Saturday:
On Saturday, Jim and Matt and Erin (she's awesome, a sassy and smart Southern girl who goes to Georgia Tech and has a cute accent that would not be out of place at one of my family reunions) and I set out to see the jade Buddha. Apparently some guy had carried the huge thing across a desert way back when. We caught a cab to it, and wandered around temples seeing all kind of buddhas, wooden, gold-plated, stone, but no jade. We started to leave, thinking one of the gold-plated ones had plated over the jade, but finally we were pointed up stairs to the jade one.
What I like about Buddhist statues is how their faces express emotion so well: anger, sadness, pleasure, relaxation, whatever. This one was the picture of serenity. I felt like if I could put it in my house and look at it regularly, I might never be stressed out again.
Next we wanted to check out the big tall pagoda, 'the greatest pagoda in all of Chiner.' It is supposedly the tallest pagoda in China, but it was less than impressive. It put me in mind of a putt-putt golf course. But they did have some booths selling things at the base, and Jim bought himself a Samurai sword, and Matt bought a little carving of a fish that split down the middle, and inside were two couples having sex.
Jim had to carry his sword around the whole rest of the day, and he was pretty funny with it. He practiced fencing with it, scared small children with it, hailed cabs with it, and talked about threatening anyone in the service industry if they didn't serve to please him. It put me in mind of that episode of the Simpsons where Homer kept slapping people with gloves and demanding satisfaction.
We took a cab to the Hard Rock Cafe, and as Jim said, it was the least rockin' Hard Rock he'd ever been to, and he's been to a lot. The atmosphere was much less noisy and lively than your average McDonalds, and it even had a little play area for children. We all ordered burgers and fries, and they were unspectacular, but the desserts were wonderful: apple pie and crumbly cookie cake. Mmmmmm, Western desserts....
American food is so ridiculously filling compared to Chinese food, and none of us could eat for the rest of the day. It was strange to use forks and knives again, and I noticed a Chinese guy at another table trying to eat a baked potato. He would rake off a bit of potato with the knife onto the fork, which he held upside down, and then balance it there on the way to his mouth. It's probably about what we looked like trying to use chopsticks those first few days.
Now we had Erin to ourselves, and we all caught up on Dalian and Qingdao gossip. Kim in Dalian, a quiet, timid, petite Southern girl, had come to China engaged to be married soon after she got back to the States. But all during the trip we had been seeing her and Wei, another Dalian guy, all but holding hands as they walked down the street, always walking together, and smiling a little bigger when the other was around. We asked Erin to dish it out, and she said that Kim had decided not to get married to he beau back home, was like a sister to John (the Dalian guy who didn't come to Shanghai), and thought Wei was really cute. After one drunken night, Erin had to restrain Kim to keep her from jumping into bed with Wei. It seemed that this China trip was her time to branch out, blossom, and see the world (and cute Asian boys from California). It made me happy.
Brian is also deciding whether or not to marry his long-time girlfriend, and Gayle just started a relationship before she came to China, and is continuing it via email. John, also a right-leaning straight-laced type, apparently gets drunk and loud sometimes, which is very dangerous in China, and once the others had to grab him and jump into some bushes to avoid the PSB, the Chinese police.
Some good music videos were coming over the TVs around, and somehow talk turned to snakes, and I was watching the videos and absently listening to them until I heard Jim say, "With my luck, they'd hand me a baby and a condom." I looked at him oddly and asked what the hell that meant. It turned out he said 'anaconda,' not 'and a condom.'
They played the video for Long December, and Erin said it was one of her favorite songs ever. Especially the part about 'the way that light attaches to a girl.'
Another thing about the Dalian people is that many of them seem too nice to complain, which would cut out about half of our conversation fodder. Us Qingdao folks are not above bitchfests, and we pulled Erin into one, and she vented about how annoying James was and how some of the others sat around talking about him because he was so annoying. Erin apparently wasn't into this kind of thing so much, but she said she liked venting with us. She said we were like Ann Landers for her. I think a little bitching is healthy now and then.
