disalarming

I never noticed how dependent the US is on the concept of customer service until I came back from China.

Take my first two days back in the US, for example. My first night, my friend and I went out to dinner at a place that served all-American food. (The sandwiches were delicious. I think part of the reason why I loved mine so much was because there was so much cheese on it!) While we were there, neither of us had to shout “服务员！” to get our waitress’ attention. All we had to do was make eye contact and… bam! She would appear at our table. Hell, sometimes she would come over and ask us how we were doing without being prompted to come over. It was like magic. Not to mention totally unheard of in China.

My second day in the US, my friend and I went to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. The portion sizes! I’ve always thought the Cheesecake Factory served massive portions, but after a year of eating smaller portion sizes I was completely wowed by the hugeness of my chicken piccata. (I was very hungry though, so I managed to eat a lot more of my food than I thought I would. That’s something, I guess.) This waitress, like the one from the night before, kept coming to our table and asking us how we were, how the food was, etc. At one point I was getting rather annoyed with her attentiveness; I just wanted to be left with my friend and my food in peace! I’ve grown so unaccustomed to any form of attention or care from wait staff while dining out that it was alien to have this helicopter waitress hovering over me. I was also quite sad to part with the money required for a 20% tip when it came time to pay the bill; I’d forgotten about tipping.

Another weird thing is toilets. For one, squatters are pretty much non-existent in the US. I’m neither here nor there on this, as I can take or leave a squat toilet. But what I can’t get over is how there are toilet paper dispensers in each stall! Not only that, BUT THERE IS ACTUALLY TOILET PAPER IN THE DISPENSER! Most toilets in China don’t even have a dispenser for toilet paper. That might seem strange, but when there’s never going to be toilet paper in said toilet dispenser, it seems a bit useless to have the dispenser.

…never in my life would I have imagined I’d devote an entire paragraph to the topic of toilet paper in a blog entry.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I feel like I am the only person in the US who did not go to the midnight premiere of Harry Potter last night, but I don’t even mind because I know that if I had gone I would have just passed out from jet lag while waiting in line before the movie even started. I hope the movie is good though, because I do have plans to see it in the coming week.

Having said that, I almost am recovered from jet lag. Which is nice, because I am not even close to recovering from the reverse culture shock. One thing after another, I guess. Although, weird as it is to not be in China anymore, it is good to be home. I’ve seen my best friend, I’ve gone to Chipotle, and I’ve watched the Food Network. Maybe today I’ll even bake something.

I miss China terribly already, as I knew I would. It’s not that I feel a part of me is missing; it’s that I feel there is a huge part of me friends and family won’t (possibly ever) be able to 100% understand.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

The cities I visited in central and southern China were arranged as part of my study abroad program. We visited Luoyang, Xi’an, Chengdu, Longsheng, Guilin, and Yangshuo. Most of what we saw were historical landmarks (such as the Shaolin Temple and the terracotta warriors) and everything we saw was beautiful (such as the scenery in Guilin and Yangshuo).

Highlights include:

Exploring ruins at the Shaolin Temple.
Tandem biking along the city wall of Xi’an.
Visiting the Panda Research Center in Chengdu. Panda cubs are so cute!
Eating spicy hotpot in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. Sichuan, for those who don’t know, is basically a world capital for spicy, spicy food.
River rafting in Yangshuo.
Eating absolutely delicious Guilin noodles in, well, Guilin.

Photos behind the cut.

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Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

“Manda, by the time you leave Beijing you’re going to be known as that crazy white girl.”

So said my brother, and I’m afraid to say he’s probably correct. In the last few days I’ve been in Beijing I’ve gotten into more arguments than I care to remember with locals. Most of them have to do with them trying to rip me off and me not putting up with it – I am practically a local, after all, and I know how much prices should be! One taxi driver tried to charge me 200RMB for what would be a 30RMB cab ride! When I called him out on his bogus “deal” he had the audacity to be offended by the fact that I called his offer ridiculous (and that I flat-out called him a cheat).

