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Well, I am back in Hangzhou after a great stay in Shanghai with my friend Luke. Of course after taking a complete memory card of pictures, now I cannot get my camera to work, so I will have to delay posting them until I can get that problem sorted out. My chinese is improving. In other news they are forcing us to take an elective Wushu course (which is basically Tai-chi with a fan). I am terrible at it. I have never been good at memorizing and synch-ing dance moves for some reason. I feel like they want me to perform like a monkey or something. I wish it interested me but it just doesn't and I feel like I am wasting my time- I would much prefer to be studying the language or working on my art!! (That's what I came here for right!?). Apparently all us newbies must give some kind of performance in the stadium in December. Its bullshit. Ok now those feelings are off my chest, I should probably try to remain more positive about it- since I do not know what will happen if I simply skip out on the classes. In other news I am trying to recover from some kind of nasty food poisoning that began to affect me as soon as we got to Shanghai. Allways have some kind of toilet tissue with you in China, or at least, as Luke tells me, wear socks. This is not to mention that it is a very good idea to carry disinfectant wipes since most bathrooms here fail to supply any soap. So while I will laud the Chinese on the modernity of their infrastrcuture, which I beginning to see as more advanced than our own, they have loads of room to improve general hygeine. Stomach problems= lost productivity in the end, right?

Shanghai Biennale

Luke Homitsky (below)


So the Shanghai Biennale is in full swing now, it began Tuesday and runs until November 16 at the Shanghai Art Museum. Like all the Biennales and Fairs these days, it will be surrounded by satellite fairs and exhibitions (SHContemporary at the Shanghai Exhibition Center, Shanghai Art Fair, Shanghai MOCA, etc). One of my friends, a fellow Savannah College of Art and Design MFA Painting alum, Luke Homitsky, lives here in China, and will be involved in some performance oriented work Tuesday evening. If you are interested in going, contact me- this weekend I will be able to give you more details as I am meeting him. I'll be posting pics from Shanghai next week so stay tuned!!!

Luke's website is http://lukehomitsky.com


See www.chinavisual.com for reviews/interviews (in chinese)

Here is a review of one of his endurance painting-performances (in chinese):


http://c.chinavisual.com/2008/04/30/c49412/index.shtml

More pics from West Lake

General Yue Fei's Temple
View inside the temple

Bike Rides

So first off, I have sorted out my cafeteria problems, and can happily tell everyone that if you come here, you can have a quite delicious meal for less than a dollar and not the 95RMB as I had feared (turns out that was the amount left on my card--- feel free to call me a name here). I thought I would show you what/where I had for lunch today, very tasty. I may have mentioned earlier that I bought a bike and am having just a magnificent time zooming around town in the mad mad Chinese traffic. Hangzhou's West Lake is one of China's biggest indigenous tourist attractions (by that I mean attraction for Chinese). It is really beautiful. There are something like 15 traditional scenic spots around the lake, which has been shaped and landscaped for hundreds of years now, and each position has an interest name like, "Orioles Singing in the Willows," or "Wind Riffled Lotus Leaves," etc. In fact, there are countless beauty spots, pagodas, temples, famuos residences, foot bridges, and more. On the other side of the lake from the city are these awesome pointy, misty hills, and tea plantations. Longjing tea is supposed to be the best in the world and comes from this area. Anyway, here are more sights from my bike rides. I figure I will get some of these touristy things out of the way as I get to know the area, and then later we will get to know the real insider stuff together.
cafeteria
cool doors
lotus flower (sorry it got kind of hidden)- there are men here who carry baskets that dangle from poles strung across their backs containing strange looking green fruit, which I finally recognized today as lotus- see above on the right side)

