Random Thoughts and Highlights: China

1. The Great Wall should be re-named the Great Haul, because that is a work out if I've ever seen one. It's not flat at all, it's up a mountain side and the sheer number of people pushing and shoving is manic! Also, if I see one more chick with stilettos climbing the Great Wall, I'm going beat her with them. Sheesh... talk about inappropriate footwear.

2. Someone needs to fix the sign on the Great Wall Entrance. Really?? This is the freaking GREAT WALL!!

3. Black Folks, just a heads up... The Chinese word for "um" or any other filler word you can imagine is "NAGE". It's  pronounced "nay-gur", but phonetically is sounds like the N-word. Be prepared to hear this more times than you'd think was possible if you take a trip there. As a matter of fact, listen to anyone's conversation around you and count how many times they say "um", "well", "uh", etc., then fill that in with the N-Word. Crazy huh? If you could have seen my face the first time I heard it... "Oh, so China is gonna be like this.." After the 50th time, I had to ask somebody because it was getting out of hand.

4. Tiananmen Square is really a site to see! My first conscious memory or thought of China is wrapped up in that historical image of the man waving the flag in front of those tanks in Tiananmen Square. I recall watching this on television with my parents, so to actually be there and read about the historical consequences and reasons for that event was like completing a full circle for me. Further, the grandeur of the square, the Forbidden City and all of the surrounding buildings is a tangible glimpse of the scale of China's ambitions; they think BIG!

5. Black folks just a heads up: I have never in MY LIFE had so many people stop, stare, point or ask to take pictures of me. I felt like P-Diddy or Manute Bol and I needed a day rate - seriously. I held babies. I posed with uncles, grandmothers, and teenage boys and in the end I came to two conclusions. First, Black Americans need to travel to China more! It's 2011 and there isn't a place on earth where we should still be viewed as an anomaly. Secondly, the Chinese need to learn the act of subtle gawking. I'm just saying...

I don't know these people!

This little boy wouldn't stop pointing!

Took a picture with the entire family!

6. Shanghai is so cool! In every country I've been in, I've found at least one city or area where I could say, "I'd live there"; Shanghai is that place. It reminds me of New York with its central park, museums, coffee houses and shopping areas. It even has a financial district and the skyline is incredible. The nightlife is amazing as well. Shanghai gets an A+++ from me.

7. Beijing's arts district, 798, is a must see. They don't advertise it heavily in "tourist magazines", but it will give you an entirely new perspective of China. It's a blend of Soho, SF's Haight Street, and Denver's Lodo all rolled into one. The shops are amazingly creative loft spaces and the streets are filled with art. It is the literally the largest public art display that I have ever seen and it needs to be on everyone's must do list.

 

Freaking Lychee!

Aggie has made it her mission to introduce me to all of types of foods I’ve never seen before. “Try this! It’s delicious,” she always says right before she orders me a heap of something. Food is never good or great, it’s always “delicious.” Surprisingly, she’s right.

Today, she wants me to eat a fruit that her Chinese to English dictionary says is “Lychee.” I’m weird about fruit though. At 33 I feel as if I should know all of the fruit that is out there: Mango, Starfruit, Lemons, Plums, Bananas, etc. So when someone is introducing a “new fruit” to me, I’m skeptical. “When did this arrive on earth?” I’ve heard about lychee though, but I’ve never seen this before.

“Try it,” she says. “It’s delicious.” I try it and in the back of my mind I’m wondering how do you say “Epi Pen” in Chinese. It’s delicious though and I end up eating five back to back. It’s really sweet with a citrusy after taste, similar to a kiwi, and I’m enjoying myself immensely. I’m reaching for another when I notice that my tongue is tingling and the corners of my mouth feel raw; like I’ve eaten too many sour patch kids. “It will go away,” I think to myself as I abandon the idea of just one more.

Do you know what this fruit is?

One hour later, my tongue is now itching and I feel like tilting my head back and sucking on a tube of Cortizone. On my way to the train station, I began mentally berating myself for not knowing my limits. Try means try, not back up a trough to the buffet!

I get on the train, passing by families, a hella rowdy group of men shooting the breeze and single travellers like myself. No Americans, no westerners, no black folks. I’m getting used to it by now. This time I’m on a hard sleeper train, which is six bunks to a berth instead of four and no doors. I settle into my bunk and this elderly grandma type immediately takes a liking to me. She’s firing off in rapid Chinese and smiling and when she realizes that I don’t speak Chinese she starts pointing to my arms. I don’t know if she’s saying that I’m strong or fat, but I just nod, smile and try to get comfortable with my new family.

