Xi Shuang Ban Na

I've been trying to post this blog for 3 days now but apparently Blogger can't handle the video I wanted to attach. Lame!

So, this little vacation we went on was supposedly hosted by Mr. Tong (guanxi guy). It was me and Adam, Anna (HR girl), Mrs. Zheng (Head of HR), and two of Mr. Tong’s friends: Mrs. Yu (Pomeranian lady) and some other lady (I think Mrs. Ying) and her daughter. Well, because we heard that Mr. Tong invited us, we figured he would be going too. So we expected a certain level of accommodation. The place we went is called Xi Shuang Ban Na, and it’s a tropical town in the Yunnan province in South China. We were thinking it was going to be a nice relaxing time so of course, we were all for it. But here’s what REALLY happened:

We got picked up at 7am on Monday and drove to the Hefei airport. The flight was about 2 ½ hours and we arrived in Kun Ming, the capital of Yunnan. The weather was very nice so we spent some time walking around outside.

Adam and I had basically no idea what our itinerary was because the only person who could translate for us there was Anna, and her English isn’t very good. We’d ask her “What are we doing today?” and she’d tell us one or two things out of the 6 or so things we were actually doing. So all I knew about this first day was that we were taking a bus from Kun Ming to Xi Shuang Ban Na at 6:00pm. The bus ride was going to be 5 hours so I knew we’d have to eat dinner beforehand. As the time crept closer and closer to 6:00, I wondered if we were going to miss our bus. Mrs. Yu and Mrs. Ying were taking their sweet time buying fruit so we ended up eating at McDonald’s, which was kind of a relief. We made it to the bus right at 6:00, but to my dismay, the bus didn’t actually leave until 7:15. When we finally got to our destination, the bus dropped us all off at the same crappy hotel. And it was at this point that I realized we were on a group tour, much like the one my parents and I took in Spain, only crappier. My fantasy of a relaxing tropical vacation was dead. It was about 12:30am when we got there and we were to be up and ready to go again by 7:00am. When we got to our room, we knew this was going to be an interesting trip.

For the first time ever, we stayed at a hotel without a western toilet. By the way, I hope you’re not tired of hearing about squat toilets because I have MUCH more to say on the matter later. Here’s a picture of the bathroom:

The squat toilet was inconveniently placed right under the showerhead so you had to be careful not to step in it when showering. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a list I made of everything wrong with this hotel room (according to my smug American standards): Squat toilet, shower drain is the toilet, showerhead really sucks, no internet, only one outlet works, no soap provided, only one towel provided, no bottled water provided, water dispenser provided but is sketchy and glasses provided are dirty, no room temperature controls, hard bed, flat pillows, thin walls.

I debated whether or not to tell Anna how much the room sucked, but luckily the following morning she took the initiative and said “Maybe, this is the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at” and we agreed. She didn’t bring a toothbrush because most Chinese hotels provide them and we didn’t bring our own soap, so we were in the same boat. We asked if the next hotel would be better and she said, “Maybe…. it will be the same.” She overuses the word “maybe” so I never know what’s going to follow it. She explained that because it’s Chinese New Year, all the good hotels are booked up months in advance.

The breakfast provided by this hotel consisted of steam buns and warm soy milk. I didn’t drink the soy milk, but Adam tried it and was disgusted, and that doesn’t happen often. Anyways, we got back on the bus and headed for the Wild Elephant Vale. This is somewhat of a nature preserve that apparently has wild elephants and monkeys and stuff. But truthfully, there are way too many tourists for any wild animals to come near. We took a trail and walked all through the jungle:

And then we got to the touristy part where you can pay to have your picture taken with birds and monkeys. Adam did both.

The lunch we had there was amazing, though. Barbeque at its best. I got some squid on a stick just so I could take a picture of it:

But it was too spicy so I couldn’t finish eating it. They had some trained elephants putting on a
show (to make up for the fact that there were no wild ones) and we both got our pictures taken sitting on one.

After that, we went on another jungle hike at a different location. Due to my lack of knowledge
about the itinerary, I didn’t wear appropriate shoes. Not high heels or anything, just not tennis shoes. There was another trained animal show at this place and the tiger looked seriously pissed but it was jumping through hoops anyways so we knew they weren’t treating it nicely. After that, we walked up to a place where someone blew a whistle and dozens of peacocks flew out of the jungle and into a clearing where you could feed them.

