THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

I've been in China for almost 8 weeks! That's almost 2 months! And now...

IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN.

Right now we're in the middle of finals week, which as anyone who has ever been to college knows means some studying, and a lot of PROCRASTINATION (like this blog post, for example). But it's weird knowing that this is my last week in China. My mind keeps cycling through a lists of "I can't wait for..." and then reverting back to, "but at home there's no...".

Right now my "I can't wait for..." list includes things like AC, normal toilets, ice cream, cheese, steak, bagel with cream cheese, falafel, salad, carrot cake, frosting (a whole other category entirely), blueberries, hamburger, mozzarella and tomato sandwich...I wouldn't say I'm asking for too much, would you?

And sure, that list also includes a few asterisks that are more, "get me away from..." You know, things like homicidal drivers, people hocking loogies in my personal space, and the fact that wherever I go and whatever I do, people will stare at me, mouth open, trying to guess where I'm from.

But at the same time, where at home can I find really good, really cheap, really authentic Chinese food? (staff of 老四川, if you're reading this, I will pay for you to live with me and cook for me at school). Or well-made bubble tea? Or my "friends" at the fitness center? Or the assurance that even if I sound like a 2-year-old, people will tell me, "Wow, you speak such great Chinese"?

What's more, I have to adjust back to speaking English. Which might probably sounds kind of pathetic, but seriously. I've devoted the past 2 months to channeling my thoughts and ideas into Chinese, so trying to 随便 switch to English is not as easy as it sounds. This has become obvious to me as I've continued to write this blog. Speaking of which, notice the word, "right," in first full paragraph? Yeah, I originally wrote "write" (cue self back-pat).

The language pledge has meant that for two months I've gotten to know my classmates in an entirely different language. With the exception of a few Yalies I knew beforehand, I only know the Chinese personalities of most of my peers. Which is kind of weird, when you think about it... But I guess, in many ways, peoples' real personalities have shone through. One classmate (I'm looking at you 老板), has maintained his VERY English, VERY idiomatic catchphrases, simply translated word-for-word into Chinese. And the thing is, these phrases have caught on. So we all shout, "为什么不?"--why not? ; 有牛肉--do you have beef? ; 新鲜到死--fresh to death ; and 老板--boss, things that make ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE WHATSOEVER in Chinese. But we've made them our own (much to the dismay of our very confused teachers).

In addition to my list of "I can't wait for..." I've even begun to add a few English sentences that I've been dying to say. It's rough when there's actually no sarcasm in Chinese. None. There's not even a word for it! (1.3 billion people and no sarcasm... WOW). As I've found in my classes, the teachers may be baffled by our idiomatic phrases (in a laugh at, not with type of way), but they are just not receptive at all to an American sense of humor. At least spoken humor. They seem to love it whenever I hit my head on something, almost fall off my chair, or gently mock my classmate (书恒, you know I love you)...Hey, at least that gave our 1-on-2 teacher a chance to teach us new vocabulary: 欺负--to bully.

The language pledge ends on Saturday, after 3 written finals and 2 presentations. So in some ways, it still seems like it's the distant future. But between now and then, I've just got to keep telling myself, "我觉得我会。我觉得我会". Translation?

Wedding Crashers Rule #71: No excuses. Play like a champion!

After celebrating the death of a chicken on Saturday, I had the chance to take part in a totally different celebration on Sunday: a wedding.

Ma Laoshi, one of the CET teachers, got married on Sunday and invited her students. Although I am not her student (in fact I had never met her before I congratulated her after the ceremony...shhhhh!), 魏德 invited me on her behalf. Apparently there was a general +1 invite put out to all the American students. Never one to turn to free food and a party, I jumped at the opportunity and began to refresh my memory of the immortal rules of Wedding Crashers.

