Today I got lost kayaking down the Lijiang River, wandered into a village roughly 30 miles south of Guilin, was taken in by an impoverished Chinese family, made it back to town (somehow) to the airport two and a half hours later and then walked onto my plane to Beijing seven minutes before takeoff. Here's how it played out.

The hills in the Guilin area are incredible. There's no point in trying to describe them as I'll be putting pictures up in a minute. Flowery language would probably just detract from the story anyway. The plan was to leave the area for Beijing yesterday, but after a cruise down the river I decided that to leave without experiencing the river more intimately would have been a travesty. The hole in the wall travel service offered me a deal that sounded good enough too. 150 yuan for a four to five hour kayak rental with drop off and pick up included. Clearly it was too good to be true. Right from the get go “China syndrome” was in full effect. “It's 9:07, you're seven minutes late” “I apologize, my hotel was having a difficult time when I was checking out” “Well, they were waiting for you for five minutes so they had to leave”. Oh, China! A full five minutes? How inconsiderate of me being under ten minutes late for a cab ride you lied about being solely for me. When we got to the launching point I was then informed that someone would be following behind us in a gasoline powered “bamboo” raft the entire way. This had quickly turned into the opposite of the quiet solitude one expects to get out of kayaking down a river in China. Surrounded by a Korean family, and a bunch of other white people with a noisy faux bamboo raft within earshot. My solution was to simply hang back and see what the guy on the raft did. Thankfully he went ahead past me.

The scenery was picturesque to say the least. It was dynamic as well. I only took a few pictures for two reasons. The first is that dropping the Google phone into a river would be disastrous. The second is that this was something I wanted to save just for me. Pictures can rarely live up to the memory. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Downstream on fairly placid water it gave me an opportunity to truly escape the issues plaguing my mind grapes at the moment. Also nice was that only one other person in the group had been kayaking before. It allowed me to hang back for a while and then power ahead until orange life vests were once again within sight. Yet at some point I started to enjoy the quiet a little too much. I opened my eyes to catch back up, but after fifteen minutes they still weren't in sight. No worries though. Surely the pick up point would be clearly marked. Then again... this is China. As the hills changed to something resembling that one scene in The Sound of Music I saw a small town on the opposite side of a fork in the river. It seemed prudent to double back and see if there were some kayaks and a faux bamboo raft there. The current on the opposite side of the fork proved to be too much so I pulled my ride up onto the bank of the river and went for a little hike.

The trails I found myself on were narrow and winding. Well worn to the point of being sunk in, they had clearly been traversed for generations. The trails wound through different plots of farmland in a strangely logical manner. Though there was no grid or signs and foliage obscured future, the way to the village was apparent. Eventually I saw someone, an old woman. She was walking back from working in the field, wielding what appeared to be a long handled sickle (ever appropriate) made of wood and bamboo. The instrument looked more appropriate for the Ming dynasty (1600s) than the post Deng era. I waved slightly and said “Ni hao”, she mustered a mild nod and thin lipped smile. The fact that she wasn't bowled over by the sight of a white person bode well. I continued into the village and eventually happened upon a group of three men sitting on the side of the road. “Hello”, “Ni hao” I responded. “Does anybody speak Yingyu?” They laughed. This did not bode quite as well. My original plan was to ask waiguoren zai nar (where are the foreigners) and if they pointed somewhere this would have to be the final destination of the kayaking trip. However it had become fairly clear by now that this was not the pickup point. This was a double edged sword.

