My Life in China: a summary

It's hard to imagine that I've been here for more than 9 months, but the time has passed and I sit here in disbelief that I am actually leaving this place. Let me start out by saying that this was an absolutely incredible experience. I lived in a place that is as far opposite of America as anywhere in the world. I made friends from every continent, many that I will keep in touch with when I go home. I don't think that there is anyone that I know back home who has had a more interesting or fulfilling job since graduating from college.

That being said, I look forward to getting back to the states after a few weeks of traveling. Living in China was great, but I am definitely ready for something new. The cultural differences got to me every so often, more so in the latter half of my stay. Every time I got on my scooter there were instances of nearly being killed by other motorists who had no business being on a bike or in a car. Debate over monetary issues with certain contracts were incredibly tedious and overlong. My apartment was absolutely falling apart, looking something like a science project at the time we left because of poor construction and a lack of water draining in our bathroom. I began to think of my life in China as a sort of purgatory. I found certain food spots that I liked, but generally the cuisine was not to my taste. I ate at the same six restaurants for almost every meal. One of those restaurants was McDonalds. Work was good for the most part, but I had plenty of time off to do nothing. I drove my scooter around the lake whenever I got bored. I watched way too many bad movies because DVD's here cost less than a dollar. There was a general overcast over nearly every day, rarely having bright blue skys.

There is a certain aura that permeates every aspect of life in China. It is a combination of communism, pollution, and noise. When I had conversations with Chinese teachers about things back in the states, they seemed awe struck. Very rarely were many informed on the happenings of the rest of the world. Having things like Youtube and Facebook blocked only further hinders freethinking. When I grew out a beard, one of the Chinese teachers told me I looked like Stalin. I was taken back at first, not sure if that was a compliment. She informed me that it was, for Stalin is a great man. It's funny, my opinion of him was a little different

To summarize, this was one of the greatest experiences of my life, and certainly something that I will remember forever. I will absolutely make it back to Hangzhou at some point in the future, and I'm pretty sure that it will be drastically different. Thinking back to college as heaven, then the real world must be hell, I'll take China as purgatory for the time in between one hundred times over. I'm really not looking forward to the real world

Jon Barron

Atleast I'll have this to look forward to, gonna ease the transition I think
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KSv8SxKeBM

Been a while, 1 week left

So I kept telling myself that too much time had passed since I last updated this thing, and recognized that I only have 1 week left before I'm leaving the country. The very last post will be around the time I leave, so I figured that I definitely needed to put something else down before then. Not a whole lot is new in Hangzhou over the last month and a half. The weather has gotten pretty hot, not in a bad way, and it'll only continue to get hotter until I leave. I went to Shanghai a few weeks ago to visit an old friend from middle school, Charlie Winship, and had a pretty good time. I was there on May 1st, the opening day of the Shanghai World Expo. The country has spent something like 75 billion dollars on this thing, a great deal more than they paid for the Olympics, and the city was bustling. I was told that at any given time during the 4 months that it is running there will be between 30 and 40 million people in the city. It was absolutely ridiculous how crowded it was. I walked down to the Bund, where you get the best view of the famous skyline, and felt as if I was wading in a sea of black hair, with just the top of my head poking out to stay afloat.

Most perplexing Chinese knockoff of all time:
A friend at work showed me a picture he had taken with his camera phone of the most aggregious attempt at ripping off foreign goods that I had ever seen in China. It was the back end of a brand new, 2009 Ragne Rover. No, not a Range Rover, but a Ragne Rover. I thought about this one for a while. You would think that there is no way that a real Range Rover dealer would ever make such a spelling error and still sell the car. You would also think that the person with enough cognition to rip off an expensive model, and put together an entire car would have the thought to actually spell the name correctly. I can't wrap my head around this one

