Okay, I'm going to try something new today. Let me don my serious attire.

Right then.

As Yllen reminded me, today officially marks my two month anniversary in China. I think that after two months,  I can have one serious blog post about my thoughts on China, specifically the Chinese people.

Now keep in mind this is from a very limited perspective of a very ignorant person in one city. But for me, it's easy to see why China is on the rise on the national stage. Simply put, their people are not subject to the "pride" we feel at home. I'm not saying they're not proud. I mean that most jobs most people back home would scoff at, the Chinese embrace them.

Near the lowest end of the totem pole, let me tell you about the cardboard lady. The cardboard lady rides her bike with trailer around the housing complex here, singing some Chinese chant. The Monty Python fan in me would like to think she is shouting "Bring out your dead!" But essentially what she does is she goes through the trash, picks out recyclable material, and recycles it. That's it. That's her job, to recycle my beer cans. And here's the thing - she has competition. There are other people trying to do the same thing. She's not homeless though. I'm sure she's not living at the Holiday Inn, but she always looks presentable and healthy enough.

Or, the street beggars. You'd think that these people are the lowest of the low, people really down on their luck who have resorted to begging for change. I'm sure for some that is the case. But there are also some beggars who are more, shall we say, energetic, that will follow foreigners or other rich looking people and pester them for some change. I have been told by locals with me these individuals are part of a sort of "beggars union", where their job is to go out, beg for money, and they all live in a shared living arrangement. I take this with a grain of salt, but they certainly do look more fit than the others.

Back in the west we judge success on the car you drive, and how big of a house you have. The car thing is becoming more apparent here, but the Chinese roll differently. They measure success on how well you can provide for your family, because family is all they have. I told one of my coworkers that I moved out in my late teens because I needed to be on my own. In fact, anyone in their mid to late 20s that still lives at home has a bit of a stigma attached. There is a stigma here, but for different reasons. Say you're a 25 year old woman. You need to have a child that will be able to work to support the family. So your daughter grows up, works, has her own kid at 25. You're now 50. That mother still has 25 years of work left in her, so you, at 50, get to go retire and raise your granddaughter/grandson. For boys, they don't have that child rearing responsibility. So they can work until they're 60, 70? That's more money that can be brought into the family. And remember due to the one child policy, you only get one shot at that.

That turned out to be longer than I thought, so I'm going to end that with a "to be continued..." note. Next time, further thoughts on Chinese pride and the consequences of the one child policy.

Lengthy blog post... GO!

Yllen, Cireena, and I popped on over to Shanghai this weekend for lunch. Then we decided to stay because, ain't no big thang. I had been craving some ethnic food, and we got to eat at some of the best restaurants in the city. Italian, Indian, Greek, Thai, Mexican, and one of the best burgers around topped it all off. The Thai one I was especially excited about, because this place had tons of awards plastered on their wall for "Best Thai in Shanghai 2010", 2011, etc. So for the folks back home - Yes, Mai Thai in Florence has better Pad Thai than Simply Thai in Shanghai. Try saying that three times fast.

I pulled a Dan and every time I saw a beverage in a vending machine I was clueless about, I decided I must have it immediately. This is how that went down most of the time.

I was also privileged enough to meet Cireena's friend Lucy, who stuck with us for most of the trip. Lucy is an amazing person. Completely bilingual, like she had lived in America since she was a kid. She also knows everyone, knows the town like the back of her hand, is strikingly beautiful, and amazingly friendly. Simply put, if you're going to do Shanghai, SHE is the one to do it with.

And thanks to Lucy, I got to party at one of the hottest clubs right on the Bund, which I guess kind of means one of the hottest clubs on the planet.
 It cost 100 RMB (~$17) just to get into the place, and that's a not insignificant portion of an average persons monthly salary here in Xiaoshan. When midnight hit, we were on the river to ring in the New Year.

Lucy found us an amazing hotel right in the heart of the city which cost me about $10 a night. $10. A night. In the heart of Shanghai. Did I mention how amazing she was? So after we all stumbled back to her place on New Years, we found out her power was out. No heat is practically a death sentence in this cold, so we had to bring everyone back to the hotel. Of course before we did we had to collect all of her wine and liquor and continue the party.

