September 24, 2010
Today’s conversation partners’ class was really fun. I met a girl, whose name is lost to me know, that hardly spoke any English and we really didn’t have very much in common but it was fun trying to figure out what she was saying. I doubt she had as good of a time trying to figure out what I was saying in Chinese though because I really am lacking in the whole conversational Chinese area. It seemed like they were all so interested in talking to us that they really didn’t want to show any of the presentations that we had planned. (of course mine didn’t work though because of technical difficulties) but it still seemed strange that they were not that interested in American holidays. Though my conversation partner was really really interested in Easter. I think because of the egg decorating and she was especially excited when I told her about the Easter Bunny- but in general she liked really girly things like Twilight and really sappy music, which is pretty common here from what I have witnessed, but I would really like to meet some rebellious girls. I know it is unacceptable for children or even college students to break out of the norm- but I am just so interested to see if there are actually any people that come close to that.
So far the only people I have met that are somewhat rebellious are the hair dressers. From the little I was able to understand of what he was saying, it sounded like he had dropped out of high school and was living on his own now. Literally the only English he knew was “fuck you” and the middle finger. I’m not sure if it is because he works in a hair salon or if he is just trying to stand out but he also had a really a-symmetrical haircut with a lot of purple streaks. To be honest when I came to China I was expecting here to be a lot of people dressed in crazy clothes and trying to stand out above the crowd, but I really have not seen anybody who looks at all outlandish or extreme by any means. I wonder what it is so emphasized in the West that Asian fashion is so extreme? I know that the Haijuko (sp?) girls in Japan have received a lot of attention because of the crazy colors and hair but where did people get the impression that China had girls who dress like that too?
Anyways we went to Nanputo after our conversation partners’ class and it definitely defied my expectations of the place. I kind of just expected it to be older and not very well restored, but after reading the article and seeing it for myself I was seriously impressed with how restored it actually was. The hike to the top was really incredible as well. We were actually able to see through the smog for once and all the islands surrounding Xiamen. I do believe this will be a new Saturday morning hike from now on. We had the weirdest experience though when we got to the top. As we were exploring the unbeaten path a guy showed up dressed up in blue camouflage who said we needed to purchase a ticket to go any further. As we were talking to him a police officer showed up behind us and just watched the guy. It seemed as if the officer was waiting for this guy to mess up somehow so that he could catch him. We finally figured out though that the guy was trying to scam us out of 40 yuan for one ticket that leads to nowhere. I wish I knew what the police officer said to the guy after we left! It is seriously amazing to hear the kinds of things people do to scam tourists out of money.
Later that night we went to a bar called 1801 that was western themed (western like cowboys and western like the United States) Anyways it was really funny because they refused to have anything Chinese in the bar. No Chinese drinks, no Chinese music, no Chinese anything basically. At first the club seemed pretty dead, nobody was dancing, but all they really needed was a little western persuasion. I’m not sure if the Chinese are just really generous people, or if they just really enjoy westerner’s company but it seemed like everyone at that bar wanted to give us drinks, and ganbei! Though, after a while it got to be too much- I wonder if their goal was to see an American get drunk? Or if they just thought we could handle it? Non-the-less I will not be making that mistake again.
