Perfect

"My English...mmm...not so good."
This is a phrase that very often indicates something crazy is about to happen.
Every Wednesday and Friday at 1:15pm I am picked up at the school gate and driven to Chinese class with the other Longgang foreign teachers who go to class. The three involved schools are supposed to take turns driving us there, and when my school is not driving, I'm the last person to be picked up. A little before 1:15, yesterday afternoon, a nice black car pulled up to the gate and waved me over. I walked up and saw that there were no other people in the car, "Me?" I ask. "Yes" he replies with more waving. I got into the car and he proceeded to say something about my classes, so at this point I figured he must be taking me to the right place...well, that or I've been quite easily tricked into being sold into slavery.
We wound around to the main road, merged into traffic and then more or less parked right there in the right-most lane. For some reason this is perfectly legal in China, the rightmost lane of any road can be driven in unless someone chooses to park there, then it becomes a temporary parking lane. Anyway, as we come to a stop he explains that the other school's driver can't bring us back from class so he's going to, and since he doesn't know where the building is he needs to follow the other driver into town. Getting this explanation was no easy task because his English is very broken and he often wanders off mid-phrase to talk to himself in Chinese. Eventually we got it figured out, and eventually I find out that his name is Luo, but only after we exchanged phone numbers and I needed to save his into my phone. With a big toothy grin he states that his English name is "Peedy". He looked so confident in this that I hated to do it, but it made no sense so I said "what?". "Peedy" he said again. "Peedy?" I tried to confirm. He shook his head, picked up his phone and typed in 'Perfect', explaining that his Chinese given name means 'perfect', so that is his English name as well. About that time the car we were supposed to follow appeared, and as we pulled away he told me, with slight embarrassment, that "Um, my English is...mmm...not so good." Perfect.
As we drove to class, zipping in and out of lanes with only inches to spare between cars (which is the way everyone drives here) we talked about the differences in getting a drivers license in different countries, the other foreign teachers in Longgang, what we studied in college, how old we were, he showed me a picture of his 6-month old son (very cute!) and told me about his wife. He asked some odd questions about marriage in the US and seemed quite perplexed when I told him (totally guessing) that it was pretty common for people to get married around the age of 25. This was baffling to him because "you graduate from university when 23, then one, two years after you marry...so young!" Good point Perfect, but then again, he's 29 and has been married for two years. I guess 25 is really young, but 27 is not. I tried to explain that some people get married even younger than that, and that I have a cousin who got married when she was 19. I'm pretty sure I lost him on that though, because I got no reaction.
After going through the two toll booths (where I had to give the lady the money. Apparently Hong Kong cars are driven on the right side, so they have booths for this...though I don't know why Perfect picked that booth) and the checkpoint we made it to class and I told him that we would be back down in a couple hours.
After class we called him and he showed up pretty quickly. The drive back was pretty uneventful: the other two foreign teachers chatted and I read my book. They were making dinner plans and asked me if I wanted to come along. I declined because I knew there was free cafeteria food at the school and I was ready to have some food, read my book, and call it a night. We dropped them off and it was just me and Perfect again. He asked if I wanted to go to the grocery store, well, sort of. After some confusion and nearly stopping in the middle of the street I figured out what he was asking and said that I didn't need to stop, I was just going back to the school to eat at the cafeteria. It took a while for this to get established, but once he figured out my plan he decided that he had a better idea. He insisted on taking me for some xicai, which neither of us knew the English translation for. We again temporarily parked in the street so I could look this up. Xi means 'west' and cai means 'dish'. He wanted to take me to eat western food and he insisted on paying. Perfect.
There are two kinds of "western food" restaurants in China: ones that are actually western-style because they are run by expats and ones that are a Chinese persons interpretation of western-style food. This place was the latter. There was a French phrase on the place mat, but one of the categories of food on the menu was "Nosh" (I tried to tell him that "nosh" is a colloquialism so it was funny to see it on a menu...blank stare). There was certainly a lot of meat on the menu (very western), but there wasn't a potato to be found and we ordered something called 'eight fingernail fish' (which was octopus, as it turns out). He really wanted me to order because I'm the westerner, but because I wasn't sure if this place was family-style or not and because he was the one paying, I insisted that he order. After a long Q and A with the waitress (who was staring at me most of the time) he eventually got some food ordered and before long the soup showed up.
