...and then they SUCKED OUT OUR BRAINS!

So we had to wait in the plane for a half hour while the dudes dressed up like the cast of E.T. invaded our ship, and shot everybody in the head with a laserbeam...one by one. Check it out!
My favorite part? When he leans over and zaps the dude in the head, point blank. ZAP!

北京欢迎你！(part 2)

Coming back to Beijing has been interesting. Upon learning that I was coming back, most friends and family asked if I was nervous (or insinuated that they would be, put in the same position). Of course, my answer was a quick and dismissive "no." But I started thinking about it: Why wasn't I a bit nervous? Foreign country, different customs, different language, different foods, different system of government, restricted press... What makes me so comfortable here?
Easy answer: I have dark hair, squinty eyes, an affinity for Chinese food, adept chopstick skills, and have spent half of the last five years of my life living in China. It's like moving from Boise to Provo. (Though I think I might have lived in China longer than I've lived in Provo.)

by this time today, i'll be in vancouver

there's wireless internet at the Burger King in the Shanghai Pudong airport. ah, the advances of modern technology! i'm writing this post for the sole purpose of posting one picture: eat your hearts out, america.

Hainan (part three): Sun and Moon Bay

sun and moon bay. highly recommended. try finding a picture. it's called riyue wan. or riyue bay. couple thousand meters of pristine white sand beach and nothing but me and matt riding the waves for an entire afternoon. we bought some chinese brand-name sunscreen and definitely got our money's worth, cuz we both got a bit toasty. not as toasty, i suppose, as if we hadn't bought any, but we've a nice touch of color to our faces now. best part of the day: taking a nap on a beach all by myself. matt wandered off to look for some shells. funnest part of the day: trying to wave down a bus to pick up a couple of hitchhiking foreigners with dripping wet bodies, boards, and dollar bills. :)

Hainan (part two): Sanya

Sanya. if there's ever an extra four thousand dollars lounging in my wallet just waiting to be spent, this is on the top of my list. i figure that's how much it would cost to fly here, live it up for about two weeks, and get back with a few pennies. though, i could live like a miser, sleep on the beach (very tempting, even with sufficient funds), and get away with it for about two thousand. oh. that's for two people, in case you were wondering. i was thinking honeymoon. we went to the "big east sea bay" (dadonghai wan) yesterday and decided we wanted to go boogie boarding for the few hours before sundown. we got the guys to rent us two boards for ten RMB a piece (again, with the chinese prices...that's about a buck forty), but didn't have enough money to cover the security fee. in the end, they agreed to giving us the boards in exchange for my flip-flops, matt's shoes, and both our t-shirts. quite fair. we decided not to rip them off (my flip flops were the most expensive...about four USD) and brought back the boards. what nice dudes!

Hainan (part one)

i'm in hainan! you wish you were here. twenty-seven degrees in the air and about twenty-two or twenty-three in the ocean. thousand-meter beaches with nobody on them but me and a constant roll of one to two meter waves. but how did we get to hainan? let me tell you, my over-curious friend! we took a plane. straight from nanjing to guangzhou (insert several hour long layover here) and then right to haikou. in the airport in guangzhou, we met joseph, our ultra-friendly, girlfriend-visiting, new zealand-living, freshman-year-in-college-but-i'm-still-a-pimp buddy. joseph came down and sat next to us in the terminal and we chatted it up until the flight finally left (a half hour late). when he found out we hadn't found a hotel for that night, he told us he'd see if his girlfriend could hook us up. she did. we stayed at a place next to her university (where she studies vocal performance, which is super-hot) for seventy RMB. that's thirty five a piece. that's about five bucks, my good man. they also treated us to a barbequed dinner and some pretty tasty noodles. all in all, i'm pretty grateful for chinese hospitality. he's gonna get whatever he wants when he comes to america. we woke up early, got on a five hour bus, and now we're in paradise.

Shanghai (上海）

Welcome to SHANGHAI!  shanghai was definitely not my favorite city in china, but it was pretty dang beautiful. i'm going to see what i can do about adding some pictures here.

MUD CAVES!

I never actually showed a picture of us soaked in mud in the mud caves.  Here you go!

