On the Other Side of the Great Firewall of China

megmeien shared an Instagram photo with you

2012-01-01T14:32:00.001-08:00

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"The perfect place to check your email-in the middle of a construction zone"

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2012-01-01T14:31:00.001-08:00

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"Marie's elaborate sweet 16 birthday cake"

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2012-01-01T14:30:00.000-08:00

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"Where I buy my fruit"

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Robots: The solution to the one-child policy demographic crisis

2011-11-17T06:41:00.000-08:00

Today I started a discussion about the one-child policy and its impact upon Chinese demographics. Namely, that in 40 years, most of the population will be of pension age and will need to be supported by a smaller workforce. The Chinese people in this discussion took the argument down a path that I would have never foreseen: the future robot population in China.

No, I'm not kidding. This group spent an entire hour discussing not if robots could fill in the workforce gap, but when, and what type of robots would be used. Would the robots be machines or artificial intelligence? would the robots be able to make critical thinking decisions?

Oh China, everyday you surprise me.

hospital photos

2011-10-03T19:13:00.001-07:00

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"Xiao Ya, my coworker and one of my good friends- somehow still looking ok even after surgery"

The little boy in the market

2011-10-03T19:08:00.001-07:00

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"The little boy in my market"

Accidentally getting Shock Therapy treatment: The 5th Worst China Hospital Experience I've had.

2011-09-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

"Bzzz! Bzzzz!" the doctor explained to me, jerking his hands spasmodically to show the effect of electricity on one's body. It was at this time that I first noticed that the doctor was not wearing a shirt under his doctor's coat. My doctor was no more legitimate than my Chloe bag. Conned again.

I considered my options. My first instinct was to fling myself off the table, emphatically stating that there will be no electrocution of Meghan today! Only... there were needles on my head, neck, hands, feet, arms, and chest. The needles were attached to electric wires. The electric wires were connected to what I could only hope was a safe-for-humans voltage box. And the voltage box was controlled by Dr. Qu, who was currently miming the word electricity in a very theatrical way.

Obviously, jumping off the table in a righteous fury would be challenging. Righteous fury is often lost in translation, I don't know the word for electrocution, and most importantly, I had dozens of tiny needles piercing my skin.

My Dr. Kevorkian/Qu smiled benevolently down at me, and I was filled with a sense of foreboding. But the idea of plucking each needle out of my skin while trying to convey my horror seemed dismally time consuming, and I made the executive decision to just let this happen. After all, the worst that worst that could happen: my brain frizzles.

I passively watched as Dr. Qu turned the dial on the voltage box. The needles started jumping around in my head while Dr. Qu interrogated me as to my favorite type of Chinese food and how I could possibly prefer Greek food to Chinese food.

"Greece is so small! How could you like their food more? So strange!" he marveled. When I noted that actually, this (meaning the electric needles) was more strange than my food preference, he and the other patients and nurses in the ward all laughed at me.

Beijing at night

2011-09-22T21:29:00.001-07:00

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the Joint Conference on the "Harmonious Human Machine Environment"

2011-09-19T19:29:00.001-07:00

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"Tsinghua university. Chinglish or a freudian slip?"

But the question remains, are they saying that humans are machines? or is this a conference about the harmonious co-existance of humans and machines? Hopefully the former, because if it is a later, that is an entirely new set of disturbing questions.

Out and about in beijing

2011-09-04T20:44:00.001-07:00

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"The daily crowd waiting for the grocery store to open"

Benches are overrated

2011-08-25T23:45:00.001-07:00

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Instant happiness

2011-08-25T04:13:00.001-07:00

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"Little girls and umbrellas: two of my favorite things"

Apartments in China: A story of cyclical woe.

2011-08-19T03:24:00.001-07:00

There are times when one forgets that one is in China, times when one starts to feel a level of comfort in China, times when one falls in love with the different, unique aspects of Chinese culture, and times when one would rather set fire to a Hutong, then throw themselves into it, than deal with the cultural divide.

Welcome to apartment hunting in China.

Looking for a new abode is never fun, but looking for an apartment in China is a very special, highly developed form of torture that renders most people substantially more paranoid and less humane than before they began their quest.

A "ridiculously expensive apartment"

The view from my Dalian Apartment

As of now, I have gone apartment hunting three times. I am now wiser, to both the market and the wiles of real estate agents. All of this does me exactly no good, as now I have to acquiesce to the unfair practices with impotent fury instead of confused naivete.

Lesson 1: Dalian: Things can always get creepier

This was my first time looking for an apartment. With little language skills and absolutely no knowledge of the renting market, I somehow managed to get a fair price for a beautiful apartment, albeit after a series of bizarre days.

Day 1: Me vs. the Communist Apartments

Standing outside of the communist, unrenovated grayish-white blocks, I was caught up in the history of it all. Imagine what these blocks have seen! Imagine the lives that these people lived! I wanted to be part of it, I wanted to eat cabbage and rice, I wanted the full Mao experience. I could, for sure, rough it for a few months.

Then, as I walked past the stacks of dried cabbage lining the hallway, noted the crazy maze of pieced-together, patched pipes and finally entered the dismal, tiny apartment, my little capitalistic heart fought back and won over my common sense.

Day 2: Me vs. future murder crime scene apartments

By the end of this day, my real estate agent's will had been broken. Every apartment was exponentially more disturbing than the apartment before it.

Apt 1) A giant teddy bear painted on a hot pink wall — I was told that this apartment "was meant for girls."

Apt 2) A studio apartment with the walls to the bathroom made of entirely see-through glass — "very modern Chinese building."

Apt 3) An apartment with a massage table in the middle of it.

Apt 4) A studio apartment with three middle-aged Chinese men hanging out in it.

This was the final straw for my poor real estate agent. She opened the door to find three older men staring blankly at us, she slowly closed the door and could only look at me with mute horror.

Day 3: Me vs. the "ridiculously expensive" day of apartments

On this day, I looked at apartments that were nice and, according to my Chinese friends, insanely expensive. They informed me that I was being tricked by my real estate agent and should find a new one. The absurd price? Around $250/month. Based on what I had seen previously, I decided I didn't care if I was being cheated.

Lesson 2: Beijing I: Deception is the name of the game

This was perhaps the most enraging of the three. Every person, landlord and realtor, lied to me. About everything. One-bedroom apartments were actually studios, 5-minute walks to apartments were actually 35-minute walks, and apartments in Guomao were actually in Shuangjing.

Lesson 3: Beijing II: Being prepared doesn't help

This time around, I was prepared. I knew exactly how much I should pay for an apartment, utilities and taxes. But it didn't matter at all, because, as my real estate agent informed me, though I knew what I should pay, other people did not, and if I didn't take the apartment for the price that they wanted, some other person would.

American Airline's New Marketing Strategy: Diagnosing me with a disease.

2011-04-07T14:11:00.001-07:00

Today I received a concerned email from American Airlines. Apparently, they are worried that I have a disease, the terrible Wanderlust.

The only cure? 1 million frequent flier miles, which only 4 will receive. What do I have to do to be in the running for the cure? Only buy a roundtrip, transatlantic flight, of course. Who would fall for this?

The Email:

Dear Meghan __________,

Are you experiencing symptoms of The Wanderlust? Do you feel:
[ ] Trapped in your own home or office?
[ ] Like you haven't taken a vacation in years?
[ ] Consumed by thoughts of exotic lands?
[ ] All of the above?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you have the Wanderlust. In celebration of our newly enhanced relationship, American Airlines and British Airways have found the cure. Together we will turn four travelers into Miles Millionaires*.

