February 6th: China Day 2 + Haircut

Day 21, 7:30AM: After my “experience” the previous night, I woke up in the spa very tired, but ready to leave. We left the spa and grabbed some breakfast before buying our train tickets for the trip to Guangzhou. The first thing to catch my attention was that our train ticket had no barcode. Instead, it actually had a RFID chip embedded in the paper so you just waved it over the machine and it let you in. That was really cool.

The train itself looked like an modern train, it was electrically powered and traveled at about 200 kph. I enjoyed sitting in my window seat listening to my iPod and reflecting on my experience the day before and contemplating life in general (I seem to do it a lot). It was interesting to see how the transition from city to rural landscape, complete with farming and straw houses in some areas next to giant freeways. China is certainly a land of contrasts. The other interesting thing was that I decided to actually start drawing up the schematics for my crazy invention I’m going to try and build next summer and it felt good to finally get something on paper after thinking about it for so many years.


Ri Huang, CS, Chang Sheng, me, and Lucas by the train

When we arrived in Guangzhou we took the subway from the train station directly to our hotel, once again using RFID chips for our tickets. It really surprised me how all the forms of transportation in Asia seem to use RFID chips, yet I’ve never seen them in use in the US. Perhaps this is because I rarely take public transportation in the US. Nevertheless, we arrived at our hotel and got checked in – into our rooms on the 18th floor that is. I rarely stay on floors that high up because my mother hates heights so when traveling with my family we are always on a very low floor, but I enjoyed the view that our room offered. I found it fascinating to look out and see the contrasts of China. Right next to our hotel were very tightly packed houses of sorts in what looked like an old and poor part of town, but right next to it were skyscrapers. I will include pictures of this in a later post. Two things in particular caught my eye, however. First, everywhere on the horizon I looked I could see construction cranes of new skyscrapers being raised. Second, the smog was pretty bad, not that I was terribly surprised by it.

Feeling adventurous, we journey out into the streets to grab some lunch. We ate at a nearby street café because most of the stores were closed due to the New Year. After walking around for a bit more CS said he wanted to get a haircut, so Ri Huang, CS, Deborah, and I went to find a haircut place near the hotel while Wai Zin, Chang Sheng, and Lucas went and did something else (I know, how descriptive of me). We found a place literally next to the hotel that looked really nice and decided to try it. This was the start of my next ‘experience.”

First off, ask yourself: “If I were in another country where they don’t speak any languages I know, how easy would it be to get a haircut?” Let me give you a hint, it’s pretty hard. But, I just successfully got through a spa where no one spoke English, so a haircut shouldn’t be that hard, right? Wrong. You have to communicate a lot of information to the person who is cutting your hair, when getting a massage they just do it, there’s no need for communication. So, it begins when they take you in the back and wash your hair. This part was weird for me. Remember how I said I don’t like other people touching me? Now I have a random guy washing my hair for me, it was slightly awkward to say the least. So I managed to get through it easily enough, although I felt bad that I couldn’t talk to him. At one point I did hear him ask Deborah where I was from and I heard her say ‘American’ in Chinese, so I could tell I was rusty, but there was hope for me yet. After washing my hair (very thoroughly I might add) they sat me in the chair to get my hair cut. This is where the troubles began. First, they offer you a beverage while your hair is being cut, which I said I didn’t want, and they weren’t quite sure what to do about that.

Then, I saw a group of 4 of them standing and looking at me talking amongst themselves, presumably trying to figure out what to do with me. CS to the rescues! He came over and was able to translate what I wanted done with my hair. I will spare the details of the next 45 minutes while the guy cut my hair, but he kept leaving and not returning for several minutes at a time and he couldn’t ask me what I wanted done. This only compounded the problem that I like my hair short, but my hair was already shorter than everyone else’s in the salon. So in the end, I looked like David Beckham. Yes, not my normal haircut, but I’m guessing it was one of the few hairstyles the guy knew. After he was done cutting, they then wash your hair again, which was just as weird as the first time. In total, 68 RMB (about 10 USD). Yeah, everything is cheap in China.

So, this was my second experience in a very short time period where I felt very bad about how much I was paying for the service I was getting. I don’t like other people doing things like that for me and I feel very guilty knowing how little they get paid. The other things I noticed was how dependant I was on my friends for everything here because so few people speak English. Also, I haven’t used my Chinese in 2 years, so I’m beyond rusty. Not to mention I had trouble learning it the first time around.

After our haircuts we went to a different part of town and walked around, the highlight of which was when we were walking outside a mall and there was a musical fountain, the sort where they time the water effects to music. Much to my surprise, they were playing “The Final Countdown” which I had first heard about two weeks ago. That surprised me a bit, but I thought it was kind of cool. After that came New Years dinner!

