In which I spend an extended period of time out of the city, befriend tons of relatives, and become a mosquito-swatting master. 

It finally happened!  A month after graduating Kindergarten, Jony is finally on summer vacation!  Swim class is finished, piano class is on break, he finished is all-day Pinyin classes and we can finally hang out!

Thursday, (two days after Pinyin class ended) Lisa, Jony and I drove to her parents’ house in Anji to spend two nights.  I’ve visited the place before but last time we went we only stayed for the afternoon before heading on to visit the other grandparents, so this already promised to be an adventure.

The first full day Jony, Lisa, myself, Jony’s Aunt and Cousin (who were also visiting) all went rafting together.  Even on the countryside the weather was ridiculously hot and sticky (night or day), so this was a fantastic idea on Lisa’s part.  The rafting place was an hour and a half away so Jony and I played make believe and other games together in the back seat the whole way there.  This was definitely a bonding experience for us.

After we finished rafting we went to go shower and change.  A new experience for me was the gender-segregated but otherwise open and public shower rooms!  It wasn’t awkward until we realized that none of us had remembered to bring towels.  Just another reason to make a habit of wearing non-cotton clothes, right…?

I was kinda hoping Jony would fall asleep on the way back, but no.  That was the day I taught him the Quiet Game.  Ha!

As a reminder, these are the grandparents who live near the mountains but not among them and have dogs, cats, chickens and ducks hanging out on their patio.  This is also the grandpa who’s an amazing artist and musician!

We didn’t do any other huge excursions besides the rafting.  Several evenings we went to watch Lisa’s other sister practice with her dance team (how do I join???), walked around on the country roads, helped prepare vegetables from the garden, played with the one action figure Jony brought, watched TV (finally caught some of the Olympics!), painted with Grandpa’s calligraphy brushes, chatted with the constant stream of relatives and neighbors stopping by the house, and thought of new ways to practice English animal names and common phrases.

This really was a Renaissance of Jony’s English improvement.  Only a few weeks ago did he really start putting English words together on his own and at this point I can actually communicate with him in English.  The boy who once needed me or his mother to translate even the simplest English phrases now proudly talks and plays with me in English.  He’s also mastered “slow talking” in Chinese so that I can understand him better and look up translations on my phone based on pronunciation.  As a bonus, I learn a new Chinese word for every new English word I teach him!  To very relevant words to our games this week were “怪兽” (monster), and “口水” (spit, he gets excited with his sound effects).

Let the picture montage continue!

I was definitely glad to come back to my air-conditioned bedroom (it literally didn’t get any cooler at after dark) and use my own shampoo instead of borrowing Grandma’s (I forgot mine), but it was so, soooo nice to get out of the city.  For once I was able to hang out and practice English with Jony full-time, hear bug noises instead of perpetual car honking when I open my window, see the moon and stars at night, and frolic in the beautiful countryside.

In which I reconnect with a random person I added on Wechat

Backstory: I was out for a walk a few weeks ago by the canal when this random Chinese guy and his daughter walked up to me and started talking to me in fluent English.  Apparently the dad ran an English school down the street and his daughter had been going to school abroad in Canada, just graduated middle school, and had just arrived home for the summer break.  The weather was cool and breezy (a rare thing) so I walked around the block with them and chatted before saying goodbye.

Fast forward a few weeks and I found myself facing another rest day without plans.  So, I messaged my new friend Annie on Wechat.  She invited me to go ice skating with her at the mall.

I was slightly concerned since the first Chinese friends that invited me to go skating couldn’t skate at all.  However, turns out that Canada has turned Annie into a pro skater.  She even brought her own ice skates.  She could speed skate laps around me, skate backwards, and loved nothing better than wiping out on the ice at full speed so she could skid across the rink.

After skating for about 2 hours we went to a restaurant called Green Tea, ate a fantastic meal, then wandered around the mall a bit.

As we were about to leave we spotted a virtual reality station.  It looked like a lot of fun so we bought tickets.  We opted to do the non-interactive sit-in-a-pod style simulations since we could both do one round of that together for only one ticket.  First we did a lava roller coaster which although it sounded amazing was, unfortunately, a disappointment.  The graphics were bad, nothing was clearly in focus, and the seat didn’t even move.  With our other ticket we did a haunted cart ride which was much better in all aspects (though still not exactly amazing).

