David's Big Adventure in China

Well, it has finally happened. I wondered when the day would come. At this point I still refuse to believe it…..I keep telling myself it was just a fluke. I refuse to accept it as truth until I get confirmation by a second occurrence. There I was, minding my own business on the bus when a young lady looked at me from her seat, smiled, stood up and then……………offered me her seat! Maybe she knew I am a teacher and wanted to show respect. At least that’s what I’m assuming until it happens again and until then I’ll still think of myself as young.

I’d like to add some further comments on why the people here like Americans. It’s true that the old people like us because we helped them in the war. There were American aircraft and soldiers here in Yunnan during the war. The young people like us because they like our culture, our freedoms, our technology, and they think all of us are rich. The ones that have had more exposure to our culture really like the idea of the American dream and being able to succeed based on your abilities and efforts rather than your guanxi. (your connections).

I recently went to an old temple just outside the edge of town (that is where the Emperor David pic was taken) that is built on a hill with very pretty natural surroundings in a park like area. There were trees that were blooming already. Spring has arrived! I have mentioned before that they call Kunming the “Spring City” so I guess it’s true that we do have spring almost year round since we had blooms before the winter solstice. At least it was spring like for a while. It has turned cold and the high for December 31 was 41. Incredibly, some of the students still have their windows open. I’m pretty sure they don’t have heat. Even with both heaters on high the warmest I can get my apartment is 65 in the living room and 60 in the kitchen/bathroom area. I went to a Brazilian BBQ restaurant with some friends recently on a Saturday night. That had a little show as we were eating. They had some Chinese ladies dressed in Brazilian costumes dancing to some music and one of the songs they danced to was “Cotton Eyed Joe”. For those of you not familiar with this song is a country dance song very popular in Texas. I had to laugh seeing Chinese ladies in Brazilian costumes dancing to American country music.

Since I have lost weight I had a couple pairs of pants that were too big so I took them to have the waist taken in. It cost me 10 yuan ($1.35) for each pair. The lady uses an old manual foot pump machine and works by the sidewalk just outside the school entrance. Sometimes I eat some of the local street food. I don’t know what it is called but they fry some dough into a size and shape of pita bread and while they are frying it they break an egg on it to fry with it. Then they fry some meat (I was told it was pork but it tastes more like lamb) and then put the meat, some secret sauce, spices and lettuce on top then fold it over and wrap a small plastic bag around it. It can serve as a meal for me and it costs 2.5 yuan ($.35). It’s a big greasy but pretty tasty. I recently tried a new way to enjoy Coca-Cola. Since it has been so cold I didn’t want a cold drink but I really wanted a Coke so I decided to nuke a glass of Coke and try drinking it hot. The microwaves made it taste a bit stale but overall it wasn’t bad. Maybe my Coke friends have a suggestion for me on how best to enjoy Coke hot?

New Year’s Eve here was a non-event. I was on my way home a few minutes after midnight and the streets were quiet and mostly empty except for the occasional firecracker. Chinese New Year is when they really celebrate the new year. Well I have only 2 more classes to finish before turning in the final grades and heading off for 7 weeks of vacation and travel. I will leave here for USA on Sunday the 6th and hopefully after about 30 hours of travel will arrive at my parents home in Indiana.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 5:27 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.