[pictures coming soon]
I’m spending winter break in China to visit my relatives, who I’ve never met. The last time my parents saw them was 16 years ago! Last Saturday (12/17), we took a 13-hour flight from San Francisco to Shanghai, China.
I thought the initial experience of being in another country was interesting–everything is written in a language I can’t read or write. In addition, Shanghai had their own dialect which is unlike anything I’ve heard before. It’s a shock when you can’t understand anything around you.
As a friend drove us from the Pudong International Airport to a Holiday Inn near the train station, I noticed how advanced and industrialized everything was. The highways were all perfectly lit with strings of yellow street lamps. Huge billboards hang over the road at regular intervals. On local roads, most of the traffic lights have timers counting down next to them. It’s very different from our streets, most of which are at least two or three decades old.
When we got to the hotel, we met my cousin Liu-Ying who stayed with us so we could travel to my grandparents’ apartment together the next day. It was only 21:00 local time (4:00 am PST), but it’s not very hard to fall asleep when you’re suffering from 16 hours of jet lag!
At 5:30 the next morning we got up to catch a train to the city of Wuhu, where my dad’s relatives live. This was the first time I’d ever been on a train! It had two levels. When the train leaves the station, it’s so smooth that you don’t even realize that it’s moving. The only thing I didn’t like about the ride was that the heaters were permanently on, and it got incredibly hot near the end of the trip. But after four hours, we arrived in Wuhu. It was a stark contrast from Shanghai–no more superindustrialized clean roads and buildings. The stores and apartments are wrecks. And the ground is dirty–there’s mud and peoples’ spit and puddles of waste water everywhere.
My uncle (dad’s older brother) met us and we took taxis to my grandparents’ apartment. That’s when I noticed how reckless both drivers and pedestrians are in China. There’s people everywhere. Pedestrians aren’t afraid of traffic at all, and drivers have to dodge all the jaywalkers, motorcyclists, and bicyclists. Yet they still drive incredibly fast–great reflexes!
When I first got to the 4th floor apartment, I realized how different it was from home. The tile floor was cold, and we put on thick cotton slippers as soon as we got there. They don’t usually use heating, so it was around 12°C indoors. The living room is a big room in the center with a blue-tinted mirror. The kitchen was like your ordinary kitchen, Because they don’t have high-capacity water heaters like we do, they have to get their hot water downstairs, and put them in big red thermos-like bottles. The bathroom was really different though–it was basically a tiny shower stall with a toilet in it. The shower had a small gas water heater which heats water as it is used. The apartment is pretty big though–they have three bedrooms, and a balcony.
It’s nice that where they live, they can walk out the door and buy things, without having to get in a car. There’s markets everywhere, and there’s no zoning restrictions like in the US. It’s just always really busy near your house though.
Some days, we went and visited my uncle’s house. Their apartment building is single-story, so they have a small backyard. It’s still cold inside, but it just looks brighter and nicer inside. I learned how to play mahjong, and I watched my uncle’s wife, grandma, grandpa, and my mom play a lot. My uncle is a really good chef, and cooked dinner for us almost every other day. At night we usually played poker using my grandma’s mahjong tiles as chips.
On the one day it was nice and sunny, we went to the park and zoo. There’s this area in the park where everyone brings their pet birds and just hangs the cage up in the tree, and they all start to sing and chirp with each other. [pic] The zoo was really interesting because the animals are really close. I happened to have some small cakes in my pockets, so I tore off bread and fed it to the animals. The bears were in a pit with railing around it, and I threw food over. It actually woke up and ate it! It stood up against the wall, asking for more food. It was so close I bet I could have touched it if I reached my hand in. (Not that I would want to try that, of course!) I think I have some video of that; I’ll post some when I import the tape. One swan followed me when I fed it, and the monkeys caught the food and fought over it! The deer ate leaves and sticks, and while they ate I could pet them. [pic] And here’s a funny picture of my sister arguing (?) with the deer. [pic]
We climbed to the top of a small mountain, and we went into a tower at the summit to look at the view. Here’s a 360 degree panorama from the top. [pic]
On Christmas Eve, we went shopping at a nearby shopping center. Until then, I didn’t know what it truely meant for a place to be crowded–there were people everywhere. [pic] You couldn’t even walk 10 feet in the store without bumping shoulders with other people. In the U.S., buildings probably aren’t even allowed to be that crowded because of safety requirements! Anyway, we bought a jade (look-alike green plastic) engraved penholder, and a set of four metal pictures which are pieces of iron placed inside picture frames. CNÂ¥8 equals US$1, but things are much cheaper in China, relatively speaking. The set of four metal pictures was only about US$15 (although after a sale). There were so many people, though, that we had to wait in line for about half an hour just to pay for our things. Once we got outside the mall, we tried to hail a taxi for 20 minutes without success. Finally, we asked someone for directions and just walked home–it only took about 10 minutes!
Earlier today, our relatives sent us to the train station and said goodbye to us. When we got to Nanjing, one of my parents’ old classmates had made arrangements for us. He has his own real estate development company, so he sent a driver to take us to his company building. It was really nice inside–it actually had heating! There were huge models of the real estate that they developed, and reception rooms for customers. There was a pool table room, card rooms, a room for little kids with one of those ball pit structures, a dining room, tennis courts, and an (empty to prevent freezing) swimming pool.
Right now I’m waiting at the airport to fly to Fuzhou, where my other grandparents (on my mom’s side) live. It’s been a fun first week and I can’t wait to see what it’s like this next week!