They set one kind of soup in front of him and one in front of me. He asked me some question that I couldn't decipher, but I think he was asking which one of the soups I wanted. I said "what kind of soup is this", which was met with a blank stare. Then I tried the soup in front of me and said "oh, it has corn in it." Another blank stare. Now I don't know what to do so I just stare back. He said "it's good?" I said yes, and he dove right into the soup in front of him. Before long a HUGE sizzling plate of some sort of rib meat and noodles is set in front of me. The waitress picks up the corner of a napkin and holds it in front of me. I though that maybe I was supposed to tuck it into the front of my shirt like some people do at restaurants. Luckily I (correctly) decided this was not what I was supposed to do, just in the nick of time. Instead, I was supposed to hold the napkin in front of me so that the sizzling sauce she was pouring on the meat didn't splatter all over my clothes. Eventually the sizzling settled down and I was allowed to put the napkin down, but I wasn't sure if I could eat yet because I still wasn't sure if this was family-style or not. Mercifully his food showed up and I knew that I was expected to eat this by myself. As he went through the protective napkin procedure he gestured for me to go ahead and eat.
His plate was decidedly more Chinese than mine, so he pointed to his rice and asked if we make "mice" or corn in America. I told him that we grow a lot of corn and soybeans, especially where I'm from. He asked if we ever ate "mice", and I told him that we do, but we have a lot of different types of rice and some are different colors. "Different colors?" "Yeah, black and brown and white" Perplexed look.
Eventually we finished eating (including the 8-fingernail fish) and the waitress brought our coffee. Of course, because this is China, there was some sort of cream in it, but luckily no sugar this time, so I was a very happy camper. He paid the bill and we left. As we got in the car he asked me something about the park: either he wanted to know if I've ever been there or he wanted to know if I wanted to go there right now. Apparently my answer indicated that I wanted to go for a walk in the park, so off we went.
We got to the park and had to circle the whole thing to find a place to park the car. As we drove he mumbled things like "no space, no space, no space" and "oh my god, no place to park" and kept trying to call someone on the phone. I'm not really sure how people know if there is a place to park or not; in America all the parking is relatively neat and tidy with people generally parking between the painted lines. In China, a row of parked cars looks like some giant child dumped out a bucket of match-box cars: people apparently just pull up and stop. Anyway, eventually we found a spot that was about one and a half car lengths long (no challenge for an experienced parallel-parker), and after an approximately 15-point maneuver, we were satisfactorily in the space.
By now we had been hanging out for about three hours, so we had settled on a sort-of pidgin English-Chinese that enabled good-enough communication. Basically we used English, but there is a lot of "zenme shuo" ("How do you say") going back and forth. As we got near the lake he said "there is the lake". "Lake", I repeated. "Who!?" he almost yelled. "Lake", I repeated again, then asked "Zhongwen zenme shuo?" ("How do you say it in Chinese?"). "Who" (hu 湖) he repeated...apparently he already tried to tell me...
As we got around the lake we neared a pavilion, which was full of people moving around with some music playing. He told me that these were "womens who are 40 to 80". "Middle-aged?" I asked, to which he triumphantly exclaimed "They are old ladies!" We walked up the the edge of the pavilion and watched these "old ladies" doing a very traditional dance that I'm sure is very beautiful when everyone knows what they are doing. It was a little chaotic, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. It sort of looked like line-dancing, only slower, which I tried to explain to Perfect. Blank stare.
After a while we got tired of that and kept walking. We eventually wound around the lake and walked across a zig-zag bridge to a pagoda in the middle of the water. In one corner there was a group of men sitting around playing instruments: a Peepaw (pipa 琵琶) and two Ah-hus (erhu 二胡). We watched for a little while and he laughingly told me that the old ladies danced over there and the old men sat over here. I guess old men and old ladies get tired of each other in China too...
It was a very moving experience to stand there watching and listening to those men play their music. It's a simple combination: very old music played on very old instruments among old friends. It's something that these men have probably done for years and something that their countrymen have been doing for millenia. Some people noticed me and stared, but most people were too wrapped up in their own worlds to care if I was there or not. It was so paradoxically Chinese: crude but beautiful, simply complex. It was perfect.
A little while later it was time to go. Perfect told me that if I ever need to go anywhere, just call him and he will make sure someone takes me there. He dropped me off at the school and I thanked him for dinner. I laughed to myself as I climbed the stairs to my room; only in China can a drive to class turn into a night like this.

