BEES!

It’s really amazing how time flies by here.

October 1^st was the beginning of the 8-day holiday. Day 1, and days 6-8 (plus the following weekend) were weekdays. As usual, I still had my share of wacky events.

Day 2: After getting up at 630 and holding in vomit through a long cab ride and a 2-hour flight I was in Shanghai. I love that city.  The streets are narrow and canopied with pretty green trees, the traffic is not outrageous and the food is great.

After a prolonged all-you-can-eat and drink teppanyaki restaurant, where we individually toasted each others’ 16 parents with Japanese beer and sake, we ended up going to an underground gay club.  At first we were having a great time dancing, but after two interesting episodes, that was it. As a group of foreigners, we drew the attention of the locals.  At one point, I leaned over to talk to a friend and felt someone touching me.  I look down and there is a short Chinese guy trying to massage me [in uncomfortable places]. That was strike one. Later on in the night, my friend Zac knocked over someone’s drink and out of guilt, replaced it. In exchange, the guy wouldn’t leave Zac alone. This is what I imagine went through Zac’s head before what came next: ‘MAN, this guy just doesn’t get it. I’ve tried walking away, picking my nose, spitting when I talk AND HE’S STILL TALKING TO ME! Oh, Josh is just over there, maybe he’ll be a good sport and help me out of this predicament.’ Zac then comes up to me, with this guy at his side, and says to his new friend, ‘This is my friend, Josh. He’s from Tunisia.’ Zac then walks away. This guy takes my hand and whispers into my ear, ‘I love Muslims guys.’ I immediately walked out of the club.

The next day we went to the park where they were selling balloon animals that were shaped like penises, and live squirrels and ducklings as pets (and maybe as food).  There were a about million people in that park (I’m sure my guess wasn’t too far off).

For dinner we went to a Yunnan restaurant that you needed to walk down 5 zig-zagging hallways passing washrooms, kitchens and mysterious puddles. After a couple rounds of German/Belgium beers (that aren’t available in Beijing) and a delicious meal, we decided that one more dish would be a great close to the meal. Instantly, what jumped up as a suggestion was: ‘Honey Bees, Beef Jerky and Malt Fries’ , but the obvious next question was to whether there will be enough bees to go around for the 8 people at the table. When I asked the waiter how many come in an order, he responded, ‘too many bees.’ We all laughed at his translation and assumed he meant to say, there are a lot of bees, or that there are enough bees to go around. When the plate came, we reinterpreted his words to mean, like he had said, ‘too many bees’. There was a heap of  maybe 70 fried honey bees that reminded me of rice krispies in both taste and texture.  There were also some larger ones, in the size category of: Holy shit that’s a big bee and I really can’t sit here while it’s buzzing around because it might kill me. AAAHH’ The taste and texture of those reminded me of eating a large, crunchy bug. Yum.

