The Weekend

Hola!

Friday. More of the usual in the office place. At lunch I explained how the American school systems work to Rachel. Poor Chu Ke had to sit the sidelines and not understand what was going on in our conversation. Welcome to the club, my man!

The colleges here are crazy. We're accustomed to all of our buildings being on the same campus. Business school in one section, engineering buildings on the other side of campus, that sort of thing. Well, here they have the Beijing University of Railway Sciences. One building, all railway science majors take their classes there. Halfway across town they have their Beijing University of Communications. They have a school for everything. Chinese Academy for Social Sciences, Beijing Economic Science College, Beijing Institute of Civil Engineering & Architecture and Beijing School of Extraterrestrial Sciences (I made one of those up).

I was told its very easy to get into these schools but hard to graduate, or something like that. I also had to explain the SAT and application process. Rachel had 5 years of elementary school, 3 years fr intermediate, 3 for high school, 4 years in college and then another 4 for her Master's. She was shocked and looked disappointed when I told her grad school isn't always that long in the US.

*Back Info* I work in the Beijing Global Trade Center. Its a plaza of 5 or so buildings that are all connected underground via parking garages and underground levels that contain salons, shops, cafeterias and people handing out fliers that I can never read. One of the ground floors of on building houses a supermarket and a movie theater.

Rachel & Chu Ke walk me to the movie theater. To get there I must plummet to the depths of Hades, slay a few minions, wind my way through a labyrinth and scale a mountain. This movie theater shows movies in English (for about twice the price of their Chinese counterparts), but here is the kicker- those movies they show in English are listed on the marquee in Chinese characters with (英文) (ying (spoken like e'ng) wen). That tells me that whatever-movie-title-I-can't-read is aired in English. That's going above and beyond. I picked Toy Story 3 out of the line up because it read "(a whole mess of characters I dont know) 3." At least numbers are universal.

Friday night was the last night for a group of fellow Aggies that had been studying over here. Cheng & I decided to tag up with them. I know two of these guys from school. One from Chinese class; one because he sat in front of me in a class with a Rockets hat on. Anywho, we tag up with them in the SOHO district in front of the Hooters in Beijing. That took some work to find. It involved Google Maps showing me two results on opposite ends of a block and me having to cross list that with the Hooters website. The website revealed there was only one Hooters in Beijing (Cheng & I were real curious whether they'd be more or less "conservative" in this country- we never found out).

All in all it was probably a 20 minute process to think through it all. May seem simple, but taxi drivers dont seem to know this city so well. Its baffling. We met the group of 20+ in front of Hooters, introduced ourselves then trekked "over the [highway] and through the [smog], to [some hole in the wall bar we go]..." Everyone in the group (minus Cheng & myself) were all dolled up. We ended up in a bar that wasn't tall enough for some of the 6'3" to stand up straight. It had a back room that had no lights and surely disease-ridden couches. I deemed it the SARS room. I figured 10 days was too long in China without a SARS joke. The timing for a foot binding joke has yet to come.

The "bathroom" door had a PG-13 painting on it. And since this is to be nearly suitable for all ages I will refrain from sharing, but some of the girls were moderately (or at least feigned being) offended. I witnessed my first public Chinese bathroom. I took a picture on my phone, but as I write this I have no way of uploading the picture to my computer. The "toilet" is a poreclain hole in the ground. It flushes and all, but there's no meeting halfway. Just a whole lot of squatting or good aim involved. I would imagine alcohol+hole in the ground toilet= the only idea worse than the creation of the Snuggie.

As we were standing in front of this bathroom (because it was cooler, less crowded and the "smog & smoke to oxgyen ratio" was better) we witnessed a little 4 year old and his mother walk in the bathroom. The hole in the ground was little more than a foot inside the doorway. We almost witnessed the creation of the Chinese Michael Phelps but his mom withheld him from diving in...

We meandered in the street for awhile. There were booths set up all selling cigarettes, cigars, lighters and one even had "good condom." There were little stands selling Mystery Meat Kabobs and other tents housing drink coolers and ice cream freezers. I bought myself a little chocolate ice cream cone as we wandered in circles between Pure Girl (It was only a bar, though I didn't venture upstairs...), our first hole in the wall bar and a tv out in the street around the locals.

For some reason vehicles had the bright idea to come driving through this alleyway. Some of them parted the crowd like it was the Red Sea. Others simply laid on the horns until everyones ears bled and were forced to move. At one point a BMW with red & blue cop lights in the grill came hood to hood with another vehicle. Neither one moved. We were told the BMW wasn't a cop- that's a felony, Bub.

I left my ice cream wrapper on top of a van that decided to drudge through. That will show him. Our final stop as a group was a Chinese club named Mix. It was just like an American one. Loud music and crowded. My favorite part was the bubble machine on stage. Nice touch. The DJ played 100% Grade A United States Music. It was hilarious when he would suddenly drop the volume down so that the crowd would shout the words- but the crowd was 94.6% Chinese people that didn't know the words. Therefore, it left our group or 20 and a few other English speakers in the building to shout the words.

