Ooo China - Pizza hut

So we went to Pizza hut the other day. In China, Pizza huts are kind of a date place. The inside looks rather nice. In fact, they even have escargot on the menu. Fancy right? 

The Pizza Hut Extraordinaire 

Pasta with sausage that tastes like dog food

Well, in the good ol’ US of A, fancy restaurants are usually known for their impeccable service. Not that I want to compare the Pizza Hut in China to a Michelin grade restaurant in Chicago, but I still want to stress service or in my case, the lack there of. At the Pizza Hut, one of us ordered pizza and the other ordered pasta. The pizza came and was fully consumed before the pasta even showed up at the table. The concept of timing food so it arrives together so the party that came together can eat together is totally lost on the Chinese. This is not the first time where one of us has completely finished our meal before the other one even started.

Oooo China! Get your stuff together!

Shopping in China

      When you go to another place, whether it be the next town over, the next state over, the next country over, or even as far the other side of the world, odds are your desire to shop will follow you there. So it will be no surprise to you when I tell you that I’ve gone shopping here in China! :O

      So you enter a store. Let’s just say out of simplicity that the store is called Vero Moda (love this store!). Immediately upon entering, one or two of the eight sales people (remember the store is probably as big as two of your living rooms) attach themselves to you. They stand pretty much half a foot away behind you and they follow you as you walk through the store browsing. If you touch something, they will immediately come closer and start saying random stuff in Chinese (because I obviously understand that ) probably telling you how amazing said item is. This continues until you leave the store all claustrophobic and feeling like a burglar.

      One time I stopped and looked at the sales people while doing the “no” hand motion and the “shoo don’t bother me motion” to no success. I even once tried the “sit” “stay” while I slowly walk away commands like I would to a dog, but that still did not work.

      Needless to say, I guess shopping in China is a communal experience (just like everything else) and you are meant to share it in a close and personal way with every sales person in every store that you decide to shop in. Unfortunately, I was not a fan of this type of shopping experience since I hate being followed and made to feel like I’m being watched because I might steal something. As such, I probably won’t be procuring many things while here in China. L

Blue Box Blues

As exciting as the offer to go out to your favorite little hole in the wall restaurant is back home in good old Chicago, the offer here in China does not evoke the same excitement. Rather, it usually involves a sigh followed by a question of “where do you want to go today?” The answer to that question is usually a list made up of names for random restaurants around our school: Big Red, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the Kosher place, dumpling place, or Something VS Something place. As we discover more hole in the walls, I’m sure the list of ultra awesome and creative names will increase. Anyways, along with the short list of immaterially different hole in the wall restaurants, our entre choices usually consist of rice or noodles topped with some sort of meat in a sauce and are usually limited to the scarce number of pictures on a restaurant’s menu.

A little outside eating area we go to often. It's quite cute at night.

Some days we get enough courage to go attempt a new place but doing so requires a true desire and patience. Usually, these new places do not have picture menus at all since we had already discovered those locations earlier on. If we are lucky, when we walk into a potential new regular dining establishment, there will be someone eating something delicious looking that we can point to and say “one of this one please”. Otherwise, we can try and orders an item from my list of 8ish items that I’ve had waitresses write down after voting them as an “I want to eat this again” meal. If we are feeling even more adventurous, we make up combinations of words such as “chicken” and “vegetables” and “rice” as if they were refrigerator magnets and see what happens.

Either way, when you hungry and you just want to go and eat, sometimes this eating arrangement leads to frustrations. There have been many days where I’ve eaten cucumbers and fried rice, or simply nothing at all because ordering didn’t work out: either the food that arrived was awful or I simply couldn’t order in the first place because I got too frustrated with them saying “mayo (don’t have)” or babbling on in Chinese and pointing to other things that I just walk away and deal with the hunger.

Our go to fried rice with ham.

We’ve found a few western restaurants along with an authentic Indian restaurant here, but they are all the way downtown. We try to head down there twice a week or so to get a dose of “normal” food as we call it and kind of recharge our batteries. It’s these little trips to eat western food that keeps us going, well at least me anyways. I was told there are a couple of pizza places within a 10/15 minute bus ride from our school, so I think we will start visiting those too, once we get one of the teachers to show us where they are.