To become eligible to enter The Miles Millionaire Contest, register, then book a qualifying round-trip transatlantic flight on American Airlines, British Airways or Iberia now through June 17, 2011, and complete your travel on or before June 30, 2011. Once you complete your travel, you'll receive an email** with details on the contest entry process. You just have to creatively answer this question: "If you were cured of the Wanderlust with 1 Million Miles, where would you go and what would you do there?"

As I read this, I became increasingly irritated at how much American Airlines underestimated my intelligence. Part of me wondered if American Airlines takes note of the people who routinely buy their transnational flights less than 2 weeks beforehand, and if we alone were targeted in this absurd marketing ploy. Just because I'm spontaneous/indecisive does not mean that I lack the critical thinkings skills that allow me to see this, the potentially worst deal of all time (If you spend $1200+ on a transatlantic flight, we'll give you a statistically insignificant chance at winning 1,000,000 frequent flier miles...on American Airlines, rendering your miles useless as AA hates redeeming FF miles more than they hate edible food), for what it is.

These terrible deals, the business equivalent of "I'll trade you 5 shiny pennies for 1 old quarter" have become a reoccuring theme of American Airlines emails to their FF customers. Thank you, AA, once again you have made me feel valued.

5 normal things that can kill you in China.

2011-01-28T13:14:00.000-08:00

   When people find out that I live in China, there usually is a series of questions they ask me, but one of the first questions is often, "Is it safe there?"
   This time last year, I would have said with full confidence that China is the safest place I've ever lived. Now I would still say the same, as the other places I've lived are Washington, DC (murder capital of the country) and Moscow (murder capital of the world), but without the confidence.
   In the past year, I've been 1) robbed, 2) dragged out of my cab and almost down a set of stairs by a group of rabid drunk Chinese people and 3) got into a screaming showdown with the "leader of the taxi cab drivers of Dalian".
   That being said, that isn't the norm for foreigners in China. I just happen to be exceptionally unlucky, to the point where I don't even think Switzerland would be safe for me. That being said, I wouldn't even put crime into my top 5 dangers in China because criminal activity is so scarce. What would I put in my top 5 list? 5 things that every person in China encounters on a normal day basis.

1) Death by Taxi cab drivers who live in a Grand Theft Auto World.
   Every single driver in China seems to think that he is Mad Max, and drives as such.

At heart, every Chinese taxi driver is this man.

However, even the Chinese people I met in Beijing noted how terrible the drivers are in Dalian, apparently Dalian is notorious for the death racers that are responsible for dozens of peoples' lives on a given day. Worst of all, taxi drivers take it as a personal insult if one wants to wear a seat belt, indignantly informing the passenger that they are a good driver, then unbuckling the offending seatbelt.
Just one example of a normal taxi drive.
   While cheerfully asking if you like Chinese food and informing you that they like Obama/Kobe Bryant/some other American sports star I don't know, they are playing a chicken/bumper car hybrid game with their car: going into the wrong lane, driving full speed in reverse for over a mile (it was maybe the most impressive thing I've ever seen) and driving through active construction sites, just of the top of my head.

2) Death by Mystery Meat Street Food
   "Fried tofu! How delicious!" It's not even meat, so it has to be okay right?
   Wrong. In street food, people often mix tofu with cardboard. Can you imagine what they mix their meat with? As one might have heard, the Chinese culinary scope and width far exceeds ours in terms of what they will eat. Which means that they will pretty much eat anything and everything, except for ice water. That means that a stick of chuar (a kabob) could be mutton, or it be the intestines of a rat. There is a reason why Hepatitis B. is a huge problem here, and it pretty much starts and ends at mystery street food.

Grasshoppers.

The worst part is that street food is curiously delicious, and most of the time, the street food is safe to eat, which lures people into a false sense of security about the food. I've gotten around this problem by eating only seafood and vegetable chuar, which is delicious and easily recognizable.

3) Death by being a Pedestrian

   Being a pedestrian in China is a little like being in world where you are a bowling pin, and every car is a bowling ball that wants you dead. If you are lucky enough to make it to the safety of a sidewalk, one still must contend with the rickshaws. As they are neither a car nor a pedestrian, they abide the laws of no man, and as such, are the lone source of anarchy in a country where everything is controlled by the government.

4) Death by Construction sites/random manholes
   When people say that China is a developing country, it isn't just economically. It is literally developing, everywhere, in every city. What happens when lots of buildings need to be torn down/built up in a short amount of time and there are no safety regulations?
   The question is, what doesn't happen. Steel beams hanging above a sidewalk like an blade of destruction, sudden drops into the dark netherworld of Chinese sewage, skeletal buildings with frames held together by twine, and burning infernos of melded iron steps away from the sidewalk, these are not occasional occurrences. It's just a walk to the grocery store.

They'll get around to building the rest of this sometime

5) Death by Fireworks
   The Chinese people are a moderate people, but when they celebrate, do they ever. Going out for a few beers? Only if by a few, you mean "their body weight," and by beer you mean baijiu. This is the country that only told their employees not to drink at lunchtime after heavy drinking competitions put one man in a coma and the other in a coffin in one week. So throwing confetti? Eh, only if it is confetti of FIRE.
   As I've mentioned before, Spring Festival is the time of year when Chinese citizens throw fireworks (and caution) into the wind, with a reckless devil-may-care attitude of where the fire might land. After all, what is the worst that can happen with millions of unmonitored pyromaniacs setting off fireworks in heavily populated cities?

Oops!

Just to get an idea, this building is in the center of Beijing, and took up an entire block of downtown real estate. It is now unusable, as no one can figure out what to do with the charred remains of the brand-new hotel that was build for the 2008 Olympics.

my street, full of fun and confetti

my street, under attack/"celebrating spring festival"

For two weeks, China is under siege by people armed with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of fireworks. And not just sparklers, but 4th of July-style fireworks as well. They also have a cutesy type of firework that shoots balls of fire out of a tube, I discovered as I walked behind a group of little boys, all busy shooting the fireballs at the windows of the apartment buildings they saw.
Every year, dozens of people die, hundreds are hurt and several buildings burn to the ground, as tends to happen when dealing with combustible fire.

