Ten Thousand Water Bottles

I recently had the joy of shopping in China with a couple of the other foreign language teachers; Kirstie from Britain who is teaching English, and Ruud from the Netherlands who is coaching football (Soccer.) Kirstie was leading our trio as she knew were the shops were, and our adventure started at one of the massive malls of Shijiazhuang.

I say one of the massive malls. Really, there isn't any other kind here. Every one of the four malls I've visited thus far has been at least 4 stories, and two of them contain movie theaters. And there are at over a dozen such malls just in this city, which has only been on the map for ~70 years. To give you an idea of these scale, the mall down the road from me, known as the White Mall, is perhaps twice as large as the FSK minus the department stores, and it's still bigger if you include them. The one across the street from the White Mall (Theses malls are a stone's throw from each other) is a bit larger, and has a supermarket in the basement that is only a bit smaller than the Weis outside of Middletown.

On this trip, we were not at the White Mall, or its neighbor, we were at... the name escapes me. It sounded like a poor imitation of some English word. But, I'll call it the Blue Mall for now. The Blue Mall is a slightly more vertical mall than the ones near me, and it managed to set aside an entire floor for restaurants. Above the restaurant level there is a fountain, an ice-skating rink and a theater. All on the the top floor, 5 stories off the ground. The architecture was rather impressive.

Kirstie and I rendezvoused with Ruud and got lunch at a Subway in the foothills of the behemoth. The menu and food were just like you would expect in the states, which is something I'm finding to be common of western franchise restaurants. However, they do make odd changes to the menu sometimes. The day before this shopping trip, I found myself eating a Mcdonalds double-patty'ed bacon burger. With salad dressing on it. If it weren't for the dressing it would have been a great burger. So, though some places and items are the same, do not assume that they always cook to Western tastes.

After Subway, Kirstie told us there was a pretty cool gift market and a Walmart nearby. Since I was interested in market and Ruud and I both needed stuff from Walmart, we decided to visit both.

However, between us and the market, there was a street where there is nothing but stores, and those stores sell nothing but water bottles. Nothing but water bottles. Tens of thousands of water bottles. It was quite a sight for the first ten stores, but after fifteen I began questioning the reality of the situation. How could these shops stay in business, when they were crammed in, shoulders touching, selling the same product? Why didn't anyone on that street sell something else, like perhaps lunch boxes to go with the bottles? Why was this altar to the great diety of all water vessels here in the first place? Did a dozen merchants decide that, due to some freak economic phenomenon, water bottles were the most profitable product to put on the market, but only if they all went all in? No one may know. Maybe it's just an ancient tradition that every merchant on that block must sell water bottles. And they did have an impressive gamut different styles of water bottles; metal ones, plastic ones, wooded ones, gold ones. Some looked like expensive vacuum sealed gold-plated thermoses, others were translucent colored plastic that would probably shatter if they were too full when they got dropped. But, in spite of this diverse spectrum that fully explored all possible extant water bottles, some shops still sold the same bottles!

After passing the amazing water bottle street, we arrived at the market. I mostly planned on looking about and window shopping, and this was the perfect place to do it. A lot of the shops sold art and decorative pieces, which were the perfect combination of cool to look at, but never tempting enough to buy. There were some amazing pieces in that place, like large glass spheres, some at least a foot in diameter, that were hollow and painted on the inside. The Chinese take on a ship in a bottle, and no less beautiful. There were large wall 3D paintings; carved sculptures that portrayed traditional Chinese scenery, such as gardens and ancient battles, which were made to be mounted on one's wall. I plan to go back to that place to buy some souvenirs, and I'll get some pictures then. There was also a shop that sold nothing but lighters, so I got a cool flameless one for about 4 dollars. It uses a Lithium battery and the same Nicrome wire that you'll find in a toaster to act as a lighter, so it's TSA safe. Here's to hoping that cheap lithium battery doesn't turn the flameless lighter into a very flame-ful lighter when it's in my pocket. (Don't freak out, I did dismantle the device and made sure everything was secure. I don't expect to come back with any burns.)