In the worst case scenario, on days when we can’t handle it anymore or are not in the mood to order food like refrigerator magnets, we know we can always cave and go eat Blue Box. We have not yet reached that point, but it’s really comforting knowing that in a few short minutes, we could have a hot steamy bowl of fake covered cheese noodles and they are guaranteed to taste just like home! :)

Total and Complete Avoidance

As I have previously mentioned in my Subway post, people in China pretty much ignore you when you ask them for questions regarding directions, advice, or to take a photo. I have no idea why this is, but some people ignore you, others pretend not to see you and walk by, and others just lie to you that they don't speak English, even though they just told you in English, that they don't speak English!

Here is a video that portrays this phenomenon very well. Granted the video is an advertisement for South Korea, they pretty much act the same way here. :)

Ooh China: a line is the quickest point from one place to another

Well not in China. There is no such concept of a line, which few exceptions, here. A bus shows up and people will rush and push on to it like the world will end if they don’t get on the bus now. Going through security at the train station putting items on the conveyor belt to be x-rayed, they will put their stuff on top or in front of yours even if you got there first. And they will be just as eager to grab their stuff before you as if you are going to steal it. Getting on the train is also a huge massive group of pushing and shoving people, even though we have assigned seats. My favorite was getting on the airplane after a shuttle bus dropped us off at the plane. There was only one ramp up to the plane so the attendant could check your tickets again, and everyone was running and pushing for their lives to get up into the plane. Once again, we had assigned seats.

One exception seems to be long lines. For some reason, people line up for that. I don’t really see any logic to why and when they will queue up. I will let you know when I figure it out. Ooh China.

Ooh China: Yea I can totally read that...

Yesterday we finally met a fellow foreign teacher who works at our school! It was a big day! He took us into town, which take a flipping hour and two bus transfers, since we were wanting western food and a trip to Walmart. On our way to Walmart, he pointed out one of the books stores that sells book in English. So glad he pointed it out to us since we could obviously tell ourselves...

Also, the English section was very well labeled (insert huge dose of sarcasm). Ooh China, thanks for your help with finding what I was looking for. :)

O and here are some of the book choices they offer. See one that seems out of place?

Answer: Lonely Planet Canada

Ooh China: the beginning

On an episode of How I Met Your Mother, Ted starts dating a girl (Katy Perry!) whose name no one can remember. Due to her silly, random, nonsensical stories that don’t really go anywhere and odd things she did, they decided to name her Honey which went perfectly with the well known phrase “ooooh honeeeey” that often followed every one of her many stories. As such, I am starting a group of posts called “Ooh China” in honor of Honey and in honor of the many different things the Chinese people like to do.

Starting with the first: Rules of the Road. Or lack thereof I should say. After three weeks of observing the multitudes of buses, motos, bikes, and other motor vehicles, I have decided that the rules of the road are actually more suggestions than anything else. For example, while driving home in a taxi late one night, we were driving next to a giant cement truck. At every red light, our taxi driver would dutifully stop and wait for the green (he was probably the best taxi driver we’ve had here) light. This cement truck, however, would just blast through the red light without even tapping the breaks. I saw this happen at three stop lights in a row since we kept passing it in between lights. Additionally, apparently, there is no need to stop and look while trying to make a right hand turn onto a street. Even though the pedestrians have the right of way, buses, cars, motos will just power through and it’s up to you, the pedestrian, to look out for them and not get hit. I must say a bus came pretty close to plowing me into a paper doll at one point. Staying in your lanes is also more of an option than a requirement. Many a times I have seen a car attempt to switch lanes and then get bored or something and just stop mid switch and drive down the highway in the middle of two lanes as if it’s no big deal. O and the shoulder on the highway is also a legit lane if you want it to be. And if you feel the need to have a party while on the highway, it’s not unusual to just pull over and have a pow-wow with you and thirty closest friends right there on the highway with all the speeding cars passing you by.

O and I’ve seen a driver here drive their automatic in 2^nd gear (instead of D for drive) for the entire ride. Ooh China.

Keeping my sanity.... or at least trying to

"Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos."

-The I Ching