August 28

Today, I’m going to catch you up on yesterday. First, as a disclaimer, I am writing this as a means to multi-task since I do not have a lot of time to spend writing emails AND writing in my journal, so when I do have time, I will transcribe the emails I send to you into my journal. This means I may go into a lot of description about my day and how I felt about certain things, to help me remember everything later. Plus, it will help keep my emails exciting to you even though they will most likely all be miles long!
Anyway. I awoke, surprisingly, at 5:45AM and was completely awake (I thought I would sleep like a rock all day) but since there is limited hot water, I had to wait until 6:10 to take a shower. There are four hot water times throughout the day—in between those times, there is only cold water.
Abby and I walked to breakfast, which was a hardboiled egg, some veggies, and a white rice roll. Decent enough, although the roll is ridiculously bland. After lunch we met with our Chinese coordinator, Kelly, who was to take us on a tour of the city. We were going to take the bus into town (a five minute ride) but there is construction on our street so we had to complete the fifteen minute trip on foot, which was fine by me because it would allow me to see the city from a different perspective. Because there aren’t really sidewalks here (just side streets right off the main street) we walked down the road. There were small shops one after the other, all marked with Chinese characters and earth stains. We passed a small daytime market where practically everyone sold seafood (live) or meat (uncooked). There were baskets of clams and buckets of crabs and whole fish stretched out on slabs of stone and large chunks of bright red beef. It stunk of seafood and dirt, and this strange, indescribable smell unique to China. Everything smells like it, whatever that smell is. It’s pretty much seafood and dirt and body odor; it’s not an awful smell, but it isn’t pleasant, either. Even the clothing or bedding section of a supermarket smells like this.
The locals stared at us as we passed, and one little boy even pointed and shouted excitedly to his parents, probably saying something like, “Look, Mom! Americans!” He ran back into the house to grab her attention and pull her toward us. For the most part, the Chinese are a shy people and will not engage in conversation or interact with you unless you act first. Which is why Kelly told us to always smile and say hi to everyone we see: If we’re nice to them, they’ll be nice to us, and then “they will love you!” 99% of the time, the person’s face will light up like I just gave them an Americanized clothes dryer, free of charge, when I simply say “nee how” to them. It’s very encouraging, actually.
As we walked to the bank, Kelly showed us the post office and various places with night markets that open at 6PM. I’ve heard tell that the night markets are the place to go to get great deals on things. I will have to check one out sometime.
At the Bank of China, I exchanged my American cash for yuan and then took out yuan from the ATM. My bank charges me a $5 transaction fee plus 3% of whatever I pulled out, so I took out the largest amount I could. Yuan is very colorful (and stinky) and all have the profile of Sun Yat Sen (I think that’s his name), the leader of China. Or the communist guy that was in charge of turning China into what it is now.
When I came out of the bank, I found my group talking to a Chinese man and a Chinese crowd circling them, spectating. Adam, the only single guy in my group (Scott is married to Kailey; both are here) has taken a year of Mandarin and could communicate fairly well with the man. The man had taken on the common Chinese fad of lifting his shirt up to reveal his belly (a large amount of Chinese males do this—some don’t even wear shirts, even in stores) and seemed to be very interested in Adam. We all assumed he was drunk by the way he was acting and, according to Adam, by how broken even his Chinese was. And this was at about 9AM.
One Chinese lady asked if she could take a picture with us (and the drunk guy) and several other people came up to us and tried to communicate in broken English. Random bystanders took pictures of us. We really felt like celebrities, just for being Americans.
Here was where we saw our first Chinese baby butt—sticking right outta its pants. Some babies do wear diapers, but most just have their butts exposed to the world and their mothers will just hold them out when stuff starts to come down on them. One of my girls said she saw a baby wearing a diaper but it was visible through the hole in the back of its pants. Many babies’ butts are covered by cute dresses, but I would assume that underneath they are exposed.
The supermarket was just down the street from the bank. It’s super crowded and noisy, with blaring American and Chinese pop music, and the incessant flow of Mandarin words coming out of countless peoples’ mouths.
