Monday, December 7, 2009

Swine flu and Chinese hospitals: Not an ideal combination

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

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Chinese wedding dinners are an example of what happens when cultural traditions and etiquette, originally made to make life more pleasant, becomes an odious process that serves to confuse and exasperate everyone involved.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

Sunday, October 4, 2009

MSG coffee? delightfully delicious

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

Monday, September 28, 2009

Yet another way China ruins the college experience

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.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

In which Dalian cabdrivers prove worthless and I pull a MacGuiver

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. 

Monday, September 7, 2009

The subversion of Chinese adolescents by Twilight/Harry Potter

"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. 

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Don't underestimate little old ladies.

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.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Chinese hospitals = wretched.

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


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.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

In which the Chinese try to defeat the Ocean Tide

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

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

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.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Flying into Cambodia at night? Not the best idea

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.