And yes, I am leaving China on June 1st. I will be heading to Shanghai to catch a flight to Phuket, Thailand, where I will be for around 9 days. After that, I'm flying to Vientiane, Laos, where I'll head to Vang Vieng for about 6 days. The last part of my trip had been up for debate for a while. Originally I had a flight out of Bangkok on June 20th. Thomas Barron didn't think that would be a good idea, something about it being a warzone, lots of people dying, buildings burning down. So after much thought, I'm now flying out of Hanoi, Vietnam on June 19th. I'm gonna be doing all the traveling by myself which I think will be very cool. Should be just about the greatest way that I could end my tenure in Asia. Gonna be pretty bittersweet, but I'm looking forward to it

Parents Visit, trip to Beijing and Shanghai

So the parents left last week after a whirlwind tour of the two biggest cities in this country. We were in Hangzhou for a few days, had some nice weather and basically just walked around the lake and saw the sites worth seeing. On Monday we flew to Beijing and were there for 3 nights. I liked Beijing, but the weather was absolutely miserable and going out at night I found the popular bar streets to be sly cover-ups for brothels. Seriously I had never seen anything like it in China, I felt like every person I made eye contact with tried to sell me something that I had no intentions of buying. Couldn't find a place where I could just sit down and enjoy a beer really. The Forbidden City was pretty impressive, I can't imagine living in a place like that. It's ridiculously big and the only man that was allowed in the center courtyard and living area was the Emperor. Seems like it would get pretty boring. The Great Wall was pretty cool, but it was really just that, a great wall. The hike up took it out of me, and I was especially disappointed to hear that Pat went to a different section that had a gondola take you to the top, and a sort of alpine slide luge ride that you could take to the bottom. I've got to go back to that part.

After a few days in Beijing, we flew to Shanghai. Had a guided tour for the day, and met up with one of my mom's friends from work and got a great dinner. Shopped around a bit, picked up some pretty awesome hockey jerseys for 1/50th of the price I would pay back in the states. Oh and also got a custom tailored silk suit made back in Beijing that's pretty nice. The next morning I had to be getting back to Hangzhou and my parents left in the afternoon. It was a pretty awesome trip, I got to eat like an American and saw the sites that had I not seen while living in China, I would've felt like a real idiot.

Observation:
Pat and I went down to the lake on Monday because it was the nicest weather we've had this year. A crowd began to form around this one tree, and people started taking out their cameras and phones to take pictures. A lot of of "ahhhh, ohhhhh"s, and we felt the need to see what all the commotion was about, there were about 50 people checking it out. It was a squirrel. All of that for a squirrel, sitting in a tree, doing nothing

St. Patrick's day, Ginger Kids

As everyone knows, St. Patrick's day was just celebrated around the world. In Hangzhou, most all of our friends planned on going to Shamrock, the only Irish pub in town. It has to be the one day of the year that this place makes any money, because it is in a terrible location and just poorly run in general, but we had a pretty great time. There was quite a crowd, people of all ages from all over the world, and a good cover band playing. Later we made it back over to our side of town because there were cheap Guinness' to be had. I did wake up with green paint all over my face, feeling a bit haggard.

At work last week somehow the topic of ginger kids was brought up among the Chinese teachers and me and a couple other American teachers. We began to tell them wild stories expanding on the evils of the ginger gene, basically just stealing everything from a South Park episode and the urban dictionary definition of ginger kids. The Chinese teachers were absolutely fascinated, and are honestly frightened of red hair now.

Gold Medal Hockey

So last week, as most everyone knows, the Canucks had their own little miracle occur by beating the Americans in one of the most memorable hockey games of all time. By winning the gold medal they salvaged what would have been one of the more embarrassing overall Olympic games as well. My account of this game is also probably the most memorable hockey games that I've personally witnessed. Seeing as I'm on the opposite end of the world, and hockey is about as foreign as I am to these people, I had to go to great lengths to watch the game. Word got around that one of the bars we go to would be playing the game, so everyone that cared made the effort and stayed up to watch the puck drop at 3:30 on Monday morning. As Sunday night is one of the more fun nights for people to go out, we just stayed up and made our way there in time to see it from the beginning. About 20 people made it, the majority of which being Canadian, and we all had quite a time. I already hated Sidney Crosby, just on the grounds that he's a bit of a pansy, but him scoring the game winner solidified him as being my most hated athlete in professional sports. Wade, the owner of the bar, was so amused at the behavior of a bunch of rowdy westerners that at the end of the game he was giving out free shots to anyone that wanted them. Obviously it was a complete tragedy the way it ended, but we still managed to have a pretty great time.