New Friends

A couple of days ago, my new roommate, Rodrigo, returned from Beijing. Last night was his birthday, so a bunch of us went for dinner. Everyone seems really nice, and it was a great chance to practise Chinese and try some new foods, like "petrified egg"- yes it is actually very old, green egg that tastes a little sour, but not bad. You eat it with tofu. Its kind of funny, I thought I was ok at eating with chopsticks before, and now I know I am ok- and just ok. I don't know how people eat things like mushy and crumbly tofu with chopsticks, its pretty hard! Anyway, here we have, clockwise, Matt (Oil Painting/ USA/Taiwan/HongKong), Shaddy (Oil Painting/ Dom. Rep.), me (GBR/USA), Andre (Chinese Language/Russia), Rodrigo (Brasil/Chinese language/ Graphic Design), Kaoli (Chinese Painting/ Japan), Jacob (Chinese Painting USA) (Maname (Japan), Micky (Jap.), Fuji (Jap./Printmaking). Everyone is at different levels of Chinese and study. I have to say that is nice being around people from all over, learning to communicate, partly because you have to be kind of nice- and by that I mean that there is not so much sarcasm or sardonic-ness if that makes sense (?). I will probably be the one who ends up breaking away into a-hole-dom. Well, I think I can be polite enough and just tone down the darker pieces of humor for the foreign appetites, right? Anyway I genuinely like everyone I have met so far, which is awesome and maybe a little surprising even.
Well, this isn't the greatest picture, but anyway, we all know how much I hate to sit there while each person takes a pic of the group with their own camera, so I didn't try to take more than one.

Online!

I'm online! Things are going better! Here are some pictures from around the beautiful campus here!

Currently at internet cafe getting in touch with the West

Pictures from Hangzhou (pronounced Hahng-joe)

9/6/08 (Sat morning) (post-posted) Just got up. Having instant coffee in my room. Satisfied with the price if not the taste. If you are a junky, you will suffer through it if it gets you the fix you need. Had a bad dream this morning; I hope it was not an omen. I was playing soccer for my old team, but at my current age. After coming in off the bench, my coach yelled something humiliating at me, and I decided to get in his face and completely embarassed him, somewhat threateningly, and then I just walked off. When I returned the game was over and I saw my dad, who I was meant to leave with. I walked up to him and apologized. He just looked at me and said, “Well you know you are not going to be attending classes now.” I woke up in tears, I havent had a dream about Dad since he died a couple years ago. I need to clear my head, luckily I have a lot of time to do it- I have no formal schedule until Wednesday. So I can stumble around for a few more days without any help.

I will have to post all my new pictures Monday/ Tuesday due to time issues sorry!

Settlin in

(This is post-posted since I did not have internet yet.) Today and yesterday have been difficult. I got up and went and got some things for the room. Yesterday I arrived in Hangzhou, and was really pleased to see how beautiful it really is. After some bungling trying to find the correct building (no signs- at least none in English to indicate where to go for the international school), I got checked into my room. It is simple, but quite nice, with a big window facing the very popular Nanshan Lu (Road). Jump to today, I was told to go downstairs for a meal card and to register for the internet at 10am. The lady at the desk did not seem to be in the mood for sorting things out through hand gestures, so I had to get help from Moshall, who will be my Chinese teacher starting next week. The experience felt embarassing and awkward when you have to rely on other people for help doing simple things, I hope she did not have too much else to do. Anyway, I was told that I could wait in my room and the man would come by either today or Monday to help me connect to the internet! I was hoping it would just involve a password, but maybe he is going to indoctrinate my computer with some kind of restrictive software. I dont know yet, obviously, my computer is not connected yet. Anyway, I figured I would go to the canteen for brunch. Absolutely no English or Pinyin (phonetic Chinese) was available, so I did the whole point randomly to order thing. I still dont understand what happened down there- I do not think they deducted the money from the card, but I am not sure. And I was shocked to see the price- it looked like 95RMB (about $15)- I still think this could not be right (hopefully it was only 9.5). The main part was a deep fried dish, which I almost cracked my teeth on a few times when I hit the bones (why are there bones in a deep fried item?- is it to intentionally hide them?) Anyway, it was tasty enough, unlike the awful brown squares-on-a-stick thing I had yesterday (I presume some kind of bean curd?-see picture) I felt full, it was raining, and I was hoping the internet guy would show, so I decided to take a nap (I've been waking up at 4/5am). When I got up I went and got a coffee, only to be shocked again that it cost upwards of $6!!! I just dont know how, even in the fanciest places, how they can be charging this much for a bad Americano that takes 15-20 minutes to prepare. I resolved immediately to buy myself a kettle and do the coffee myself at home from now on! Honestly I am very worried about the cost of some things here. My budget will be coming from the Chinese government, and I believe it amounts to about 30RMB/day (5 dollars). Some things are very cheap, but lots of restaurants seem extortionately expensive. You can see from some of the pictures how fancy some places are- I don't know how long it has been like this here, but it seems that most Americans' conceptions of China are way off-base. On the other hand, you can still find things cheap if you are careful and dont mind some entering the scruffier joints. In Shanghai, I was eating delicious fried breads from the stand for just 1 or 2 RMB, and I think this is going to be the way to go. For dinner tonight I had a really nice noodle dish at one of the small unassuming places for only 9RMB ($1.50). They were friendlier there, and helped me to order, humoring my terrible, but as-a-necessity-rapidly-improving Chinese.