I wanted to do some Christmas shopping, so we also popped on into this giant pedestrian area. I can't really do it justice in words, you'll just have to look at the pictures.

To top it off, the night before we left we had traditional Mexican food at Lucy's old job. This just so happens  to be at an old Mexican style mansion. She also knows the head chef, who personally made a drink for us. It was kind of a Bloody Mary with beer and shrimp, which I was kind of on the fence about. However we also got to enjoy all we could eat fajitas, and since it's Lucy, all totally free. I think I'm in love.




There's way too many photos to put on here, so check Facebook if you're interested. I haven't even gotten Yllen's or Cireena's yet.

See you, Shanghai.

Are you sitting down? You'd better sit down. I'm about to blow your mind.

Do you know what those are? Shut up, I'm going to tell you what they are. Those are curly fries. From McDonalds. They're pretty much carbon copies of Arby's, but it may be the most amazing thing I've seen in my time here. You want a Big Mac with regular fries? You're a fool and we're no longer friends.

(curly friiiiiies!)

We had our staff dinner a few nights ago at a swanky hotel. Something I've noticed about Chinese food is that the more fancy it is, the more I dislike it. I mean I suppose the cabbage in some sort of duck sauce is good, but honestly the local noodle place around the corner is usually better. This is by no means an isolated incident, pretty much every fancy dinner here I've been underwhelmed with. That being said one of the women from marketing kept feeding me wine. And more wine. Then we ran out of wine, and she somehow magically produced another bottle for just the two of us. I think her goal was to get me totally shitfaced, and she certainly succeeded. I had to rally and come back to play some sort of random game that I only vaguely remember. After that we all went to karaoke, which resulted in me bouncing back and forth between four rooms:

1) The room most of the foreign teachers were in
2) The room where most of the local staff were in
3) The room where the new receptionist was hanging out with her friends
4) The room of the group that high fived me in the hallway, because why not?

Basically it was a whirlwind of activity that night, and after getting home I PTFO.

Also we got another foreigner at work, an Aussie. He is super chill and one of my favorite people to come along in a while. Lately some people at work have been getting a bit under my skin, so he's a much appreciated breath of fresh air. I don't mean to complain though, work is going pretty well. If anything I'm getting a touch overconfident, but so far nothing has exploded in my face.

I have been bugged by two separate people to blog more, and I want to - I'm just like, super busy right now. And starting Thursday is Spring Festival, which is a whopping 9 days straight off of work. I've also been encouraged to participate in HAF by Ben and the Zaj. If you don't know what HAF is, that's probably for the better. But guys, ask and you shall receive. I'll try my best to get some pics, but here's the new beautiful receptionist at work.

Someone told me I should take more pictures. Well fine. Person who shall remain nameless, you're a jerk. I'll post more pictures for you, you wanna fight about it?

This first photo is the oven catching fire at my favorite dumpling place. It sucked and their meat dumplings went up in smoke (ha ha!) That ruined my morning because I had to eat a veggie one like some kind of field hand. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW, ANONYMOUS PERSON?!

The next photo is a bunch of bikes you can rent. Not like you would ever rent one, you 1% asshole.

Here's a bridge. It's what people use to cross over water. I'm sorry my words weren't enough to describe to you the functions of a bridge, but I guess now you can wrap your head around the concept.

This is the street I live on. I told you it was a street with cars, trees, and shops. Well guess what this picture is of? OH EM GEE, CARS, TREES, AND SHOPS?!

And this is the path I walk to work sometimes. It's along a canal, which is a kind of like a river but instead made by people. Oh what, you need a picture to visualize that? Well okay then!

THERE! THAT'S WHERE I LIVE! You made me post 5 pictures, which means you basically just made me write 5000 words. I hope you're happy.

In less mock angry news, I've told some of you how I've been collecting dinosaur comics I've been making my kids do. In case you don't know what dinosaur comics are, go to www.qwantz.com now and check them out. They're really quite funny. Here are a small collection of my favorites. Transcripts provided if you cannot read them so well.

