Every so often I get bored and decide to take pictures of myself. I know, I know – how vain of me! Here are the results of my latest session with boredom. They aren’t exciting or anything, but they made me think of the time when I showed this little Chinese kid my eyes in Hangzhou.

Back when we lived in Fuyang, we were invited to go to a food festival by one of Phil’s students. After stuffing ourselves with all sorts a weird, but fantastic food, we were informed that we were going to finish the night by going to a nice restaurant across town. There was no way I was going to be able to eat anything, but Phil and I agreed and promised to eat as much(or as little) as was possible. We thought we were going to be joined by the student’s parents, but neither stayed in the room very long. They were too busy running around the restaurant socializing. They just wanted to give their son ample time to practice his English. In that, they succeeded.

Sometime into the feast(Phil was somehow able to down a rather large portion) another boy entered the room. He was first introduced as the student’s brother, but we later discovered he was just a family friend. I guess he was invited to practice his English with the foreigners. He was shy at first, but before long we had him using what English he knew. We even taught him a few new words and phrases. Somehow or another we got on the conversation of how westerners look different than Chinese.

The boy that had entered the room had never before seen a foreigner’s eyes, so I offered to show him what mine looked like. I stood up and walked to the other side of the table where he was sitting, bent over so that I was at eye level with him, and opened my eyes as wide as I could. It was almost hysterical. The boy jumped out of his chair, nearly knocking it over, as if he had seen a ghost or something. I don’t know exactly what he saw in the depths of my eyes, but he wouldn’t sit back down until I was safely seated in my chair. I couldn’t help but giggle. He acted very similarly when Phil leaned over to show him his blue eyes. I guess he thought all the people in the world had dark eyes up until that moment in time. That would probably freak me out too.

I particularly like how you can see the reflection of the bars of our balcony.

Perhaps this is what the boy saw instead! I’d be pretty freaked out too.

Ah. No more planes, buses, trains or automobiles. I never thought I would despise traveling so much or enjoy the pleasures of home like I do now. It’s so nice to know that my home will be nice and stable for the next three months(at least) and that it won’t have wings, tires, shake, or have the possibility of crashing. We’ve only been here four days now and I’ve already dug my feet into the ground and started growing roots. It’s either going to take all of the men, women, and children of China ripping me up and dragging me out or a fierce typhoon to make me leave Xiamen.For those of you who have just arrived or missed some of the posts that talked about our crazy trip that bounced us all over China, let me bring you up to speed. For those who know all about it, take a look at the map above and get a good idea of just how far we’ve gone is such a little amount of time. I know think I can say that I have been to more places in China, than I can say I’ve been in my own country. There is something wrong about that, I think.

So, if you take a look at the map above, you will see a whole bunch of black lines going from one corner of China, one city at a time, to the other corner of China. Now you can understand my hatred for traveling. I think anyone would have a sour look upon their face if they had just gone through what we have. I’m just a little sad that I didn’t make it any further west. I mean, if you are going to bounce us around China, you could have at least bounced us in all of the cardinal directions! :)Alright, hopefully, this final explanation of everywhere we’ve been will not become any bigger than it has. Every time I’ve thought its come to an end, something else has happened. This time though, I think the insanity has finally settled to the bottom of the ocean and won’t be tempted to show it’s evil face again.

From the top:

Fuyang to Hangzhou – by bus – 1 hour
Hangzhou to Beijing – by train – 14 hours – soft seat
Beijing to Shenzhen – by plane – 4 hours
Shenzhen to Hong Kong – by “train” – 1 hour
Hong Kong to Shenzhen – by “train” – 1 hour
Shenzhen to Hangzhou – by plane – 2 hours
Hangzhou to Tunxi – by bus – 2.5 hours
Tunxi to Huang Shan – by bus – 1.5 hours
Huang Shan to Tunxi – by bus – 1.5 hours
Tunxi to Hangzhou – by bus – 2.5 hours
Hangzhou to Beijing – by plane – 2 hours
1st attempt Beijing to Shenyang – by plane – 2 hours of sitting – Freak snow storm
2nd attempt Beijing to Shenyang – by plane – Flight canceled
3rd attempt Beijing to Shenyang – by plane – 14 hours of sitting for a one hour flight
4th attempt Beijing to Shenyang – by train – soft sleeper – 8 hours
Shenyang to Beijing – by train – soft seat – 9.5 hours
Beijing to Shenyang – by plane – 1 hour
Shenyang to Xiamen – by plane – 5.5 hours (delay and stop-over)