This supermarket had almost everything you could need, from bedding to flower pots to dishware to hangers to the most adorable and stylish wide-brimmed hats I had ever laid eyes on. If not from the supermarket, I will own a hat like that before I leave China.
I decided to buy the necessities there and wait until the night markets and the Pearle Market in Beijing to buy random souvenirs, as they will be immensely cheaper there. Cami told me that an umbrella at the supermarket for 25 yuan was a rip off, even though it’s only about $4.50 in US dollars. So I bought shampoo (my bottle is completely in Chinese, so I had to find one that said “Shampoo” in English so I could compare the characters), toilet paper, hangers, some traditional Chinese snacks, a bed sheet, and a peach juice drink Cami claimed was amazing, all for about $13.
When I exited the supermarket, I once again found my group surrounded by Chinese spectators, who were simply staring at the Americans for no particular reason, as my companions were just standing around waiting for the rest of the group. We’re just so popular we can’t help it!
We boarded the bus and headed for our next stop: Big World, as Kelly called it in English, a gigantic shopping center, the heart of downtown Weihai City. To ride the bus, it’s only 1 yuan, which is about $.20. Our bus was a stick shift, and the driver even stalled it once at a bus stop. People would swarm onto it until we were all pushed up against each other, until it was almost too close for comfort. I could only imagine what Central and South American buses must be like.
In China, if you’re the bigger vehicle you totally rule the road. Our bus forced people into other lanes and out of the road by speeding up and honking the horn angrily. I nearly witnessed a few fatalities. People—unintelligently, I think, considering how people here drive worse than Utah drivers—jay walk up the kazoo. It’s not illegal and it happens constantly—we even did it a few times throughout the day to speed up our travel time; cars cut each other off all the time.
Big World is amazing. There are shops everywhere, but we went into one of the larger buildings that is filled with smaller businesses, like a shopping mall in the States. The upstairs floor was, and I’m not kidding, AT LEAST 85% shoes. Hundreds and hundreds of shoes—and not just any shoes. You can buy Toms and other ridiculously expensive brand name shoes for about ten dollars—of course, they’re knock offs, but who could tell? There are also the most incredibly fashionable shoes I’ve ever seen, with bows and buttons and ribbons and bright colors and unique styles that no one in the States would have, except for me when this trip is over. I will invest in a pair or two of these amazing shoes, though I will not wear them here in China.
The women here, for the most part, love to dress up. Countless wear adorable and very nice dresses and heels around town, like Sunday best best, even when just shopping or getting lunch at the cafeteria. The irony is, I found, is that they all dress so nicely, but the city is so filthy that they appear out of place to me. I would never dress up to go around this town, especially not wear a pair of irresistible heels down the dirty sidewalks that babies poop on and old men hock loogies on. (No lie there.)
But that’s just me.
We had limited time, but several of us plan on returning to Big World when we have lots of time to blow on window shopping. Or, er, real shopping. Whatever happens happens.
We then proceeded to walk to the port. We were all definitely quite a spectacle, 19 Americans hiking through the streets carrying toilet paper, laundry detergent, pillows, and everything else we had accumulated (I wasn’t the only one to purchase necessities) over the day. I commented on this to Kelly, and she assured me that we didn’t need toilet paper to get people to stare at us: they would stare at us anyway. How reassuring.
Our destination was the Happiness Gate, a monument on the Weihai coast line. It’s a gigantic “picture frame” or “door frame,” a gate to happiness. Before it is a large copper mound inlaid with Chinese characters. The Chinese believe that you will always be happy if you walk on all of the characters. Kelly says she is always happy, so it must be real. I made it a point to step on all of the characters.
The Happiness Gate was on my “To See” list before I even arrived here; I saw it on Wikipedia for Weihai. At night, the edges light up in bright rainbow colors.
