This Thanksgiving was the first one I've spent out of the country. This is not suprising considering I have never lived outside the country before, but you know. Anyways, our program decided to throw us a pot luck style Thanksgiving dinner. My class made mashed potatoes, and they were awesome. All in all the menu included spaghetti, a fruit platter, pumpkin pie, our mashed potatoes, salad, chocolate chip cookies, turkey, apple pie, and a punch made of straight liquor and fruit. Needless to say, a good time was had by all. Even though none of the food came out, and our Chinese teachers started eating dessert along with the food (and also, straight from the buffet table). But it was great fun. Not the same as a home grown Thanksgiving, but still pretty special. Sadly, we neglected to dress up like pilgrims and indians, as had been the plan. That evening we tried to find and watch Jurassic Park, but were unable to, and settled for Indiana Jones instead.
The next morning we left for our program's weekend long trip to Shaoxing. We loaded up bright and early and drove about 4 hours southwest to Shaoxing, which is the "textile capital of China", and the home of Lu Xun, a famous revolutionary writer. When we got there, we checked into our hotel, and then we toured a textile factory. It was really moving experience. The factory was basically a giant a room where hundreds of people sat at sewing machines and made shirts, or pants, or whatever it was they were assigned to make. I suppose I am just supremely ignorant, but prior to this I thought all clothes were completely machine made, that they had robots that sewed shirts and pants and what not. But no, these clothes are sewn by people. People who spend all day, every day sewing the same collars and pockets onto shirts, over and over again, thousands of times. I watched a woman sew the ruffle part of a tuxedo shirt, a process which was intricate and tedious. Really it was very sad. Most of the people only had 2 days off for the entire month. Most were migrant workers who had come from rural areas and were saving up money or sending it back home to their families. Almost certainly they were not fairly compensated for their efforts. It put a human face behind clothing. I will probably never be able to buy clothes again without seeing the hundreds of faces, working their fingers to the bone to help their families, and grateful for the oppurtunity. I couldn't imagine this kind of work. I wish that every person in America (and the west, really) could be made to walk through this factory, or perhaps spend a day doing one of these jobs, and that way they might consider what goes into things that we so easily take for granted. Of course this all seems preachy. And I don't really know what the answer is. All I know is that the whole thing didn't feel right. And I guess it made me think that there is a price to pay for everything that goes beyond dollars and cents. And also, I think I'll make my own clothes from now on.
After that we went to dinner. Prior to dinner we had about 30 minutes to go explore, and I ended up going by myself, and wandering in the alleyways and down the street. Shaoxing is very much more like a traditional Chinese town than Shanghai, and it was really, really cool. I was standing in the park below a pagoda perched atop the hill, watching a man do tai-chi with a fake sword and was once again amazed to find myself in China. The evening was great, Shaoxing is much cheaper than Shanghai. We took pedicabs from our hotel to the bar, and on the way there I realized that we had not negotiated a price. I automatically assumed the drivers would work in cohesion in an attempt to rip off the big group of white people (something that is likely to happen in Shanghai). They were suprised when we offered them 10 kuai per person, and eagerly accepted the proposition (I was expecting to start at 10 kuai as the beginning of my bargaining, and if I was lucky would only be paying 15 kuai). Apparently we could have paid a lot less. But they worked hard. And when we got to the bar, it was only 15 kuai for Tiger beer (which is my favorite beer in China, it's imported from Singapore and oh-so-delicious). In Shanghai at the seedy dive bar we go to on Tuesday nights (the Hard Rock), it's 20 kuai for Tsingtao (the run-of-the-mill Chinese brand). So it was super cheap. We enjoyed some beers and then hung out in the massive public square in the middle of the city (where the security guard was walking around with a giant patio furniture sized umbrella).
The next morning we woke up and took a boat ride. It was awesome. Me and two of my buddies piled into a "Water taxi", which is a traditional covered Chinese boat, and we were rowed down a canal. It was amazing. Again, I felt like I was really in China. The weather was absolutely perfect, sunny and a little bit chilly. Old women and children were washing clothes and dishes in the river. Old men sat in chairs smoking cigarettes. They say life is made up of moments. This was definitely one of them. It was beautiful.
We departed from the canal and waited for everyone to arrive before going to the house of Lu Xun. While waiting, we saw a man who was selling a snake in a bag. Upon trying to ask him how much it was, he showed us that two of his fingers were missing. I couldn't reallyy understand what he was saying, but he kept pointing to the snake and pointing to his butt, back and missing fingers. I'm guessing he was a snake hunter. Either way, it was nuts. The house of Lu Xun was pretty cool. It was a very traditional, old style Chinese gentry house, and I enjoyed being there more for that than knowing that it once belonged to Lu Xun. After this, we toured a buddhist temple and enjoyed a delicious vegetarian meal. So far, the food had not been excellent on the trip, so I was prepared for the worst. But it was one of the best meals I've had in China. After the meal, we hiked to the top of Screaming Mountain, which is more of a hill. At the top, there was very cool buddhist temple, and it was all very serene. Strangely, on the hike up, we realized that all of the natural rock formations had been covered in concrete. Perhaps this was to prevent erosion, but either way it was dissapointing. Upon the completion of the hike (and a short nap in the hotel room), we had another exciting night on the town. This time we went to the bar and to an arcade afterwards. It was amazing. I got like 40 tokens for 10 kuai. Plus they had a Mario Kart arcade game! Picture a game as ballin' and as fun as Mario Kart, and then picture in big arcade form with a steering wheel and pedals and such. It was awesome. I also spent like 2 hours trying to beat my buddy Joe at shooting hoops. My arms were sore the next day. It was quite sad.
The next morning we awoke and traveled to a replicated "1000 year old riverside street", which was also very cool. My buddy Ryan found a vendor who was selling these absolutely ridiculous Chinese Pop Star posters. They were only 1 kuai each, so I bought like 6 of them. They are ridiculous. Like, you look at them and then wonder who would actually post them on their wall. Also they had posters of babies, with unicorns in the background. It was wierd. Plus, they had fireworks. Naturally, I bought some, and Joe promptly attempted to set them off. We realized that the fuse was way too short, as the bottle rocket pretty much went off immediately after having been lit. This was all very amusing to the Chinese lookers on.
After a delicious lunch, where I tried snail for the first time in my life, we boarded the bus and went home. All in all the trip was super....what's the word I'm looking for?...duper!
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