On Friday, Ma Laoshi gave her students the address of the restaurant and said that it would be casual, but that was it. Casual? Like jeans? Or like "anything less than a floor-length ballgown"? I had no idea so I put on a dress and hoped that I wouldn't embarrass myself. Scratch that. I knew that I would bring my A-game. Rule #71: No excuses. Play like a champion.

To make matters more complicated, none of us could ask our roommates or other teachers about Chinese wedding culture because Ma Laoshi is a Huimin, a member of the Hui ethnic minority group. The Hui people are one of China's 55 ethnic minority groups, or shaoshu minzu. Most Hui are from western China and are Muslim, so their customs and ceremonies are pretty different from the average Han celebrations. Since the Han people make up 92% of the population of China, almost everyone here is Han, so not only was this MY first Hui wedding, it was also the first for all of our other teachers.

In any case, we had NO idea what to expect. So when 8 other students and I gathered in the dorm lobby at 9:45 AM, I glanced around the motley crew of Americans, pretty convinced that we were invited as the free entertainment.

One ceremony ends and the next begins. At this restaurant, you get 90 minutes for your wedding, so let's get the show on the road!

We arrived at the restaurant, or should I say wedding factory, and were ushered into an elevator as another wedding party was leaving the building. I should add that on Sunday we saw over a dozen wedding convoys. But in a country that has almost 1.4 billion people, I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that a few million people were getting married last Sunday. Anyway, as I stood in sardine formation, I suddenly heard "MiLi" come from the back corner of the mob jammed in the elevator. Only able to turn my head slightly, I glanced out of the corner of my eye and saw...Sun Laoshi, my 1 on 2 teacher. I know that at this point in my life I should be over the whole, "it's awkward seeing teachers outside of school" phase, but I'm not. I mean, how are you supposed to act? So with my jaw still gaping, I mumbled something that was supposed to be ni hao ma? and was pushed out into a large room.

That's quite a bit of food.

The room had large tables that were filled with chattering Chinese people. The 9 of us were seated at our very own special foreigner--waiguoren--table which was OBVIOUSLY right next to the table with all of our teachers, most of whom were in jeans or casual casual clothes so we all looked like the overdressed jerks. Perfect!

Beautiful bridegroom + awkward, sappy English lyrics = Match made in Chinglish heaven

When I sat down, I was first struck by the incredible wedding slieshow projected on a screen. It would have been sweet and cute if I wasn't so distracted by the lyrics to "Truly Madly Deeply" that were proclaimed across each slide. The lyrics, "I want to I wanna stand with you on a mountain, I wanna bathe with you in the sea, etc..." were misspelled and likely not understood by any of the Chinese people in attendance. Soon the emcee came out, dressed in a somewhat traditional Muslim outfit. The entrance of the emcee, who was as crucial a part of the ceremony as the bride and groom, was accompanied by music. But not just any music. The theme to Pirates of the Caribbean. Because nothing says wedding like a table full of Americans staring at the door expecting Captain Jack Sparrow to enter with his classic swagger. Unfortunately, the emcee was not a pirate :(. As the emcee began to work the crowd and our table slowly began to be swallowed up by massive plates of food, a young Chinese Imam eyed our table.

The Imam excitedly approached the table and began to talk about his religion and tolerance. He was clearly excited that we had come all the way from meiguo to participate in the ceremony and his speech was quite emotional. It sounded like the some bonus Chinese stanza off of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way". Essentially the English translation was,

"Whether Christian, Muslim, Jew,
we want to make peace with you;
You see our goals are the same,
That's why I'm glad that you came!

...Ooh there ain't no other way, baby, I was born this way..."

You get the idea...

The emcee and excited (read: nervous and dripping with sweat) groom.

The Muslim ceremony comes to a close.

Shortly after the Imam left our table, the first ceremony began. Two Imams and a Hajji presided over a combination of Chinese and Arabic. Both Ma Laoshi and the groom were dressed in more conservative Muslim outfits--although Ma Laoshi's red and gold outfit was pretty stylish. After the ceremony was completed, the star of the show (the emcee) and the bride and groom all left the room for a fast costume change. Meanwhile...NOMNOMNOM. For the 9 of us at the table there were about 18 dishes. By the time the emcee and bridegroom returned--this time in western attire--we were all stuffed. And it looked like we had barely touched the food.

