And more....

Wednesday, 6/13: Yesterday evening we made arrangements to get hard seat tickets for the train for 450Y a piece, and this morning we got them. We are supposed to say that we bought them at the train station if the security guard asks. We were planning to go to Qinghai Lake today, but then someone told us this morning that the only bus was at 7 am (which later turned out to not be the case, there are buses every 30 minutes) plus the trip would cost us about 100Y each and Christopher wants to save money for Tibet, so we stayed in the city. We had a slow day until 3 pm.

I bought knitting at the giant street market (turquoise, cream, and red-orange yarn) and so I have enough to do forever, plus I have chinese lessons on my mp3 player, plus I have a loonnng fantasy book that I'm only about 170 pages into (and I'm a slow reader), plus there are puppies to play with, plus I can go talk stilted Chinese with people and look at shops (which are very exciting and different) and check prices and then be disgusted (a 100Y bracelet? please.), plus I need to upload my pictures from my camera onto facebook, plus I can go eat something new and different, plus I can take the bus and look out the window, plus I can wander around on the mountains because they don't belong to anybody except I have to make sure that the Chinese government isn't using them for missile target practice because Christopher saw that once, plus I want to review the lessons from Chinese III and IV to make my vocabulary and character recognition better, plus I like to just sit and daydream. I'm a very busy girl!

The puppies are named Lala and Sasa (like Lhasa). La is a 1st tone, so when you say Lala, it sounds really sweet and googoo-ey. Sa is a fourth tone, so when you say Sasa it sounds mad. Poor little Sasa must think she does everything wrong!

Around 3 pm we went to Ta'er Monastery. The directions said to catch a minibus from a certain bus stop, and there weren't any minibuses there, but there was a guy with a car that was not a taxi trying to get us to give him 30Y (way overcharging) to take us to Ta'er Si (si means temple or monastery, not sure). We went to the other side of the street and showed the characters for Ta'er Si to a lady at the bus stop and she was super nice and walked us a few blocks to the place where the minibuses come. The minibus was 5Y a person which was much better (in Xining, people spend yuan about the way we spend dollars). The minibus ride was pretty long but we saw lots of stuff through the windows. I also talked to a guy, who was a senior in college, who said "Hello" to me (since everyone studies English in school, although most people forget it right away, everyone knows "Hello" and likes to say it to the white people, and we say "Ni hao" back to show them that we speak Chinese even though we don't really) who actually spoke some English - probably about as much English as I spoke Chinese, so I spoke Mandarin and he spoke English. He wanted to know how long I was in Xining and offered to teach me English and wanted to know where my hostel was. I told him "No thanks, I'm only here for 5 days" and "Wo xiangbuqilai" (I forget) because even though he seemed perfectly well-meaning it seems weird to tell a stranger where I am staying.

Once in the big market here someone shouted "Hello, I love you!" at us. Can you imagine someone in America shouting "Ni hao, wo ai ni!" at a Chinese-looking person? Christopher and I are the only white people I have seen in Xining with the exception of a family at the train station, even in the places you'd most expect tourists like the temples and the big market. Andrea and Brian, the Canadians who stayed at the hostel, were both of Chinese descent.

We didn't want to pay 80Y to get inside the buildings at the monastery (and see the famous yak butter sculptures), so instead we climbed around on the mountains surrounding the monastery. It made me feel really happy. I love mountains. I felt very fresh and awake in a way that I'd forgotten to feel. I also love how mountains make you feel very small, and very tall, at the same time. At the top there were lots of colorful prayer flags and also lots of paths going every which way. There was one going down the other side of the mountain and I really wanted to follow it but I wussed out before I got to the bottom because I saw people's feet wandering around beneath the trees and I thought maybe I would come out in somebody's backyard. So instead I went sideways (all the mountains are terraced, I think by the monks, so that trees can grow on them) and tried to find a place where I could see through the trees but instead I found a baby dragonfly and then I stepped in a giant anthill at which point I decided to go back to the path. On the mountain I also saw two types of flowers that I had never seen before, and some small kids playing tag next to a stone monument thing. I wanted to take a picture of them but I was afraid they'd notice. Christopher and I split up for an hour and I heard people making comments in Chinese like "She's here alone?"