Forget you, Eat Love Pray, I'm taking my vacation back :Thailand Pt. 2

2011-01-05T17:21:00.000-08:00

   Since my freshman year of college, I have been surrounded by people who are more liberal than me. I am either viewed as a moderate or a soulless big-business vampire who bleeds third world children dry in the name of greed, depending on how dramatic the person is feeling.
   All the same, I will admit that the free-spirited bohemian gypsy hipster wearing long skirts, hand painted beads and drinking iced thai tea while explaining that we're all connected by an energy is not me. While I understand why people have their views, I do tend to err on the pragmatic side, and I've never felt the need to "find myself."
   I've spent my life reading. Beautifully disturbing Russian novels, stoic yet sweeping British romances, books on 1001 ways to use baking powder, it doesn't matter. Anything and everything I will read. The only exception to that rule is books that try to tell you how to live your life and enlighten you.
   I first heard about Eat Love Pray when a junior in college, and refused to read it for four years, due to the fact that it seemed to me to incorporate everything I was wary of. However, in China, beggars can't be choosers when it comes to English books, and desperation for a decent book wore me down.
   This is important to understand in regards to what comes next. I decided to go to a meditation retreat in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I blame it completely on Eat Love Pray. In case you have no idea what this book is about, it's about a depressed woman who travels and finds herself and is happy again.
   So I trekked back to Bangkok, bought my ticket, then went to the most rickety train station one could imagine. It was literally just a platform of rotting boards on either side of the train tracks. I was quite worried, imagining the type of train that would pull up. I didn't care if it was clean or dirty, stuffed with people or empty, I just prayed that it would have a working air conditioner, because the Thai heat was draining me of both my energy and, I feared, my logical reasoning skills. That morning I had bought an enormous bag of strange, heavy fruit that I had no idea how to eat. I had just bought it because it look interesting and the street woman told me to, and so, for the next few hours, I lugged around my tiny backpack and the huge bag of uneatable fruit.
   Luckily, a train that appeared to be a smooth pewter bullet emerged on the horizon, two hours after it's initial estimated arrival time. I had kept busy by watching some Thai women torture their clothes by plunging the clothes into water, twisting and whipping the clothes against a small shed, then beating the clothes with boards in the most violent washing I've ever witnessed.
   Not only was the train air conditioned, it was frigid. The icy, stainless steel speed train contrasted so much with the heavy humidity, festive colors and comfortable dirtiness of Thailand that it seemed like it belonged to a different time, a different world.
   Shivering, I emerged from my refrigerated cocoon into Chiang Mai the next morning, ready for meditation to be the garbage disposal to all of my convoluted thoughts. I imagined myself, thoughtless, still and serene, while Buddhist monks nodded their head approvingly at my imitation of a statue. I imagined what life would be like when I thought less and slower, when my words would be measured and wise, not the steam of consciousness chipmunk-speak that they usually are. I would return to the US, and everyone would be so impressed by my changes. They would say things like, "Meghan, you speak so slowly now!", "Meghan, you are so chilled out, it's like you're from California!" and "Look at you, reading the news and not getting sad."
   So I went to the monastery, put my things down and still had two hours to meander before the retreat stated. So I went to find Thai iced tea, my obsession in Thailand. As I explored the little Chiang Mai streets, I started to feel uneasy about the meditation retreat, but I tried to push it out of my mind. I went into a tiny tea-house on a side street of Chiang Mai. Moments later, two foreign women walked into the tea house as well. One looked very whimsical, 60s hippie-ish, she had black and white streaked short hair, big star earrings and was wearing a billowy shift dress. She was a real, life-long hippie! She had to be, looking as she did and living in Thailand.
   So I started up a conversation with her, I told her about the retreat, expecting that she would have something to add. And did she ever. She lived on an ashram in India for 10 years, in serious meditation.
   "Oh wow, really? I'm actually just about to go to a meditation retreat. Any suggestions or tips?" I asked.
   "Yes. Don't do it." She answered solemnly. "Meditation lets in everything, and not all spirits are good. Many are evil. I ended up joining a cult and was haunted by evil spirits until I was saved. I'm now a missionary in Thailand for the Catholic Church."
   I blinked. That was not at all what I was expecting.
   What are the odds? That in the 1 hour before my retreat, I would run into an ex-cult member/current Christian missionary who would warn me against meditation?

I had to return to the monastery to pick up my things, but I was having serious second thoughts.

"Oh no!" I scanned the room full of hipster hippie backpackers with their fedoras, lonely planets and supercilious conversations about finding truth. I saw a Che Guevara T-shirt and I started to panic, as I imagined my next few days, a captive audience to listening to Bob Marley and diatribes about the US government. On the far side of the room, the monks were moving a gong into the room.

Then I looked at myself, after all, I was there too. Days of endless heat had broken down my resolve and I was wearing a peasant skirt, and I was backpacking through Thailand, trying to be as frugal as possible. Was I really any different?

And that's when I had it, my moment of epiphany. They aren't me and I'm not them. I don't want to meditate. I don't want to clear my mind and get rid of my thoughts. I realized that

1) Just because I'm backpacking doesn't mean I need to have the backpack lifestyle. I'm not a hippie, and I don't want to be.

2) I don't like gongs, and I don't want to listen to them

3) If I wanted to not be in my head anymore, meditation was perhaps the worst idea I've had so far.

5) I don't need to find myself, because I never lost myself.

which could all be summed up to:

6) forget you, Eat Love Pray, I'm taking my vacation back.

So I picked up my things and walked out, away from the meditation, the gongs and maybe spiritual enlightenment.

I didn't know what I wanted, but i knew that I didn't want to go on elephants, i didn't want to go to temples, I didn't want to take the backpacking vow of poverty, priding myself that I spent $2 a night on a room full of cockroaches instead of $6 on a clean room.

Let me be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with cheap hostels, backpacking, or even Che Guevara (as long as people actually know what he did and what he stood for, instead of some abstract idea that they just link to him), it just isn't for me. I can do it, but it isn't my idea of a vacation.

I wanted to do what I wanted to do. So I went to my hostel a day early and signed up for a cooking class.
That was the beginning of the wonderful last two weeks of my vacation. I spent one week in Chiang Mai, that is where I discovered the kindle, which changed my world. An electronic book that could hold hundreds of books! I rediscovered my love of reading, and realized that it was always through reading that I gained perspective. I spent the rest of the vacation wandering around Chiang Mai, talking to people, eating random things and going to nearby lakes and villages.

The last week I spent in Koh Phangan doing nothing, and I loved every minute of it. Koh Phangan is known for the infamous full moon parties, but besides the actual full moon party, I stayed on my sleepy side of the island in a cozy bungalow.
I spent my days making friends with the other guests, reading everything I could, snorkeling, swimming, hiking and drinking copious amounts of coconut shakes. Boring? Maybe to some people, but for me it was perfect.

Isn't she cute? She was so excited when I asked if I could take a picture of her.

At the marketplace, picking out veggies.

Main lesson of Thailand: Kindles trump Meditation

How driving a motorbike off a cliff was the best thing that didn't happen to me: Thailand, Part 1.

2011-01-04T21:00:00.000-08:00

The last photo of my ill-fated motorbike ride

As I watched my white motorbike fling itself in a suicidal dive out of my hands, across the broken paved road and soar into a tree, all I could feel was exasperation.

The island of Koh Chang from the ferry

"Fine! Fine! You win!!" You. WIN!" Happy?" I was not sure to whom or what I was conceding to. God? Asia? My common sense? As Thai people ran out of their houses made out of boards and insulated by newspaper across the rotted log that I had just gingerly tiptoed across, that led from their beach to the main road, I crossed the road to inspect the poor bike. For the first time, I saw that the only barrier between the road and a several hundred foot freefall was that gnarled tree. The lone foreigner, a britishman, came up to me.
   "You let go of the bike." he said. "That's good, most people never do." Picturing myself and my bike soaring off the cliff in a final blaze of glory, I realized just how close of a call I had just had.
   I had a flashback to when I was in 2nd grade: standing in my kitchen, anxiously recounting the boxes of girl scout cookies I had sold, realizing I was under quota, and my mother's response to my woeful lamenting. "So what are you going to do? Jump off a cliff? Figure it out."
   Here I was, seventeen years later, anxiously counting and recounting, standing on the side of a cliff.
   What was I doing? Why was I here? How did I get here? How did I almost drive off a cliff, alone on a remote island in Thailand?
   It was a reality check. This was far from the first dangerous situation I'd encountered in the past eighteen months, but it was the first time that it had been my fault. I had been reckless, I had told the person I was riding with to go on without me, I had wanted to stay behind and take pictures. Sure, nothing bad had happened, but I was lucky. What was I thinking?
   The issue was, I hadn't been.
   According to all the expats I've talked to, as well as a graduate students whose actual study is the effect of living abroad on people, after living in China for about a year, expats experience what is scientifically known as the "China funk." It's symptoms are different for everyone, for me, it manifested itself in homesickness.
   The difficult part of living abroad isn't the culture shock, the language barrier or traveling. The emotionally draining part is the unsettling knowledge that everyone who knows and loves them is 3,000 miles away, and that they have to build a life without any of that support, and that everyone else's lives are moving on without them.
   So in the throes of the "China funk", I decided to escape from the crowds of people and disconcerting street food.
   I was going to backpack my way through Thailand, hostels and all. I was inspired by a friend known for her chill, laid back demeanor, love of traveling and penchant for staying in hostels that looked like someone had just been murdered there. If she could travel cheaply and light, so could I. Carrying only a small backpack filled mostly with sunscreen and the book Eat Love Pray (more on that later), I boarded the plane to thailand.
   Baby powder beaches, vivid blues, grey matte skies (it was the rainy season in Thailand) , bizarre yet tasty street food,  hospitable Thai people, it was as if I had stepped into a computer beach screensaver.

