Happy Halloween!

Last night, we threw a Halloween party for our roommates and friends. They don’t celebrate Halloween in China, so we were determined to make this party a good one. We planned it for a week or so and invited more than 40 people. I think that it turned out to be a huge success!

The night began a bit behind schedule, as the hour that we had reserved to set up turned out not to be enough time to make our haunted house, let alone the fact that we ran out of garbage bags. Nevertheless, our roommates and their guests (they were allowed 2 each) showed up around 7:30, just as we told them, so about half of us Furman students worked on the haunted house while the other half entertained the guests with a welcome speech, snacks, and chit-chat.

Finally, at 8:30, we were ready to perform in our three-room haunted house, which contained mental patients, the undead, the ghosts of mass murderers, a vampire, spooky story-telling, and a chance to touch human body parts, among other things. Almost everyone who went in had never been to a haunted house before; they were really scared! (If you are wondering, I was the ghost of a murderer who appeared to be missing from my chair and then snuck up behind people with a foam sword. I wore a creepy plastic mask and a garbage bag to cover my clothes, and apparently, no one could tell who I was because it was so dark that they couldn’t see my hair!)

Around 9:15, after everyone had been through the haunted house, we switched to a dance soundtrack, courtesy of yours truly, and commenced, well, dancing! I tried to include a mix of Chinese and Korean popular songs (they tend to like Korean music and film here), American pop circa our middle school days (i. e. Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, etc.), and popular rap and hip-hop that we dance to nowadays. I also put in quite a few novelty songs and songs to which we could teach them the dances, such as the Cha-Cha Slide and the YMCA. Of course, not everyone danced, but it did seem to be a much more popular option than sitting in the provided chairs and snacking. We sadly had to end our party a little after 10:00, though many of us were ready to dance for at least a couple more hours.

All in all, I think that everyone had fun mingling and dancing. I know that I had a blast! We were initially a bit worried, but the decorations, planning, and everything seemed to come together at the last minute. Oh, yeah, and I was a fairy with my roommate, Orange. It was a good night!

Tonight, I’m going to Shanghai with Andreina to meet up with our friends Yonathan and Yulia. Happy Halloween!

The Quest for Calcium, Episode I

I’m sure that all of you have been hanging by the seats of your pants for these past few weeks, just waiting to begin the Quest for Calcium series. Am I right? Well, either way, it’s time.

I’ve been biding my time, documenting my calcium quest for weeks now. I know that I can get my necessary calcium through cheese, ice cream, or even supplements, but really, I just miss milk a lot: cow’s milk, soy milk, whatever. I still have yet to find a winner here in China, but fear not - I have hope. Anyway, I have devised a scale of 1 to 5 points, 1 being not worth buying again unless it were the only beverage left on Earth, and 5 being...well, truthfully, nothing has ranked that high yet, so if I find it, I’ll let you know.

Mission #1
The beginning of my quest occurred way back in early September, and, at that point, I wasn’t even sure yet that I was on a quest. I bought a bag of milk - no, that’s not a typo, and yes, you read correctly: a BAG of milk - from the supermarket near my dorm. It was recommended to me by my Seattlean friend, Matisse. I poured it over some cereal and was unimpressed - actually, before I ever even used it, I had to refrigerate it myself, as it had been room temperature in the store. (Is that safe? I don’t know.) Then, when I went to pour it, I had to be ever-so-careful not to squeeze too hard or tip the bag so as to not spill the milk. And when I finally tried it, it was whole milk, which I have come to find reminds me distinctly of cheese, which I prefer to not think about when enjoying my cereal.
1/5

Mission #2
The next drink that I tried was okay. The bottle has a lot of Chinese but calls the beverage “Nutri-Express” in English. The picture is a slice of apple splattering into a bowl of milk, so I went into this mission imagining apple-flavored milk. That is more or less what I got, so, if the drink is cold (which, of course, it never is on the shelves in the store) and I can go into it thinking of not milk, but apple milk, then I can stomach it. I can’t say for sure, due to the Chinese label, but I at least hope that I am getting some calcium out of this thing. Negative points for having to refrigerate it myself again.
3/5

Mission #3
The same day that I tried Nutri-Express, I bought a small plastic container of what looked like soy milk. It was in similar packaging to the Little Hugs that are found in the U.S., but the liquid was opaque, and the bottle was much tinier, so despite the completely Chinese label, I was pretty sure that it was not a sugary, watery drink.

