Pandaland

I promised you 熊猫, and 熊猫 are what you're going to get!

熊猫 means panda, and I spent last weekend in Pandaland, AKA Chengdu. Of course, I didn't go to Chengdu just for the pandas, though they are worth a trip in and of themselves. Chengdu, located in Sichuan province, is known for having the tastiest and spiciest food in the country. Plus, the surrounding towns have some interesting tourist sites that draw in big crowds.

Who's that random girl?

This was an impromptu trip to say the least. I had just finished lunch with a friend and I went to a popular "laowai" cafe (a cafe where mostly foreigners go) to get coffee and do some lesson planning, when a nice German girl struck up a conversation with me. After chatting (procrastinating) for quite some time, she told me about her upcoming trip to Chengdu that weekend, and how sad she was that she had to go alone. I told her how much I wanted to go to Chengdu, but how I couldn't find anyone to go with me. So, completely spur of the moment, we booked flight tickets to Chengdu together and began planning our trip... for which we left four days later.

Even though we had just met, Berrit and I had a really wonderful time traveling together. I arrived very late Friday night (Saturday morning), and then woke up really early to get a head start to Leshan. Leshan is a nearby town (two hours by bus) where you can visit the Grand Buddha. The Buddha, built during the Tang Dynasty, is 230 feet tall and is carved into a giant riverside cliff. For a small fee, we could enter the park and see the buddha from the top, then wait in a long line to climb down and see the buddha from a better vantage point.

Damn that's a long line.

Along the way, Berrit and I met three older people traveling from Canada and Liverpool (two were married and the third guy was the wife's brother.) We ended up spending the whole day with them. I was really impressed that they climbed down the stairs at the Grand Buddha, they were really difficult even for me!

While still in the Buddha park, Berrit and I went to go check out a temple. At the top, a Tibetan woman was preparing to pray. Berrit struck up a conversation with the man who was with her (she didn't speak any Chinese) and we ended up getting a picture with her. It was really interesting to hear her speak and watch her pray.

Some other Chinese ladies insisted on hopping in too.
Ruined my picture or made it better? Not sure.

After seeing the Buddha in the park, the three older travelers wanted to take a boat ride so that you can see the Buddha from the best vantage point: the water. Not really sure if it was worth the money, but they wanted to do it so we joined them.

But at least I got to wear a cool life vest

We didn't get back to Chengdu until really late, but Berrit and I had already planned to go to a Tibetan restaurant. Even though it was 9 PM, the five us walked to the touristy temple area and found this back alley Tibetan place. Although the restaurant was next to a well-known youth hostel, we were the only foreigners. It was us and the monks. And the food was incredible! The only thing I didn't like was the yak butter tea, but I'm glad I tried it because it's so typical Tibet. It was salty and gross and ew. The rest of the food was great, and unlike anything I had ever had before... even the Tibetan food I had tried in Beijing.

Made me want to yak 

The next day, Berrit and I just walked around Chengdu. We went to three tourist sites that were each about a 30-40 minute walk from the previous one, so we had a route with destinations, but we also got to wander a little bit. We went to a monastery, an ancient tomb, and a Taoist temple (which was interesting because I had only been to Buddhist temples in China before.) We also stopped at a famous Mapo Dofu (spicy Tofu) restaurant and had the most delicious mapo dofu I've ever had. It's one of my favorite dishes in China, so I was pretty excited to eat it.

At the monastery 

"Only above ground tomb in China."
Big woo hoo for you, above ground tomb. 

Taoist monks look really different from Buddhist monks. That hair!

Monks in training

THE BEST! 