Gan bei!

According to the Google search I just did, the first Tuesday of the first full week in May is Teacher Appreciation Day in the United States.
I don't really have any memories of this holiday as a student, but I'm sure that teachers get some sort of gift from the school and maybe a card or two from students whose parents are teachers. As I tried to explain this to the Chinese teachers, I might as well have told them that we publicly flog our educators and steal their shoes.
You see, yesterday was Teachers' Day in China, and it is a big deal here. I got a call from Maggie, my contact teacher (aka translator and guide to China), at 7:30am telling me that "maybe you should come to the flag raising ceremony now" - which means "you should have been at the flag raising ceremony 10 minutes ago". So I throw on some clothes and run down the 6 flights of stairs from my apartment and up the 3 flights of stairs to the office, where Maggie is waiting. "Ok, we'll go" she says and we rush to the playground/track/open area where all of the student are lined up military-style, filling the yard. A song that I recognize as the national anthem is playing over the loudspeaker and a group of 9th graders are hoisting the flag up a pole. After the flag is up, a couple of people step forward to give speeches and I am shuffled to the front with the other new teachers, where a group of adorable kindergartners in their little uniforms give each of us a bouquet of flowers that is approximately as big as they are. A couple of speeches later we are all allowed to file back into the school and get the day started.
The day proceeded fairly normally, except for the fact that everyone was giving everyone gifts and flowers and chattering about the fancy dinner we would have that night. This dinner is notorious for having lots of good food and lots of drinking...and because I am the only one in the school that does not have an Asian level of alcohol tolerance, I am an obvious target. The debauchery started with the all too familiar yell: "Amelia! Ok, we go now"
The restaurant was pretty nice, and "very famous" according to Maggie. Each place was set with the typical Chinese dishes and two glasses: one for milk and one for red wine. To me, this milk business is pretty bizarre, and it became even more so when I tried the milk and it tasted like a cross between milk and yogurt...yet another example of the many ways in which China is similar to the west, yet so very different.
The dinner was really good and there was a lot of toasting and good cheer all around. It wasn't until everyone had finished eating, though, that the real drinking started.
I knew that things were going to get crazy when the principal came to our table with a carafe of wine. He sat down and said that he hopes I have a very good year at their school and that he wants to have a special toast with Maggie and me. He starts to pour wine in my glass and tells me that he'll pour until I say "stop". When the glass was 2/3 full he stopped pouring, which means he either temporarily forgot how to speak English, or it was a blatant lie from the beginning. He did the same thing to Maggie and then started to fill his own glass. He only poured a swallowful before yelling "stop!" and then started laughing and told us that that's the way to do it. He of course filled his glass and gave a very nice toast, finishing with "gan bei!"
"Gan bei" is like "cheers", but you have to finish your drink or it is considered impolite. So, like the champ that I am, I finish that huge glass of wine and got a round of applause for doing so. Poor Maggie, who is a tiny Chinese woman, also finished hers, and as she set the empty glass down she turned to me and said "I am drunk!"
A few minutes later her face is bright red and she wants to leave, so with an "ok, let's go" we get up with the intention of going home. This plan is quickly foiled when I hear the principal say, "Amelia, come here". He takes me over to the table that is full of 9th grade teachers and we toast again. Then he tells me that each teacher wants to toast with me individually and we are going to switch to white wine.
Now, Chinese white wine is not really "wine" as much as it is rubbing alcohol. Fortunately though, you drink white wine from these very small glasses that are approximately half a jigger. By the time we went around the table and each teacher toasted with me, I had approximately 10 of these. Needless to say I was getting very drunk, and it wasn't over yet. For some reason we started doing toasts where I would have one drink and the other teacher would have three...and then I would have two and they would have three. Luckily someone finally decided that we better stop before someone died, and it was time to go. From here my memories get very spotty: I know that we took a school bus back to the school and that I was trying to speak Chinese to everyone (God only knows how that went), I also remember being handed a bunch of little boxes while I was standing in the guardhouse (it turns out they were pieces of a kit to ward off mosquitoes), and I know that I was talking to people on instant messenger. The next thing I remember was my alarm clock.
My alarm went off at 7am and it hurt: my head was pounding and my stomach was very queasy. I hit snooze as many times as I could, but I had to teach a class at 9:05am, so I eventually had to get up. Now, I love Chinese food and even back in the States I ate a lot of Chinese and other Asian cuisine. But I have never, not one time, woken up with a hangover and wanted to eat Chinese food. Ever. And since my food options were the canteen downstairs or the moon cakes in the fridge, I opted for some cola before wobbling off to class.
I did survive the day without puking, I taught my three classes, and by the time lunch rolled around, the food was a welcome relief for my poor body.