Of course, not all has been crazy; I’ve had some lovely encounters with locals that remind me of the Beijing I’ve fallen in love with over the last year. I had one taxi driver who sang along to Beijing opera-style music in his car (I normally hate Beijing opera, but he sang along so happily that I couldn’t help but warm to that particular song). I had a few friends who befriended my brother and I when we went out to snack on 羊肉串 (chunks of lamb roasted on a stick with spices) for a midnight snack. But still, no matter how many wonderful people I meet, every time I call out someone attempting to cheat me I inevitably end up looking and sounding like the crazy one – I am the white girl shouting in Mandarin Chinese and giving locals a run for their money in bargaining, after all!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

My year abroad has almost come to a close; come July 11 I’ll be on a plane to Chicago. Right now, I look and feel as though I don’t have a care in the world – I’ve got my headphones on, typing away at my laptop, sipping a green tea frappe. But inside, I’m terrified. I’m terrified of what things will be like when I go home, I’m terrified of finding how I’ve changed as a person (what was that quote about finding out how you’ve changed when you return to a place that hasn’t changed at all?), I’m terrified of the reverse culture shock… well, I’m terrified of everything.

So I decided to write an ode to China as a way of trying to tie together all of my experiences. I wrote it as best I could, but I still don’t think this ode does my year abroad justice. It’s a start, though.

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Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I got a Groupon email today for a deal at a spa in Washington, DC:

Like cars, human beings require occasional corrective bodywork, custom finishing, and fresh coats of wax to avoid being towed away and crushed into a cube. Keep your chassis classy with today’s Groupon: for $61, you get a spa and massage package at The Spa Room (a $123 total value). The package includes the following:

A 30-minute massage in the style of your choosing (a $60 value) as well as one of three massage enhancements—the birch back cleanse, garshana silk-glove exfoliation, or the wild-rose facial cleanse (a $15 value).

After a year of living in China, that doesn’t sound like a good deal to me. 60USD (approx 390RMB) for a half-hour massage with one enhancement?! Right around the corner from my apartment in Beijing is a massage parlor that offers amazing one-hour full-body pressure point massages for 88RMB and one-hour full body oil massages for 138RMB!

I’m not going to want to pay for anything when I return to the US. Everything will seem way too expensive!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

This summer, apart from traveling, I was going to intern in Beijing and teach English in Shanghai. Initially, I struggled between which employment option to choose: interning, or teaching. Then, I found some magical way to incorporate both into my summer by interning the first half and teaching the second half. And then… complications arose and the whole plan fell apart. Except for the travel component, thank GOD, or else I would have had nothing to show for my summer besides lazing about and not using my hard-earned Mandarin skills.

Interning fell through not because I wasn’t a viable candidate or anything like that. In fact, I had pretty much secured the position, which was no small feat seeing as it was at a world-class PR company’s office in Beijing. However, the issues that arose were not to do with me, but with my Chinese visa and housing. I had contacted the company expressing my interest in interning through my study abroad program in Beijing, who conveniently forgot to mention that 1) I would require a student visa to intern, 2) They would not be providing me papers to renew my student visa, and 3) They also would not offer me any housing. So, thanks to no student visa and no housing, I had to decline the internship opportunity. Frustrated doesn’t even begin to cover how I felt when things came crashing down.

Teaching fell through for a myriad of little reasons, unlike interning. The school was incredibly vague on how much I would get paid, and how much of my working hours would be paid (last official thing I heard was that I would be paid three hours per day, but expected to be at the school and work for a minimum of six). They also wouldn’t cover any visa or visa travel-related expenses (a Chinese visa costs around $140USD for an American citizen, and to “renew” a double-entry or multiple-entry visa one must leave the country). Getting in touch with the school officials to confirm anything about the job was like pulling teeth – at times, it was altogether impossible. Not exactly the most promising work environment. Also, since the teaching gig was at the very tailend of my summer in China, I would have to piece together alternative living arrangements for the rest of the summer since the internship fell through.

In the end, I’m simply going to be traveling with family in China until mid-July. Then, I return home to Chicago for two weeks to pack up my things and move out permanently to my apartment in Washington, DC. After I celebrate my 21st (August 23rd!), I kick off my final year of my undergraduate degree. Needless to say, there are a lot of major changes coming up in my life…

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

July 11.

