你们好！I’m back from my trip to China and thought I’d post up a little (lies!) thread about what I’ve been up to for the past couple of months for those who have some irrational curiosity about my personal life. Or China. It’s more than a little tl;dr, so I put all of the stuff relating to pokémon specifically in a separate post below, conveniently linked for those of you who find the scrollbar to be entirely too much effort and for some reason aren’t interested in reading my unreasonably long ramble about my study abroad experience. Additionally, it should be noted that I am lazy and everyone in my class is supposed to be uploading their trip photos to a mutual album but, despite the fact that they’ve had plenty of time to do this, only one person has actually done so thus far. Operating under the assumption that there was no reason for the same, say, building to be photographed seventeen different times, I chose to champion laziness efficiency and only take a few, mostly bad, pictures, and primarily of small details that particularly amused me. Therefore, there really aren’t many good pictures of the places I went here yet, but there should be some more available later, if anyone really wants to see them for some reason.
Obviously, there’s no possible way that I’m going to be able to cover nearly everything that I did during my two-and-a-half month stay, nor even give a little summary of what we did in each different place (that was my original intention, and then I gave up after a glorious three and a half pages that only covered four things). So! Instead, here are some of my observations about the experience in general, specifically about the culture of China as I witnessed it, as well as a smattering of people whom you neither know nor care about. If you want to hear, specifically, about some of the places I went or things I did there, feel free to ask; I’d be more than happy to type your eyes out with a blow-by-blow if that’s what you really desire.
For those as lazy as I, here is the super Cliffs-notes version of this thread:
It’s not every day that you feel camaraderie with a poor stick figure guy apparently falling for unspecified reasons towards an ugly demise involving a serious misunderstanding of proper word spacing! But, enough of the silly intro. By train, by boat, by airplane; by bus, “electric bottle-vehicle,” and motorcycle; by subway, by taxicab, and most definitely on foot, I’ve been crisscrossing China for the past two and a half months to bring you nonsense about…
Atmosphere
The recent rise of free-market economics in China has resulted in a kind of capitalist frenzy. One of the most common questions that people in our group were asked was how much money we made, or our parents made, or how much the average person in the US makes. People were also curious about how much various items cost in the US—the price of McDonald’s fare in America, for example, was a common point of inquiry, and my Chinese friend at the university I attended in Shanghai expressed considerable dismay after asking about how much it would cost to attend various prestigious schools in America.
Just some tall buildings in downtown Shanghai. Kind of felt like sticking something here.
From the embrace of a communist ideology in which classless society was the ideal, China has moved to indulging in conspicuous consumption. How much money a person makes is viewed as one of the most important determinants of that person’s value, with education being emphasized as well—though more as the path to making more money than for its own sake. One of our Chinese teachers asked us whether the boys in our class would be willing to marry a woman who had more education than them, or who made more money. She then went on to explain that in China the view was that women who went to grad school must hate men because guys wouldn’t want to marry someone smarter than them or who had, especially, a higher salary. Later, in one of our frequent rants about the state of traffic (see below), she explained that people who have cars don’t yield for pedestrians because they don’t care about them: if they have to walk or ride a bike, they must be lower class and therefore scrambling out of the way is their lot in life.
A lot of what Americans consider to be common courtesy simply isn’t seen as important in Chinese society. This was probably most evident whenever we had to stand in a line somewhere; the Chinese don’t really believe in standing in line. It’s more or less every man for himself in trying to get to the counter to order something, or through security, or whatever people are queuing up for. Shoving, cutting other people off, and in general getting ahead by any means necessary are completely kosher. Being a person who instinctively squawks an apology whenever anyone so much as runs into me, this led to me waiting inordinately long in lines as Chinese slipped around me without so much as a backward glance. Even when out with Chinese friends, there were uncomfortable moments where they’d get jostled into me, quite forcefully, even, and then just go about their business as though nothing had happened, not even noticing my reflexive apology.
A typical subway scene. You’ve got to be fast to make it on a train!
Unfortunately, such an attitude is understandable given the insane dog-eat-dog state of their society at the moment. This is exemplified in the school system, where tests are required to get into not only college, but high school and even middle school as well. What college you attend is solely dependent upon your performance on one three-day test, in the tradition of the old Civil Service Exams. Millions of people compete for mere thousands of seats; even for a competent student, the exams can be little more than a crapshoot. We happened to be in Shanghai during the administration of the exams; the sidewalk outside the testing center was crammed with grim-faced parents fanning themselves as they sat out in the heat, awaiting their children’s emergence. Police officers circulated around the edge of the crowd, keeping order and enforcing the no-honking policy temporarily put into effect in an attempt to prevent students from being distracted during their examination. With such intense pressure to outperform one’s peers in order to simply survive, it’s little wonder Chinese don't have "niceness" stamped into them the way many Americans do.
