I Have Been to the Mountaintop, I Have Seen the... Buddha?

I had just begun to grow weary of Hong Kong. I wasn’t even really sure if I wanted to leave the hotel and head back out to the crowded streets, crowded with both people and buildings. The buildings clawed their way towards the sky to try and escape all the people below. Every day here has been like looking through frosted glass, not like Beijing on a bad day, but it was suffocating me somehow. At night the buildings across the strait lit up with Santa decorations and displayed messages on others. It felt hokey. And to top things off Mandarin is not spoken in Hong Kong. Exhibit A of this: Hong Kong is not how you say Hong Kong in Mandarin. It’s Cantonese. The Mandarin is Xiang Gang, meaning Fragrant Port. America and the rest of the world started going by the Cantonese ways of saying names and places when Jiang Jieshi fled to Taiwan with the rest of the Guomindang (the Cantonese is Kuomintang). He was originally from Canton, so when the world recognized Taiwan and not China as the true government of China, they picked up on the names that Jiang Jieshi used. You’ve probably heard of Jiang Jieshi’s Cantonese name, Jiang Kai-shek. So because I couldn’t communicate with the people around me, I felt completely and utterly useless. In Beijing, I could show my parents around and my favorite places to go, such as little niche restaurants that Chris and Gavin and I frequent, or underground shopping malls where the only entrance is a drink stand on the street. But here I didn't know about any places or restaurants, so not only did I feel completely and utterly useless, but my Chinese felt like it was getting worse with each passing day. But today was my last day in Hong Kong and the last day of the year 2008 and I still had one more thing to do on my list of things to do. I had to go visit the big Buddha. My parents hadn’t heard of it and I only knew of it by asking a friend back in America of places to go in Hong Kong. Gave me a sense of usefulness. But I’m beginning to ramble. We rode the subway through Hong Kong. There was no stares sent our direction on the subway, we were just another bunch of foreigners, like the other dozens that were on the subway. For the first time in four months, I wasn’t something that deserved a glance at. It didn't feel good. We arrived at the last station and got on the trams. They never stopped moving, so we jumped into the moving trams while they slowed around the curve to go back the way they came. Nine people crammed into the vehicle and then with a slight increase in speed we were off. We hung over the ocean, hopping from island to island from the giant webs of metal that had been spun within the past decade. The trams were at least two hundred feet over the tops of the mountains at times, and the wind shaking it back and forth only made it a little more nerve wrecking. We had been in it for fifteen minutes when we came over a forested peak and in the distance saw a slightly irregular mountain. As the minutes rolled by and slid closer to the mysterious mountain, it became obvious that it was, in fact, a giant statue of Buddha on the peak of a mountain. It was awe-inspiring. I looked at it and remembered the Buddha carved out of the cliff at the Longmen Grotto and began to wonder about the faith of the other religions. People believed in this particular one so much that they got a giant bronze Buddha statue out to the top of a mountain, and carved another one into a cliff face. You don’t see things like that in Europe. The tram never stopped, but we got off of it anyway at the station on the other side of the expanse. We were now in a quaint village, built around the Buddha. Or maybe the Buddha was built around it; I never did my research on the place. But I digress. The place had typical architecture like you would see in a cartoon, except with franchise names on the signs. A 7 Eleven on the left, a Starbucks on the right, etc. We walked up to the foot of the mountain Buddha was perched on and looked up at the stairs. I jogged up to the top, being the only one there wearing a blazer, with the wind blowing my coats tail around on the ascent. In my defense, I wanted to wear my Christmas/Holiday gift. I really appreciated it, though my parents called it a happy-to-see-me gift. The place was gorgeous, the railings were carved nicely and all around the giant Buddha were little statues, in kneeling positions, each holding a different offering. I wandered around and admired the view from the top. I have been to the mountaintop. The buildings around looked like they were thrown onto the mountains in front of Buddha in no particular order, and to Buddha’s back there were cliffs and more mountains. It made me wonder even more how it got here. The statue had such details in it too, like the fabric on his clothes looked like they had been sewn, not just molded. I wandered back down and took pictures with my parents. About three hours of admiring the area later, we were wandering back to the tram and on our way back home. I was happy with this excursion. It made the whole trip to Hong Kong worth it. We got on the tram and headed back to the hotel over mountainscapes and calm ocean views.

