Aspiring advertisers

I'm teaching a television lesson to some of my classes this week (basically if their computer works they get the tv lesson, if not we do something else).  We talk about different kinds of shows (sit-com, drama, game show, etc) as well as tv ads - side note: making them say 'reality tv' is hilarious.  After we watch that funny Pepsi ad where Jimmy Fallon dances down the street I explain that ads are also in magazines and newspapers and have them draw one.  So far this exercise was pretty much useless because the kids didn't want to do it, but since I need that time to draw up the game on the board, I considered it time well wasted.  Until today.  Here are a few of the funniest ones from my 7th grade class this morning:

The Chinese on the bottle means "Coca-Cola"

I was told this was a pizza ad...

This kid took my explanation of 'it makes you want to buy things' very seriously

Chinese Health Care, part 3

Two nights ago as I was going to bed I started to feel the onset of a couple of cold sores in the corners of my mouth.  Now, because this is China, pharmacies are...well...different.  Of course they sell band-aides and vitamins and pills, but because of their pesky habit of writing things in Chinese, it is a very difficult to sort that stuff out.  They also sell things like giant dried mushroom caps, worms, butterflies, cocoon-looking things, and a menagerie of plant-ish substances.  I'm am way to scared of this type of store to even attempt to find Abreva, so instead I decided to tell myself that they were not cold sores and that everything would be fine in the morning.

Everything was not fine in the morning.  Those tingling spots had grown into full-fledged cold sores because, as it turns out, telling yourself that you don't have them does not make them disappear.  Because my last bout of cold sores was so incredibly bad I decided to attack them with any home remedy I could concoct in my dorm room.  After a short Google session I decided to alternate rubbing on some toothpaste and pressing warm tea bags on them.  Everyone on the message boards seemed to think these had at least limited effectiveness, and I was willing to do anything for even a small relief from these bad boys.

Before I go any further, I should explain why exactly I was so terrified of these cold sores.  Now, most of us have probably had one of these at some point and they are no fun.  They hurt, they itch, they are pretty contagious, and you can spread them around your own body if you aren't careful.  I'm usually prone to getting a nose-full of them at a time, but only once a year or so...until China.  Last month I got a raging case of these things that completely covered my mouth and trickled down my chin.  Curiously I also had some allergy-like itchy bumps around my eyes, which were also extremely watery.  I chalked it up to either some new strain I must have encountered or to being in such a different environment than back home, and simply hoped they wouldn't come back.

Now, these home remedies seemed to do absolutely nothing for the problem, and if anything they were making it worse because those little spots on the corners of my mouth had spread around my mouth and were starting to travel down my chin again.  Even worse, they itchy eye spots showed up mid-afternoon.  By the evening I was pretty miserable but I convinced myself that the toothpaste had dried out my mouth area and everything would feel better in the morning.

Nothing felt better in the morning.  When I woke up I was absolutely miserable.  I sat in bed for a few minutes before going to the bathroom because I was too scared to face the mirror.  Eventually I got up and, at the sight of my own face, I burst into tears.  My eyes were puffy and surrounded by red blotches, my lips looked like I had over-done some botox injections and, upon closer inspection, were covered in tiny oozing blisters.  I was hideous, everything hurt, everything itched, and because of how contagious cold sores are, I was terrified of touching any part of my body.  I decided that I simply could not teach class like this and I had to go to the doctor.

I found Maggie (my contact teacher), who took one look at me and said, "Oh, how horrible" as another teacher told me to "drink more water, get more rest."  I explained the situation and got someone to take my class while she got the school's driver and we went to the hospital.

Chinese hospitals function differently than American ones, there are lots of lines you have to stand in to get anything done.  Also, they are confusing.  Thank God for Maggie's help because even she had trouble figuring out which line to stand in and in what order, and she's Chinese!  After waiting around for quite a while I got to see the doctor.  Now, another quaint little thing about Chinese doctors is that it is never just you and the doctor, it's always you, the doctor, and a nurse or two at a desk that is right next to another doctor, another nurse or two, and whatever patient they are seeing at the time.  When the patient is a big, ugly, swollen, white person, all 10+ people in the room are listening intently to what is wrong with you and often taking part in the discussion.  Maggie explained what had happened to me to the doctor, who proceeded to take one look at me and asked me when was the last time I ate a mango.  What I thought was: "F*ing quack China doctor", but what I said was, "Monday".  She then told me I have a mango allergy and I should take these pills, use this cream, and don't drink alcohol or eat anything spicy until I feel better, also don't eat seafood or any meat except pork, especially not beef or lamb.

Stunned, I took the prescription and we headed down to the pharmacy.  More lines and 25RMB (~US$3.75) later I had two kinds of pills and some cream and we were headed back to the school in a Fu'an school bus we happened to see and flag down.  The women we joined inside chattily discussed all my symptoms and the doctor's verdict and I was told that I also had to avoid pineapples because mangoes and pineapples have too much 'fire' in them (this is from the Chinese idea of balancing the foods you eat - some food are warming and some are cooling and you have to balance them...it is also why they hate coffee, too much 'fire').  I politely thanked everyone for their help and headed upstairs to my room.  I quickly fired up Google and it turns out that mango allergies are pretty much exactly like what I have and are a result of some link to poison ivy (among other things).

So, it turns out that I'm allergic to either mango skin, or seeds, or both and maybe that doctor wasn't a quack.  Live and learn, I guess.

My toothpaste 'mask'

***scroll down***

I just posted stories and pics from the Philippines - sorry it took so long!

There are two parts: Part 1 is under the story about the motorcycle wreck and Part 2 is under the "Language of Love" post.

Enjoy!

~Amelia~

The Language of Love

In honor of Valentines Day I did a lesson on the "Language of Love". I start out talking about boyfriends and girlfriends and how they go on "dates", then if they really like each other they get married and become "husband and wife". We talk about things people do on dates, what people say to each other ("I love you", "I love you too!"), and how people hug, kiss, hold hands, and dance. After we talk for a while the kids play "Two truths and a lie" (say 2 true things and 1 lie and have your friends guess the lie) then make heart-shaped Valentines. If there is time left over we play hangman. Considering I teach junior high, I was fully aware that there would be maturity issues, but some of the stuff these kids did and said made me laugh out loud:
~ After giving two examples of where people go on dates (movies, restaurant) I asked the kids to give me some more examples. My jaw dropped when, in unison, the whole class yelled "hotel!"
~ One male student made me a Valentine that said (in English), "Will you marry my father?"
~ "Yellow" is a funny word for these kids because it is associated with pornography. So when one boy went to the board for a turn at hangmang they were sure that that was his word. Imagine everyones surprise (and amusement) when, instead of "yellow", his word was "swallow"...and yes, I'm quite certain they meant that in a sexual way...
~ In Chinese feiji means "airplane" and da1 is something like "to do". Combined, the literally translation is "to do the airplane", but it actually means "masturbate". In one class I ran out of "love" words for hangman so I started pulling random words out of the air. I take full responsibility for everything that happened after I stupidly used "airplane" in an 8th grade class...