For the faint of stomach, it might not be a good idea to be eating food while reading this because I am about to describe the culinary items that shocked me during dinner. I knew it would be outside my comfort zone when we walked in the restaurant and the front is lined with fish tanks. This in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the fish in the tanks are your seafood. In Asia they display the live fish for you to see so that you know your seafood is fresh. We then went upstairs and actually had a semi-private room for our dinner. So, the first surprise awaiting me during dinner was the first dish to come out: pig leg. They take most of the meat off the leg, but include the leg (mostly bones at this point) on the dish so you can get all of the meat out of the hard to reach areas. When they set down the plate and there was literally a pig’s foot on it, I had to subdue the gag reflex for the next several minutes. Once I finally got used to it my next shock arrived: our chicken. We had ordered half a chicken as one of the plates and indeed out came half a chicken – complete with half a head. Yes, half a head. Insert gag reflex here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. So, it looked as though someone had taken a chicken and cut it in half with a saw, then cooked it, cut it up a bit, and served it. I must admit, I came close to throwing up when they set down the chicken plate and Ri Huang saw them setting it down and tried to cover it up so I couldn’t see it (I appreciated his attempt) but it was too late. He must have seen the expression on my face and kept telling me to look away but the damage was done. After the chicken, the unagi (fried eel) didn’t bother me as much as it usually does and the goose didn’t either. Here are some pictures of our meal.




The bowl is the eel


The pig claw is the front dish




Goose




Sweet and Sour Pork, finally a dish i can eat!


Potatoe


These ones reminded me of pill bugs.



So, towards the end of the meal I was lucky enough to be introduced to a Singaporean custom that I think I’ll adopt for my own use when I get back to the US. It began when Chang Sheng and Lucas wanted to order a beer and did so. The waiter obliged by pouring the bottle into 7 small glasses for each of us. At this point I’m thinking ‘not again.’ I’ve been told by other people that beer tastes bad, and I was none too eager to try it. But once again I found myself in a situation where everyone else had their cups in the hand raised up at the table and figured ‘why not?’ So, with great reluctance I raised my glass. At this point I was expecting us to simply toast and get it over with. I was wrong. I’m not entirely clear on the tradition, but it involved standing up, toasting our glass, and yelling “Yamseng” as loud as we could. So, we’re standing there and they instructed me on what to say so it started out loud, and by the time we were done we were shouting at the top of our lungs “YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMSENG!” Yelling that one word lasted over a minute. After that everyone else drank their beer as I sat there waiting to try mine and none too eager enthusiastic. So, once again for your viewing pleasure is my first taste of beer.


The Beckham hairstyle is quite apparent in this video.

Yeah, as you can guess from my expression, it tasted really bad. I do not enjoy the taste of alcohol (even though I’ve only had very small amounts). By the time I was done tasting it, everyone else at the table had already finished theirs (including the girls). Honestly, I was slightly embarrassed at this but it tasted DISGUSTING! After a couple minutes I decided to brace myself and right as CS and Wai Zin were telling me not to worry about it (they saw me just staring at my glass) I downed it in about three gulps. It was indeed as bad as I thought it would be.

After our dinner we went to Teemall, which used to be the largest mall in China and to none other than the arcade! The arcade was enormous! It was so big I even got lost inside it a few times. We hung out there are a while and I tried a tank simulator where you sit in a chair that’s on hydraulics and it shakes you around as you move up and down terrain and get hit by enemy fire.







After walking around the mall until 10PM we headed back to the hotel. When we got back I was looking forward to sleep after such a short night yesterday, but this was the Chinese New Year – certainly no time for sleep! Instead we went across the river in front of our hotel to a giant festival. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking, but there were probably hundreds of thousands of people packed into the street for over a mile with shops lining the center. The atmosphere was vibrant and festive unlike anything I’ve ever been in before. The one nice thing about having me in their group was that I was about a head taller than most other people there, which meant I could spot people if we got separated and they could easily find me in the seas of people.


Can you see me?


Yeah, i stick out that much...


This gives you a small sense of the crows that were there to celebrate. imagine this going on for over a mile!!!






Oh, I forgot to mention that it was COLD again!!! Yes, lucky me it was freezing. Not as bad as Hong Kong had been, but I was still shivering with my jacket on. The unfortunate part of the festival is that the mile we walked was away from our hotel, meaning that we either had to take a taxi back or walk the one and a half miles. I opted to walk back with Ri Huang, Chang Sheng, and Lucas and it was actually quite fun walking back, but still very cold. The most surprising thing to happen on the way back was when we were walking in an underground tunnel to cross the street and some guy was throwing those Cherry Bomb (the ones that make a loud sound when you throw them on the ground) at the homeless people trying to sleep in there. Being inside the tunnel it was extremely loud and my ears were ringing. As I walked up the stairs on the other side he threw one at my feet and I lost hearing in both ears for the next minute or so.

All in all, it was an interesting day, and I managed to keep this down to 4.5 pages single spaced. W00t!