Next we were bent on seeing the Shanghai Sex Museum. We knew Chinese people had sex, but we didn't know any details. We wondered what kind of lascivious things they had come up with in 4000 years of history; plus all those impulses suppressed by Communism had to go somewhere, right? We caught a cab to what we thought might be the address, but on the way we saw some drummers in a square, and we stopped the cab to have a look.
It turned out to be the grand opening of Plaza 66, a new super-posh department store. It was built kind of like the Guggenheim, with a big central hollow space, and designer clothing and cosmetics stores in a spiralling circle all around. Everything was immaculate and marble-looking, and the stores were stylish, scant, and expensive. It made me depressed somehow to look at it, all this expensive, useless merchandise in a poor country, with a building just as hollow as the place in our hearts that this stuff tries to fill. Jim remarked that this was one of the few places where he had seen actually attractive Asians, by which I'm sure he meant stylish and Western-looking.
Many poorer Chinese were wandering around the place, certainly unable to afford much or any of it. I imagined that soon after their initial views they probably wouldn't be allowed in again, and why would they care? It was all useless to them anyway.
After that, it took us more than an hour and a few cab rides to find the sex museum, and it was interesting, but probably not worth all the trouble. We saw an educational video about the history of Chinese sex, and we saw artifacts like fans that, if opened fully, were quite normal and harmless, but when closed just a bit, they were scandalous, showing people having sex or whatever. There were many vials and bowls with a 'sex secret' somewhere that you had to look for (kind of like Matt's fish). The coolest exhibit was a statue of an old bald guy with a wicked, defiant look in his eye pointing at himself, and the sign underneath said, "It was the beginning of life." There were also two-headed stone dildos ostensibly used by lesbians, and I was like, damn, that would be cold.
The video kept saying 'pennis' instead of 'penis,' and remarked that everything round was symbolic of a vagina, and everything elongated was a 'pennis.' Frogs are also sexual symbols, as are cranes. By the time we walked out of there, we were seeing penises everywhere: skyscrapers, street lights, cigarettes, Jim's sword. And those round jade lifesaver necklaces that the Chinese always wear--now we know what they really mean.
Next we went to the Ritz Carlton to see the acrobats. A cute-ish blond guy sat on the other side of Erin, and he was speaking a strange language that we couldn't place. From his looks and what I had heard in my brief time there, I guessed it was Scandinavian. Erin asked him what the language was, and he said it was Norwegian. We chatted a little until the show started. His name was Johann.
Some of the acts were really bad, like when jugglers would juggle for a while, stop and do a back handspring, and then juggle some more. And I never could stand plate spinning acts. But others were amazing. When the contortionist, a tiny Chinese girl dressed in silver like a snake, rested her butt on her head, Jim spit his gum out. There were also some really breathtaking aerials. But again it made me kind of sad to see people doing unhealthy things and performing like a trained animal for my amusement.
When it was over, we filed out behind the Norwegian guys and discussed what to do that night. I suggested we ask Johann which clubs he might recommend, and Erin tapped his shoulder and asked him. He told us about some good clubs, and said they would head to YY's later that night, and we should meet them there. Sounded great to us, but we needed to go to the hotel and put our swords and packages and bags away first. We asked him what he thought of the show, and Jim mentioned that he was really impressed with the contortionist. Johann got a kind of pained look on his face and said, "Mmm, I don't think that is very good for the girl's body. It's not healthy." Maybe I should go to Norway next.
We went back to the hotel, put our stuff away, and took the elevator down, ready to head out and try to find YY's. We stepped onto the elevator, and I could hardly believe my eyes. The guy on the elevator with us was Mark, a German guy who had stayed in our hotel in Qingdao for a while and told us about the Honolulu Club and taught me how to get my clothes washed on campus. We had agreed one night, his last in Qingdao, to meet up at the Honolulu Club with some friends, but he never showed for some reason. I assumed I'd never see him again, but there he was.