We got a taxi back without incident.  Glad I found another friend who lives nearby that I can hang out with!

Last note: On my walk back to the apartment I counted SEVEN dance groups in one plaza!  (A different plaza than the one with the group I joined in a previous post) Calm down ladies.  Even though the sun had set I was sweating just by existing.  The dancing here is hard core.

In which I finally do something noteworthy on my day off (July 8).

*and then procrastinate on posting about it for over a week…

Once a week I have a “rest day” from my Au Pair job during which I am free from family obligations.  However, my first two off days I either hadn’t gotten plans together or had been sick.  I also usually have my Chinese class on my off day which is time-consuming and tiring in itself.  However, this week I was feeling good, my class schedule got moved, and so I made plans to revisit my first home in Hangzhou: 九土, my Chinese language immersion oasis on the south side of the lake.

I experienced so many new things that day that I’ve had to organize this blog post by subheadings.  Yikes.  Normally I just talk about the highlights but this day was jam-packed with interesting interactions.

Dancers

The bus route I chose had me catch the bus on the other side of the canal from my apartment.  After crossing the bridge I was crossing under it to the other side of the street when I heard music.  This wasn’t your average plaza dancing group, this was a fully choreographed dance routine.  I don’t know why they were practicing in a parking lot under a bridge at 9am, but they were awesome.

Bus Ladies

All together it took me almost an hour and a half by bus to reach my destination.  九土 is pretty far from my apartment which is why I waited till my off day to pay a visit.  After switching buses (another standing room only load) an old lady waved me over to sit next to her.  There’s these odd few seats on the bus layout that are each about 1 and a half seats wide.  Like, two people can sit there, but only if they’re friends, you know?

Well, it was this almost-seat which I was being invited to share and since I’d spent my first bus ride standing I was happy to sit.  Then, she and another lady sitting across from her (they might have been friends, but perhaps not since they got off at different stops) started chatting with me.  They asked all the usual questions: how long had I been in China, how old was I, what was I doing here, etc.  However, whenever I didn’t understand something and needed them to repeat it, the lady sitting right next to me would say it again slower but also louder.  My poor ear.

Since I speak primarily English at my host family’s home, talking with those ladies was a good warm up to having full conversations in Chinese again.

Hair Cut

After 2 months in China, it was definitely time for a hair cut.  I had remembered that during my stay at 九土 Jessica had ordered hair cutting scissors online.  I haven’t gotten my hair professionally cut in years and didn’t see why I should start now.  She agreed to give my bangs a trim and although she was nervous did a pretty good job.

Lunch #1

After my haircut I went to help Xiaodie (another friend I’d made during my stay) in the kitchen.  Well, more like watch her cook but that was fine too.  Jessica had planned for us to go out to eat but since the food was ready insisted that I eat some of Xiaodie’s cooking as well.  Such good food!

Tiger, Trash, and Tea

Also watching Xiaodie cook was a house guest who introduced himself to me by his English name of Tiger.  He spoke English about as well as I speak Chinese, so we started chatting in the most convenient mix of Chinglish.  Apparently he works in the movie industry so we got to talking about Kungfu movies and martial arts.

Jessica had disappeared so I went with my new friend Tiger to walk the dog around the neighborhood.  I learned that he was doing volunteer work in Hangzhou and as we walked he kept picking up trash.  Mianbao (the Labrador puppy) did his part by enthusiastically finding and attempting to eat every piece of trash he could reach.

After picking up a particularly nasty piece of garbage with no trash can in sight, I followed Tiger to a nearby house where he asked for a trash can.  The guy at the house happened to be a local tea farmer and showed us the different teas he was selling.  Tiger asked if I liked tea (I really do like tea) and said he wanted to buy me some in as a gift.  I’m not exactly sure what happened next as my “translator” really only spoke clearer slower Mandarin  sprinkled with English, but I think the tea farmer offered to give me the tea “as a gift from China” before Tiger could buy it for me.  He also let me use his bug repellent.  Whatever the details, I got 2 boxes of premium Hangzhou Longjin tea as a present which pretty much made my day.

Lunch #2 & Movie

I soon came back to the house to find Jessica looking for me.  She introduced me to two of her friends that I’d never met before, tall guys about our age, then called an Uber and we went off to have lunch (second lunch for me).  We went to the mall to eat and had a very nice lunch, which I was able to help them eat somehow.

