an attempt to be serious

a blog generally does one of two things: it tells about the inane life and times of someone no one really knows or wants to hear about, or it has information about the state and situation of something no one really cares about either.

then there are those rare blogs that are the perfect combination of funny and wit and artsy.

WHY THE HELL NOT.

the china chronicles 5 -- chengdu day 1

so when we landed in chengdu i knew wouldn't like the city very much. the airport was the indicator. it was not too impressive. dusty-ish, claustrophobic, a lot of people, old, dated. i turned out not liking the city very much at all, surprise surprise.

we did all the usual things one does after getting off a plane, except that our friend lauren got lost around the baggage claim. so me, my roommate and our other pal all yelled HEY LAUREN! across the baggage claim. EVERYONE except lauren turned around and there was when i realized that less people here speaking english and that an english-speaking chinese in chengdu would be weirder than in, say, shanghai or beijing. consider it noted for future exploitation. we found her eventually.

we loaded our baggage up into a taxi and headed off towards the hotel. my dad, in the spirit of casual conversation, asked the taxi driver if the hotel we were staying at was a good one. the response was a no. it's not.

well, damn.

the hotel, as i found out, wasn't the worst one i'd ever stayed in, but it definitely ranked on the 1 to 10 sketchfactor scale as a 6. sketchier than normal. the carpets were first. they were an indiscriminately dirty gray and we couldn't tell if they were supposed to be that color or they were just filthy. we decided on filthy and played the floor is lava and avoided touching it at all costs. we even walked on tiptoes in slippers.

the second thing that was bothersome was that the room smelled like cigarette smoke and the a/c, when turned on, smelled like old a/c. the third bothersome thing was that our window led out onto SOMEONE ELSE'S DECK. i kid you not, their houseplants were outside our window. if they wanted to open our window and rob us in the middle of the night we couldn't do a thing.

we left the door out to air the room and my roommate was on her bed, threatening to eat me because she was hungry. i told her i wasn't food. then, to test the skills of room cleaning, since i doubted room cleaning did a good job in this hotel, i drew a picture with the pencil and paper provided by the hotel. it was a dude screaming I'M AN AMERICAN BASTARD in chinese which would look like this:

我是一个美国混蛋！

[to clarify, that wasn't i'm an american comma bastard. it was i'm an american bastard.] and then in english, DON'T SCREW WITH ME, B-TCH, THAT'S RIGHT, YOU'D BETTER RUN. now whoever picked up the paper could enjoy the benefits of two languages and in case they couldn't understand either, also a cartoon figure.

well the whole point of the exercise was to test if room service thoroughly cleaned the room or not. again, i had my doubts. so i folded it up and stashed it under the cover of a magazine that was in a drawer and drew a smiley face on the cover to cleverly deceive whoever found it into thinking it was nice. if the cleaners found it it would be removed. if not then we know who's not earning their wages properly.

by the way. i left the dash in "b-tch" to self-censor because i didn't want anyone who picked up the paper to think that all english-speaking chinese were bastards like me.

throughout this whole time, my roommate was lying on her bed threatening to eat anything that came near. it was a relief not to be devoured by a starving fourteen-year-old when her mom finally showed up to announce the epic quest for lunch.

we found it at a restaurant nearby and nothing was remarkable until it came time to pay the bill. then it took two women, four waitresses, and a waiter about forty-five minutes to split the bill evenly, calculator included. the kids? well we were just happy we had wifi in this dump of a restaurant, in a far away city.

the usual. it's a hazard of traveling.

afterwards we went to a temple BUT NOT BEFORE we stopped at a travel agency to book tomorrow's trip. thinking ahead, that's us.

the temple was unremarkable, made remarkable by my dad's insistence that we pay attention to a topic the kids honestly cared nothing about. it was a horrible day for walking around. the humidity was high and so was the temperature, and we seemed to be there for the benefit of my dad only, who was the only one interested in whatever dose of ancient history this place had to offer.

again, a hazard of traveling. all those temples and sanctuaries and monasteries all seem the same after awhile. just old-dead-history that we were supposed to appreciate because it was our heritage and no better reason than that. and for a bunch of kids who would have rather seen the city and maybe get to love it a little more, well. we weren't getting out easy.

there was deathmetal screaming, failed suicide pacts, wait-you-told-me-those-weren't-peach-trees-but-they're-growing-peaches, starbucks as the first sign of civilization, stone xylophones playing simple gifts due to marching band, and asians wasting money involved. long story, ask me sometime.

we went back to the hotel BUT NOT BEFORE we stopped at the travel agency again. we then got some shopping done and since my dad my brother and i couldn't find a taxi like the rest of those lucky sons of guns, we walked fifteen minutes back to our supersketch hotel. then i took a shower, didn't eat dinner, and started drawing another picture completely unrelated to cartoon figures screaming in american and chinese.

before my roommate took a shower i turned on the tv and starting watching a cheesy drama which i laughed about watching. but by the time my roommate stepped OUT of the shower i realized that it was actually a good drama and we started watching it. and watching it. and watching it.

there were gay joker-like campy antagonists with harems, emo-starving-wait-he's-actually-kinda-attractive-whoa-artists, amish chinese hitmen with john lennon sunglasses, twisted family histories between a rich family disowning a girl into a poor family, cartoon sound effects, beating of old men, and pretentiously asshole-ish but later turned good random guy for plot advancement or else the drama would have made no sense.

but once i thought on it, EVERYTHING here made no sense. what happens in chengdu, stays in chengdu.

chengdu day 1 END.

the china chronicles 4 -- shanghai

so remember the bug drama and how my roommate promised she would scream if a bug landed on her face while she slept? it turns out that she makes noises in her sleep and that i might or might not have misinterpreted that as screaming at 5:08 am. but unlike a good friend, i just lay in bed for awhile, wondering if that was seriously a cry for help and why she wasn't flailing around the room because i knew she hated bugs. so i looked over, discovered that she was just stretching or something and still sleeping and NOT covered in bugs, and went back to sleep.

we woke up early and ate at the hotel buffet. i love hotel buffets. they are so neat and clean and organized. don't get me wrong, i like the cultural food too and the experience of eating legit regional food but hey. i also love breakfast on white plates with placemats and five different kinds of fruit juice and bacon and danishes.

