EmailfromJessica

Even the cold blooded love Winston!

"Dalian is famous for its seafood"and we had enough of it!

Kum pow Chicken.......

[remember that you can click on individual pictures to see them in a much larger and clearer form]

Yes, it's been awhile. Trying to catch up. So much has been going on... Chinese New Year( Fucking awesome), Climbing a huge ass chinese mountain, Jessica visitied, plus much more. I am still trying to get cuaght up on other things, but jessica sent a group email out about her trip to visit me and i thought it would be a good idea to print it out to give her perspective on her trip here( I will write more about my perspective of it. I still love being here by the way. anyhoo, here she is ( please note. jessica is chinese. while her English is very good, there are a few things that she might say that might sound strange to us. Her command of the language is excellent, but still, there are nauances in English that might be missed. She says that we made fun of winston all of the time, but that comes out harsh. we made jokes, but they were nice jokes, we love him! She says he speaks very slow and its hilarious, well, the chinese are very blunt, she is not moking him, just making an observation. she says I have a big nose and talk super loud-- well , she means that! she is a sweet kid; it takes some exposure to the chinese for americans to understand their bluntness is not meant to hurt our feelings. oh, and she is wrong, W loves chinese buses. my hatred of them is legendary, however...):

Hello!!!~~
everyone:

Hope you all well!!

This is Jessica. I'm currently in China for visiting. Before arrived at home I went to visit a friend in Dalian. I met Patrick in US when I was studying in Oswego. He's in linguistic major graduated last year and decided to go to China to teach. He labels himself as a writer, but the last time he updated his blog was in November, 2008 which was long time ago !! anyway, He ended up in Dalian. So, I visited him on the way back home. Dalian is in up north of china, and it's about 50 mins by plane from my hometown.

Blow is a brief description of the trip. the things I remembered and found interesting and worth to jot down and to share with.

It begins with the weather.................~~~~~

China is colder than NZ ! Not too cold per Se, it is actually very warm this year. Normally it would be around 0 degree at this time of the year, but yesterday it was so warm as 12 degree!!

I arrived at home on Sunday the 8th, since been going here and there since then. My parents picked me up from the airport so it was a lot easier for me instead of taking public transport for myself with two luggage. It would be a nightmare. The airport is in the middle of TangGu (district where I live) and TianJin (city where airbus goes).There's no direct bus, and so i would have to transfer in TianJin. TJ is further away from TG than from the airport. Anyway, sitting in a car is more comfy and quicker than bus!

I went to visit both my grandparents and uncles and aunts and cusions and a niece. In total, it's 9.5+13.5=23 people. the .5s are one is still not born yet, and the other is the dog my grandma has. It's a big surprise for them as none of them i came back. My parents knew it on the day the 8th before I departed from Dalian.

The trip to Dalian was great. I met some new people, patrick's friends who also are from US and teach Eng here. Sara and Ed are a couple who have been in China longer and speak good amount of Mandarin. They are fun people to be with and have good heart. Winston is the one we hang out a lot with. They live pretty much next door to each other. Patrick calls him the black jesus! because he's black and is extremely nice. He's liked by everyone, even by fish which is cold blooded! The story behind this was that we went to a theme park together, there is a aquarium where people can pay for feeding gold fish by holding food in a palm and putting the fist into water. And fish smells the food and swim to you to kiss you. So, me and winston did it together as it was a big fish tank. The thing was that most of the fish swam to Winston and didn't come to me, considering we had same amount of food and was doing exactly the same thing!! It was very funny that there was hardly any fish near me and lots of fish near winston! We concluded that He's even attractive to the cold blooded!! It was very fun!

Another highlight was the food. We had tight budget but we had many interesting stuff. cheap ones and good too. At one breakfast, we had deep fried noodle which was very crispy and won ton which was tasty, and a couple of pancakes like mooncake, if you know what mooncakes are, that has filling in the middle.

Dalian is on the coast, and so has rich resource and easy access to seafood. There are good and fresh seafood! People like to cook seafood when it's still alive to keep the freshness. Unlike NZ, fish are eaten as whole, including bones and head. In fact, everything except guts. Hundreds of kinds of fish. I also had steamed crabs and seafood with shells. And I had this seafood that looks like hedgehog which has lots of protective coverings all around. It's a red round thing as big as palm. People halve it and eat the soft thing inside raw. It's like fish egg. I had it cooked as I was concerned with the freshness of it. It's soft texture.

Dalian is a relatively clean and nice city but dry. There is this famous square next to the ocean is modern and beautifully constructed for Creation purpose used to be a garbage field where the city garbage were uploaded there. But then, the city council cleared all the garbage and expanded the land by filling the ocean. Now, it's the financial center and tourism site. impressive!

People I came cross in Dalian are honest and friendly. Patrick's landlord cindy is a lovely woman. I talked to her a few times when I was in New Zealand to help Pat translating. She knew I came, and took us out to see the night of Dalian and shouted us for dinner. Winston were with us too. There are other people I met randomly were nice to us too.