T-Rex: Hi, my name is Black.

My is very happy.

But my is very big.

Utahraptor: Let's go, we are dancing.

T-Rex: I like dancing.

T-Rex: Hi, my name is Lucky.

How are you?

Dromiceiomimus: I am soso... what can you do?

T-Rex: I can dance.

I can sing.

I'm helpful. See you!!

A pretty handsome dinosaur

Look, so beautiful!

It takes after my teacher (get married)

They are fighting. It loves B, too.

T-Rex: Stop! She is my wife now. If you want her, I will give you.

Utahraptor: Ok, thank you

(they stop)

T-Rex: Oh yes! I got a divorce! Happy!

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.

.

.

.

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It takes after my teacher <sniff>

The reports of my death / incarceration in a labor camp have been greatly exaggerated. It was simply a case of light treason, when I contracted to build homes in Iraq for Saddam. By the by, there's always money in the banana stand.

Chinese New Year is fast approaching at the end of the month, which means I get a lovely week and some change of time off to do god knows what. Originally there was talk of going to Thailand with the Redditors I met on New Years, but unfortunately our days off don't line up. So we were thinking about just going anyway, because Thailand sounds swanky. Or just going to Shanghai. It's all up in the air honestly, and I'm unsure what will happen.

We got a new employee yesterday - Rebecca from New York. She's been in China about a year and a half, and had a fantastic time last night with a trip to a Korean restaurant and a dive bar. When I say dive bar, I mean this bar is where dive bars go when they want to take it down a notch. It was seedy in the figurative and literal sense, in that they provided you dishes of sunflower seeds to munch on. They also provided spicy crackers, and these pickle-like things. We played some dice game which is remarkably good at improving your Chinese counting. After that Toby and myself were paid money if we could eat the entire plate of crackers and pickles in x time, respectively. We both came through just under the wire, and I actually kind of liked the pickle like substance. No idea what the heck it was.

Also it turns out I will be a kindergarten teacher. Myself and the lovely Allison have been given a class full of the rambunctious little scamps. I am so going to color inside of every one of those lines. The destruction begins next week.

Now here is my New Years, recreated in some photos/video. It started off with the green tea latte I just adored, as you can see below:

And following that, we met up with Leon and repeated this 10 second clip for about 30 minutes:

After that it was off to a club, and pretty much everyone was exactly like this:

And before the evening ended there was this fucking creepy clown:

Yllen has a lot more pictures I haven't gotten from her yet. Enough happened that night to fill an album itself.

I've got a feelin'... that tonight's gonna be a good, good night (a feelin'!)

WooOOoooooOOO!!

At long last I met up with some Redditors in Hangzhou. They live in the next suburb over called Binjiang, which necessitated a trip to an area Yllen nor I had ever been to. It's actually a really nice shopping center with tons of shops, not to mention the only Dairy Queen I've seen in China. I'll probably head back one day and get lost there.

Unfortunately Google kind of lied to us. It said there was only one Starbucks in Binjiang, which in fact there are two. Guess who showed up at the wrong one? After much confusion and me trying to tell the cab driver what I was told in terrible Chinese, we were on our way and finally met Leon. Leon lives in a really swanky building with a bunch of other teachers, although their apartments are about the sizes of a closet. We met a bunch of friends, Redditor and non-Redditor alike, and went up to the roof to blow things up. It's the tallest building in the area at about 30 stories, so the booms and bangs shooting over the city sounded especially cool.

I warned Yllen before going that the evening might be kind of lame, just a bunch of guys sitting around talking about Reddit and other nerdy things. Oh how wrong I was. There were 3 other girls there, 2 from the US and one from the UK. They instantly hit it off and carried on for the entire night. We went to three different bars, and even ran into a coworker at the second one. I will say I have never seen so many good looking people in my life. The second club especially was packed full of about half Chinese, half westerner. Chinese girls take note, this is where you go to get a foreign boyfriend.

Overall, it was a completely crazy night and we made a bunch of new friends. I also found out that Starbucks plays god and mixes green tea and coffee to make a Green Tea Latte.

Mother of god. <sunglasses>