Our older travel friends from the day before recommended that we see a Chinese opera performance that could be booked from our hostel (we were all staying at the same hostel, believe it or not.) Even though Berrit and I knew it would be really cheesy, it was a fun experience and I'm glad we went. There was a man who played the arhu (a traditional Chinese instrument) and scenes from a traditional Chinese opera. There was also a man who, for some reason, did these weird tricks with a bowl of fire on his head. He was supposed to be a "stupid husband" and there was a woman who was supposed to be his exasperated wife. Even though they spoke with an extremely strong Sichuan accent and I couldn't understand a word of their dialogue, their body motions made it obvious that they were a typical comedic arguing couple. The most amazing part with the Sichuan "face changing" and "costume changing." Within a blink of the eye, the performers changed the mask they were wearing from happy to sad, then from green to red, then from full mask to only an eye mask, it was crazy! One guy changed his whole costume, from black to red to gold to green. I still have no idea how they did it.

Chinese opera 

Dude with a bowl of fire on his head. Why, just, why? 

There was also an AMAZING shadow puppetist. Puppeter? 

Really amazing.

Day 3 was the day that will go down in China Doll history: Panda Day. Our panda tour left at 7:40 (with transport and the price of the ticket, it was actually cheaper to go through our hostel) because the pandas are most active in the early morning. By 10 AM or 11AM, they settle down for a nap, which usually lasts the rest of the day.

Seeing the pandas was AMAZING. There are no words. I almost cried in the panda nursery, I just really love baby pandas. Really, really, really love baby pandas.

I had been going back and forth between whether or not I wanted to pay the exorbitant extra fee and actually hold a panda. But in the end, I was convinced by my family and friends and the fact that I am sometimes a little too frugal for my own good (as a child, I saved my tooth fairy money for a car. I was seven.) And oh, my friends, it was so worth it.

OH. HAI

CUDDLEZ TIME

U DA BEST

I CAN HAZ PANDER?

OOOOOO

I LUV U

Believe it or not, that's actually a toddler panda, not more than two or three years old. They grow up so fast... literally. I am so glad I got to hug a panda, I feel insanely lucky.

When the pandas settled down for their nap, we headed back to the hostel. Berrit and I, along with the two other people on our panda tour (a boy from Canada and a girl from South Korea) went for Sichuan hot pot. Even though Berrit possesses truly phenomenal Chinese language skills, she accidentally ordered us the second most spicy hot pot, instead of the second least spicy hot pot. Sichuan food features these little spiceballs called "Sichuan peppercorns." They literally numb your mouth. The hot pot was so spicy that I felt like I had just chugged Seltzer mixed with pop rocks. Or maybe like I had done the exploding Coca Cola with mentos experiment in my mouth. I've never eaten such spicy food in my life. It was, in a word, amazing.

Afterwards, we walked around the biggest temple, and the touristy street next door. Even though we were still full, we went to a Xinjiang restaurant for dinner, and she got to try Da Pan Gie (big chicken dish), another one of my favorites. From there, I went straight to the airport for my flight back to Nanjing. Unfortunately, the flight was set to arrive in Nanjing at 1 AM, giving me just a few hours of sleep before my 7 o'clock bus to the satellite campus for class. Even more unfortunate, the plane left 1 1/2 hours late, so I was especially tired for my Tuesday class, but c'est la vie. My trip to Chengdu was totally worth 95 minutes of sleepy teaching.

Big plate chicken, amiright?

I wanted to go to Chengdu for the Buddha, the pandas, and the food. And I was not disappointed at all. Another amazing place China Doll can check off her China "to visit" list!

Here are some more pictures of pandas and food. Just because.

Sichuan peppercorn breakfast 

PANDA PILE 

The red pandas (no relation to actual pandas) walk right up next to you!

熊猫

Some kind of doughy sweetness thing

Yummy noodle soup breakfast. Also super spicy. 

Pineapple rice

Busy Girl

I dislike complaining about being busy. I try not to do it, because everyone is busy and there's no use comparing and competing to see who is busier. So please don't misinterpret my next statement: Man, I've been busy!

On top of creating my year-long syllabus for the students, I have also begun Chinese lessons again (twice a week now! Though I hope I can eventually see her three time a week), started my private tutoring and teaching at Rise, hosted visitors to Nanjing, AND went to visit a new city. I've been all over the place lately. However, I have a ton of awesome stories and pictures now, which I can't wait to show you.