That’s about 70 hours of traveling and is probably pretty accurate, but I wouldn’t doubt it if it was actually more. I’m probably missing a bus ride or something in there somewhere. The worst part about it is that the only places we had actually planned on going after our contract was up in January was Huang Shan, Beijing, and of course Shenyang. It is true that we got to see a lot of China, but almost everywhere we went, we were trying to get important things done so that we could stay in China for the following semester. Because of that, we missed a lot of cool things in the cities that we were able to go. Maybe I will win the lottery or something, and be able to go back and enjoy them all at a much more leisurely pace. Heh, that would be nice.

And after all of that, there isn’t much more to say on that subject. I guess that chapter of my life is over and it is time to move on to the next one. As crazy as this chapter was, I sure got some crazy stories out of it – that’s for sure. And even though the experience at the time frustrated the living hell out of me, I know that I will have a good laugh when I’m 60 and sipping sweet tea on my front porch. . . .”Hey, Phil, do you remember the time we got bounced all over China.”

I have a feeling that Xiamen is going to be good to us.

If you have ever wondered what you would look like in a claymation cartoon or movie, all you have to do is go to any large market in China and say the word. That’s what Phil and I did and look what happened. They are pretty freaky, but remarkably good.

Phil is so suave.

We had seen something like this in Hangzhou, but to save money and space in our suitcases, we decided to pass them up at the time. The kind we saw in Hangzhou were made of clay too, but didn’t come in color. When we saw the guy making these at the Silk Street Market in Beijing for cheaper than the variety in Hangzhou we couldn’t pass them up. I think that Phil looks more like his than I do of mine, but they are still very cool. For the two of them we paid 160 yuan and it took the guy about 25 minutes to recreate us in clay. Neat, huh?

Gabe will never be as beautiful as she was on the day she was made.

Ray, a native of Beijing, asked me to correct the mistranslations of the signs I took pictures of so that he could have a better understanding of standard English. He was referring to my recent post entitled Lost in Translation. For all I know, there may be other native Chinese people reading my blog trying to enhance their English ability. Because of that, I will now translate them in what should have been their proper form or what would have made more sense.

The first picture on my original post was of the back of our hotel door in Shenzhen. It was instructions on how to get out of the hotel if a fire occurred. In it’s original form it was as follows:

When the fire occurs runs away to,Must use the wet towel clothes, the cloth class and so on to cover up the mouth nose, bends the waist lowers the head the advance by creeping.

Leaves the scene of a fire through the security staircase.,

This is how it should have looked like:

When a fire occurs, use wet towels or clothes to cover up your mouth and nose. Bend at the waist and crawl on the floor to the nearest exit. To leave, use the staircase. Do not use the elevator.

The other picture was of a business in Hangzhou:

Hangzhou Local Famous Specialty Monopolized Store

Perhaps it would have looked more proper if it had been written like this, but there are a half a dozen other ways it could have been done. This way there isn’t so much redundancy. Hangzhou and Local cancel each other out, as well Specialty and Monopolized. You could technically throw Famous in there somewhere, but it isn’t completely necessary.

Hangzhou Specialty Store

with Famous: Famous Hangzhou Specialty Store or Hangzhou’s Famous Specialty Store

Hope this helps, Ray.

Anyone who has been to China or any other country where English is the second language knows how humorous a translated sign can be. I come across them a lot, but I don’t always have my camera handy. My New Year’s resolution is to carry my camera wherever I go and to take as many pictures as my battery will let me. I don’t want to go home to find that I don’t have as many pictures as I should.