It turns out that my assumption was right, as near as I can tell. It was weak soy milk. It was unflavored. It was alright, but I’m not a huge fan, and I can’t say for sure whether or not it has been fortified with calcium, so that pretty much defeats the purpose, I guess.
3/5

Mission #4
The fourth attempt that I made at finding milk was purchasing a half-pint carton from Auchan. I tried this on my cereal, as well, and was met with a similar outcome to Mission #1. Fail.
1/5

A Dreamlike Night

I attended a party last night with Robert, Geena, Staci, Caitlin, Andreina, Karim, Kathleen, Tim, and Yonathan. As I recounted to Robert, I was very confused throughout the ordeal: I did not know exactly where I was, who was throwing the party, what I was doing, what time it was, why I was there, or how I’d arrived. More than the basics “on a bus,” “in a room,” “with Chinese-speaking people,” I did not quite understand anything going on. All I knew was that Kay had invited all of us a couple of weeks ago on behalf of another group of students; I had obliged and then promptly forgotten, not realizing how much homework I was sure to have on our first day back. To make a long story short, I ended up attending and having fun - we watched various performances, snacked on strange Chinese treats, made dumplings, and chatted it up, but the whole evening was very dreamlike. To tell you the truth, I’m still not quite sure that it occurred; it could have been a wild, sress-induced illusion.

I was reminded last night of the Chinese’s apparent fascination with foreigners, especially those with blonde hair and blue eyes, like Robert and I. I knew of this thanks to my first trip to China and was pretty used to it coming in this year on our first national tour. I guess that being in the international dorm here at SuDa has just caused me to forget and feel normal once more - no dice. Last night, countless college students were ever-so-eager just to talk to me and to even take it a step further: to take a picture with me (or of me - talk about creepers!) I think that they were impressed with my Chinese language skills, minimal as they are. It was flattering, sure, to be reflected in so, so many lenses, but, honestly, it gets annoying and tiring. Why does this fascination exist? If the visa regulations were to be less strict, would that mean that more foreigners would visit, and we would be rendered less interesting? I would be okay with that, for sure. In the meantime, I would be interested to look at some tourism statistics and see just how many Americans and other Westerners do visit each year and to what places they go.

The Biggest City I Have Ever Visited

I am in a city of more than 33 million people. 33 MILLION. Can we just try to wrap our heads around that?

Class Trip, Pt. 2

Our flight from Guiyang to Chongqing has been delayed about an hour, so since I have my laptop with me, I figured that I would catch up on some computer matters.

The trip has been great so far! We’ve visited four Miao villages, an old Han village, a traditional Ming/Qing dynasty town, a batik factory, an aluminum factory, a market, a minority museum, and the biggest waterfall in China. All of the minority villages were really neat and gave us a lot of bai jiu (“white lightning”), or strong, locally-made rice wine. I enjoyed seeing the costumes and getting to talk with the villagers about their jobs, living conditions, and traditions. In one village, we stayed in the home of the village chief and feasted upon some of the most delicious food that I have had in China. The rooms and facilities were not the nicest, but it felt good to be authentic - especially after we had worked up a sweat plowing fields and harvesting potatoes outside.

The old Han village was really neat in that we saw a traditional opera performance up close and personal and the village seemed very un-touristed. The dynasty town was one of my favorite stops of the tour thus far: we saw a variety of religious places, including a Catholic church, a Daoist temple, and a Buddhist temple, and we also were provided with lots of unique shopping opportunities to buy everything from food to bags to clothes to crafts. The batik factory was another favorite stop of mine, as I love the batik style. We got to see the entire process, and we also made a Furman/FiC-inspired small cloth that we are going to have made into group t-shirts.

We just went to the aluminum factory this morning (to really work in the environmental aspect of this class trip): that was enlightening. I did not know anything about the process before, but now, I feel much more educated. The market the other day was very interesting, as well - it is where all of the local villagers go, so we saw the carpentry section, the ironworking section, and lots of clothes and food. We also went to a distillery and tried fresh plum liquor. The minority museum was nice, but a little small, and since we visited after we had been to the actual minority villages, it was a bit anticlimactic.

Our trip to the waterfall yesterday was great. I kept being reminded of Blackwater Falls in West Virginia, though the height of the falls here dwarfed Blackwater. The amount of water flowing seemed to actually be less, though I was told that this is more of an off-season. One of the coolest parts of our journey was that we walked not only to all four viewing platforms but we actually went behind the falls into a cave that was full of natural windows from which we could look out and sometimes even walk out and touch the plummeting water. I got wet, but I luckily had my poncho in my bag, so I was a lot dryer than I would have been otherwise.

Along the way, we have had lots of good talks at meals, on the bus, and in the rooms, and we make sure to take evening walks around the cities in which we stay. I don’t want to jinx this, but everything is going well so far!