There were no places of business, oxen sparsely populated the surrounding area, the streets were still, most houses were glorified shacks. This was as close to the other China I was looking for as most westerners will get. So I spent some time exploring. In the other villages I have explored people look at me strangely. That wasn't really the case here... because there was nobody on the street to look at me strangely. After a good bit of wandering the time had come to find my way home. The first plan of attack was to call the hotel, get the number of the place that booked the kayaking trip, have them call the kayaking people and tell me the name of the pickup point. CLEARLY that did not happen. Plan B was to get the hotel to get a cab out to me. The major hitch in this plan was that I had no idea where I was. The GPS told me a name, but the woman at the hotel didn't seem to have any idea. When in China those who do not speak Hanyu and find themselves in such a situation are wise to track down a trustworthy looking local and hand them the phone. Again, I ran into a snag in that there was hardly anyone on the street. Eventually I saw another old woman in a house (which had no door). Asking doubeche (“sorry”, or in this case “excuse me”) I handed her the phone. She had absolutely NO idea what was happening. Luckily at that moment her daughter or daughter in law walked into the room and the phone was transferred to her. They spoke for a while with her at one point walking out of the room holding my phone and primary means of surviving in China. Eventually she came back and handed it to me. The woman at the hotel had explained the situation and given her the number to a taxi service to get me out of dodge. From this point I had the pleasure of a cultural exchange. For thirty minutes I was lucky enough to sit with a rural Chinese family in their living room and try to absorb whatever possible about their way of life in that amount of time.

So here's the situation. This place wasn't exactly impoverished, but by most standards the living conditions were very poor. Before I begin describing the house, keep in mind that this was definitely one of the nicer ones in the village. Imagine the poorest non-homeless people you've ever met in America. Take away the door and make the flooring of their house bare concrete, replace the furniture with simple wood furniture and add more flies. There was a crib for the baby (albeit extremely shoddy and worn) and even two posters for when the child got a little older, one designed to facilitate learning pinyin, the other with pictures of family members and their names (baba, mama, etc.). Outside of the house the roads are dirt, there are a good deal of chickens walking around and there was a single construction site which it seemed had been given up on. It should be noted that the image of poverty in America generally includes a lot of clutter and uncleanliness on the part of the impoverished. These people kept their house clean to what extent it was possible. Sorry, again I didn't take pictures as I didn't want to be rude to my hosts.

My assessment of the situation is that not long ago these people were legitimate peasants but something has changed. The family even had a small television. What exactly changed is the question. There was no real economy in the village. These were farmers. Clearly all of their livelihood was based around agriculture and before whatever changed they had a subsistence lifestyle. Now there's electricity running to the village and cell phone towers are close enough that the father of the family had an old beat up mobile phone. In my view there are a few possibilities. The village is close to Guilin and to tourist towns. So the first possibility is that a demand arose for their produce when tourism in the area picked up. The second is that the village has these amenities thanks to remittances. It is my understanding that the factories in China are manned largely by people who come from the countryside to work for two or three years, save money and then go back to their village and support their families. Maybe a few people in the village work in Guilin in some capacity, hotels or something along those lines. The third possibility is that what has changed is government intervention. Either price floors on the produce, subsidies, or even giving them money outright. It's difficult to say. Clearly the latter is at play to some extent. They obviously didn't erect the electrical lines themselves. But of China's 1.3 billion people over half are dirt poor peasants. There are no social welfare programs because in spite of how flush the government is, they simply wouldn't be able to afford it. None of the explanations are particularly good. If only I could speak Mandarin!

All of this aside, it is clear to me that I liked these people. So many Chinese people are inept. Deal with a waiter in a restaurant and the experience is just unreal. But middle and upper class Chinese are not like that. Apparently rural Chinese are not either. The old woman had no idea what the hell was going on when I handed her a cell phone. The wife though knew what was up and was on point. The front desk at the hotel explained the issue, gave her a phone number to call, she called it and that was that. The communication involved in getting a cab to come to the hotel to bring me to the airport was vastly more complex than getting one to come to a tiny village accessible only by the rockiest of dirt roads. Unfortunately our communication was limited (if only I could speak Mandarin!) but they were extremely hospitable. Before the exact nature of the situation was established the old woman had already invited me to come in and sit down. At the earliest possible time the wife brought out some food and I was offered a much needed cigarette by the husband as well. They tried their best to communicate with me as well and make me feel welcome, clearly that could work though to only such an extent.

