Tigers, Exams and Chinese Hospitality

So I would like to apologize for my lack of updating lately; however, I have excuses! And I'm pretty sure they're good ones too. The last three weeks have been rather busy between exams and spring break. An no, I could not have updated y'all during break as I was down south without internet access (or spare time, for that matter).

So, first things first: tigers.

Yes, I went with my roommate and another classmate to 东北虎园(Siberian Tiger Park) and it's pretty freakin' awesome...if not also bizarre and slightly appalling. I'd basically equate it to one of America's drive-through Safaris but with a little more meat-eating. And more screaming adults. Pushing against you. All the time. I'm not sure if I was more frightened of the man-eating carnivorous beasts approaching rapidly on the other side of the not-really-reinforced van or all the Asians inside pushing towards the windows to get a good look. The Chinese have a thing for the 热闹. A group had purchased a sheep to feed the tigers, which is delivered by a truck to the tigers (who most certainly know what that truck means) while the van of tourists watches with a mixture of repulsion and cruel fascination as the tigers leap onto the helpless small sheep. I won't lie, it was fascinating to watch two tigers hold the sheep in their jaws until it was completely dead and had stopped kicking. They don't just immediately rip into it. However, the Chinese evidently were a little upset that they had paid so much for a sheep that hadn't had an opportunity to run about and make it a bit more of a show. Oh well. Regardless, the tigers are really incredibly beautiful and it's an odd experience to have them quite so near to you.

Next things next: exams.

They're over now. Let's all thank God together. Yay! Now, moving on.

Then things then: SPRING BREAK!

So for spring break, I went with four of my classmates down to Hangzhou for a few days. I'll try to make this brief, as compacting all these memories into a consumer-friendly blog could be a little difficult.

We flew out of Harbin Friday night, and I've just got to say, Chinese airlines have got it right. I don't know how they do it, but I dig free bags and a full meal on every flight. And I mean every flight. Including the 45 minute one. Awesome. Seriously. Anyway, we spent the next few days in Hangzhou seeing the local sights including West Lake, which is a really beautiful lake right in the middle of the city which is famous in China, famous enough that it is featured on the back of the 1 kuai note. We also took a boat ride (similar to a gondola) around the lake to that location, which

Throughout the Hanzhou part of the trip, we ate lots of local dishes (including dongpo pork, which is more or less lots and lots of delicious pork fat in a sweet, brown sauce), rode in lots of black-market cabs (not as sketchy as it sounds...sometimes) and drank lots of tea. Oh, and got attacked by loads of Chinese teenagers wanting to take pictures with us. I felt like a celebrity.

Following a few days in Hangzhou that included a day trip into the neighboring tea mountains, we headed to Moganshan, a mountain a few hours outside of Hangzhou/Shanghai best known for being Chiang Kai-shek's playground of sorts. When I told my parents the story of my break, this is when my mom started being glad I told her about this adventure afterward rather than beforehand. We took a train from Hangzhou to the small town closest to the mountain and, after experiencing what it's like to travel by cheap rail in China, got dumped onto a train platform in the middle of nowhere by ourselves. This is where our plan started to be very see-where-you-end-up. We left the train station to try to find a car to drive us to the mountain after having been told to find a local driver because ‘they won’t kill you!’ (We weren’t sure if we should take this advice sincerely as it was delivered with a laugh…) Yeah…we didn’t find a local. Regardless, we made it to the mountain and ended up climbing about half of it before we found someone to drive us up (this mountain was not designed for climbing). Once we finally made it to the top, we had some negotiation battles with hotel owners, went for a hike and realized we were effectively the only tourists on the mountain. We literally found one restaurant that was willing to feed us and we all crowded into the back kitchen as they laid out the few ingredients they had so we could choose a few dishes for them to cook up for us. I think we cleaned them out!

The next day we saw Chiang Kai-shek’s home and Mao Zedung’s ‘temporary lodging.’ He’s got this whole cool little house up in the mountain. You know how long Mao spent in this house that they built just for him? A whole 4 hours. Really, China? Why? At least Chiang Kai-shek spent a whole month living in his house...(the KTV was a nice touch, Kai-shek). That afternoon we headed down the mountain and took a bus to Wuzhen, a city known as the Venice of the East. Here, we really ran into that 'I don't know if this is a good idea, I heard about somebody who did this on the news and they turned up four days later in a dumpster, dead, with their head shaved' territory. So here's the story:

On our bus, we met a brother and sister from Sichuan who were also traveling, looking for a place to stay in the area. Somehow, don't ask me how, we ended up sharing hotel rooms with them (helping to make it cheaper for all of us, as the brother and sister would have needed to rent two rooms) and spending the evening wandering around the canals of Wuzhen, lit up for the evening. Wuzhen is a really old city built on a river with a very ancient feel about it, with old, dark buildings built close together along the river piloted by boats similar to gondolas. It's got a lot of interesting charm and mystery to it. Really, the pictures I posted on Facebook are about as descriptive as I can be here.