The Philippines Part 2: Just the Two of Us

I would say that most vacations are composed of varying percentages of relaxing and sight-seeing.  After Walter's parents left the majority of our sight-seeing was over and a lot of butt-sitting commenced.  We spent the night in 7 different resorts/hotels/hostels on 3 islands over the course of 2 weeks.  Some places were tiny rooms in the middle of a big town, some were right on the ocean, and the rest were somewhere in between.  We spent our days swimming, reading, and watching American television (a real treat considering there are only two English-language channels in Shenzhen and they only actually air American and/or Hong Kong programming for about 6 hours per day).  Aside from the motorcycle issue (discussed in a previous post) and a possible UFO sighting all was relatively normal and peaceful.  Until the last day, of course.

The very last day in Manila (the last city we flew out of) we decided to take one last sight-seeing tour around a couple of parks and the old city.  We hopped on a metro train line of some sort and found our way to the heart of the historical section.  We wandered into the old city through the gigantic zig-zagged fortress walls and wandered around an antique/craft shop for about an hour.  After that we got out of that city because we were tired of being harassed by men on horse-drawn carriages who wanted to give us tours...at a steep price I'm sure.  We headed to this park that was named after the Philippines' national hero, Jose Rizal.  The park now encompasses both where he was executed and a monument under which he was eventually buried.  While walking through this park I really had to pee and the most convenient way to do this was to pay 5 pisos ($.10) to get into the "Chinese park" where there were bathrooms.  This seemed oddly ironic since it really did look like a Chinese park, but the novelty was completely lost on us.  I should point out that the reason we knew that this was the most convenient way to find a bathroom was because some Philippino guy overheard me tell Walter that I really really had to go and directed us there.  We sat in the park for 20 minutes or so before moving on.  Imagine our surprise when we exited the gates and that guy was waiting for us!  He introduced himself as Paul and proceeded to adopt us so he could take us on a tour all around the park.  He was great; his stories were funny, he really knew the history of the park and the politics surrounding Dr. Rizal, and he loved to talk about all the American and Australian friends he had met this way.  We followed Paul around for nearly an hour before we had to go.  He never exactly mentioned paying him but we were pretty sure that's what we were supposed to do, so we over-payed him (and under-guessed his age by 20 years...he may have appreciated that more than the cash) and headed off to the airport.

Now, because we knew we were heading home we had let our money dwindle down to next to nothing so we wouldn't have to exchange much (mostly because their money is practically worthless, it's nearly 50 pisos to US$1).  We got to the airport with plenty of time and stood in the ticket line FOREVER.  But, eventually got through and headed to customs.  There was a counter between us and customs that required us to pay an airport usage fee which, of course, we didn't have enough cash for.  Walter left me with the stuff while he went to exchange money, came back to get his passport (which is required to exchange money), exchange all the Hong Kong and Chinese money he had, and find an ATM after that still wasn't quite enough.  Finally he got back and we payed and headed on to customs.  I went first and the lady looked through my passport and all was well until she noticed that we had overstayed our visa by 2 days.  Shit.  Well, rather than being helpful and telling me the next step or handcuffing me or whatever, she just looked at me and asked in this 'how could you?' voice, "Why did you overstay your visa?"  "Uh, it was a mistake?"

This was the first I had heard about this, but apparently we were given conflicting reports on how long a tourist visa was good in the Philippines and chose to believe the wrong one when purchasing airline tickets.  5 bajillion forms, a couple ATM trips, and a few thousand pisos later we were through customs and through security and really, really ready to get out of that country.

Our flight was delayed (of course) but we got back to Hong Kong and then Shenzhen in one piece.  It was a weird feeling to "come home" to China.  You see, in the Philippines a lot of people can speak English but they don't use it with each other.  The result is similar to any foreign country, you just get used to a constant buzz of words you don't understand.  However, it was oddly comforting to be back in China with the familiar buzz of mostly Mandarin with a small sprinkling of Cantonese and there's at least a shot in hell that I can understand some of it.

I really did like the Philippines, but I would recommend to anyone who wants to visit there: always have cash and bring all the patience you've got!

The view from our room door

One of my favorite things about the Philippines - livestock everywhere!!!

Dr. Jose Rizal's monument and grave in Rizal Park

Motorcycle

About halfway through our vacation, Walter and I found ourselves at a pretty terrible resort: the mosquitoes terrorized us constantly, the water was too shallow and full of wildlife to swim in, and there were daily "brown-outs" (a planned power-outage because work is being done on the lines somewhere). Our first day there was miserable and boring, so when the power went out again the second day we decided to take matters into our own hands and rent a motorbike for the day.Motorbikes are definitely the vehicle of choice in the Philippines. People use them to carry multiple people around, transport goods, and attach them to carts to make "trikes", which are the nearest approximation to taxis most towns have. 

Despite the apparent lack of road rules (other than "always honk when passing") and the fact that roads can vary from paved to gravel to "under deep excavation" within a single kilometer, traffic feels surprisingly safe. Because I actually have a motorcycle license in the States and because no one laughed at the idea of two American-sized people riding one one motorbike, we decided I would drive and Walter would ride behind me.

Pause for road construction

Map in hand we took off and encountered our first problem: I couldn't figure out how to up-shift. On every motorcycle I have ever driven you step down to down-shift and pull up to up-shift. Not this time. When I pulled up I down-shifted and when I stepped down nothing happened. No problem, we just got used to shifting from 2nd to 3rd by down-shifting (2nd to 1st to neutral to 4th to 3rd). This, of course, is a terribly rough way to drive, but I couldn't figure out any other way.