Food
While many of the people who went on the trip with me didn’t like the food, I was perfectly happy with Chinese cuisine. Granted, I’m not exactly difficult to please at mealtimes; put pretty much whatever you want in front of me and my general sentiments will be more or less, “OMG FOOD. *chomp snarf munch slurp*” The Chinese style of eating, where there are several communal dishes that each person serves themselves from, suits me particularly well, however, as I enjoy browsing through a variety of different foods and trying new things rather than sticking to just one dish. There’s always an element of compromise with such meals, though, and if you end up stuck with a bunch of people who don’t like the same things that you do you’re going to lose out.
Brent about to try some squid-on-a-stick he bought from a street vendor.
Western-style food is all the rage in China now, though. Ironically, due to the oversight of the corporations that control them, fast food restaurants are some of the most reliably clean and safe places to eat. Young people in China have a ravenous appetite for western-style cuisine—or what the chains pass off as western food, anyway. KFC and Pizza Hut are the most dominant at the moment, and KFC is almost undoubtedly bigger in China than it is in the US. Never before have I encountered three-story McDonald’s with special ice cream-only takeout windows that are nevertheless standing-room-only with huge lines.
Even the marketing of fast food is different. One particular Pizza Hut billboard that depicted a bunch of (western) businesspeople enjoying what looked like wine and an expansive pasta dinner sticks out particularly in my mind. Fast food is a part of the mythos of America, apparently, and is associated with wealth and high-class living rather than the greasy burgers and working-class life we think of it being a part of in the country that originated it.
All I know is, you know you’re in a strange and foreign land when you can’t get biscuits at a KFC (;-;) and spend two hours unsuccessfully scouring a city in search of what has been described to you as “famous American restaurant”—TGI Friday’s.
A typical tea shop in China. Most of the more touristy places will give you free tea, as was the case here.
The Ugly
Public sanitation was probably what I had the most difficulty adjusting to in China. Here, diapers are uncommon. Most children wear jumpers with open bottoms, allowing them to simply squat down and take care of business out in the middle of the street. One morning after leaving the restaurant where we’d eaten breakfast we ran across the charming sight of a young boy puking up his morning dumplings right next to his brother, who was peeing.
Similarly, spitting is considered acceptable in most places, and Chinese people have it down to an art. There are few things more startling than being standing next to a young woman who all of a sudden lets out a noise that sounds like Imminent Death from Consumption and casually spits a wad of phlegm onto the sidewalk. According to my professor, spitting is considered a way of purging the body of illness, which is fine, but I hope that in the future the Chinese decide that they can purge without introducing others to their illness in such an intimate way—such as by getting it onto their shoes or suitcase, as happened to some members of our group on our epic thirty-two hour train ride.
Bathrooms, too, were a constant source of drama. They can pretty much be summed up by the conversation that took place at one restaurant where we were having lunch:
“Oh my gosh, guys, you have to check out the bathrooms here. They’re not western, but they’re really nice.”
“Do they have toilet paper?”
“Yeah, they have toilet paper—and soap!”
“Soap? Really? Now this I’ve gotta see!”
Overall, I didn’t really have a problem with the standard Chinese-style toilets, which are pretty much just flushable porcelain bowls in the ground, but unfortunately I often ran across instances in which they actually weren’t flushable, and cleanliness standards were generally low. Not providing toilet paper I can understand, what with the sheer volume of visitors that attend the places we went to, but a little soap would be nice to offset the images of vomit and worse all over the floors of most public restroom stalls. Probably the most heartbreaking bathroom experience I had in all China was in one restroom that actually had soap in an automatic dispenser. I could see it in there, a fine orange color, but the power was out and no amount of begging and plaintive hand-waving could coax the machine to give me some. Now, I’m sure that the bathrooms in people’s homes, for those who have them, are much nicer, but when one of my friends decided that she could write a valuable travel guide to China simply by reviewing the public restrooms in different places, I felt I had to agree with her.
This would be a typical public toilet in China, were it not for the fact that this one is actually clean.
Buckle Up
A Shanghai street scene.