This is an actual picture I took myself. Go to your computer's screen savers...look familiar?

   Perfect, right? The only problem was myself. I snorkeled, accidentally deep fried myself, meandered on beaches, saw insane amounts of temples, tried to find elephants and consumed every type of food I saw; yet I was still plagued by the same thoughts, namely, that I was 24 and still didn't know my exact life plan.
   Standing over the mangled body of my poor motorbike, I realized that throwing myself off a cliff, metaphorically or physically, wasn't for me. I had passively brooded over my potential life plans for months. It was time for me to be proactive.
   A few hours later, after a kindly Englishman and Thai man took me back to my beach bungalow and I had negotiated and paid the motorbike rental price for the damages (about $90, which I was later told was far too expensive, but I did wreck their bike, so I didn't negotiate too much), I started to read Eat Love Pray.
   And thus started my attempt to be proactive by being exceptionally passive. I, the anti-hippie, anti-vegan republican, decided to go to a meditation retreat on a quest to find myself.

Inner-Mongolia pictures

2010-07-25T02:28:00.000-07:00

Manzhouli at twilight

A huge, festive umbrella in the middle of nowhere

Here a few photos from Inner-Mongolia:

traditional chinese palace in front of a new high rise in Hailaier

"We kill the sheep and eat the sheep" - recollections from Inner-Mongolia

2010-07-25T01:37:00.001-07:00

When one thinks of Inner-Mongolia, it is not unlike thinking of Siberia, as being a distant, mysterious barren wasteland. Even though I am only 10 hours away from Siberia, and 24 hours away from Inner-Mongolia by train, both of these places seem so far removed from my reality that when it was suggested that I go to inner-mongolia, my first reaction was to say that i didn't have enough time to travel there, as I only had 8 days.

Upon reflection, a train schedule and a map, I realized that it was absolutely a possibility, and tempted by the luxurious accomadations of sleeping in a yurt, eating yak meat and maybe herding some sheep, I decided to go.

Accompanied by my likewise - adventurous friend, Caroline- we decided to venture to Manzhouli, a town that sits on the border of China, Russia and Mongolia. At first, we had planned to just get on a train and go, but unfortunately, our Chinese tutor, Emily, found us a travel agent to book the trip for us. Neither one of us had very strong objections to it, so we agreed to it.

But before that, we had the 24-hour long train to inner-Mongolia before us- everyone warned us against it- but we loved every moment, it was just us, our books, two bags of groceries and one huge bag of an entire day's worth of meals from McDonalds for two people. Intermittently, another girl in our travel group, a deaf Chinese girl, would come to check in on us. This was always a long ordeal, as we would have to write our conversations to her- in Chinese characters- which, we thought speaking in Chinese was hard? writing a chinese conversation= much worse.

Getting off the train in Manzhouli, we faced a two-pronged problem which we had not foreseen- 1) we were traveling with two deaf Chinese people- so we couldn't communicate with them except by writing solely in characters- so our conversations were limited, to say the least- though Caroline valiantly and successfully struggled through a conversation about American colleges. 2) in terms of shopping and restaurants, everyone spoke Russian.

Basically, our Chinese was useless to us (except in relation to our tour guide/hotel employees that we later argued with). and my Russian? rusty to say the least- I could read-but I found that I had forgotten most of my food vocabulary. and thats how I became an enigma to the good people of Manzhouli. I look Russian, speak a little Russian- but within a few seconds have to switch back to Chinese- in all fairness, it's been 3 years since I was in Russia- so I confused Chinese and Russians alike, as they tried to figure out how a Russian girl could not speak Russian.

Now, inner- mongolia is beautiful- full of cows, goats, greens and blues- all of things i've been starved to see since I've been in China. Stepping into Manzhouli was like stepping into technicolor- and a little like stepping into Russia. Full of vivid yellow, gold and red hues, the city had all the curves, steeples and austere authority of traditional Russian architecture- it contrasted sharply with the slate gray, modern rigidity of the buildings and dull blue of Dalian's sea. I do love Dalian, but Manzhouli was a whole other world. we had fun- we went shopping- ate and just walked around the city, which is charming and european- more so than Dalian or even Haerbin.

Now, the first day, we went on a horse-ride, then to see various, awful, Chinese-style tourist traps. Finally, at the last tourist trap, I was frustrated and asked the woman what we were going to do the next day- at which time, she informed me that we were going to "kill the sheep, and eat the sheep." To enforce my understanding, she repeatedly and forcefully mimed guillotining the sheep. This didn't sound like fun to me. It seemed to me that since we had joined this tour group, they were always miming the death of some animal- at lunch they had happily demonstrated how to break the backs of the dead fish laying before us (that was our lunch). Caroline agreed with me, and so we made a pact to to go rogue on our trip the next day- to disappear and do something that did not involve sheep having to die.

The next morning, we woke up to an ordeal. The people in our travel group wouldn't let us go. We told them we weren't coming with them that day- didn't ask for our money back or anything- but b/c it was a matter of losing face, they all tried to force us to go, but we wouldn't capitulate- we didn't want to kill sheep. It was a 1.5 hour argument in Chinese that ended up with us storming off after they tried to take our passports.

The rest of our trip was relaxing, uneventful and wonderful.

Lesson of the Story:

Chinese tour trips: are the absolute worst and should be avoided unless you want to practice your chinese by arguing

Inner-Mongolia= wonderfulness

Chinese New Year Fireworks for Breakfast

2010-02-23T18:07:00.001-08:00

Bang! Bang! Bangbangbangbangbang! This morning I was awoken from my peaceful slumber by what sounded like a military artillery outside of my apartment complex. Confused, I ran to my window to see only a wall of thick smoke- and the sound of gunshots filled the air. In my sleepy disorientation, there was only one explanation:

"North Korea is attacking us!" I exclaimed. It then took me a moment or so to figure out why that statement sounded so ridiculous...

.... it was Chinese New Year, a fact that I slipped my mind for the first few moments of being awake. Oh, Chinese New Year- the month-long festival in which fire crackers are set off on seemingly every corner of every street of every city in China. From early in the morning until very late at night, one is in a constant state of wariness, never knowing if the fireworks will be set off before, behind or under them

That, along with my double-strength jet lag ( the product of being home for 10 days- not enough time to adjust to US time, and then returning to China and having to readjust to Chinese time)- has made certain that I have not slept a full night since the beginning of February.

Counter Culture Shock amid Snowmageddon 2010

2010-02-21T21:57:00.001-08:00

Counter-Culture Shock amid Snowmageddon 2010

For Chinese New Years, all sane foreigners have only two options: leave the country or stay at home- because traveling within China when most of the population is also in transit would be akin to swimming in honey-slow, suffocating and sticky. I decided to return to the US for my ten day vacation.

Counter Culture Shock Countdown:

1) The snowplow fail When the few inches of snow descended upon Dalian, I scoffed at their subpar snow removal, fondly reminiscing about the efficient and skilled snowplow/salting trucks that roamed the streets and highways of Pennsylvania.