Home sweet home

China has certainly been an adventure so far, but as far as adventures go, things can only be so crazy when, no matter what happens, there are 100 people just like you back at the hotel. It is an entirely different experience when all the people that remind you of home are at the other end of the phone line or internet cable.
Its hard to describe the feeling I had in my stomach as I rode away from the hotel with Mrs. Huang and her husband. It was kind of like a tightening knot of excitement and curiosity and sheer terror. I didn't know whether to cry or laugh or just stare off into space...though I quickly settled on staring off into space, as it was the easiest to do.
After driving for about a half an hour we got to the area of Longgang where the school is and Mrs. Huang had her husband drive around for a little bit so I could see the area. Immediately surrounding the school is a factory that makes most of the eyeglasses sold in the world, various types of housing, a handful of stores and street vendors, and a lot of construction. There is clearly a lot of poverty in this area because of the factory workers, but buildings and arenas for the 2011 Universitad will literally be across the street from the school, so apparently this neighborhood's days are numbered. Not all of the housing is bad though, some of the teachers live off-campus in nearby buildings and those buildings look alright ("alright"on the scale of China housing, of course). The downtown area is about 10 minutes from the school via public bus and it has a decent amount of department-type stores, restaurants, and grocery stores. Because I mentioned my deep love for black coffee (which you cannot find in China), I was also shown the two coffee shops in town. I have not tried either yet, but I'm not holding my breath because I'm sure it will either be the Chinese idea of coffee (cream and sugar...blech!) or too expensive to be worth the habit. It didn't take too long to see the highlights of downtown Longgang, so we quickly pulled up to the school grounds, drove through the security gate, and Mrs. Huang said, "welcome home!" We pulled my stuff out of the car and lugged it up the the 6th floor and into room 603.

The view from my balcony

My first impression of my room was similar to my first impression of many places in China: why is everything always dirty and just a little bit wet? There was a small puddle of water in the middle of a dirty room with a tile floor and filthy walls. The bed is a bunk bed with a mattress on top (dirty from the air conditioner above it, of course) and one of those "mattresses"that's really a board on the bottom. There is a "closet" that's really a free-standing wardrobe (the kind that zips closed), the "kitchen" is a metal table with a microwave and a hot-plate, and across the room is a refrigerator and a desk. On the balcony there is a washing machine (which, from what I hear, mostly eats clothes) and a rack for drying your clothes (no one has a clothes drier in China). The bathroom is very small and the "shower" is just a hand-held shower head hanging on one of the walls with a drain in the middle of the room.

