New Year's (in my Least Favorite Chinese City)

I've been too busy to write in my blog lately, so I have a little catching up to do. Going back several weeks, to the weekend after the one in which I went skiing, I spent the weekend in my least favorite Chinese city, Lanzhou. As you may or may not recall (rather, as you probably don't recall), Lanzhou is the capital city of Gansu, the province I live in. It's the only big city in Gansu, with perhaps 1 million residents. I've had a general disinterest in Lanzhou when I've been before, but after my most recent trip I've decided I really don't like it, for the following reasons:

1. polluted - Lanzhou has some of the worst air pollution in China, which in turn has some of the worst air pollution in the world. Visibility was shockingly bad at times. Statistics vary but I've seen one source give it the distinction of worst air quality in the world.
2. unfriendly - in Zhangye I get a sense of well-meaning curiosity when I go out in public. In Lanzhou I don't like the way people are looking at me.
3. unsafe - in the past 6 months I know of two foreign teachers being stabbed in Lanzhou. And on one bus ride in the middle of the afternoon, a fight broke out inside the bus. The bus stopped and let them out, and as we rode away we watched about 10 young men beating the hell out of one guy who was crouching on the pavement. I've never seen anything like it.
4. too large - we spent hours upon hours on buses that weekend just getting around the city. I spent 35 yuan on a taxi ride from a club back to the university we were staying at - a typical taxi ride in Zhangye is 3 yuan.
5. dishonest - my dislike of the city was sealed when I was almost massively ripped off as I tried to leave. I couldn't find my bus at first, because I didn't realize it was in the back parking lot. Normally the various workers hanging about are helpful and point you in the right direction, but this time an unscrupulous bus operator led me to the wrong bus, namely, his. I was a little alarmed to see I was on a sleeper bus, which was also empty, and even more so when he started telling me we'd be leaving at 8pm and wanted my ticket. I told him no, my bus leaves at 2pm, and he told me that bus had already left because it was full. I decided to have a look for myself, and at that point he did actually lead me to the right bus, which I caught by only a couple of minutes. If that had been my first month in China I might easily not have known better.

Anyway, moving on, the reason I went to Lanzhou (Danielle, Stephen, and Phillip went as well) was to attend a formal dinner for all foreign teachers in Gansu on Friday to celebrate the impending (Western) New Year. The food was nice enough, but not really worth the 8-hour trip, and at that point I found it more than a little odd to be surrounded by 100+ foreigners in one room. Danielle and Stephen convinced me to stay and attend the New Year's Party being held by Peace Corps volunteers on Sunday night, so it turned into a long weekend.

Saturday night was the most enjoyable part of the weekend for me. We treated ourselves to the first genuinely good pizza I have had in China, and had a decent time at a bar with a few of their Peace Corps friends and an amusing young Chinese man named David. He was fluent in English to the point that he could keep up with our conversation, got our sarcasm, and even swore, all very unusual.

We ended the night at a dance club, something I've actually warmed up to over the course of the past few months. I'd like to think that I am now simply unimpressive on the dance floor, rather than an absolute disaster, just another unexpected result of my life in China. At any rate, after we split a bottle of Jack Daniels I was feeling pretty confident, and meandered away from my group and towards the attractive Chinese girls. At first none of them seemed overly concerned with me and my 3 repetitive dance moves, but before long a particularly good-looking girl I hadn't seen "accidentally" bumped into me and started dancing with me. I never did rejoin my friends. She was a tease, periodically going over to dance with other guys with a sly smile and making me win her back. Eventually my friends left, but I was about 60% confident I remembered the name of the school and could find our friend's apartment in the dark, so I stayed. Once it got pretty late she left, but before that we exchanged numbers. At that point I realized I needed a cell phone, as I seem to be forming a habit of giving girls in other cities my apartment number in Zhangye and never talking to them again. There was afterwards a mystery about what her name could possibly be - she had written it so carelessly that even Chinese people couldn't read either character.

At that point in the weekend I was obligated to stay for the New Year's party, or rather the "white trash" party, as all the Peace Corps parties apparently have a theme. It was pretty much as I imagined, with cans of imported Pabst Blue Ribbon, everyone imitating a hick Southern accent, lots of Lynyrd Skynyrd songs, toilet seats hung on the walls, dirty messages in the bathroom, and a general drunkenness and lack of clothing, including a guy wearing only underwear with toilet paper sticking out. And yet despite the charming atmosphere, I managed not to have a good time. I counted myself out relatively early, but I didn't miss much of the party, as it ended with a big trip to the hospital because a volunteer turned out to have appendicitis. I'm not sure it's possible to have a normal Western holiday in China.