The Curious Incident of the Bass, the Lake and the Night Time

Saturday night. I was sitting in the hotel room studying when I heard a knock at the door. I walked to the hotel room door and answered it. It was Gavin. He insisted that this was the only night that we would be able to go clubbing in Beijing without breaking the rules. We were under our parents watch now. So we researched a bit and were on our way through the frigid nights of Beijing in search of a club. We pulled up after stopping at 3 other clubs and arrived at something called Club Banana. The outside was next to a hotel, lit up for Christmas, but the lack of snow made it feel nothing like Christmas. At the front door of the club was a humiliated Chinese man wearing a Santa outfit and we went in. I walked through the door and I felt my heart shaking. Not out of anxiety or fear but because of the bass. The dance floor was on the second floor and they made us check our coats on the first floor. We walked up the stairs amidst odd hairdo’s and fashion statements into a line so that we could get frisked. The bass was intense. I got frisked and then Gavin and I walked in. It was dark and foggy. Multi tiered levels overlooked the dance floor. Everyone was doing the same dance move and I felt like I would fit right in with my limited skills at dancing. The walls were pock marks of changing color and tables at 400 kuai a seat were everywhere around the place. Flashing lights came from above the DJ’s raised throne and four honeycomb screens showed silhouettes of women dancing on a red background. Lights and lasers flashed down, and an occasional onslaught of fog showed the path of each beam. I had finally found the mysterious absence of Nightlife in Beijing. I doubt that this is where everyone goes after 9:30 in the evening, but there were a good deal of people. Thousands of deserted streets and one packed club. Gavin and I stepped out onto the dance floor and we realized why the base was as intense as it was. The entire dance floor was a subwoofer. The floor moved up and down and shook me and made everyone on the dance floor actually vibrate. I pushed my way into the mess of the crowd and eventually had a group of people that were interested in the foreigners on their dance floor. I saw two fine-o-mite girls dancing with each other and started making a move, when every other Chinese male went and surrounded them. Am I sensing a bit of xenophobia? No? It was still ok; we still had our circle of dancers. We took a break and wandered the club, thinking we could practice our Chinese with some pretty women. Here’s how most of the conversations went.
Us: Hey
Girls: What?
Us: We said hey!
Girls: I can’t hear you!
Us: What?
Girls: We can’t hear you!
Us: Forget it, we can’t hear you!
Of course we did talk with some, but that example was more than half of the conversations. We left shortly after, body shaking still from the tremendous bass. Gavin had no intention of going home, so we went to Houhai, the lake behind the Forbidden City. Nobody was there but peddlers of beer and cheap women… or was it women and cheap beer? I digress; we had no intention to indulge on any of that. We just wanted to go on the lake. It was completely frozen over. We wandered around the entire lake looking for a place to walk down. Men would grab our arms and tell us we should go to their bar. We pretended we were German and didn’t understand English. One guy followed us for a while, trying to sell us on something. But we just said no, until Gavin said, “We don’t want it, are you deaf? Oh wait, I’m sorry, I was saying the tones wrong. We DON’T want it? Now do you understand?” The man walked away fast, but kept glancing back as if he wanted to kill us. He was huddling in his light jacket to fight the not so light cold. We wandered around until we found a path to the lake. So we went down the ice skating path and slid out onto the lake. The lake was surrounded by countless lights from bars and small stops, but we wandered into the center of the lake, walking further into the void of darkness in Houhai. It was stunning. We skated onto the island in the center, and Gavin wanted to meditate there and then pee on the ice. I was just happy to be in the center of the expanse of ice around us. There were a few streaks of colored lights reflected on the surface from the buildings far off, but the ice was mostly scuffed from eight hours of ice skating. I looked out from the small pier on the island and saw an encroaching dome of fog enveloping the city. We slid back to the shore and hailed a cab home, slinking into the hotel as the hotel staff slept. It was an interesting night.