More Shanghai Pic.s

Tea Tasting

I met some English students from Qingdao today, who took me to a proper Chinese tea-tasting, hosted by a "Teamaster." I sampled several including one ginseng variety, one of dried fruit and flowers, one blackened lychee, one jasmine flavored, and one with a flower that "blossoms" in the hot water. It was fascinating to see the expert steeping and pouring, and to have someone translate the Teamaster's extensive knowledge of the teas' uses, traditions (girls should hold the cup differently, and the small pots are full of symbology), and superstitions (we had to touch the tea god- which looked like a frog, but was pointedly not a frog, but a three legged god, with chinese coins built in that hopefully preclude riches for us). The rituals involved were really quite complex, I hope that some of the good luck actually comes through. My new friends really helped me with my Chinese- when I accidentally left out the 0 when I said 205, which left me with a very offensive term, apparently. There are a couple of numbers in China that double as curses! (36 is also bad!!, but how random is 205 with no zero?!)

Shanghai-ed in Shanghai

There are some setbacks to getting so much attention here in Shanghai. I was very amused this moring as the old lady walking beside me kept looking up and smiling at me, like I was some kind of friendly giant. On the other hand, being immediately identified as a foreigner means that lots of people associate me with money. Unfortunately, even in China the dollar is not going as far as it probably once was. What really pisses me off however, is that in two separate situations now, I have simply been left the check after visiting a restaurant or coffee-shop at the invitation of a local. This last time particularly stung. The very friendly English teacher just wanted to practise his English, I thought. He takes me to a nice restaurant for coffee. I told him I did not want any snacks, and so paid no notice when he ordered some (I presumed for himself). After coffee, he suggested wine to celebrate our new friendship. OK, I thought, until he said, "Thankyou." "Thankyou? I thought you were paying?" Then he says he'll pay for one thing and I the rest. I told him no, we split it. Then when chen comes, he comes up short. WAY short. And theck check is not so small, either- I have never paid $7 for coffee in America, let alone all the other charges. Gonna have to get smarter and maybe a little meaner quickly here.

Shanghai!

So I got into Shanghai last night at around 930pm local time, it is an amazingly beautiful, awe-inspiring city at night. All of the skyscrapers are lit up in a heady, fantasy like visual feast of changing neon wonder. I will try to get some pictures tonight. In the meantime, I hope you will all enjoy these.

The White Owl Takes Flight

Sometime last week, I muddled through my move from Savannah, Georgia (utter chaos- most people would not try to pack for the biggest move of their life in the final 2 hours before leaving home, let alone attempt to pack AND move half their apartment into storage between 8 and 10am), and flew home to see my dearest mum, Lesley in Minnesota before coming to China. I left Minneapolis early September 1, stopping in Chicago, then hopped on a Korean airlines flight to Seoul, and finally connected to Shanghai, from where I am currently writing. The total travel time was somewhere in the vicinity of a full day, and Chi-town->Seoul was about 13 hours. I am now 13 hours ahead of everyone on the east coast (I think). I highly recommend Korean Air- they put every other flight Ive ever had (international and otherwise) to shame. I flew economy and still got 2 full meals (one with wine!) snacks, drinks every hour I think, a personal entertainment center (with a large selection of movies, music, games, etc) complimentary socks and toothbrush, and the stewardesses all looked like they had just come out of some perfect asian doll-factory.

These are the printed instructions I received with my in-flight Bibimbap (Korean dish). You add the steamed rice, curry paste, and sesame oil to a very tasty vegetable medley (see below).

This is the seating for the flight, and below is a shot of Seoul from the airport window (wish I could have looked around!).