Spitting

Winter has by now come to Zhangye, and with it, Chinese snot rockets. It’s no secret to anyone who has been outdoors in China for more than 20 minutes that Chinese people like to spit. And they do the job, too—no quiet, subtle spit, but rather a nasal-cleansing, monstrous loogie, the preparation of which can be heard a kilometer away. The floors of buildings, including restaurants, are by no means out of bounds, and women join in too. The spitting I can nearly get used to, even laugh at a particularly powerful one, but the snot rockets still bother me. This is a special treat of wintertime, in which a pedestrian feels that a normal spit won’t get the job done, and keeps one nostril closed with his finger while the other launches a mucous missile onto the pavement. But you’re unlikely to see a Chinese person blow his or her nose, especially at a meal—that would be rude.

Skiing with Chinese Characteristics

Since Christmas fell on a Monday, we decided to celebrate over the weekend. Danielle and Stephen being as ambitious as they are, we ended up traveling 9 hours to the city of Hami in the province of Xinjiang, mostly to see our British friend Tracy and to go skiing. This was well worth the trip. Hami is perhaps slightly bigger than Zhangye, with a similarly small foreign population (meaning you can count them on your fingers), and an eccentric group at that. Two are married to Chinese – an American girl who addresses her own husband as “Mr. Tian” and seems to speak at least some Chinese, and a 60+ year-old man who is married to a 35-year old Chinese woman, and who speaks approximately 8 words of Chinese from the look of it. However, since she was taught English by her smart-ass husband, she had one of the best Chinese-English senses of humor I’ve seen. She seemed a feisty woman, and in fact not only yelled at Tracy to “go back to England and find your own husband!” recently in a fit of jealousy, but started a short fist-fight with her.

Skiing outside of Hami was definitely Skiing With Chinese Characteristics. Me and Stephen at least were well amused to arrive and see this ski “resort” we had traveled so far to reach—a total of one slope, which was no more than a quarter of the size of the smallest bunny hill I’ve seen in America. Which was probably just as well—I may have been the only person in the place who had skied more than twice, and the well-to-do Chinese women who arrived seemed interested mostly in giggling, falling a lot, and getting personal assistance from the “fit” employees (to use a British-ism/Tracy-ism). I would call them ski instructors, had I seen any instructing whatsoever going on. There was also tubing on offer, which was generally agreed to be more fun than the skiing.

That night we went out on the town, and Tracy made plans to meet a Chinese women she knows and her group of friends. This was at a rather up-scale dance club, in which there was no dance floor and everyone danced in their little personal space around their table. Danielle fixed her eyes on a Chinese guy in the group, and Stephen simply likes to dance, so I began to feel a little bored. Tracy then practically pushed me into dancing with a small group of attractive girls, which was suddenly going quite well—until approximately 3 minutes later, when it was time to leave. The obviously interested one asked in (Chinese-)English, “your phone number is how much?” as I left, but I’ll add another check to the “missed opportunities with Chinese girls” column. Zhangye is unfortunately so small, conservative, and aware of the smallest move we make that I think girls here are off-limits (and married by 20 anyway). And everyone knows where we live - one off-balance girl having my phone number is probably enough (more on that another day). The second bar we went to was dull for me and Stephen, who mostly contained our irritation at the stunning beauties in the group being spoken for and watched the recreational activities going on around us in confusion.

The main activity of our last day in Hami was for the four of us to get massages. Not just a massage, but a three-hour marathon on the 15^th floor of an expensive hotel, which would be Tracy’s style. So, I sat in a robe and long underwear for hours as a cute but rather young-looking girl soaked my feet. Now I know how to say “ticklish” in Chinese. I’ve never done that before but supposedly it’s very expensive in America; here it ran us about $9 each.

We returned to Zhangye at about 5:30am on Monday morning, Christmas morning. We were offered the day off but it was much too complicated to rearrange our final exams; hopefully I won’t make a habit of working on Christmas day. It didn’t particularly feel like Christmas, though a number of students stopped by my home with gifts, including a scarf from me and Andrew’s friends “the daughters”, which they knitted themselves. And what is Christmas without eating Beef Noodles with Andrew and two of the daughters. In the evening me, Gary, Danielle, and Andrew celebrated at China Fire (where else lately), where I fought off a sudden case of home-sickness, followed by fighting off the urge to inflict physical harm on a few excruciatingly annoying new Chinese “friends” who had had a bit too much Christmas cheer.