Chopsticks and Manners

I look back at the meals I’ve had at Chinese restaurants and how classy they pretended to be, or actually were. People dressed in jeans, khakis, suits even, fumbling with chopsticks as they sat in a western fashion around the table. The waiters would bring plates of food and it’d be family style serving to their individual plates. There was just an air about it, as of someone swaggering, except sitting. I look back at it and laugh, especially at the chopsticks and the baffled expression of an erudite trying to figure out the polite way to use them. There is none. I see them as an extension of my fingers to place each piece of food in my mouth and then use them like a shovel to get the last bits of food out of the bottom of the bowl. I came to China, raised on manners, but being too lazy to use them on an everyday basis, and tried to show how polite I was to my host family by using these ideas instilled in me as a kid. They wondered what was wrong with their food. Why wasn’t I enjoying it? They didn’t believe me when I said it was delicious, (it was really just hao chi at best.) Why though? Why didn’t they believe me? Because I hadn’t tried eating it like I was hungry, I hadn’t slurped the noodles, I hadn’t burped at the end of the meal. Apparently Emily Post doesn’t quite fit in with Chinese customs. Ba had lifted his bowl to his mouth and pushed the food towards him with the chopsticks, Peter was slurping noodles noisily from the bowl to his mouth and Ma was picking small fish bones out of her mouth and putting them on a napkin on the table. I was absolutely horrified by this my first day, but somewhere deep down, I loved it. I never really understood why you had to eat like you weren’t hungry if you were starving. In China, if you’re hungry, go to town on that meal. Of course this is just from my experiences in the normal middle class dinner setting, but still I felt instantly connected to this way of eating and fell even more in love with China.

I don’t know what really made me think about this… maybe my parents being on their way to China?