Just kidding. THAT'S a lot of food. NOMNOMNOM

Part 2 of the wedding was like a western wedding gone haywire, but there was an exchange of rings and I'm pretty sure something like vows were said. When it was over, we all got together for the requisite waiguoren photo op, before the restaurant staff hustled us out to let the next wedding party begin.

Part 2: All three stars come back out in Western attire.

Just Married!!!

Overall the ceremony was beautiful and it was amazing to get the opportunity to see such an incredible event. But it wasn't without it's more bizarre, memorable moments. Some of the highlights:

1) Contrary to my initial beliefs (since it was a Muslim wedding), there was alcohol. And lots of it. Each table was given large bottles of hapi, Harbin's beer, and a handle of baijiu, China's lethal contribution to the world's liquor cabinet. In fact, the bridegroom and their parents all took shots of baijiu during the ceremony. Name lihai!

2) As the Muslim part of the ceremony came to an emotional close, the bridegroom and emcee all grabbed handfuls of prunes and peanuts (I'm not sure from where) and launched them into the air. The only problem was that our table was about 1 yard from the threesome, so the small, edible objects rained down on us, hitting our heads and splashing into bowls of soup on the table. Throughout the meal, as we would take food from the various plates we would discover random peanuts and prunes covered in all sorts of sauces and mixed with all sorts of ingredients.

Peanuts and Prunes: DUCK AND COVER.

3) The Hajji, an old Chinese man, gave a speech that, for much of the time, was focused on the American guests. Although the intention was sweet, it's kind of awkward to be featured in the wedding speech/toast of a wedding where you've never met the bride OR the groom--I'm pretty sure John and Jeremy (Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn's characters) would be proud.

4) There was a small wedding favor left on each table in the middle of the Lazy Susan. It was a small red and gold bag--about the size of a jewelry bag--that had a few pieces of hard candy, a box of matches, and his-and-hers boxes of cigarettes. Because nothing says "Congratulations on the Wedding" like a box that comes with a warning label because its contents are "harmful to your health."

Tiger Attack: A Tale of a No. 1 Adventure Bus and a 50RMB Chicken

I, like so many other people, have watched the movie Jurassic Park with somewhat mixed feelings. Obviously the film is supposed to be an adventure, thrilling and frightening viewers by warning against the dangers of a dinosaur amusement park; however, on some level, the movie fails. Why? Because I still DESPERATELY want to go to Jurassic Park! While this blog post won't relay any tales of freakish science experiments or velociraptors (unfortunately), it will tell the tale of the Harbin Siberian Tiger Park, which comes pretty close.

Damn straight the scene was THRILLING!--But not too thrilling to make me miss this wonderful Chinglish sign

Earlier today, three friends and I hailed a cab and headed to 东北虎林园, the Dongbei Tiger Park. About 30 minutes later, we climbed out in Tigerland: tiger figurines, paintings, dolls, stuffed animals, murals, statutes, etc... I would say some of the decorations verged on kitschy, but when I saw the top-hat-wearing, pipe-smoking baby tiger figurine, I quickly realized that everything was totally necessary and appropriate.

Have no fear: Sherlock the tiger and I are on the case!

We lined up to buy student tickets, but were slightly distracted by a group of middle-aged Chinese men taking our pictures. Uh-oh. The paparazzi had been tipped off to our location and they were at it again. After answering the usual questions (ni shi eluosiren ma?--Are you Russian?), we politely posed for a few dozen pictures and then jostled back to the ticket counter. For 57RMB per person (about $9), we each purchased a student ticket and the split the cost of a 50RMB live chicken. SCORE.

Wait...What? A live chicken?