More fun than Christmas itself was the English Department’s Christmas Party the week before. The Party, which included 50 guests and the renting out of an entire restaurant/bar/music hall in town, was moved up to Thursday solely so that me and Danielle would be able to attend. It turned out that it was also the first day the place was open, so they had likely moved up their first day of business simply because me and Danielle were going to be gone during the weekend. Certainly you’re never starved for attention here. Though I must admit we did help the party along—I’m always willing to sabotage the poor music, and Danielle got the dancing started as per usual. A few of our students came to sing songs for us, which was sweet, including a very endearing student of Danielle’s whose name is Bamboo. That’s a new contender for my favorite English student name, along with recent favorites Accident, Black, and Jedi, or rather Jedi Dawson Shi. The food was tasty, the dancing was genuinely enjoyable (dancing with my students, who are almost my age…. appropriate?), and we only had to sing one song (My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, chosen by our fair Scotsman).

Peace Corps and Amity: Volunteers of a Different Color

I’ve been behind on my blog lately, partly due to the end of term and exams, and partly due to being too busy with things I should write about in the blog to actually have the time to write about them. So going back a couple of weekends, there were foreign visitors to Zhangye, as in Danielle and Stephen being visited by other Peace Corps volunteers in our province, and Andrew and Gary being visited by a friend also in China through their organization, Amity. The Peace Corps teachers can be seen in the pictures - Emily and Thomas, me and Danielle, Cary and Stephen. I spent a little bit of time with both groups, and this is a brief run-down of the activities:

Peace Corps:

Friday

-met volunteers around 6pm, at a bar
-dinner, with drinks
-back to Stephen’s apartment, to drink

Saturday

-met them at Danielle’s apartment roughly 5:30pm, where I was apparently just in time for the drinking
-went to dinner, then a bar
-dirty dancing at Hot Ball Place
-a round at another bar to end the night

Amity:

Sunday

-went to Gary’s apartment, and listened to him and their friend Rae perform religious hymns
on the piano while we gently sipped homemade wine and discussed watching a movie from perhaps the 1950’s called Miss Marple

Being around Peace Corps teachers is like being at a frat party; being around Amity teachers is like being at church. Our Chinese friend He Le, owner of our new favorite bar China Fire, was at Gary’s apartment, being his usual entertaining self. We decided he would like Sex and the City better than Miss Marple, and in the interest of politeness I won’t repeat some of the funniest lines, but at any rate by the third pair of breasts nothing was disproved about the preconceptions of “easy” Western women.

So me and the Peace Corps teachers thought it would be fun to dance American-style at the dance club, in which boys actually touch the girls rather than keeping a safe 18-inch barrier between themselves and anything with breasts. However, we realized only too late that we were opening Pandora’s Box on this one. We immediately received loud cheers and whoops from the men, who formed a circle around us while we danced in the middle, exactly like the kind of scene from a movie that seems so cheesy because you’ve never seen it happen in real life. This circle drew closer and closer, like a pack of hyenas closing in on a wounded gazelle. There was nary a female in sight, besides the pole-dancing girls manning their usual stations. Emily, one of the visitors and an attractive blonde, had to actually sit most of the night out due to the unwanted attention. Very much to my dismay, I was also receiving too much attention—from men. Particularly Red Sweater Vest Man, an unwanted friend who happily bounded up to me every time I got on the dance, or rather into me. You need to build up a tolerance for discomfort when living in another culture, but I still have a line somewhere, and it was definitely crossed. It would seem Reform and Opening has yet to cover “dirty dancing in small provincial towns”.

Italian Noodles, Chinese Fire

Lately we seem to be seeing a lot of He Le, the young and charismatic owner of the bar China Fire. Last Saturday he invited us to invade his bar in the afternoon to cook Western food, and stay all night to hang out and drink. The menu included spaghetti, steak (of sorts), fruit salad, fish, and kebabs. I haven't had pasta (or "Italian noodles" as it is known here) for around 11 months, so I was pretty thrilled. He Le provided the spaghetti and other ingredients that you can't find here, and was suspiciously unwilling to give away his source. I suppose somewhere in the back alleys of Lanzhou there is an illicit trade in Oregano.

China Fire is getting well ready for Christmas, and luckily Stephen was able to provide us with accompanying music on his iPod. It turns out I love Christmas music when it hasn't been shadowing my every step for 8 weeks. We've become fond of He Le; when he has a free moment, he loves to come over and play cards, chat, and encourage drinking games. His girlfriend also seems to be among the friendliest and most approachable girls I've met in Zhangye.

My Chinese teacher Lina was also in attendance, and was responsible for probably my favorite moment of the evening. As is her habit, Danielle was overly excited about something or other during a drinking game, and said "shit!". So Lina (who is an extraordinarly polite young Chinese woman) said "Danny is always saying 'shit'. What does 'shit' mean?" Maybe you had to be there. Altogether I spent around 7 hours at China Fire, and in fact we were there last night, only to be invited again tonight for Danielle's birthday. I think my social life in Zhangye is probably more enjoyable than at college.