Rules for Bargaining

I’ve always been a somewhat passive person. But if you go to the Hong Qiao Shichang, (Pearl market,) being a passive person will get you ripped off. Sophie, Chris and I hired a mo-ped rickshaw from Wangfujing to the Pearl Market. The only problem was that this was a two seater. So Sophie sat on Chris’ lap, I had all the bags on mine and we were off. Our ride was having trouble moving and was tilting towards the side with Sophie and Chris. At stop lights it stalled and taxis almost rear ended us. They would honk at us, but we would wave at the driver and passengers and they’d just laugh. I looked out the window on my side and I saw people looking out their car windows at the three waiguoren cramped in that small cage of metal on the back of that old Chinese man’s mo-ped. I was enjoying the ride until our driver turned left from the far right lane across eight lanes of busy traffic. That’s something I don’t even think my dad would do. I had submitted myself to death and thought I had a good life. I closed my eyes, but there was no crash, no screams, no explosion of blood, no implosion of cheap metal. We had safely navigated the way across the intersection and had wound up at the market. We paid and walked towards one of the entrances. It was a shoebox of a building, and I wasn’t expecting much of it from the plain exterior. Then I walked in. It was more like a flea market than a pearl market. There were stands everywhere and it reminded me of a flea market in Florida, except there were multiple floors. Chris and I walked by the electronics section, selling iPhones for 600 kuai, Nintendo DS’ for 1500 kuai and the like, and went to the second floor for the clothes. I was on a mission for some Christmas gifts. The first rule of bargaining I learned was this.
1) The less the person knows about you the better.
I said I was shopping for Christmas gifts and she tried selling me a Santa tie. It was yellow and thin and just something I wouldn’t see anyone wearing. I told her I was Jewish and then she became confused. Why was I buying Christmas gifts? No matter, I didn’t want ties, I wanted that Beijing shirt. It started off at 100 kuai. I said “That’s simply too expensive, my friend bought his for 20.”
The clerk was offended. “20 kuai?! I’ll go poor that way!” So I started walking away. “50 kuai!”
I stopped. She was starting to break. “50? You’re pulling my leg? 20.”
“30.”
“20.”
“35.” I was baffled by the sudden increase and started walking away. Where did she learn to bargain? “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to the store that sells it for 20. Why should I pay more?”
“Fine… fine,” I handed her the 20 kuai, and she gave me the shirt. Rule number 2 of bargaining,
2) You are the Customer, you have the power.
I thanked her and walked over to Chris who was trying on sweaters. The sweaters were decent, but they were all too small. Chris tried to tell the clerk that he wasn’t interested in the sweaters anymore but the woman was persistent. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back, refusing to let this catch get away. This leads to rule number 3 of bargaining.
3) If it gets too intense, walk away.
The lady kept pushing the sweater on him, but we just left and tried blending into the crowds of the market. We couldn’t really blend in, being a full head taller than almost everyone there, but it showed her. We stopped at a new stand and the clerk’s starting price was 20 for the shirt I had just bought. So I bought a Mao T-shirt for 20 and was on my way. One lady stopped us and tried to sell us a jacket. “I have quality brand name jackets. Do you want Peak or Canadian Goose. I also have North Face.” Sophie was cold so Chris gave her his jacket and he was going to get himself a new one. The clerk pulled out a Peak jacket and she showed it to us. “You like? It’s real.”
Chris asked, “How much?” The girl typed 380 onto her calculator and I let out a quick Aiyooo.
“Aiyo?! Why do you say that?”
“It’s too expensive. I’m only willing to pay 100,” Chris said.
“100?! I could buy five shirts for that? Do you really think that this jacket is worth five shirts? No.” She motioned to the wall of jackets behind her, thrown on the wall in a miraculously organized manner. “These jackets are all worth more than that!”
“100.”
“350.”
“120.”
Chris and the clerk went on like this for ten minutes, until they came to the price of 200 kuai for the jacket. The clerk looked pleased, as she got the two 100 kuai bills and Chris and I walked off down another aisle. A lady ran out to us and said, “Look here, only 100 kuai!” She pointed to the exact jacket that Chris had paid double for. We turned around and went back to the lady Chris had bargained with. “You’re a liar! We just went to a stand that was selling the exact jacket for 100 kuai.”
“NO!” the small woman yelled, “She’s the liar! That jacket is a fake!”
“You come with us and we’ll show you that jacket.” The woman glanced down and paused. We waited for what she was going to do next, then she bolted into a crowd and we lost her. We stood dumbfounded by what had happened and couldn’t help but laugh a little. While we were standing there Lauren and Claire bumped into us and we hung out for a little, but they were also shopping for gifts, so we went our separate ways. Rule 4 of bargaining.
4) You can find cheaper.
Chris and I had found what we wanted, so we were wandering the aisles having fun. One woman pulled us inside her stall and tried to sell us woman’s clothing. “You can give them to your girlfriend,” the woman tried to rationalize.
“I don’t have one,” Chris lied.
“Well then, give it to your mother,” the woman said, sensing this would make the sale.
“My mother died,” and Chris went silent.
“You liar,” the lady said and wandered to me who was waiting in the aisle way, “Did your friend’s mother really die?”
“Wha…” I saw Chris nodding behind the woman, “Yes, she just died last week.”
“Liar, buy her some clothes.”
I gasped and walked over to Chris, “Don’t cry, she’s just trying to make a living.” Chris began sniffling and I turned to the woman and hissed, “How could you? Why would we joke about something like that?”
The lady looked absolutely mortified. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” but we were already walking down the aisle. She looked at us and the other clerks were laughing at her. Right before turning the corner, still patting Chris’ back saying “don’t cry,” I looked back at her, gave her the evil eye and shook my head. Her young face was shaken. And then she fell out of view and Chris and I started laughing. We couldn’t control it. This comes to the most important rule of bargaining.
5) Have fun doing it, it’ll lead to some great stories.
We ran into Lauren and Claire again and started talking next to a stand, when a woman came up to us and wanted us to buy something. She said in English, “Get your friends some underwear.” Following rule number one, we cocked our heads to the side and pretended we didn’t speak English. I’m sorry we’re from Spain. Chris and I then convinced her that we were students at Qinghua University and hilarity ensued. Sophie found us again, Lauren and Claire left and we wandered around the market for a little while longer, going up to the fourth floor of the market. We didn’t want to spend any more money, so we headed out. I felt that I had changed a bit after my time at the Pearl market. I walked out of there and looked back at the shoebox of a building and we left on our way to dinner.