After a while, several more people show up and it quickly becomes clear that someone is in the wrong place. I hand my train pass to grandma in hopes that it’s not me and she reads it out loud. Everyone begins pointing in the opposite direction and pointing at numbers I swear I didn’t see before. Rightttt….. I’m in the wrong bunk. I gather my things and head to the other end of the train and of course, I’m in the berth with the rowdy bachelor party I passed earlier.

As soon as I show up, someone yells, “LOAWAI, Hello!” Laowai means foreigner in Chinese. They know I’m confused and was in the wrong place and everyone starts cracking up. I’m super embarrassed, but thankfully I can laugh at myself.  Apparently my laughter breaks the ice because someone immediately starts breaking out bags of food. “LOAWAI, Hello!” they are saying as they pass me hands full of bright red, prickly balls – freaking LYCHEE!!

These are some of the nicest, uncle types I’ve met in China and understanding the significance of sharing food, a proverbial olive branch, I peel the lychee eat two more and then offer them the food I’ve brought with me. “Father God, please help me. These are delicious.”

Who's the Boss?

 

I’d never thought I’d be walking through the streets of China barefoot on my way to Kentucky Fried Chicken like some backwoods bama on a food run, but oh… here I am. It’s July 12, 2011 and Aggie insists that I eat a little something before getting on the bus that will take me to the train that will take me to another train that will get me to Vietnam.



Soaked to the bone and barefoot!

Why no shoes, why KFC, and who is Aggie you might be wondering…

Well, the reason we have no shoes on is because the term “rainy season” means much more than I suspected. It’s raining cats and dogs and elephants out here and for some odd reason the streets of China are paved in tile; it’s actually the sidewalks. If you’ve ever ran through your bathroom while the floor is still wet, then you know what it feels like to walk around China during the rain. So instead of taking one more un-lady like face plant in public, I did like the locals and kicked off my shoes.  Problem solved… yuck.

Why KFC?

KFC is almost on every other block in China, sometimes two on the same block; it’s the fast food of choice. Watermelon vendors are also in excess, but I abandoned the idea of explaining the irony to Aggie; she just wouldn’t get it. We ended up at a grocery store instead of KFC because, quite frankly, I rarely touch the stuff in the U.S so I’m definetly not doing it in China.

Which brings me to the next question: who is Aggie?

One of the benefits of my previous job at Nine West was that I got the opportunity to work with people from all around the world. Since I was on the production side of the business, I corresponded daily with various agents from China or wherever else we were producing shoes. Working with the same agents year after year, but having never met in person, you begin to reference them to others by first name. You even start to assign them personalities, understand their feelings through different quirks in their writing and occasionally, during holidays and special occasions, you send and receive personal greetings, cards, and photos; but for the most part it’s all business.

Last Christmas our department took our regular Christmas photo and we emailed it to all of our counterparts saying “Merry Christmas!” Since China sleeps while we work and vice versa, the next day I received an email from Aggie, a China agent who I talk with frequently, asking if I could label the people just from production, so that her team could see who is who. “Sure, why not.” I sent the email with the labels. The following day I received another email, “Oh, look at you! You have such a baby face! How old are you?”

“Baby face?!”

Who knew that that one email would spark a litany of back and forth emails between she and I. Over the course of the next few months, I began learning about her family, her life in China and she began learning about me.  So, when I told her about my trip and that I was coming to China, Aggie went to work! She began sending me information about hotels, trains, prices, crime, tourist attractions and anything else she could get her hands on. She honestly could put Frommer’s out of business.

The team at Paramount Asia!

“Are you coming to see us?”

“Absolutely! Let’s all have lunch!”


Now, Aggie and the team of girls she works with have been following my travels through my blog as best as they can (Blogspot is blocked in China). While I’ve been on the road, I’ve been getting emails from them expressing how they like this destination or that activity and how they couldn’t wait to show me around their city.  So, when I finally met up with Aggie, she brought Julie and I immediately said, “I’m the tourist, you guys are the guides. I’ll go wherever you want.” Aggie responded, “Here, Aggie is boss” and she and Julie began pulling out maps and notes and schedules and speaking in rapid Chinese.

Wow! Go to work!!

These girls are no joke!

I had no idea what she meant by boss, until she told me the schedule, booked my hotel in Guangzhou for me and absolutely refused to allow me to pay for anything. Whoa… So NOT in the plan… Way too generous. “No, Aggie is boss,” she said when I tried to literally wrestle her away from the cash register. We spent the next two days exploring tourist locations and parks in Guangzhou and shopping in wholesaler markets and eating everything in Donguan.