However, I arrived in the US during the "Snowmageddon." While I was not surprised at DC's snow incompetence- since every year they are surprised by snow- I was somewhat bitter at being trapped in Chicago overnight- then arriving to Pittsburgh in a state of emergency- streets unplowed, electricity cut, etc etc. Though I will say that, as always, my town was perfectly plowed and functioning as normal.

2) The mullet - so, when I was in China, I was very wary of all hairstylists- because Chinese hairstylists are used to chinese hair- thick and straight- not fine, curly hair, such as mine. For this reason, I only allowed them to trim my hair. When I went back to America, I went to a hair salon and received a mullet. straight up MacGyver- style. Maybe not quite as dramatic. But bad enough that I invested a great amount of money in hairbands.

3) small yippy dogs- in China, if one owns a dog, it's a small dog. I have stated several times that I prefer large dogs, and that I would only own medium to large dogs. Hence, imagine my surprise when I returned home to find Daisy: the smallest, yippiest, most adorable dog in the world. Daisy might, on a good day, be the size of small handbag. Small dogs = not so bad at all

Swine flu and Chinese hospitals: Not an ideal combination

2009-12-07T06:45:00.000-08:00

For the past several months, I've watched the Chinese people panic over "the swine." I laughed as they became OCD in taking our temperatures on a daily basis, mocked as we were ominously warned about N1H1 via verbal and written announcements, and rolled my eyes in contempt when my coworkers and classmates started wearing face masks.

Turns out? Swine flu? Not fun. Swine flu with asthmatic complications? stressful. Swine flu with complications in China? Horrific. A few months ago, I wrote about the terrible chinese hospitals and how I hoped I would never have to be in one. I really shouldn't tempt fate.

I had swine flu for two weeks, in which I was unable to do anything except be miserable, take the sugar pills that the Chinese refer to as medicine and get IVs. I couldn't go to the university- my professor called me to tell me I was very sick, I shouldn't come to class, and I should be in the hospital- so I missed two whole weeks of class. I was afraid to see anyone- I managed to infect at least seven people and made them ill as well.

When I finally emerged from the swine flu- 10 pounds lighter, dehydrated, with hands that were bruised purple from the multiple IVs I was coerced into getting and the voice of a dying cat- I emerged with the knowledge that Chinese medicine is pretty much worthless and their whole theory of medicine is based on the premise that hot water and heat heals all, which is most likely derived from the Chinese people's hatred of cold water, ice and all cold things.

In which I became a cautionary tale of future maid of honors at Chinese wedding dinners

2009-12-07T06:23:00.000-08:00

Su-Mai-En! Su-Mai-En!! As the banquet hal full of chinese people chanted my (Chinese) name, I started to sincerely reconsider the wisedom of my choice to be Maid of Honor at a Chinese wedding dinner.

My ordeal started two weeks before, when a friend of mine asked me to be maid of honor at her Chinese wedding dinner. Knowing as I did that her wedding involved a donkey parade, jumping over a lit oven and ridiculous Qing-era clothing, I decided that, as maid of honor, I would try to do an american style toast, so some part of her wedding would have a familiar element to her.

Chinese wedding dinners are an example of what happens when cultural traditions and etiquette, originally made to make life more pleasant, becomes an odious process that serves to confuse and exasperate everyone involved.

The Chinese wedding dinners involve "red envelopes" in which the people who are invited must come and are obligated to give a certain amount of money to the bride and groom- if they fail to do this, they lose face. It's a tacky, antiquated tradition that often puts chinese people into a catch-22 postion, since they have to come to the wedding dinner and they must give a certain amount of money, which is at least 200 rmb, which is, for most chinese people, a substantial percentage of their monthly paycheck. So they can't not go- they would lose face, but at the same time they can't go, because they can't afford the money.

Anyway- because of this catch 22 situation, the chinese teachers in my school were placed in a cultural conundrum, that resulted in two weeks of wavering between all the CTs not going, all the CTs going, and only some of the CTs going. I decided to organize an american-style gift- in which all of the CTs going would pay a certain amount of money for one large gift. This seemingly easy idea caused me much stress as we had to get through all of their "face issues" - and resulted in me dragging an enormous, cast iron "hanging arch" lamp through the labyrinth that is the Dalian IKEA, after my friend decided that since he had carried another, much lighter lamp before, since I changed my mind, I would have to carry this lamp myself. The frantic IKEA trip culminated with the two of us getting into a ridiculous, yet heated argument over the importance of wrapping paper and ribbon for a wedding present.

So, cut to the next day: I discovered that, as a Chinese maid of honor, besides giving a speech, I had to follow around the bride, holding a tray full of cigarettes and candies to give to all the men at the dinner. I thus became the most sullen maid of honor as the sexist symbolism of the entire tradition was far too wretched for me to stomach gracefully. Luckily, as the bride was an American, wearing four inch heels, a blue ballgown and a fur shawl, she was with me in the opinion that this was awful.

Finally, I was able to sit down with all of my coworkers, leaving the bride and groom at the mercy of Chinese wedding dinner games and the malevolent guests who enforce them. Or at least, that is how I'll try to remember the evening. In reality, The groom announced that he had written a love song for his beautiful bride, and that, " The guests would like the maid of honor, Su-Mai-En, to dance to the song."

Have you ever thought that you are in the midst of a nightmare? I have before. The difference between this time and the other times is that this time? I didn't wake up. As the third round of "Su-Mai-En!! Su-Mai-En!" started up, I realized that, short of bolting for freedom , I was going to have to dance.

As the groom started singing, acapella, a song that went along the lines of, " Alicia, I love you, love you, love you. Alicia, I love you!" I awkwardly hopped, tap danced and twirled around, doing at best, an interpretive dance, and at worst, my impersontion of a chicken, while 100 chinese strangers cheered (or jeered) and laughed. I was a scene from bad '90s era teen movie.

My only consolation was that at least, besides my coworkers and my friend, no one I knew would ever see this. Even this small consolation was taken from me when I was finally allowed to leave the stage, and I discovered that my Judas of a friend had filmed the entire, mortifying ordeal- from my attempt to escape, slithering my way under the table at the beginning, to the end, when I attacked the groom, wrenching the microphone out of his hand.

wicked Chinese wedding dinner guests: 3,000,000,000
Meghan (aka Su-Mai-En): - dignity

MSG coffee? delightfully delicious

2009-10-04T08:14:00.000-07:00

Being illiterate in the language of the country that one is residing in can be very complicated- it presents one with issues that one wasn't prepared for- a verbal language barrier can be broken through with miming, body language and a handy dictionary. Characters that one can't even begin to recognize or identify provide a wall even more impermeable than the Berlin Wall in terms of comprehension.

This makes shopping an ordeal since I've gotten here, since I often have no real idea of what i'm buying. Characters aside, grocery shopping is difficult because much of what is sold in China is unrecognizable to me- the products that are used for cleaning, beauty etc. deal with issues that never concern westerners (i.e. skin whiteners)

For example, I was confused as to why my hair spray, which I bought in the hair care area of carrefour, smelled like icy hot. I discovered that my hair spray was in reality mosquito repellent. I bought a bag of white crystals that I thought was sugar, only to discover that I had added 3 tablespoons of MSG to my coffee instead of sugar.

Thus, shopping has turned into a mindtwister, requiring a skill of logical deduction that sometimes eludes me, as I search for the package for indications as to its contents, and try to judge what it might be, based on its location in the store floor plan. Even my electronic translator is not that helpful, as the characters can be tricky to identify. Today was no different, as I returned home to find that three separate items were not what I had believed them to be.