Afterwards we walked over to the movie theater which was beside the restaurant and Jessica admired the cardboard cutout advertising the new release.  I’m not exactly sure what Jessica’s relationship was with these guys but they definitely bought us all matinee tickets to go watch this chick flick.

The movie was so-so in my opinion and reminded me of a Korean drama (poor school girl at a prep school, tragic death of a parent, dreamy but over-protective love interest, etc. but with the added Chinese twist of actual school and career stress.  yay?)  But, by far the best part was that this Chinese movie in this Chinese movie theater had ENGLISH SUBTITLES!!!  Yeah!

Chats and Cats

Since I had only seen Sanshui briefly I went back to the house with Jessica and friends after the movie.  I showed Sanshui the postcards I’d bought at the mall (Yes, I bought more stationary… it was so pretty!) and she got to showing me photos of her adorable cat.  She then started a video call with her husband and handed me her phone… so that I could see her cat.  This is not nearly as awkward as it sounds since I had met him before and chatted with him quite a bit at a dinner during my stay, so I had a nice time chatting with him about how I’d been and my new Chinese family in Hangzhou (like a pro!) while watching him play with the cat.

Dinner

At about 7:30pm they started discussing dinner plans (I think I’ve mentioned before that this is an evening crowd).  Sanshui took me, Jessica, and Jessica’s two friends to a restaurant within walking distance by a botanical gardens.  Though the power mysteriously went out half way through the meal, we recovered quickly by balancing a cell phone on the light fixture.  The food was delicious!

We ate nearly everything but towards the end there was one dish left mostly untouched.  “You haven’t tried this one yet, have you?  It’s DELICOUS” said all my friends to me a little too enthusiastically and without touching it themselves (well, Sanshui was nibbling at it a little).  They made sure I got only the tiniest speck of mystery paste on my chopsticks and watched so intently for me to eat it that I certainly wasn’t fooled.  Sure enough, it had the heavy creamy/lumpy consistency of soft cheese and tasted… well, it literally tasted like a fart.  It didn’t smell completely horrible before I ate it but my breath instantly smelled horrific.  I can only assume it was stinky tofu that I ate since we couldn’t find the dish listed on the English menu (my friends supposed the restaurant must have left it off intentionally because foreigners would never order it on purpose).

The Ride Home

After dinner Jessica helped me find a cab and I said goodbye to my friends.  It’s not unusual for taxi drivers to strike up conversations with me but usually they wrap up pretty quick.  This guy, though, kept me talking the whole ride which was over 20 minutes.  He asked all the usual questions of “Where are you from?/What are you doing in Hangzhou?/How did you learn Chinese?” but then his friend called him and I heard him say enthusiastically to the guy on the other end “I’ve got a pretty American girl in my car!  …she’s 23 years old, I asked her.”  He then started relaying questions from his friend as well.  I didn’t always understand what he was asking, but I did understand clearly when he’d relay back to his friend “She didn’t understand what I asked.  Her Chinese is too poor.”  Yep, that’s the everyday reality of an intermediate language learner.

He was curious about my home in the US and my family there.  He also turned the conversation to economics and politics asking if Americans were rich and whether I liked Obama.  This was definitely pushing the limits of my Chinese vocabulary, not to mention my general knowledge, but it was a good way to end my jam-packed Chinese immersion day.

In one day I got gifted 3 full meals, two boxes of tea, a movie ticket and popcorn.  It was so nice to visit my friends again.  All together it was a long but fun and successful day fulfilling my two main goals: practicing Chinese and making/maintaining Chinese friends.

In which use the power of public transportation to go exploring in Hangzhou alone.

Even though Jony is technically on school break, he is signed up for so many lessons that many days I still have tons of free time.  With 5 hours to spare after lunch today, I decided it was time to take a bus.  Why?  I needed to get out of the house and buses have are air conditioned, that’s why!  Until this point I had used most of my free time to explore on foot and only taken the bus alone to go to my Chinese class and back.

Ever since I first became interested in Asia (via Korea) I’ve dreamed about cat cafes.  It’s exactly what it sounds like: a cafe that has cats.  You can drink coffee/tea, eat cake, relax, use Wifi, AND pet cats all in one place!  What could be better?

Unfortunately for me, though, cat cafes are not as popular in China as they are in Korea and Japan.  However, there is hope since Chinese people think Korean culture is cool.  Also, China has no shortage of adorable coffee shops so I definitely think it could catch on.  Hangzhou is a huge city so there had to be a cat cafe somewhere.

