日常用品 = Everyday Items

We had class in a different classroom today, and I noticed a poster that I had never seen before. Sorry for the slight blurriness.

The title of the poster is 日常用品. Translated, this means something like "Everyday Items" or "Daily Use Items."

I was struck by 1) how dated this poster is, and 2) how culture-specific many of these everyday items are.

Have you picked up your ping pong paddle today?

How about your life jacket?

Abacus?

Squirt gun?

Seen from the Window: Mannequins

We don't know a lot about our upstairs neighbors. We're pretty sure that they're local art/design students. And we know that one of them walks around the home wearing heels (all the time). And it sounds like they drop things on the floor quite a bit. But, that's about the extent of it.

And then a few weeks ago, a truck parked in front of our downstairs gate, and we saw a rope thrown from the window upstairs down to the ground outside. What things might one try to move into a home by tying a rope around it and hoisting it up and through the window? Our first guess, of course, would be... a bunch of mannequins.



Most buildings here (and in China, actually) do not have elevators. Only buildings that are 7 stories or taller are required to have elevators. And so, it makes sense, I guess, why folks may try to do it this way instead of carrying them up the stairs.

Just as this group of 6 human torsos passed our window, we heard some sort of a commotion and then a yell and then... the 6 torsos decided to end it all, falling 5 stories back to the ground below.

Date Night: Western Cuisine and... Bowling (?!!)

Dear beloved blog reader,

It's been awhile, I realize. I'm sorry.

-Alvin

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Our summer began on July 6th, and it lasts until August 30th. That means it's more than half over, and yet we don't really feel like we've had much of a summer break. We did a little bit of traveling, and then we had some friends visit. All wonderful things. But now, for 3 weeks... just a little bit of downtime.

On Monday night, we had an impromptu date night. That is, we agreed to babysit for friends who were going to go out to dinner. Our city has a very small handful of five-star hotels, and these hotels are your best shot at finding some good (though probably not great) western food. Our friends decided to eat an early dinner at one of these hotels, so we decided to babysit for them there on the hotel grounds while they went to dinner... and then after babysitting, our plan was to go and have dinner at that same restaurant for our own date night.

The restaurant was... ok. In fact, even though it was a western restaurant, we decided just to order the Chinese food on the menu. Why? Because we go by the principle: If they can't translate it well, they probably won't cook it well. Sure, they may have gotten "Angus fillet Steak" kinda correct. But when on the same page you see the western delicacy known as "The gold digs up lithosporically"... it makes you wonder whether they actually get regular practice cooking any of these western dishes.



So instead we stuck with Chinese dishes which we had more confidence that they would be able to cook. We even ordered the broccoli (even though it was translated as cauliflower. *sigh*). The Chinese dishes were good... so we still came away satisfied.

Anyway, we should have known as soon as we walked in. Clearly this wasn't a Western Restaurant. No, it was a Western Rertausant.



It's ok. We know there are 2 other international hotels in the city, and we've heard much better things about their western restaurants.

Ahh, but the highlight of the evening was... this hotel had a bowling alley. As far as we know, it's the only bowling alley in the whole city. It has 6 lanes. That's right, only 6 lanes. But it's clean and looks hardly used. And it costs 20元 (about $3) per person per game, with shoes included. Not bad, eh? We were a little bummed that there wasn't anybody selling nachos and hot dogs, but it still made for a fun bowling date night. We had the whole bowling alley all to ourselves.

Go Snus!

Here is my favorite picture from the Expo:



Go Snus! On the back, the shirt says "Nash."

The Expo

Alvin, Alvin's parents, and I went to the Expo together for two days. I felt like I didn't know what to expect for the Expo, except I heard that it had really long lines.

Here is my critique.
Beautiful architecture. My favorite pavilions in terms of architecture were Poland and Spain. This is a picture of the China pavilion.







Long Lines. You only have to wait about 10-15 minutes for the smaller pavilions, like Brunei, Philippines, Netherlands, New Zealand, ect., but well, they don't offer much in the pavilions except for a couple pictures and a stamp in the Expo passport. Most people are in line for the small pavilions just to get a stamp in the passport. Most big countries had a line that took about an hour to an hour and a half.

The longest line we waited in was Japan. We waited 3 hours. The pavilion included a demonstration on new technologies including a robot playing the violin, and then it had a 20 minute Japanese opera about an endangered bird. I thought it was very well done, but most of my companions did not think the wait was worth it.