On my last day in Shanghai, I went to the Expo. An event that has 90 million people passing through the gates over the course of 6 months. Averaging about half a million a day. Pretty outrageous.  In order to maximize your time there, foreign passports are crucial.  Passport holders can go into their native countries pavilion without waiting in 3 hour line-ups.  After going through the Canadian pavilion, which exemplified the mild-manner of Canadians and our love for nature (or something really cheesy along those lines), and the American pavilion, which demonstrated sponsorship and corporation as mainstream American culture (surprised?), we wandered into the Angolan pavilion, where I knew someone working. They took a more traditional approach to exhibiting their country.  Main industries of Angola (from what I got out of the tour) included [Blood] Diamonds, inhumane methods of trapping and killing gazelles and delicious-looking food (that closely resembled mud and goop).  We were invited to skip the 4D movie line and sat in a private theatre with an African ambassador (to somewhere) and his entourage.  I know what you’re thinking: ‘Josh, What the hell is 4D? ….and less importantly, Africa isn’t a country’  Well, a 4D movie includes, the normal 2D images of a regular movie, plus the 3D glasses that make mountains look deformed and a gazelle have three horns. Most excitingly, what is the 4^th dimension? Is it a) water getting sprayed in your face every time they show water in the film, b) you’re chair shaking uncontrollably every time the camera moves, or c) Both! Yay!  After getting a really nice loot bag of dongxi dongxi (goodies) from the Angola pavilion, we tried to check out the UK site. Unfortunately, showing a Canadian passport and arguing that we are a part of the commonwealth, former colony or still having the Queen on our money wasn’t enough. Then we tried Germany. A friend I was with speaks perfect German, lived in Germany for 2 years and even works for Siemens in Beijing and they didn’t even consider letting us in. I pulled the “My dad was born in Hanover, but our family isn’t german, catch my drift? (as this blonde-haired blue-eyed guy stairs at 3 brown-haired ‘American Jews’).  After walking passed the massive China Pavilion, and understanding that China’s main source of pride comes from poo smell (thousands of backed-up Port-a-potties surrounded their pavilion), we went to the Israeli site.  The Chinese guard at the VIP entrance asked for my passport, and I ignored him and waved to a bohemian-looking Israeli to come over. All I said was: What’s up dude (in Hebrew), before he let us in. Like all good Israelis, after telling us that he knows Jews in Toronto and New York, he invited us to ‘party, party’.

Saturday afternoon I get a call from my best Chinese friend, Ryan, who, in my 2007 emails, was referred to as Flash.  He and his girlfriend picked me up around 8:30 and we went to the top bath house in Beijing.  The parking lot outside was filled with brand new, black Audi A6’s with tinted windows.  Those are government cars. I mean, if you were a Chinese official and had a nice family at home, why wouldn’t you spend your Saturday night at a bath house (especially when prices for massages are given by how pretty the girls are rather than their skill level).  We first went to the change room, were a 15 year old kid watched me undress, so that he can subserviently place my clothes a locker for me.  From there, we head to the baths. The first was this massive saltwater pool with fountains and waterbeds with jets.  Then we go into the bath beside it, which was much smaller, yellow and cold.  That’s not what makes this bath interesting, but rather the tiny fish swimming around in this bath. We get in and ‘protect ourselves’ as the fish swim up and nibble the dead skin off of our legs. I was giggling uncontrollably for about 15 minutes.  The next bath was this amber coloured hot tub, that is called a Chinese medicine bath. It smelled kinda funny, but it was nice. After the sauna, we hit the showers. When I came out of the shower, I realized there were no towels available.  Instead, a smiley guy comes up, hands me a face towel and continues to dry me off with a second, larger towel. It gets better. From there, we went to the dressing room, where you, as the name of the room implies, are then dressed.  A guy, kneeling in front of you, put on a pair of underwear about ¾ the way up, and then wraps a gown on me, as I standing there laughing (no, his job was not to nibble me, he left that for the fish.) We went for a foot massage.  In China, they say the whole body is represented in your foot and because this certain spot on my foot hurt when she massaged it, she told me I have a  bad stomach and eat too much meat. But come on, what non-vegetarian white male in a country where food is dirt cheap, doesn’t eat a lot of meat? After the massage, we went for the midnight buffet, which was great. (I even ate a big plate of veggies, just in case)

Yesterday, in the car with my boss, we were coming out of the parking lot and the attendant says that its 2 kuai (yuan) for every hour of parking and that we owe him 2 kuai. My boss responds, “你说， 每一个小时两块， 是吧？好，每问题， 你给我两块， 好巴？”. Translation: “You said, every hour is 2 kuai, right? OK, no problem, you give me 2 kuai, sounds good?” The guy gives him 1.5 kuai and asks, ‘is that ok?’ Presumably, he was kidding, but we drove away anyway.

Oh, and I have forgotten to mention this before, but my blog is actually blocked in China. I have to log on to a US proxy server to update it.