For the next hour or so we motored along a coastal road at a speedy 40 km/hr (25mph), taking in the sights. We passed rice paddies, cows and goats tied alongside the road, dogs sleeping in the street, schoolchildren taking lunchtime walks, and a lot of people escaping the heat in shaded sitting areas. Many of the people we passed waved and yelled "hello!", some stared in wonder at two white people on a motorbike, and quite a few pointed and laughed when they realized the woman was driving the man around.Eventually we got to the one turn we had to make to get to a waterfall we wanted to see. The turn immediately turned into a steep hill so, being the skilled motorist that I am, I down-shifted and the motorbike immediately stalled to a stop. We both hopped off the bike and very carefully rolled it back down the hill to a closed-down gas station. After our failure the first time with the hill, I was certain that trying again would lead to almost-certain death. Walter, however, was less convinced because he claimed that I was in 4th gear when we idled, not 2nd as I had assumed. I declared him a liar because I had been completely unable to up-shift the whole trip, so how did I possibly do it mid-hill? After some mild bickering I hopped on the bike to turn it around (still totally unwilling to try the hill again) and miraculously discovered how to up-shift. Brilliant! I reluctantly admitted that maybe he was right about the 4th gear thing and maybe the hill wasn't going to kill us. With just a little bit of difficulty and a lot of cursing from me (and, subsequently, laughter from the passing Philippinoes...) we got to the top of the hill in one piece. We wound around and found the place to park for the waterfall and headed down the steep stone staircase to check it out. Walter had slightly burned his leg on the exhaust pipe when he got off the motorcycle, so he quickly hopped in the water...with the map still in his pocket. We fished it out and tried to unfold it, but mostly we just tore it to shreds. Oh well, we'd figure it out later. The waterfall was beautiful and it felt good to sit in the shade, so we hung out at the river's edge for quite a while. Eventually we climbed back up the stairs, paid our 5 pesos for parking (~US$.10) and headed off to the city for lunch in an internet cafe.

Me at the falls

The parking people told us the two ways to get to the city from the falls; one included winding through the mountains and one was basically back-tracking the same way we had come and then going a little further. We figured the drive there was relatively easy and familiar so it was probably a better option than the presumably steep and curvy mountain paths.
As we made our way back along the coastline road I started to notice that the back-end was handling funny and fish-tailing a little bit. We were in a construction zone on a dirt road, but it was getting more and more out of control as we drove. Even though neither of us know a thing about motorcycle maintenance, we decided to pull over and see if we could figure it out. Luckily for us the problem was very easy: the back tire was completely flat. Unluckily for us we had no idea how to fix this problem and we had zero cellphone reception.

We managed to get ahold of the resort but knew it would take them a while to get to us, so as I sat and read on a dirt mound Walter headed off to see if there was a vulcanizing shop nearby. A few minutes later he returned on the back of a motorbike being driven by a small Philippino man. The man knew of a nearby repair shop, so he helped us walk the kilometer or so to a house with a greasy garage behind it. In the garage (which smelled of burnt rubber and motor oil) there were a couple men working on another bike's tire with an open flame. Chickens, roosters, and a couple of well-fed but mangy puppys wandered around the working men and me on my plastic stool. Another dog slept in the shade nearby and a couple of women came and went, performing household chores. We waited there in the shade for about an hour before our bike was fixed, and we were pleasantly surprised to only pay 50 pesos (~US$1) for the repair.

Our broken-down bike

About 20 minutes later we were going through a construction zone and saw that our path was blocked by a couple of big trucks. I slowed to a stop to wait for them to finish, but the construction workers waved me through a small path between the first truck and a pile of dirt. We easily slipped through, but I did not see how we would slip through the next path without getting off the bike and walking it. What happened next I cannot explain; as I tried to slow to a stop the back tire continued revving until I completely lost control and the bike went down. Luckily the fairly light bike mostly went down one my left leg (in pants) rather than Walter's bare legs. As the construction crew ran over to pick up the bike and I inspected myself for injuries I heard the bike loudly rev again. I looked up to see the bike hopping on it's back tire with Walter wildly trying to hold onto it. As he tried to help the other men pick up the bike, he had unknowingly grabbed the throttle and was giving it a lot of gas. "LET GO!" I screamed as the other men yelled and got out of the way. Walter let go and ran out from under the bike as it finally came to a rest on the concrete.

The men picked up the bike again and quickly set to work pounding things back into place. At this point Walter realized he had burned his leg pretty badly on the radiator so he took off to the nearby water to dunk his very painful injury. After the men had fixed as much as they could, I was handed the very broken tail-light and was told "You can never use this again" as they pointed to the kickstand.
At this point we were both very shaken, but we wanted to get the bike fixed as much as possible on our own before returning it to the resort because we figured it would be cheaper that way. We very slowly made our way to the next town and the nearest repair shop.
I must have been quite a sight as we pulled up because everyone immediately stopped what they were doing and stared at the tall, dirt-covered, sunburnt white woman entering their shop. I explained that we had taken a spill and needed a new tail-light, but they quickly informed me that they didn't have any in stock. When I asked them to look at the kickstand, I was met with blank stares. "Kick start?" someone asked. "No, kickstand," I repeated while pointing to one of their bikes. Blank stares. "Ooooh, side stand!" they corrected me in unison. "Yes, side stand. Can you fix it?" The agreed to look at it and after about 15 minutes and 50 pesos it was repaired and we were on our way.
At this point Walter wanted to go to a pharmacia, but it was another 10 kilometers drive and my nerves were completely shot so I insisted that we return to the resort. Sunburnt, hungry, sore, dirty, and exhausted we returned to our room and collapsed into bed. As we lay there, drinking a beer in front of the fan, we agreed that this was going to be one of those days we'd remember for a long, long time. And while we didn't want to say it wasn't miserable, it was certainly anything but boring.