I was very proud of myself: I did a search for cat cafes using a Chinese search engine and map app, compared reviews, prices, and distances from my apartment, then after picking a cafe I got on the correct bus and located the coffee shop.  Yay!

The shop was in fact a cat-themed coffee shop and had a nice two story seating area, but there was only one cat and when I got there he was fast asleep.  I came 6 bus stops for one lazy cat?!  Lame.  My mango smoothie was yummy though.

While I was drinking my smoothie I looked again at my search results and noticed that another cat cafe was only one kilometer away.  Since I still had tons of time to spend I decided to brave the summer heat and check it out.

I got a little distracted on the way because I passed a STATIONARY STORE!  😀  Cute stationary is one thing I was looking forward to buying/using/bringing home from Asia.  I went a little crazy in there.  However, I can justify it since writing mail is one of my favorite hobbies.  Also, stationary is easy to fit in my suitcase.

Back on track, I did locate the second cafe.  However, it turned out just to be a very small ordinary cafe that happened to have the word “cat” in Chinese in the name.  No cats to be seen.  I hadn’t been able to find any information online about it so I wasn’t too surprised, just a little disappointed.  I bought myself bubble tea on the way to the bus stop as consolation and to combat the insufferable heat.  I guess next time I’ll hit the location further away with better reviews and see what else I can find.

~~~

To prove that good cat cafes do exist in China (and as an excuse to post some pictures I neglected to share from before), here are some photos from a cat cafe we found in Qingdao not far from the campus.

P.S.

Speaking of cute stationary, you can send me mail now!  To anyone who was interested in sending me something, below is the address I’ll be using for mail (it’s the Au Pair company office where I go for Chinese class, not my host family’s address).  For packages sent through an international carrier, the English one is fine.  If sending a letter or anything through the regular postal system, best to include the Chinese address as well.  I will post the addresses on my About page as well for reference.  If you want a letter on cute stationary, email me your address! ^-^

Melissa Gold c/o Lopair

(Chinese version)

P.R.中国浙江省杭州市西湖区天目山路327号合生国贸中心7-5F 310023

(English version)

7-5F, Hopson world center, No.327 Tianmushan Rd. Xihu district, Hangzhou, 310023 P.R. China

In which I dance in public

Before I came to China, I thought line dancing was just something middle-aged white women (just in the US and probably just in the South) enjoyed doing.  After coming to China I realized that the activity is very, VERY alive and well among middle aged Chinese women as well.

There is an epidemic in China commonly called Plaza Dancing.  At about 6pm every evening plazas and other convenient public spaces start to fill with dance groups.  When I say epidemic, I mean there are at least 15 different dance groups within a 20 minute walk of my apartment that all meet at about the same time every evening.

This, in my opinion, qualifies public dancing as a Chinese cultural activity.  However, all of my young and hip Chinese friends assure me that this is not a Chinese thing.  Uh…huh.  Without discouraging me outright, they also make it clear to me that no Chinese young person would ever consider plaza dancing.

To my Chinese friends’ bemusement, I’ve wanted to try plaza dancing for a while now.  Like, why not?  They look like they’re having so much fun!  However, not until today did my location, health, schedule, boldness, and the weather align for me to do so.  Jony has swim lessons from 7-8pm this week so today instead of hanging out in the pool I went to the plaza across the street from the apartment complex to find a dance group to join.

Like I said above, China (and my neighborhood in particular) is like a line dancing buffet.  There are so many choices!  Each group has a different genre of music, intensity level, skill level, age group (elderly people have their own groups), size, and sometimes costumes or props.  Some are more work-out focused, and some are partnered dancing instead of line dancing.

When I reached the plaza, there were literally three different small groups already started of about 10-15 people each.  Yes, multiple groups can use the same space, they just have to compete with their loud speakers for their music to be heard.  After surveying these three most convenient groups I joined the one that did not have intimidatingly-cute matching outfits and was currently dancing to 小苹果 (Xiao Pingguo/Little Apple), a Chinese pop song that I had already learned the moves to with my dance group at UNCA.  The moves were a little different from what I had learned, but the chorus was similar enough.  I had intended to discreetly hang near the back, but of course foreigners can never get away with that.  They graciously made me room in the middle of the group so that I could follow along better which was actually quite helpful.  It put me in the spotlight (literally, the street lamp was directly above) and locked in my commitment a little more than I had initially planned, though.