After the market, we went to the Walmart to get some real shopping done. I was a bit surprised that this Walmart was laid out differently, and bore signs with very different designs from the ones at home (Other than the Chinese characters, of course.) I sort of assumed, due to their franchise nature, that all Walmarts would be extremely similar. Also, of course, their stock was very different.  For example, they have live fish in tanks. And they sell, just like every other store in this area, no other soda but Coke, Sprite and the Pepsi equivalents. Oh, and Fanta: Orange and Grape. No Root Beer, Mountain Dew or Dr. Pepper.

At this point, I'm starting to lose hope that there is any Mountain Dew in this country. I used to drink a bottle nearly every day, including the day I caught my plane, and now I have to go cold turkey. Unless there's some kind of foreign market that imports 'exotic' beverages, like a soda other than Coke, I may not have another Dew for the next 3.75 months. I hope I don't go into withdrawal or something.

We finished at Walmart without catching sight of whatever the Chinese equivalent is to "the people of Walmart," and took a cab back to the school. Just like any self respecting cab in China, it had no seatbelts and the cabby was not shy of his phone while driving.

I've never shopped in a city before and I'd say my first time wasn't a bad experience. But I think there is something tragic to it: for all those thousands of water bottles, there was no Mountain Dew to fill them with.

P.S. I did actually take a couple very short videos, which you can see in this gallery.

"I only have a few hundred, will that be enough?"

In the last entry, I established that I converted $100 while I was making my torturous journey through the airport. For the time being, that money, about 560rmb, did nothing more than lend me some peace of mind; I at least had the cash to deal with problems, even if I didn't have the communication skills. Turns out, that money didn't even help much the next morning when I was looking for breakfast, but just having it gave me the confidence to look (I had a meeting to attend, and I spent too much time stumbling around asking, in broken Chinese, where I could find some food, so I never actually found food.)

But, finally, the time came to employ my Mao dollars (So named because of the image of the terrible dictator staring into the soul of anyone spending or recieving this legal tender.) The opportunity was lunch with the other English teachers; my first meal in China.

The other teachers are pretty cool people, and they were happy to bring me along as they had lunch together. I was happy just to get something to eat, having eaten nothing since an in-flight meal about 21 hours prior. But, as we approached the restaurant, I became a bit nervous. Just how expensive is it to eat out in China? I imagined only the wealthy could afford to pay someone to cook for them.

"Hey Maggie, how much does it generally cost to eat out?" I asked the teacher walking next to me, "I've only got a few hundred."

She laughed and said, in so many words, that was more than enough.

So that was the last I thought about the money until the end of the meal.

I mostly left the ordering up to the other teachers, since they had eaten here before and knew the menu. I noticed that they ordered about one entrée per person, and some bowls of rice, but when the food arrived, and it arrived one dish at a time, the servers would just put the dish in the middle of the table. Everyone ate out of the same bowl, sometimes transfering food to their plate, sometimes just eating straight off the serving dish. I wasn't too shocked by this, having heard about this kind of thing from travel shows, but what really surprised me was the water.

All the water was as hot as tea, nearly too hot to drink.

Of course, I heard, this is normal. Evidently, the Chinese think it's healthier to drink hot water. But, even more interesting is the fact that they perscribe it to treat most minor ailments. Apparently, drinking hot water is more powerful than either Advil of Chicken Noodle Soup. One of the teachers even reported that a friend who had a bicycle accident was told to drink more hot water to help with her injured foot.

After getting over the idea of hot water, I came to reach some kind of appreciation for it, and decided to try drinking hot water for a while to see if it helped digestion or something. But, one thing I still haven't come to appreciate is the total absence of bread. None of the dishes served in that meal had bread or were breaded, and even the noodles weren't doughy. It wasn't until the next day, yesterday actually, that I ate any bread, and that was in the bun of a western style chicken burger. As a sandwich loving American, and one with a taste for breaded deserts, I'm starting to seek out more bread-based foods, which I hear are sold in the foriegn-foods corner of a local supermarket.