Overall, we were there for a total of 10 hours and we visited 9 pavilions: Brunei, New Zealand, Singapore, Netherlands, Philippines, Australia, Japan, Spain, Urban Planet Themed Pavilion. The themed pavilion was really good, and no lines because you don't get a stamp in your passport.

Unique food. The Expo reminded me of the Texas State Fair without the rides. I always thought the Texas State Fair had mediocre shows and rides, but the exciting part was trying out new fast foods you don't get to try everyday. The Expo was the same way. You could try out the stereotypical fast food fare for each country. Belgium served waffles and fries with mayonnaise. Australia had burgers. Japan had Yoshinoya. Yes, it was actually a Yoshinoya. We only tried the Singaporean food, and we had satay chicken with peanut sauce and then a chicken curry on rice.

People ask me if the Expo is worth it. I will say it depends on the person. If you happen to be in Shanghai, then yes check it out and just walk around looking at the buildings and enjoying the food. If you want to get inside many of the good pavilions and you expect them to be awesome, then you will be disappointed. I liked going, but I would have been ok with not going too.

3 Flights, 3 Delays

We are back at our place, but not without a couple of hitches in our flights. We had three flights scheduled, at all of them were delayed.

The first, one, from our city to Shanghai, we were delayed 6 hours due to air traffic control, mechanical error, and weather.

The second flight, from Shanghai to Taipei was delayed for 30 min. because of weather, mainly lightning. We were on the bus going from the terminal to the plane, and all of a sudden lightning struck somewhere near, but not too close. A second later, another bolt of lightning struck, but this time it was really loud and looked really close. Alvin estimated it couldn't have been more than 2 miles away. Immediately the gate check-in people ran out to us, and told us to get off the bus. So all the passengers ran off the bus and back into the terminal. The storm cleared up quickly and then we were ready to go.

The last flight, from Taipei to Guangzhou was delayed two hours because the plane that was going to take us didn't arrive yet. As a result, we missed our connecting flight from Guangzhou to our city. There is only one flight a day to our city, so the airline ended us giving us a free night at a nearby hotel. That was nice, but Alvin's only complaint was that there wasn't a Starbucks near by.

Overall, our flights were nice and comfortable. We had a good time traveling, even with all the delays.

Delayed

On Monday morning, Alvin and I were heading to Shanghai to visit family. Our flight was at 8am and we had a layover in the city of Xian. And then this is when the trouble hit. Our flight was supposed to leave at 10am to Shanghai, but we didn't leave until 4:00pm, and we arrived six hours late.

The day before, a friend was telling us how she didn't think the Chinese complained about time as much and her example was a delayed flight she was on. She was correct, for the first 45 minutes. And then, trouble began. Here is a schedule of what was happening:

10:00-10:45am - On the plane. Calmness.
10:45-11:15am - On the plane. Anxiety building.
11:15am- 12:15pm - A flight attendant announces that the delay is because of traffic control and we will be leaving at noon. Calmness.
12:15- 12:45pm - Flight attendant announces that there is a mechanical error and we will have to wait for unknown amount of time. Now the most vocal guests run up to the front and start demanding to get off the flight and want their money back. A huge verbal match occurs where the flight attendant tells a man to stop yelling, and then the crowd starts yelling at the flight attendant that she has no right to say that. The verbal match gets pretty heated and loud.
12:45- 1:00pm- We are all escorted back to the gate.
1:00-3:30pm- The whole crowd loudly yells at the gate agent continuously for two and a half hours. There is a break when the agents try to appease us with free crackers and Pepsi, but then the crowd gets back into the yelling.

What did Alvin and I do during this time? Well we were in the front of the crowd. Not to participate, but we were using this opportunity for language practice. We learned things like, "So tell me, really what time are we for sure going to leave?" And things like "traffic control," "mechanical error," and "fog" (since there was supposed fog in Shanghai). And most importantly, "you must compensate us."

The other thing we did was make some friends. We became translators for some Canadians and then made a Chinese friend who helped supplement some of what we were missing.

In the end, we got to our destination safely, and also with 200 kuai (~$30) compensated for our wait time. We also learned a lot of language to use in arguments, and learned about the culture's limit on their patience with time.