The next morning, we headed off to another part of the town to see the part of the city better suited to the daylight. But first, we hooked up with a local woman we also met on our bus into town and she offered to let us leave our things at her house so we wouldn't have to carry them around all day. Sound sketchy? Let's just say I kept all my valuables with me. We then went to explore the town, which is a really old town with lots of history dating back from before the Qing Dynasty (Well, probably much earlier as I know our local friend's family has been in Wuzhen since then...)
(see

For lunch, our local friend took us back to her home for lunch, where we had the incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience of sitting in the (tiny) front room of this family's house with a big table which is moved in and out of the house (there isn't enough space to leave it set up), loaded with 13 or 14 dishes for us (only six of us total). The more we ate, the more the dishes came flowing out of the kitchen. Our friend's mother just kept cooking and cooking and cooking! I just couldn't believe their generosity. Over the course of the meal, we learned a lot about how the Chinese government had decided to turn Wuzhen into a tourist area and how much it had changed since, how our friend's mother had been forced to move to the country and farm during her youth thanks to one of Mao's (less-than-perfect) policies, our friend's grandmother, who was sleeping in the bed in the corner of the room, was over 94 and effectively unresponsive, and how our friend's husband had left her and their son. It was touching to meet this woman who had lived a relatively hard life but was still so willing to befriend us and care for us. We, who were no more than strangers, and I, who had been so uncomfortable and suspicious of her intentions.

When we had just about finished eating (although you're never really finished eating at a Chinese meal), our friend's son came home from school, with a mixture of extreme excitement to have foreigners in his home as well as adorable embarrassment. It was through this ten year-old that the differences between Americans and Chinese were shown to be not that large. Although we had just experienced the hospitality of these wonderful people, a hospitality you would never see in the US, what did the little boy want to do when he came home? Certainly not homework. No, he just wanted to get on the computer and play video games. It was so interesting to see the little boy sitting on the computer playing an American war game right next to his very, very old great-grandmother while his mother sat with five American college students at a huge table spread with Chinese dishes galore. Before we left to head for the train station, their family even gave us a huge grocery sack of local snacks which lasted us for quite a few days. It was simply too much. We felt so bad for not having anything to give them in return, so all we knew to do was get their address so we can send them letters periodically to thank them for their hospitality. I now feel obligated to buy from every single student with a school fundraiser that comes to my door.

After leaving Wuzhen, we took a bullet train (talk about a totally different experience than we'd just left) back to Hangzhou, spent the night and then headed off to Putuoshan, a mountain island which is one of Buddhism's four sacred mountains. We spent the next day and a half exploring the island and having interesting conversations with monks and some random Chinese Viet Nam veteran who very clearly announced his hatred for Americans, very proud of the fact he had killed four Americans and declared China would go to war with America within the next five years. That was a little startling. Regardless, the island was an interesting experience as I know little to nothing about Buddhism so it was interesting to watch people practice their religion. Because the island is one of Buddhism's four sacred mountains, the people who come there are not really tourists, but more of pilgrims. We spent one night on the island at a tiny little "hotel" which resulted in an extremely enumerable evening due to an ant infestation which turned into a hilarious evening of people flipping out, spray poison while sounding like Rambo, and the building owner rushing to tend to the situation while wearing nothing other than sandals and very, very small, very, very tight boxer shorts. And this was not a small Chinese man. He was a big Chinese man and reminded us all very much of an Italian mobster. This story is best told fluidly and not in blog format and I haven't got time to write about it now, but I'd be happy to tell you and, if I have time, I'll write it out here a little later. You should ask me about it. ;-)

So after all that, we returned to Hangzhou and then to Harbin from there, after I promptly missed the last stair on our way to the airport (hey, it was dark and 4 in the morning, give me a break) and now have a sprained ankle. China's lack of ice has never been less convenient. So overall, it was an excellent break. I'm also disappointed that my depiction of my Wuzhen story doesn't sound nearly as sketchy as it actually way. Darn it.



Last things last:
- In China, you'll just see random chickens hanging out on the street. Random. Cool. Yes.
- I've found my calling. if you've ever watched Chinese professional basketball, you'll see the team has one white coach in addition to the head coach whose purpose is to communicate with the black, American players on the team. I'm gonna do the same thing for the white players in the Super League.
- Chinese is cool. They have lots of onimonopea. And that's cool.
- I have been struck with the desire to apply to London School of Economics. If I ever decide to go to grad school, I'll apply here...if only to prove I can get in. But really, I'd love to go there.
- Skype is censored in China.
- Don't eat durian. Just...don't.