Unfortunately, I got back from the Nanjing airport at 3:30 AM this morning. Then I woke up at 6 AM to catch the bus to the satellite campus and taught a 95 minute class. I dragged myself to Chinese classes and did so much grocery shopping I could fill a bunker and live for a year after the smog takes over China.

I am very sleepy.

So in an effort to provide you with something, I now present my final Grinnell Corps report. "But aren't you done with Grinnell Corps?" you might ask. Yes, yes I am done. But I hated the fourth report that I wrote last May and meant to rewrite over the summer and I just kept procrastinating until it was already September. But my first week in China I had an experience that inspired me to write something that felt right, that really encapsulated my Grinnell Corps experience. So enjoy! And check back throughout the week for lots of new posts... especially if you have a fondness for 熊猫. 

China Moment 一

I love China moments. And lucky me, I get to have them pretty often.

For example, today I lost my scarf. It's not really chilly enough to wear scarves yet, but when I'm riding my bike my neck sometimes gets cold. It was an awesome, brightly colored scarf with "Dia de los Muertos" style skulls all over. I bought it last year at the Hankouxi Lu Night Market. I must have dropped it while I was walking (bike in tow) with visitors from Shanghai, my mom's college friend Joan and her two kids, Kyra and Cullen.

I checked around the cafe where we were, but I think I must have dropped it before then. I was bummed. And my neck was cold. So on my way back, I happened to bike past that very night market where I bought my scarf one year earlier. A stall with tons of scarves caught my eye, so I pulled over. I picked out one of the only scarves that wasn't covered in fake Louis Vuitton logos or crazy hot pink Hello Kitty patterns and asked how much it was.

26 RMB. That's approximately $4USD. "Can you make it cheaper?" I asked her. She suggested 24 RMB. I suggested 18 RMB. We settled on 20.

So I walked away with my new $3 scarf. I put it on right away, and my neck was nice and toasty. I actually think this scarf is softer, prettier, and matches my coat better than the skull one did anyway...

It wasn't really a China moment specifically, but it was definitely some kind of moment. The moments that make me smile. The moments I want to remember because they're so short and sweet but I often don't. Walkin' away with a super cheap, really beautiful scarf that I bought on a lark, on my way home.

Here, China Doll demonstrates two extremely fashionable ways of displaying her new scarf.

Which is better? China Doll... fashion extraordinaire...

China Doll's New Bike

Remember that girl who got lost in Grinnell, Iowa? The small city with numbered streets?

Remember that girl who had to wear a cast for the 3rd grade Newscasting Session because she hurt her arm on a bike? That girl who hurt her arm on a bike when she gently love-tapped a shrubbery?

A shrubbery, for crying out loud.

Well, that girl got a bike. It was not her brightest of ideas.

Living at Hohai University has some large advantages over my location from last year, the biggest (and maybe only) advantage being my large living space and beautiful tree-lined campus. The most drastic change is the location. Last year, my dorm was in an extremely centralized place. There were tons of buses that ran frequently from the bus stop across the street. And the food... oh the food...

Even though I am only a 25-30 minute walk away from my old apartment, the change feels drastic. There are no buses that leave from the back gate (close to where I live) and there are only a few buses at the front gate, which is a 10 minute walk at least. Plus, the major construction nearby hinders the bus routes, and has demolished a lot of the business near my apartment (including restaurants.) The lack of convenient buses and shortage of good restaurants made the idea of getting a bike appealing. I decided to go for it.

Lela and I took the bus to Tangzi Lu, the street in Nanjing known for selling cheap, second-hand (read: stolen) bikes. I've noticed that in China, there are often markets where everyone sells exactly the same thing. It's useful when you're going to buy something specific: a lot of  merchandise are centralized in the same place. It also makes it really overwhelming, since there are so many options. When my mom and I went to the Pearl Market in Beijing, it was just stall after stall of the same pearls over and  over. Just pearls for what seemed like eternity. That's what Tangzi Lu looked like.

