No trouble making

June is shaping up to be an incredibly pleasant month here in good ‘ol Qinhuangdao. It is warm, but always with a nice sea breeze that tends to pick up every day around 3 p.m. Nights are comfortable. I’ve snapped some pics around town and campus of our day-to-day life.

We went to a very pleasant mountain park in Qinhuangdao recently and came upon these rules. My favorite is probably: “Illegal activities like gathering, fighting, trouble-making, assembling, gambling, superstition, etc. are forbidden in the park. Disobeying the above regulations will get corresponding punishment. ” Hmmm. Wonder what the corresponding punishment for superstition is. I’m also a fan of “Don’t spit everywhere and relieve the bowels and throw out the offal without care.” Not sure what “offal” is….

Here I am on the verge of harsh punishment. 1. I climbed this mountain stone, and “Climbing the mountain stones is forbidden.” 2. Superstition, for I have just avoided stepping on a crack as not to break my mother’s back. 3. After this picture was taken I relieved my bowels over the side and 4. …then I spit everywhere and…5. … worst of all I threw out the offal without care.

Mark and a professor from our school. The trip to the park was a foreign language department outing. In the park, Professor G. was jumping from rock to rock like Spider Man and also climbing the mountain faster than any of us, whilst simultaneously pulling lotus flowers off the trees and snacking on them. I tried one, too. Not bad! He smoked us all. He is 63. Rumor has it he swims every day in the ocean, even in winter. I can only hope to be that spry.

Back at the apartment complex. Here is our porch, on which we like to sit and chat late into the night. There is another teacher’s scooter, which is broken. But it serves as a good napping spot for the complex’s favorite alley cat, whom I call Mr. Kitty. You may also observe a random wet spot on the ground. It’s from the air conditioners above. China has a lot of random wet spots on the ground. Mark and I like to whisper “mystery wetness” each and every time we see one.

I’m kind of obsessed with Mr. Kitty. An old woman upstairs gives him fish heads and he hangs around. He is extremely friendly but also covered in dirt and I haven’t dared to pet him. I don’t want his fleas. He chases all the other cats away so he alone can enjoy his fish heads. He is the king of the feral kitties in this neck of the woods.

As I write this Mr. Kitty is outside wailing like a freakish, possessed child at another cat. It’s actually quite frightening. Scrappy Mr. Kitty will surely prevail. OK, that’s enough Mr. Kitty.

Hazardous puppies and the dangers of over-Googling

I mentioned this before, but every time we pet puppies here in China, something medically bizarre happens to Mark. Puppies are usually sold off of the sidewalk, as are kittens, goldfish, turtles and lizards. Their adorable, sad puppy faces call your name. You know you shouldn’t. You know these cute little mutts and inbred purebreds are dirty. But you do. We did.

In the fall, we were walking down the sidewalk when we came across a guy selling puppies out of a cardboard box that he had strapped to the back of his motorcycle. We stopped, and Mark picked one up and cuddled it in his coat for a minute. The poor little thing needed some comfort. Death was definitely knocking on its cardboard box. Days later, Mark became violently ill with a number of unpleasant symptoms. I Googled all of his symptoms-I’m not about to list them- to try and figure out what was wrong. But then I went beyond his symptoms and just started reading bizarre medical stories – like the one about the super bacteria you can catch from under-chlorinated pool water- and it’s antibiotic-resistant! It killed a kid in New Mexico! Never mind that we hadn’t been swimming. I became convinced he would die any moment, from both dehydration and antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains running amok. We went to the doctor and they rehydrated my poor boo intravenously (The Chinese really love any and all drip-style medications, by the way. If we feel ill, our Chinese friends like to ask, “Do you need an injection?”) Aside from the rehydrating, he got some medicine, and I still don’t know what it was, but I Googled the ingredients in it, too. Definitely not available in the US. And it worked like a charm.

Months passed and we nearly forgot about the first puppy disaster. So, we pet a few more sad looking little guys. And, like clockwork, a new bizarre condition surfaced in unfortunate Mark. He just can’t catch a break. He developed what looked sort of like acne..but…wasn’t. Mutant, small under-the-skin boils around his mouth, that hurt. One cropped up one day, another the next. They were spreading. I Googled “face boil” infection, and immediately decided a bacteria would enter his bloodstream any minute and kill him. There are a dizzying array of family doctor type sites out there, and each one of them scared the bejesus out of me with their freakish, long-named, crazy skin conditions. But can you blame me? We’re in a foreign country and something foreign had invaded my fiance’s face. I was completely freaked out. Our friend, his English name Chain, told us that Mark was simply “on fire.” That’s the Chinese traditional medical term for it. We don’t quite understand what that means, but every time in the last week Mark has told a Chinese friend “I’m on fire,” they understood precisely, and usually told him to eat more vegetables, wear more clothes and avoid sweets and beer.