A few times the Chinese guys next to me began imitading the words being said with similar caveman like sounds. I needed a video camera. I'm fairly certain at one point a guy tried to solicit me a prostitute. Flattering. But no. I made it a point to dance with as many Chinese girls as I could. Especially once I saw one in a cowboy hat. Hindsight, being 20/20 as it always is, that was a good way for me to get stabbed.

Cheng & I left around 1. My dinner had consisted of an ice cream cone, his of 2 beers. So we stopped at the only open thing we knew of.... KFC. Well, I was told to try the popcorn chicken- but funny thing they weren't serving chicken any longer. Hmm? We ventured over to McDonald's but it is safe to say that the Mickey D's here is worse than any Mickey Ds I've had before. It did not bode well with my system. Last time I have that whilst living here.

Saturday we planned to visit Tian'anmen Square but we waived that idea once we got in late on Friday night. Instead we paid the Silk Alley Market a visit. I don't even know where to begin. Its not at all an Alley, its a 6 story tall building housing all sorts and forms of pirated merchandise and knock-off look a likes. Bags, shoes, hats, watches, jewelry, sunglasses, jeans, button ups, cashmere sweaters, toys, electronics, children and luggage.

Being the white-skinned guy the asking prices automatically grow exponentially. Cheng & I's first line of business was watches. We browsed the ever-ending booths of watches. Rolex, Casio, Tag Huer, Brettling Bentley, Cartier, etc. Heckles galore "You like?" "What you want to buy?" "You like Rolex?" "My friend, come look! Amigo! Amigo!" I kept giving the same lines "Bu yao (I don't want)" or "Zhi kan kan (Just looking)." I finally stopped at one booth (Disclaimer: there is nothing polite about the majority of these people) and began looking through the briefcases of watches.

Stumbled upon 2 different "Rolex"s that caught my eye. Going back and forth between the two I asked the lady how much, she punched 380 into a calculator (about $55 US). I put it down and began to walk away. She called my back and punched in "180." I said "Tai gui! (Too expensive!)" and typed 30 into the calculator (less than $5 US). She snarled and punched in 100. I said 50. She said 90. We eventually settled on 75 (just over $10 US). I actually only had 72 in small bills, she wanted to break my 100, i told her I didnt have one- so I got the watch for 72. She took 2 links out, handed me the watch, took my money and I walked off having paid her 20% of what she wanted it for. I still probably got the short end, but $10 on a ticking "Rolex?" Sure.

My following purchases include a pair of "Ray-Bans" for less than $5 US and a conical rice field hat for less than $3 US. It started off fun, haggling and all. But it became very taxing and the people were very invasive (says the guy that has no personal bubble). Grabbing, groping, tugging, pulling, yelling, hassling. At one point a girl had 2 hands on my wrist and was trying to pull me off of my feet. Her shop owner stepped in between us to hassle me a little more and I was pulled onto her foot. I stepped on her foot, she began htting me and calling me all sorts of dirty names (I imagine) while a man in the booth just smiled in delight. I considered just dragging the girl with me but she eventually let go. We ended up spending 4 or 5 hours carrusing the thousands of stalls.

Because of the Air Canada tag on my backpack everyone kept asking me about Canada. Not sure if Canada was too close to the US for their taste I began telling people I was French. I was shocked when some of the people began speaking spanish "Amigo! Amigo! Mira! Mira! (Look! Look!)" But when I tried to take it a step further, nobody understood me.

We ended up home exhausted, looking forward to bed when it dawned on us that the USA game would be on at 2:30am. I took a 2 1/2 nap and my dreams were endless stalls and more bargaining. Even dreaming of it was exhausting. It was our luck that the game went into Extra Time. We had been looking forward to the 4 o'clock bedtime. Instead we got in closer to 5.

Sunday we had intended to go to church, but the 5 o'clock bedtime nixed that. We spent the day Sunday sitting on the couch resting our feet and catching up on old TV Shows. We ate a very big lunch (everything is beginning to taste the same) and for dinner we went to the supermarket to see what we could find. My little taste of home came in the form of Skippy Peanut Butter (Though Mom's like mine choose JIF), Honey, bread (the only label of which was in English was Bimbo brand bread. Excellent choice) and bananas. My peanut butter, honey and banana sandwich was the cleansing of my palette.

Late, around 9, a maintenance man came to put an end to the tremendous back flow emitting from our showerhead/hose. We've had to call them a few times. Leaky sink pipes, A/C units that wouldn't cool and to get the internet activated (we only have it in one room). Our bathroom has 2 little decorative drainage holes in the floor that really stunk something awful at the beginning of our stay. We have since dropped 2 rubber mats over the top of each and treat them like Hiroshima & Nagasaki with Febreeze being our A-bomb.

Epilogue:

Just finished Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Strange book. This Thrusday I'll be going to the factory with Cheng so that I can play basketball with him and all the engineers afterwards. The factory is at least 45 minutes from my office and if the taxi driver has no idea how to get there. I have no idea how to tell him to get there.

I'm hoping to get a haircut soon. Cheng said it was a struggle to communicate what he wanted to the people. I might just hit up the salon here in this plaza if I can find it. I have no idea how to communicate anything I want done and those that know me know how I am with my hair. I've loosened up a little, but I'm afraid the language barrier might be rough.

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