As we learned in our 1 on 2 classes this week, 入乡随俗...When in Harbin, do as the Harbiners do--which in this case means buying live animals to watch large Siberian tigers attack, destroy, and enjoy. NOMNOMNOM.

If you are interested in donating money to help me purchase a live cow to feed to a very hungry tiger, please let me know. Every donation makes a difference.

In case you've made it this far, I'll provide one last warning: If you find this sort of gruesome, carnivorous thing repulsive or offensive or you're a card-carrying member of PETA, I advise you to stop reading this post now (and to never accompany me to a steakhouse; I've been known to eat ungodly quantities of steak, my favorite food. NOMNOMNOM).

So with our chicken receipt in hand, we boarded onto a No. 1 Adventure Bus (according to the Chinglish sign). The bus, a sort of safari bus with bars on the windows, loaded up and headed towards the gaping mouth of a tiger that doubled as a gate into the park. The gate opened, letting our bus into a middle area between a series of about three gates, each 20 or so feet high and topped with barbed wire...Welcome to Jurassic Park.

We bumped along through what looked like pretty average terrain until I spotted some orange out of the corner of my eye: A TIGER! We kept bumbling along until we sided up right next to it. Up close, the tiger was both enormous and beautiful. It powerfully glided over the ground, gracefully placing its giant paws one in front of the other. After the initial gasps and squeals, the passengers of the bus collectively AWWed as the tiger laid down.

AWW, so cute.

We passed tiger after tiger until we entered a new part of the park, where a small van rolled up next to our bus. Suddenly, a hand reached out of the van and placed a squawking chicken--OUR squawking chicken--on its roof. Before we knew what was happening, BOOM! A tiger jumped on the roof of the van and sank its massive teeth into the chicken. The chicken, which had gone silent--SURPRISE!--accompanied the victorious tiger into a bush, where the tiger proceeded to pull mouthfuls of feathers, meat, and bones off the chicken. NOMNOMNOM.

GO TIGER! NOMNOMNOM

The people on the bus erupted in cheers. And I'm not going to lie, I cheered as loud as any other person on the bus (maybe louder...I was pretty proud of OUR chicken). Everyone kept buzzing about the tiger's snack until we entered yet a different area of the park--the LIGER section.

What's a liger?, you might ask.

"It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic."

If you're like me, your knowledge of ligers is limited to Napoleon Dynamite. The animals are, in fact, crosses between lions and tigers, though unfortunately not bred for their skills in magic (but then again, with the Chinese government ANYTHING is possible). The ligers, slightly smaller than their full-bred counterparts, were equally beautiful. We paused beside a pair grooming each other before heading back into Tiger world.

Our No. 1 Adventure Bus tour came to an end, depositing us in front of a pathway that led over several other tiger areas. These areas brought us up close and personal with a few dozen more tigers. As we passed through the walkway, we came across a museum employee standing over a bin of live, clucking chickens (probably the siblings of the one we sacrificed to a tiger) and dangling a piece raw chicken meat into the tigers area. The tigers quickly spotted the meat and zeroed in on it. One jumped up on the fence, gnashing its teeth at the meat.

After being so wary of Chinese food safety and sanitation (or more accurately, lack there of), my instinct was to warn the tiger, "Zhuyi nide weisheng!"--pay attention to your sanitation--but I remembered that all tigers eat raw meat and watched as the satisfied tiger ripped the chicken chunk away from the employee and swallowed it in one gulp.

But it's raw meat...in CHINA!

We continued our way through the maze-like walkway and exited back into the parking lot, unable to contain our enthusiasm: hao wan debudeliao!

Other than the fact that I still have yet to see a velociraptor, the trip was a success. I mean, I got to cheer with Chinese people as a 700 lb. mammal annihilated a chicken...what could be more exciting than that? (Please note the utter lack of sarcasm.)

And if you ignored my previous warning and are totally disgusted with my post and enthusiasm for tigers ripping live chickens to shreds, TOO BAD.