Taiwan

i lived in taiwan for two years, so it's one of my favorite subjects.  any book you read on how to be polite or how to do business in china will tell you to avoid talking about taiwan.  never, never, never.  i'll echo that opinion with business, but if you'd really like an insight to the way chinese people think, start talking about sensitive issues like taiwan.  every time i've mentioned taiwan (to close friends, teachers, strangers), i immediately get the party line:  taiwan is part of china and has always been.  and if you ask for proof that taiwan and china are inseparably linked as a nation, they say chinese.  the chinese language is the reason taiwan is china.  history lesson:  taiwan has long been the trophy handed to the latest victor of the spoils.  the chinese, the dutch, and the japanese have all laid claim on the island in the past two hundred years alone.  the original inhabitants of the island, having arrived several thousands of years ago, were of malay and polynesian ancestry.  the han chinese didn't actually begin to populate the island until about 1200 AD.  the portuguese saw the island in the sixteenth century and began to call it formosa, or the island beautiful, but it wasn't until the dutch began to colonize the island in 1624 that there was a significant european presence.  not too long after this, the fujian military and navy kicked the dutch out and the island came under the rule of the qing dynasty, eventually becoming its own province with taibei as its capitol.  at the end of the nineteenth century, the japanese successfully invaded and quelled resistance.  japan controlled the island until the end of the war in 1945.  the kuomintang that controlled china at the time then controlled taiwan until 1949 when the communist party finally vanquished the KMT and the nationalist leaders lead by jiang jie shi (or chiang kai-shek, as he's know to ignorant westerners) fled to taiwan to "regroup", as he called it.  they never left, and taiwan has effectively had its own economy, military, trade, treaties, legislature, law, political parties, language, and traditions since.  as far as i can reason it, taiwan hadn't been china's since 1895, and (because we know that jiang jie shi was preparing for a retreat to taiwan for many years before the actual event in 1949) the 1945 to 1949 legitimate rule by the KMT only prepared the island for yet another invasion (this time by the nationalist military).  china calls taiwan a province, and the chinese people insist (very heartily) that taiwan is part of china and eventually china will "jiekai" or free and release taiwan from its present situation.  the taiwanese that i know, on the other hand, seem satisfied with the status quo (afraid to provoke china to war with claims of independence, but having independence in practice) but do not consider themselves chinese.  many will actually correct you if you call them zhongguo ren.  interesting, no?

Pictionary in Reverse, AKA this is our writing class

we have a three hour long writing class.  it's tomorrow.  i'm not stoked.  it gets boring enough that sometimes professor ying has to come up with pretty interesting activities to keep us awake.  two weeks ago, we played a reverse version of pictionary where the guys (no girls in our class) described the perfect living room and i had to draw it on the board.  here's the result: two of the three amigos (kris and marc, i think) sit on the couch with an obviously underaged and very unhappy chinese girl.  they're grinning ear to ear.  the couch is purple with polka dots, and beside it sits a mini fridge, opened, so you can see the many bottles of "coke?".  the air conditioner, in a not-so obscure reference to our actually air conditioner in our apartment, drips copiously onto the couch. working from left to right, you'll notice a MATRIX poster in the background: a stick-figure keanu reeves dodging bullets. on the table in the middle sit three cds, three bowls of rice with meat (a taiwanese dish we all miss...paigu fan), a tv remote, and a dancing clown.  yes. a dancing clown in a purple get-up with purple and yellow polka dots, white gloves, painted face, and wacky hair.  lighting the room overhead is a fantastically sketched disco ball, which reflects off the massive flat screen tv (which is playing a barney rerun).  right in front of the tv rests a DDR dance pad for those late night parties.  meanwhile, dave looks in from the door and is aghast.  :)

Basketball Reinvented

it was late. steph and i decided to wander into the arcade at the top of deji plaza, trade a couple bucks in for a bunch of coins, and take on the reigning champion of the basketball toss.  in a completely worthy attempt to establish ourselves as the top of the social ladder among overly-bored and slightly less socially adept teenagers, we found the basketball hoop with the lowest high score and decided to own it.  after three tries, a good break and a turn with "too spicy" (the coolest shooting game ever), and two more tries, we destroyed the record.  and here's the proof:

Reflections on China

this picture was taken from the northeast corner of an intersection about ten to fifteen minutes walking distance from my apartment.  to the left and behind the camera is the super-posh deji plaza, and behind me in the distance is the xin jie kou shopping district.  i can't count the number of times i've been to this spot (the subway exit is right behind the fountain) and i figured i ought to take a picture and remember it.  it really is one of the prettier places in nanjing at night.  mind you, after eleven o'clock, all the lights go off and the whole city goes to sleep.  definitely not the city for night life if that's what you're looking for.  

Power Issues

there's a reason i haven't been posting as often as i used to.  my power cord died.  and by that, i mean i accidentally broke my power cord and i now hate myself for it.  turns out trying to buy replacement parts for four year-old apple notebooks in china is kind of like trying to buy dr. pepper: you can't do it.  i've tried both, frantically, and neither has been a success.  apologies.  however, since i've managed to steal a classmate's computer for a few minutes, i'll make a legit post.