Peking Capital Airport to Chicago O’Hare.

It’s so strange to think that in a month, I’ll be home. I don’t know how I feel about this. A part of me never wants to leave Beijing…

(Obviously, this means I’m not interning or teaching in China this summer. But an explanation about how both plans fell through for unrelated reasons tomorrow – still in shock about this ticket home.)

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve spent the last week in Yunnan Province, China, checking out the famous cities of Lijiang and Shangri-la. Yunnan is beautiful, and it’s not hard to see why so many tourists, both foreign and Chinese, travel to Yunnan for sightseeing.

One would think, though, that with so many tourists there would be a more centrally coordinated tourism industry in Yunnan. (I guess this applies to China as a whole, but I’ve noticed this infinitely more in Yunnan.) If there is one, I have yet to discover it. My time in Yunnan so far has been riddled with haggling with van drivers over the cost of getting from Point A to Point B, hidden extra fees at random checkpoints at sightseeing locations, and other not-exactly-above-board procedures.

When I went to the Tiger Leaping Gorge, I experienced all of these and more. After I got dropped off by a bus at the gorge’s entrance, I immediately got approached by two people who offered to take me to the middle section of the gorge, where there were hiking trails and guesthouses to stay overnight in. These private vans were the only way of getting anywhere in the gorge, and of course there was no standard price, so I had to bargain my way to a fair price.

Once I got to the trail, I was charged for using it as it was apparently privately maintained by a family who resided in the gorge. When I had hiked down the trail, I was charged yet again for using the returning portion of the trail as that was allegedly maintained by a different family!

The bus I left Tiger Leaping Gorge on was also fairly sketch and I was overcharged by 5RMB, but by that point I was so glad to be off that cramped, sweaty, smoky, fly-infested bus that I didn’t care.

The lesson I took away from my time at Tiger Leaping Gorge: traveling in China is generally cheap, but shoestring budgets will be hard to follow as so many make their living with these not-exactly-above-board methods!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

In a city where breathing the polluted air alone is the equivalent of smoking three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day, I’m pretty surprised I haven’t come down with any lung-related ailments yet.

Beijing, I love you, but fact that I am passively smoking about a zillion packs of cigarettes a week¹ has me worried I’ll return to the States with a set of smoker’s lungs!

The air pollution, combined with the amount of secondhand smoke I inhale when going out at night, is most definitely damaging to my lungs in every possible way. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

In a remarkable change to my summer unemployment dilemma of 2009, I have two very excellent employment options for this summer. The only problem is that I have to choose which one I want; due to the location of each position I can’t do both.

As I would say in Chinese, 怎么办？(“What’s to be done?”)

Option #1: Interning at a PR firm in Beijing
Internships are obviously a great thing to have listed on a resume, and interning at a first-class PR firm in Beijing would be pretty damn amazing. I’d get tons of work experience in my field and also get to know what the industry is like in another country, and how PR strategies and such differ from country to country. As a full-time intern, I’d be fully immersed in my work environment and would have awesome opportunities to improve and expand my skill set. This internship would be the most related to my field out of all the work experience I’ve had so far.

But there are cons, of course. I’d be an unpaid intern, and I’d have to cover living expenses out of pocket. I also wouldn’t be able to use much, if any, of my Chinese at my internship because of the nature of the company and my position. Yes, I would still be able to use my Chinese in daily life, but not being able to use it (or improve it) in a professional setting is a little discouraging.

Option #2: Teaching English just outside Shanghai
I have never taught English before, but I would make bank doing so in China. The teaching gig I’m looking at is a pretty sweet deal, too. I would get paid to teach and receive free room and board as well as free Chinese lessons. Three of my friends are also considering this employment opportunity, so it would be all of us working at the same school this summer.

My issue with this is that it is not in Beijing, a city I have grown to love. It isn’t even in Shanghai either, but right outside it. I like everything that a big city in China has to offer, so I am a little skeptical of how well I would adjust to not living in the city.