Seeing Aggie bargain is a sport! “You tell me if you like something and I’ll do the talking, but don’t show the merchant that you like it,” she suggests. Being the shoe hound I am, I immediately saw a pair of shoes I absolutely had to have. The style was original, the shoe was hot and the handiwork was real quality. “I love these! How much are they,” I asked the shop keeper, forgetting Aggies rule.



He pulls out a calculator and puts the price so I can see. Aggie looks over my shoulder, takes the shoe out of my hands and starts shaking her head and clucking her tongue. She’s pulling at the leather and poking the lining and telling him how the leather is inferior and the buckles they used are not worth the price. “Oh and look at the work around the toe! Where did you have these made?” By the time she finishes talking to the shop keeper and sporting her shoe knowledge, the price is now less than half of the original! The only problem is that now I’m not sure that I still really want it. “Dang, did I really want that piece of crap shoe!” I purchase it anyhow because dirt cheap is really too good to pass up. As soon as we leave the store, Aggie is high fiving me and jumping up and down. Oh I get it… We head to the next store and I step back and watch this miniature dirty Harry do her thing.

Aggie and her husband!

Later in the evening, I was speaking to my husband on Skype and complaining that she was spending too much and I needed to figure out how to pay her back. Aggie overheard my conversation and yelled “No, it’s okay! When we come to New York, then you can pay for everything because New York is more expense!” We all started cracking up laughing and my husband says, “Yo! She’s smart, but she’s got a deal!” 

Thank you Aggie!  She and her husband, as well as Julie, showed me a part of China that I wouldn’t have seen on my own, fed me and opened their home and I’m immensely grateful to call them friends.

Guangzhou's highest observation tower

Strolling through Guangzhou's parks

Newly married couples all over the park taking photos!

Lovely Architecture!

Food, Glorious Food!

From this to sushi in less than 10 minutes

Note:

 I've been in China for the last two weeks, where Blogspot is blocked. I have a lot more to say about Japan, Taiwan, and China and will try to group it together over the next week.

Stay tuned for more posts.

Frog and Veggies in China!

Before I left a friend of the family told me a story of how they went Thailand and after weeks of staying there, they ran into a Kentucky Fried Chicken and grubbed. Naively, I said, “KFC in Thailand?! I’m never going to eat American fast food while I am away.”

This post is written as both an apology and explanation as to how I ended up in a McDonald’s murdering an order of chicken mcnuggets while in Beijing.

Here’s the thing…

"Hot Pot".. Yum!

Unless someone local is with me, most days I have no idea what I’m eating. I go into a restaurant, point at something on the menu and it’s literally hit or miss. “Is this chicken or pork?” So far I haven’t had a bad meal and I’m grateful. I take that back… I did have this thick, sticky, white ball concoction in Japan, but aside from that I’ve been blessed. Nevertheless, the trepidation of ordering something, tasting it, and then wondering if it’s going to mess you up later is a psychological pain. “Am I going to end up in a public restroom, precariously balancing myself and all of my stuff over a disgusting hole in the ground?”

Squid Body at the Japanese Festival

You'd think the solution would be to go to grocery stores and stick to items/brands you know, but the truth is that even that is hit or miss. For example, I saw a “Minute Maid” branded drink the other day and bought it. The label looked like melons, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong. I opened it and took a long, thirsty, drink. Immediately, I had a mouth full of chunks. Seriously… Chunks… In my drink! Till this day, I have no idea what the chunks are, but they taste  great, so now I look for that drink when I get sick of water. “Where’s that blue, chunky, Minute Maid drink?” On the other hand, I ate a peach yesterday from a street vendor and was sweating and sick within hours. So you never really know.

Movie Food! Duck Head in Guangzhou.

So understanding the dilemma, it should be clear as to how I ended up in McDonalds. I wasn’t craving hamburgers and fries as much as the assurance of actually knowing what I’m ordering and knowing what I’m eating.  It won’t be a constant thing, but I was having a horrible day and as soon as I exited the train station, McDonald’s was right there. So like Ciely running to Nettie in the Color Purple, I ran to McDonald’s.

“Netttttieeeeee! A #3 with a coke, please!”

String beans w/ duck fetus. Seriously...

Green Tea Ice Cream. I almost ate this daily!

Clams and Jalepenos in Donguan

Japansese Spaghetti! Kimchee, pasta, squid etc...

Fruit, Green Tea Ice Cream, Beans and White Rice Balls (ugh).

Crepes, Japanese Style!