After 小苹果 we danced to at least 10 more song clips (I was able to stay for about 40 minutes).  Every song was at least 100 bpm which made it a bit difficult to pick up on the step patterns at first, but also made the songs more fun.  I got lots of compliments and encouragement from the leader and other dancers, so sweet!   Too bad I had to leave a bit early.

I’ve mentioned before how hot and humid it is right now in Hangzhou.  Even in the evening it doesn’t get below 80 degrees and the air is constantly heavy from the humidity.  When I went back to the pool to meet Jony after his lesson I was nearly as soaked as he was and would have liked nothing better than to jump in the pool.

One of the nice things about being foreign in China is since I don’t blend into any common demographic anyway, I don’t feel particularly more out of place plaza dancing with Chinese middle-aged women than doing any other activity.

Next time should I go back to the same group, or should I shop around before I settle?  One thing is for certain, I will be coming back for more.

In which I eat dessert for lunch

Monday, July 4th

In the U.S. the fourth of July is cause for every supermarket to start selling fireworks, every county to hold a public celebration, and family get-togethers with food and more explosives.  Everywhere else in the world (including China of course) the fourth of July is just another date.

Today I tried not to think about the family potlucks, trips to Virginia to watch fireworks over the lake, playing in the band during the county fireworks display, egg tosses, watermelon eating contests, and amazing firework displays of the past.  I told myself that I wasn’t missing anything, really, since it wasn’t even the fourth back home yet.  It’s not like I could have made raspberry trifle with my mom back home since she’s out of the country too at the moment!  Sigh… good times.

I happened to do special things anyway today, nothing to do with the date except in my mind.  Since Jony graduated Kindergarten last Friday and is on Summer vacation now, we got to do some stuff together.  The day after graduation Jony was so sad about school ending.  I told him that it was only Saturday and so he wasn’t allowed to be sad until Monday, the next day he would’ve had class.  After staying up a little late Sunday night to watch the new Ninja Turtles movie in 3D and sleeping in Monday morning, he was definitely over it.

Since Jony had almost the whole day free, Lisa took us both to West Lake to see the first lotus blossoms.  It took us approximately 300 games of Rock, Paper, Scissors in the back of an Uber (including a mandated break) to reach the lake, which was more due to traffic than distance.  At the lake we decided to take a ride in one of those cool little row boats.  This could have been really nice, but 95 degree weather with 95% humidity is brutal.  The experience wasn’t awful, but an hour ride was definitely too long.  Thankfully we had a canopy for shade but there was no breeze until we stepped off the boat.  I decided that West Lake is much more beautiful from inside a vehicle with air conditioning.

I had seen West Lake twice before, but aside from the lotus blossoms the new and most exciting part of this trip was lunch.  Not that we actually had lunch, exactly…  Lisa is an awesome mom and I wouldn’t say that she spoils Jony, so I was a little surprised when she had the rather un-mom-ish idea for us to go to a famous dessert shop by the lake for what turned out to be lunch.  By “lunch” I mean we ordered a bunch of food at about 12pm, stuffed ourselves, and didn’t eat anything else until dinner.

I really enjoyed trying everything (hey, anything cold was welcome at this point!) and most of it I thought was delicious.  After “lunch” we visited a park where we took pictures and looked at more lotus blossoms, then called it a day and went home.

After a nice long air-conditioned rest, I went with Jony to the community pool for his swim lesson.  While he was in his lesson I paddled around with an adorable 3 year old girl after helping her grandmother coax her into the water.  So cute!

Dinner was normal except that as an appetizer we ate snake which everyone was excited to see me try.  It tasted fine, and I liked it especially since the bones (ribs) are placed predictably and are easy to remove.  Almost no meat is served de-boned where I’ve traveled in China (fish bones make me so sad) so that’s why the orderliness of snake bones is important to note.  I should also mention that my family does have a cook.  Every meal including breakfast is fresh and hot and I can only think “Woah, this is what my mother always wanted!”  hahaha

So, that was my fourth of July.  I’m not as sad as I might have been to miss spending Independence Day in the States.  Anyway, I’m sure I’ll get to help celebrate plenty of nationalistic Chinese holidays that we don’t celebrate in the U.S., so I’ll make it up later.