I know that whomever is translating these from Chinese to English tries very hard, but sometimes I think that they should hire a more fluent speaker of the foreign language if it is going to be in the public eye all the time. There are enough expats here in China who wouldn’t mind taking over the job for a small fee. But then again, if all the signs were proper, I wouldn’t have some much to laugh at as I walked around town.

Below are just a few of the many humorous signs I’ve seen. I have a pretty funny picture that I got from inside of a taxi in Shanghai, but that I don’t have it uploaded to Blogger yet. It said something to effect of not allowing psychos in the taxi. Heh. I’ll make a point to start taking more pictures as I see them, and I’m sure I’ll see plenty.

On the back door of our hotel in Shenzhen.

One of the stores in Hangzhou. Do they know what monopolized means?

Ah, Internet.

After much searching and aching to feel these little keys at my finger tips while ones and zeros clammer through the world wide web, I have at last located an Internet cafe. I never knew how reliant I was on the Internet until just now. I’m sitting next to two Chinese men. The one on my left is busy blowing up bad guys in World of War Craft and the other is downloading and searching for things I’m not quiet sure of. I do see some weird scantily clad Chinese cartoon characters on his screen . . .

Well, I guess you may want to know how our train ride went. I won’t keep you waiting any longer.

At about 4 pm on Tuesday, we began taking our luggage down the 40 some odd steps that led to our hostel room. Phil was nice and took down the bulk of it. I played the weak and dainty girl and carried down our back packs. They weren’t light, though. Each had a lap top computer and some other odds and ends that we deemed important enough to bring with us. We stood out like the white Americans that we are as we rolled our bright purple, orange and turquoise bags down the streets of Hangzhou. Thankfully, the train station was just a few streets away, but it felt like miles with all that weight. I’ve made a promise to myself to never bring so much junk with me if I ever go to another country for an extended amount of time again.

Our train was due to leave at 6:03pm, so we made it to the train station in plenty of time. It’s always better to be early than to be late, you know, and it can’t be more true than it is in China. As we rolled our bags into the soft seat waiting room, I crossed my fingers and prayed that the ticket takers wouldn’t forbid us to bring all our crap in. They didn’t say a word and I was very much relieved. We plopped a squat and waited the hour an half for our train. The time passed quickly, and soon we heard the call for our ride – train number Z10. I was very pleased to find out our platform was on level ground and that there were no more stairs to drag our crap up. We hopped on the train and found our seat without too much of a hassle. Again our bags caused chaos. The aisle was small, and everyone else wanted to get to their seat, too. We got a lot of stares as we tried picking up our bags one at a time and placing them on the racks above our heads. I am sure that they were wondering why we had so much stuff and where in the world we taking it. Of course, they had no idea that we weren’t tourist, but instead residents like themselves and that everything we had with us were our worldly possessions.

Tired and hot, we finally got everything settled and took our seats. It wasn’t long before two Chinese people came to their seats(directly across from us – like looking into a mirror). They took one look at us and said, giggling of course – “Foreigners” – in English like we weren’t there to hear them. They then looked at the rack above us and saw there was no room for their two little bags and had to find a place to put them. Come to find out, they were on their way to Beijing to study English(they knew some English already). I think that we couldn’t have sat by better people. Talking to them made the trip go so much smoother. The 14 hours was tough, though. 14 hours on any form on transportation is hard. I managed to get about 2 hours of shut eye towards the very end, but it wasn’t enough, really. I wish that we could have traveled during the day because the only thing that I could see out the window the entire time was the light of the buildings and cities that we past. I can’t imagine the scenery would have been spectacular. I rode on a train to Shanghai once, and the scenery didn’t change at all. It was just farms and run down houses for 2 hours and some change.

We arrived in Beijing at about 7:30, just like we were supposed to. Our two new friends asked if they could have a picture of us and we obliged. We said our goodbyes and waited for the train to empty before exiting ourselves. Before we could do this, four Chinese men appeared and asked us if they could help us take down our luggage. We said no, that we could do it, but they insisted. They took down the four suitcases and started rolling in down the aisle. I thought they may try to run off with it, so I kept up with them as best as we could. As soon as we got off the train and started walking a little bit, they stopped and asked for 200 RMB. Phil and I both laughed hysterically and demanded our luggage back. They dropped the price to 100 RMB and we still laughed saying we didn’t even want them to take it in the first place. The price got dropped again to 40 and that is when we decided to take our luggage back into our possession and head for the exit. They weren’t happy with us, but I didn’t care.