Even though there were bikes for days, none caught my eye. Immediately, Lela picked out a pink Giant bicycle, which she able to bargain way down. But I was still on the hunt. After a few failed attempts (the "salespeople," which I put in quotes because it was basically just people selling bikes on the side of the road, weren't willing to bargain) this lady came up to us out of nowhere. 

"Buying a bicycle?" she asked in Chinese. She waved at us to follow.

I thought we were going to the visible side alley with lots of bikes lined up along the brick wall. Nope. We went further into the alley, twisting and turning. I found it hard to believe she could even wheel a bike back there it got so tight. Finally, we arrived this little hole in the wall with 20-30 bikes lined up. On the other side, some old men were spray painting bikes army green and attaching a wagon to each one. No idea.

I found a bike I liked, but again, I was having trouble getting it at the price my Chinese friend had advised me not to go above. Tired and frustrated, I ended up paying 10 RMB more than "the highest I should pay at Tagzi Lu" but included was two locks and two bells (one for me, one for Lela.) I figured Lela deserved a bell after all the haggling she did for me and after all the indecision I put her through.

Now came the scary part. Buying a bike meant biking home. Having not ridden a bike in over a year, it would have been nice to start out on the Hohai campus, biking up to Shanghai Lu, my old stomping grounds. Nope. I had to bike from a new place during rush hour traffic.

It was trial by fire, to say the least. I discovered that when the bike was going downhill at rapid speed, the breaks were not as useful as on a new, American-sold bike. Lela and I followed the bus route back to her school, then I biked home from there. Even though I led the way for awhile, I could not have done that without Lela.

There it is!

My purse just barely fits in the basket...

The next day, I biked to the technology market to retrieve my unlocked iPhone. That was a huge win for me. I had no idea where I was going and I was riding by myself. Apparently, the way to Zhujiang Lu is a "bike lane" that is actually also a pedestrian walkway, so I had to do some impressive bike maneuvering and bell ringing.

As scary as riding a bike is in Nanjing, having this bike is a lifesaver. What it saves me in time and money it gives me back in heart attacks and conniptions. Bikes seems to follow their own traffic rules here: sometimes they follow the vehicle traffic and sometimes they act more like pedestrians. The only thing I'm yet to perfect is the left turn. It's not super intuitive...

I hope that having a bike will help me learn the city better. So far, I really love it. This China Doll isn't as fragile as she seems—biking along the traffic-ridden, law-unabiding roads...

She's Back!

SHE’S BACK!

That’s right boy and girls, your favorite rambling, hyper-observant China Doll has returned to the place where it all began: Nanjing, China.

I will be teaching oral English at Hohai Univeristy, one of the many colleges in Nanjing. I live about fifteen minutes walking distance from where I lived last year, so even though I do not know this specific area terribly well; the areas I do know are not so far away.

China Doll has not had the easiest of transitions this time around. Last year, any homesickness or disgust was masked by excitement and newness. Since I had already lived here, I expected to feel fully moved in and ready to go as soon as I arrived, which was, of course, not the case. My university apartment needed a lot of hardcore cleaning (I wish I had taken before and after pictures, it was insane.) I’ve also killed, well, let’s be honest, had someone else kill four roaches so far. Even though I have sheets and more furniture now, I still need to go to Ikea for kitchen supplies… and then furniture on which to keep those supplies. Right now, I don’t think about much else than getting food into the apartment (but away from the cockroaches) so that I don’t have to worry about where I can go for my next meal that isn’t a huge inconvenience. I also don’t think about anything other than getting internet, which is supposed to happen today or tomorrow, but since it’s China I’m trying not to get my hopes up.

My expectation was that since I had already lived in Nanjing, I already had things figured out. I haven’t felt like going out and exploring this new area because I thought of this as “coming back again” not as “coming back anew” and it irks me that I have to relearn everything: where to buy fruit, where to bank, where I can get free WiFi. I quickly realized that my new home is pretty far away from everywhere I’ve needed and wanted to go, even for groceries, so I have decided to buy a bike. The thought of biking in Nanjing totally freaks me out, but I think that it’s necessary.