My knowledge of China is still somewhat limited but there are a few things I have learned and did my best to apply them in this situation. The main one is not to turn down food. If you turn it down or even don't eat enough Chinese people interpret it as you not liking it. At the same time I was worried that they might not have a great deal of food, so I ate slowly throughout the entire time. I gave a prolonged head nod at times when thanking them, which it seems is a sign of respect. Beyond that I used my translator and very limited vocabulary to try and make small talk and do my best to let them know quite how thankful it was. For instance, when talking to the father I pointed at the baby and asked “Baba”. When he responded affirmatively I said in English that he had a beautiful family and did a lot of head nodding and smiling at the same time. He beamed from ear to ear, so it seems that he got it. I put into my translator things like “I am thankful for your hospitality” (which translated to a single word) and “I am in your debt”. Overall it seemed like they were happy to play host for thirty or forty five minutes and glad they could help me. For my part, there were backup plans but the family saved me a lot of hassle and the learning experience was invaluable. One of my favorite experiences in China so far.

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The past few days I have been enjoying the peace of a small town called Dali. Old Dali is population 40,000 or so and everything is within walking distance. A far cry from Shanghai with a about as many residents as the entire state of Florida. In leaving Dali I took a bus back to Kunming to avoid a $1000 US flight out of a tiny airport. The plan was to go a couple of days early to make sure there were no foul ups in catching my flight out and allow myself time to explore the city. Unfortunately my stay in Kunming was underwhelming. The night before leaving Dali my debit card was left in an ATM machine. So instead of seeing sights, securing a new card and western union funds were of a higher priority. The one thing I was able to do though, was finally scope out a Chinese Wal Mart. Though I have taken many trips to other mega stores, it was always either Century Mart or Tesco. I've been dying to see how good old Wally World stacks up to the competition and test my theory that all of the cheap stuff in Wal Marts in China is made in America.

Chinese Wal Marts are nothing like American Wal Marts. In America our Wal Marts have wide aisles and are generally quite sanitary. In China they are more condensed and not nearly as clean. I would go so far as to say they're actually dirty, worse than Albertson's or Harvey's. Slammed with people and covered in a thin layer of grime... welcome to China! What a great microcosm. An American would feel much more at home at Tesco. Another way Chinese Wal Marts are analogous to China as a whole is that they have so much going on. In a space about equal in size if not a little smaller (the building covers much less ground, but there are four floors) there is vastly more food. The potato chip aisle is mind boggling. And whereas Century Mart may carry three or four Oreo flavors, Wal Mart seemed to have all of them. Chocolate, mint, cappacino, strawberry, original... there were many more. Also, it should be noted that Chinese people are way more on top of their junk food game than Americans are. Oreos also come in wafer and straw form, both with a variety of creme filling flavors (edit - I purchased the “mint”, it has turned out to be green tea milkshake. still quite scrumptious).

Wal Marts here also carry more traditional Chinese foods than their competitors. Poultry is sold with the head still attached (and for some reason the chickens are black) and there are more eggs than you can shake a stick at. I'll assume this is just in Yunnan, but there are people dressed in exaggerated traditional local garb hawking particular sorts of good. Again to jump to a conclusion, I'm going to guess these are foods specific to the area.

Wal Mart makes up for some of it's shortcomings with more service. They offer delivery, free packaging of gifts, free parking (apparently it costs money elsewhere) among other things. They also encourage you to write the president of the company with complaints and suggestions. Borrowing from Sam's club, products are marketed more aggressively inside the store. Samples are passed out and by certain displays there will be people with megaphones extolling the virtues of Wal Mart's wares.

One area where I really have to hand it to Chinese Wal Marts is in the television section. While American Wal Marts play DVDs the store is selling, Chinese Wal Marts show pictures designed to showcase the crispness of the picture. One of the videos they play is essentially softcore porn. The women keep their clothes on, but are definitely engaging in lesbian foreplay. This is smart. When the dealership simply handed me the keys to my current car and I got to test drive it at 120 mph on the highway I subsequently purchased the vehicle. Before making a large purchase it only makes sense to be able to test it doing the job it was designed for. Roughly 50% of the population is going to be watching porn on their new flat panel TV. How many people are really going to watch “Shrek XIII”? Kudos, Chinese Wal Mart on your pragmatism. Actually, Wal Marts here are more racy in general. In the lingerie section there were a series of pictures of women not wearing bras (though they did cover areas which are traditionally off limits with their hands). In another picture a Chinese woman clearly had her breasts Photoshopped to be at least two cup sizes larger.