We all talked to him for a bit, and he said he was on his way to C's, a bar that served 10 kwai drinks all night. That was an outrageously low price, something like $1.25 per drink. When he finally looked me full in the face, his eyes widened, and he said, "Chir! I took you to Chir the first time." She is the laundress on campus. I laughed and said, "Yeah, in Qingdao." We talked for a bit, and agreed that C's sounded like a great place to start out the night, and he gave directions to our cabdriver.
C's was crowded with mostly young white people from all over and a few Asians (average age was perhaps 23), and we searched some of the rooms until we found Mark and his gorgeous blonde girlfriend. She looked like she had just stepped off a Calvin Klein ad, with razor-sharp cheekbones and jawline, sparkling brown eyes, and long, straight, tawny blonde hair. She was also very friendly and seemed collected and intelligent. Jim was drooling.
I ordered a shot of Finlandia vodka from the bar, and sure enough it was just 10 kwai (some places charge as much as 60 kwai for a shot). We stood around and talked until Matt sat on a bar stool and motioned for me to sit in front of him, with his legs on either side of me.
After another shot (Smirnoff), he said, "Are you ready? OK, brown hair, blue shirt, right in front of us."
I looked over and said, "Ooh, he's cute."
Then he looked at us straight on, and he didn't look quite as cute.
"Oh, he's a profiler," Matt said dismissively.
"Profiler?"
"Looks better from the side." I laughed. I had never heard that one before.
"Blond hair, big muscles... kind of dumb-looking."
"Yeah," I agreed, "but he does have the muscles..."
"The Asian guy dancing... I can't tell if he's gay or not."
"He can move," I said, "he's probably gay."
We went on like this for a while, and Erin finally laughed and said, "You two are worse than any two girls I've ever heard."
I asked Matt if he could always tell if other people were gay, and he said, "No, not always. I don't think I have the best gaydar. Sometimes I have wistful gaydar." I laughed again.
After I'd had a shot of Stolichnaya, a Blue Lagoon, and another Finlandia, we were ready to head out. (By the way, I'd never had a chance to try three kinds of vodka in one sitting before, but for future reference, Finlandia is much smoother and tastier than Smirnoff or Stoly.)
We looked forever for YY's, but to no avail. I was very sad, because the Norwegian guy was cute, and like-minded on at least one point, and what better chance did I have in Shanghai? We finally had a cab driver take us to whatever disco he could find, and he took us to Young Young (not YY's. I know, it's confusing), a mainly Chinese hangout with some pretty lame music.
We danced a little, and it turned out that quite a few of the Chinese girls on the dance floor were actually from California. They seemed to be doing some kind of aerobics, and Jim talked to them a little. Jim and Erin danced together, and Matt and I danced close sometimes, and it was nice. Sometimes Matt did his cowboy dance, where he grabs his imaginary belt buckle and seductively twirls an imaginary rope overhead, twisting his body seductively as well. It's funny to watch, but also dead sexy. Amy and I ask him to do it whenever we think we can get away with it, and we laugh, but... yeah.
Near the end, they started playing some slow songs, and Matt and I danced some more. I said something once, and he laughed and said, "Chinese Prom?" I'm pretty sure that's not what I said, but he thought it was funny, so I agreed.
I danced with Jim on another slow song, and at the next one we switched. Some goofy Chinese song was playing that said, "Ai bu, ai bu," over and over. Chinese pop music is unfathomably lame--even lamer than American pop. But slow dancing was nice.
When it was over and the place closed at 2:00, Matt said, "Chinese Prom is over." We smiled as we headed out.
Sunday:
The next day, Matt, Jim, Amy, Kim, Wei, Erin, Kiran, Boer and I headed out to lunch at Subway, then we went to the Shanghai museum, which was impressive, but after three days of pounding the pavement and barely sleeping, a museum was the last place I should have gone. Museums always take my energy level down about eighteen notches, and I could only look at half of one exhibit before I had to sit down and rest. When I could get back up again, I could only breeze through and glance at things, and even that was exhausting.
We went shopping at the touristy china town district again, and I bought some gifts and a little silver and amethyst bracelet. We left for the airport way early, and my feet hurt so badly that I could barely make it to our terminal. Then we flew back to home sweet Qingdao.
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