It was spring break for the high school, so I decided to go and hang out with my lovely friend, Junlin. We decided to meet up in Shanghai and hang out there for two days, then go back to Nanjing, where she was going to school. When we were talking about what we wanted to do, it mostly involved going to really cute cafes, and that's why our whole time in Shanghai was just really super cute! After we both got to Shanghai and were all settled, we went to the Line Cafe, which was covered with the cute characters from the Japanese social media app. I loved using Line back when I was in America, and I really enjoyed all the cuteness of the cafe. I also found out that eating in a cafe is expensive! I'm glad we only got cake.
The next day we went to the Disney store, because when do I not go the Disney store when I'm in Shanghai, and we looked at tsumtsums! They are super cute. I even saw some new tsumtsums from The Nightmare Before Christmas, which I thought were really unique and cute. I really loved the Peter Pan ones too! Junlin noticed that they were buy two get one free, so I decided to buy some! I got Chip and Dale, and one really special one! It was Pooh dressed as a monkey for Spring Festival. So cool, right?
Another thing I want to say is, I really love the displays that they put outside of the Disney store! They are so cute and creative. During Spring festival they had Baymax everything, and they even sold Baymax hongbaos. When the flowers started blooming they had a Pooh bear outside with a bunch of beautiful sunflowers. When I went they were doing a promotion for their University Bears, so there was a giant one of those bears outside. It was cute, so I of course had to take a picture with it.
the countdown!
the clock tower is finally finished
If you were wondering, that clock tower is pretty special. Not only is there one of these outside of this Disney store in Shanghai. It is the same clock tower that marks the entrance of Shanghai Disneyland. Oh I can't wait to see that one!
Before we got on the train to go to Nanjing, we went to yet another cafe, this time the always adorable Hello Kitty cafe. It was in a shopping mall fancier than any I have ever seen before. I think the pictures will speak for themselves for this one. It was just really really cute. The food we got was also really super cute. We also discovered something amazing when we were in that cafe. All around China you can find these machines with Baymax on them that print photos for free. From now on I am going to look for them when I go traveling. They are so great!!!
We had a great and very cute time in Shanghai, but it was time to go to Nanjing to play. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
恭喜发财！身体健康！万事如意！
Spring festival is the best time of the year in China, and also the most nightmarish time to travel. It is the one holiday that everyone in China celebrates. To people like me and my students, all the other Chinese holidays are mostly seen as just days off of school, but the spring festival is something special (well, technically so is mid autumn festival, but its not the same). I decided to go home with Hui, and I had an absolutely great time with all his great family. While the other foreign teachers, who are totally all rich and can afford it, took lavish vacations going to other countries, I think I had a better time just hanging out, having quality time with Hui's family.
We started our journey early in the morning, getting on a long train ride to Hefei. I was playing Kingdom Hearts on my new 3DS the whole time, which was so awesome, because you all know how I feel about playing Kingdom Hearts. Anyway, we arrived in Hefei, and Hui's dad and cousin picked us up. Then it was a 2+ hour car ride to Yuexi. I slept most of the way, because I was completely exhausted. That was the point when my sickness started. When I was in Yuexi, it was just a cough, but when I got back I started getting more and more sick. I thought I was like dying or something, because I wasn't getting better, but I found out I just had sinusitis, which is also not great. As of this very moment I still have it, but I have learned from doing a little research that this disease can last a whole year. I really really really really hope it doesn't last a whole year. Its already been half a year as it is. I can say that I feel a lot better than I did before though.
In Yuexi we had absolutely the most warm welcome. Hui's grandma was outside the door looking so happy and yelling "you came back!" Hui's grandma is so sweet, and she really likes me a lot. Before we came, she was having some health problems, and she was in a lot of pain. Hui said she likes Buddhism, so I bought her a little speaker device that recites sutras and Buddhist songs, and she really liked it. I was happy I could give her something that could make her happy while she was in so much pain. I was really touched, because she was playing it almost all day every day we were in Yuexi.
The first couple of days there we just relaxed and went to visit the family members I had met in the summer. One thing that really made me happy, was every meal we ate at every different person's house or restaurant had my favorite dish, 红烧肉. This time I think my favorite was the one made by Hui's aunt, who also made me a pair of shoes. When I showed them to my mom, she asked if they could believe the size of my foot? Yeah, if you didn't know I have really big feet. I mean, in America they aren't that big just a size 9 1/2, but in China that's a size 41, and they don't usually make shoes bigger than 39. I have had to go to special plus size foot stores to buy shoes. Yep, you read right....plus size. Anyway, the shoes kept me nice and warm inside the house, and I really liked wearing them!
The morning before the fist night of the Spring festival, I woke up hearing what I thought was a chicken going crazy, and when I went downstairs into the kitchen, I saw a dead chicken in a bowl. Yeah, what I heard was really a dying chicken. While I'm on the topic of chickens, there was one cool thing I got to do while I was there. During that week Hui kept taking me back to the chickens to see if they were laying eggs, and finally we found one, so I got to hold an egg that was just laid by a chicken. It was actually warm. I'm not sure if that's cool or not, just interesting.
my shoes!
there's that chicken
this was a gift to Hui's family from Alibaba. they are so thoughtful on holidays.