I have to decide between one of the two soon, and I have no idea how I am going to be able to make this decision. Input, anyone?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Glorious food days are hard to come by in China. This is mainly because by now, at roughly six months into my year in Beijing, glorious food days have come to be defined as days that involve eating copious amounts of cheese. Obviously, these are hard to come by unless I want to fork over hundreds of RMB for small blocks of cheese. But my day of exploring Tianjin was a glorious food day beyond all glorious food days, largely in part due to visiting Little Italy.

Breakfast

Two pork 包子 (steamed stuffed buns)
White grape juice with aloe

Lunch

Fried mozzarella on toast
Gnocchi alla sorrentina¹

Teatime

Chocolate cream mochi

Dinner

Korean barbecue (beef, pork, lamb, assorted veggies, etc)

Dessert

Cheesecake ice cream with graham cracker crumbs and Heath bars²

Needless to say, I had an excellent day traipsing around Tianjin. While one full day is ample time to see the city, for the food alone, I would definitely consider going back again. And again. And again. And again…

This was positively smothered in cheese. Not to mention the restaurant we went to gave us a dish of grated Parmesan in case we needed to add more cheese to our food. I have not seen a plate of grated Parmesan since leaving the States last August! [↩]
This was from COLDSTONE! Something else I haven’t seen since leaving the States, although there are several Coldstone locations in China. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve been in China since late August. Needless to say, I’ve come a long ways in terms of adjusting to Chinese daily life and social norms. Nowadays, I get asked for directions, I drink bubble tea on an almost daily basis, I am spoken to solely in Chinese by everyone around me that isn’t foreign… the list goes on, but essentially, I’m feeling more and more Chinese as the days go by.

Today, I took a major leap in becoming a true Chinese.

I made a 人人网 account.

人人网 (Renren Wang, or just Renren), is China’s version of Facebook. And just like how practically everyone in the US has a Facebook, practically everyone in China has a Renren. It was only a matter of time before I signed up for one.

(Sidenote: My signing up for Renren may or may not have been motivated by an experiment to see if I would be granted “star status.” From what I understand, “star status” is given to active users of Renren. One of my [American] friends uses Renren regularly and has been rejected for this status on the grounds that he has a fake account; that is, his profile picture is not really of him. So I may or may not want to see if I am more successful than he is at becoming a star user… ahem.)

It’s been a struggle trying to navigate the site, as I can’t fully understand how it works. It’s a lot like Facebook in terms of set up and function, but it’s different enough that, combined with the fact that the site is not in English, it has me wondering whether or not I’m ever going to be able to use the site properly. Still, it’s been fun trying to figure it out. Right now, I only have one friend on Renren – but hopefully that number will grow…

Now, all I gotta do is sign up for a QQ account and then I’ll really be able to get new 关系 going!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

It has come to my realization that I have not done any traveling since arriving in Beijing this semester. I might have been in Beijing for only a month so far, but in study abroad speak, that’s a long time. Hell, I didn’t even manage to go to Pingyao during Chinese New Year (or anywhere else, for that matter). Unlike my friends studying abroad in Europe, who seem to be planning glamorous vacations to places like Italy, Portugal, and Austria, I have been spending my days in Beijing, doing the same old thing day in, day out.

Well, no more. I have spent the majority of today browsing good places to travel to in China that are affordable and can be done in a weekend, as my class schedule doesn’t allow me to travel on week days. It’s surprisingly hard to find places that are interesting and that I haven’t been to already, but I did manage to come up with a small list of cities I absolutely must visit before my time in China is up.

Tianjin
Fuzhou
Qingdao
Yantai
Dalian
Dali
Kunming
Lijiang
Lhasa
Urumqi
Nanjing
Harbin
Hohhot
Chongqing

Now that I have a list of places I want to go, it’s time to figure out when is the best time to travel. Then comes buying cheap plane/train tickets, booking hostels… oh, and finding friends to travel with! Any takers?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Ah, Shanghai and Hangzhou. The first of my many adventures during my year abroad in China (this was way back in August!). These adventures and mishaps provided a crash course into the Chinese culture and way of life. I visited these two cities with my best friend and together we saw a ton of stuff and had a fantastic time.