NOTE: All of the pictures from my trip to the Tiger Park can be found by clicking on the album link below:

Siberian Tiger Park, Harbin

Naive Bear Paradise, and other tales from Sun Island

Welcome to Sun Island!

When I climbed onto the bus this morning, I was certain that I was headed to Taiyang Dao, Sun Island. But now I'm not so sure of where I went. If Alice fell in a rabbit hole in China, I'm pretty sure she would end up on Sun Island.

Dragons? The basilisk in Harry Potter? A phoenix? All of the above? Probably.

Don't get me wrong, that's not a bad thing...I mean, I like trippy, bizarre places. It's just when you make that a trippy, bizarre, Chinese place, it can be a little strange.

Dr. Seuss called. He wants his forest back.

Sun Island is an island across the Songhua River from Harbin that's known for being a sort of escape from the city. Despite the connotations of its name, it's actually best known as the site of the annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival. So the attendance rate on the island spikes when the average temperature hits about -1 F. Makes sense, right?

In the summer, the island becomes an eclectic mix of...actually I'm not really sure. Most of the time we spent walking around through the lush greenery we were distracted as we dodged high-speed tourist trains. Picture those trams you see moving about 5 mph, carrying kids and the elderly through amusement parks; now, picture them moving about 15-20 mph on the sidewalk. Yeah. Scary.

Rule #3: Children, the olds, pregnant women, and the one who gets drunk or the person suffering from heart disease are not allowed to rent bikes. Otherwise "you will accept all the consequences yourself." Who is left over?

After a few close encounters with these trams, we head off the beaten path to Naive Bear Paradise. I wish I could say that the name, ben xiong leyuan translates into something more eloquent and that this is just an unfortunate example of Chinglish, but the translation is actually quite accurate. If not "Naive," it might translate better into "Stupid Bear Paradise," so I'll stick with what they have. As it is, it sounds like it might fall somewhere between the Gumdrop Mountains of Candyland and Winnie-the-Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood.

Also translates to "Stupid Bear Paradise." Take your pick.

Look at those cute bears with 魏德. Oh, and is that a prison behind them?

Which of these Naive Bears does not belong?

Naive Bear Paradise was what you might get if you crossed a park with an amusement park, and sprinkled in a few creepy buildings that look like prisons. In other words, like nothing you have ever seen before. The icing on the top of the bizarre cake was the figurines sprinkled throughout the area. The vast majority were bears--in every pose imaginable--but there were also apples, birds, corn, pumpkins, and Bugs Bunny's evil Chinese twin. Once we passed some of the epic bear figures, we found a big blue roller coaster that 乐然 and I just had to ride (魏德 claimed he didn't want to ride because it looked bu name lihai--not that exciting--but let's be honest, he just chickened out). The roller coaster in itself really wasn't that great, but the experience was pretty exhilarating, if for nothing else than because I was sure that the frequent, violent jolts meant that at any moment the ride might fall apart.

乐然 eyes the roller coaster ready to go. 魏德 quivers with fear.

We left behind the bears, rides, and wandered around the park for a while. We approached taiyang hu, Sun Lake, with paddle boats and decided to inquire about the price for renting a boat, but we were stopped by a group of eager, middle-aged people. Pointing at us, one man threw his companion his camera and ran over to pose with us for a picture. Caught off guard and baffled by his actions, we stood there, motionless as a series of five different people took turns posing with us: arms around our shoulders, on my left, in between us, smiling, stoic...I'm not sure how many pictures we were in, but the general consensus is that it was about 20 too many. So we ducked out of sight and took a break in the wooded area at the foot of taiyang shan, Sun Mountain.

Sitting on a bench near taiyang shan was like putting ourselves on display as the resident waiguoren: children ooh-ed and aah-ed, teens tried to stealthily snap our pictures, and elderly couples stared in disbelief when they heard us speaking Chinese. When we finally got up to leave the park, we were approached--nay, ATTACKED--by a group of people hollering and waving their cameras in our directions. With mutual glances and knowing nods, we did what any experienced celebrities might do: lowered our heads and ran away.

