. The little animal things turned out to be color-changing pets when you pour hot water on em. I think they were the coolest. The second coolest was the cup/pot (served as both?) that as all white except for two animals, a dragon and a phoenix, that also changed color like the pets. They turned into these brilliant green and orange. Ah I couldn’t resist buying a set when we were shown the shop nearby. Drew also got a color changing cup. I think they might be called Don su…? Augh need to check/verify this. Yasmina bought a tiny cup set thing. One small like what we used and then long and cylindrical. They had very pretty floral designs on them.

We left the museum to check out the Green Tea Restaurant as recommended by Annika. Ended up seeing her there later on as well. We had crab and (fowl?) egg, fried cabbage and pork, drunken soybean (I think it was just slightly salted water), pumpkin and shrimp (more like krill… Shrimpy shrimp as Yasmina called it), a very dry brownie, a pretty tasty peanut butter ice the sand (….something along the lines of shaved ice with peanut butter… As we ate we saw a lot of food go by ( we sat next to a windowed wall), in particular, we saw bread boxes with ice cream on top. It turned out the boxes were completely hollow but still looked really good. Baked anything and ice cream are kind of difficult finds. I plan on stopping by a bakery to see what they have instead of living off of lame choco pies as delicious as these little bastards are.

We returned to Ling Yin kinda damp from the rain and took an hr break to figure out how I was supposed to get back to Xiaoshan that night and for a rest. Decided to try to find the night market of Nanshan road but I think we ended up at the Wushan one. I’m still unsure.

The first shop we actually walked into and checked out was something akin to Nirvana or any of the shops in Yellow Springs. Very heavy scented with incense and oil cones with tons of patchwork or brightly colored (perhaps Tinker :P) clothing. Lots of little knick knacks. We even saw a postercard? Of Chairman Mao that said Chairman Mao is a red fucker in our hearts. I have no idea what that was supposed to mean but it was kind of hilarious to see.

We stopped at a little snack stand with a guy who knew some English. He pointed to the right and said sweet and pointed to the left saying salty. They were 5 yuan and I figured why not? And grabbed a sweet disc. They were like these odd cookies we tried thanks to Travis but I can’t really describe em. They had sesame seeds on top. It was sweet and tasty. We ended up getting a crowd around us as we waited for the vendor to heat up the little baked disc. I’m not sure if they were expecting fireworks to shoot out from the disc, were fascinated by foreigners, or what… It was kind of awkward being surrounded by people with no clear reason for such a gathering. Not quite like a flash mob.

I rushed off though because I had to find my bus back to Xiaoshan. I’m not sure if it’s just me but I really have a terrible time with buses. Even the small bus routes in the PTVA. Gah. I am doomed even more so here. I’ve taken up writing down … attempting to write down the characters for the bus stops. We’ll see if that’ll do me any good. Hopefully I’ll figure it out soon before I run out of cash thanks to cabs…

Catching Up in Xiaoshan- June 4th

Day 7 – June 4^th

Woke up to find an opened umbrella with my name written on a note card on top of it. A Yi’s such a sweetie! Augh how much she tries to take care of me (and clearly succeeds) is awesome.

Although the storm/rain was a drain on the rest of my day. In fact it had interrupted my sleep as I do recall. Fairly unpleasant if I may say so.

Anyway only had one class as students did not sign up for the spa class. This meant I could go to the party at Zhejiang University with the others. I quickly set about this endeavor only to realize I had taken the 301 the completely wrong direction. I ended up at the end point for the buses. I was a bit terrified and sent a panic stricken text to J.C. then proceeded to walk aimlessly towards the buses I saw still in the area. I understood my folly and found a 301 leaving the area. It quickly took me by my place of work and then onwards.

Something weird I’ve noticed about the men… They don’t either seem to care that their flies are open/half done or are aware. Considering they piss and spit wherever they please (yes this included the bus I was in, in fact he spat right next to me) I doubt that it is the latter.

Made it to Zhejiang University, the campus is huge but because of the rain I didn’t want to take a picture. It was ugly and I like my camera. Once I arrived I was told to do some sort of improv because I was late. ><’ There were a lot of Chinese students and they all seemed pretty interested in us. It ended up being Drew, Yasmina, and I as well as Annika. Met Brandon Kung, Jason’s brother, and another foreign teacher? Matthew. They had been playing Waa, never have I ever, and some other games. We did a “boat” race  where we had to gather the items the MCs listed. At one point they called for a boy, Drew was on our team and quite easily the tallest guy in the party, which really helped us in the end. They also asked for shoes, laptops, and a jacket. I ran around without a shoe and tossed out my jacket for the win. It was a lot of fun, definitely something I want to take back to the states as ice breakers. Or even as a language game. 

After playing these games, we performed a bit of an improvised skit singing Mulan’s Let’s get down to Business…. It was… okay…? Um I supposedly played the part of Mulan. It was more of a joint effort with Yasmina but either way we were left to dry as we kind of gestured and ran around the stage in front of university students. We felt very silly singing and motioning things that we associated with the words. Ended up doing a gesture like a Tsunami for Great Typhoon. I’m not sure why but it worked for our purposes. We also gestured to ourselves for “did they send me daughters?” then pointed to the guys who were in the back hiding from the limelight. It was really silly and a lot of fun. I doubt the students really understood what we were going on about, they seemed fairly clueless. Afterwards they even asked some of us what we were singing/dancing/flailing to. It was seriously embarrassing but I guess that doesn’t matter seeing as we all had made fools of ourselves earlier. 

We then ate Zhong zhu… ? A rice triangle ball with either: pork meat, eggs, or red beans that was wrapped in a couple of large leaves similar in appearance to dried corn husks. I first ate a red bean one, which reminded me of the red bean ice cream popsicles Omma used to get for me from the Korean Market, later I grabbed one filled with pork. They were really delicious. The rice they used was insanely sticky.

While we ate we took the time to talk to the various students; I met a girl named Anniey (Annie) spelled her own special way who invited me to a movie later on next week. I don’t know that I’ll be able to easily navigate back from Xiaoshen but we’ll see how that goes. Maybe we can find a halfway point or something.

After eating we listened to Sea Lion (yes that’s her English name apparently – I find this to be super awesome) perform Ambush from Ten Sides – played on the traditional Chinese instrument the Pi Pa (also a fruit). It is considered a masterpiece much like Flight of a Bumblebee according to certain sources – i.e. Drew googling some bits instead of preparing for his class. The song/performance was amazing. I think that girl would be a killer on the banjo/guitar. The Pi pa is a really intense instrument as well. I wish her luck in all of her endeavors. 

When we left the University the others mentioned food… I was very envious. It would appear that staying in Hangzhou would have been much nicer to my stomach (and possibly wallet) as I would have been able to check out the sights and places to eat with them. It would also have just been nice to have a consistent friendly face but such is life. Apparently Yasmina has been hunting down all of the bakeries. Drew tried a century egg and overall found goodness.

I feel like I’ve missed out on a lot for having been gone for a week. I really did miss them after being gone for so little time. I guess I just missed having people who were fresh to the whole China thing around me. J.C. and Zack are great though cynical especially in regards to the job. Drew hasn’t done much with Linkman it would appear. Jim seems to keep better tabs on him than me but I guess that might be linked to the fact that he has Annika to run to and I have A Yi who treats me like kin.