The spread was so-so. The stuffing was alright, but the beans were canned and the pumpkin pie was mostly orange frosting. I couldn't help thinking about what dinner at home would be-candlelit, warm, all my family gathered 'round, a fire blazing in the background, sweet potatoes, sparkling cider, oh oh. I'm so homesick. I know UPS and Hwa Nan worked hard to make thanksgiving special, shipping out turkeys all the way from the states. And perhaps I'm just SPOILED, but really, I was somewhat miserable.
Portrait of a Girl
At dinner, were introduced to our Hwa Nan buddies, and my partner is Angela, a petite and lovely 21-year-old. After the meal, which she thought was "strange," we walked around the city and talked. She is very skilled at English, and I can see why--she goes to school 7 days a week, studying translation. The classrooms are huge and crowded, though, and it's hard to see how anyone could pay attention in there, especially from the back. She doesn't go out much, even in her own city, and admits she has few friends. She doesn't want to travel because she thinks it would be too difficult. She calls herself an "indoor girl," and her main hobbies are studying, shopping and surfing the net.
She lives in a house with her parents, but her parents are always gone because they work in different cities. She's mostly alone, she says. An only child, she wishes she had an older brother to look after her. Sometimes the electicity or the water pipes break, and she doesn't know how to fix them, so she lives by herself in the dark and cold for days at a time, hoping for help from some benevolent neighbor. She spends a lot of time in internet chat rooms looking for friends. Girls don't talk to her, she says, so she usually makes "friends" with muslim men from places like Pakistan and India. She showed me a picture of one of them on her cell phone, and she says he might come visit her some day. He calls her sometimes, and they've been having a "relationship" for two years. I asked her if her parents knew about it, and she looked embarassed. She has never had a real boyfriend before. "Sometimes in primary or secondary school, boys wrote love notes to me," she explained. "I always told them that if they write again, I will tell the teacher. I didn't want a boyfriend. All I wanted to do was study." Since she started college, she doesn't have much homework, so she gives herself tasks to keep her busy, like reading books. But the books are strictly academic--she rarely reads stories.
Whenever something negetive happens, like the bus driver getting in a heated argument with a passenger, she asks me if this happens in America. She thinks of America as very clean and safe. She expects very little of me, and is suprised that I can use chopsticks and whenever I say a word in Chinese. She asks me what Americans talk about and do for fun, and I don't know how to explain. She thinks her life is very boring compared to ours, and I comment that we are very lazy and self-indulgent in comparison.
Splitting the Bill in China
Anglela and I went out to a traditional resaurant with another Hwa Nan-Pac Rim duo. It reminded me of the dim sum restaurants in Vancouver BC, though the Chinese girls had never heard the term "dim sum." I had some fried spicy tofu, pumpkin cakes, shrimp dumplings, bok choy and sweet bean buns. Afterwards, we had a lot of trouble calculating how much each person should pay. The whole thing took a long ten minutes, and I was embarassed. I saw a Chinese mom and daughter fighting over who pays the bill (a friendly sparring, because both parties want to treat eachother). I wanted to just cover it, since it was only a little over $10 for the four of us, but my Pac Rim mate thought it would be showy and presumptuous. We knew they didn't have have a lot, so we let them calculate the cost down to the penny depending on how much each person ate. It was strange. Even in the states, we would split the bill evenly by the number of people for the sake of convenience, and because talking about money with friends is uncomfortable. Japanese society reminded me more of the bill-sparring couple--you have to fight if you want to pay. My host family, Japanese friends and even western backpackers usually footed the full bill quietly unless I insisted on paying the whole thing, and I usually had to act before anyone noticed or they would jokingly argue. Occasionally I would drop around $50 on a meal or $25 or so on a few drinks or snacks, but I was covered for the most part if the person were older, Japanese or male. I ended up with a lot of extra money at the end of the day. Personally, I like the idea that people should volunteer to pay the whole bill, on the unspoken understanding that it would be the other person's turn next. It's nice to treat and be treated, and it usually evens out in the end. The overall feeling is warm and friendly, and there are no embarassing disputes over money. I should have just paid the whole thing myself. My Humble Abode: I share a common room with 6 other girls, and my room with one roommate, Marlene. We have a kitchen, television (which we haven't touched), dining room table, internet jacks. Everything we need. My only complaint is that there are a lot of cockroaches living in the shower drain, and the drawers are really hard to open and shut. But I hear the dorms of Hwa Nan are a madhouse--ten girls to a room, and only one toilet in the whole building! So we feel very fortunate.
My apartment
My bed
Overall Impression:
This part of the country is much more impoverished than any region of China we have seen yet. After the cleanliness and organization of Japan, the differences are striking. There are few foreigners here, so sometimes I feel like an animal at the zoo--lots of pointing and staring, sometimes hostile. There are a lot of dirt roads, glass shards and winding allies. The downtown is huge and slightly intimidating, though, and the buses are packed. Angela hates the bus so much that it makes her physically sick, and I can see why. She told me about the pickpockets, the gropers, and a funny a story about a girl who went to kiss her boyfriend and the bus moved, so she kissed an old man instead. Even though Japan prices were high, I wish I had done more shopping there now that I have seen China's markets. To be blunt, the clothes here are gaudy and tasteless. Frilly pink things, money sign belts, rhinestones, shirts with threads already coming out, loud patterns and fake brand logos. I got some lovely, high quality things in Japan, the land of subtle and understated beauty, that don't seem to exist here even at a high price. I need a new t-shirt, and all I ask is that it doesn't have sequins or cheesy additions. The general designs of China, from architecture to music videos, can often be a little over-the-top for me. Lots of fake gold, big structures and a general show-off, overdone fashion. It's a little like the American 1980's when people were just coming into money and they wanted to shout it out with loud colors, extra fabric and shiny accessories. Or, like mainstream American hip hop--talking about excess money is impressive because so many people go without. Oh bling bling. It's all a bit jarring to my hippie tastes.
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