The Philippines Part 1: Family Vacation

Mark Twain is credited with saying, "There is no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them." Never is this more true than when you travel with someone else's family.
I want to make something very clear from the beginning: in no way am I complaining here, I know that different people have different methods for doing things with pros and cons to every approach. That being said, traveling with the Brummunds is, well, different from traveling with the Colemans. When you travel with the Colemans there is a folder full of print-outs, confirmation numbers, attractions at various points, and other well-planned and useful information. This folder is started weeks, if not months, before the vacation begins. If flying is involved, we are at the airport well in advance and always go to the gate first before wandering off for coffee or food. Not with the Brummunds.
Walter's parents arrived in Shenzhen one week before we were to leave for the Philippines. At this point we had no airline tickets, we weren't yet certain whether one or both of his siblings would be joining us, and Walter was very sick. Despite his fever, we were able to get out and about a little bit and eventually (after many hours on websites and making phone calls) had plane tickets and knew that both siblings would indeed be meeting us in Hong Kong before flying to the islands. The day of our flight Walter was feeling better so he took his parents out for some last-minute sightseeing before leaving. I opted out of the trip and spent the afternoon at the Starbucks just across the Hong Kong/Shenzhen border. Between my shady cell-phone reception (because I was technically in Hong Kong), some misjudgement in their timing and some plain old bad luck in the timing of my bladder, we had to really scramble to find each other in the metro station and get on the train. The train trip from the border to the airport is not particularly quick and we realized that we were really pushing it, but once we were on the train there was not much we could do. For the whole trip we had to buy two sets of tickets and switch trains twice, with each switch eerily resembling a flock of headless chickens running around. When we finally got to the ticket counter our plane was supposed to be boarding, so we flew through security and ran to our gate (which of was the farthest one, of course). As we arrived, completely out of breath, we saw that our plane was delayed and we could actually grab a bite to eat before leaving. We boarded about 30 minutes later and were in Manila about an hour after that.At this point I should mention that Walter and I were by ourselves because his parents were waiting for his siblings' flight to get into Hong Kong. Their flight into HK was kind of late, so they couldn't get into Manila until well after midnight. We decided that it would be a good idea for at least a couple of us to go ahead and secure the hotel room before it was the middle of the night. Upon arrival at the airport we, of course, had no Philippino money so we had to hit up the ATM before getting a taxi and heading to the hotel. We were very happy to find an ATM that accepted UnionPay (the Chinese equivalent of Visa or American Express on our cards), but we were markedly less happy when it would not allow either of us to withdraw money. Oh well, we decided to figure it out later and used our American debit cards instead. We grabbed an airport taxi and as we pulled away I was fighting back tears because all the signs we passed were in English! I didn't even know how homesick I was for my own language!
We drove around for quite a while because the taxi driver had no idea where the hotel was, but we didn't mind because the price was fixed and we considered it a bonus city tour. Finally we made it, eventually his family made it there too and everyone fell into bed, exhausted.

The next morning we were woken up, brighter and earlier than most of us had expected because our flight to the island of Bohol had apparently been booked for about 10am. We threw our things into our bags and headed back to the airport. Initially we were running a little late, but were blessed with another delayed flight so we had some time for breakfast and a newspaper. Eventually we took off and 45 minutes later were in Bohol. Now, the airport we landed in was tiny. Tiny. To put this in perspective, it was about twice as big as the Monticello airport and our plane was bigger than a plane you would take from Champaign to Chicago. Walter's parents (who both have pilot's licenses) both commented on how tiny the runway was for the size of our plane. We deplaned, gathered our luggage and found a taxi van to drive us around.

A sign near the baggage claim

At this point we had no real plans and no reservations yet, but we did have a list of possibilities, so we asked to driver to take us to check out some resorts. The first one we got to was right on a pretty nice beach, had a decent enough restaurant, and had two rooms available for the six of us. Good enough, so we made our reservations and headed off to settle in. On the way to our rooms there were two animal cages. One had turtles and chickens, the other had a monkey and a monstorous lizard. As we bent over to check out the monkey it immediately swiped Walter's US$400 perscription sunglasses and started to chew on them. Walter flipped out, but was able to grab ahold of the monkey's arms and pull them through the bars (as it shit itself) and a nearby small child was able to reach through the openings and grab the glasses that had been dropped in the process. The whole ordeal pissed off the monkey and Walter almost equally and the monkey definitely held a grudge, because it hissed and spat at him every time it saw him for the rest of our time there. Walter 1, monkey 0.

Eventually we got tired of that resort because they kept fiddling with our reservation and moving our rooms. On the last day I was playing with the monkey and Walter was standing behind me. Quick as lightning that thing snapped the glasses off his face and promptly broke them into three pieces. We practically had to tie Walter up to keep him from killing the monkey. Walter 1, monkey 1

Our next resort was called the Bohol Bee Farm and it was GORGEOUS. Each room was different and unique (we moved rooms every night), the food was delicious (and usually covered in edible flowers), and the view of the ocean was spectacular. The farm was self-sustained with wonderful organic gardens, bee hives for honey, compost pits full of worms, a craft shop, and (most importantly) no monkeys.

The view from the Bee Farm's restaurant

Me with the bees...I don't like bees

Someone's beautiful dinner - all edible!

Walter's mom met some Australians who were also staying at the resort and decided to have both groups go on a sight-seeing tour together. The next day this absolutely ridiculous-looking open-air van thing showed up with an Australian expat in the back to take us around the island. This van was definitly built for Philippinos, NOT 5'10"+ tall white people. Not only could I not see out the "windows" (read: opening at approximately window height) without practically laying down, every time we hit a bump I got a concussion. Eventually I quit being a huge crab about the whole thing (mostly because Walter made it his mission to make me happy) and started to enjoy the sights. We drove around the islands and saw wonderful and interesting homes, schools, and locals, as well as a plethora of animals lining the roads. We passed rice paddys and climbed mountains for spectacular views. One of our destination was the Chocolate Hills. The area that the Chocolate Hills occupies used to be an inland sea. Over time the underwater mountains were eroded and smoothed until they resembled...well...boobs. The inland sea dried up and now the mountains are covered in a kind of vegetation that turns brown every year, making the mountains look like chocolate mounds...thus the name.

The "bus"

Chocolate Hills

Some other highlights:

Tarsier monkey (their brain is smaller than one of their eyes!)

Which one is the monkey?

Rope bridge (my father would NOT walk on this...come to think of it, most of my family probably wouldn't...)

On the lunch tour boat

How to drive a tour boat in the Philippines

Musical performance, native style

Walter's family was in the Philippines with us for about 10 days before they had to go home (they had school and real jobs, after all). It was really cool to hang out with all of them and we were sad to see them go, but we were also excited because there was still a lot of fun to be had in those beautiful islands!