Shopping? quite the ordeal

Yet another way China ruins the college experience

2009-09-28T05:26:00.000-07:00

As I sleepily wandered through the University at 7:30 am, en route to my class, I was startled by being cut off by a few squadrons of Chinese military marchers. As miserable as I was about being up and dressed so early, about to start a 4 hour class, watching the marchers reminded me of the silver lining: I was not them.

As the week progressed, I realized that all of a sudden, Dalian had been inundated with soldiers? Marchers? I didn't know who they were or where they came from, all I knew was that everywhere I turned, I kept on seeing these poor people in uniform, doing what appeared to be a hybrid of high school marching band and Prussian military marches. Finally, I asked one of my CTs what was going on, and she informed me that in China, all freshman are required to do three weeks of military training. I suddenly had a flashback to my freshman year of college, back to welcome week, when we were all bitter that we had to do a couple hours of orientation. Every month that I am in China, the thought that Chinese students are the most misfortunate of students is reinforced.

In which Dalian cabdrivers prove worthless and I pull a MacGuiver

2009-09-08T19:36:00.000-07:00

So to continue the story of my first night out in Dalian. My friend and I ended up going out to a restaurant for a little bit, then decided to head home.

And this is actually where my night begins. Before getting into the cab, I told him where to go, carefully pronouncing each word as it was supposed to be said in Pinyin, and in the proper tone. The cab driver smiled and nodded and motioned for me to get into the cab. Once in the cab, I also showed him the chinese characters of my address. Once again, he smiled and nodded and off we went.

Within a few minutes, I was started to get- not anxious- but puzzled. I knew that the restaurant wasn't so far from where I lived, and yet we were merging onto the highway. However, considering the fact that I had been living in Dalian for 48 hours and this man had most likely lived in Dalian his whole life, I decided to give it a minute.

Five minutes later, I repeated the address. This time, he didn't smile and his eyes showed his confusion. As I was discussing this with him, and by discuss, I mean repeat the pinyin of my address over and over repeatedly, he drove me up into a dark alley next to an empty lot filled with dark, vacant buses.

He kept on driving slower and slower, until I finally shrieked at him to stop, then once again showed him the chinese characters. This time, however, he looked perplexed and than had a fake moment of eureka! This address isn't right! Something that he was perfectly aware of the first time I showed him the same characters. I was left to conclude that either 1) he never had any idea of where the address was or 2) he did, and drove me the opposite was to try to cheat the silly foreigner. Either of these options was enough to send me into a mood best described as, " a murderous rage." That was the point when he decided to pull over to the side of the road, turn off the car, and start calling different people for help with the directions.

As I sat there, seething at the injustice that I should be at home in my bed, but instead was on the side of the road with a lost cabdriver in a bad part of town, I decided it was better to be proactive, because to be honest, I had no faith that the cabdriver would ever find his way to my apartment

That was when I remembered the map of Dalian given to me by my school manager, which had my apartment marked on it. The map had sat, un-opened, in my bag for the past week, but I decided to pull it out. I showed it to the cab driver, he looked at my blankly. I was starting to lose hope, when I suddenly recalled my lesson on map orientation and positioning that I had learned from the Australian Marine I'd met in Nanjing. Miraculously, I remembered what he said and I was able to orientate the map properly, using only the barest memories of the bus routes and the position of the sea in relation to me.

Using this, limited chinese and miming- the cab driver and I were able to find my apartment. I arrived at my apartment an hour and a half after I got into the cab. The cab driver, perhaps feeling guilty, only made me pay 10 RMB- 1.3 dollars.

The next morning when I told my roommate what had happened, her response was, "but weren't you so scared? Alone, by yourself, on the side of an unknown road with a cab driver on a bad side of town." And once she put it that way, it did seem like a frightening scenario- and maybe it was, but my anger kept my fear at bay. Or there is also the possibilitiy that it just wasn't a frightening scenario- it just sounds like one?

Thus started my Dalian cabdriver curse- for the next two days, all three cabs I tried to take ended up taking me to the wrong address- despite saying the proper pinyin and having the characters for all the adresses. Trying to get to Ikea- a 10 minute drive from my apartment- ended up taking longer than it took for me to fly from Jinan to Dalian.

The subversion of Chinese adolescents by Twilight/Harry Potter

2009-09-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

"Cain? Your english name is Cain?" I asked. "Yes."
"Have you ever read the bible? That name has a negative connotation- I'm not sure that you really want that name."
"No, I read bible. I like story. Cain is a cool name."
"....?!?!?!"

I stared blankly at the 21 year told boy, who appeared normal but clearly was not. I spent the next 10 minutes explaining to him that if he planned on going an english-speaking country, there might be quite a number of people who would find that name offensive and either think that 1) he was ignorant of its meaning or 2) that he was insensitive to the culture. Still, he stayed true to the name Cain until he finally realized I was not going to give up on it. I wrote 16 names on the board- and he rejected them all, in favor of "Miller" - the hero of "Call of Duty," his WWII videogame.

Still unhappy with that name, I talked him into being named Don Draper, which he agreed on with the stipulation that we refer to him in class as Draper. I then taught him to say "Draper. Don Draper." as one would say "Bond. James Bond."

Thus began my 3 hour intensive IELTs prep course. What is IELTs? It is the english language test all foreign students must take to be considered for studying abroad. I teach IELTS for eight hours over a two day period every week to the same students, so as I was going into this class, I was praying that at least one student has a personality, otherwise it was going to be a very tedious semester

By the end of the first class, I found that one has to be careful what one wishes for. They had personalities all right, all bizarre in their own way, but with one common factor: they are all needlessly arbitrary and all of them watch way too much American TV for their own good. By the end of the class, they had:

-berated me for the purchase of red throw pillows, which they said 1) not necessary and 2) one should only buy red pillows for weddings

-peer pressured me into eating an ice cream dumpling- which is actually better than it sounds

- had an in depth conversation of whether zombies are vampires or if vampires create zombies, which, as the foreign expert from the country of Twilight, they expected me to know

Most impressively, they managed this feat while in the confines of my lesson plan. When I gave them assignment of presenting a one minute speech on something that was really important and meaningful to them, they took it as an opportunity to discuss their favorite magical creatures: Harry Potter, Michael Jackson, that vampire from Twilight and the plotlines from Supernatural and Heroes.

Don't underestimate little old ladies.

2009-09-06T01:37:00.000-07:00

My first night out in Dalian, I wasn't sure what to expect, but since in Jinan the main attraction on a night off was to go to Wei Weis, to watch a crazed, old alcoholic do and say ridiculous things while his despairing family looked on, the bar had been set pretty low. I figured that it could only get better.

I was right and wrong. My first night out in Dalian started with me watching two grandparents drink my friend under the table, and ended with my cab driver recreating a scene from a horror movie.

The night began with the Dalian Aston dinner, where I sat at a table with an old british grandma and grandpa. Outspoken and prickly, but nice, I enjoyed just watching them bicker as they had bickered for at least the past 4o years. As I was in a reverie, people-watching the couple, and imagining their lives as a happily-married, adventurous British couple through the 20th century, I was not taking note of how quickly they were consuming beer.

Thus, I was shocked when the grandma uttered words I never expected, " Let's bring out the baijo!" - for those of you not in the know- baijo? is a strong, Chinese hard liquor. In terms of liquids, it resembles and tastes nothing as much as battery acid. In other words, baijo is not a drink you would ever choose to drink, and most people, myself included, try to avoid it. So there was that, and then there was the fact that this woman had to be at least 65: she had eight grandchildren and had referenced an event in the early 1960s.

