Beijing!

So we arrived in Beijing, our first stop in our giant China travel itinerary, after a six hour delay in Shenzhen airport. Apparently it was too foggy in Beijing to fly in, and it's true that you couldn't see for more than about 15 feet for the first few days. We're staying at our friend Sasha's parents' house - they are truly spoiling us rotten. Not only is their house gorgeous, they feed us extravagantly and they let us use their private driver to see the sights!

Chinese Yard Sale

Like every time I move someplace, I have to first say goodbye to my loads of cherished, useless crap. I figured what better way to do it, than introduce the good old american concept of a yard sale to the comrades.





I drug a huge suitcase full of stuff, two bicycles, a guitar, a kite, and a ripstick downtown and set up shop on the corner.
At first they were pretty weirded out, but once they noticed my "cheap cheap, everything must go!" prices, they couldn't resist.





Some of my students noticed me, got their friends, and then all wanted the chance to buy something from mr. andy.



Within 1 minute, the passers-bye instinctively assumed standard chinese, huddle-and-gawk formation.





By the five minute mark, this lady purchased about half of what I had, and then tried to steal some squirt guns on top of it. I was only charging 3 kuai each, or 5 kuai (NOTE: I had questions about this, Chinese money is called renminbi, or RMB or Yuan, kuai is a unit word for money, like saying "bucks") for the set (about 45 cents). She then gave the guns to her kids and said that i couldn't take them from the kids since she already gave them the guns. I called her a theif, and harnessed the power of the crowd to stop her theivery. Begrudingly, she pressed the 5 yuan into my hands in 50 cent increments.



8 Minutes in, the guy in the A-shirt bought my handy bike, 2 pairs of "Fatty Man underwear" and some hair extensions. I threw the colander in for him for free.





After only 10 minutes of intense humidity, shouting, and craziness i sold out and made 300 RMB. I think i might have a real love for yard saling. Maybe one-day I will pursue my new life-long dream as a globe-trotting 1 man yard saling machine. First I gotta go back to school.




But first I gotta travel china!



Leaving shenzhen on Tuesday! To beijing! Then Xi'an! Then Cheng du! Then Lijiang! Then Kunming! Then Back!

Chino Productos

Time for less ranting and more of what everyone wants: MoRE WEIRD CHINESE STUFF!


First up, the most appetizing dish at a dessert restaurant in Hong Kong. Mmmm! I've had the "Mutually Symbiotic Loranthus" version, but this one's gotta be even better!




Here is a great restaurant that we pass all the time when out shopping, but haven't been able to really locate it.




The back of the case for the show Dollhouse. As with many of the DVDs here, the english was taken from some blog or user post and copied directly onto a template for the back. Kelsey had an even better one for the movie "Death Race 2000" which read,  "This movie is the only thing more painful than participating in an actual death race." (more risque DVDs at http://picasaweb.google.com/Andrew.Quitmeyer/ChinoProductos#)





Good job chicken! Gold medal!





On our last trips to the tailor we spotted the place that we should have been going to the entire time.



This thing came with my peanut butter. It was really appealing looking, but WHAT IS IT! In our little apartment we only have chopsticks, so i was hoping it would be something i could spread my peanut butter with, but nope, got big weird holes in it. Had to throw it away for spiting me so hard.



Kitty returns to her kingdom!

Subverting the Big Brain

June 4th (or as the renegades refer to it, May 35th, in order to undermine the search filters of the "Great Firewall") came and went with little incident throughout the country. Hong Kong-ers were, of course, allowed to protest freely, but in the Mainland, where any type of demonstrating is illegal, Tiananmen square was filled with uniformed police as well as undercover police. Apparently, though, the plain clothes officers all decided to wear the exact same outfit, so they weren't exactly incognito. They also dispatched special police units armed with umbrellas all over the square who would attack your view if you tried to snap any photos. Overall sounds pretty goofy.

Some of our teachers, who had been university students during the "accident," as it is referred to here, actually had really interesting conversations about the rather taboo topic. Overall they seemed disheartened by the actions of those higher above, but entirely optimistic as to the future of the country as a whole. They seem to really believe that the leadership is getting much better and less corrupt and that these qualities will filter down throughout the entire republic.