Chinese Health Care, Part Deux

Last week Serena asked Wally and I if we wanted to join her and a couple others on a trip to Hainan (an island off the south of China that is known for beautiful beaches and lovely weather). It was to be a perfect interlude between the holidays and our and trip to the Philippines. If only.
Serena et al decided to take a plane to the island, but after hearing the price of transportation we decided to try a cheaper and more adventurous route. On Friday night we headed to Luohu train station to buy tickets for the next day to Guangzhou. From there we would hop on another train to the island; the whole thing would cost about 450RMB (~US$75) and take about 17 hours. Unfortunately we got such a late start that we arrived at Luohu just as the train station was closing. No big deal, we decided to get something to eat and try again tomorrow. Next to the station was a hotel restaurant called the Berlin Cafe that looked nice and not too pricey. As we sat down we were very pleased with our choice: the restaurant was beautiful, the music was great and the food was decent. We took our time eating a combination of Chinese and Western-type food and sipping a monster bottle of cheap Chinese champagne. Despite the chick-fight we witnessed outside the hotel and some issues getting home in a taxi, it was a really lovely evening.
The next morning I woke up sick. I spent some time on the toilet in the morning and a little time hugging it in the afternoon, but by late afternoon I was able to down half a banana and was feeling a little better. I decided that I was going to be miserable all night anyway, so I might as well be miserable on the train and wake up at the beach when I felt better. With that in mind, we hopped on the bus, as planned, at about 6:30pm to go back to Luohu. About half-way into the short trip I was not feeling well and was starting to overheat. Wally asked if I wanted to turn around, and I did, but the driver had just pulled away from a stop so we couldn't get off right away. As we stopped at a light just past that missed stop I knew I was going to be sick. Wally tried to get the guy to let us off at the light, but he wouldn't. Plan B was to find a plastic bag, but it was too late and I threw up all over myself. At this point the driver decided that he better let us off, which was good because I was extremely dizzy and my hearing was muffled. Wally drug me to a bench, where I promptly went from being overheated to having the chills, and he told me he was taking me to the doctor.
Before long I was sitting in the little clinic near his school where the doctor was asking questions about my symptoms. He told me to avoid oily food and fish (a real no-brainer since seafood was the culprit anyway), and then promptly wrote me a prescription for the Chinese cure-all: IV's. I paid my 320RMB (~US$45) and was lead to one of two beds in the clinic. They gave me a shot in my rear and poked my wrist before hooking me up to a massive bottle of liquid with two slightly smaller bottles hanging there for later. I was clearly in this for the long haul.
In the bed next to me was a little boy who was maybe 10 years old. This poor kid was so sick: he was passed out when I first got there but later woke up disoriented and nearly ripped his IV out trying to go to the bathroom. At this point his mom and another young lady came running up and tried to comfort him. He was crying a little and throwing up every 15 minutes or so and looked just so miserable. I tried to read and not see him throw up, but every minute felt like an hour in that uncomfortable bed.
About 3/4 of the way through my IV's my hand started to hurt. I tried to forget about it, figuring the new pain was all in my head, but it was hurting and throbbing more and more. I looked at my hand and saw that where the back of my hand is usually bony and veiny, a big bubble was growing. Oh shit! I had no idea what to do and didn't really know how to get a nurse to come over, so I just sat up and hoped someone would notice me. Luckily the mother of the sick boy saw my expanding hand and called a nurse over who switched the needle to the other hand and semi-gently scolded me for moving around too much (at least that was my interpretation of what she said).
Finally, after 2 hours, I was set free and headed back to Wally's with some medication and multiple reminders from the nurse to "come back tomorrow". I slept great that night and felt much better the next day (though I still couldn't eat anything) and after another round of IV's I was feeling nearly good as new. Around dinner time I said I felt good enough to travel, but we decided that losing that day made the trip not worth it anymore. This turned out to be a very good decision.
At about 9pm (which, coincidentally would have been the time we were boarding the train for the very long ride from Guangzhou to our city in Hainan) Wally started to feel sick. After a rough night, he made a visit to the school nurse and by dinner time we were both finally able to stomach some food.
So, I may have missed out on Hainan and it's beautiful beaches for now, but experiencing Chinese health care firsthand was definitely an experience. Not the most fun experience I've ever had, but an experience none the less.

A Night of Impromptu Karaoke

As strange as it sounds, I'm getting so used to this place that it kind of feels like home. I've settled into a sort-of routine and I have a decent grasp of how to get around (so much so, in fact, that I saw a clearly lost man in Longgang the other day and started to stop to help him before catching myself...I may know my way around, but I still can't speak Chinese well enough to share that information). I have my foreign friends and my teacher friends, and (believe it or not) I'm so used to hearing the constant background noise of a language I can't understand that I find myself agape when I happen to overhear an English conversation!
Yesterday at lunch Maggie mentioned something about a singing competition she is going to take part in. She loves to sing (really though, she sings constantly) but feels that she is out of practice so she said she wanted to work on it before the contest. At the time, I couldn't have known how involved I was going to become in this process.
After school I had to tutor from 5-6. Tutoring jobs are one of the lovely perks of being an English speaker in this country; they are absolutely thrown at you and you get to charge pretty much whatever you want. The girl I tutor is in 4th grade with excellent English, so we just hang out, chat, and draw pictures and I get paid 150RMB (~$25) per hour. She also happens to be the music teacher's daughter. Maggie, of course, knows this, so when I went to meet up with the girl she tagged along to talk to the mom about working on her singing.
After tutoring I shuffled off to dinner and was waved over by Maggie who happened to be just finishing up. As I sat down she said, "I'm going to sing on the 6th floor tonight, would you like to join?". Laughing out loud I said no, which, judging by the look on her face, was the wrong answer. Feeling bad I asked, "what time?", only to find out that this was going to start in about 15 minutes. At this point I figured there was little chance to escape so I reluctantly agreed.
After we finished eating and washed our dishes she asked me if I was going to the office. In a last-ditch attempt to get out of singing I said no. Rallying quickly from my shocking answer she said, "Okay, you go to your dormitory first and then meet me at 6:30" (it was 6:25 at the time). Seeing that I was clearly NOT going to be able to wriggle my way out of this one, I agreed that it made more sense to go to the office since I didn't know where this singing room was.
A few minutes later we were trudging up to the 6th floor of one of the buildings where the maintenance guy let us in. I was shocked at what I saw: a massive KTV room right there in the school building! KTV is what they call the karaoke places in China; you and your friends sit in a room the size of a medium bedroom and sing. It is outfitted with plenty of comfy couch space and a couple tables, and there is an all-you-can-eat bar down the hallway. There are usually some colorful lighting fixtures and, of course, a stage. Fu'an School's KTV room was 6 times as big as a KTV, with all the crazy lights and couches, but no food and only the three of us.
Once we got the stereo working, Maggie informed me that she invited everyone she saw that night but only a few were going to come. Great. The only thing worse than karaoke with your friends is karaoke with just two people. Maggie insisted that I go first, but I insisted she went first since I had yet to see any English songs in the book. We found the page and she left me to peruse it as she sang her first song. Now, this was a pretty big book of songs; there were pages and pages of Chinese songs, a couple pages of Japanese songs, and one single page of English songs that was only 2/3 full. To make matters worse, I only recognized about half of the songs and only liked about 5 of them. Oh well. As we took turns singing a few people came and went, so there were always about 3 of us hanging out. I sang "Tears in Heaven" and a lot of Beatles and we all had a pretty good time for the first hour or so.
By hour 3 I was ready to make like a tree and leave, but Maggie still persisted. She insisted on me choosing songs even though I had fully exhausted any and all songs that I had a chance at being able to sing and had even faked my way through a couple. I finally decided that the only way out of there was to claim exhaustion and hit the road. This excuse always works in China because they believe that rest is an extremely important component of your healthy.
So at 9:30 I finally made it back to my room and I just laughed to think about what a strange and random night it was. I also realized that no matter how used to China I become, there will always be something waiting to surprise me.