Elderly people, in my experience, don't drink, except for my great-aunts, but they are Italian alcoholics. It is especially unhealthy for them! However, referencing my great-aunts again, if elderly people do drink, one should NEVER, EVER drink with them, because chances are, they will be much better than you at it. You've had 2 years of drinking experience, they've have 60: who do you think is going to walk away unscathed?

The elderly couple started peer pressuring of the other people at the table to take shots of baijo, I begged off, explaining my repulsion of baijo, but my friend was roped in, as he was still new to china and thus did not understand the horrible nature of baijo.

"Let's do a drinking contest- whenever I have a bit of baijo, you have some too!" the elderly lady suggested to my friend, I desperately tried to warn him, but his reasoning was the hopeless naivete of a person whose family background is not Italian/Irish Catholic, "She's a little old lady, how bad can it be?"

Very bad, as it turned out. My friend was supposed to join my other friend and I to go out for drinks after the dinner- but by 7pm, he could barely sit at the table and was slurring his words. Meanwhile, the little old lady was still unaffected by their baijo drinking game.

Chinese hospitals = wretched.

2009-09-05T07:46:00.000-07:00

I have been pretty well fortified against culture shock since I've been here, but I met my match with the Chinese hospitals.

When reading this, keep in mind that I love China and appreciate almost everything about China, save this one matter. China doesn't do healthcare well. It is most likely the combination of the fact that because they have 1.3 billion people, and so the value of an individual lessens in the pragmatic long-term viewpoint of a nation, because they're a developing country as well as the problem that they just don't have the knowledge base to build a better healthcare system at this point.

Recently, my friend was diagnosed with something that could have been an appendicitis- but had mysterious symptoms that did not fit with her diagnosis. Day after day, she would return from the hospital more confused than the day before, usually grasping the test results and X-rays taken that day, because in China, your x-rays aren’t needed by the doctors for your medical records because medical records? Don’t exist.

She asked me to come with her to the hospital the day before her surgery for moral support, because she was little frightened. As I walked through the hospital, I realized that while I had been wary of the dismal hospitals, I had not been afraid. I should have been. Elderly people stared at us with vacant eyes, as they laid on the gray cold tiles, resting their head on the single piece of newspaper that served as their pillow, The hallways, “waiting rooms”- just a wider hallways with chairs- and parking lot of the hospital were lined with sickly people in various stages of decay. It was horrific.

As for the surgery, it went off without a hitch. The doctors did know what they were doing after all, though the language barrier had made things much more difficult and stressful. However, healthcare in China is not anywhere in the realm of healthcare in the US.

First of all, the concept of sterile is to China as dragons are to Americans: make- believe. There is a reason why Hepatitis B is an issue here. What are the implications of this? Forget sterile, basic standards of cleanliness is too much for traditional Chinese hospitals. One is lucky to walk into a hospital and not see a floor streaked with blood and vomit.

Within hours after the surgery, my friend was taken off of painkillers. She had been sliced open and had an organ removed and had no morphine, vicoden or even tylonel to surpress the quite substantial amount of pain she was in.

-She was not given nearly enough general anesthesia- she woke up while she was still in the operating room

and oh, insurance is completely worthless in China. They still make you pay everything upfront, and the insurance reimburses you afterward. So if you are hit by a car, and don’t have the 10,000 RMB on hand, you are pretty much doomed.

Basically, if I get seriously ill, I'm on a plane back to America. China wins this round.

New city, whole new world

2009-09-05T04:14:00.000-07:00

I moved to Dalian this week, which is in far northern China. I was not sure what to expect, since every single chinese person I asked about Dalian had the exact same answer: "Dalian is a very beautiful and modern city." Trying to expand on that sentence is pretty much useless, because the one sentence is burned into the Chinese cultural memory, so that all they know and don't know about Dalian is wrapped up neatly into that one sentence. Circular flawed logic? is a speciality of the Chinese people.

Example:
Me: I'm excited about moving to Dalian.
Chinese Person: you should be, it is very beautiful and modern.
Me: I know, I've heard. How so?
CP: well, it is a modern Chinese city that is beautiful.
Me: Really? why is it so modern?
CP: because it is so beautiful.
Me: Is there anything else you can tell me about Dalian
CP: you might want to bring a jacket.
Me: ::exasperated sigh::

Also, side note: In China, no city is ever a godforsaken, antiquated communist shell of a city. It's either "traditional" (old and most likely poor) or "modern" (soulless, cold new buildings). That being said, as with any and every city, there are always redeeming, charming qualities. And as for me, I loved Russia, so obviously I have a thing for depressing architecture.

I arrived in Dalian, to bright blue skies, fresh air and a cool breeze. It was affection at first sight. The city is, as advertised, both beautiful and modern- most noticeably, it is clean. I live within walking distance to the beach, which is already to cold to swim in- Dalian is far enough north that it was controlled by Russia at one point, but I really don't mind after suffering through the dizzying heat of Cambodia and the oven that is Jinanian (sp?) summer. I've discovered that despite my best efforts and wishes, I handle extreme cold much better than extreme heat. Give me blizzards, white outs, black ice and hail. I'll drive all wheel-drive down an Appalachian mountain without a second thought and walk through a blizzard in stilettos. It doesn't mean I like doing it, but I've done before and I can do it again. However, put me in anything above 105 degrees, and I react not unlike the Wicked Witch of the West, in that I wilt, then melt away and am incapable of anything but the most simple thought processes, such as : "I want to lie here and not move until the Earth flies off of its rotation and away from the accursed sun."

Dalian is a bizarre muddle of the ultra-chinese version of modern architecture, which is best described as oddly shaped buildings with random cut-outs and arches, Czarist-period Russian buildings, and early 2000s-era D.C. suburbia.

I have been much better at settling into Dalian than I was in Jinan. Maybe its because this apartment isn't always on the verge of being resettled by its original occupants: cockroaches, maybe its because I'm more adjusted to China, or maybe its because I've exhausted of continually being in transit. It is nice knowing that I will be here for the next six months.

I've also found that I've picked up much more chinese by osmosis than I would have imagined. I successfully bought champagne-colored sheets, pillowcases and duvet cover for a mere $21.25 USD through hard bargaining. The fact that I haggled it down from the original issued price of around $80 USD made this hard-won purchase perhaps my most victorious moment in China so far.

I've also found since I've arrived to Dalian that I actually know a lot more Chinese than I thought. Still not nearly enough, but it was a nice surprise. I suppose in Jinan that since I had originally learned to survive and get around with no Chinese, that I just continued doing so out of habit and laziness. My moment of shock came when I was interrogating my cab driver- the 3rd I'd had gotten into on this single trip, about if he actually knew where Ikea was, or if, like the 2 previous cab drivers before him, just lied to me to get me in the cab and had no idea what Ikea was, much less where it was. I found myself using vocab that I didn't even know I had retained, and most shocking of all, he actually understood what I said, answered the questions, and I understood him. So it's a start, I suppose.

In which the Chinese try to defeat the Ocean Tide

2009-08-01T04:55:00.001-07:00

Construction is almost as pervasive as smog in China. On any given road, at any given time, one will have to climb through random piles of rubble- making a short walk to the dumpling stand an exercise in risk calculation- “If I balance on that unsteady rock, leaning forward, I can leap over the manhole and edge around aluminum fence OR I can dodge between bulldozer and the claw thing and zigzag my way across the road.”

The Chinese adore manholes. I always walk looking down because one never knows when there will be a sudden drop into the dark abyss of the Chinese sewage system. On the beach, it is no different. We came onto the beach at low tide to see Chinese men and children hurrridly, haphazardly digging manholes. As the tide came in, we watched in bewilderment as they built a fortress of sand in front of the manhole, desperately trying to protect their manholes from the unavoidable exposure to water.