The guy with the sketchy non-taxi came to the monastery when we were waiting for the bus at 7 pm, and he wanted to charge us 25Y. We told him no, we were waiting for the 5Y bus, so then he offered to take us for 6Y a piece, since he had to go back to Xining anyway. Christopher said no, 5Y, and I translated, and the non-taxi driver drove off by himself thereby losing 10Y. I think it would hurt his pride for him to lower his price all the way to ours without us raising ours at all. The bus didn't come, so I was nervous, but then we wandered down the street and found another minibus also for 5Y and got on. The people got us to sit on a carpeted bench at the front, and we talked in choppy Mandarin. The people we met were also tourists, from Urumqi, which is in Xinjiang, China's western-most, mostly Muslim, province (Qinghai is second western-most so there are also a lot of Muslims here). They had a strong accent and I don't understand spoken Chinese very well so it took us a while to communicate. The man in the front told Christopher that he wanted to be his pengyou (friend) and the ladies I was sitting next to felt my braid and my arm - my pale skin was even more interesting to them than my blond hair, and they exclaimed over it at length. I think one of them wanted to know if I dyed my hair. One of them had her teenage son there and she kept holding out my arm and pointing at my skin and then trying to get him to talk to me. He spoke a little English because he is in school right now. She and I took pictures together.

The bus ride was exciting because driving in China is very different. Our driver passed every single vehicle on the road, one by one. His method of passing was to change to the other side of the road, no matter what vehicles were there, and then honk his horn until they slowed down or stopped to let him by. In response, they would flash their lights which in China means "I am going to run into you." In spite of all this I have not seen a single traffic accident in China, probably because people drive more slowly because the roads are so busy. At one intersection (no light or stop sign - which I don't think exists in China) a tiny truck in the left lane pulled right in front of us to do a right turn. As well as passing and crazy turns and potholes and people doing U-turns when and wherever they feel like, pedestrians and people with fruit carts or bicycles just wander out into the road and hang out. The result is reminiscent of that car ad on TV where the guy's standing in the middle of an intersection in a desert and then four cars speed past him on all sides at the same time. The buses also frequently drive with the door open and people sometimes jump on while they're moving. I think the minibus is a private enterprise so the whole first half of the ride they've got someone leaning their head out the window shouting the bus's destination and occasionally a person will flag the bus down.

After the bus ride our pengyou asked us to have dinner with him and his family (the Urumqi crowd). We went into the restaurant next to their hotel and they brought out a bag full of chicken while we were waiting for other food to come. I didn't want to offend them so I took the smallest piece I could find. I realized that chicken isn't actually that tasty (although the spices that you could pinch and sprinkle on it were really good) so I don't miss it. Then the mom put another, bigger piece on my plate and so I ate it. I didn't feel guilty but I'm not going to eat chicken again unless identical circumstances happen. Then there was more food - tofu and noodles and bitter fruit, which is delicious but has a strong bitter aftertaste and I've never seen it in the US. I'd like to find some at a Chinese market and cook it once I get back to MIT. They asked if we liked rice so I told them about how we've been eating a lot of rice and noodles because those are the two food words I know how to say, so they taught us to say "Hongshou doufu" (a red, spicy tofu dish) and "Ku gua" (bitter fruit) and "Ya qian" (toothpick), which is a very useful bit of vocabulary. I want to find kugua at a Chinese market in the US and cook it because it's not something I'd ever had in the US so I can impress everybody with my foreign travels. I told them "Xie xie" a lot and we said goodbye, and then we saw the Chinese gangsters whom Christopher said were not gangsters but I think his definition of gangster is more like mobster and mine is more like high school kid who joins a gang and then beats up on people the gang doesn't like. They were chasing another guy on a motorcycle and trying to beat him with sticks. One of them hopped into a cab to chase him. They waved their sticks at us because they wanted to scare the foreigners.