A Birthday with Chinese Characteristics

Chris is turning 18 soon. On the 23rd of December to be exact, so his host family decided to throw him a birthday party before everyone got busy with studying for “Midterms” and families start to arrive in Beijing. School let out and I did a bit of homework before changing into something a bit dressier than a track suit. I went to his house at 4:45 and his host family greeted me at the door. They told me he was upstairs so I went up and dropped off my things and started chatting until Sophie got there. We then went down and I began helping his host aunt prepare jiaozi for dinner. I’m awful at making them. The ones that she were making were perfect, like a piece of art, crescent moon shaped and everything that makes jiaozi, jiaozi. Mine on the other hand were like very small burritos. Warren showed up soon after I was told to stop making jiaozi for the sake of the dinner, and then the whole bunch was there. Chris’ grandmother mailed him some balloons for his birthday. We began blowing those up which created a balloon war. There was only the Kitchen which transformed into the dining room/living room, so there wasn’t much space. We ran around and I watched Chris play with his host family as if they were his real family. They joked; the whole scene was heartwarming, if you will. I joined in and it was a blast. Sophie was frosting the cake Chris’ grandmother also had mailed to him, but finished with half a jar of frosting left. So we had yet another game. Chris’ Jiejie, who was supposed to be his Ma, but instead Nainai was Ma…, joined in too. She’s a tall, thin Chinese woman who is a flight attendant. She stole a whole bunch of Air China plastic cups and chopsticks so we could use them for dinner tonight. But I digress; we began smearing frosting on each other’s faces. And it got interesting fast. A game of tag where you know if you’ve been tagged by the white streaks of pure deliciousness left on your shirt. Jiejie ran up and wiped the frosting that Chris had smeared across her on me and I would then wipe it off on Chris creating a vicious cycle. Chris’ other host sister, the 4 year old one, shrieked in the background along with the television that had its volume on too loud. Chris calls her “Xiao Mafan,” or Little Trouble, and even his host family has begun to call her that. Xiao Mafan has a bowl haircut, bad teeth and is slightly spoiled, but says the cutest things like, “I don’t like you,” or, “I’m going to kill you.” How adorable! Chris’ Ma stood in the kitchen making the little circular wraps for the jiaozi. She barely came up to my shoulder and had grey hair. She rolled dough and then pressed it out, over and over again, like a machine. The relationships between his host family is quite confusing. I still don’t know how everyone is related, but it doesn’t matter. There was Ma, Ayi, Ba, Xiao Mafan, Jiejie, and Kara’s sister. They set up a table they pulled from the closet and dinner was under way. They put a huge bowl of jiaozi in front of us and we devoured it. But the jiaozi kept coming. We finished five bowls of it before we were starting to feel slightly full. While we ate, we put on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I tried to tell them that E.T. was in the movie but they didn’t believe me. So when the senate came up I stood up and pointed him out. How could they not know that E.T. was actually trying to phone home to cast his vote of no confidence for the current chancellor? The cake was amazing, we got candles and sang happy birthday to him. We finished that cake and his host family pulled out another one. It was a Pikachu shaped cake. Xiao Mafan wanted to have Pikachu’s left eye and electricity pouch. We humored her, and left Pikachu horribly disfigured. We sat around and talked at the dinner table about nothing in particular, until we went upstairs to watch the movie Sophie had given him as a gift. Art of War II. Never. Ever. Watch it. It was so bad, that we actually laughed ourselves to tears. Chris’ Ba walked by us and began to do the laundry and hang it on the balcony. He had salt and peppery hair. According to Chris, Ba and Ma had been Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, but they looked and acted like normal people. I never would’ve guessed that. The movie finished and we went home, thanking the family for dinner and wishing Chris yet another happy birthday. It certainly was an interesting party. I can’t wait to see what my birthday brings.