My dormitory

The closet

The kitchen

The study

I was instructed to "sit and have a rest" (I am given this order a lot around here) while these four people set to work on this apartment. After a brief flurry of activity, the bathroom was cleaned, the floors were swept and mopped, my bed was set up and they were leaving me with the promise that "maybe after some minutes have passed we'll be back". And then, I was alone.
I started to go through my things and unpack, deciding that this place really isn't so bad when it's cleaner. I put all my clothes away and did a load of laundry (a "load" of laundry is different when you wash your clothes in the sink). As promised, Mrs. Huang reappeared after some minutes had passed and handed me a few bags of groceries (including some coffee - cream and sugar already added of course) and told me that dinner is at 5:30, and she would see me tomorrow because she does not live at the school. A little bit later there was another knock at the door, and this time I was greeted by a the principal, Mr. James, and the small woman whose job it is to follow around any man who is visiting a female teacher's dormitory. He was very nice and asked how I liked the room and told me to make sure and talk to him if I had any problems or needed anything. I must say, based on the things I have heard about Chinese headmasters, I was pretty impressed that he made a house call on my first day!
As instructed, I had a little rest until about 5:30 when I wandered down to the "canteen" for dinner. I'm not really sure why it's called that, but I think it has to do with the fact that the Chinese word for cafeteria is can1ting1. Anyway, I walk into the canteen and am immediately greeted by about 6 people who do not speak English. A man appears out of nowhere who claims to be an English teacher (though we were still not able to communicate particularly well) and he tries to help me. I'll spare you the painful details of my learning curve on this one, but basically the way the canteen works is this: you have your own dishes that you can keep in a cupboard in the dining area, every meal you put rice and some vegetables and clear broth into your dishes and the lunch lady adds a few ladlefuls of whatever the main dishes are. When you have finished eating you wash your dishes in a trough outside and put your dishes back into the cupboard. Theoretically, the dishes inside the cupboard are disinfected between meals...but this is China, so who knows.
After dinner I headed back upstairs and decided to take a shower, watch some Chinese television, and call it a night. This plan was quickly foiled when I realized that the biggest towel in my possession was the size of a kitchen hand towel. The sleeping thing also didn't go so well because it turns out my air conditioner was broken. Eventually I got to sleep, and as I write this a few days later, I have since had the air conditioner fixed, acquired a towel, and taken a shower...but I'll save the shower story for another time.

The bathroom

This ain't yo mamma's Wally World...