What is really odd is that the gov goes through all the difficulties of blocking all of youtube, twitter, blogger, flickr, and wikipedia, but as long as I use google.com over google.cn any information about tiananmen i could ever want loads up quickly and easily. If i was the government, I think i would be blocking the sites like the ny times that are running several stories trying to find the truth behind the incident, rather than block zillions of videos of people's cats falling off things, or fat people singing pop covers on their webcams.

Anyway, I am able to get a few posts in, but it is a pretty big pain, so hopefully the ban will be lifted sometime soon. Here (hopefully) are some of the things the country really doesn't want you to see, i guess: Super fun, tourist-inducing, vacation photos of beautiful beaches! These were some of the last photos taken with my old camera before it got fixed and then stolen, so you can see the weird blurriness it was doing to things. If none of the photos work, you can go to:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Andrew.Quitmeyer

and check out our pictures there.


These shots are from our return journey to Tai Long Wan (big wave beach) that we had visited last october. First we stopped off to check out the floating fish market made by boats pulling right up to the sidewalk peir.









People were wrestling with big live octopi and selling made-to-order cracked open starfish.
 

Whoo! New Camera!

Yes it was quite tragic that my good old camera just got stolen, only days after repairing it, but as my dad points out, "Good thing [I] live in the part of the world where these kinds of electronics are cheaply and abundantly available."

So i got the upgraded version of my old camera, even more water and shock proof.

Unfortunately, China is blocking blogger, so it's hard to get any of the new photos to upload.

Hopefully the ban will be up soon and I can show off. Other than that, it has been kinda rainy here, giving kitty a chance to sport her awesome, Skulls and Roses rainboots around town.

Lame

There has been a slow pressure building over here. It is hard to believe we have been here as long as we have and now we are in the midst of finishing everything and trying to not be overwhelmed by the pressure of the boundless potential in this crazy city. So we have been getting stuff tailored like crazy, getting plane tickets ready (trying to buy tickets from airchina is about the craziest process in the world (in short- it involves taking a lot of pictures of things you write freehand)), and buying last minute electronic and DVD neccessities at awesome prices.


Sad story:

So earlier i reported about my handy camera started having CCD problems. Now in the US this would cost about $100 just to get someone to take a look at it to try to fix it.
Luckily I live in the city of ingenuity and took my camera over to a shop. They told me they could fix it and the entire cost would only be around 200 RMB ($30).  It would only take 3 days.

On this third day, though, I made my first successful telephone call entirely in Mandarin. It was great; I could understand everything including the part about how my camera was terminally ill. There was nothing I could do but pick it up.

I got to the camera shop and the man assured me once again that there was nothing he could do because he said there was water in it (which is odd for a supposedly waterproof camera). I was confused when he handed it to me though. The camera worked much better now. The blurriness was mostly gone, except for a tiny blurry area in a new section of the screen. The man apologized again and didn't make me pay anything. When I got the camera outside I noticed that the lens had this big blotch on the inside.

Apparently they must have fixed the CCD and then spilled something onto the lens. So I took the camera to this Electronics Carnival wonderland downtown to see if anyone could fix it. Indeed they could, and in 1 hour and less only 65 kuai ($9.50) I had my camera back up around 90 percent of perfect.

Then today I hopped on the bus after eating fun syrian food, but this jerk in front of me wouldn't go further than just inside the door. It was pouring outside, and everyone was shouting at him to go on. He quickly turned around and went back out to the bus station with his friend, and kitty and I made it in and out of the rain. Then the bus left. Now my camera is gone. So I did a really good job getting the camera fixed for that guy.

Lame.

Standard Chinese Fun

So I am all depressed because my camera is kind of broken, the CCD is screwing up and making the top and left side of things all blurry. So I might have to get a new one or find some people here who can fix the current one without destroying it. Anyway here are some of the last few pics i have been taking with it showing some general chinese weirdness and fun.

This is a clip from my textbook where i have to teach about civil obedience.

I love how once laws dissapear, one of the first things that everyone will do in hong kong is to start kung fu fighting (just like you would always imagine). Of course the absolute best part are the sad little "Social Order" and "Public Interest" blob creatures that are about to get it!

Here we are surprised by a pearl watermelon, which i guess must be some sort of watermelon canteloupe hybrid because they are yellow on the inside!

This is when i got lured into crazy karoake where people physically held my head down and nose shut and poured nasty little cups of beer into me then made me sing the titanic theme song and bon jovi over and over again. You can see how the night progressed...