I often wonder why Chinese people stare at foreigners like we are aliens. This was one of those times when it makes sense to me. The people walking to work or school at 8:30 in the morning, or those serving us our McDonald's breakfast, were completely terrified, justifiably so. As I said before, probably the most memorable hockey game I've ever witnessed

Chinese New Year, Suzhou, and some fantastic weather

So we had the Chinese New Year on February 14th, and this was like nothing I've ever seen before. After being fairly disappointed with the fact that our trip to South (and North, if we had it our way) Korea was canceled, we at least had this to look forward to. Like I said before, there are fireworks everywhere in this city. Like serious, display style fireworks, ridiculously large and loud and explosive. These people are literally lighting them off at all times during the day, in the middle of the street. It's completely ridiculous, they are incredibly loud and dangerous and there are just firework scraps flying around everywhere. On the eve of the New Year, we were at a fairly crowded bar, and there was a torrential snow storm going on outside. This didn't stop anyone from lighting fireworks off though, and as the hour counted down we went outside and had a huge snowball fight, along with more fireworks.

A couple days after this, a group of 8 of us decided to get out of Hangzhou and do a little traveling. We went to Suzhou, about and hour and a half west of here, and basically just walked around the city and saw some cool gardens. Stayed at a pretty cool hostel, and had a wizard battle with roman candles outside of it at around 3 in the morning. The people at the hostel thought we were mental. After debating for a while over where we would go next, we decided to head to Shanghai. Only problem was that when we got to the hostel we couldn't stay because Pat and I didn't have our passports, so we hung out around the city and took a late train back to Hangzhou.

Since last Thursday we've been having some great weather. It was really getting to me, these past few months, the weather's been straight out of a cold war propaganda movie, just miserable. So having the sun out and it being around 75 was a great breath of fresh air. We've just been going down to the lake and walking around, hiked up a couple mountains as well. Definitely makes me realize why I like it here

Starbury in Hangzhou, Super Bowl Monday, and the Chinese New Year

So last Friday a friend told me to head to the basketball stadium after I got off work to see the game. The last basketball game I went to was honestly, one of the most exciting basketball games I've ever seen, with a last second dunk from my boy Rodney White to win it. This one though, was big for a different reason. As some may know, Stephon Marbury just signed with a team in a northern province named Shanxi. Ned, my friend with the tickets, had first row directly under the basket for about 7 of us. The game ended up being pretty good, with the hometown team taking it by 4. I think we got into Marbury's head, or maybe it was the Chinese screaming "MAH BOO ARY!" relentlessly that did it.

For the Super Bowl, a friend decided he would have people over to watch the game. He has a working SlingBox (read: Brother Matt, you owe me a Christmas gift), so we caught the Washington DC broadcast of the game, kicking off at 7:30 in the morning here. Getting up for it was a drag, but it ended up being a pretty good game. We did get some looks, rightfully so this time, for buying beers and McDonald's breakfast at 6:45 in the morning on a Monday, but it was a rightful reprieve, kicking off our Chinese New Year celebration.

We have off work until the 20th, and just about everything here is shut down. What I don't understand is where all of these people are supposed to get food during this time. Seriously just about every single store and shop is closed, I've been eating pasta for the last 3 days. I don't know what I'm gonna do. One thing that isn't closed though are firework stands. Pat just came back with a nice stack of explosives, and we're gonna go blow them up later. Some of these things are pretty intimidating, like 7 foot long black cat rolls that last for several minutes, or large half disks with cartoons of young Chinese kids running around playing with said fireworks. Not too worried about it, there are directions, all in Chinese, to avoid any danger. We'll figure them out