"Don't Lose Your Sense of Wonder..." and Upcoming Projects

Well, I have run out of things to do today, so I guess I will put up a blog post! It's funny, blogging was so important a few days ago, and I have totally neglected documenting this "just arrived and still adjusting" time.

I spent yesterday and today at Lanzhou University of Technology, my old school, to see old friends and help one of them do a crazy difficult and heavily technical translation for a recruiting presentation. It was so difficult and seemed impossible at times, but together, we did it! I feel pretty accomplished because I was able to translate pretty well in my own right except for some really, really technical things (like different kinds of engineering projects and statistics kind of technical).

Basically, that made me realize that I DON'T want to be written translator. Ever. That's just too tedious, and because of the nature of written vs. spoken language (not just Chinese, any language), it's much harder and it takes the human element out of the equation. No fun.

Besides that, I hung out, had a few meals with, and joked around with my friends who are still left at L.U.T. - they kind of became my family during that time there, and it brings back memories of great times to see them.

Anyway, you didn't come here to read about me waxing nostalgic - you came here to read about me and Lanzhou (or just Lanzhou.). 

I met a couple of American teachers who live next door to me at Lanzhou Jiaotong University, and they are really cool - they're in their early 40s and the wife has spent some time in Kunming and Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. They can't speak much Chinese, so I gave them some advice and said I would help them out anytime they needed. I like them a lot, and I hope we can hang out more.

Campus is still kind of crazy with all the new students - I see people giving tours to groups of 30-50 people at a time and people are clogging the shops to stock their rooms with snacks, water containers, etc.

Living in China is a constant exercise of your patience, your sense of adventure, and your capacity to deal with unfamiliarity. Pretty much how you do everything in China is different from how it's done in America. The public transportation system is the best way to get around, which is new to most Americans, water must be boiled before drinking, walking is just part of life, not an exercise regime, people drink tea instead of coffee and soda, eat rice, noodles and dumplings instead of pot roast, steak, hot dogs, and burgers, and live in apartments instead of suburban houses. It's a whole different way of life.

My dad told me,

"Hey, while you're over there, don't lose your sense of wonder and appreciation at where you are. You have a really unique opportunity, and you need to not lose sight of where you are and where you come from."

That's been rolling around in my head a lot these past few days, and while the wonder is still fresh in my head being sort of "fresh off the plane" for this time, it's my third time to come to China and to Lanzhou. It's more or less daily life, and it's hard to shake your head out of the daily routine and remember where you are. Most days last year, I totally forgot I was living in China - it was just life. Anyway, I'll try to stay conscious of that.

Anyway, I will make a video about all of that soon - I've been a bit busy and distracted to film much stuff. I've got about 2 minutes of raw footage I could spin into a video, but I want to wait until I've got enough for a good video. I want to make good stuff, you know?

I met an American couple online who are in Lanzhou now who said they saw my videos and read my blog about Lanzhou, and they said it gave them a lot of really good information, so I'm very happy about that, and the American couple who live next door to me said they read my blog and watched my videos as well, so it appears that what I'm doing is at least reaching a few people.

I know  that Lanzhou seems like a relatively unimportant place in a world with cities like New York City, Shanghai, Beijing, Mumbai, London, Sydney, and Chicago, but that doesn't mean that it's not a place worth visiting. It's a whole different kind of city, with great people, great food, unique culture, and a long history.

I will be putting together a series of pages/posts about a "Guide to Lanzhou" project, and I'm hoping to get some feedback from my readers and the people I know here as to what they want to see in it. In the future, I'm kind of hoping that my blog will become a significant stopping place for people who want to visit northwest China, and hopefully Lanzhou in particular. It's got it's faults, sure, but I like it just the way it is.

Until next time,

Austin Guidry

My Daily Life in a Chinese City

I've been really surprised at the number of views on my posts concerning what Chinese cities are like, so I thought I'd post a little something about the subject, since it seems to be a topic of interest.

[by the way, the blog hit 10,000 total hits a few days ago! Great milestone for me!]

Although I'm not in China now, I can remember very well the daily routine of the life of a foreign student in mid-sized Lanzhou (3.3 million people) when school was not in session. Some of the stuff is not exactly pretty, but it's part of what's really in China. I love China just as much (or more) than America, but there's no such thing as a perfect country.