The Speech Festival: Professor Weiser or How I Learned to Loathe the Bomb

I prepared myself for the speech festival. I had written it and memorized it four days earlier, but for some reason the flow was off. I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom and preformed it over and over again. All three minutes or so of it, but I couldn’t figure out the problem, when Ma called me to eat dinner. I sat at the dinner table across from Ma, hearing the faint sound of the music I forgot to turn off in the background. There were some scrambled eggs in front of me and a pork and cabbage soup that looked like the trash compactor scene from Star Wars: A New Hope. She placed a white puff of bread, called man tou, in my bowl and we began talking. We got to the topic of weddings and divorces. She said that it’s not seen as acceptable for woman to divorce as often as they occur in America. Before 1927, there were no divorces. They started when Mao was sent to Hunan and made the peasants rise up, as it goes in Marxist theory to get to communism. Women worked in the fields so they had more power than women in the cities, thus creating gender equality… more or less. Divorces were originally seen as a fad and there were a lot of them, but died down and marriage became a thing about commitment. But nowadays, they’re still frowned down upon. If a divorced woman was to get remarried, she’d lose some face. Dinner rolled on and I prepared for my speech even more. It was as good as it was going to get. Time for a good night’s sleep.
I rolled into school earlier than normal. I tend to do that when I’m slightly nervous. The walk to school was almost completely black except for an occasional orange glow flying towards me, only for it to rise up and I would realize it was a biker smoking. I paced the empty halls of the school reciting the lines for my speech. “Lai zhongguo yi qian…” I wanted to fix that because it seemed that almost every single person’s speech from the day before started that way, but it was too late. It was branded into my brain. I passed by the grey lockers countless times, muttering to myself until we met up at the small auditorium. The speeches started up. Jamie gave a good speech. Everybody was giving good speeches. I was starting to get that feeling in your stomach where it feels like something is pressing everything in your torso together. Shi Xiao Ning, or Tsechi, gave her speech and then they called my name. “Shi Hualin from Class four is now going to give his speech.” I walked up to the stage and realized I shouldn’t have listened to the speeches and instead focused on mine. I got up to the podium and looked out at the faces in the crowd. I saw my friends, my teachers, my host mother, but I wasn’t focusing on how many people there were. I began to focus on the empty seats. The places where there weren’t people. I began my speech and shifted from one empty spot to the next so it made it seem like I was looking at people. I had started planning hand motions so that the people wouldn’t see my leg shaking violently. I knew it would, it always has. From my Bar Mitzvah all the way down to my presentation on La Alhambra in Spanish class, it shakes. I got to one line, “And my students were especially loud,” and I couldn’t remember what was next. So I let out a long, soft, “Aiiiyoooooooooooooooooooooooo,” to let my mind think. My mind went back to the hallways from an hour earlier. I was walking right behind myself in this dream, listening to what I was saying. “So I had no choice but to teach them the alphabet…” I waited nervously, still on the tenth or eleventh “o” of aiyo and staring out to a crowd of waiting faces, while walking the halls of the school in my mind. “I found a teacher and asked her to help me.” I was back on topic and finished it up shortly after with, “So my story’s moral, [if you will,] is you should respect your teachers.” I whipped off my glasses and said a few Xie Xie’s and pretended to shoot them off to some of the audience members and tried to walk back to my seat as smoothly as possible. It’s hard when your legs are just beginning to recuperate from being Jell-O, but I managed. We had a ten minute break and I went over to congratulate Nick S. on his speech; it had been funny. He gave me one in return saying my speech had been like poetry to listen to. He had thought my brief relapse into my mind had been me acting on the stage. That worked out a bit better than I hoped. I guess being a recidivist to my thoughts, as I tend to be, made it seem normal. But no matter, I was still on the “finished-with-the-speech high.” We returned to our seats and listened to the rest of the speeches in Chinese. Sam had an interesting speech and soon the festival was over. They dismissed us and we were off to our classes. I had prepared for two days and it was all over in less than four minutes. But it felt good, even if my content lacked… content.

