Today is January the 28th. When we got to class to take our weekly proficiency test, the teachers wanted us to sign this document that disclosed the locale where we would likely pass the Spring Festival. At the end of said document, the teachers wanted us to date our signature, but they wanted us to sign with yesterday’s date. I decided it would be simpler not to say anything.
Thus, I took the test. It was a fine test, with numerous pitfalls attempting to entangle us in their many traps. However, I prevailed over my foe, and emerged victorious. I will save you the foreshadowing and the suspense; I made a 92.1. It’ll do, I guess. Then, I went back up to the room to contact the Western world yet again.
After making contact and verifying my existence, I went over to the restaurant where my classmates were eating lunch with the professors. The teachers treated us to a New Year’s meal of roast lamb, Beijing Duck, dumplings, Chinese yams, tree fungus, salad, sweet and sour pork, beef and peppers, soup, fried duck bones, Coke, Sprite, flower tea, and a host of other dishes that It don’t remember. We had all kinds of stuff left over, and I took three containers of take-out back to the dorm to keep in the mini fridge.
After returning to the dorm, I prepared for my afternoon interview trip. My advisor knows a former ACC teacher who is moving to Nigeria within the week to work for a company doing contract work on Nigerian ports. I wrote a set of interview questions, translated them, grabbed my gift and coat, and hopped on the subway about 3:55. It took me right at an hour to make it to the stop. Despite the unreal amount of people that were trying to take the subway – and being crammed into a subway car well beyond its intended capacity, I traveled 19 lengths of track and made two transfer stations in that time. While I can’t say I would want to do that everyday, it was fun to do for once.
The interview was great, and the guy – although he didn’t admit it himself – was pretty knowledgeable about the Chinese presence in Africa. I won’t tell you exactly what I learned just yet (that would be cheating, since I’ve not finished the thesis yet) I will say this: if the China-Africa relationship is just now starting to generate media attention and such, we are way behind on the game. China has been in Africa for over 50 years, and they have made a major impact on the continent, especially on African politics.
Then, I met Shazeda and Lee at a subway station north of the Forbidden City. I say that I met them there, but what really happened was that I waited at the station for about 45 minutes for them to arrive… Then the three of us set out to find this venue hosting a DJ from New York on the 26th of February. They wanted to buy tickets, and considering how cheap the ticket was I decided to tag along.
After that, we set about finding ourselves somewhere to eat dinner. We decided upon a restaurant specializing in spicy food from the western provinces, and we ordered hot and spicy tree fungus, fried rice, kung pow chicken, and home-style tofu. When the fungus arrived, it came with some dipping sauce that appeared to be soy sauce. I – not expecting that the sauce could be anything other than soy sauce – dunked the fungus with alacrity. Upon placing the morsel into my mouth, however, I discovered that the sauce was not soy sauce, but some other type of incredibly spicy mixture that Shazeda would term “liquid wasabi.” Other than that, the meal was good, but for some reason it didn’t sit too well with my stomach.
Then, we began to determine the best way to return to campus. I am a proponent of the subway: it is cheap and moderately fast. My two counterparts, on the other hand, wanted to take a cab. This would have been fine if there were any cabs available for use. We were facing a number of obstacles. The first of these was the fact that it was 8:30 on a Friday night. Every taxi in this city was taking couples and business groups to and from restaurants and clubs. The second was that the Spring Festival is in 4 days. This holiday can best be described as Christmas and New Year’s rolled into one giant festival. It is a delightful festival if you are in China. Everyone is buying gifts for their families, taking friends out to eat, and generally acting very Chinese-ly. However, everything closes down for the holiday, and I don’t exactly know what we are going to do for food for the next week. Another thing about the Spring Festival season is this: it is the single largest migration of humanoids on the planet. At least half of the population of this country will be traveling somewhere to visit family this spring, and the majority will travel by train. More fortunate ones will travel by plane (should tickets be available), and less fortunate souls will steal and swindle their way to scrounge up enough money to pay off a truck driver or stow away in the back of a transfer truck.
These factors combined caused us to run around like morons for over an hour, trying to find a cab to take us back. According to my calculations, we could have made it to the school and back in that amount of time if we'd taken the subway!
A large group of people was preparing to go out for the evening, traveling to the Chao Yang districts many clubs. My stomach still did not like me for making it digest my Chinese dinner, and I decided to stay behind and guard the dorm from assailants. Lee also stayed at the dorm, and we did the only sensible thing to do at a time like this. We played poker, 10-Yuan buy-ins ($1.50). We played for about 2 ½ hours, but the others were nowhere to be found when I retired.
I’ll write soon!
Love,
Jamey
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