So, the communal, breadless meal was washed down with hot water and it was time to pay the bill. Because every dish was split, the bill was divided evenly, and my part came to a total of 28rmb, or about $4.50. Mind you, this was a filling, multicourse sit-down meal in a nice resteraunt. And it cost less than a Big Mac Combo in America.

I have since discovered that this trend holds true with almost all food in this place. Sodas are regularly $0.50, entrees at resteraunts can start as low as $2, and I estimate that most grocery store products are 80% or less what they would cost in the States. And the food is good too; I've attached a picture of some really tasty, thin-wrapped dumblungs I got for $0.90 from a local café.

It's awesome that food is cheap, especially since I need to do some experimenting to figure out what I like to eat. And before you ask, the price difference cannot be chalked up to smaller portions; serving sizes are the same and the differential is too large to be covered by small change in portion anyway.

So, it turns out, my "few hundred" is plenty to live on until the first payday, even if I eat out every day and buy some supplies for my dorm. Reducing the posibility of financial crisis may not be especially intersting, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Anyway, as 'boring' as having enough cash may be, the students here definitely make up for it. But, I'll have to tell you about them next time.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles. And Buses. And Feet.

Ironically, while I was writing this post, which concerns the many inconvenciences of my passage from the airport to the school, all my progress was lost. Which was an inconvenience.

I don't really feel like working hard and writing everything a second time, so I think I'll be lazy by trying to summarize everything in snapshots.

After the easy passage through Dulles and the great flight I had, I guess the world felt I'd had it too good.

I got off the plane and my contact wasn't there.

Maybe she's further along? And everyone's going that way anyway...

Time? 3:32. My flight was scheduled to arrive eight minutes later. I missed her because I was early.

Maybe she'll pass through this space, holding my name board for some reason, and I'll see her amongst the hundreds of people.

That was stupid, I shouldn't have waited for 20 minutes. That was really stupid.

At this point, I have estimated my carry-on luggage weighs a total of 35 pounds, spread between a backpack and a large should bag, which is trying to remove my arm very slowly.

I moved on to a large area with even more people in it, in complete chaos. Which line? Which desk? Why doesn't this payphone work? Why can't I connect to this wi-fi?

I think it would be really smart to stand around for another 10 minutes, see if I can figure this out....

Nope! Can't figure it out. But maybe this guy speaks English.

He does!

I borrowed the man's phone, called my contact, Amanda, and handed the phone back to the guy because I could barely understand what she was saying. Her English was great, but she couldn't make heads or tails of what I was describing when I tried to tell her where I was.

And he handed it to his daughter, who spoke Chinese into the phone for a few minutes in case Amanda understood that better.

Eventually we reached some understanding, and the man said I should get to Amanda in about 30 minutes, I just had to go through immigrations and baggage check

What a liar! It's been 45 minutes and we're still in line at immigration. That line was slower than any line at any convention I've been too. Well, except maybe Otakon 2013 pre-reg. But that was just longer.

Finally made it to the immigration officer, but she has decided that the passport photo I took in December doesn't look like me, and she needs my driver's license and a superiour officer to make sure I'm me.

On to baggage claims. I mean, on to the train to baggage claims.

In PEK Airport, there is a desk where you are told which carosel your bag is on,  but there's only one person maning it. And she's occupied with the long-winded senile Chinese lady who has chicken-scratch notes instead of a boarding pass. I'm fairly certain, given the lenght of their discussion, that old lady had enough to say to write fill her own blog post. Exasperated, I finally present my boarding ticket and  the person at the desk tells me where to find my bag. Hey, Old Lady, What's so hard about that?!

It's kind of amazing to me that I had the presence of mind to notice the currecny exchange, and change $100 into about 600 Yuan. I felt better once I had some usable currency in my pocket.