We got to the exit with no problems, and met the people that were supposed to pick us up. In the world wind of everything, I forgot to take our tickets back from the ticket taker, and as a result, lost our ability to be refunded, but hey, it could have been worse. It was cold outside, but I had expected worse. Our greeters didn’t say much to us. All I heard way Morning, Cook, and Phillip. I thought maybe they didn’t speak English. They took the majority of our luggage, so I was happy. The trip to our next destination was a bit of a weird one. We seemed to be going the backward ass way, and through the worse part of town. Once or twice I was sure that the person driving was lost. The thought crossed my mind that these weren’t the people that were supposed to pick us up and that we had been kidnapped in Beijing, but that was my imagination running away with me as it normally does. Heh.

We arrived at a sketchy looking gated community that reminded me of a military base. It was actually a college campus. Beijing International Studies University. WECL, the company we will be working for in Shenyang has a sister-school here. They dropped us off at the dorm building that would become our home for the next several days and made us happy by helping us take our luggage up another 40 stairs to the third floor. Let me remind you that up to this point no one had said squat to us in English, so we didn’t have a clue what was going on. We were starving and tired, and couldn’t decide what to do first. There was a place at the front desk to buy drinks, so I got some liquids in me to hopefully quench my hunger. When Phil and I stepped out front to see where exactly we were staying a Chinese woman came out with our room number 310A and started speaking Chinese that we couldn’t understand, but we knew that she wanted us back in our room. My first thought was that we were under house arrest or something like that. Yeah, my imagination running off with me again. Heh.

We went back to the room thinking that maybe we had a telephone call, but the phone never rang. I laid down on the bed trying to figure what in the world was going on and why our room was so cold. This is the point in which I started to panic – but just a little. When I am hungry, cold, and tired, I am just not a happy person. I was all three of these, so you can imagine what I was like. Soon there was a knock at the door. I opened it to find two Chinese men holding a sink. Apparently, our sink was faulty, and they were there to fix it. A few minutes later, we had a new sink, and they left. I was too tired to care what was going to happen – whether the room would start warming itself up or how we would get food – so I did the only thing that seemed like a good idea. I slept. We both slept.

We slept for several hours and awoke to our bellies threatening to start eating anything our eyes saw. It was time to get out and find something of substance before we died. I didn’t care if the guards at the gate refused to let us out – I was going anyway. It wasn’t a problem, thankfully, and the guards let us out without even a word. And what did we see right outside the gate? The most beautiful site to a starving person . . . a McDonald’s.

More or less, we ate, we walked around a few blocks and came back home. And that was a first day in Beijing. Today is our third, and nothing that spectacular has happened. We went to the Beijing Zoo. All most all of the animals were put up because it was freezing outside. On the up side, we only spent 30 RMB to get in, so I didn’t feel ripped off or anything. Also, we went to a pedestrian street and had some yummy street food. I had some fried banana that tasted like a funnel cake. And my favorite – fruit on a stick with sugar drizzled over top.

And what is in store for us now? We will be in Beijing until the the 8th or 9th of February. Then we have to go to Hong Kong to get ourselves legal. That’s a long story; not as long as this one . . . but I’ll leave it to another day.

We’ve made it to Hangzhou in one piece, but it wasn’t easy. Of course, nothing in China is easy. And I mean nothing.

Our trip began by carrying 6 pieces of rather heavy luggage down six flights of stairs. We each took a piece down one flight at a time. Even though it was cold enough to see my breath, by the time we were done I was hot enough to take off all of my winter clothes. After catching our breathes at the foot of the stairs and waving goodbye to our lovely abode, we began dragging all of our suitcases to the front gates of the school. We ran into some Chinese folk on the way. In Chinese, they asked us where we were going. I think they were a bit surprised by how much crap we had with us. We left our stuff at the gate so that we could go give our key and gym pass(which we never used – hence why I am a fatty now) to Mr. Zhou. He wasn’t there and the entire English office was asleep. We had to poke Peter, Mr. Zhou’s man servant, and give him our stuff. He looked completely out of it and I think that he may have forgotten how to speak English there for a moment.