Chinese Wal Marts are what a Wal Mart should be. In the States Wal Marts sell us on as many pointless things as possible. We get drawn in for something we need and leave with that plus four we don't. They're large and clean (the latter depending on the area of the country). They're indicative of the current zeitgeist of entitled privilege. Here Wal Marts echo China. They do so in the relentless shopping experience itself, in the goods being sold, the manner in which they are sold and the environment as well. While Tesco and Century Mart do their best to mimick American Wal Marts (most of the time ending in an epic fail), Chinese Wal Marts do their best to echo China. Even the need to have arbitrary rules is catered to. The exit was very clearly marked... the entrance not so much.

And nothing in a Chinese Wal Mart is made in America. A good bit of the brands are American though. So, service sector.. yay!

Pictures aren't working right now, but I'll put them up later.

We all make mistakes in this world. Some are purely accidental. Others we go into knowing somewhere in the back of our minds that it's going to be a duesy. This one was of the latter variety.

When you think of Shanghai one image comes to mind: an imposing skyline bejeweled with an iconic tri-sphere tower. This TV tower built a scant 15 years after Deng began to open up the Chinese economy is known as the Oriental Pearl Tower. And for as cool as it may look in pictures it is waaaaay slicker when you see the skyline in person. To go to the top of this symbol of China's most modern city is the sort of thing I couldn't leave this place without having done. However, from every experience I've had here so far it was the wrong move. Any tourist attraction anywhere in China is overrun. If it's a well known attraction all bets are off. Moreover, the Expo is going on which means there are even more tourists in Shanghai than there would be normally. Clearly the waiting was going to be insane... but I had to do it anyway.

Welcome... to hell.

I was under the impression I had purchased the best ticket available. Immediately after entering the wisdom of this move proved itself. There was a huge line wrapped around the tower and my 150 yuan ticket enabled me to walk past it. The poor schlubs then had another huge line once they got into the building. It probably saved me three hours, if not more.

Unfortunately my wait was still pretty bad. About two and a half hours. And Chinese lines are an oxymoron. Cutting is a way of life. Retaining your spot requires constant vigilance and everyone ends up packed in like sardines. It took me 45 minutes to get through what you're looking at and I was nowhere near done. Unbeknownst to me there was also a 300 yuan ticket, which included a meal in the revolving restaurant and allowed you to skip all of the lines.

Once I got to the elevator we went up to the second sphere... where we got to wait some more. Keep in mind that these lines move by roughly ten people once an elevator full decides to come back down.

The second elevator taking us to the sphere on the top. The floors are labeled in meters.

It better have a cool name considering what I went through to get there. At this point I was all but done for and wanted to spend only 15 minutes in the "space module" before leaving, but after all of that there was no way I was leaving with less than an hour in it. I ended up staying for about 4.

The view was pretty slick though. I should have gone the day before or the day after when there were crystal blue skies. This day had moderate smog.

Here it is folks. Type Oriental Pearl Tower into Google images and this is what you'll never get to see, the inside. However, I suffered so you can get a backstage pass.

She's refreshed. The small children were sleeping in their parents arms through the wait.

The slightly more tranquil bottom floor of the space module.

Say cheeeese! Commie cameras know no bounds. Seriously, if you want to make a ton of money manufacture security cameras in China. There's usually two on every corner.

Stairway in the third sphere.

Floor of the third sphere. I took 150 pictures of every little detail.

Glass floor on the balcony of the second sphere. They had to throw the peons and their lowly 100 yuan tickets a bone.

Revolving restaurant. After the ordeal and a look at the line going back down I needed some down time so I fought my way through a different line to get tickets for a meal. The buffet was pretty decent, but nowhere near 230 yuan and 20 yuan per drink decent. When everything was accounted for I spent 440 yuan.

This way to wait some more please.

The thing about it is that ultimately Shanghai is meant to be looked up at from the street, not down from what isn't even close to the highest building there.

See what I mean?

But nonetheless the Oriental Pearl Tower is quite picturesque from the outside and of mistakes made on this trip going to the top is nowhere near the worst.