Like a typical man, Mark totally ignored his symptoms and my harping about going to the doctor for days. He instead got all Quasimoto and hid and sulked around in our apartment like it was the bell tower of Notre Dame. Finally, he ventured into the world again and took his fire face to the doctor on campus. We had a Chinese friend translate for us with a doctor via our cell phone to describe symptoms. The doctor busted a big flash light from his desk drawer and shone it on Mark’s chin. He spoke in Chinese to our friend on the cell, and then our friend translated, “He thinks it’s bacterial.” The doctor wrote down a prescription for two topical medications. They cost-get this-78 cents for both of them. And immediately, the medication began to work. No expensive diagnostic tests, no fancy blood work. The visit was free and the medicine cost under a dollar. If only it were that easy back home.

The point to this blog? Don’t pet puppies in China. And don’t let Google get too firm a hold on your imagination. Just go to the doctor; if you can afford it.

Paris Hilton Britney Spears

Psyche! this post isn’t about them. It’s about goldfish, and the Monkey Man, and other matters. But I noticed that, the other day, when I mentioned Vince Vaughn, someone landed in my blog. I was writing about Mark and I bringing Popeye’s Chicken to the extras in his old Chicago neighborhood, whilst stalking around “The Break Up” set. You see, WordPress lets you know what Google search terms lead people to your blog, and there he was: “Vince Vaughn.” So maybe, in the middle of sentences, I’ll start to mention celebrity names. I think that will be Angelina Jolie quite effective, don’t you? And I’d like to add that I’m sure Jennifer Aniston did not have the Popeye’s, because isn’t she on The Zone diet for life?

I really hope that I’m not reincarnated as a monkey. Specifically, a baboon or a gibbon, that live in China, and belong to a man with yellow teeth and a big round leathery head and a loud voice and a whip and a soggy cig hanging out the corner of his mouth. He comes around McDonald’s on the weekends in downtown Qinhuangdao. So do we. Unsurprisingly, we call him “Monkey Man.” He has four monkeys: one is a small baboon, the rest gibbons that wear little jackets with stars on them. They all have chains around their little monkey necks. He yells, and I don’t know what he yells, and he cracks his whip, and his monkeys do tricks. Like, jump up in the air and catch a ball, or jump onto his shoulder. But really, they are just trying to avoid the whip. They don’t get treats afterwards. They usually just get yanked around a bit more by the neck. I mean, I know a brother’s gotta make a living, but, eh, I feel bad for the monkeys.

I had a “sick of China” moment while I paused to look at Monkey Man’s show. It had nothing to do with the monkeys and everything to do with the fat 11 year old who looked at me screamed “Laowaiiiii!” At the top of his lungs. Laowai is the common term for foreigner. We also get “Waiguo ren,” which means outside person and is a little more polite. We hear it all the time; it’s odd at first, but they really aren’t used to seeing white people here, so it’s not a big deal. But this kid. Ach. First he made me mad because he was a portly fellow. That sounds mean, but I had a feeling that his being pudgy and standing outside of McDonald’s were not two unrelated occurrences. So maybe I wasn’t mad at him, I was mad at McDonald’s. I can’t decide. Secondly, I was more than perturbed that he yelled “Laowai” at the top of his lungs. Was that necessary? Really? I gave him the stink eye and walked away before I popped him in his obnoxious mouth.

Mark and I had, earlier, gone to the pet store, which is a row of animal cages on the sidewalk, also outside of McDonald’s. Every time we pet the puppies, something bad happens to Mark a few days later. For instance, one time, Mark held a puppy, and then he became violently ill two days later. Another time, he pet a puppy, and he got a zit that turned into weird face boil. The face boil went away and a new crop of mutant pimples cropped up.

So, now we look at the puppies, from a distance, and take pictures of them. There are also turtles and lizards and goldfish. We bought some a few weeks ago. Those died, in, like, days. And we bought a few more. Those are thriving! We have six; two look pregnant. They are either gold or speckled black, white and gold. We stole a crumbled piece of the Great Wall, and it is in the bottom of their bowl. It looks just like any other rock. These are the first pets Mark and I have owned together. Every woman looks at the way her man handles pets, and her mind automatically rushes forward, to child rearing. I have done this with the goldfish, which is in every way ridiculous. But things are looking good. Mark tenderly moves the fish tank from our kitchen table to the window sill, but only when the sunlight is not direct. This is to give the fish a better view. He positions our plant over the fish tank, to make them feel more at home. He faithfully changes their water, letting it sit out all night. It is also his job to feed the fish, which he does dutifully. We both talk to the fish every day, usually with a resounding, “Hello fishes!” said for unknown reasons in a southern accent. Sometimes I sing them a tune, and they come to the surface and make fish faces. When we leave, we will release them into our campus’s pond.

