urban planning propaganda museum

The other day, a Chinese friend asked some of us foreigners to go to a museum opening with him the next day. He said something big was going on, someone from the government was going to be there, and it promised to be something out of the ordinary. Also, I don't know that Songyuan has any other museums, so naturally we agreed.

Then it morphed into an I'm-not-going-with-you-but-this-other-Chinese-friend-of-ours-is-and-they'll-arrange-a-car-for-you kind of thing, which always makes you question motives.

There are definitely a good amount of Chinese that like having access to foreigners, whether they're friends with us or they know someone who is, because it makes them seem much cooler/more important/whatever to other Chinese. Sometimes being the token foreigners somewhere can be fun if you're ok with the ridiculous attention and questions, and it usually leads to a free meal or drinks. Typically you can tell from the outset of an invite though if that's what the whole thing is about, and our friends don't usually pull the bait and switch on us. The motives actually got a bit more confusing at the museums though, because one guy's boss met us and invited us to lunch and then he didn't even come with us.

Regardless, we went (to the museum and lunch). Turned out the museum had already opened, but very recently, and that morning the Secretary of Urban Planning for the province was there. We met him, but after going through the whole museum, and we didn't really talk to him at all.

All in all the museum was kind of cool, but I'd definitely classify it under the "propaganda" heading, as opposed to "education." 90% of it was about future Songyuan, with a lot of really, really impressive models, but they were completely unrealistic, they didn't agree with each other (I noticed the proposed Sky Tower in at least three different locations in the city) and if anything on them was going to come to fruition it wouldn't be for at least 50 years.

This model was the centerpiece. It was in the middle of the building on the first floor with second and third story balconies overlooking it. And naturally the Earth above it. You could actually go in the Earth and watch a little 360 degree animation clip.

Can't remember what this room was about.

More models and propaganda.

Virtual tour of the river, complete with seats mounted on a platform that swayed a bit to mimic the motion of the river.

FOREIGNER PERK: random gift when you leave the museum.

random pix: Chinese Mexicans, urinary reproduction & hair salon torture

I'm just confused.

This frickin' clown is EVERYWHERE in Songyuan.

These people are definitely not Mexican...

"Eastern Urinary Reproductive of Hospital"?

Most hair salons have this. WTF is it?!

Come again?

field trips

In the past three weeks I've gone on two field trips with my favorite class (my only class actually, but I love them regardless!). The rule for field trips is theoretically "English only" and the majority of the class must go. That class is a really fun group with good chemistry and they also happen to be adults with really good English; I think of them more as my friends than my students.

Field trip number one was a picnic. It's been raining basically every day for the past month or two, but luckily on picnic day the weather was absolutely amazing. There was one point where we thought maybe it was going to rain, so we packed up all of our stuff, but we ended up just relocating our base.

Enough of my students have cars for them to have been able to drive us all about 30-45 minutes away from school near the river and Long Hua Temple, basically in the middle of nowhere (yay for nature and green things).

Yep, some cows were hanging out with us. They made fun of me for taking a picture of them though, "Haven't you ever seen cows?"

...and some farmers.

Everyone brought food or props or something; I was in charge of games. We played tradition American picnic/children's games (Capture the Flag, Telephone, Red Light Green Light), some Chinese games (some kind of awesome blindfold game and the card game all the old men always play outside) and some we all knew (Charades, Hot Potato, soccer, relay races, three legged races).

Class is supposed to be four hours, 8am to 12pm, on Sundays, which picnic day happened to be. My students picked me up at 8am and I think I got home from the post picnic dinner at 6:30pm. I got to hang out with people I really like all day, enjoy nature and great weather, be active and get paid for the whole thing. It was kind of awesome.

Field trip number two was to play badminton (with a sprinkling of ping pong) this past Sunday. We were going to have class from 8am to 12pm, do lunch and then go, but we ditched class an hour early for more game time.

My students all work for some subsidiary or other of CNPC, the big oil company here, and we went to one of their offices to play (none of them actually work together). His office was kind of nuts, it was in an old hotel and you could definitely tell, they hadn't remodeled the majority of it. The carpet was my first clue, and not just that there was carpet, even though you rarely find that here, it was that "main-hallway-of-a-hotel" pattern also. In his office there was a bathroom and a bed (granted it was a twin), but it had clearly been a hotel room. There was even the standard fire evacuation map on the back of the door.

The ping pong was in the same building, in what might have been a conference room. They had special sport flooring and maybe ten tables, with balls, paddles and homemade hoppers (like in tennis, containers on handles that you can push down on top of a ball and the ball pops into the container so you don't have to bend over to collect them all). It was legit.

I mostly stuck to the badminton. One of the guys came into the badminton room and he was really sweaty, I asked what he'd been doing and when he said playing ping pong I was sliiightly confused. And then I went to watch. They're really intense about ping pong. They put all kinds of crazy spin on the ball and stand literally almost a full table length away from the table to play.

In a separate building, in what appeared to have been an auditorium of sorts, the company had recently built the single badminton court. The guy who's office we were at said everyone could play for a half hour of each workday. Since it was the weekend, we had the place to ourselves. We ended up playing for something like five hours.