Breakfast

Breakfast usually consisted of 饼子 of some kind (sort of like if a pancake and a crepe had a baby. A wonderful, tasty, baby), and then a short walk to the bus stop to either the West Campus of 兰州理工大学 (Lanzhou University of Technology) or to 西关, a downtown region of Lanzhou. It could be any other place, but for this post it'll be 西关 (pronounced "She-Gwan") and Zhongshan Bridge.

The Bus

In Chinese cities, the bus is what most people take to get places. Depending on where you're at, they can be air conditioned and clean with a few people in them or hot, dirty, musty, smoky, and crowded with all of the migrant workers of the entire city.

It's different from place to place, and you never really know what it's gonna be like when you step on - you just hope to God that it's not so bad.

On an average day in Lanzhou, you'll be standing up in the bus. Only one bus line in the city has air conditioning, and I think it's bus line 1. How appropriate, right? The #1 bus is the only one with air conditioning.

Most buses have windows you can slide open if it gets too hot, but it's generally not too unbearable unless it's the weekend and everybody's going downtown to shop. God forbid. I really didn't enjoy the weekend crowds.

The Streets

Just like every section in this post - it depends on where you are. If you're in Guangzhou or Beijing or any other city that sees a lot of tourist and/or foreign business activity, it's pretty clean and organized with a decent amount of English speakers.

However, if you're in Lanzhou, Huan Xian, parts of northern Beijing, or any other place where not many tourists go and no foreigners "dare to venture", it's a little different. Many streets are dirty or under construction, there's a lot of trash in places, and you can see a lot more of China's poverty. It's in these moments that you are forced to confront the fact that you're in another country. Not many streets in America will have kids wearing only dirty t-shirts run through the street and playing in trash piles and peeing on the street. Seen it.

The People

When walking the streets of Lanzhou, I was usually left alone except for the occasional "Hello," but it was whenever I was idling about by myself or just standing alone looking at the Yellow River that people usually came up and talked to me.

(Okay, this photo is cheating...it's actually on a train, but he DID just start talking to me)

It's true - it's not just some funny story we tell people for fun. People really do come up to foreigners and try to practice their English! If they don't speak English, you'll get to practice your Chinese. This is especially true in certain situations:

1.) The person who comes up to you is alone.
2.) You are alone or are only with other foreigners.
3.) You are just idling about and not really doing anything.
4.) You say you can speak a little bit of Chinese and are friendly.

If you're with another Chinese person, it's rare that a strange Chinese person will approach you if they speak sub-standard English. They'll assume your Chinese buddy will be fluent and that they'll be inferior. Best advice - go alone to a place where you know you can just hang out and chill.

For me, that was the area around Zhongshan Bridge.

The area on the far side of this picture is green, shaded, and dotted with small beaches and areas where you can sit and buy a drink and just chill.

Along that street, you can see a lot of older people in the morning doing Tai Chi, and in the afternoon you can see some doing different types of martial arts or playing the Erhu or any number of activities.

It's a great little area that reminds you of why you wanted to come to China in the first place.

After hanging out and talking to a few people, it's always cool to go to 西关 (pronounced "she-gwan"), which is the most cosmopolitan area of the city. It's mostly pedestrian roads and has a lot of shopping centers and restaurants and tea houses. It's the perfect place to go for a snack. I don't really have any pictures of 西关 itself, which is something I'll have to rectify, but I've got some video of it here and here if you want to check it out.

Other

Usually, after that, I'd go back home to the apartment and just chill until dinner, which was at one of the local restaurants, but I'd also do laundry every couple of weeks or so. Very involved process you can see here at my YouTube page. If YouTube's blocked in your country, sorry....I'll put them up on Youku eventually

You'll get a few (or a lot) of strange calls. I've gotten calls from:

1.) The International Office of L.U.T. asking if I would hang out with a high school kid who wanted to practice his English

2.) From a local TV producer asking me do participate in a segment about my culture shock in Lanzhou

3.) From a primary school asking me to come down to participate in "English Adventure Day"

4.) From a VERY wealthy businessman who wanted me to help him in some very lucrative (and possibly illegal) business ventures

5.) From many random people that I never met or talked to before.....just to chat! "You're a foreigner in Lanzhou? Oh, what's your name?......etc."

6.) Calls from anyone and everyone inviting me to dinners, parties, just to hang out, help with schoolwork

7.) To travel to Tibet......wait, what? Yeah, I got a series of texts/calls from some random guy who wanted to take me to Tibet. My friend Elizabeth would've jumped on it in a heartbeat haha. Yeah, I don't think I told you about that one, did I? Maybe I should've called you, yeah? haha

I'm a pretty friendly guy, and once I got over there, I made it a policy of mine to never refuse an offer for a new experience unless it was: physically dangerous, illegal, or if I was really ill. I never once did, and I don't regret any of it - I had a lot of interesting experiences, and you've got to be open.

