A picture speaks a thousand words
But a gif…
More China Adventures
My grandma lives in a retirement community not far from my aunt’s apartment. The head of the nursing staff heard that my grandma’s two grandsons from Amelica were visiting! The head nurse happens to have a daughter who is going to study abroad in England in a couple of weeks. Of all the cute girls with the short skirts, leggings and :3 faces, I get stuck with the best one of all.
Wat.
Her style is unique; I don’t think I’ve seen anyone in China like hers. Bowl cut with the back sheared up? That’s cutting edge, forgive the pun. My mom says to stop making fun of her, so I’ll stop there.
Pictured: style.
The plan was to take us to go hang out somewhere so she could scratch up on her English. “Perfect,” I thought, “I get to see the sights and sounds of Hangzhou! :D” besides, I would have liked to speak some English after two weeks of nonstop Chinese. Okay, I’m ragging on her again, but I’m only indignant because I thought she could actually understand basic English.
Update sitting in the backseat: Check that. I just discovered that she ISN’T going to study abroad… yet. (Turns out there was another girl we were supposed to hang out with the next day who was actually going to study at the University of Sussex starting this summer). My first clue was her horribad English. And no offense to all of you who speak English as a second language, it’s hard. My Chinese is pretty bad too. Then again I don’t really aspire to study in China in the future.
So we head out to a pottery museum. It was interesting, I suppose. There were huge panels on the walls tracing the history of pottery-making in China. Luckily, I took art history ARH 302 (Ancient to Medieval Art), so BOOM I was already scratched up on that topic. Those panels had Chinese and an English translation underneath. I asked our new friend if she could read it. She couldn’t. To avoid explaining the meaning of every word in the paragraph, I just read the first sentence and translated to Chinese and moved to the next exhibit. The museum was a small deal, with only two big rooms of pottery, though their artifacts were pretty top notch. Lacking in the air conditioning (it was a really humid day), but what building in China isn’t?
Her mom takes us to go eat at a 小吃 xiao chi place. 小笼包 xiao long bao is like, the most legit thing ever. I mean, I even think the frozen ones you get at Welcome are excellent. They steamed them fresh up and you had to use tickets to pay. It was really hustle bustle and lots of spilled soup and all kinds of things everywhere. 30 RMB for ten 小笼包. So awesome.
Afternoon = saved.
It took an hour for her mom to drop us back home on a trip that would normally take 20 minutes. China has a lot of two-way roads, I guess mainly to preserve the nature. There is a lot of vegetation growing along most of the roads. Well, this two-way road we’re on cuts through a forest in the Lingyin area. A common habit Chinese people do on the road is to pass on the wrong side of the road as long as there are no cars. Fine with me. This time, traffic going the other way ground to a dead stop, we were crawling along at about 15 miles an hour. Then we stop. Some motherfucking genius on the other side tried to pass a while back but discovered traffic is stopped so he can’t get back into his lane. And being a two-way road, he is now blocking our lane. I can’t even imagine this happening in America because 1. Who the hell is retarded enough to try and pass when it’s painfully obvious that you can’t get back into your lane, 2. Most two-way roads don’t have 10 foot deep pits on either side (though some do). We’re pretty much trapped. Never in my life have I ever felt so much road rage, and I wasn’t even the one driving. A police officer rolls up in his motorcycle. You’re probably wondering how: on the side walk. He somehow gets the road to become three lanes. Also, their lane started moving so that was good news. Then, to my great horror, I discover that it wasn’t just one car causing this stupid stoppage of our lane. It was a whole lane of cars. So apparently this group of cars thought they were outsmarting everyone by skipping the line, but in reality just fucked up our entire lane. I don’t even know how far back our line stretched, luckily we were near the front.
I’ll post my thoughts on Chinese drivers in another blog. If you’re Asian, imagine your mom driving. Now multiply that by a thousand. All at the same intersection. If you’re not Asian, remember that time your Asian friend’s mom offered you a ride in her minivan? Yeah.
musings at 4 am
whatever happened to the days of young love? so innocent, so true. now we’re all grown up. sometimes my heart yearns for the past and for the times that could have been. a shuffled song sparks the thought of you.
i saw an angel, of that I’m sure. but it’s time to face the truth: I will never be with you.
Sent from my iPod
mastashih.com is blocked in China
Apparently this blog does not have the Chinese government’s approval. I have to access this blog through a proxy like I do with Facebook. It’s not like I have revolutionary tendencies or my blogs talk about inappropriate material.
I visited Expo 2010 Shanghai last Friday. I took a bunch of pictures of the pavilions, they’ll be up on Facebook when I get back home to Houston. If you’re wondering, the pavilions I actually went inside were: Jordan, Laos, Japan, Lithuania, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Most of our afternoon was spent waiting for and inside the Japan pavilion. Here’s me, Christine and Franklin at the United Kingdom pavilion looking across the river.
A message from Joseph Shih
2010/06/02 Dear old Chinese lady behind me on the plane,
What would possess you to smash the backside of my seat while on this airplane? Yeah there is a bad ass touch screen movie, music, video game player embedded in the headrest but you don’t need to fucking smash your entire weight everytime you want to choose a selection. Maybe you’re fine with 15 hour flights, but my tired ass didn’t really get sleep til around 11 am this morning. I mean seriously, it feels like you’re a little kid kicking the back of my seat and it’s very annoying. I’d turn around and scream in your face, but somehow I feel the meaning of “I fucking hate you and want to shit on your face” would get lost if I tried to translate into Chinese. it’s just a touch screen, not a test of your finger strength. To compound the hilarity of this scene, your husband is sitting in the aisle across and doesn’t seem to really care that some kid is constantly jostled every 20 seconds because you want to watch “Avatar” with Chinese subs. I hope you will one day realize how fucking rude you are, though I think that is unlikely since you’re still rocking my seat as I write this on my iPod touch.
Cliff’s: This Boeing 777 is really awesome and advanced, really digging the complimentary on-demand movies and classic video games. Even the leg space is pretty epic, and I’m a six foot character. Power outlets in every row, i find it hard to believe I’m in economy class. Props to Boeing for no longer making us feel like bored sardines. Too bad they can’t eliminate inconsiderate passengers who know nothing of the pain they cause others. Maybe I’m being the asshole here.. maybe she’s dying to talk to me and she is just kicking the shit out of my back to get my attention.
Update! I got up later and stood around the lavatory area to “stretch” and scope out what was really going on. I saw that you aren’t even pushing any buttons, you’re just straight up kicking my seat. Good thing there’s only 3 hours left on the flight. When you deplane, it’s common knowledge the rows in front exit first, otherwise we just have a huge smash of people fighting for the exit. But to add insult to injury, you cut right past me without even looking me in the face.