Safe out of reach of their voices or lenses, we chuckled and loaded back onto the bus, just in time for the sun to finally come out after what had been a rather sun-less day on Sun Island. Between the sun shining over our heads and our harrowing experiences with the renmin paparazzi, our discussion as found our seats focused on only one thing: where we could find the sunglasses we so desperately needed.

The sun finally comes out over Sun Island and the city of Harbin.

Harbin: Three Days of Real Life(ish?) in China

The past few days have been a slightly awkward limbo between adapting to life in Harbin/Chinese culture and waiting for classes and the language pledge to begin. We have toured the 哈工大 campus, downtown Harbin, met our roommates, and explored the area around the campus. As I said in my previous post, the campus is HUGE and constantly filled with people. The cafeterias, classrooms, streets, and ball courts are always busy. In my state of zombied jet-laggedness, I was awake at 4:30AM and saw countless people playing basketball across the street. Maybe it's dedication to become the next 姚明 (Yao Ming), but it also might just be that with so many people on this campus, someone is always out and about.

The second full day in the city we took a bus to downtown Harbin to tour around. The city has a bizarre mix of Russian architecture and Chinese signs. Several official buildings have plaques in Chinese, Russian, AND English, but most signs are only in Chinese.

Some of the architecture in downtown Harbin.

In fact, very few buildings have any sort of English. Without key landmarks like 肯德基, KFC, and 必胜客, Pizza Hut, to remind me of home, I might not have even recognized that I was on the same planet! Our RA, Eric, also gave us time to explore Fendou Food Store, 奋斗副食，a supermarket-esque place downtown. The market was AMAZING, with fruits, nuts, meats, fish, etc...The stand with the overflowing piles of dried fruits were across from the pyramids of steaming bāozi, which in turn were next to the chicken feet and goose heads.

A few other CET Harbin students exploring the Fendou Market.

Beautiful mounds of dried fruit. I was only able to resist because I had just seen a fried duck head.

I'm not sure what "Tourismy Bread" is, but look at those loaves of bread!

The counter with baozi and jiaozi...NOM NOM NOM.

Nuts, chocolates, fruits...NOM NOM NOM TAKE 2!

The upper levels of the store had the requisite KFC, but also several clothing stores. Ever since arriving to China, I have noticed that young Chinese people seem to wear a lot of clothes with English words--but the words don't always make sense. The clothing stores as the shopping center specialized in this type of Chinglish fashion, with bright colors, large fonts, and total nonsense.

Want T-shirt--Do you like?

Have no fear: in China DREMS do come true!

Later that day we met our new roommates, who then took us out for dinner. A small group of CET students and their roommates headed to dinner at a Szechuan restaurant. Szechuan food has a reputation for being spicy even in the US, but the spice there pales in comparison to the heat in China! One of the most famous Szechuan dishes is Mapodoufu, in which the ma means "to numb." So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when the dishes that had tiny peppercorns literally numbed my mouth.

Sunday we finally met our 1-on-1 course teachers. My topic--Chinese food culture--is pretty broad and my teacher and I began to figure out a way to focus on more specific subjects. But most of the lunch we had together was spent discussing differences between American food culture and Chinese food culture. My teacher was shocked when I said: 1) I rarely, if ever, go to McDonalds or KFC; 2) fast food restaurants are not considered "nice" American restaurants; 3) I don't fry all of the food I eat at home; 4) I don't eat soup everyday; and most shocking of all: 5) I like coffee (weishenme? she begged in response, tai ku le!)

Sunday morning was bittersweet since the language pledge began at 2PM. We all wanted to keep speaking in English, knowing that the pledge would be frustrating and exhausting. Yet, at the same time we all came for the pledge. Hopefully it will all be worth it.