Because to go from walking down Bund Plaza at night (this is on a Tuesday by the way)...

and happening upon this, is the singular most impressive thing I have ever seen in my life. The buildings are imposing on their own, but at night it becomes a spectacular light show. It cannot be described accurately and pictures simply do not do it justice.

Drinking supposedly boiled Chinese water right now, so hopefully I don't pay for it in the morning.

My tradition while traveling in the states is to find some Blues and or Jazz in whatever city I go to. Jazz and cars are at the heart of American culture, so it's a bit different here. But at the same time there are McDonald's on every corner, so why shouldn't US cultural hegemony extend to some of the finer aspects of what we've created.

Tonight started by going to the Blues and Jazz club of Shanghai. It was an unduly pricey establishment. But what else would one expect of the best blues club in the most modern city in China? Top shelf drinks were about $11 a piece. That's less than the going price of my favorite jazz spot in Harlem the last time I went (in 2008) so despite the fact that it took nearly a full 100yuan bill for every drink I didn't complain. Moreover, the music was really good. Like reallllly good. In Asian fashion it was done a little differently. Most of the time when you hear sincerely good blues or jazz there's only one white dude in the band, continually pinching himself he's so happy to be there. This time around there was one black girl singing surrounded by a bunch of white 20 somethings. That's Asia for you. She was seriously good, but come on man. I don't want white boys playing my blues more than I want Asian people working on my Chevy. Of course, music transcends racial stereotypes and I thoroughly enjoyed the single set I showed up in time for. Sadly, that place closed at 2am. In Nashville, Harlem or St Louis blues is a way of life for many people. Blues musicians are easy to come by and bars with live acts have a large audience to cater to. In China they have only a small portion of the expat community, so there isn't a glut of shady clubs that keep going until the wee hours. This being the case, once the band wrapped up I hit the bricks immediately.

The bartender told me that the nearest late night bar was something called "Mint". Mint sounded like a classy name. Moreover I had seen it on the way there... on the top of a skyscraper. Still, my thoughts on the matter were basically "why not?". To make things difficult though, while in the blues club my phone had conveyed to me that I was once again without 3g, so it was up to me to figure out where I was going. Once in the general vicinity I could no longer see the sign on top of the large building and a lack of clearly marked entrance had me through a loop. To tell the truth at this point I was all but done for and was pretty glad I couldn't find the place. But all of the sudden a bunch of westerners got out of a cab and upon seeing me asked if I was looking for Mint. "Sure", I responded. I tried to make some polite conversation with the leader of the foreigners. "China Unicom cut me off again, without my GPS I never have any idea of where I'm going." He responded "Do you have a reservation?". Really dude? A high and mighty response worthy of the Portuguese, but from their accents I could tell it was worse... French. "No... but I've got a bunch of monopoly money". The mile joke was lost on the Frenchman. They continued on, smug looks upon their faces. The stupid Frogs may do things by the book, but in Meigou we don't need reservations. It there's a door I want to go through, I'm going through it. Had it come down to it I would have simply handed the bouncer some colorful toilet paper. Luckily all I had to do was walk in with the flag waivers dressed better than they were. Upon getting to the top of the building a few things were made clear. (1) They were prepared to spend a lot more Euro than I was Dollars. (2) given the girl to dude ratio of all the Chinese clubs I've seen so far and my current level of intoxication, hanging out for thirty minutes and spending 100 US dollars on two drinks would have been a waste of monopoly money (3) Rich westerner clubs in Shanghai are RIDICULOUS.

Tourist stuff is all well and good. I've seen a bunch of interesting museums and have wandered different parts of the city extensively. These things have definitely given me perspective on who the local people think and a taste of what their lives may be like. However, to come to a place with a name like "Shanghai" and have not gone to the clubs at all does seem like a bit of a waste.  Lucky for that bouncer, he may go home a few bills of colorful toilet paper richer tomorrow.

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of this one because I didn't want to look like a d-bag in front of the flag wavers. Here's one of the Shanghai skyline from the Bund. It looks cool in this picture but trust me, there's nothing like seeing it in person.