There are basically four rules that govern traffic in China:
1. Apply the horn liberally.
2. The lines are just there for decoration. You can drive on either side of the road, provided you’re able to intimidate oncoming traffic out of your way (usually by adhering to rule number one).
3. Pedestrians and other vehicles are just obstacles to either weave around or scare out of your way.
And, most importantly:
4. The buses stop for no man.
It doesn’t really matter if the walk signal’s on at a crosswalk or not, although you’re marginally less likely to get yourself killed by crossing on a green light. Even when you have the right of way, though, you need to be on your guard for taxis too much in a hurry to pay any attention to the lights, a barrage of bicycles and motorcycles and, most terrifying of all, a bus making a turn.
I took this by request for another member of our group. She said it caught her eye because the kids aren’t holding hands or casually walking across the road—no, they’re FLEEING FOR THEIR LITTLE LIVES across the street. Quite true-to-life.
Buses pretty much rule the road by virtue of their ability to squish anything that wants to get in their way. More agile taxis and other small vehicles will flit around them in traffic, but in a one-on-one contest for a spot on the road, the bus is going to win and probably not even notice the people it scattered in the process of merging. Heaven help you if you’re on a bike or motorcycle or, worse, on foot.
Oh, and buckling up? Totally for squares. Most vehicles don’t even have seatbelts. A taxi ride through Beijing after your professor’s told the driver to “go fast” is made even more exciting by the fact that you keep getting thrown up against the sides of the vehicle and your fellow passengers.
Environment
Hiking along the ridgeline of Jiuhua Shan. We were up in the middle of a cloud, so looking out over side of the mountain was looking into an intense white blankness that almost hurt your eyes. Everything was constantly shifting into and out of the mist as the wind stirred the clouds; definitely one of the coolest places we went while hiking.
Some parts of China are absolutely beautiful. When we went climbing mountains towards the end of our trip, we had the opportunity to pass through huge forests of bamboo that rattled eerily in the wind, relax by huge waterfalls (one of which was used as the set for a scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and tramp across remote, monkey-inhabited ridgetops. I saw more dragonflies there than I’ve ever seen in my life, huge ones in colors ranging from bold yellow to iridescent hyacinth and had a brilliant green mantis alight on my bag (I saw surprisingly many of those, too). There were huge beetles, electric-blue lizards, storks and other large birds of all descriptions and, as mentioned in the caption of the above picture, monkeys.
The aforementioned waterfall, at Nine-Dragon Falls in Huang Shan.
Nevertheless, the more populous areas of the country are hardly so pristine. I decided about halfway through the trip that one of the things I missed most about home was being able to see the sky. If Beijing doesn’t have a slogan already, an apt one would be “Beijing – Air Quality You Can Taste!” When we first arrived in that city, visibility was reduced even across the span of a parking lot, and the sky was lost in a kind of grey-yellow haze. It was impossible, for most of the days we were in Shanghai, to tell whether it was clear or cloudy; now and then, you’d see a patch of gray-blue sky somewhere, or be able to make out the rough shape of lighter gray that was a cloud, but most days it was just a uniform, hazy sort of leaden color. Even on clear days when the sky was actually mostly blue-looking rather than gray, the clouds looked smeary and blurred at the edges, rather than crisp and wispy the way they do on a summer day here at home.
A view of the Forbidden City that gives you an idea of how poor the atmosphere is. The Forbidden City itself is pretty cool, though.
Of course, the books of photographs from Shanghai all showed spectacular vistas of puffy clouds floating above the skyscrapers. Clearly they’ve been putting their pirated Photoshops to good use.
Entertainment
Karaoke, or “卡拉OK,” is hugely popular in China. A popular style of Karaoke is the KTV, where you pay for a room with a TV hooked up to a karaoke machine and a couple of mics in it and caterwaul the hours away. Most places will have a healthy selection of songs in English with sing-along subtitles, although they’re liable to have their titles left untranslated and therefore be unrecognizable in the music listing or be mislabeled.
Not karaoke, just a famous movie theater in Shanghai. I went to see Prince Caspian here (with Chinese subtitles, of course).
One of our class activities was to pay a visit to the school’s karaoke competition. On our last night of classes, after which point half of us returned to the US, we actually took our two Chinese teachers out to karaoke, where we had one of them perform “中国话”, a song she’d done for the university talent show and which is actually a rap whose lyrics are traditional Chinese tongue twisters. Unfortunately, there were few people in our group that had any vocal skills to speak of, so though we tried to learn our favorite pop song, our attempts could only charitably be called singing. Nevertheless, it was kind of fun.