There is a very specific smell that hits you when you walk into a store in China. I have no idea how to describe it and I don't know why they all smell like that, but it is distinct.
I shouldn't have been surprised that the Wal-Mart in Shenzhen had that smell, but it seemed so familiarly "Wal-Mart-ish" that I was not expecting it. The store has all the normal components: a special section to buy glasses and get your eyes checked in the front, a large make-up and toiletries section, books, food, kitchen wares, large and small appliances, clothes, and those familiar blue signs with white block print.
We had two hours to spend at the store, and it took me the entire first hour to figure out how to get a cell phone that would work. It took another large game of English-Cantonese-Mandarin telephone with Serena leading the way yet again, but we eventually figured it out and I now have a cell-phone that is the technological equivalent to the cell phone I had when I was 16. But, the important this is that it works and the whole thing only cost 440kuai (about $67).
The only thing I needed other than the phone was some conditioner and something cold to drink, so that left me with an hour to explore the store. The first floor is mostly books and toiletries, so I started out looking around the book section. I considered buying a kids book (because I am, after all, illiterate), but chickened out. Next I headed over to the hair-care section and it took me all of 30 seconds to realize that finding conditioner was going to be kind of hard, so I decided to put it off for a little bit and go to the second floor.
Now, because this is Wal-Mart and you generally need a shopping cart to get everything you need, there's an "escalator" that is really just a ramp to take you to the second floor. I think this is a good idea in theory, but considering I was carrying nothing except my rather empty purse and STILL nearly tumbled backwards down the thing, it might not be the greatest idea ever...at least not at that angle anyway.The second floor is where all the food is. At first it looked pretty normal (well, "normal" in the sense that it looked like the other Chinese grocery stores I've been to). There's a bakery and a snack foods area, the produce section is well-stocked and the masked people who man the produce and bulk scales are standing around looking bored as usual. There is a section to buy ready-to eat stuff (kind of like the deli section in the US), and aisles of frozen foods, drink stuff, and other pre-packaged Chinese foods. And then, there is the fresh-foods section.
The first thing I noticed upon walking into this section was the sausages hanging on the wall. These sausages kind of look like some sort of scat you would see in the woods, and I hear that they are very good...but that is not the point. The point is that they were hanging on the wall without any sort of packaging or wrapping whatsoever. After the initial shock of this wore off I realized that the same went for all kinds of dried fish-looking items and other meats that were cured in some way. It doesn't seem very sanitary to me that random people are brushing up against your food, but then again, China in general is not particularly sanitary...and it turns out that wasn't even the worst of it! The next thing I noticed was a woman using a colander to scoop live crawdad-looking creatures (they were probably shrimp, I guess) out of a large tank. Next to that was another tank with a floating colander and LIVE FROGS (well, except for the one floater). Next to that tank was a block of shaved ice that had dead squid sitting on top in a pile. I continued to wander this fascinating and horrifying section and saw tanks of large fish and turtles, big chunks of very fresh meat, another block of ice piled high with chicken feet, and a section to buy pieces of animals...like fish heads. After circling this area three or four times, I decided that I was done being a gawking foreigner, and since I was not going to be making a purchase, it was time to move along. I spent very little time on the third floor because, well, it was boring. So after a quick lap I headed back downstairs to the first floor. I decided that it was time to face the music: I had to find conditioner.
Standing in the shampoo aisle I truly felt what it means to be illiterate. There is a lot of writing...a lot. Bottles are covered in words that are supposed to be catching my attention and making me want to buy their product, but since I can't read them, all they do is confuse me. Luckily I have bought hair products before, so I know that most companies put their shampoo and conditioner in similar but different-looking bottles. I went from shelf to shelf comparing similar-looking bottles to try and find some small difference that might be the word "shampoo" on one and "conditioner" on the other. The aisle had a sign that said "shampoo" in English under the Chinese characters for the same (presumably), but even that served to be little help. After several minutes of me staring at bottles like a monkey doing a math problem, a nice saleswoman saw me and tried to come to my rescue.
I say "tried" because she doesn't speak English and I clearly do not have a firm grasp on Chinese. After she tried to explain in Chinese and I tried to ask a question in English, the conversation that finally got me my answer went as follows (roughly translated):
me: "This one and this one the same?" (pointing to two bottles)
her: "Not the same" (also adding some information in Chinese I had no hope of understanding)
me: "This one and this the same?" (pointing the the one I thought was shampoo and the sign that said "shampoo")
her: nodded yes
me: "Thank you! I want this" (followed by me all but running out of the aisle with the alleged conditioner)
By the time that was all squared away it was time to go back to the hotel. By coincidence, it was also the time the sky decided to open up and pour down a few inches of rain. This phenomenon of beautiful weather, then torrential rains, followed by beautiful weather again all within a couple of hours, is completely foreign to me. Coming from the Midwest, we see weather coming for days before it actually hits, and while sometimes it fluctuates quite a bit from day-to-day, it just doesn't compare to the hour-to-hour fluctuations here.
After running around in ankle-deep puddles in the pouring rain, we eventually found our bus and made it back to the hotel. I was soaked to the bone, but I had my new cell phone and my Chinese conditioner (at least I think its conditioner), so all in all it was a successful day.

Two of these are conditioner, one is hand soap, and one is shampoo...I think

Welcome to China!