I’m off to the coffee shop to enter my students’ grades on their letters to Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel.

Tigers, vodka and ice

I am very behind with my bloggin’. Mostly because I can’t get to this blog every day. I try, but the programs I use don’t always work properly against the blocks in China.

My dad told me some of the Saline American Legion members check in periodically for updates. Hello to you from China. Also, my grandpa reads this. Hi Papa!
Anyhow, here is the long version of something I wrote the other day. I am leaving on a train to Shanghai in two hours! I’ll be gone for 7 to 10 days. The trip is pretty open ended, but we are going to be visiting some truly historic cities in the south of China. We’ll have 20 hours on the train to plan it out. I’ll try to post from internet cafes, but without the right software, wordpress.com is blocked here! So here is something long to keep my now 5 readers busy!
I joined the swirling mass pushing onto the train at the Qinhuangdao Station in northeast China. The car was packed like ladies room at intermission, but five times worse. The seats were full, and people choked the isles, as the railroad also sells standing tickets. The luggage racks looked like gigantic Jenga sets, ready to tip. Mark, my fiancé, and our friend Eric balanced our luggage and squeezed into our row. We faced three others, with an itty bitty table in between us all. I sat knee to knee with a young Chinese woman who peeled an orange and smiled at me when I pulled an orange out of my bag and began to do the
same. Eric pulled out a beer and we all took a sip. It would be a 12-hour ride. I sighed, Mark stewed and Eric drank. And then something wonderful happened. A conductor agreed to upgrade our seats to sleepers. We’d brought an English student with us to the station do some fast talking, and it had worked. We grabbed our stuff, paid for the new seats and left our cozy car behind. A few of those around us who had purchased standing tickets had big smiles on their faces. They got our hard seats.
The sleeper was crowded, but compared to the hard seat cars, it was high end luxury. Hard sleeper cars like ours are made of eight compartments. There are six beds to a compartment, stacked three high against one side of the train. Luggage is stacked above a small isle. In the isle, fold-up seats and tiny tables connect to a wall, where people sat and looked out curtained windows at landscape of northeast China. The best beds are the bottom beds, where you can sit up, whereas the top two are a few inches too short for sitting. The

downfall of a bottom sleeper is that everyone sits on your bed until the lights go out. We ditched our stuff and headed to the café car for beer and Uno. Though soon well buzzed on beer called Snow, I still couldn’t sleep that night among the chorus of a crying children and snoring men. But I was warm and comfortable and thankful not to be cramped in a sitting position, or worse, standing.

Crack. A long-haired woman gnawed sunflower seeds at the window. Bleary-eyed men in long johns scratched and yawned. Others dined on noodle and boiled egg breakfasts. It was morning and we were in
Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province.
Harbin is about the size of metropolitan Chicago, with a population of 9.5 million. It’s nestled south of Siberia and east of Inner Mongolia a bit south of the center of China’s northernmost province. As such, it’s cold. Really cold. While we were there in early January, between -8F during the day and hovering around -20F at night. Harbin’s architecture reflects a blend of cultures, most notably, Russian. Onion domes and well-preserved facades mark the cobbled pedestrian shopping area of town along Zhongyan Lu, lined with quaint cafes and pricey boutiques. There are several cultural gems, and naturally, McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut to dumb it all down (not that we didn’t tap all that). Outside of the gleaming tourist centers in the
sprawling metropolis are lots of run-down streets; the city has been likened to Detroit. Still, it is known as the Paris of the East, or the Moscow of the East, and perhaps most famous for the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, which was what we were there to see.
We Americans are all teachers at a university in Qinhuangdao, northeast China, and a student’s mom had volunteered to pick us up at the station, arrange a hostel and our return tickets. When we emerged from the station, a well-coiffed little lady popped out of the crowd and whisked us away. Her boots clacked on the pavement as she took me by the arm and started chatting to me in Chinese I didn’t understand. We headed under the street through and pedestrian tunnel and market. Though Eric speak fluent Chinese, it eased our minds to be lead by this kind, quick-moving local woman. China has no central bureau of tourism and very few English-language maps. It’s not at all impossible to get around on your own devices in the far corners of the Middle Kingdom, but without a Chinese speaker on your side, it isn’t a question of when you will get lost, confused, stressed or overcharged, but when.
We arrived at our hostel after a short, frigid walk. The hostel was dingy, but warm, a local place with no other foreigners staying there. Sheets were hanging in the hallway to dry, which I took as a good sign. I would leave a few days later with no bug bites, which is the mark of five-star hostel accommodation in my book.