Being the generally reclusive person that I am, though, I was plenty content to return home and proceed avoiding social activities as much as possible. Enough adventure for me this summer--give me a good Internet connection and some time to grind levels on my Pearl version, and I'll be more than happy! My trip was one of the most awesome things I've done all my life, but I think it's time for me to have a little vacation from my vacation.
Obviously, there’s no possible way that I’m going to be able to cover nearly everything that I did during my two-and-a-half month stay, nor even give a little summary of what we did in each different place (that was my original intention, and then I gave up after a glorious three and a half pages that only covered four things). So! Instead, here are some of my observations about the experience in general, specifically about the culture of China as I witnessed it, as well as a smattering of people whom you neither know nor care about. If you want to hear, specifically, about some of the places I went or things I did there, feel free to ask; I’d be more than happy to type your eyes out with a blow-by-blow if that’s what you really desire.
For those as lazy as I, here is the super Cliffs-notes version of this thread:
It’s not every day that you feel camaraderie with a poor stick figure guy apparently falling for unspecified reasons towards an ugly demise involving a serious misunderstanding of proper word spacing! But, enough of the silly intro. By train, by boat, by airplane; by bus, “electric bottle-vehicle,” and motorcycle; by subway, by taxicab, and most definitely on foot, I’ve been crisscrossing China for the past two and a half months to bring you nonsense about…
Atmosphere
The recent rise of free-market economics in China has resulted in a kind of capitalist frenzy. One of the most common questions that people in our group were asked was how much money we made, or our parents made, or how much the average person in the US makes. People were also curious about how much various items cost in the US—the price of McDonald’s fare in America, for example, was a common point of inquiry, and my Chinese friend at the university I attended in Shanghai expressed considerable dismay after asking about how much it would cost to attend various prestigious schools in America.
Just some tall buildings in downtown Shanghai. Kind of felt like sticking something here.
From the embrace of a communist ideology in which classless society was the ideal, China has moved to indulging in conspicuous consumption. How much money a person makes is viewed as one of the most important determinants of that person’s value, with education being emphasized as well—though more as the path to making more money than for its own sake. One of our Chinese teachers asked us whether the boys in our class would be willing to marry a woman who had more education than them, or who made more money. She then went on to explain that in China the view was that women who went to grad school must hate men because guys wouldn’t want to marry someone smarter than them or who had, especially, a higher salary. Later, in one of our frequent rants about the state of traffic (see below), she explained that people who have cars don’t yield for pedestrians because they don’t care about them: if they have to walk or ride a bike, they must be lower class and therefore scrambling out of the way is their lot in life.
A lot of what Americans consider to be common courtesy simply isn’t seen as important in Chinese society. This was probably most evident whenever we had to stand in a line somewhere; the Chinese don’t really believe in standing in line. It’s more or less every man for himself in trying to get to the counter to order something, or through security, or whatever people are queuing up for. Shoving, cutting other people off, and in general getting ahead by any means necessary are completely kosher. Being a person who instinctively squawks an apology whenever anyone so much as runs into me, this led to me waiting inordinately long in lines as Chinese slipped around me without so much as a backward glance. Even when out with Chinese friends, there were uncomfortable moments where they’d get jostled into me, quite forcefully, even, and then just go about their business as though nothing had happened, not even noticing my reflexive apology.
A typical subway scene. You’ve got to be fast to make it on a train!
Unfortunately, such an attitude is understandable given the insane dog-eat-dog state of their society at the moment. This is exemplified in the school system, where tests are required to get into not only college, but high school and even middle school as well. What college you attend is solely dependent upon your performance on one three-day test, in the tradition of the old Civil Service Exams. Millions of people compete for mere thousands of seats; even for a competent student, the exams can be little more than a crapshoot. We happened to be in Shanghai during the administration of the exams; the sidewalk outside the testing center was crammed with grim-faced parents fanning themselves as they sat out in the heat, awaiting their children’s emergence. Police officers circulated around the edge of the crowd, keeping order and enforcing the no-honking policy temporarily put into effect in an attempt to prevent students from being distracted during their examination. With such intense pressure to outperform one’s peers in order to simply survive, it’s little wonder Chinese don't have "niceness" stamped into them the way many Americans do.
