So I decided to make a list of things I like and dislike about China.
***Things I like***
1. The freedom to drink anywhere you want and as much as you want.
2. The niceness and reasonableness of the police.
3. The beautiful girls.
4. The fact that the beautiful girls find me very handsome.
5. People are very friendly.
6. People are not fat.
7. Everyone loves children. In some countries they are often seen as an annoyance. Here, a baby may cry like crazy on a train and everyone is just happy that the baby is alive.
8. There is no promotion of manly-macho insecurity, i.e. there are no "rules" about what a real man should or should not do.
9. The families are very close. A few examples. Grandparents, since they are retired, view it as their duty to take care of the grandchildren as a help to their children who have jobs to do. A father may have to work two thousand kilometers away and only see his family 3-4 times a year but this will not make his children bitch and moan later about how dad didn't spend enough time with them.
10. No tipping-anywhere, not in restaurants, not for cab drivers, not doormen. Well except the guys that massage your back in nightclubs when you take a piss at the urinal, you're supposed to tip them but if you don't that's ok too. I, for one, no longer use the urinals in night clubs and go for the closed door stall b/c I don't enjoy a back rub while taking a piss, but to each his own.
11. No racial tension.
12. The food. (though I am not a fan of dog meat, silk worm, skorpion, tiger penis, bird puke soup, live monkey brains, bear bile wine, rotten poisonous snake wine, endangered bird dishes, aborted baby soup-no I am not joking, I will discuss this one in another post)
13. The communal eating style in the homes and restaurants. Everything that is ordered is for everyone at the table, so if you have 4 people will probably order about 6 dishes and everyone pulls what they like from each plate into your personal bowl to put on top of the rice. Also, everyone gets as loud as they want and it's all good.
14. The street food vendors--stinky tofu or one of 8 kinds of noodles or corn on the cob or sweet potato or various steamed/boiled/fried dumplings or various pancakes or sugar cane or barbeque of your choice of 15 kinds of meat and seafood--it's all super cheap, anywhere from 17-34 cents an order. There are also meat options but that's not for me.
15. The trains. It's a great train system and really cheap. They are also putting in new lines of fast trains that cost a bit more but are 2-3 times faster. You can get anywhere by train and a sleeper ticket is cheap, you get a (relatively) clean bed and the train is smooth and quiet.
16. No political correctness. This may be the best one. Just say what you want and what you mean. You think someone is fat, tell 'em.
17. It's much easier to talk to people even with the language barrier. There seems to be much less second guessing of what someone means. This is certainly an overgeneralization, but here if someone gives you a compliment, they mean it, if they criticize you, then they just criticize you, they don't need to be sarcastic or beat around the bush about it and secretly harbor resentment.
18. The shops. There are small shops everywhere. It seems that they are approximately 2 small shops for every person in this city. Every street is lined with tiny shops and they all have friendly people with something random for sale. You can pick any street in the city and just walk and look around.
***Things I don't like***
1. The weather in Nanchang. Always hot or cold and often all in one day. But this con doesn't necessarily apply to all of China.
2. The air pollution--at night you can usually only see a few stars, sometimes none. When the pollution is really bad, you can't see any stars during the night or day--and that's really bad, b/c you really hope to see at least 1 star in a 24 hour period--the big one that's in our solar system.
That's all.
So I almost forgot about this aspect of living in China until last night when a neighbor set off fireworks right outside my window that were so loud I was sure someone was shooting off fully automatic weapons outside. They also gave off a ridiculous amount of smoke. In China, you hear fireworks go off about every 2-3 hours-seriously. Fireworks are set off to celebrate moving in somewhere, moving out of somewhere, getting a new job, having a baby, being happy, the night beginning, the day beginning, it being 9 o'clock, etc. My college sets off fireworks at 9pm every night just for fun. The college next door sets off fireworks at 11pm every night. The college across the street sets off fireworks every morning at 6 am!!! And this doesn't include all the students and residents that set off their personal fireworks. I almost don't notice it anymore but apparently when Spring Festival takes place-that's part of the Chinese New Year in late January and February, for the entire ~30 days of Spring Festival, everyone will set off fireworks many times per day and night. Oh and fireworks are illegal here because they could start fires, but of course "illegal" is a flexible term which in this case means completely legal.