Typical Junior High Behavior (?)

An incomplete list of the things kids have done in my classes:
~ played badminton
~ threw paper airplanes
~ punched a nearby student
~ knitted
~ played with live turtles
~ one kid said he would like to f*** me
~ asked for my signature
~ asked my blood type
~ given me their phone number
~ broke a clock (I was somewhat responsible for this one too though)
~ gotten a finger extremely stuck in a hole in their neighbor's desk
~ discreetly corrected my spelling of "favorite" and "color" (psst! Laoshi, you forgot the 'u'!)

It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game

Every year in Longgang there is a basketball tournament for the teachers. Each school fields a women's team and a men's team to compete - no p.e. teachers allowed though, because they are "professionals". Because I am an American, and a tall one at that, I must be good at basketball, so they asked me to play. I insisted that I am not good at basketball and I don't even really like the sport, but they took this as me being modest and got very excited because they were certain I would carry their team to victory. Thursday I was given two jerseys and a new pair of shoes before being sent out to attended practice. "Practice" was really just about 20 minutes of shooting around followed by full-court 5-on-5 ball. This, of course, exhausted me. As the practice went on the group of students watching grew, and every time my team had the ball there were chants of Wai jiao, wai jiao! ("foreign teacher" 外教), which resulted in the ball being passed to me over and over, making me more and more exhausted. Finally (and mercifully), the practice ended and I was allowed to go pass out in my room. The next day in class, multiple boys called out "lao shi, Kobe!", with the appropriate basketball-shooting hand motions. I guess they think I'm good...silly youngsters. This Monday was game day and I was informed that the bus would be leaving at 5:30pm. Wally was coming to watch and the school was going to pay for a nice post-game dinner for everyone, so it looked to be turning into a nice little evening. However, at lunch Karina (an administrator) informed me that unfortunately I was not allowed to play because I'm paid by the Education Bureau, not the school. Bummer. I still wanted to watch the games though, and I'm so glad I did because they were absolutely ridiculous. In typical female fashion, the women teams made up for their lack of athleticism and talent by beating the shit out of each other, and the men strutted around like they were NBA All-Stars. In typical Chinese fashion, every man who was not currently playing basketball was smoking. I tried to get a picture of a man in a jersey smoking on the bench, but I couldn't get away with it on the sly...trust me though, it happened! Both teams lost that night, and Tuesday too, so we are out of the double-elimination tournament. Maggie told me that it is not important to win, we just have to try our best. I told her that we have a saying that, "It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game"...but only the losers say it. That, she found hilarious.

Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving night I sat down at my computer with a glass of "Peanuts and Milk" to write about how strange/funny/etc. the day was in China. If you are paying attention you may be wondering why, then, this post is dated December 11th. There is a very simple answer to that question: nothing really happened.
The Sunday before Thanksgiving all of the CTLCers got together for our best approximation of the holiday feast. We had all of the basics like turkey, mashed potatoes, and yams, but there were some strange additions like these Chinese desserts with plastic dolls on top and orange juice. We all really enjoyed being in our big group again to laugh and commiserate about our experiences here. There was even a pick-up football game!
I had to get back to Longgang that night so I could teach the next morning, and the rest of the week proceeded as usual. I had been teaching about Thanksgiving for a week already and I was teaching it for the remainder of that week as well, so when Thursday came it was just like any other day. I taught my classes (all three of them...it was my "long" day) and at about 6pm I headed down to the cafeteria for dinner. As I grabbed my lunch box out of the cabinet it hit me: I'm getting ready to eat dinner in a cafeteria in China by myself on Thanksgiving. A knot started to form in my throat, but I immediately told myself to get over it because I was being ridiculous.
As I sat down with my food, three 9th grade teachers I don't really know asked if they could sit with me. "Of course," I said, motioning for them to have a seat. It turns out that two of them don't really speak English at all and the other one only kind of speaks it, but we were able to sort of chat in broken Chinglish, and it was nice to be eating with people. I finished eating and as I got up to leave I told them I was so happy they sat by me because it was Thanksgiving and I would have been sad to eat alone. I don't know if they understood or not, but I wasn't kidding; I was thankful for that.
After dinner I decided to head across the street to the grocery store to seek out some American-ish food to gorge myself on in the name of the gluttonous holiday. This particular grocery store is pretty poor in terms of selection anyway, and American food is basically non-existent. I bought a small bag of dried fruit, some cookies that looked like those creme-filled vanilla/chocolate sandwich cookies (they weren't very good...kind of like crackers with a drop of icing on them) and a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Feeling moderately satisfied with my selection I headed home.
At my apartment I enjoyed my pseudo-American feast and cracked open my deliciously terribly PBR as I chatted with my family over Skype. As I talked to them and heard the hustle-bustle of everyone (animals included) I finally felt a little homesick.
I was sad because their lives were going on as usual and mine is completely upside-down and inside-out, I was sad because Thanksgiving came and went without much more than a blip here, and I was scared that Christmas will feel the same. However, more powerfully, I was thankful for the experiences I'm having here and I was incredibly thankful that the people I love are safe and sound and still on the other end of a phone line. Looking back, I realize that in some ways it may have been the best Thanksgiving I've ever had because I learned that I don't need to eat certain foods or even see my family to have a good Thanksgiving; all I need is to know that I am blessed in so many ways and to pause for just a moment to give thanks for all that I have...and the PBR was pretty nice too.