[the hangzhou hotel buffet was much more impressive, but heyy. you took what you got.]

then we were off for our main objective in shanghai, which was the world expo. we subwayed there, which was practical for maybe more practical for one or two people but not a group of 11 with a small kid and four confused adults.

but we got there and i found that we had to walk a mile or so before we even got IN the place. this was intense. obviously walking around was the theme and my shoes were already half-dead. so it was like china walking vs. my shoes and we would see who came out victorious.

the expo for those who don't know are a bunch of buildings with exhibits inside depending on who set them up. they're called pavillions. there were country pavillions, company pavillions, and miscellaneous ones like the ones about city planning and stuff.

we went into at least like thirty that day... i can't even remember them all. we only went into the ones that didn't have a huge line, so that meant some of the smaller ones like belarus, slovenia, bosnia/herzegovina, you know the ones that most people are like HUH THAT'S ON A MAP. the largest ones we went in were indonesia and australia, which involved somewhat of a line but it was worth it. it would take entirely too much time to explain them all but let me tell you it was AH-MAY-ZING. all right. i'm being overenthusiastic. but it was SUPER COOL.

we were planning to stay in the expo until late so we could see the lights. so we did. we got there at 8 something in the morning and didn't leave until 10 that night. it was awesome.

we ate lunch at the cafeteria in the expo, where i had really good baozi and some weirdass soup that was like seaweed in water. we had a break for ice cream after the australia pavillion [vanilla for me, i keep it simple]. we bought dinner at one of the fast-food places and ate it on some benches outside, like hobos except everyone was doing it. pizza hut and kfc for the win.

then afterwards we went into more small pavillions. my legs hurt from all the walking but it was so much fun that we just kept going in more and more.

interestingly enough, the country name for belarus in chinese translates into "white russia" so i wondered out loud if belarus was like russia, but more racist. i got laughed at. there were stamp stations in most of the pavillions where you could "stamp" a "passport" and collect the stamps so we ran around doing that as well.

then we went home, which was an epic quest in and of itself being that we couldn't find the subway, and when we did it was completely PACKED with people. and when we finally got in bed that night, we were ordered to go right to sleep because we would have to do the same thing tomorrow. but my roommate and i watched V again instead of sleeping. teenage rebels. that's what we were.

the next day was essentially a repeat of the first day. more walking, except with more of the larger exhibits. we got this thing on a red lanyard that let us skip the lines into 5 exhibits and they were i think: india, nepal, morocco, lebanon [i think?] and the GM theater where we were supposed to see a 4D show.

so off we were waving our red lanyards in the faces of the workers and skipping the lines. morocco's pavillion was SUPERNICE. i think i will live in morocco when i grow up.

while waiting for the GM show we went into the north korea pavilion and then the iran one, which were right next to each other. it seems like a bad idea, right. nkorea's was really super happy fun time, which we were like yeah right. us four american kids went in and my roommate and i really wanted to buy a north korean flag to wave in the face of airport security on the way back. but we didn't.

then we ate dinner omnomnom. i had chicken rice that was way overpriced. but what can you do, eh? everyone's trying to make a living.

then we went to the GM show which involved people saying that in twenty years we would have personal cars that could steer and park themselves, avoid accidents, plan out routes to stop traffic congestion, and be 100 percent environmentally friendly. also the cities of the world by that time would have all turned into a loving places full of huge glass buildings, futuristic-looking highways, beautiful people and sunshine and peacenotwar and happy endings.

i'm sorry to tell you, GM. some dreams don't come true in 20 years. some don't come true in ever.

we went home that day on the subway, ready to head out again tomorrow.

the third day, we went to the america pavillion. we had heard from the military police who were patrolling that we could show them our passports and they would let us in since we had the sacred navy books. turns out it wasn't true but by waving our navy books in the face of the workers there and schmoozed our way in.

we [meaning me my dad and my brother] left the expo early that day, leaving our friends there. we had a date with the guy that picked us up from the train station [remember, gray BMW and converse?]. he said he would bring us around the city and so he did. we rode in high style, VIP. we saw a cute little shopping street full of stuff, the temple of the city god, and some street sights of the city.

let me tell you that i am in <3 with shanghai. if there is one place i want to go back to, it's that place. like maybe to live, even. it's great.

unfortunately as soon as a place starts growing on me we have to leave and that's what we did the very next morning. we had to fly out to chengdu, way out in sichuan province. so we did. the flight was not long. a small girl received a puzzle from an airline attendant. the small girl kept staring at me. i demanded a puzzle from the airline attendant. they were fresh out. so i complained in english, got stared at some more, and read song of the dodo halfway through again.

the usual. traveling gets so traveling after awhile. and then we touched down in chengdu international airport and then the fun began again.

shanghai END.