Food
While many of the people who went on the trip with me didn’t like the food, I was perfectly happy with Chinese cuisine. Granted, I’m not exactly difficult to please at mealtimes; put pretty much whatever you want in front of me and my general sentiments will be more or less, “OMG FOOD. *chomp snarf munch slurp*” The Chinese style of eating, where there are several communal dishes that each person serves themselves from, suits me particularly well, however, as I enjoy browsing through a variety of different foods and trying new things rather than sticking to just one dish. There’s always an element of compromise with such meals, though, and if you end up stuck with a bunch of people who don’t like the same things that you do you’re going to lose out.
Brent about to try some squid-on-a-stick he bought from a street vendor.
Western-style food is all the rage in China now, though. Ironically, due to the oversight of the corporations that control them, fast food restaurants are some of the most reliably clean and safe places to eat. Young people in China have a ravenous appetite for western-style cuisine—or what the chains pass off as western food, anyway. KFC and Pizza Hut are the most dominant at the moment, and KFC is almost undoubtedly bigger in China than it is in the US. Never before have I encountered three-story McDonald’s with special ice cream-only takeout windows that are nevertheless standing-room-only with huge lines.
Even the marketing of fast food is different. One particular Pizza Hut billboard that depicted a bunch of (western) businesspeople enjoying what looked like wine and an expansive pasta dinner sticks out particularly in my mind. Fast food is a part of the mythos of America, apparently, and is associated with wealth and high-class living rather than the greasy burgers and working-class life we think of it being a part of in the country that originated it.
All I know is, you know you’re in a strange and foreign land when you can’t get biscuits at a KFC (;-;) and spend two hours unsuccessfully scouring a city in search of what has been described to you as “famous American restaurant”—TGI Friday’s.
A typical tea shop in China. Most of the more touristy places will give you free tea, as was the case here.
The Ugly
Public sanitation was probably what I had the most difficulty adjusting to in China. Here, diapers are uncommon. Most children wear jumpers with open bottoms, allowing them to simply squat down and take care of business out in the middle of the street. One morning after leaving the restaurant where we’d eaten breakfast we ran across the charming sight of a young boy puking up his morning dumplings right next to his brother, who was peeing.
Similarly, spitting is considered acceptable in most places, and Chinese people have it down to an art. There are few things more startling than being standing next to a young woman who all of a sudden lets out a noise that sounds like Imminent Death from Consumption and casually spits a wad of phlegm onto the sidewalk. According to my professor, spitting is considered a way of purging the body of illness, which is fine, but I hope that in the future the Chinese decide that they can purge without introducing others to their illness in such an intimate way—such as by getting it onto their shoes or suitcase, as happened to some members of our group on our epic thirty-two hour train ride.
Bathrooms, too, were a constant source of drama. They can pretty much be summed up by the conversation that took place at one restaurant where we were having lunch:
“Oh my gosh, guys, you have to check out the bathrooms here. They’re not western, but they’re really nice.”
“Do they have toilet paper?”
“Yeah, they have toilet paper—and soap!”
“Soap? Really? Now this I’ve gotta see!”
Overall, I didn’t really have a problem with the standard Chinese-style toilets, which are pretty much just flushable porcelain bowls in the ground, but unfortunately I often ran across instances in which they actually weren’t flushable, and cleanliness standards were generally low. Not providing toilet paper I can understand, what with the sheer volume of visitors that attend the places we went to, but a little soap would be nice to offset the images of vomit and worse all over the floors of most public restroom stalls. Probably the most heartbreaking bathroom experience I had in all China was in one restroom that actually had soap in an automatic dispenser. I could see it in there, a fine orange color, but the power was out and no amount of begging and plaintive hand-waving could coax the machine to give me some. Now, I’m sure that the bathrooms in people’s homes, for those who have them, are much nicer, but when one of my friends decided that she could write a valuable travel guide to China simply by reviewing the public restrooms in different places, I felt I had to agree with her.
This would be a typical public toilet in China, were it not for the fact that this one is actually clean.
Buckle Up
A Shanghai street scene.
There are basically four rules that govern traffic in China:
1. Apply the horn liberally.
2. The lines are just there for decoration. You can drive on either side of the road, provided you’re able to intimidate oncoming traffic out of your way (usually by adhering to rule number one).
3. Pedestrians and other vehicles are just obstacles to either weave around or scare out of your way.
And, most importantly:
4. The buses stop for no man.
It doesn’t really matter if the walk signal’s on at a crosswalk or not, although you’re marginally less likely to get yourself killed by crossing on a green light. Even when you have the right of way, though, you need to be on your guard for taxis too much in a hurry to pay any attention to the lights, a barrage of bicycles and motorcycles and, most terrifying of all, a bus making a turn.