Once that was done, we pulled our suitcases up the only hill in Fuyang and down the other side. We didn’t have to wait long for a taxi. It was a bit of a chore getting all of our stuff in the taxi, but we somehow managed. Two in the trunk. Two in the back seat. And our backpacks on our lap. We’ve both gotten pretty good at saying how to get to the bus station that takes us to Hangzhou, so that wasn’t a problem. There is almost always a bus there. It is a popular route, so we more or less jumped right on. At first Phil thought that he had left all of his money at home, and that gave me a heart attack, but he found it. Thankfully.

The hard part began when we actually got to Hangzhou.

It didn’t take us too long to find a taxi. We flagged one down and he asked where we were going. I showed him the address, but he didn’t seem to know where it was. He called a few people, but still didn’t seem to know. I tried telling him that I knew where it was and that I could direct him. He understood a little of what I said, but it didn’t look like we were getting anywhere. Phil tried putting two of our suitcases in the trunk, but only one would fit. The taxi driver already had something back there. So, we then tried putting it in the back seat. That didn’t make him happy. Phil threw one of mine back there anyway and shut the door. For some reason, the guy didn’t want to take us both even though we could have fit everything in like we did in our last taxi. I let the taxi driver look at the card one last time and gave it to Phil. It seemed that we were going to have to separate to get to where we needed to be. I got in the front seat, closed the door, and off we were. A part of me thought that the taxi driver was trying to kidnap me and had been playing dumb the entire time just to get me alone. Thankfully, that was not the case. He did manage to get me to the PSB. When I got all of my stuff out of the taxi, I made sure to look at my watch. If Phil wasn’t there in the next 15 mintues – I was going to flip out. It wasn’t too long before another taxi showed up and Phil appeared. Whew.

I grabbed the receipts that we had gotten a week before and ran up to the second floor of the PSB while Phil watched the luggage. I got in line at one place, but was soon directed to another line. I went to that line, and was told something in Chinese I didn’t understand. The girl in line next to me said that she told me to wait for a minute. So I did. A few minutes passed, but nothing happened. I waved my receipts again to get someones attention, and was told to take a seat – that someone would call my name. My first thought was, ” These people don’t even know my name!!” I sat down anyway. A few minutes passed, and then a few more, and finally I couldn’t take the fact that 50 other Chinese people had gotten in line and received their documents. I marched back up to the counter and demanded that I get our passports. The lady didn’t say a whole bunch, but when she got done stapling some weird papers together – she ripped the papers out of my hand and stalked off. Not even 5 seconds later she had both passports in hand, told me how much they cost, I paid and out the door I went. It was so frustrating that it took that long to get something that simple.

We had to get another taxi to get to our hostel for the night. I flagged down maybe 5 or 6 taxis and they each told me “no” they wouldn’t take me. There was no way we could roll our stuff there. By this point, I just wanted to scream. It was cold, drizzling, and I was hungry. More taxis went by, and none would agree to take us. Phil flagged one down, and even though the guy was confused on where we wanted to go – he let us put all of our stuff in his taxi. We made it to the hostel, as you can tell since you are reading this. We were so happy that we tipped the taxi driver and said thank you about 100 times.

If only that was the end of the story, but it isn’t. We got a room on the 3rd floor and there was no elevator. We were lucky, though. There was this little Chinese girl that insisted on helping us take it up stairs. We told her we could do it, but she still insisted. With all of our powers combined, we got everything to our room. I gave the gril10 RMB even though she probably deserved more. I just didn’t have any other small bills on me. She said thank you, and off she went.

For dinner we went to Pizza Hut and had dessert at TCBY. It was yummy. Ever so yummy. After that we came home(hostel) and crashed.