I keep meaning to tell them about Sunday Funday and forgetting. We're essentially starting the Sunday Funday Field Trip Series. Next up: bbq and strictly English ktv!

visa lording update

When my hypothetical friend that was having issues with her school getting her visa in my previous posts flew into Changchun after her trip, a caretaker type guy from her school picked her up and informed her that they were spending the night in Changchun. A few of the other teachers were to meet them in the morning so everyone could get physicals for their visas. She and the guy that had gone to Hong Kong got theirs, along with three women that had been teaching at the school for like three years that all already had visas. The place they got the physicals was basically a physical factory; it was a medical office that only did physicals for visas and cranked them out ridiculously quickly for tons of people.

When she finally got back to Songyuan, she asked her school owner when he would send her to Hong Kong again with her correct paperwork. She basically told him she was leaving if it wasn't in the next two weeks. He promised her that by July 10th she'd be there, it was going to take some time to cancel her old, incorrect documents and reapply for them.

She's going on holiday again soon, and is supposed to be gone until July 8th, so when she leaves she just going to have all of her stuff packed up, and if he doesn't send her, she won't return, she'll head straight to the next city she plans to live in. At least that's her plan. She'll lose her flight money and a month of pay in that instance though, which really sucks.

On the upside, the guy pretty much knows not to mess with her as long as she's actually at the school, so he didn't end up trying to deduct money from her pay for the first failed Hong Kong trip.

random pix: fish 3 ways

Notice the jumper to the right... this happened about every 15 minutes while I was eating there. Nobody would notice until I started giggling every time.

Why wouldn't candy come in a plastic foot with a fish on it?

beer fest

When I returned from my latest adventure, Songyuan had transformed quite a bit. Apparently someone had flipped a switch and it was officially summer. Whenever a sale is happening or a new store is opening or something, once it's summer, the Chinese break out the crazy inflatable arches and lanterns, put up a stage and have some kind of singer or band or comedy act or something going on all day. Little vendors will set up all around and it's always entertaining. These kinds of things happen all the time, and it's slightly reminiscent of all of the festivals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (where I grew up) in the summer, so I dig it.

That weekend, there happened to be a car festival on the street in front of my school, a real estate expo behind and a bunch of other nifty outdoor stuff going on. The real excitement began the next weekend though, with the beer fest.

The beer fest consists of two large circus style tents full of picnic tables for eating and drinking. In the middle of the two large tents is a big space with a stage at one end and the beer vendor at the other. All around the perimeter are food vendors. The whole shebang kicks off around dinner times and goes until maybe 11pm every day. It's rumored to be there for two months, 100 days or all summer, it's not really clear. And it's literally 100 feet from the front door of my school.

A bunch of us foreigners went the first day and had a grand old time. Unfortunately, as is usually the case when the drinking begins at 5pm and dinner is for the most part neglected, things got a little out of hand for some of us. Most of us left and went to ktv after a while, but a few laggers stayed and then forgot they were going to leave. Drinking with the Chinese turned into wrestling with the Chinese, which turned into a friend of mine trying to tackle a Chinese man, missing and hitting the underside of a picnic table face first instead. Huge debacle ensued involving lots of blood, some vomit, my school owner and a story in the daily paper (luckily omitting his name, race and school).

Naturally, whenever we go to the beer fest, the Chinese stare but eventually want to drink with us and we have a good time. A couple of my friend went on stage and basically ktv'd Linkin Park the other day, which was pretty cool. There's generally a really big empty space right in front of the stage (the first day the police made everyone stand a good distance back and now everyone still does anyway), so the rest of us stood dead center; we were the biggest spectacle but it was kind of amazing.

power oulets

Electrical outlets in China are actually, surprisingly, compatible with most plugs from the US. Anything with a ground won't fit, because that portion of the outlets is shaped differently, but most other things will.

If one of the prongs is bigger than the other, you have about a 50/50 chance of the plug fitting into an outlet here, and about a 50/50 chance of it fitting into an extension cord, but you can always find something to make it work (unless you're traveling around China, in which case you might want to bring an adapter just in case). All outlets are singles, so extension cords tend to be necessary.

One thing I didn't really think about too much until recently was the voltage of the outlets. Whenever you plug something in it gets REALLY hot, so I don't leave anything plugged in for very long (especially not anything from the States), but I've never really had it cause any problems. Until the gala the other week. I decided to try to curl my hair since I was dressing up and all. About a minute or two after plugging in my curling iron I noticed a funky smell, but couldn't place it. Maybe five minutes later when I went to curl my hair I figured it out, it was melting plastic.

Now, this was a cheap curling iron, which probably accounts for part of it (my other one survived). I've plugged in many other things from the States while living here and this is the first time anything funky has happened, but it definitely made me laugh.

I was talking about it with some friends here, and one of them said in their apartment there is a line clearly singed up the wall leading to the outlet where their tv is plugged in. Sliiiight fire hazard anyone?!

For anyone that's coming to visit me (or just curious), items I've safely and successfully charged to date include:

-MacBook Pro

-Kindle Fire

-iPhone 4S

-iPod Nano

-Fuji digital camera battery charger

-Clarisonic face scrubber

-Oral B electric toothbrush

-ConAir curling iron

-BaByliss hair dryer