In the US, and in the western world, children build sandcastles. I remember carefully carving out a moat around my castle, so that my sandcastle would have a moat and be unaffected by the incoming tide. This form of irrigation does not seem to occur to the Chinese men who were performing what actually might be the definition of “exercise in futility.”

My friend and I watched and analysed the sad endeavor, coming to the conclusion that there must be some point to the action that we didn’t understand.

Gardening: the videogame

2009-08-01T04:51:00.000-07:00

The Videogame that reflects a favorite past time of the Chinese

The other day, coming into school, I noticed my CT, Flora, deeply engrossed in the computer. Concerned, I asked her if she was ok. Flora angrily informed me that her boyfriend had stolen all of the watermelons out of her garden. I thought that was a rather strange comment, especially since she lives in an apartment on the 4th floor of a building. Scowling, she motioned towards the computer screen, where I saw that the garden she spoke of was a computer game garden- apparently a new computer game that is all the rage in China- where a person tends their garden, planting, watering, weeding- but one is allowed to steal other people’s fruit and vegetables, as long as the person has enough food that if food is stolen, they won’t starve. Comparing it to the video games my little brother plays, which involves weapons, stolen cars, tactical plans and etc- I could only marvel at the wide disparity between the US and Chinese of what classifies as entertainment.

Of course the Chinese would play a game that involves stealing food from each other’s gardens.

The Chineseazzi

2009-08-01T04:50:00.000-07:00

The hardest transition for me so far in leaving the US is one that I never dreamt of, mostly because I didn’t even know it was a transition to make: the transition from comforting anonymity to …tabloid celebrity? Zoo animal?

One always hears about culture shock, and suffering from culture shock. So everytime that I’ve gone abroad, I’ve waited for the moment where I would flabberghasted and bewildered to the point of shock by some element of another country’s culture.

As of now, my culture shock experience has been more of a collection of “But why…?” moments. I have found, however, that as confused as I am by the Chinese mentality sometimes, it is nothing compared to their confusion about my existence in general. I am their culture shock. Anywhere I go, hundreds of Chinese eyes follow my movements. Anything I do, from getting on the bus to smiling at the people who are unabashedly staring at me to buying food, merits their shock and amazement. With eyes wide, open mouths, they watch me as one would watch a cat recite Shakespeare- as if it is too unbelievable to be reality.

I must have done 60 hours of thorough research on China before I arrived here. I gathered primary information from people who had lived in China, and secondary info from websites and books. I knew what not to eat, the intricacies of the train system and to bring a years supply of deoderant to China, the one item they don’t sell. Yet not once during all of my research was I ever warned about the one aspect of China that would affect me the most: the fact that I, by virtue of being a foreigner, would be as much as novelty as two-headed squid monster.

Americans aren’t really impressed or shocked by much- especially not ethnicticity- so when I went to Russia, I was shocked that not being Russian mattered- I was targeted more by the militzia, people always wanted to know where I was from. I thought that in China, it would be the much the same. But whereas in Russia, they watched me with an interested wariness, here everyone watches me all the time with baited breath, waiting for me to do something bizarre or unusual.

My first day here, I thought that I was being silly when I first noticed the pairs of Chinese eyes peered at me from around supermarket aisles. Later, I started to think I was paranoid when I noticed that a small group of people seemed to be ambling the exact same route through the grocery store as me. On my way home, I glanced up at a bus to see the every single person on that packed bus staring down at me. Noses and palms pressed against the glass, their curious eyes followed my movements in unison. I was stricken, convinced that the Cambodian heat had truly scrambled my mind. I walked home, carefully ignoring all the stares, trying to determine if I should tell someone that I was hallucinating or just hope that it would go away. It wasn’t later, until I discreetly mentioned my experience to another teacher, that I learned that was the norm here.

Sure enough, the next day in Jinan, as I was taking pictures of the giant bulldozers meandering down the main highway of Jinan as flimsy bicycles recklessly swirled around them, I noticed the cagey movements of Chinese teenagers behind us. Curious, I turned to see that we had attracted a large group of Chinese people, using their cellphones to take pictures of us taking pictures. The bravest of the crowd were, one by one, slowly edging themselves around us, so that they could pose in the background of the photo, making peace signs- the seemingly standardized pose for all Chinese people.

To be fair, we were a group of two tall African-American men, a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette- so, for China, we were an extremely diverse group.

Flying into Cambodia at night? Not the best idea

2009-04-19T04:07:00.000-07:00

As I cautiously walked across the empty, stifling baggage check in Phnom Penh, still weak from being food poisoned by a tuna sandwich in the Korean airport and the resulting vomiting on a tiny, claustrophobic shuttle plane for three hours, I found myself questioning the wisdom of traveling to the 3rd world.

A few seconds later, after I emerged from the airport and saw a sea of faces staring at the door that I just came through, and was led by a man who held up a sign of Meghan and called me "egan" to a tuk tuk ( a wagon pulled by a motorbike), I was in the back of the tuk tuk driving through small, dark streets lined by piles of burning trash.

I had foolishly watched Slumdog Millionaire in the plane to Korea- and as I fearfully watched from my tuk tuk, I realized that I had seen this place before- as the slums of India in the movie. I was in Slumdog Millionaire. As the tuk tuk took me deeper and deeper into the ghetto abyss that was Phnom Penh, I had a horrifying moment of clarity.

1) I had no idea where this man was taking me.

2) No one else did either.

3) my organs? worth around 400,000 dollars on the black market

4) being sold into the human slave market is very prevalent in southeast asia.

5) the minute I left the phnom penh airport, I vanished. If something happened to me, no one would ever find me.

I tried to hold back the tears and remain calm, but I couldn't help sobbing as I contemplated my fate of being sold or killed for my organs- all by my own foolish doing. Unfortunately, since I had taken a class and done many papers on organized crime syndicates and the human trafficking, I had a cornucopia of dire visions of what was in store for me. I tried analyze my options- I had been carefully tracking our journey since we left the airport- so i knew that 3 lefts, 1 right, half a circle and 2 lefts bought me to the "villa." I weighed my option of leaping out of the tuk tuk and making a break for it- but i knew that I would be free of the tuk tuk but still in the middle of slumdog millionaire.

I stayed in the tuk tuk until we arrived at the villa that was surrounded by a barbwire fence. Every window had bars on it, every door in the bleak gray building had a deadlock, the sides were covered in pieces of sharp, rusted tin to either keep me in or keep others out. Either way, it wasn't that reassuring.

"Where is everyone?" I asked the tuk tuk driver.

"What?"

"Everyone else in the program- where are they?"

(pause) " they asleep." he answered as he unlocked the door to a small, sweltering room with faded white walls upon which a fresco of sad dinosaurs was painted. The man shut the door behind me and as I took in the cracked glass of the mirror and the fact that my windows had heavy duty bars on them, I realized I really, really wanted my parents. Then I heard the noise that I would now know as the fighting of the packs of wild dogs that roam the street of Phnom Penh at night.

I haven't cried myself to sleep since I was 13, but I cried myself to sleep that night. I woke up at 6 am to await the awakening of fictitious "other people" that were part of the "program" which I was 95% sure was a front to capture people in Cambodia. I also started drafting an exit strategy that consisted of me stealing the tuk tuk and driving away.

Finally, at 9 am, my patience wore out, and I opened one of the many doors to see ....another American girl. I have never, in my entire life, been so happy to see someone else.

So I've just arrived back in Cambodia from Thailand- for the first time I saw the drive to the airport in the daylight- which was much less terrifying than it was the original time I arrived in the Phnom Penh airport.