Chinese Health Care

"Amelia, I'm in the hospital"
This is the first thing my, obviously very drugged, boyfriend said to me on the phone Tuesday. Because of my crappy cell phone and his pain- and drug-induced state of mind, the ensuing conversation was very confusing. All I knew was he tore up his knee, surgery was involved, he was going to to be in the hospital for multiple days, and I was too far away to do anything except worry.
The next day I found out that he had been rushed into emergency surgery on Tuesday night and he was laid up in a hospital near his school for at least a week. I was happy to hear he was doing much better and that I would be able to visit him later that day. That afternoon I skipped Chinese class and headed up to Dongmen where I bought a small plant in a very Chinese-looking pot and took a taxi to his hospital (he's obsessed with house plants, he has 10 or more in his apartment).
As soon as I was out of the taxi and surveyed my surroundings, I realized that finding him in this messy complex was not going to be easy. I knew the building number, floor, and room number I was heading to, but this complex looked as organized as a 5-year-olds Lego project: building 1 was next to building 2 which was next to building 6, and buildings 3-5 were not in plain sight. As a further complication, I could not remember the word for "building" so I couldn't even ask anyone if I had to. Eventually I happened upon a map with big numbers on it and saw that I had to walk through a sketchy-looking construction zone to get to the right place. I should not have been surprised by this because there are always sketchy-looking construction zones, and you always have to walk through the middle of them to get places. Such is life in a developing country.
I got to building 3 and saw the sign for "bone and joint surgery" and knew I was in the right place. As the elevator doors opened on the third floor I was greeted with big cloud of cigarette smoke. Apparently cigarette smoke is not bad for hospital patients in China.
As I entered the "bone and joint surgery" hallway I was greeted by a smiling, waving Chinese man I didn't recognize. I figured he must have seen a white person wandering around and assumed I was looking for the only white patient in the place (this, of course, was the correct assumption).
The room (like the rest of the hospital) felt reminiscent of a US hospital in the 1950's: four simple metal beds in a stark-white room, with patients wearing hospital gowns heavily faded from years of repeated washings. The room was full of people talking and shuffling bags of food and bottles of water, and the patient where laying there looking uncomfortable. Wally explained that the nurses in the hospital don't take care of people the way they do in the States: they administer medicine and run tests, but that's basically it. If patients need to eat, bathe, use a bedpan, or otherwise move around, it is up to family members to help them. This is unfortunate for a foreigner whose closest family members live on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, so a school employee has been appointed as his designated caretaker.
I had been there less than 15 minutes when a doctor walked in wearing a mask and well-worn scrubs, dragging a gurney. After a brief conversation with the caretaker it was clear that some sort of test or procedure was in order. I was assured that they don't bar visitors from any part of the hospital, so I was invited along to wherever it was he was headed.
We shuffled onto the elevator then down a twisting hallway to the radiology area. There we took a number and continued to the next building, up another elevator and into an ECG room. I stayed in the hallway while they pulled a sheet around him so passer-bys wouldn't be scandalized by his very un-Chinese amount of chest hair. After handing me the machine printout, we headed back to radiology where I again stayed in the hall while they x-rayed his chest, because they don't bother to protect anyone from unnecessary radiation.
Now, if you have been paying attention you might be asking yourself "If he tore up his knee, why does he need an ECG and a chest x-ray?" The answer is this: God only knows. He has no idea why they ran these tests, nor why they keep testing his blood sugar like some diabetes patient. His best guess is that it is some combination of curiosity about a foreigner, odd ideas of "health" in China, and a desire to run up the bill.
Eventually we made it back to his crowded room and he was (painfully) pushed back into bed. I stayed as long as I could without risking my ability to make it back to Longgang that night, and the rest of the time was pretty uneventful. Only time will tell how knee surgery recovery will go in China, but he seems to doing pretty well so far!

The sports meeting and "Successful Land"

Last Wednesday morning I woke up sick. My throat felt like it had been rubbed with sandpaper, my nose was running, and as the day progressed I got shakier and shakier. Somehow, luckily, I ended up not teaching my two lessons that day because the teachers forgot I was supposed to, and after a trip to the school nurse I was armed with some Chinese medicine. The rest of the day I took it easy and made sure to go to bed early because I knew I had a couple of long days in front of me.
The next morning I was feeling a little better, so I put on my new track suit and ridiculous China shoes and headed downstairs bright and early for the opening ceremony of the "sports meeting". As it turns out, a "sports meeting" is basically a school-wide track meet, and because it is in China, there must be a certain level of pomp and circumstance to start it off. Because I am a token figure, rather than and actual teacher, I got to sit next to the principal and other administrators on the stage as the procession went by. First a group of kids in military uniforms marched by with flags, then each class in each grade went by and paused for some chant right in front of all of us. With nine grades and eight classes per grade, you can do the math and guess how long this whole thing took, but it was kind of cool. Some of the younger kids rode by on roller skates or bikes rather than marching, and some of them wiped out pretty bad. I'd love to say it wasn't funny, but it was.
After the opening ceremony was over and all the speeches were made, the events got going. There were races, shot put, archery, high jump, and the littlest kids did relay races and three-legged races in the middle of the track with their parents. I was asked by several people if this is how our sports meetings are in America. They didn't seem all that surprised when I told them we don't have sports meetings in America (I guess our reputation precedes us).
An hour or so later I heard my name (well, their bastardized pronunciation of my name) and someone whisked me away to the shot put area; apparently this is one of the things I signed up for. Everyone seemed very excited for me to be there because they were sure I was going to be very good at it. I, on the other hand, was nervous because I had never thrown a shot put before in my life, I have no idea how to do the spin thing, and I'm still slightly wimpy about my right shoulder. The first woman went, then the second, and I realized that "correct form" in not even remotely important and it was perfectly acceptable to sort of shuffle forward and hurl the ball. Fantastic. When my turn came, a grinning 8th grade boy who was in charge of fetching the shot put after we threw it, handed it to me with a thumbs up and said "Very good!" High praise indeed considering all I had done so far was not drop it on my foot. I shuffled up and threw it...a good two feet past all the other throws. A chorus of "very good!" and "so strong!" with plenty of thumbs-up showed their approval. My next throw went a couple feet past my first and my third went a couple feet past that. When all was said and done, not only had I beat all the other female teachers by over 2m, I had beat the school record by 7cm. Not bad for a rookie!