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Today I visited the birthplace of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai. It's a small museum made out of the house where Mao and a bunch of people nobody in the west has heard of gathered to formulate the tenets of the CPC. It was interesting. Actually, it was probably one of the best museums I've seen here so far. You could tell they really brought their "A-game" with this one because there was not one instance of "Chinglish" throughout. One thing that really struck me was that it wasn't particularly down on democracy or even the KMT. It didn't talk in terms of global liberation of the proletariat, rather it framed the CPC as the savior of the Chinese people. In many ways this is true. From the early 1800s up until the mid 20th century China's sovereignty was impinged upon continuously. Yet shortly after the Communists took over the mainland, China was fighting against American troops in Korea and winning. The museum did use some Commie catchphrases ("means of productions", "workers"), but most of the explanations seemed to be measured assessments.

My favorite part though... the gift shop at the end. This is really a beautiful microcosm for the current state of affairs.

How bourgeois!

Getting around in Shanghai has been interesting. As the most modern city in China, apparently the subway system is a little older. Apparently it also shuts down a little earlier too. Yesterday I tried to meet a friend of mine. As always, the maps belie true distance. Her hotel was a good 40km from mine. Seven stops away from the one near her hotel (this place was faaaaar) all of the sudden the lights on the train started blinking. Then they shut off. When they came back on an announcement was made in Chinese and all of the sudden everyone ran off the train. It was pretty freaky. But everyone seemed to be waiting on another train, so I waited as well. The next one came and two stops later, it happened again. This time everyone was leaving the station. Shanghai is a city of neon skyscrapers by night, but where this let me off was dark and run down looking. There were a ton of people on scooters and in vans running unlicensed taxi operations. The whole thing threw me through a loop. According to my GPS I was still about 20km away. The whole operation was a little unsettling as well. It's difficult to say why, but intuition was telling me that something about this wasn't entirely above board (I've been around a good bit of stuff that was decidedly under board).

Obviously none of these guys spoke English, so I was forced to show them the translation of the directions on my Google phone. It doesn't worry me so much letting licensed cab drivers hold the thing when I'm sitting right next to them, but despite a firm grasp, the six or seven sheisty Chinese dudes huddled around me could easily have swiped it. Beyond the fact that the thing is ridiculously expensive it's been priceless in getting me around. To lose it would make the trip vastly more difficult. To make things even more sticky, at the moment I was under the impression that there was a problem with my bank card which left me with only a modest amount of money, and Chinese hotels require a passport to check in so there's no way I could have utilized a credit card if worse came to worse. The situation was untenable and required more analysis to avoid making a stupid decision. Surrounded by people having a price war over how much they would charge to take me (it went from 100 yuan to 18) I fought my way back to the subway station to try and figure out what was going on.

There were four possibilities. The first was that there were technical difficulties. Immediately after the light outage this is what I had assumed. The second was that the maps were wrong and the line didn't go that far. Subway construction outpaces maps here and there was a sign which led me to believe that to be the case, so why not? The third was that the subway stopped running altogether at 9pm. The fourth was that it hopefully stopped running only in that direction. When I had left the platform there were still people standing on the side going the other direction. After regrouping my theory was that it was probably the last one. Eventually I found someone that spoke a modest amount of English and it turned out that I was right. So I chalked it up to a loss, called Jenny and headed back. It was a pretty scary thirty seconds and fairly worrying five minutes though.

Tonight on the way back to my hotel... it happened again. This time I was prepared for it mentally and simply went upstairs hailed a cab and ate the 16 yuan cab fare. My entire day was aimless traveling anyway which probably cost me 150-200 yuan so whatever. The day itself was interesting if not tedious at times. I tagged along with this girl from the trip to supposedly hang out in Suzhou and Haungzhou. Really, she had left stuff at some of her friends houses in those two places, wanted to get it and didn't have a firm grasp on the timing of the whole thing. But her friend in Suzhou hooked us up an insane lunch as a ridiculously sick hotel, I got to ride in a Ford and I got to see how upper middle class Chinese people live

View of Shanghai from the street on which I found some really good Chinese fast food. Wonton, but I'm thinking they'll do Jiaozi too and I just have to figure out how to ask. It's 24 hours, so it's my next stop in a minute.

