Things that really wouldn't fly in Canada

It's been way too long since I've updated this blog and so much has happened since then. I have so many little China observations and anecdotes, so I apologize in advance for the randomness of this post.

First of all, there are some things you would experience only in China. I'm not even sure if this is normal in China or if I just have all the luck. The last time Anita and I went to pick up drycleaning at the small shop in Manjitan, we were calmly and politely (or should I say Canadianly) conducting our business when a man walked in to drop off some clothes. He budged in front of us (a common occurance here. With so many people, it's truly survival of the fittest in China. You have to fight to be seen and heard). He started talking loudly with the store clerk, completely ignoring the fact that we were in conversation with her. He picked up his drycleaning and then proceeded to quickly strip down out of his pants. Now this store is really tiny, so I tried to avert my eyes, but this dude was really in our personal space. When you go into a store, you simply don't expect to see someone from the opposite sex take off his clothes right in front of you. He gave his dirty pants to the cleaner, put on a pair of clean ones and walked out as if he did this every day. Can you imagine if this happened in Canada? I could sue for harassment.

I still can't get over the way people drive here. I would never dare to drive a vehicle on the roads, although I am getting used to the honking (which really means "I'm here - get out of the way and fast!"). Last time I rode a taxi, the driver pulled up onto the sidewalk (even though people were walking there) in order to get in front of a couple cars to make a right turn. I rode in another taxi that was flying through the traffic, changing lanes continually and honking non-stop. He even cut off a police car with its sirens blaring. Can you imagine this happening in Canada?

The view I have from my office window is constantly changing. There's a new commercial centre popping up across the street and I've never seen anything get built so quickly. Just a couple weeks ago they were dropping huge, flat, round rocks to create holes in the ground for the foundation. Now they're building the actual buildings and at least one floor gets added every two days. I wish I had taken time-lapse photos of the construction. The guys out there are like lemmings. They're crawling all over the place, working 24-hours a day. There's a good 100 guys out there right now, each efficiently doing his task at hand. Labour is cheap in China, so construction happens at record pace. I wonder how stable it can be, however, if it gets built so quickly. Just the other day, one of our students was playing around downstairs and bounced a basketball off the wall once. The plaster crumbled on contact and now there's a huge hole in the wall. I can't imagine what would happen to our buildings if an earthquake hit here.

This afternoon our club, the Maple Leaf Angels, visited an home for children whose parents are in prison. We played games and sang songs with the kids and then make cookies together. It was a lot of fun and it felt good to do something in the community. We're hoping to raise enough money by selling newspapers at lunch time to buy the kids winter shoes.

My address

Here's a copy of my address in easy-to-print label form just in case you want to get in touch with me. I'd love to hear from you!

I stink?

My vice-principal came in to my office today and said she just met with one of my students who couldn't remember my name, so she said "You know, she's the one who's really smelly. She's the teacher with the big smell" It took the vice-principal a minute to figure out that by "smell", she really meant "smile" :)

Observations

China is full of great benefits and drawbacks:

- Today is so foggy and/or polluted that we can barely see the buildings across the street. My eyes are stinging a little, so I decided to check the air quality index. It turns out we're at 128, which is "unhealthy for sensitive groups". Anything under 100 is satisfactory. Surrey, in contrast, is at 9 right now. I'm just hoping that cold, cold wind from the North will come and blow the blue skies back again.

+ On the weekend, I took my first motorcycle ride back to campus from the Qing Gui for only 50 cents.

- While walking out to dinner in Kai Fa Qu last Thursday, we passed by an outdoor pet market. The puppies looked way too young to be separated from their mothers and many of them were shaking with their tails between their legs. One of the puppies jumped out of its box to the ground two feet below. I gasped in shock when the pet salesman gave the pup a good hard kick (the puppy squealed in protest) and then picked the poor animal up and threw it in the trunk of his car. I can't wipe the image from my mind. I just wanted to buy the whole lot of animals then and there. It looks like there is no SPCA in China.

+ Yesterday, I took my bike club guys on an hour ride up to the golf course and back. The views of the waves crashing along the beach were extraordinary. The pollution makes the sunsets even more brilliant. It was a great way to unwind from a long, long day.

- The list of foods which are safe to consume keeps getting shorter and shorter. So many things are tainted with melamine that I'm beginning to lose track. At first, it wasn't so bad. Chinese milk was infected, but then I never did like milk all that much, and I could always get New Zealand milk from Metro. Now all our dairy products are in question: yogurt, ice cream, coffee creamers... What took the cake was when they announced that Snickers and Dove had melamine in it. How dare they take my chocolate! Now it turns out that Dalian eggs are not good and our oranges have worms in them.

+ To end on a good note, we discovered another little luxury after our Halloween party on Friday night. For about 14 dollars, you can stay overnight in a lazy-boy at the Kerren Hotel, enjoy the spa, watch tv, and even get a massage (for a little extra). I was going to take advantage of it, but ended up going back to Jinshitan instead. It's nice to know that I can always stay there overnight if I'm out on the town late. One of these days I'll sleep there just because I can.

Whoops, I can't believe I haven't posted for a month! It sure has been an eventful month! I'm going to have to fill in all the details eventually...
This weekend, we celebrated Halloween to the extreme. Angali, Anita, and I got Jane-Austen-style dresses tailored at Er qi square in Dalian (I always thought it was Archie square, named after a tailor or something, but it's actually just "27th square"). I can't wait to get a bunch of different clothes tailored there. I was just drooling when I walked in. There are literally hundreds of booths, each with a different tailor and different specialty, just waiting to take your order. The rows upon rows of fabric to choose from are any seamstress' dream come true. Now I just need to decide what might look nice. There's just way too many choices!
Anyways, our dresses turned out wonderfully and we bought gloves and masks to match. Anita convinced me to dress up for exam invigilating during the day so we could show our students. I got a lot of work done before the party and headed home where our hairdressers from Dalian were waiting to do our hair. Anita had taken them on a short bike ride and they were both exhausted, but they still managed to curl all our hair with only one curling iron in an hour. We went out for dinner with them at a Korean restaurant and enjoyed a night out on the town at the Silk Road Bar afterwards. We definitely turned some heads walking down the streets of Kai Fa Qu on the way there (especially the guys in their dresses!)
Yesterday I went to another Halloween party near LvShun with the guys we met in Beijing. We were all exhausted from report cards and partying, but we still had a great time. We were even greater celebrities there. The party was mostly for the Chinese university students and they made a crowd around us when we came in. Everyone's cameras started flashing and I was asked to be in so many photos that I felt like I was being chased by paparazzi. We had a great time - we got the shy Chinese students on the dance floor and were entertained by an amazing magician. The best part was hearing the shop owners blare French pop music as we walked down the street.
Right now I should be writing report cards, so I'll have to save all the other interesting updates for later...