I took this by request for another member of our group. She said it caught her eye because the kids aren’t holding hands or casually walking across the road—no, they’re FLEEING FOR THEIR LITTLE LIVES across the street. Quite true-to-life.
Buses pretty much rule the road by virtue of their ability to squish anything that wants to get in their way. More agile taxis and other small vehicles will flit around them in traffic, but in a one-on-one contest for a spot on the road, the bus is going to win and probably not even notice the people it scattered in the process of merging. Heaven help you if you’re on a bike or motorcycle or, worse, on foot.
Oh, and buckling up? Totally for squares. Most vehicles don’t even have seatbelts. A taxi ride through Beijing after your professor’s told the driver to “go fast” is made even more exciting by the fact that you keep getting thrown up against the sides of the vehicle and your fellow passengers.
Environment
Hiking along the ridgeline of Jiuhua Shan. We were up in the middle of a cloud, so looking out over side of the mountain was looking into an intense white blankness that almost hurt your eyes. Everything was constantly shifting into and out of the mist as the wind stirred the clouds; definitely one of the coolest places we went while hiking.
Some parts of China are absolutely beautiful. When we went climbing mountains towards the end of our trip, we had the opportunity to pass through huge forests of bamboo that rattled eerily in the wind, relax by huge waterfalls (one of which was used as the set for a scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and tramp across remote, monkey-inhabited ridgetops. I saw more dragonflies there than I’ve ever seen in my life, huge ones in colors ranging from bold yellow to iridescent hyacinth and had a brilliant green mantis alight on my bag (I saw surprisingly many of those, too). There were huge beetles, electric-blue lizards, storks and other large birds of all descriptions and, as mentioned in the caption of the above picture, monkeys.
The aforementioned waterfall, at Nine-Dragon Falls in Huang Shan.
Nevertheless, the more populous areas of the country are hardly so pristine. I decided about halfway through the trip that one of the things I missed most about home was being able to see the sky. If Beijing doesn’t have a slogan already, an apt one would be “Beijing – Air Quality You Can Taste!” When we first arrived in that city, visibility was reduced even across the span of a parking lot, and the sky was lost in a kind of grey-yellow haze. It was impossible, for most of the days we were in Shanghai, to tell whether it was clear or cloudy; now and then, you’d see a patch of gray-blue sky somewhere, or be able to make out the rough shape of lighter gray that was a cloud, but most days it was just a uniform, hazy sort of leaden color. Even on clear days when the sky was actually mostly blue-looking rather than gray, the clouds looked smeary and blurred at the edges, rather than crisp and wispy the way they do on a summer day here at home.
A view of the Forbidden City that gives you an idea of how poor the atmosphere is. The Forbidden City itself is pretty cool, though.
Of course, the books of photographs from Shanghai all showed spectacular vistas of puffy clouds floating above the skyscrapers. Clearly they’ve been putting their pirated Photoshops to good use.
Entertainment
Karaoke, or “卡拉OK,” is hugely popular in China. A popular style of Karaoke is the KTV, where you pay for a room with a TV hooked up to a karaoke machine and a couple of mics in it and caterwaul the hours away. Most places will have a healthy selection of songs in English with sing-along subtitles, although they’re liable to have their titles left untranslated and therefore be unrecognizable in the music listing or be mislabeled.
Not karaoke, just a famous movie theater in Shanghai. I went to see Prince Caspian here (with Chinese subtitles, of course).
One of our class activities was to pay a visit to the school’s karaoke competition. On our last night of classes, after which point half of us returned to the US, we actually took our two Chinese teachers out to karaoke, where we had one of them perform “中国话”, a song she’d done for the university talent show and which is actually a rap whose lyrics are traditional Chinese tongue twisters. Unfortunately, there were few people in our group that had any vocal skills to speak of, so though we tried to learn our favorite pop song, our attempts could only charitably be called singing. Nevertheless, it was kind of fun.
Being the generally reclusive person that I am, though, I was plenty content to return home and proceed avoiding social activities as much as possible. Enough adventure for me this summer--give me a good Internet connection and some time to grind levels on my Pearl version, and I'll be more than happy! My trip was one of the most awesome things I've done all my life, but I think it's time for me to have a little vacation from my vacation.
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