St. Sophia Church
Our spunky Harbin mom provided us with a bus route to reach downtown, where she left us. We boarded a bus near the train station and exited near St. Sophia Church. The church-turned historical site looked like a Moscow postcard with its guilt crosses and onion domes. But the Chinglish at the ticket stand was classic Middle Kingdom: “Deformity People, with certificate, free; Old People, with certificate, free.” “Ah, dang I forgot my deformity certificate,” I lamented. We paid walked through the doors. The hollowed out church was in dyer need of restoration, and the exhibits just so-so, but we were easy to please. Shelter from the
-22C (-8F) cold was all it took to make us deliriously happy. Blown up black-and-white photos lined the walls, and the front of the place offered over-priced souvenirs. Information booths about Harbin were actually in English, which was thrilling. There, I learned the brick-and-wood church was built in 1907, and again in 1923 to accommodate the growing number of Harbin Orthodox, taking nine years to complete. It was built mostly in the Byzantine style, combined with Russian domes, Roman archways and various other architectural styles.
And so we got a little dose of local culture before braving the cold again.

Quaint streets of Harbin
Our faces went numb as we plodded down the cobbled pedestrian streets Harbin, along Zhongyan Lu. We hit up a café called USA Bucks for knock-off lattes and more Uno. Outside, ice carvings the size of economy cars dotted the street, announcing the festival. We later ventured to an Ice Bar for glasses of Russian vodka, served by Chinese wait staff in gigantic fur hats. Sitting on animal skins at an ice table, sipping my vodka, I decided I quite liked Harbin. For dinner, we ate at a place called The Russian Teahouse. My father, the king of
mashed potatoes, would not have approved, and being my father’s girl, I just can’t call a place with good. It had fake mashed ‘taters. I do admit, reluctantly, that the rest of the food was quite tasty, with offerings of stews, bread-stuffed meat, borscht and other Russian treats. I left a little hardier. Back at the hostel, we drank Harbin beer, played cards and rested up for a busy schedule of tourist attractions the next day.

Siberian Tiger Park
Siberian Tiger Park is a poor man’s Jurassic Park, and an alleged breeding and re-introduction training tiger farm. After wondering the streets of Harbin, and asking the coldest looking local we could find for directions (the coldest looking ones seemed to know best), we took a bus (#88 to #84, to end of route) out of town. A man with a pedi-cab, which is a teensy, three-wheeled vehicle, offered us a ride to the park for about $4, After pretending we were just going to walk there, we got the ride for 20Y ($2.75) -yes, we’re that cheap-and stuffed ourselves into his cab, which was heated with a tiny coal stove. He stoked his stove and we headed down the road, soon turning onto an ominously long driveway. The front of the park featured happy, cartoon-like tiger models beckoning tourists their way. At the ticket window, a price list of animals included chicken, duck, pheasant, sheep and cow. These animals were for sale for between 40Y ($5.50) and 1500Y ($206), to be thrown to the park tigers to eat as us tourists watched from the bus windows.
We boarded a small bus, and a tall, rusty chain-link gate opened slowly. Would we soon be having a Jurassic Park moment, should a snow storm blow in, should our beat-up little bus break down? Maybe the tigers were smarter than we thought, like those raptors. Maybe the tigers would go berserk and bum rush the bus. It was too late to turn back. We were in. The bus drove, much too wildly for my taste, around the different sections of the park, such as “African Lion Park,” and “Adult Tiger Breeding Park.” The ground was covered with snow and ice and I had a sneaking suspicion the driver had been hitting the bai jiu (Chinese spirits). A cig hanging from his mouth, the driver pulled up near a dozen tigers huddled together lazily. He honked the horn. He
opened the door and slammed it shut. Our jaws dropped. The Chinese folks on the bus squealed with delight born of a false sense of security. Or were we just wimpy Americans, used to safety precautions and signing waivers at the slightest hint of danger? The back windows of the bus could be slid open. Mark did so to take a “better” picture. I yelled at him, but no one else seemed to notice. The driver continued his wild tour of the park, the honking and the door slamming, to our dismay. Mark and Eric had just read Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, which goes into great detail as to describe how the tiger should be respected, how the tiger is the perfect killing machine, how the tiger can take off a man’s head with a swipe of its paw. And here we were, on a bus, taunting the animals, who looked hungry, and pissed off to begin with, and who cold blame them? Then a man purchased a chicken. The driver stopped the bus and radioed in the order. An SUV armored with steel fixtures over its windows, body and tires (by the way, where was our steel armor?) sped into the enclosure. The driver of the SUV opened the door and threw out a live chicken. The chicken fluttered to the top of the car. Within a half second a tiger pounced onto the SUV and had the chicken in its mouth. The chicken was doomed, the tiger satisfied, but the others got nothing. The driver followed the tiger with the live chicken in its mouth so we could watch it rip the thing apart, and a few rather gigantic tigers followed our bus hoping for seconds. I wondered how well-fed these animals were, anyway. Conditions certainly looked poor, by obvious virtue of African lions wondering around the desolate landscape in Siberian temperatures. We later saw a tiger licking a block of ice in a tub, apparently its frozen water supply. At the same time, I was thankful no one bought a sheep.We saw over about an hour hundreds of tigers and lions, both on the grounds and in small rows of outdoor cages. According to Chinese news reports, the population at the park should reach 1,000 by 2010, climbing from 8 in 1986. That was the year it opened, funded by the central government, at a time the sale of tiger parts was still legal. The park is millions of RMB in debt; its managers have called for the legalization of the sale of tiger parts, which was banned from use in traditional Chinese medicine in 1993. The park only makes enough to feed about 300 tigers each year, though it houses 700, and all of the revenue is from ticket sales. Managers are keeping tiger bodies in gigantic freezers hoping the government will lift the ban, while conservationists say a lift would eliminate the existing small wild
population of tigers. Mostly, the tigers at the “breeding” park looked sad, ate snow and huddled together. I would advise the weak of heart or animal lovers not to visit the park, and I would be quite surprised that there isn’t some trade going on with dead tiger parts on the sly. In the mean time, it’s doubtful these animals would eat at all, if no one came to see this bizarre spectacle.