And now that I had my wheeled suitcase, I could use it to carry my shoulder bag!

And now I've found Amanda!

From here, the journey became way easier. Erica, the other student from America, and I followed Amanda to the bus, which took about 2 hours to get to the train station. The ride was a welcome respite after the hell-ish 2+ hours in the airport, especially since I was finally relived of my luggage for a while.

I got some sleep during the bus ride, but I didn't want to rest too much in case I started onto the wrong sleep pattern. Fortunately, very random firework displays helped me stay awake.

I mean, very random. I swear there was at least one in the middle of the street, and another so close to a building, I'm surprised they didn't break a window. And these weren't kiddy sparklers either; they were short range star-rockets.

I guess I fell asleep for a bit, inspite of my efforts and fireworks, because the clock kept jumping forward until we arrived at the train station. Amanda presented our tickets and passports, and the three of us ran to catch the train in time.

Amazingly, the train did not have accomodations for luggage, so it was rather ackward fitting the volume of 3 humans, plus many cubic feet of Erica's and my bags into the 3 train seats.

This high volume became a problem again when we got off the train and into a taxi, but we managed to fit all three of us and some luggae across the backseat. It was a cramped, thankfully short ride to the school. I got a bit worried when the cab driver answered his phone, and started checking his WeChat voice messages while driving, but Amanda assured me this was normal.

Finally, at ~9:30 PM, 6 harrowing hours after landing, I walked through the East Gate, at the Shijiazhuang Foriegn Language School. Now, all I need is a map of the school, a schedule of my classes, some details on my classes, a towel so I can take a shower, Dinner, water and some sleep. Oh, but I do have Wi-Fi!  

From Above Russia

This is a VERY long plane ride, so in addition to the email I sent out, I'll also compose a blog entry! Note that some details may change between when I'm actually writing this, and when it is actually posted.

Currently, I am miles above Russia, but you wouldn't know it form the view. Everything is as white as Trump's ideal America. That's not too much of a bummer though; a mother that wanted to sit with her children displaced me, and I sacrificed the window seat for some epic footroom. Given the 1 Shade of Grey weather, it was not a loss.

And the window isn't the only form of entertainment on this plane anyway, even in Economy. Every seat has a little TV in it, and every TV has access to an surprisingly good selection of movies. An hour into the flight, I settled in watching The Martian with Chinese subtitles on. Then the drink trolley came through and gave me a Sprite and I got to thinking, "If this is what it's like in Economy, how ritzy is it up front?" But, I imagine the First class crowd doesn't take kindly to the gypsies from economy checking out their digs, so I'll just have to look it up when I have internet.

The accommodations are not the only interesting thing, my fellow passengers are pretty cool too; as you would expect, the clear majority of passengers are Chinese, at least 80%. I've not flown very much, but I think Chinese are great people to fly with. There's only been one crying kid (The one I switched with) but he wasn't that bad despite being the row next to me, and his mother hushed him within a few minutes. Also, boarding was a breeze; there was no drama that I detected  and everyone moved efficiently to their seat. And, except for the baby, the flight has been almost silent. 

So, I mentioned that I watched The Martian. It's an amazing movie and nearly brought me to tears. If you liked Gravity, or if you liked ANY Matt Damon movie where he's rescued, you will love The Martian (Oh, look at that, they also have Saving Private Ryan. United Airlines must love Matt Rescue Movies.) The native Chinese man sitting next to me is also watching an intersting movie: 90 Minutes in Heaven. I know China has really lossened up on their religious controls, especially in recent years, and I'm glad even older, first generation Chinese are embracing Christianity. And I want to add some more details for context; the man didn't watch the movie "on accident." While I was talking to him, his English is very good, he revealed he is a Christian, and I saw he's carrying a prayer guide. (Later in the flight, this man, Jay, and I exchanged contact details. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with his number, since I don't plan on going to the city where he's staying, but I guess it can't hurt to have contacts in China.)