At this time, we decided to head back to the school. Most of the group left early, and Adam, Maren, Mizzy, Katy, and I decided to try out the Chinese Pizza Hut down the street. One of the best ideas ever. The menu was much more elaborate than it is in the States, with smoothies and milk shakes and seafood dishes and unusual pizza. Mizzy, Maren and I shared a New Orleans pizza, with tomatoes, chicken, onions, mushrooms, and lots of cheddar cheese. There was no red sauce, or any sauce as far as we could tell, but it tasted incredible—perhaps because we had eaten so much rice and too many bland rolls lately.
(To be honest, I have actually been surprised by how tasty the food at the school is. I pick over some parts of the meals, but there has always been one selection on every tray that has been delicious, and I discovered that if you dip the rolls in the sauce, it tastes amazing and is usually an easier alternative to chop sticks. I am not eating as much as I am accustomed to, however, probably because the food fills me up so quickly due to all the white rice that expands in my stomach and I find I become hungry much quicker than I did in the States. At this time in my story, we have not been served anything horrendous—some dishes are actually ridiculously tasty, consisting mostly of rice, vegetables, and meat. Think Panda Express but wetter and less sweet.)
We had a fun time getting to know each other and learning each other’s backgrounds. Katy should receive her mission call while she’s here in China; Mizzy (Maren) is from Missouri and so we call her Mizzy to differentiate her from the other Maren (both are 19); Maren goes to BYU and is like my new best friend (she was my housemate in Utah before we flew out); Adam is 20 and is at the U getting his bachelors in International Studies with a minor in Arabic and a minor in Mandarin. Everybody, including the Chinese, thought he was Indian (Middle Eastern Indian) but really he’s El Salvadorian.
After dinner, we decided to hail taxis because it would take too long to get to the bus station since the last bus comes at 6:10, and it was 6:04. Kelly had claimed that all taxi drivers would understand if we told them to take us to Daguanghua, the name of our school. Adam, Mizzy, and Katy went in one taxi and Maren and I took another. Our driver only spoke Mandarin, not even a lick of English, and had no clue what we meant by Daguanghua. He drove us around aimlessly for a few minutes, yelling in Mandarin. Now and then he’d pull over and write characters on his hand and point at them, as if we had any idea what he was saying or what the characters meant. Like we should know. (Maybe we should, actually.) He was not nice at all about it and I’m certain he called us a few choice Mandarin words, until Maren told him we were getting out. We paid him for our troubles and got out on the sidewalk where we were. Kelly was supposed to give us her business card with all the school’s information on it, but hadn’t yet and so we had nothing to go off except Daguanghua, which apparently wasn’t enough.
We were downtown and the sun was setting fast, and the anxiety was setting in. I knew Maren was very distraught, and I understood the gravity of our situation, but for some bewildering, perverse reason I wasn’t that scared. I think I had a naivety about me, thinking, “Wow, I come all the way across the world to CHINA and my first night on the town I’m lost in translation. This is AWESOME!” I guess I felt like I was in a movie, or that this was all part of the experience. I had the same thought as when Abby and I found cockroaches in our freezer: “Welcome to China.”
I did keep a prayer in my heart, because deep down I knew I didn’t want to be sleeping on the streets. We hailed a second taxi, and the driver had no clue what we were talking about, but the third one seemed to have an idea. With growing desperation, we climbed in.
This guy drove in a confident manner, and we felt we might have just lucked out. Finally, we began to recognize our surroundings, and after a fifteen minute or so ride we pulled up in front of our school. After paying our driver, who was the biggest sweetheart and was so kind to us, and xiexie-d the crap out of him, we hurried into the school grounds and felt like kissing the security gate or the nasty sidewalk. I said, “If it wasn’t illegal, I’d praise the Lord aloud right now.” I kept my offerings of gratitude in my heart.
Hurrying to our apartment building 230 stairs away (we counted later, see pictures), we were never so happy to see our group. Apparently, however, they had just as hard a time as us and had just arrived before us. Adam had finally understood the driver saying “school” and took his word for it.
I vowed never to leave the school grounds again until I had Kelly’s card in my pocket for reference.
It was an altogether exciting experience, one Maren and I will one day look back at and laugh. The day, overall, was actually quite fantastically mind blowing amazing.