开裆裤－Baby Chaps

so mom requested a picture of Baby Chaps to make my post on the subject more complete.  as you would imagine, however, it's slightly awkward to wander around Nanjing with your camera, taking pictures every time you see a child with its genitals sticking out!  so i figured i'd go to google images, type in 开裆裤, and take a decent picture from the web to post on the blog.  for future reference, don't ever do an image search for 开裆裤 (literal translation: Open-crotch Pants).  google filtering doesn't work so well in chinese.  anyway, what was done was done, so i picked the only picture on the page that was what i was actually looking for and downloaded it for your viewing pleasure.  ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to introduce "Kai Dang Ku"!

A Picture for Mama

i promised my mom i'd upload a picture so she could make it into another idol god and put it next to matt's picture in our living room.  love you mom!

just kidding about what i just said (AKA I LIED TO YOUR FACE)

as we got toward the end of the day, the three amigos (kris, dave, and marc) and juliana decided that they wanted to go to the light show later that night.  greg and i weren't particularly interested and, instead, decided that we wanted to go cruise the town on our super-sexy electric scooter (see my previous comment on the sex appeal factor of electric scooters in the first post about the dirty old boatman).  it took a great deal of convincing to get mr. su to say ok.  the day before when we'd agreed to rent his scooters and let him be our guide, he'd promised that we could use the scooters all day.  apparently, his definition of "all day" and ours didn't line up.  to him, "all day" ended at about five.  "that's when i get off work!" he said.  (of course, he didn't mention that it was nearly ten o'clock when he found us on the street and invited us over to his place...BUT I DID!) as i reckoned it, he was working until about nine thirty or ten o'clock the day before, and since he was liable to be up just as late looking for tomorrow's customers, it wouldn't be a big deal if we didn't bring the scooter back at eight thirty or nine.  finally he agreed.  THEN, when we got back to his shop, his wife took our scooters and said nicely, "come back tomorrow!" "actually," we said, "we're going to be back in just a second with a passport for collateral.  mr. su told us that we could keep the scooter until later tonght." after about fifteen "they're out of electricity"s and "it'll be dark outside"s, i finally said, "fine.  keep it then.  but we won't be back tomorrow."  when she heard this, suddenly there was enough electricity AND she could show us how to work the lights...but we had to promise to be back before eight thirty.  so we wandered back to our hotel, stopping for some bandages for my toe and knee, and returned to the scooter shop at around six thirty or six forty-five.  SURPRISE, SURPRISE!  yang yang (the wife) has taken the scooters into the back and has started charging them.  "you two took too long! i've already started charging them.  you'll just have to come back tomorrow!"  needless to say, i was pretty dang grumpy.  few things make me more angry than people lying to my face...probably because it insults my intelligence.  i gave her a piece of my mind, reminded her that she had JUST told us that we could have the scooter and went back on her word, and promised that i would NOT be coming back the next day for so much as a road map.  and i didn't.  instead, greg and i rented a gas scooter from a place right next to our new hotel.  and that's the next story.

the dirty old boat man hooks a brother up

despite his relentless dirty-old-man-ness, the dirty old boatman proved useful.  as we were pulled over to the side of the river, snacking on our newly-purchased barbecued chicken, a couple of girls pulled up beside us.  one got off their raft, came over next to me, and ordered some stuff from the lady there.  just as she got done ordering, the dirty old boatman yells over that we should buy her something to eat and go on a date.  then, to her, he shouts, "american guys are good-looking beyond compare! you should let him take you on a date!"  we both chuckled awkwardly at his attempts at matchmaking and started chatting while we stood there.  finally, as we were getting ready to go, i suggested that she and her friend split up and finish the rest of the river trip with greg and i.  everyone agreed and we spent the rest of the trip chatting about home, work, school, teaching chinese (turns out that's what she does.  she teaches chinese to foreigners in shanghai), etc.  all-in-all, it was a pleasant trip...that is, until my toenail got ripped off and shi jie (that's her name) had to dig through her bag for some bandaids!  