Then we walked further up to see a Dai minority village, which was kinda boring. It was at this
point that I was getting pretty tired. But we ventured onward, further up the mountain to do more hiking! I’ve decided I don’t like going on vacation with Chinese people (or maybe just Chinese women). You know that stereotype we have about them taking lot’s of pictures? Well it’s true. It’s probably the truest stereotype that exists. These women took pictures of themselves and each other next to every stinkin’ thing. And they had to get every permutation: one with just themselves, then just a few of them, then a group shot, then they’d make us get in the picture. Sometimes they’d take a serious shot and an action shot. And ALWAYS they had us pointing towards the sun so I have a feeling I look angry in every picture because I was squinting. It just made everything go that much slower. Here are a couple of the very few pictures I took:

When we got to our new hotel, the bathroom was even worse. I’m sad to say I forgot to get a
picture of it but I did make a new list of cons, with a few pros. Cons: No counter space, worse flushing toilet, no towels provided, no toilet paper provided, no soap (again), still no internet, hot and cold water opposite of what it says, and no actual hot water, just warm. Also, roosters woke us up at 5:00am. Pros: Better showerhead, better beds, and better pillows. But the no towels thing was just flabbergasting to me. How can you expect people to bring their own towels? They’d take up so much luggage space! I asked Anna, "So how much does this place cost per night, like $5?" And she was like, “Oh no, 300 yuan”. That’s about the price of a Super 8 motel, and they have free internet! But they’re only charging that much because it’s Chinese New Year and they know they can get people to pay it. I wonder how much a hotel with a western toilet would have cost…

That night, we had a cafeteria style dinner, and then went to see a show put on by the Dai minority people. And THAT was cool, more so because it was so crazy than because it was awesome. The dancing was not professional and the costumes were ridiculous. There may or may not be a video attached below:

The next day, we visited a Buddhist temple that was newly built in 2005. It was very lovely. This time I came prepared with tennis shoes.

We visited another Dai village and a lady showed us a Dai house and talked about how they lived, then tried to sell us some silver souvenirs. Then we ate lunch, visited a few touristy shops, then went to a flower and plant garden. The garden was pretty lame, but of course our friends had to take pictures with every bush. We went on a mini cruise before dinner and met a little boy who spoke pretty good English. Here are couple pictures:

We had another cafeteria style dinner and saw another show. This time the dancing was a bit better but the show in general was less fun because they played a couple of games involving audience members that seemed to go on forever.

The next day was all travel, back to Kun Ming. We crossed over a large bridge that they claimed was the highest bridge in the world, but if you google it, you’ll see that China has already built another one that’s even higher. Here’s a picture of our bridge:

Now, our first stop on the way back was at a little hillside tea farm where you could sample their teas and then buy some if you wanted. I didn’t necessarily have to pee when we got there, and if I’d known from the start what their bathroom looked like, I probably wouldn’t have sampled any tea. But I didn’t check, and for that I paid the price. I think the worst public squat toilet I’ve
ever used up until this point just had a nasty wet floor and smelled bad. This one had no stall doors. And even worse than that, people stood there and watched you pee while they waited for their turn because god forbid they stand too far back, and someone skips them in line. Being in line (for anything) in China is an interesting thing. Like I said before, people will skip you if you’re not close enough to the person in front of you. Soooooo, that made for an uncomfortable pee. In America, if I go into a public bathroom and the lock on the door is broken, I go to another
stall…

And then at lunch time, we stopped at this roadside cafeteria-like place and their bathrooms were a little worse even! They didn’t have a flushing mechanism. It was just a hole in the ground leading to who knows where. I really wish I could have gotten a picture of it but I couldn’t because there were always people in there. I grabbed one from the internet that was similar:

I found myself just being thankful that they separated the bathrooms by gender. I really hope that I’ve now seen the worst. Anyways, when we got back to Kun Ming, we had a fabulous dinner at a nice restaurant, then headed to the airport. And that concludes our journey. It’s taken me until now to catch up on the sleep I lost every night from going to bed late and getting up early. But I learned that if you’re going to travel during Chinese New Year, you need to make your plans about 4-6 months in advance if you want a good hotel. If we get invited on another one of these, I’m not sure what we’ll say.

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Happy Year of the Dragon! I haven’t had the chance to write about Chinese New Year yet because I’ve been without internet for the past few days and I will explain about that later. So anyways, I can’t really tell you exactly what Chinese people do during what they call the “Spring Festival”, because they spend it with their families. Every person I’ve tried to ask about it simply says they get together with their family and have a big meal. So it sounds like Thanksgiving, for like 8 days. But I do know one other thing they do, and that’s set off firecrackers. On New Year’s Eve, you can hear firecrackers being set off all day long. Here’s a video of what we heard approximately every 10 minutes:

And then at night, instead of having one place in town where everyone gathers to see a fireworks display, fireworks are set off all over town. It was a little underwhelming where we were (hence no video) but I’ll bet it would have been spectacular in Shanghai or another giant city. It was weird, though, we went outside at midnight to see fireworks and nobody was around. The streets were completely empty. There were a few taxis on the road but pretty much no one else.

We didn’t have Smudgie with us because we got invited to go on a little vacation Monday-Thursday and our housekeeper agreed to puppysit. She didn’t think she’d be able to get a cab on Sunday so she picked him up Saturday. I’m sure he was a barky little thing during the firecrackers.