Bamboo scaffolding. Unless it's a pretty big project they usually use bamboo for this.

The lobby of Jenny's friend's apartment building. It's reasonably nice but a little rough around the edges by American standards. The place is locked up security wise though. If you don't live there or don't have an invitation, you ain't getting in. It seems like there's a pretty firm divide between the lower class and middle/upper class. What also interesting is that these buildings look like projects from afar.

The desert I snagged at the ridiculous buffet lunch in Suzhou. Real tiramasu, not frozen stuff. That fruit tart was off the chain too. Wish I had snagged all of them. They were closing it down in five minutes so we did it up.

Oh, I got an ice cream cone too. They don't really do cones here.

What was weird was wondering about the living situation of the people who worked there and their families. I'm sure they can eat alright, but obviously never like this and it's not a huge leap to assume that some of the people working out of sight might have family that would kill to eat what we threw away. After the garbage I've been eating though, I tried not to think about it.

View of Shanghai from outside my hotel. Better pictures when I explore more.

It was a completely different feeling here than it might have been in Tally. The day of my last Tallahassee exam there was so much buildup. A year and a half of work capped with two weeks of living under the fluorescent lights of club Stroz (Strozier library turns into "club Stroz" during exam week) and unhealthy amounts of coffee. Going into the last exam was nerve wracking, leaving was a strange mixture of relief, residual adrenaline and anxiety about my next move. Watching my sister and others walk at graduation looked like an equally intense, albeit much more prideful experience.

Study abroad in Tianjin, China did not pack the same emotional punch. Study guides were given a few days before the exams and nobody really sweated them. We don't have access to the library so studying was nothing like at home. The main area in dorm building B only has two large tables so it was more collegial and lighthearted. Moreover, at the graduation ceremony only a handful of us were actually graduating so it didn't matter all that much. Some people some dressed up, others dawned a tie and sandals and yet more stuck to standard fare t-shirts. But globetrotting trumps walking so this is it for me. That in mind, I went to Binjiang Dao the day before, purchased a tie and shirt and at 8:30 in the morning donned my new tailored suit unshowered and hungover as all get out. Just like my high-school graduation, "Ba" came before everyone else's last name alphabetically so I got to graduate first in my class. ;)

The other FSU grads who didn't get to walk: Sam, myself, Austin, Kaylan and Jon.

My Tianjin Foreign Studies University graduation trinket certified with some sort of official looking commie stamp. Of course, after blowing your nose you have to get the used tissue commie stamped three times so it's not that big of a deal.

My 4.0 is now in the hands of this man and this man alone. Hopefully Dr. Lan hooks it up.

The urinals at Morakot where we will be celebrating/erasing all memories of the past four years in the next few hours. That Chinese dudes apparently want imagine white women taking pictures of them taking a leak is pretty creepy.

At least the sink is cool. This is common in China, one sink with about a zillion faucets. They also sell glowstick lollipops!

There are a few different groups of students here from different areas of the world. I'm not sure whether everyone harbors rivalries or it's just us Americans making it up. The Koreans are pretty sheisty. There are no clothes driers here and we have to hang dry our clothes. The Koreans have a penchant for stealing them. The French we don't like because, well, they're French. The Japanese we don't really have an issue with. They're all girls and generally pretty nice. The new ones though are the bane of my existence. The Portuguese. Or we've taken to calling them Brazilians because apparently they hate it.