the dirty old boatman

after cleaning up as much as we could from the magical cave, we cruised through the countryside on our super-sexy electric scooters (kind of like motorcycles, but without the engine...or the noise...or the bad-boy sex appeal aura______actually, i'm gonna say that riding an electric scooter increases sex appeal by about the same factor as riding a too-small tricycle).  eventually, we arrived at a dock on the side of the yulong river to the west of yangshuo.  after (again...and this is a repeating theme of our whole chinese experience) debating prices with the bamboo rafter-men, we hopped onto three two-person rafts.  you'll see them in the pictures, but they've got the world's crappiest lawn chairs attached to maybe ten thick, parallel bamboo sticks and are propelled by one wrinkly, tanned, super-ripped chinese dude.  our bamboo-pusher-man was named mr. huang.  we chatted for a while, but after he started talking about how he could predict how the alignment of the stars at the time of my birth and the chinese name i had picked would impact my future i stopped paying attention.  eventually, he gave up on mysticism and picked a topic dearer to my heart: girls...though his approach was a bit crude.  he kept yelling at all the chinese girls on shore (or with other guys on rafts) (or by themselves on rafts) that they should swim on over and take a spin with the americans.  leaning over to speak more quietly, he kept telling me that americans could pretty much hook up with any chinese girl they wanted and that i should probably take advantage of that.  (on a related note, our hotel manager told me the same thing one day.  having heard this enough to make me grumpy, i replied sharply: "so...what does that say about the foreigners, and what does that say about the chinese girls?"  he thought for a second and responded: "they're desperate...and the girls are easy."  "yeah.  exactly what i was thinking.")  we told mr. huang that we didn't need any dating advice, thank you, and that it'd be best if he just kept pushing while we went swimming.  we did, and he did.  when we got back, however, he suggested that we go to Xi Jie later that night and find girlfriends.  i laughed pretty loudly (the idea of picking up girls with this wrinkled 50 year-old dude was that funny) and he got confused.  "no! seriously! chinese girls like you!"  i laughed even louder.  "thanks, but no thanks" i told him.  he made some more comments on the way down the river, but for the sake of all women and those unmarried men reading this page i won't repeat them.  suffice it to say that i got pretty grumpy with him.  eventually, he persuaded us to stop at this barbeque place on the side of the river for some chicken and fish.  i told him we'd buy him a drink and he promptly ordered a beer (the first of two we bought for chinese guys that day).  while we waited for our barbeque to cook, he kept hitting on the girl cooking the lot of it...even though she was married.  i told him off for it and he told me it wasn't a big deal because her husband wasn't there.  oh freak.  though, he did kind of hook us up with a couple of girls at that same barbeque place.  that's the next story!

health mud

as soon as we got to yangshuo, we checked into our hotel (we'd booked it for four nights, but they only had room for two...go figure...so the guy at the desk hooked us up with another place for the last two nights), and wandered the town looking for something cheap to eat.  just as we were walking down Xi Jie (west street) where all the western restaurants and foreigners are, a middle-aged chinese man poked me on the arm and asked what we were looking for.  i told him we just wanted to get some regular chinese food at regular chinese prices.  he chuckled and started talking about some place down some road over there.  i nodded, and we started walking in the direction he pointed.  after a moment, we noticed he was still following us.  after asking what was going on, he finally came out and told us that he owned a bike shop that rented bicycles, electric bikes, and scooters and wanted to give us a tour of yangshuo the next day.  we visited his shop, talked prices for a while, and ended up promising that we'd be back at eight the next morning.  for less than $13 US per scooter and $3.50 per person, we rented scooters for the day and mr. su took us around to different places of interest.  the very first place we went was the "magical cave".  the cave itself was pretty cool, though it would have been way cooler if it were more natural.  instead of picking our way through stalagmites like i had though we might, we walked through the cave on a paved concrete sidewalk lined with different colored neon glowtubes.  the different colors of neon placed throughout the cave made it seem pretty ghetto, but it was still fun.  the best part was undoubtedly the end, where we found the long-awaited and much-anticipated mud pit (health mud, as the advertisements in the tourist pamphlets had bragged). greg and i were the first to strip down to our board shorts and jump in.  and it was DISGUSTING!  clumps of goo floated on the surface and our feet sunk more than six inches into thick, sticky mud.  before anyone else could get in, we were already throwing mud at each other from across the 30 foot diameter pit.  by the time we got out, we had all wrestled in the mud, slid down the slick embankment right into the goo, and floated on our backs (an easy feat, considering the density of the mud!).  kris came out of the back float missing a ring and unable to open his eyes (apparently health mud isn't so great on the ol' conjunctiva!).  we spent a LOT of time trying to get all the grime out of our suits, ears, and eh...everywhere.  my once glaringly white board shorts are now an attractive shade of orange mud. great pictures though.  

Regarding the Stories on the Right

For Your Information:  i just realized that if i published everything in the order that i'd listed over there on the right or (as i'd been doing it) in no order at all, you'd all be lost and have no idea in which order these stories go.  what's worse, some of these stories go hand-in-hand with others, so it's kind of important to get them in the right order.  some of the bottom ones don't really apply...they're just general comments and editorial notes that i'll write when i've got time. many thanks- the author