Thursday, 6/14: Yesterday and today we had breakfast at the hostel. They give us rice congee with raisins and gouji berries in it (very delicious) and fried eggs (which I gave to Christopher) and a bun (pretty bland but the only bread I've had in China) and today yummy cucumber thingies.

There are relatively few washing machines in China, and no dryers. We paid 5Y to use the do-it-yourself washing machine (which means that one part of the machine does the washing and the other part spins the clothes to get out as much water as possible, and you have to transfer the clothes in between) and then hung our clothes up to dry overnight. It's exciting because I watched the washing machine spin and soap my clothing. Last time I did laundry by hand.

Today we went to the market again to buy more gouji berries, which are like red raisins and you can put them in hot water or milk with breakfast and they swell up. This time we did some comparison shopping and got twice as many berries for the same price. Then we walked around and looked for a bank so that I could get more cash because I only have 7Y and so borrowed 120 from Christopher. I tried 3 different banks before I found an ATM where my debit card worked, so Christopher got bored and went home. I wandered around the market and then around this mall whose only entrance was a couple of doors inside the market. There were all sorts of interesting and different clothes. The most fun are the wedding dress shops, which also have these giant puffy sparkly colorful dresses (more flamboyant than prom dresses) and we can't figure out what people wear them for. We also saw a couple of sparkly traditional Dutch-looking outfits for children in one of these shops. I bought a popsicle, the kind that I saw the most Chinese people eating, and it tasted banana-flavored. Because it was such a hot, sunny day, almost half the ladies and girls wandering around had sun umbrellas to keep their skin pale. You can tell they're sun umbrellas because (a) they're open on a sunny day and (b) they involve glitter and gauze.

After the market, I took the bus home, and these four school girls sat down next to me. We talked in Chinese and I understood them much better than ordinary Chinese people because schoolchildren practice their diction so they didn't speak with an accent and also because they were 9 years old (I asked. They were 10 in chinese which means 9 in America) and so they weren't afraid of condescending to the foreigner by talking loud-ly-and-slow-ly. They said my skin (pifu) and my hair were pretty and I attempted to tell them about tanning in America and skin cancer but didn't know the words so I think I just confused them. Three of the girls got off at my stop, but one said she lived far away so she was on the bus with me for 15 minutes maybe and we talked. Her name was Zhu1 Ping2 (the numbers mean 1st tone - flat and high - and 2nd tone - rising). I love talking to people in Chinese and I think I'm getting better at it although my vocabulary is deplorable.

Chinese people are so nice! Charlie thinks they all hate him because he was in Japan before this and they all fussed over him and in Shanghai he pretty much got ignored because there's a lot of foreigners, and then on his second day in Shanghai a girl dropped her credit card and he tapped her on the shoulder and held it out to her and she slapped him and shouted "Bu!" (NO!) and then he shouted "Shi ni de!" (It's yours!) and she grabbed it and ran off. Plus he kind of enjoys thinking the Chinese people hate him because then he can be the obnoxious tourist, getting in people's faces and saying profane things to the people who try to sell you useless stuff and then they repeat it back without understanding what it means.

I can't believe I've only been in China for a week and a day. So much experience! And so much to do. I don't think I could ever get bored. When I've been here longer I'm going to send everyone postcards and buy gifts and work on my bargaining skills and go make friends with random people in the mall since they all stare at me anyway. This may not work as well in Xi'an and Chengdu and Guilin and Beijing because those are bigger cities and tourist destinations so I'm sure they have more white people there. That probably also means they have more English speakers, which is kinda sad because I've been getting to practice my Chinese a lot the past few days. I realized that even if I lived in Xining for a year, people would still stare at me in the street because there's a couple million people in the city and so'd I'd still be walking past new people every day. However, if I lived here for a year I'd learn better Chinese so I wouldn't feel like as much of a foreigner.