When people find out how open you are to try new stuff, you'll get more and more friends, more and more calls, and you'll be a popular dude! (or chick).

So, if I had to sum up my Lanzhou life in a nutshell, that'd be about it!

See you guys next time,

Austin.

4/4 Xi'an. Day 2: Part 2

Today, we got up early to go to the Shaanxi Provincial History Museum, which has an amazing world-class collection of artifacts. However…..when we got there at about 8:00am, there was a line of about 1000 people. Umm, yeah...we couldn't get in, because they have to limit the number of visitors each day, plus we had other places to go.  We got on a bus to go see the Terra Cotta Warriors, which is not actually in Xi'an, but in a smaller town called Lin Tong, which is about 40km away from Xi'an. After a long ride, we got there and saw the three different pits of warriors and horses and what was left of chariots. They were in all conditions of shape. Many were broken, some were half broken, some looked brand freaking new. It is a sight that can but can't be captured on video. When I read that each warrior is molded on different people, I was like "oh, that's cool, what's next?", but when I got there and actually saw that each warrior was molded on a different person, I kind of flipped out.  Every person had a different face, some with facial hair even. Different types of hair, armor, position, poses, even shoes were different depending on the person's rank. Some of the clothing that peeked out from under the person's armor in the back was sculpted differently. I was completely blown away. More than blown away - just imagine doing that for literally thousands of people. Thousands!!! I guess that's why the project was commissioned by Qinshi Huang when he was 13.  This stuff isn't made out of stone, it's made out of Terra Cotta….glorified clay. And so much of it is intact after thousands of years. Places where water had dripped in or the roof had caved in years before discovery were obvious, because a face or a hand or an arm would look like it was growing out of the ground, because the rest of the warrior had  fallen apart and become one with the existing clay/rock. It's a priceless treasure for China to have. The place is still being excavated in places, so there are spots with ladders, buckets, tools, and the general archaeology stuff. So much has been done, but there is so much left to do if there are plans to completely excavate it.  After that, we planned to go to Hua Qing Chi, which means Clear Flower Lake (if my off the top translation is right), but when we got there, the ticket price was a bit expensive, so we didn't (plus, we had heard from the taxi driver that there wasn't much to see anyway). Our next step was going to be Hua Shan, but that was changed to Li Shan, but then we couldn't got to Li Shan because it was too late in the day to try to climb a mountain (it was about 3:30/4:00pm). After not going to Hua Qing Chi, we took a bus back to Xi'an. The absolutely most crowded bus I've ever been on. It was easily over capacity by about 50 people. There were two rows of two seats and in the middle aisle, the extra people were crammed in in like sardines (yours truly included). They had even developed a special system of standing so they could fit more people - it was ridiculous. For about an hour I had to stand in one spot, without moving at all, hot as h*ll, and with a dead camera battery. I couldn't document one second of it. As I was standing there in my spot, slightly amused and slightly angry, I noticed the looks on the faces of the other people on the bus (they were all Chinese). They were as calm as Hindu cows, as if it were completely normal as sitting at home watching TV. As I was standing there in the middle of the aisle, my stomach poking into the shoulder of some random guy sleeping in his seat, his head rolled over in sleep onto his shoulder (AKA my stomach). It was in this moment - on an incredibly hot and crowded bus with a Chinese man sleeping on my stomach - that I was reminded that being in China or being Chinese isn't all about eating fantastic food and getting to see places thousands of years old in the world's oldest culture. There are always some spots that could use some polishing.  As Dane Cook says about owning a monkey: "It's not all about bananas and dancing with toothbrushes".  It's really difficult to explain how I felt in that moment - all I have is this really strong feeling, but I don't know how to explain it. Words can't always encompass what we we've seen and felt, as much as we wish they could. Just for a second - only a second, I felt like I had crossed the cultural bridge and took one step onto the Chinese side, but someone on the other side was waiting for me and said, "sorry, but you can't go any further - this area is off limits to you".  This is a terrible analogy, but it's the closest I can come at the moment to how I felt. Although this trip to Xi'an has been really fun, it's also been incredibly educational in terms of vocabulary, patience, Chinese hotel service,  and cultural gaps.  (Oh, and by the way, I disconnected the phone in my hotel room so that I wouldn't get any more 'service' calls)      :)