In a minute...

Remember that PBS pre-commercial bizarre 15-second bit that went, “In a minute! In a minute! In a minute! In a minute!” ?? Letting us know that we only had to wait a (relative) minute before enjoying more Big Bird, or whatever…Anyone? Well, anyway, this post will be (should be) just as flashy: a sort of drive-by updating.

Hong Kong: Some of the weekend was pretty sweet. We all rocked out at the party, winning the prize for best group performance, and we also took in all the bright colors and drunken odors at the nearby carnival ala’ Mardi Gras. However, I was a little too ambitious: I played a bit of Ultimate and I paid the price. My back went out again, not even half way through the 2nd game. Turns out I’m not invincible. Blast! I was pretty pissed at myself for making the decision to play in the first place, and at not being able to play, and at being in stupidly horrid pain. Blah. I’m going to start seeing a Pilates/Physical Therapy expert in Shanghai, so initiative is (finally) being taken.

Halloween: Remember Halloween back in elementary school, dressing up as witches and vampires, trick-or-treating, and having a day of games and candy at school?? Awesome right? Well, when the table has turned, it becomes a royal pain of a freak show to provide the shenanigans that both kids want and teachers expect. It’s like each class is in competition to see how many stupid orange pumpkins she can hang up (which has completely killed our supply of orange paper, I’ll tell you that much). At first I was a little bitter, but I ended up getting into it. We played pin the hat on the witch, musical chairs, and mummy wrap. I even dressed up…I even made part of my costume (note the ears…and the hidden tail made of sewn cloth with a hanger and paper stuffed inside).

My cat-alicious self with some of my little munchkin wizards, witches, monkeys, skeletons, and fellow felines.

The basis for "Pin the Hat/Broom End/Feet on the Witch" that I drew. What a hideous monster I've created!

Mummy Wrap: The Pumpkin girl and the Scarecrow doing a scarily good job of mummifying their classmates.

I ended up having a great time, and came away with a sackful of candy. Bonus! Plus, later that evening we all went out (minus students…) to get free beer courtesy of our sweet costumes. Oh, the benefits of being a lao wai…

Election: HOLY MOLY!!! I am so f&*#ing glad that Obama won! I mean, this doesn’t instantly solve all of America’s or the world’s problems, but it’s surely a step in the right direction. I read an article from The Onion that my brother, Paul, brought to my attention, entitled Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress. It makes a pretty interesting, and painfully clear, point of how we can’t seem to get out of the habit of waiting until the shit really hits the fan and we’re all covered in the gross shit that we’ve, until now, tried to dump on the world…before even thinking of switching gears. Apparently, “42 percent of voters said that the nation's financial woes had finally become frightening enough to eclipse such concerns as gay marriage, while 30 percent said that the relentless body count in Iraq was at last harrowing enough to outweigh long ideological debates over abortion.” All I have to say is, puh-leez. Some Americans have - thankfully - momentarily pulled their heads out of their asses to make what in my mind was the right vote…I just hope now that the movement toward change doesn’t sacrifice “small” causes like gay marriage and women’s reproductive rights (the passing of Prop 8, banning gay marriage in California, already sends alarming shivers through my veins).

Furthermore, as Paul cautiously points out: Of course, even though Obama "kicked ass" in the election, and the "people have spoken," the vote was still something like a 52-48% split. This country is so weird. I’m with ya. America is freakin’ weird. Hopefully Obama can rally up the nation to help us really see and believe in the potential awesomeness that America has. I love ya, bro!

Over and out.
Em

P.S. Not quite drive-by in-a-minute updating…sorry…the intent was there. ☺

Black Market Receipts

Emma and I have spent a lot of time in Shanghai's Railway station over these past few months because of our many trips to and from Shanghai. On every corner surrounding the train station there are ladies mumbling under their breath "fa piao, fa piao, fa piao, fa piao" (fa piao means receipt in Chinese). So, I knew that these ladies were interested in receipts for some reason, but I didn't really understand why. I learned that they were interested in both buying and selling fa piao, but couldn't get any further because of my lack of speaking skills. I asked my friends in Shanghai about fa piao and found out that they are the official form of receipts and businesses use them for expenses and companies use them for tax purposes. These women in the railway station buy fa piao from anybody and sell them to people who need them for expenses.