Highlights include:

Going go the World Expo!
Visiting famous sights in Shanghai like the Bund, the Pearl Tower, etc.
Eating the best steamed dumplings of my life in the Yu Gardens (Shanghai).
Hiking this rocky trail in Hangzhou that led to a beautiful view of West Lake and the city skyline.
Visiting Zhujiajiao for an afternoon, a water village outside of Shanghai.

Photos behind the cut.

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Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

It’s 7a.m. on a Monday morning. It’s the second to last day of vacation for Chinese New Year. Where would you expect a group of American college kids studying abroad in Beijing to be?

Why, at the local foreigner-friendly pizza parlor, watching the Super Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers, of course!

For many of us, it was our first taste of Americana since leaving the States to study abroad in Beijing. We watched a live stream of the U.S. broadcast, and while we didn’t get the commercials the Super Bowl is famous for, we still got U.S. commercials. It was so weird to watch U.S. television; the last time I had seen any U.S. television was in mid-August, back when I was in the States. I had forgotten how outlandish some commercials in the U.S. can be (although I did like Volkswagen’s commercial about the new Bug).

I gotta say, there’s nothing like nachos, pizza, French fries, onion rings, and beer while watching American football at 7am. (Yay day drinking!) I am a little sad that the Packers won, though. As a Chicagoan, I was rooting for the Steelers on principle!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve mentioned before how displeased I was with the layout of my room in my apartment. The room is pretty decently sized, but the way the furniture was set up did not maximize the space at all. In fact, it minimized it, if that’s possible! I was constantly tripping over the desk/bed/bedside table/desk chair/etc, simply because there was not enough breathing room.

Today, I decided to take matters in my own hands. I rearranged everything in my room and organized all of my things so that everything would be neat and orderly. And I’m pretty proud of how everything turned out.

This is the view of my room when you walk in. My room was designed for double occupancy, but I actually have a “single” as I have no roommate. So I have two beds and two closets, but it’s just me using the room.

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Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

(Or find at an affordable price. Or in a form that remotely resembles what I can find back home.)

Pillsbury buttermilk biscuits
Doritos
Kraft Mac and Cheese
Parmesan (or pecorino romano) cheese
Bagels
Cream cheese
Pesto pasta
Blueberry muffins
Cheetos
Pop tarts
Chipotle
Red velvet cake

This list could go on for quite a bit but now I’m getting cravings for foods I won’t be able to have till I return Stateside in July/August. Sigh.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Class all day, homework all evening, studying all night… ah, my second semester in Beijing has truly begun.

It’s a strange feeling of deja vu. It’s a new semester, with a higher level of language classes and new textbooks and new classmates and new kids in the program – but at the same time, it’s like going through the motions all over again. The only thing that’s really different is the people; I miss my good friends from last semester. Oh, and the weather is different too. Beijing is cold!

If last semester was anything to go by, I’m going to be run off my feet in the next few weeks until everything feels routine-like. Or, I decide it’s time to give myself a break and give myself more time to go out and be social rather than be shut up studying all the time. (I’m only like that during the week, though. I definitely take the time to enjoy my weekends!) It’s also hard to find time to spend on the Internet when it’s even more difficult to find a good Internet connection. Oh, China.

I seem to have already lost the ability to string together two coherent sentences in English. My goodness. I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say. Except that hi, I haven’t died, I’m just insanely busy as per my life in Beijing!!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

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The Tip of the Reverse Culture Shock Iceberg

Jet Lag and Other Things

Travel Recap: Central and Southern China

That Crazy White Girl

Ode to China

I Think I’m Becoming a Cheapskate

How Everything But Travel Fell Through For My Summer

Officially Going Home

六四 (6/4)

The Tourism Industry in China is Lacking

Smoker’s Lungs

Employment Options for the Summer

Tianjin: A City of Glorious Food

人人网：A Leap In Becoming a True Chinese

Bitten by the (Chinese) Travel Bug

Travel Recap: Shanghai and Hangzhou

A Taste of Americana in Beijing

My Room in China

Food I Wish I Could Find in China

Back to the Grind

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May 2020

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