I think it is fair to assume that most people are fascinated by (or at least somewhat curious about) other cultures, but generally distrusting of the people themselves. The Chinese are no different, and for this reason I spent yesterday morning in a hospital and the afternoon in a police station.
Now, if you just read that sentence and assumed I was being treated for alcohol poisoning and then charged for disorderly conduct, shame on you! I've only been here for two weeks, and there's been no time for things like that. Rather, we were getting the health exam that is required for all non-Shenzhen citizens who want to work there, and registering with the police station in the district we are going to be living in.
Walking into this Shenzhen hospital was sort of like walking into a hospital in a 1970's movie. It's clean and the staff is friendly, but everything feels a little...well, retro. The nurses are wearing dresses and those little triangle-looking hats (although their outfits are pink rather than white) and they speak just enough English to order us around. The hallways are long and narrow and lined with wooden benches. Each room is designated for one specific purpose and is outfitted with a sink, a table, some old-fashioned looking machines, and little else.
Before arriving at the hospital we were separated into groups and each person was given a little booklet with spaces for the doctors to fill in our information about each test. The idea was that each group would do one kind of test at a time and switch tasks as a group until all groups had done all the tests, rather than having a free-for-all with all 115 of us lining up for 10 rooms in one narrow hallway. Upon arrival to the hospital, however, it took all of 10 minutes for the group idea to fall apart and the melee to commence.
The first thing I did was get my blood drawn and was given my marked cup for the urine test I was to take at some point. Getting the blood drawn was no problem (I'll get back to the urine test), and from there I went on to the EKG line. For this test I walked in and laid down and was instructed to raise my left pant leg to my knee and my shirt "over the bra". The nurse swabbed something on my wrists, my ankles, and my ribs and put these clamp things on. After feeling like Frankenstein for a couple of minutes, she let me get up and handed me a print out of my heart rate (which was normal, but indicated I was somewhat nervous...go figure). After grabbing a quick bite to eat to avoid passing out after my pre-blood test fast I hopped into the (very long) ultrasound line.
At this point it is getting to be 9am or so and there are Chinese citizens starting to show up for whatever testing they are getting (I'm sure they took one look at our hallway and thought "why me, why today?!"), so now, not only are we contending with each other to get all of our tests done, we are also having to keep away from all the line-cutting Chinese. After being ultrasounded, x-rayed, weighed, measured, and otherwise poked and prodded it was time to take my measuring cup downstairs for the urine test.
In case you've never done one, a urine test in the US usually consists of you being sent into a single bathroom with a cup (and a lid) and told to put it on a certain shelf when you are done. Not in China. First of all, I was given this cup with no lid at the start of my testing, which means I was carrying it around with me for about an hour before I actually peed into it. Second, there is no specific bathroom for this test, you just stand in line and pee in a stall in the regular bathroom. Third, there is no "certain shelf" where these cups are placed, there is a wheeled cart that is placed in the hallway outside of the bathroom where everyones pee is just sitting right there next to everyone elses. If you are starting to think that this seems very unsanitary, it gets worse. This "regular bathroom" we are all using is a Chinese "regular bathroom", which means there is a hole-in-the-floor toilet, no toilet paper, and no soap at the sinks. Luckily some of us remembered to bring our kleenex and hand sanitizer, so the amount of urine that was exchanged was kept to a bare minimum.
When all was said and done, it only took a couple of hours for the whole process and we were all so glad that we were allowed to leave the OB/GYN portion blank that the rest of the ordeal seemed pretty painless.

We eventually made it back to the hotel and had a couple of hours to eat and relax before heading off to the police station. I will be living in the Longgang district, which is one of the more outer districts, so the bus ride there took about an hour. When we got to the police station we were taken upstairs to some sort of foreigner detaining/interrogation room and told to sit and wait. There was another foreigner sitting at the table in this room when we got there, and we overheard just enough of his interview to know that his visa expired in 2005 and he is in a lot of trouble.
After about 40 minutes the policeman showed up and handed us our passports, and a card with some laws that foreigners need to follow and sent us on our way. We made sure to read the card on the way back and were very disappointed to find out that it is against the law for foreigners to be "overly drunk" and engage in prostitution and whoring while in Shenzhen.
All in all it was a crazy day, but like we keep saying, "Welcome to China!"