The real humdinger will be later today when we go to the train station. As long as they let us take all of our stuff on board, it shouldn’t be a problem. But like I said before. Nothing in China is easy. Nothing. At least if all goes semi-well, I will have 13 hours to calm down before we hit the next leg of our journey . . . Beijing.

– G

It’s official. Both mine and Phil’s obligation to the next generation of Fuyang has come to an end. Today was Phil’s last day, but I was lucky, and was able to stop teaching a week ago. Today I ran down and picked up my last chunk of change from my school and said my final farewells. Phil will get his tomorrow.

We’ve pretty much finished everything that needs to be done in order to move. We just need to pick up our passports and new visa from the PSB office in Hangzhou and possibly send one more package up north so that we don’t have to carry so much with us. We sent one today to our new school. It weighed about 44 lbs and only cost 110 RMB. That is about $14. If only that is how much it cost to ship things back to America. Going from Fuyang to Shenyang would be like going from Columbia to California. There is no way a 44 lbs package would cost 14 bucks to send in a million years. A few days ago, we sent two packages back home filled with some odds and ends that we have purchased in our travels. The biggest box weighed about 20 lbs and cost $204. We did send this the fast way, but still . . . that’s a lot of money and hurt our wallets. Mine is still crying about it. I just hope that it gets home. Apparently, they did not know where to send it even though they had all of the information on the box. They said that the zip code was wrong, and we had to repeatedly tell them that we lived there and knew our post code like we know our names. Of course, this was all said to people who really couldn’t understand us. Thankfully, there was a random man there who spoke a little English, and without him I don’t think we would have figured out what in the world was going on.

I don’t really know what else to say. My mind has felt tired and uninspired for awhile now. Everything I type seems so forced. Maybe it is that I can’t really put into words what I feel or express what it is that I am experiencing here. That is frustrating. Hopefully, it will pass, and I can resume my normal writing of this blog for the few people who do frequent it. The Internet is slowly getting repaired but it isn’t perfect yet. I am going to give it a while longer before I attempt to post pictures. I really, really hate posting pictures and not having it work after spending a lot of time on them.

Well, I’m signing off. I’m going to play Fable until I turn blue in the face. Tomorrow we finish or rather start packing. I can see Beijing on the horizon. It won’t be long now.

Goodbye Fuyang. Nice knowing you.

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Here is a slide show of our trip to the zoo with a few pictures of my 25th birthday party. I will add the commentary that I know you all love and live for later.

Phil and I were invited by one of Phil’s students to go to a festival in Hangzhou several weeks ago. Because we had nothing else better to do on a Saturday, we decided to tag along. Before we went, we had no idea what to expect. We didn’t know what kind of festival it was or what it was celebrating. It could have been a “Slaughter an American Foreign Teacher Festival” for all we knew. And it almost was that for a split second, but thankfully we were able to avoid death in China for at least one more day. As you can see, it was a food festival that we were invited to enjoy. And here you can see Phil doing what he does best – stuffing his face full of meat from an unknown animal. Whatever it was it was good, but I think that I would rather not know what it is that I swallowed. If you can imagine an animal, I saw a picture of it and its meat crammed onto a stick much like the one in the picture with Phil.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, those weird things in the picture to your left are starfish, scorpions, roaches, and my very favorite – tarantulas. I’ll get to that later.

We were picked up by Paul’s father and his supposed Uncle, who I think was actually his “driver”. He actually almost called him that, but caught himself. I’m pretty sure that his family has money and that they could afford one. The car was fancy and black with dark tinted windows and nice comfortable leather seats. It was the first car that wasn’t a taxi that we had been in since someone from Babel Language Center took us to Fuyang. Paul’s father, who spoke no English at all, had booked a hotel room for us for the night in Hangzhou. It was really nice gesture and we would have liked to have stayed, but we had to be back in Fuyang on Sunday morning in order to have lunch with another one of Phil’s students and his parents. Can’t you tell Phil is popular among his students? None of my students would ever invite me anywhere unless someone was threatening their lives or something. Maybe they are starting to like me a little though. I had two students ask for my autograph. Heh, I must be famous.