So I visited Nanjing with another FT (foreign teacher) last weekend. That's him next to me in one pic. We took a 12 hour overnight train and were able to get a sleeper so that was great. You go to bed on the train, wake up in the morning and you've arrived. Nanjing (literally: "southern capital") is the capital city of Jiansu province and is the former capital of China. It has many historic places though we only had 2 days to spend there so did not get too see many places. We did go to the Japanese Invasion museum, a huge free museum which focuses on the Japanese invasion of Nanjing in 1937, known as the Nanjing Massacre. One pic with a cross shows the front of the museum. Over a period of 6 weeks the Japanese invaders killed about 300,000 Nanjing residents, burned down many parts of Nanjing, raped over 20,000 women, etc. This museum was rough, it's entirely black in color, has the most forboding music and lighting possible and has absolutely grotesque exhibits. There are pictures people being cut up and shot, women being raped and there are some mass graves that have been opened and the decomposed bodies are now on display. All in all, I am not sure I would recommend going to this museum. There are many beautiful places in Nanjing though. There's a huge lake in the middle of the city with many very old buildings and to the east part of town there is a large scenic mountain to climb. The thing I did not like about Nanjing is how many foreigners there are. It's very similar to Beijing, everywhere you go you see at least 1-2 foreigners. There are many foreign stores and restaurants, we went to an Irish pub and there were at least 50 Europeans, Australians and Americans there--I felt like I was not in China. It was cool being able to drink Guiness which was as good as it was in London (better than in the US) and cost about as much as it did in London. We also went to a 50% foreign nightclub and that was pretty cool (see pic), but overall I wasn't digging it. I have gotten used to being the only foreigner everywhere I go, so this was all a little strange. It also seems that when you are around foreigners in China who are large enough in number to have their own community they are more likely to be complaining. That seems to be the main topic of conversation--bitching about China in one way or another: "the Chinese spit on the floor...the Chinese are stupid...the air is bad...the weather is bad...blah blah blah". It's really rather annoying, you gotta wonder why they left their homeland to begin with. I like China so much I definitely couldn't get into the complaining spirit. But overall it was an interesting and fun short trip, and I successfully was able to find the cga card for my computer that I had a tough time finding in Nanchang :-)
So this is a pic of my current pimpin' ride, a Junlu mountain bike. It looks cool and was only 300 Yuan (~$45). It has the special shock absorber which is nice, but of course it's made in China so in the 5 weeks I've had it, it has seen the repair shop 6 times. The pedals both broke off within 2 weeks and had to be replaced, it is now only a 1 speed bike instead of the original 18 speeds because it just won't change gears, the seat had to be replaced, one tire started doing such bad figure 8's that it would no longer spin through the mud catcher thingie, the squeaking got extremely annoying, the chain is now completely rusted, etc. But anyway, I went today looking for scooters and am considering either buying a gas powered scooter or a motorcycle. The prices are rather reasonable--scooters are between 2000-3000 yuan and very nice motorcycles are 4000 (~$550). Some issues I have run into, to drive gas powered vehicles you must get a license plate and have a driver's license. As for the license plate, the way that China is trying to help the environment is by putting in effect a law 3 months ago which states that no one can get any new license plates for an indefinite period of time. The only way to get a license plate is to buy a very old scooter/motorcycle that has a plate and you can use that one. However, I asked the scooter salesman if there is another way and he said of course, the store 2 doors down sells fake license plates for only 10 yuan and I can have any number I like. Problem solved! Regarding the driver's license, a foreigner can only get a driver's license after being in China for at least 1 year. To deal with this annoyance, there are 2 methods. The shop across town sells nice looking fake driver's licenses for 100 yuan but that's not a good idea because fake government identifications can get you in trouble, so he recommends I take the second method. If I see a policeman, either act calm and drive normally and he probably won't notice me in a sea of other scooters (80% of which also have no driver's license and a fake license plate) or try to get away from him which is not hard to do because the police never go very fast because they don't want to endanger the public by chasing someone very fast (an eminently reasonable idea that perhaps should be exported to the U.S.) so I can definitely outrun him. If somehow neither of these ideas works out, then it's still not a problem because then I can just speak English to the cop and he will realize I don't understand anything and just let me go. At absolute worst, there is a 300 yuan fine for having a fake or no license plate and a 300 yuan fine for no driver's license, but usually you can just give the cop 100 yuan cash on the spot to avoid these troubles, but foreigners are almost always let go for free for any violation because the paperwork is very annoying for the police to deal with, plus the foreigner will usually not pay the fine since for some reason (hmm) foreigners never figure out the right place to pay it, and moreover the policeman will lose face for having made China look unfriendly to foreigners.