A game of English-Cantonese-Mandarin telephone

Let me start off by saying this: massages in China are amazing. They cost about 10 US dollars for an hour...and that is the pricey place!
Anyway, we have been to this spa a couple times by now, and my friend Serena and I have sort of befriended this one guy named Xiao Yang (which means "little sheep"). Last night we decided to go hang out with him and his friends and try to see some of Zhuhai that we might not be able to find otherwise.
The adventure started when Serena, another foreigner named Lori, and I took a cab to a part of town that has a bunch of shopping and some bars. As soon as I got out of the cab, Xiao Yang pops out of nowhere and says "Hello!" (which, by the way, is about as much English as he knows). I jumped out of my skin, which he found hilarious, and he proceeded to lead us down the street telling us that he's taking us to a Mah Jong place where there are some people who speak English. Now, before you start to think that we are just following this random Chinese dude around that we can't communicate with, let me explain: he speaks Cantonese and Mandarin and Serena speaks Cantonese pretty well. So while Lori and I can't really talk to him, Serena can.
We turn off of the main street and all of a sudden we are in old China. The street is dark and wet and very narrow with small shops and street vendors lining both sides. A little bit down the street we get to the place and are immediately greeted by "Hello! Hi! Hello! How are you!?" from about 6 Chinese people (which is the way we are usually greeted...by everyone...). We walk in and sit down with these 3 Chinese women who speak a little English and start to chat. They told us about their boyfriends and asked us where we are from, and we told them about how we are moving to Shenzhen soon, but we all really love Zhuhai. After a bit Xiao Yang shows up with some cans of stuff to drink; we tried orange soda, herbal tea, and crunchy water chesnut juice (which I actually kind of like...Lori and Serena, not so much). A little bit later we headed off down the street with Xiao Yang and his buddy - after exchanging email addresses and taking a few pictures with the women, of course. Now, as I said in my last post, we are gawked at everywhere we go...but we were a real spectacle in this part of town. Serena looks Chinese, so she blends in, but Lori and I are white and about 5'10...which fascinates them.

The street...and some random person who walked in front of my camera...

Two of our Mah Jong buddies

At the end of the street we came across a restaurant and decided to eat there. I use the term "restaurant" somewhat loosely here; it had three walls, tables and chairs, and clean table settings...but after that it was a bit crazy. On one wall there were fish tanks...not for decoration, but rather to house the food. On the other wall was the "kitchen"...which looked more like a couple of hot plates and a bunch of pots. The buddy (we never did catch his name) ordered some food that he said was "hao che" (good eating). We sat around and chatted and sipped our pijiu (beer...very useful vocabulary around here) until the food came. The first dish to arrive was shrimp...and these were not American shrimp. These suckers had eyes and legs and everything! I had no idea how I was supposed to do this, and then when I cracked it open, this brown stuff came pouring out (the guts). I was obviously turned off by this process, especially since I don't like shrimp all that much anyway, but I ate a few and was very happy when the next dish arrived. The next thing was some sort of rib meat. I picked up a piece and bit down...on a piece of rib. This was when the eating and spitting bones out commenced. It was kind of awkward at first, but the Chinese guys were doing it, so I figured I might as well do it too. The other dishes included some intestines of some sort, some vegetable stew stuff, a fish (again, eyes and tail intact) and rice. It was all really good...even if it was a bit crazy.
After dinner we headed back to the Mah Jong place where Xiao Yang ditched us to play Mah Jong while we chatted with one of the Chinese women and the buddy some more. We had talked earlier about poker, so we had the cards out and were telling each other how to say the suits in our language. After a bit this got old, so we decided to play a game.
This was when the English-Cantonese-Mandarin telephone game began. I was teaching the game (it's that version of A**hole that Kevin Price loves) in English, Serena was using Cantonese to tell the girl, who was relaying the rules to the buddy in Mandarin. It was a bit crazy and slow at first, but we eventually got the game going and it was really fun! We only had time to play a couple of rounds before we had to go, but the whole things definitely a really interesting/crazy/random/fun experience!

Xiao Yang and "the buddy"