But anyway . . . They drove us the long way to Hangzhou. Not that I minded. We got to see some spectacular views of West Lake at sunset. I would have paid money to have stopped the car at one point to get a picture of It. We even saw some people in their wedding attire taking pictures. They will probably be the most beautiful pictures they’ll ever take together. If you could have seen it – you would have said the same. We finally, after about an hour and a half scenic tour of Hangzhou, arrived at the festival.

It was several degrees cooler than it was when we left Fuyang, but the hoards of people and all of the food stands letting steam roll over the crowd was about to become our personal heater. We didn’t really know where to start. Paul had money in hand(somehow we got away without spending a dime the entire time) and asked what we wanted. We pointed to a random stand with some kind of meat on a stick and said we would give that one a go.

And that is when I heard the bottle break. I looked up and there was this Chinese guy shaking the biggest shattered beer bottle I’ve ever seen at this Chinese cook. The freaky thing about the fight is that it was happening not ten feet from me. In disbelief, I got Phil’s attention and made him look. And that it when the bottle got thrown. How the guy who was throwing the bottle missed his intended target, I don’t know, but it whizzed over the top of the other guys head. The fight unfolded quiet quickly. Before long, pots and pans were being hurled at the poor Chinese cook. He looked so dumbfounded – like he didn’t know why they were so angry at him. Then there were more bottles thrown and one actually smashed into the cook’s temple. Blood started to pour down his face. More things were being thrown. Lights above the stand were being smashed. A group of interested people began to gather. All the while Phil, Paul, and I were just standing there wide eyed. We finally snapped out of our amazement and began to walk away from the fray. A random girl jumped into the big mess and tried to break up the fight, but that didn’t really work. There were some more bottles thrown, a lot more screams, the rest of the lights broken, and then the fight dismissed. The ones that started the fight ran off and in just a few minutes all was almost back to normal except for the poor cook whose head was streaming with blood. Needless to say, we didn’t eat at that stand.

The three of us walked around for about an hour. Paul kept asking what we wanted to try and kept buying more than we could eat even though it was all pretty tasty. There was so much food we didn’t try. It was like one big fair in America – except that the food section of it never seemed to end. I took the picture of the guy to above because apparently his job for the evening was to dance with the sign and advertise one of the stands. He was making some weird faces and dancing pretty wild, so I had to get a picture of it. You really had to be there to appreciate him fully.

After we finished stuffing our faces Paul told us that we would be going across town to a restaurant to have dinner. I don’t know why we went to a food festival to eat just so we could go out to dinner, but that is the Chinese way, I guess. The place we went to was nice. We were lead to our own private room – as is normal for people who travel in large groups. I can’t even remember what kind of food they brought out. I just know that it never seemed to end. A lot of it was too Chinese for me to eat – ie the crab in this picture. They don’t eat the legs, but they do eat what ever is inside his body, and whatever that orange and yellow stuff was – I don’t know and don’t care to learn. The little I tasted didn’t taste very good. It tasted a lot like many dishes I have eaten and describe simply as the “Taste of China”. If you are living in or have been to China, I am sure that you can relate to that comment. They wanted to keep feeding us long after the fact that we were full. Paul’s father kept toasting Phil(ganbei) which involves downing your entire glass of beer or wine or whatever else it is you are drinking. I thought that Phil was going to get himself drunk, but the ganebeis finally stopped and he was able to get a hold of his head.

After dinner, Paul had his driver, I mean, Uncle drive us to his house. What a nice place he had. He gave us a tour of his two story penthouse like apartment that consisted of three bedrooms and three baths. His kitchen even had a oven. I would do anything to have an oven. And, you should have seen the walk in closet this boy had. I know some women who would be supremely jealous of him- ie – ME! After I nearly killed myself falling down his stairs, it was time to go home. His driver, I mean, Uncle . . . heh – drove us all the way back to Hangzhou so that we would be able to have lunch with Holy’s parents. It was of the most interesting Saturdays that we have had since we got to China. I hope that I have many more just like this – minus the brutal fight that is.