Company New Year's Party

Chinese companies celebrate New Year's like American companies celebrate Christmas, only with kareoke. The party was held at a big hotel, and all 300ish employees attended. Here is the view from our table:

We sat at the head table with Mr. Tong, Cynthia, and several retirees. To start the night off, there were some speeches, and then some awards given out for the outstanding employee in every department. Then sprinkled throughout the night, there were singing performances by several employees. Here's an old guy accompanied by an accordian:

Mr. Zheng, my boss, got up on stage with a drum and I thought he was going to give a drum performance but it turns out they were just playing a game where a bundle of napkins gets passed around while the drum is played and whoever has it when the drum stops gets a prize. I took a picture anyways:

Adam and I had to sing a song, of course, so we chose "Auld Lang Syne" because it seemed appropriate. Here we are, trying not to be embarassed by how terrible we sound:

And later on they pulled us up on stage to sing a group song about friends. We didn't know the words so we just smiled:

They had a drawing for prizes (cookware) and money and I won an electric tea kettle.

Side story:

Dreamer got a ring with "LUCK" engraved on it, hoping it would bring her luck. She especially hoped it would help her win the grand prize of 2,000 yuan. That didn't happen. In fact, she didn't win anything. I tried to convince her it wasn't a lucky ring but she still wore it. She also bought two hamsters lately and was very excited about them. Well, when we were at the dentist the second time, her sister called to tell her that one of the hamsters had died already. She doesn't wear the ring anymore.

Going to the Dentist in Huainan

Earlier I mentioned that Adam's crown popped off (during the week of bad luck) but Dreamer's uncle is a dentist so we made an appointment with him. The first appointment happened on January 2nd, then they had to send the mold of Adam's mouth to Shanghai to have the crown made, then the crown got put on last Friday. So here is how it went.

Difference #1: The dentist office isn't a stand alone building, it's inside of a hospital. Here's a picture of the hospital:

Here's a picture of a hilarious sign out front, showing you where some departments are:

Obviously my favorite is the Hemorrhoid Department but the Facial Features Department comes in a close second. "Within Department" is probably just a bad translation of Internal Medicine. Here's a picture of the hallway the dentist office was in:

I don't know if you can see the doors with bars on them but it did have a very prisony feel to it. But apparently they were going to be renovating soon.

Well when you walk into the office, there's the front desk, and then there's a dentist chair right next to it.

Difference #2: No privacy. Adam did get to go into a different room (not the dentist chair next to the front desk) but Mr. Yu left the door open so random people could (and did) pop their heads in and oogle for a minute. Dreamer and I actually got to sit in there with him the whole time, which is good because there was some translating to do. Dreamer's English is good, but she's not up to snuff on her dental vocab so she would translate to me and I would clarify to Adam what to do with this mouth. Difference # 3: No receptionist. Mr. Yu kept answering his phone whenever it rang, which was often. And that's not considered rude here. People always answer their phones and generally they don't have voicemail. So if someone calls you and you don't answer, they will usually call back 2 or 3 times before giving up. Anyways, it just kinda slowed things down a bit. Difference # 4: Not as hygenic. He didn't wear gloves, his dentist tools (though I'm sure they were clean) were not pulled out of packaging in front of us like they do in the US, and his tray looked like this:

And the room itself was not the sterile environment we're used to. My favorite part of the room was the piece of random fabric that was nailed to the wall acting as a curtain over the window. I didn't take a picture of it but you can see a small bit of it in the right side of this picture:

Anyways, despite the differences, the actual procedure and the quality of the crown were the same and it cost a lot less. It was only $350, and that's without insurance. Crowns are $500 with insurance in the US. So we were happy with the experience.

Here are a couple more dishes from the housekeeper:

Sausage. Too salty and fatty

Egg thing. Delicious!

And here's Smudgie peeking out from under the living room curtain. His favorite thing is to sit behind the curtain and watch people go by. Then you can say "Where did Smudgie go?" and he'll pop his head out like this:

We got a housekeeper

A couple weeks ago, Adam and I got an e-mail from Anna, one of the HR girls. She said the company feels like they aren’t taking good enough care of us and they’d like to hire someone to cook and clean for us. This may have stemmed from Dreamer picking my brain about what we eat for dinner and me answering honestly. She also saw our apartment and must have thought it was messy. We politely declined, but to no avail. Mr. Xu (the general manager) told us a few days later that they are hiring us housekeeper. At Christmas dinner they joked about getting us an attractive female housekeeper (I actually thought they weren’t joking at the time). But then we heard that the person might be a guy. Last Friday they came over to see the apartment and at that point, I still believed it was a man! Sure looked like one. But I found out today she’s a woman. Mrs. Wang is her name and she comes to us from one of Mr. Tong’s friend’s friends (guanxi!!!). She worked for the same lady for 10 years so I’m sure she won’t steal anything.

She’s been here twice now and has made these three dishes so far. Two of them were amazing.

Last night she brought her daughter and Smudgie looooooves her!

Also, my co-workers’ aunt sent her some kind of bread that’s only made in the Zhejiang province and she shared it with everyone. I didn’t catch the name of it so I’m calling it “paper bread” because it’s paper thin. It’s like a cross between a rice cake and a communion wafer (it’s not made from rice, though, that’s just what it tastes like). And I love it! Too bad I’ll probably never have any more of it.

Here is Smudige snoozing on his pillow like a little angel!