Chinese "Friends" in Bars

With the addition of two young American Peace Corps teachers in Zhangye this term, the "Friday Nights for Foreigners" tradition that began last term has been much more lively. We always meet for dinner on Friday, and this term we generally end the evening bar-hopping on European Street. Yes, that was "bar-hopping"; Zhangye, with its nearest international neighbor being Mongolia, has a cooler bar scene than my American hometown. In particular we've come to like two: "Gary's Friend's Bar", with the owner's girlfriend being a generally agreed front-runner for Most Beautiful Woman in Zhangye, and China Fire. China Fire has a good logo to go with a great name: the place is covered in posters with a flaming huo, the character for "fire".

Strange and amusing things usually happen when foreigners stay up past the time that decent people go to bed in Zhangye. Last time I went out, we attracted an unwelcome, but not unusual, amount of attention at Gary's Friend's Bar. This was, of course, focused on Danielle, who is not only foreign but a young female with blonde hair. She was double-teamed or triple-teamed this time, with a guy on each side, one of whom Gary was sure was Japanese. To this he would only respond confusingly, in English, "I am Japanese guide-o!". By the end of the night, Danielle told me "I think I've been told 'I love you' more times tonight than during the rest of my life combined". I had my own new best friend, who was drunk and mostly repeated the same conversation about seeing me play guitar at Hexi University, occasionally adding emphasis by playing air-guitar and saying "very beautiful!" in English.

Stephen also got a lot of attention, as his beard and long hair also make him a particular novelty. The owner of the bar, Gary's friend, insisted he looked like someone, whose Chinese name didn't make sense to any of us. Finally he found a photo in a magazine: Viggo Mortensen, best known for playing "Aragorn" in The Lord of the Rings. Apparently worried that the hero among us might be under-armed, he fetched a large and expensive-looking dagger (from where, I have no idea) and insisted that Stephen accept it as a gift. Someone soon pointed out that "hey, you look like him too!", referring to the poster of Kurt Cobain on the back wall. To anyone who has felt embarrassed about not being able to tell Chinese people apart, I assure you that they can't tell us apart, and are probably less embarrassed about it. As the swarming of weird, drunk Chinese men began, Stephen, who normally leaves early because his school is farther away, asked "is it usually like this after I leave?", and we assured him it was nothing out of the ordinary.

In an earlier night at the "Halloween Bar" (giant fake spiderweb on the wall), Danielle attracted a particularly persistent friend. As can be seen from the picture (which Danielle may or may not appreciate me putting on the internet), he had had a fair share of alcohol, and was getting a little too close for her comfort. Interacting with locals who pay no attention to the language barrier is generally a good thing, but possibly Danielle finds an exception in sweet nothings being whispered into her ear in unintelligible Chinese, peppered with the occasional "I love you" in English. But then again I could be wrong.

Live in Zhangye Prison

As probably goes without saying, performing rock music inside a prison to a crowd of Chinese criminals was memorable. For some reason, none of the Chinese people I was with seemed to find it as amusing as I did. The daily stares from Chinese people haven't fazed me for a long time, but as we walked through the room towards the stage, I couldn't help but feel self-conscious about a few hundred convicts turning in unison to watch my every move. The performance was on a rather official-looking stage in the cafeteria, with a red banner about World Aids Day; it seems the prison has a decent entertainment budget.

I hadn't practiced with them for months, and even on the stage I had not the slightest idea what songs we were playing. I finally asked Little Ma what song we were going to play first, and he just said "don't worry, we're playing the songs you know". For some reason the Guitar Club is not keen on learning new songs. The music went over pretty well with the audience, which included the guards at the front, and Little Ma knows how to entertain a crowd (not that I ever know what he's saying). The power went out during the middle of a song, which was slightly awkward (I'll refrain from making any cheesy comments about our "rocking out" here), but otherwise things went well. A few of the inmates actually performed, with mixed results, and I was unfortunately talked into a poor performance of an English song. I refuse to sing in front of a crowd of three in America, yet in China somehow I'm willing to sing in front of more than 200 prisoners. And Hotel California reared its monstrous, outdated head again, with just me and Little Ma playing guitar. I hope there aren't any serious long-term effects on my taste in music from my stay in China. But I think my favorite moment was near the end, when my friend encouraged the crowd to join him in a sing-along of a song that everyone but me seemed to know by heart, and I was treated to the spectacle of dozens of hardened young men singing their hearts out to a daydreamy Chinese song from the inside of a prison. Just when I think there are few surprises left in Zhangye...