Fa piao (note the red chops, Chinese people love that stuff)

This past weekend I was in the eyeglasses market with Milan and Mary (they were shopping) and we passed a fa piao lady. I got so excited that I scared my friends... I convinced Mary (who is fluent) to pump the fa piao lady for information. They had a little conversation that involved a lot of pointing at me, some laughing, and eventually some knowledge. It turns out that a fa piao for approximately 100 RMB is worth 2 RMB. So, for every receipt that I collect I can get 2% back on the black market! I'm going to collect all the fa piao I possibly can!!!! I'll be keeping track of the amount of $$$ I make from fa piao on the blog (although I haven't decided whether I should measure it in RMB or in fractions of Teppanyaki). All in all, this is a very exciting moment for me :)

- Jon

Shanghai Hockey?

This past weekend one of our friends scored some free tickets to an international hockey match (Shanghai Sharks vs. some team from South Korea). I'm not a big fan of hockey, but this sounded like a fun, new experience, so I was pretty excited about all of it! Anyways, after frisbee, some delicious Xinjiang food, and a quick trip to the eyeglasses market (I will say more about this in a later post) we made our way down to the stadium. The stadium was out on the end of the Line 9 subway. Now, I don't have a vast knowledge of Shanghai (I don't live there after all), but I hadn't even heard of Line 9. It is a rarely used boondocky subway that took us out into the 'burbs. It was like going back to Suzhou :) We got to the rink just in time for the game to begin and it was everything that I dreamed it would be... The hockey was definitely mediocre (think high school/college level), but the atmosphere was hilarious. There were thunder sticks everywhere, dancing cheerleaders on a stage (the Chinese seem to have an unhealthy obsession with cheerleaders, but that's a topic for another post), and beer-swilling Chinese hockey fans. It was terrific!

High quality hockey

Picture time at the hockey game!

The highlight of the match for me was betting Robin a bunch of bananas that no goals would be scored in the 3rd period only to have Shanghai tie up the score with a goal in the final 19 seconds of the 3rd period. You just can't manufacture excitement like that! Haha. Anyways, once the game was over we needed to get back to Shanghai, but at this point the subway is no longer so we hire out this sketchy mini-van and ride joyfully back to Shanghai. On the ride back, we prank called Joann (a frisbee friend). We pretended to be lost in cab with a cabbie who only spoke Cantonese and asked her to talk to the cabbie for us. Joann (who speaks Cantonese fluently) then spoke with the "cab driver" Geoff (our friend in the van who also speaks Cantonese). Geoff proceeded along an inappropriate line of questioning (in Cantonese) asking Joann if she was pretty and where she lived. It was all quite amusing at the time, but definitely loses something in the the re-telling. I actually just re-read that and realized how little sense it makes, but I'm too lazy to re-type all of that and I'm just going to leave it up there as is.

Ok, back to work for me!

- Jon

Halloween Suzhou-style

Halloween isn't really done here in China. The Chinese kids know about its existence and wanted to celebrate it. I taught them "trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat" and gave myself a virtual pat on the back. Now, that's a job well done. Haha. Aside from a couple of candy-crazed kids Halloween is a foreigner-only event in China. A bunch of the other young foreign teachers at our school decided that we should take advantage of the Friday night/Halloween festivities to go out in style. We found an Aussie bar in town that was serving free beer (7pm-midnight) to anybody in costume! I couldn't believe it. FREE BEER. This is unheard of... I mean, I'd dress up like an idiot every weekend if it meant free beer. God, I love free things. Anyways, we slapped together some costumes last minute. Actually, I shouldn't say that. The girls (Emma, Keli, and Amanda) put some serious time and effort (and arts & crafts skills) into their costume and turned out with 1 pregnant redneck and 2 cats. I decided to go with the low-effort route and chose to be a Chinese tour guide. Now, this doesn't make as much sense for those of you who have never seen a Chinese tour, but I'll try to give a little description. Basically, Chinese tours consist of 30 random Chinese (who are all forced to wear matching brightly colored hats) and a tour guide. The tour guide has a similiar brightly colored hat, brightly colored flag, and finals a mobile amp for blasting whatever it is they say to anybody within a 5-mile radius. Anyways, we made our way downtown as a Chinese tour guide, 2 cats, and a pregnant redneck (and her husband) . We drank free beer, chatted, and had a wonderful time. The best part of it was actually the whole crowd of Chinese that gathered around the bar to stare at all the foreigners in costume. They enjoyed the show as much as we enjoyed the free beer. It was a win-win!