We made fun of Winston all the time! He speaks slowly and has a distinctive and hilarious accent. He's from Arizona. He found a dish in China which he eats everyday. He's in mad love with this dish (and as well as his gf! )! Every time we went out to order, he didn't need to look at the menu (besides the fact he can't read in Chinese), he just ordered this dish. We happened once had to look for a restaurant that has this dish in their menu before decided to dine there! The dish is a simple dish which I believe is from Muslim ethnicity, Com Pond chicken (Gong Bao Ji Ding). We haven't yet figure out why Winston only likes this dish! but, we will!! And, we believe that in near future, he will publish a book, the name of the book will be "Winston and Com Pond Chicken in China"!!! And he's going to open a Com Pond Chicken restaurant in America or club!! Dont' forget to support him!!

We were starred at by people very often when in public. Winston is pretty black so he's easily spotted different. Patrick is very tall and has a big nose and white skin and always speaks super loudly is also easy to notice. He also looks scary to some people (I get used to it already!! haha..). and Me as being a perfectly normal Chinese from appearance becomes 'abnormal' as I speak fluent English with these two folks comfortably. I enjoy the privilege. I'm a good interpreter. I provided comprehensive service as a interpreter! I have good grasp of both cultures which was very handy.

Oh, another interesting thing was that Patrick and Winston absolutely dislike the crowded buses in Dalian. Unfortunately, the buses in Dalian are always packed with people. Because it's very convenient and cheap. I think W and P don't get used to such close physical intimacy with people. People on bus are too aggressive for them. They get pushed away in discomfortable positions, and they don't push back just because they don't. They sometimes wait for a few buses pass before got on because they don't want to be pushed. For me, the bus isn't too crowded, but for them it is. It is true that America doesn't have 13 billion people live next to one another. I understand. But it's funny.

There are also many funny things happened during the trip, but i wanted to stop here.

all the best and love from J~

iforgotaboutthebadmitton(sp)andthekindnessofthechinese

In my list of strange things that the Chinese (and there is more of this to come), I forgot about the national obsession with badmitton( sp?). the game like tennis. You see it everywhere, they even do these jazzercise exercises with the raquets. You really haven't lived untill you have seen 40 older chinese all in synch with raquets. It's pretty awesome. I have seen them playing the game in classrooms, in front of stores, on the street, pretty much everywhere. They seldom use nets, if ever. They love it!

Youhome is a giant supermarket by where I live( ba yi lu- 8 1 street). Youhome has two floors, the first floor is like a k-mart or something, the second is all grocery. You can take your cart up to the second floor by escalator( it's flat, no steps, just an inclined ramp). Youhome has alot of stuff. They have American style stuff like cookies and chips( although the potato chips in China come in all kind of crazy flavors- steak, baked potato, tommatoo, duck, you name it). they have big ass catfish in tanks, they have roasted chicken, chicken heads, chicken feet, you name it chicken. One thing about chinese stores, is that they have maybe 2 or three girls in any given section to help you make your selection. Usually, they just point you to the thing that the store wants to sell the mos,. but Youhome is a bit different. Today, Winston and I were there and we got alot of assitance. Many, but not all, Chinese women like to take care of Americans like we were children, especially Winston, who is an African American with corn rows and is the nicest, sweetest guy that I have ever met. There is not any discernable racism against african americans in China becuase there are hardly ever any African Americans in China! If i am a novelty ( and i am) in China, Winston is doubly so. They love his hair and his freindliness( although he has had Chinese argue with him that he is not from America- they think all Americans are rich White people- they told him he was from Africa or Brazil). Anyway, at Youhome, we were looking at yogurt, which is a love I share with the Chinese. So many types of Yogurt, FLavors, pouches, liquid, big containers, small containers, ect. WEll, there was a really cheap deal, and the women at the ailse just looked at us and said no. now, you might think that they were trying to get us to buy a more expensive brand, but i know that they weren't . The brand that i got was slightly more expensive, but not much more. That yogurt was probably bad, and they were looking out for us. Chinese grocery stores are not above selling bad yogurt, which is probably why it was such a good deal. Later, i was looking at dumplings. I picked out a bag that looked good. A youhome worker came over and stopped me. I thought, jesus, she's not going to let me get this( becuase they can be a pain in the ass sometimes) and she reached over and grabbed another bag that had a give away bad ass apron tied to it. I explained ( without language) that i did not want that flavor, so she took off the apron from the bag it was on and tied it to my bag! then i had to buy a pot to cook my dumplings in. A youhome lady came over and inspected the box, making sure that the pot was in the box. you might think that this is store policy, but i don't think it is. poeple who run businesses in China will do anything to make a buck. they will oversell, rip you off, sell you bad products, whatever. You have to be careful. but the youhome ladies will help a brother out, becuase in their eyes, we americans are like children.
The women at the office i work at are like that, but they will kill you with kindness. So are many of the older teachers; i have to tell them that i am ok eating with chopsticks, no, i don't need special western food, please let me wash my tray like every other teacher, no, i don't need you to walk me to the bus becuase i am 38 years old. A few times, some street vendor has tried to rip off one of us americans( it's ok, becuase all americans are rich beyond belief, they think) and some lady will pop up out of nowhere and give them hell and take us away! The Chinese lady is a great thing (however, if the lady is a vendor, the situation is quite different). In general, the chinese are a very kind, gentle people. That being said, there are many who will rip you off or steal from you. Violent crime is almost non-existent, but thievery very, very common. But, i have encountered many kind Chinese who counter the thieves in my eyes.

Ok, so tommorrow will be part two of the long promised chronology....