'Cause this world turns on lessons learned

As I've mentioned before, and as you can easily imagine, a 5'10" American brunette with an Irish complexion and a D-cup chest gets a lot of second looks and blatant stares in China. Imagine, if you will, that same tall white woman stomping around the streets of Shenzhen alone at 10:30pm with mascara-stained cheeks, cursing aloud and talking to herself. If I was Chinese, I probably would have taken a picture.
October 1st is National Day in China, and in celebration of the holiday the Chinese declare the entire week a "Golden Week" where people don't have to work and everyone travels. Luckily we got our passports back just in time to join in the craziness of travelling in China. I ended up tagging along with a group of people on a 3-day trip to Macau and Hong Kong. In Macau we saw some pretty sweet fireworks and poked around in a casino for a little while (after all, Maggie did say that Macau is the Las Vegas of China). We had no intentions of really gambling in the casino, maybe just a couple pulls of a slot machine, but we ended up not being able to even do that because of a mix-up with the money. You see, Macau is part of China (trust me, I made the mistake of saying it was another country and was swiftly put in my place), but you have to have a passport to come and go and they do not use the same currency as most of China (the RMB). To prove they are Chinese, they make things unnecessarily complicated and use both the Macau dollar and the Hong Kong dollar. However, the Macau dollar is quite possibly the most useless currency on the face of the planet: shop keepers willingly give it to you as change, but do not necessarily accept it for payment, the casino machines would not take it, and we were unable to convert it back to RMB or HK$ as we were leaving. Macau is very interesting because it is a blend of European and Chinese culture: government buildings look very European-colonial, but the narrow streets are lined by tall apartments piled on top of each other like Mainland structures, you hear many different languages in the streets (still not a lot of English though), and you can see a mixture of Chinese and Mediterranean features in the faces of the locals.

Macau

Now, as interesting as Macau is, one day there is plenty, so we got up early for our ferry-boat ride to Hong Kong. At the ferry station we hopped in a couple cabs and headed off to our hotel. The girl who arranged this trip had never been to Hong Kong before, so she had relied on a recommendation from a friend there to find our hotel. As it turns out, he had gotten a recommendation from someone for this hotel from someone and had never actually stepped foot in the place. If he had, he would have never recommended it for a group of more than two...let alone a group of seven. Our room was so small that we could all barely stand in it! Oh well, we decided that because the room was so expensive anyway, and since our plan included a lot of time on a bar street, all seven of us passing out on top of each other for one night was not so bad. With that decision made, we headed out for food, shopping, and exploring.
After a full afternoon of wandering parts of the city we all met up at the hotel to get ready for our night out on the town. Four of us (me, Alaina, Ashlee, and Jodi) were supposed to meet up with Jodi's friend Scott (a British expat living in Hong Kong) and he was going to show us around. It certainly was an interesting night out, some highlights include: Guinesses at an Irish-style pub, flaming shots at a Euro-style dive bar, vodka shots in a freezer at the Russian bar, a Chinese Elvis impersonator, Scott doing one-armed push ups for reasons we still do not completely understand, me being picked up in the air twice by Scott, spitting contests, motorboating (think "Wedding Crashers"...), Ashlee dancing on the bar, and all of us being denied entrance to a bar because of the fluffy red bunny ear headband Scott was wearing. The night ended with a trip to McDonald's and promises that we would do this again soon.