Quality Halloween in China!

- Jon
P.S. MUCH more will follow in the near future. Sorry I haven't been updating recently, but I'll get back on that...

Vegas meets China

Hong Kong is a special place. I was only there for a weekend and I spent the vast majority of that time playing frisbee, but the little I did see shocked and intrigued me. HK seemed like a city of contradictions and odd juxtapositions. Everywhere I looked there was opulence (BMWs, mansions, Louis Vuitton (sp?) stores, etc...) and there was squalor (beggars, ghettos, etc...) When we first arrived in Hong Kong I was taken aback by the bright lights and the Vegas-like atmosphere of Kowloon. The diversity of Hong Kong's streets was a shock for the system as well. I've adjusted to Suzhou (and China in general) which is an incredibly homogenous place. I'm not sure what the actual demographics are, but everybody here is Asian (no surprise, really). This is not true in Hong Kong. There were tons of people of all different races and from all different countries walking around the streets drinking, eating, and socializing. It was like NYC. Anyways, I wish I had been able to spend more time in Hong Kong, but I'm sure that I will return to explore it later...

Here are a couple pictures from the weekend:

O-line (Sherry, Nutt, Sam, me, Robin, Sara, Jono)

Joann, Robin, and our cabbie on the way back from the fields

Emma helping me prepare my costume on the subway (who knows what I'm doing...)

The tournament was a blast. We lost to a team from the Phillipines in the semis. Our team's performance varied from nearly perfect to downright sloppy. There were definitely some flashes of brilliance and I think a lot of hope for the future. The tournament party was pretty fun too :) Highlights include a lot of couch dancing (hard to describe), Double Dragon skit, and eating a HUGE pile of McD fries in the middle of the night!

- Jon

GROSS

I ate my first chicken foot last night - ugh. Imagine nibbling salty skin from around a chicken toe-nail/claw... That's pretty much exactly what it's like. I don't get why anybody would be interested in the first place - there isn't any meat on the thing to begin with... I guess I shouldn't go on about this too much because I wasn't forced to eat the foot. I was just out with a couple of the Chinese teachers that I play basketball with and I didn't want to seem rude. Bah. I'm going to tell my Mom that good manners did end up almost killing me.

We leave for Hong Kong today!

- Jon

"The only one who could ever reach me..."

I don't have anything in particular to say right now. I just have a few things going through my head that I want to get down...

1) Despite my previous short anti-political rant, Palin scares me. Check out the website http://www.palinaspresident.us/ move your mouse around and click on random objects in the room.

2) My parents are in China right now! They have spent the past week or so on a pretty sweet tour of "China's Tourist Highlights" (Great Wall, Forbidden City, Terracotta Warriors, tea plantation, etc...) It's pretty cool that they've come all this way to explore a new country. I'm glad that I could provide the impetus for such an adventure! I'm also pretty excited to take a couple of days to explore with them...

3) I am taking 4 days off over the next week. I emailed the foreign teacher liaison about this almost a month ago and he just told me that it wasn't possible for me to take leave. I emailed back trying to express how important this was to me and that I wasn't really asking for leave, more that I was informing him that I wasn't going to be around. At this point, he chose not to respond (this is a common tactic - if you hear something you don't like, just pretend you never heard it and under no circumstances should you confront the issue). Anyways, this situation lasted for a couple of weeks during which I'd send the odd email to remind him that I wasn't going to be around for 4 days. Just yesterday he decided to address the issue and tell the vice-principal about it. Now it's become a huge fiasco. More details will follow on this I'm sure as things develop...

4) I'm really excited to play in my first Asian frisbee tournament in Hong Kong. The level of frisbee out here is significantly lower than that in the States, but I'm still REALLY excited to play in a competitive tournament. I like the people on our team a lot and I'm looking forward to spending the weekend with them playing, eating, and partying in Hong Kong!

5) Huangshan was ridiculously beautiful and we haven't posted enough pictures of it...

Here I am saving the world...

All the lockets and a mountain view

Only in China...

- Jon