To be honest, my first week here was miserable. I get choked up thinking about how badly I wanted to go home. This is my sixth year living so far from my family and friends—it will be my sixth Rosh Hashanah without Grama Minnie’s apple cake, my sixth Thanksgiving without my family, my sixth year of missing birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, graduations, and the little things that other 20-somethings who live close to home get to experience. I know that I’m lucky that I get to live abroad and have different, unique opportunities, but I still get that nagging feeling like something is missing. Especially considering that after this summer I could have said, “screw China” and remained in the states, (probably) employed and close to home, this transition was even more difficult than I could have ever anticipated.

That being said, I’m back. And I can’t complain about how much I want to go home when this year is filled with possibilities. I have loved seeing all my friends from last year, and one of my close Grinnell friends, Evan, moved in with me last week. I am already getting psyched for my first upcoming holiday break. I can’t wait to start lesson planning and to meet my students. I am excited for what this year holds, but I’m also afraid that I won’t take advantage of my time here. I’ve been so reluctant to leave my comfort zone in my first week back: I am yet to explore the campus and surrounding areas. So readers, hold me accountable! If I’m not updating with awesome stories on the regular, tell me to get my butt out of my apartment…

China Doll signing off the first of many posts to come!

By the Way...

Right now, I'm sitting in my living room, rereading my blog in anticipation of my return to China. I've been emailing back and forth with my new supervisor these past few days, which has kind of gotten me back into the mindset of China life. I am having an amazing summer career-wise (find out more here), with my family/friends, and with my one true love, food, that it will be hard for me to return. I would seriously consider staying in the US for longer, but I know once I'm back in China I'll be happy that I returned. But basically, I'm feeling a bit sad about leaving the US. Hence: reading through my blog.

In doing so, I realized that I totally forgot to tell you that I figured out the lyrics to my students' twice daily outdoors exercise routine!!!!!! 

Twice-daily exercises look like this...

Here is the original post, from October 2012...

A little Wednesday treat for you:

Every morning and afternoon, the students of Nanda Fu Zhong do their outdoor exercises and it's really a sight to see. Unfortunately, YOU CAN'T SEE IT because blogger is not permitting me to upload the video. However, I will share with you my own lyrics to this exercise song. It is in Chinese and it gets stuck in my head with alarming frequency, so I have created my own English version so that I can sing along. It begins... "I've been around the world, haven't any pearls" but climaxes with this lyrical chorus:

Ay ay ay there are noodles in the sky

I like to eat them
bottles in the sky

Ay ay ay I'm a dragon in disguise

in magazines and

bottles in the sky

ayayayayayayayayay, ay hunters eat some pie
ayayayayayayayayay, ay Christmas in July

Pure poetry. More soon, I promise. China Doll

Excellent, right?

So here's the thing: the song is actually in English. MIND BLOWN!

Interested=Piqued

It's called Butterfly*. It's by SMILE.dk. It's weird. Here are the actual lyrics:

I'm searching for a man
All across Japan
Just to find
To find my samurai

Someone who is strong
But still a little shy
Yes I need
I need my samurai

Ai yai yai
I'm your little butterfly
Green black and blue make the colors in the sky

Ai yai yai
I'm your little butterfly
Green black and blue make the colors in the sky

I'm searching in the woods
And high upon the hills
Just to find
To find my samurai

Someone who won't regret
To keep me in his net
Yes I need
I need my samurai

Then it's just Ai yai yai over and over again, alternating "Where's my samurai?" with "Little butterfly." Interestingly, the link I used via youtube has lyrics that are MUCH clearer than the version NDFZ used in the exercises. I assume what I heard was a Chinese cover.

Anyway, mystery solved. No dragons in the sky, just colors in the sky. Much less exciting. China Doll is disappointed.

*FYI, if you can't make it through the whole youtube video, the two girls get abducted by a butterfly-shaped UFO with two buff Asian guys. Just sayin.