The Mundane Adventures of the Eskimo and the Ninja: All I Want for Christmas is You… And a Better Bootleg Copy of Quantum of Solace

In the morning, Ba, Peter and I had an intense conversation about Alexander the Great and Moses. We sat there and debated over the wooden table, the bowls nearing empty as the debate roared on. If I didn’t know a word, Ba would take an orange peel and leave streaks of citrus on the table to make the character. Ba sat cross legged, leaning over two chairs, and put his hands on the tops of the chairs, as if there were people there to put an arm around. Peter sat hunched over his metal bowl, slurping loudly as he occasionally threw a tidbit into the argument. I sat leaning in the corner, feeling completely at ease, even though the conversation sounded like they were yelling at each other and me. I’ve gotten used to how harsh the language sounds sometimes. The Alexander the Great argument was based on the fact that the Chinese translation is Alexander the Big Emperor. They assaulted me with questions to why there was a translation mistake, and I ended up offering up the lie that maybe it was translated from Greek to English wrong. Ba seemed content with that answer and slowly moved onto the origins of Judaism, which I had to explain, were not in Egypt, but actually the reason why radical Muslims don’t tend to get along with Jews. He only cared about the crossing of the Red Sea though. I offered a theory to explain the crossing of the Red Sea, but quickly followed it up with, “It’s just a story.” My host family laughed at that. Quite the lunch I’d say. I then wandered over to my cha lou to apply to colleges. After a long day of applying to colleges in the smoky tea house and having to bear with an annoying Chinese man watching Semi-Pro at the table across from mine, I left and headed for a quick meal at McDonalds before curfew. I walked in and Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bells and the like were playing overhead. The music finally put me in the holiday mood. I don’t know why the eight story tall Christmas tree at Jianguomen, or the decorations at Xidan didn’t make me oh so ho-ho-ho jolly, but what did was the music at McDonalds. Odd how my mind works. I looked at the crowd that visits McDonalds at 10:30 at night. There were a few business men, a lone girl, head hung over her coffee, but most surprising of all was the young couple at a table, stroking each other and… OH MY GOD… Turning away. I never thought of McDonalds as a place to get festive. I returned home and went to sleep, humming I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.

I don’t want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need. I don’t care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree… It’s that time of the year.

I woke up to the obnoxious ringtone I picked for my ancient cell phone. I jolted up and grabbed it, answering, “Wei?” It was Chris. “Hey you wanna grab some lunch?” I looked at the watch I never wear anymore and it was ten ‘till twelve. Yes, yes I did want some lunch, so I threw on my warm Eskimo jacket and met Chris downstairs. We were off to find a new place to eat. We started discussing some of the problems that we were finding in Beijing as we walked the crowded street of Xinjiekouwai. Our biggest problem was the fact that we have to go out to do something, we can’t just invite people over and relax on a couch and watch movies. But the conversation quickly ended as we walked by a woman carrying a baby in a very odd curly bear suit. Chris and I both looked at each other and then looked back at the kind of woman that would dress her child like that AND THEN take it out in public. The child had magically transformed into a poodle. We both started laughing like madmen, attracting even more attention than we were as the Eskimo and the Ninja. Really though, who carries their poodle like a baby?! We wandered into Beishida University and found a restaurant that Warren recommended to us. We sat down at a table and they brought us half a roast duck and some Jing Jiang Rou Si. We chatted about various things such as school, the upcoming speech festival, my newly donned single status, etc. as people came in and sat down around us, giving us a three table berth. The duck was greasy and I couldn’t believe that my mind had been rewired so that I could eat this type of food. For example, I had eaten a bowl of fat as a meal in Chuxi. People in China, on average, eat 20 to 30 percent more calories per meal than the average American but are skinnier and healthier. I’m slightly baffled how that works out, but no matter. The Chinese sure know how to make the most unappetizing things tasty. We left and didn’t want to go back to our houses and thusly homework, so we decided we were going to buy a movie and watch it. We didn’t care that there was still homework to do and it was Sunday. We were going to indulge in some American activities. In the movie store, a woman was arguing over the incredibly “high” price of seven kuai for a movie while her pug sat next to her in a bumblebee outfit. People around town have started dressing their pets up in sweaters and other clothes. I’ve seen more emasculated men avert their gaze from me as I see them walking their white Pomeranians wearing a turtleneck down the street. But back to the movie store, we found Quantum of Solace, shelled out our seven kuai and were on our way to Chris’ house to watch our bootleg copy of the movie. I enjoyed it, up until the part where they were falling out of the plane and then landed in some sinkhole and the movie credits went up. Wait? Did Bond die? Nope, bootlegger was lazy. We went back to the store and exchanged it for a new one, which didn’t even get to the plane ride. So we just listened to Christmas music and talked in Chris’ room. It was nice. Going out is fun, but every now and then I need a break. Apparently so do other people.