Students hanging out

Me with a couple of 7th graders...why do they look so scared?!?!

China Shoes

I was supposed to run in a 100m race later that day, but I didn't hear my name because I was busy chatting with last years foreign teacher, Michael. He teaches at a different school in Longgang this year and had the afternoon off, so he stopped by to watch. We spent the afternoon chatting about sports day and having our pictures taken by students (sometimes they asked first, sometimes they didn't). At some point they told us that there would be a dinner later and they wanted Michael to come along too. He accepted and at 5:30pm all the teachers and administrators piled into a couple of buses and headed to the restaurant. As we turned into the parking lot we saw a beautiful open-air restaurant, situated in the middle of a garden, partially up a hill. We also heard the first murmurs of gou rou.
Gou rou is one of the things in China that disgusts Americans. The mere thought of it makes most of us shudder and think "how could they?!?" Gou rou (狗肉) is dog meat. I was told that many old Chinese people think that gou rou is very good for your healthy and it is warm for your inside. With hesitant anticipation they asked, "will you try?"
"Yeah, I'll try a little"
We sat down and dinner started to come pretty quickly. Gou rou was the second dish to arrive and it was disgusting. I'm sure that this was partially psychosomatic and partially because the two bites I tried were too fatty, but either way I'm not a fan. Before long the toasting started. Since I was just starting to feel better from my cold, the last thing I wanted to do was drink beer. However, since I had put on such a performance last time we all drank together, and because Michael was there, I felt there was little I could do about it without being rude.

I woke up the next morning with a vague memory of being in the Principal's living room drinking tea and found a drunken text conversation on my phone (and was later told I also had a drunken regular conversation on the phone). I also found that, even though my throat felt better, I was completely unable to speak. Mei guan xi ("never mind" 没关系), I put my track suit back on and headed downstairs for day two of the sports meeting.
All the teachers I saw at the track greeted me with a hearty "Hey! Amelia! How's your throat?" (in some combination of Chinese and/or English) and I found out that I had apparently spoken Chinese all night long in my drunken stupor. Fantastic. I was told many times that I speak it very well and I should use it more, though, so that's a moderately good sign. All the students I saw asked "Who was that guy you were with yesterday?" and seemed very disappointed by the answer of "another foreign teacher"; apparently they were really hoping he was my boyfriend.
The very last event of the sports meeting was the teachers' relay race. Each grade picks 4 women and 2 men to compete in a 4x250 race. I, of course, was included in this race and all the other teachers seemed to think this was unfair...except the lone female p.e. teacher who took it as a personal challenge. Before the race I was told by many teachers that I should run slowly and one teacher even said "may your legs work as well as your voice today"...which I thought was hilarious. They explained to me, no less than 10 times, that one teacher was going to hand me the baton when it was my turn to run, and when I was done I was supposed to hand it to this other teacher. I'm not sure why they were so sure I was going to get this confused, but it was nice that they were keeping me informed.
I was the 5th person on my team to go and by the time I was up we were already behind by a few places. I took off running and all the students lost it. They were yelling and screaming and I was running faster than I had any business running. In the last stretch I felt my weight was getting pitched too far forward, but I was able to right myself. Just as I was back on balance, the teacher running in front of me wiped out; I was so glad it was her and not me! I handed off the baton (nearly taking out the teacher I was handing it to) and a few minutes later the race was over and we got third place. Lots of "good job" and "so fast" all around, and it was back to the stage for the closing ceremony. About 45 minutes of speeches and certificates later, I was up in my room preparing for the weekend.

Closing ceremony

Me, Joy, Maggie, and Michael

Earlier in the day I had been invited to an event taking place that evening and continuing through the next day. It wasn't clear what exactly was going on, all I was told was that it would be relaxing, there might be a boat, it would be a good chance to practice Chinese, and it would be cold. With that description in mind I packed a small bag of things and went down to the gate at 5:30, as instructed.
As I waited for someone to show up and tell me where to go, a well-meaning teacher asked me where I was going. The following conversation went on in a combination of broken Chinese and broken English:
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know, I'm supposed to take a bus."
"But the bus just left!"
"I know, not that bus."
"Okay, where are you going?"
"I don't know where I'm going. No one told me, they told me to wait here."
"But if you tell me where you are going I can help you."
"I don't know where I'm going, but the 7th grade English teacher does."
At this point she either understood or got tired of trying because she just smiled and awkwardly said "Okay, I go now!"
Before long some other teachers showed up and we all piled onto a big bus and headed to the nearby town of Fenggang. We ate a delicious dinner in a nice restaurant (complete with some campy-looking live singers who tried to impress me with their English) and then stowed our stuff in our luxe hotel rooms before heading to the spa. At the spa we relaxed for a couple hours and got foot massages before heading back to the hotel around midnight.
The next morning we tried to sleep in (no easy task for a bunch of teachers who get up at 6 or 7am every single day) and had a late breakfast before heading off to the real reason for this excursion: a meeting. Luckily they took pity on me and let me sit out of the meeting which was, of course, totally in Chinese. The 7th grade English teacher also played hooky to sit outside and chat. We had some really interesting conversations about language and culture, and I was shocked at how good her English is when she gets going!
The meeting lasted about 3 hours, so at about 1pm we headed to the next part of the outing: barbecue. We pulled up to a park, cheerily named "Successful Land" and were carted off to the grill area. Now, Chinese dining is generally a free-for-all, so of course a barbecue is no different. You sit around the pit and everyone cooks stuff and eats it as it finishes. We had vegetables, hot dogs, chicken, pork, yams and more. There was rampant bone-spitting and loud chewing, and it was delicious!
The melee went on for about an hour before we were handed some ticket things and told to "go have fun". We rode paddle boats, shot arrows, played with clay, rode a carousel, did bumper cars, rode a horse, and rode the scariest roller coaster I've ever seen. Now, I'm not really a fan of roller coasters anyway because I'm generally not a fan of being thrown around in the name of fun; and riding a Chinese roller coaster sounds just plain suicidal. This thing looked like it was constructed in 1953 and it's last paint job was probably in 1997. It was small and creaky and the seat belts looked like they were swiped from an old Grand Am. Despite my better judgement I got in and held on and, against all odds, survived the experience.
We finally left Successful Land and Fenggang around dinnertime and I rushed off to downtown Shenzhen to hang out with some friends and listen to a live band. Finally, on Sunday I was able to really rest, relax, and start to recover from my cold and the ridiculous events of the last few days!