I'm glad that I sat next to this man, not only becasue I learned some stuff about China and had a good conversation with him, but also because he unconciously showed me that being a Chrsitian isn't a problem in China. Not that it should ever be.

Now, I should probably try to get some sleep before I land; if I don't, I'll end up staying awake for about 24 consecutive hours, after 4 hours of nervous sleep the night before. That certainly would be 100% interesting.

(After writing this, I got up and looked out one of the widows and discovered that the view had cleared up a lot, and was pretty cool. )

I have discovered there is a lot more stuff that I need to do than I thought. In hindsight this should have been obvious, and maybe it was at some point, but  once again, that evil enemy procrastination has claimed me as a victim. Just to recap:

Things I have done:
Cleaned 40% of my room.
Packed some of one of my bags, but I may need to re-arrange it.
Thought about a VPN.
Taken care of my phone situation.
Told everyone I'm going.
Bought fabric and thread for a suit I would like to have tailored while I'm there.

Things I've not done:
Refreshed my Chinese skills.
Downloaded Chinese Music/ movies.
Taken care of my money situation.
Prepared my best Scout uniform for the Court of Honor I'm having before I leave.
Prepared my remarks for the Going Away Party I'm having before I leave.
Researched the cleanliness and health-safety situation of the city I'll be living in.
Made copies of any of my official documents.
Studied a map of the place I'll be staying.
Memorized the name of the place I'll be staying.


Some of these incomplete items are fairly unimportant, for instance, I'm sure I'll have no trouble getting Chinese music and movies when I arrive. And some of these items won't matter after a certain time, like whether or not I have my uniform and speech ready. And I guess, except for the money and documents, leaving the rest of these items incomplete will be nothing more than a hassle once I get there. And that hassle will actually make the 100% interesting trip even more interesting.... so, maybe I should just forget about those items and save myself the stress.....

100% Interesting

This blog will serve as a journal of my trip to Shijiazhuang (SJZ), Hebei, China.For those who have not heard, I will live in the city of 12 million for 4 months, teaching English to children around 11 years old at the Shijiazhuang Forging Language School.

Oddly enough, that one sentence is entirely full of things I have not done before; Leave my house for 4 months? Teach English? Live in a city? And I intend to start doing all these things in China, which is almost on the other side of the world. In light of this, everyone has started asking me how I feel about the trip, and after going through every response I thought they wanted to hear, I settled on, "I feel like it will be 100% interesting," to let them know I have almost no idea how to feel about this.

But this line is not just a response to the constant question, I really mean it. After long consideration, I have decided that once I get to China, almost no part of my lifestyle will be quite the same; obvious things like food, routine and language will be drastically different, but so will little things. I will need to switch service providers just to use my phone, or maybe even by a burner phone just for emergencies. Teachers in China regularly wear suits while teaching and I've always had  panache for t-shirts. And everyone in China inexplicably uses this app called WeChat instead of normal text messaging, so I'll be using it too. But though these omnipresent changes may be disorienting when I arrive, I plan to make sure they are not stressful. Not just by anticipating them, which helps immeasurably, but by adopting the mindset that they will be 100% interesting.

In my experience, and I am certainly not unique in this respect, perception is based on translation. Though I expect to suffer some shock upon my arrival, I will try to say "This is interesting," more than I'll say, "This is different," or "This is not right." Come to think of it, I should probably figure out the Chinese translation of this phrase, I initially thought it was "很有趣" [Very funny] but it may be "很有意思".[Very interesting(?)] .

But enough about my feelings and coping mechanisms; I have one more thought for this first post. This blog is called So Jo Chang, a legendary-level mis-pronunciation of Shijiazhuang from a very important person in my life. For the record, it's pronounced Ssii Gee-ah Jew-aang (ssiii is said like 'is' backwards, and pronounce 'Jew' like 'Draw') . Though it is not an easy set of sounds for a native English speaker to produce, I was so gobsmacked by the extraordinary botchery that I was moved to preserve it.

I will probably post again before I leave on the 21st of February 2016.