Oh my, it’s almost Christmas and I can’t get All I Want for Christmas is You, the My Chemical Romance version, out of my head. And when is Hanukah? Just so I don’t feel like a bad Jew when I’m asked again.

The Cold

I looked outside and saw a blue sky, the sun shining brightly, leafless trees with no wind bullying them around. I walked out and it felt like I’d been punched by the air. I wouldn’t call it brisk, I’d call it a dry cold, one that burns the inside of your nose the longer you stay in it. I quickly fumbled for my headband and wished I’d brought my ski mask. I started the walk to school, my bones creaking like the sound of water on ice. My breath hung lifelessly, like a ghost, in the air next to countless other ghosts left by other people. By the time I walked into the school building, my fingers felt like they were blistering from the cold, but the warmth of the building permeated my skin and they started tingling without fully regaining the ability to feel. The cold has arrived and it doesn’t even look like it. It feels like summer if you don’t see the trees.
***
School ended and Gavin and I were off to work on the English scavenger hunt to find the dying parts of Beijing, such as the hutongs, trees, parks and all the wonderful places that represent the disappearing past of China. The ultimate goal was to meet up with the people who are fighting against the construction, showing a public voice emerging from the depths of a socialist country. An opinion. That’s what I was searching for. Ok, that is a bold faced lie. I was searching for a warm coat. I couldn’t take the cold anymore. We were really off to Xidan to buy a coat, the one with the furry hood that makes you look like an Eskimo. It’s all the rage in Beijing. We strolled down to the Jishuitan subway station with the wind. I was still wearing my six layers of clothes so I was warm, but it was too troublesome, tai mafan le, to actually wear that much. And to actually do the scavenger hunt, we needed to move quickly and comfortably. We arrived in Xidan and wandered through the underground mall, searching for bargains, but to no avail. Everything was quickly out of our price range, so we wandered to the streets and found a stand and bargained two jackets for the price of 2/3 the price of one. Oh how I love the power of bargaining. I put it on and I felt odd. Maybe it was the feeling of numbness and cold leaving my body, or maybe I felt even more like a part of the city. Gavin and I both felt it, we both felt we had undergone some ridiculous quest that made us part of a larger group. It felt good. Now we had our coats so it was time for the scavenger hunt… or yet another distraction. The cold only bit at my fingers now. My headband was no longer necessary; the fur just hugged my head and was so comfortable and warm. Gavin got a call back for that internship he applied for at a company to help teach Chinese to people. We got in a cab and went to the 15th floor of the building, and they invited us both into the meeting, even though I wasn’t there for the job. They talked in Chinese and I understood but couldn’t respond. Not that I would anyway, it was Gavin’s job. It felt like a big company thing, sitting around an oval table, the business people were all dressed in their work clothes and we were dressed in jeans and our newly purchased coats. It was a funny sight, but we composed ourselves with dignity. I walked out for the personal interview and soon enough Gavin was out with an internship. We went back out to the cold and wandered back to the underground mall. It was time for the arcade to celebrate. We found a Dance Dance Revolution machine and Gavin went to town on it. He’s as good on that as I am on Pump it Up. We danced with some Chinese kid and drew quite the crowd. Not just teenagers, but adults and kids too. People dragged their dates away from what they were doing to watch us dance. Why don’t people in America do such romantic things with their dates? The building was hot, and I decided to finally take off my coat and stop looking like a moron dancing in the Eskimo coat. By the time we finished there was a semi circle of people around the machine, all staring blankly, until one of us would say to a person, “Bu hao yi se,” or how embarrassing and then they’d smile. We left and headed back to the subway station, fighting the cold with our coats that blended into the crowds and went our separate ways in the subway. The walk home was into the wind, and it ripped and tore at my fingers. The cold gets fierce at night. Wait… there was a scavenger hunt. Whoops.