At first I didn't know why I hated the Portuguese. It may have been something about the way they carried themselves or an undue pride given their faltering economy and long lapsed hegemony. Today though I was finally given a reason. The food they serve us here sucks. One of the few things that's decent are the freedom fries (yes, I called them freedom fries). We've got a good 60 people and the women that work the joint clearly can't count or do basic math so our fries were overrun within seconds. Seeking to pull a jack move I walked to the other side of the building to the room where the Portuguese eat. Only one person was there and their buffet was completely full. I went to get a modest amount of fries and was stopped. "You can't eat here, this is for the Portuguese." I didn't know quite how to react. My first instinct was to say "I'm an American, I'll eat where I please" because, let's be real, it's the Americans who should be keeping the Portuguese out, not the other way around. Instead I let it slide and went back to the Meiggou room. Eventually they brought more freedom fries which were again devoured quickly leaving us wanting. Upon leaving I walked through the room packed with those filthy Portuguese only to find that their tray of fries was half full! Freedom fries are like a quarter of the average American's diet. We need them to survive! Yet while the Portuguese are running a fry surplus and the Americans are running a severe fry deficit they can't even spare me a half serving. That is not justice. I feel like it should be taken to some sort of acronym. Possibly the ECHR, maybe the ICOJ. Optimally, we should just bomb them senseless, but the democratic peace precludes that. Dang!

Here are a bunch of pictures that are in no way related.

In China...

This is a Holiday Inn by the airport

7-11s serve lots of interesting meals, not just snacks.

And yell at you for taking pictures.

Cigarrettes are still prominently displayed in department stores

Buicks are a status symbol

and look way meaner than Buicks in the States

those simple stick figures that explain simple concepts are remarkably complex, really cool looking and sometimes hilarious

Birthday cakes are all angel food, but the choice comes in when you pick the fruit on top

Fish are sold like lobsters...

... and stingrays are sold like fish.

The Chinese are really big on fish. I can't figure out which ones are sold live and which ones are iced though. If anything the iced ones usually look more exotic.

Regular farm animals make up a large portion of the zoos, and for some reason like to put on a show

but like in America, it's still the three legged monkey that's the crowd pleaser

there are surprisingly few commie flags flying.

toilets don't have seats and instead involve squatting (this is not a urinal).

Seriously though, the bathrooms here are disgusting. In busy ones piss gets tracked all over the floor, it's slippery even by the sinks.

they have super efficient ways of wasting your food stamps. "China Welfare Lottery". Actually I'm pretty sure they don't have any social welfare programs here, and it's possible this isn't a lottery in the sense I'm thinking... but that doesn't make it any less funny.

when you order "lemon black tea" in the school cafeteria they still give you Lipton.

I've been slacking on the blog recently, so here's a bunch of random stuff off my Google Phone.

Talk about a developing country! They still have knights in armor guarding their department stores here. His boss the jester was pissed about me taking the picture. I think maybe you were supposed to pay. Luckily stupid Meigouren get a pass on just about anything here.

 I nearly died laughing. If the sky in China is blue then Bristol Palin is actually Barack and Sarah's love child.

Beijing aquarium was supposed to be pretty cool, unfortunately they closed about thirty seconds before I got to the ticket counter. I wandered around the rest of the zoo for a little bit which was ehh, but not nearly as bad as some people online made it out to be. Though all Chinese zoos do seem to have a penchant for showcasing everyday farm animals.

Apparently the eagles in Chinese zoos are friendly. Hopefully taking this picture doesn't make me a creeper, but it looked like a pretty sick shot.

They have concessions stands in the subway stations here. Also, notice the lack of people. This is the Tianjin subway which has one line and is pretty much worthless.

Ghost town

Contrast to line 1 in Beijing...

I actually had to take line 1 during rush hour the other day (this isn't packed). Picture taking was the last thing on my mind though. All of my energies were focused on not punching some sweaty shirtless dude in the face.

My buddy found this on his plate and pretty much flipped. It's all fun and games joking about the freshly slaughtered animals until it's staring you in the face. Dr. Lan told us a lot of Chinese people think the head is the best part.

Morakot. My new favorite spot in Tianjin and a brosef free zone. This is the difference between the Nylon mentality and the brosef mentality. The brosef goes to Scarlett every night because it's 70 yuan all you can drink. Nylon realizes he's in a foreign country and seeks out new places constantly, finds this craziness and then gets bottles for $45 US.

Oh, and did I mention Morakot has like the finest girls in China doin' it Coyote Ugly style?

Yeah, it's like that.

Those are my random expat bar friends Dane and Geoff on the left. Cool guys, I hope they made it home. No cell phone and too drunk to pronounce the tones in the name of your university is bad news.