So I think I finally figured out the drinking traditions in China. The alcohol situation in China is rather different from the States. There is no minimum drinking age. A popular drink is homemade fermented rice wine which can be anywhere from 5%-30% alcohol content and tastes extremely sweet. Families often let their children drink it, but usually they must be at least 6 or 7 years old. Beer usually tastes bad here, there is never draft beer unless you go to Beijing/Shanghai and the local brands of bottled beer only make light beer that tastes kind of like Natty Light, Beast, or Old Pile, but it's still ok. You can really splurge and find some Pabst Blue Ribbon in a few stores though. The real man's drink though is Baijou--see the pic on the left. It's usually at least 50% alcohol and tastes like some kind of odd mix between kerosene, butane and Everclear. There is a couple of FTs here that like it, but most of us kringe at the mere sight of Baijou. There is no way to mix it b/c it will at once overtake the flavor of any mixer and even half a shot will give you a terrible hangover.
Drinking is an important resume builder here. One of my students is allergic to alcohol (he gets red rashes on his body the next day after drinking) and his parents are very worried about his employability and are trying to teach him to drink. Many people routinely inquire as to how many bottles of beer someone can drink. If you say more than 10, you get major respect. If you can't drink, you can't really make it in business here, people will think you have something to hide. The more you drink at a business gathering, and the more loud and obnoxious you get, the better. If you try to get a girl to drink more than one bottle of beer she may say that unfortunately she is not experienced in drinking a lot of beer, she has not had enough training.
Drinking in bars or restaurants is certainly encouraged, as is getting as plastered as possible. Restaurants will not close until you are ready to leave. A place that usually closes at 10pm stayed open for us until 4am one day just b/c we were still enjoying their facilities. If people get rowdy, that's cool too. Some students next to our table had a few too many bottles of beer and started breaking the bottles against the wall. The restaurant owners would come and clean up the mess with a smile.
Drinking and driving is certainly a lot looser here. The general rule is that so long as you don't hit anyone, no one is looking to catch you for drinking and driving, unlike America where the pigs look for trouble/look to create trouble by setting up road blocks and taking similar kinds of measures. If you do get caught drinking and driving here, usually being nice to the cop or giving him a cigarette will settle the matter. If he's a hard ass, you probably gotta give him 100 Yuan, but he will probably give you a ride home as well, so it's like a taxi service.
Here are various pictures from my trip to Fujian Province. In one pic you can see me and my student who was my guide for this trip. Most of these pics are from sites I visited in and out of Fuzhou-the capital city. We climbed up a mountain on the Warrior Trail-called that b/c it's 2500 meters up stairs and definitely wears you out so you can see down to the city below from the pics. The first few temple pictures are from a Buddhist temple at the top of the mountain and the others are from a different temple in Fuzhou. Take a look at the blurred picture of the Indian Buddha. You will see the ancient symbol of protection, aka Swastika, which was later used by Hitler.
There is also a pic of a not-so-clean toilet on the train. 
These are some pictures from Xiamen, the beachfront city in Fujian. One pic where I am next to a big bullet is from the island off the coast of Xiamen where the PRC began its ill-fated attack on Taiwan. There is also a pic of me sitting in front of the monument to Chairman Mao Tse Dong in Xiamen City.