The International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival
The crown jewel of Harbin in the throes of winter is its ice and snow festival, which will run for two months and began Jan. 5. The snow portion of the festival is in Sun Island Park, which is the attraction to see during the day.

Snow
After being scared out of our minds at Tiger Park, we were thankful to wonder peacefully among snow sculptures. Not only could you gaze upon snow art, you could pet a deer, sit on a yak, or ride a snow mobile, for a price. We warmed ourselves in a snow cabin and drank overpriced milk tea before taking in the frosty exhibits. The sculptures ranged from the size of a couch to a few football fields. A snow Arc de Triomphe welcomed visitors over the road to Sun Island. Sculptures of harmony among Chinese and French were common, as the area was near the French Embassy. We saw frolicking snow children, a snow village, and a gigantic snow Thinker. The most popular theme had to be big breasts, and yet the Chinese have so few of those. There were a various flower goddesses, all with long flowing snow hair, a minimum of a C-cup and notably hard nipples. Along those lines, the shining sculptural achievement this year had to be a gigantic snow montage that included a huge, bare-chested (ofcourse) mermaid, six-foot tall coral sculptures and underwater castle. It was at least 50 feet tall and 300 yards long. I’d never seen anything like it, and I doubt I will again.

Ice
The sun began to fade and we opted for a frosty walk to the ice festival, rather than a cab. I was getting hardier by the second in this city, and loving every minute of it. Ten minutes later, we purchased our tickets to the ice festival, and waited in a glass-walled café for the sun to go down. The impressive ice village sported a 2008 Olympic theme. In it, 3,500 ice sculptures covered an area of 400,000-thousand-square meters. The ice blocks have colored lights within, and the result is beautiful. The grounds feature ice roads, cars, an ice castle, church and Greek temple, igloos and an Olympic-themed tower, a skating rink and a huge snow Buddha for good measure. By far, my favorite part of the festival was an incredibly long, fast toboggan run. I wanted to take video of the run with my camera, but instead screamed and hung on for dear life. I wondered how, exactly, I would stop and soon had my answer. My sled flew up a curved wall of snow and I tumbled off my toboggan. Workers yanked me up before I could be hit by the next guy. After a day of outdoor antics, we were colder than ever, and stayed for only two hours before returning to the city center for dinner.

Our spunky Harbin mom returned with our train tickets the next morning. We drank more USAbucks, wondered around a few markets and ate Russian food before boarding the train that evening. On the train, I
cracked sunflower seeds with my teeth and had a warm beer before crawling to my bunk. I went to sleep satisfied, with visions of men in long johns, ice sculptures and the Moscow of the East swirling in my
head.