Jodi and Chinese Elvis

The next day we drug our hungover selves around Hong Kong some more before heading home. The four of us had so much fun on the trip that we decided to continue our vacation with some shopping in Dongmen (in Shenzhen) the next day. We met up for massages and manicures and spent about an hour shopping for "real" fake purses. We had some dinner in a Japanese-style restaurant and then hit up a Cold Stone Creamery for dessert. As the saying goes, time flies when you're having fun, and before we knew it it was 9pm. We all decided that we had better go because a couple of us have very long commutes home from that part of the city. Earlier that day I had been very proud of myself because I had figured out a new and better way to get to the subway from Longgang by reading the bus sign and asking the conductor a couple questions (reminder: people have the terrible habit of speaking and writing in Chinese here). So, feeling confident, I decided to take the new route home. I got to the bus stop to wait and after about 20 minutes the #329 approached. Like a good Chinese commuter, I waved furiously at the bus to get the driver's attention, but unfortunately was waved off and passed by. This occasionally happens with the buses that travel pretty far distances: if there are no seats, you aren't getting on. I was kind of pissed because usually the wait between these buses is about 30 minutes, and I was a little nervous because I had never actually taken this bus home before and I couldn't find my stop on the sign. A half an hour passed and no #329, so now I'm starting to panic a little. I tried to read the sign again to see what time the bus stopped running (they stop curiously early here), but was having a hard time. I started to ask someone and then I saw that the bus had already stopped, so the bus that passed me was likely the last bus to run that night. Shit.
I decided to make a run for the bus that I had used to get home previously, the problem was that I had 3 metro stops and a 10 minute bus ride between me and the only place I know it stops...and 20 minutes to get there. I ran through the metro and quickly got on the train, it got there pretty quickly and I ran up the stairs...of the wrong exit. As soon as I got to street level I realized my mistake and I realized that there was zero chance of me actually getting to that bus. I called my friend to try and stay at her place that was "pretty close" to the metro, but "pretty close" consisted of walking a few blocks then catching a bus for a few stops. I decided that I was better off sleeping in the metro than getting lost, God knows where, trying to find her. My next idea was to get a cab, the problem there was that I had about 30RMB on me in cash, which I knew would not be anywhere near enough. I then set out on a mission to find an ATM so I can at least have some cash before trying to explain to a taxi driver where I live.
By now I am thoroughly pissed off (at what, I'm not sure), really starting to panic, and have been crying on and off for about 20 minutes. Of course Murphy's Law is in full force and the first two banks I find have "Out of Order" signs on all their ATM's. Upon seeing this I become even more enraged and upset, so my talking to myself becomes cursing to myself, and gets much louder. I realize after a couple blocks that this has attracted the attention of a group of Chinese men who are about my age. "I dare you to mess with me f*ckers," I think to myself right before one of them jogs up with a "Ha-llo!". I turn and glare at them and say "what?!?" as threateningly as I can muster. They turned at the next corner.
The next bank I came to had a working ATM, so I got money and hurried to the street where a cabbie quickly saw me and nearly ran me down to make sure he got the fare. After confirming that he does go out to Longgang I hopped in and he asked where exactly in Longgang I wanted to go. I told him the name of the school and the street it was on, but he didn't know it so he more or less kicked me out of the cab. I had a feeling something like that was going to happen because, to put this in perspective, for me to tell a cabbie in downtown Shenzhen that I want to go to Fu'an School on Hua Meizhong Road in Longgang is kind of like me getting in a cab in Urbana and telling the driver to go to Lincoln School on Buchanan Street in Monticello. Without any extra information, it's probably not going to happen.
As I stood on the curb and he drove away, full-blown panic settled in. You see, it wasn't that I was in danger per se. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I have never been safer because anyone who crossed me was asking for an ass-kicking. Rather, it was the fear of being stranded so far from home and unable to even ask anyone for help because I simply don't speak Chinese well enough, and the fact that this situation was not going to get better any time soon. I decided that the only thing I could do now was call someone at the school for help.
Maggie didn't answer her phone, but an administrator named Karina did. She listened to me explain what had happened and what was going on, then patiently said, "Okay, well I cannot understand you at all right now, maybe you should find a police man." I walked back toward the metro stop and found a police man on a motorcycle. I said "Qing wen..." (Excuse me please), and then immediately broke into the same panicked English that even Karina could not understand. The poor man's eyes got as big as saucers and he waved his hands to indicate that he did not understand English at all. Pointing to my phone, I recovered some of my Chinese and told him "Ta shuo Zhongwen!" (She speaks Chinese) and he took the phone. I stood there feeling stupid as the police officer listened to Karina and scribbled a page of notes before leading me to a taxi. Back on the phone, Karina told me that the police man was going to give the taxi driver directions and her number and that everything is going to be alright. After saying thank you to the cop about a thousand times I was in the cab and we were off.
As I sat in that cab, watching a Mr. Bean episode on the television on the back of the head rest (the one where he is too scared to jump off the diving board), I finally started to relax. A little while later Karina called me and asked if I felt safe. I told her that I did, and she asked me to call her when I was safely home. The second she hung up the cab driver pulled over and stopped in the middle of nowhere. "So this is how I'm going to die," I thought. No sooner had I thought that, then a car pulled up out of a side street and a Fu'an driver I recognized popped out of the car! I was so happy that I didn't even notice how much money I paid for the ride (about 120RMB I think).
In the car I said "sorry" and sat quietly, feeling like a teenager caught at a college party by her parents. I know that this particular driver does not speak a word of English, but I decided to try to break the silence with a question in Chinese. I tried to ask him if he had a good holiday, and he responded (in Chinese) "I don't speak English." Apparently whatever I said was such mangled Chinese that he didn't even recognize it as an attempt to speak his language! Shot through the heart on that one, I fell silent again. Soon enough we were at the school and I got out of the car, saying "thank you" and "sorry" over and over again. I felt terrible, it was midnight and all of these people had been disturbed from their relaxing weekend to take care of the lost American teacher. I found out later that even the police man called Karina back to make sure I made it home alright!
On Monday school started up again and, of course, word had spread like wildfire about my adventure Saturday night. And, of course, everyone had a suggestion for me: "maybe next time you should go out with a Chinese person", "maybe next time you should stay with another foreign teacher", "maybe you should always have the address of the school written in characters with you", and so on. I just smiled, accepted my penance, and thought to myself, "Believe me, I've really learned my lesson this time."

Hong Kong