At this point, I think I have a lot of thing to explain. Since Hui's family lives in the countryside, we celebrated Spring Festival in a very traditional way. Maybe people in America haven't even heard of celebrating in this way. Because Hui's grandmother is the oldest person in the family, everyone came to Hui's house to see her, because in Chinese culture there is greater respect for old people.
My reaction to Spring Festival is that its pretty much like if you were to take all of the American holidays and put them into one. One thing I never knew when I was in America was that on New Year's Eve everyone will travel around to different houses to visit family and neighbors. I say that, but Hui told me that most of his neighbors are actually family members, so that works. The kids I saw were going around with bags that got filled with candy (so, there's your Halloween). I personally didn't go around to different houses with Hui and his dad. I stayed in to help Hui's mom and grandma, because, as I said before, a lot of people were coming to his house to see his grandma. Another reason why I didn't go around is because we aren't married, and people would try to give me a hongbao, which would be awkward.
So, my job staying back at the house was to give every guest a cup of tea, even if they didn't want it, giving snacks and candy to the kids, and giving every man a cigarette. This is apparently the thing that you do when people come over during the holiday, because Hui came back with his pockets full of cigarettes (he doesn't smoke). There is also a gift exchange that happens in the days following new years eve, but it truly is just the thought that counts, as they are exchanging really simple things like a bottle of 白酒 (baijiu) or something like that. Based on what I could see in the supermarket around that time, it was basically just groceries in very fancy and high quality packaging (it was really nice though, and I wanted to actually buy some of it for myself). I made many mistakes with the gift exchanging thing when it was just me and grandma at home, but I'm not going to mention them here, because as I am a foreigner, my mistakes didn't manage to offend anyone (I was still embarrassed though, because Hui's family was repeating it to everyone).
I know I'm kind of going backwards here, but on New Year's Eve people typically have a big dinner. This dinner will usually include fish, because of a Chinese pun, 年年有余（鱼). It is in fact a pun, so I will try to explain it to those not in the know as best I can. You could translate this phrase to mean "having a surplus in the new year", but what does this have to do with fish? Well, the character for surplus 余, and the character for fish 鱼, have the same pronunciation and tone (yu), so you could read it as "having a surplus in the new year" or "having a fish in the new year", and so we eat fish in the hopes that we will have a surplus of food in the coming year. There it is, hope you're not confused. Anyway, when you see our picture, you might think its not too big of a dinner, but it was just us five people eating, so it was actually still a big dinner, really delicious, and obviously included some 红烧肉, because it is just great. In my picture of our dinner, you will see my hongshaorou right in between the shrimp and the corn chicken soup. It is just amazing, and, if I didn't know any better, I would say you can translate it to mean greatest thing you've ever put in your mouth pork, because that's what its called in English by me. As it is, there's no good way to translate it, so you can just call it hongshao pork(because when you are speaking Chinese, if it just says meat, it means pork).
There's another thing about dinner I haven't mentioned yet. A big big Chinese spring festival tradition is to exchange 红包 (red envelopes) at the dinner table. I say "exchange", but if you are a kid and don't have a job, you just "receive", buuuuut we have jobs, so I did the receiving, and Hui did the exchanging. We spent the money together though. We bought some clothes, and used it to buy our groceries after we both spent a month's wages on plane tickets to America. I still have some left, and I might just be spending that at Disneyland.....or maybe not. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with it. That's that, I got five hongbaos in all from various family members, one of them had to fight me to give it to me, haha. That's one thing about gifts in China, when someone first gives it to you, you kind of have to fight them and say you don't want it, otherwise it could sometimes be not polite. I don't mean you literally say "I don't want it", but you get what I'm trying to say.
Well, that's been a massive wall of text. Here, have some pictures!
Now for more about New Years Eve, because really, we did so much. On New Year's Eve in China, at midnight what do you think you should be doing? Well, I'll tell you what we were doing. We were setting of the longest strand of firecrackers I have ever seen. I mean, it was so long it would be illegal in the US. I'm going to include a couple of rough videos of all the people setting off fireworks around the neighborhood, but first, just take a good look at this strand of firecrackers. I mean, my brother would love to just go outside and set that thing off. When we did it, I was kind of thinking I have to show this to him ASAP.
ready to unleash this beast!
beautiful!
Here we have a video of Hui singing I think just as good as Katy Perry, and telling me to wait and take video later when it turns midnight.
In this video we set off our strand of firecrackers. We had to run for cover to get away from the black pieces coming off of the big fireworks.
Finally, here's the third video. I think this one was the best that I managed to get. I think it would have been better if we could turn off the lights, but we couldn't do that, because of another New Year's Eve tradition I'll talk about in a minute.
After we did this, it was about time to go to sleep, but oh, don't think that the fireworks were over. After they started just before midnight, they literally did not stop for three days. I am talking 72 hours boom boom BOOM! It was a great time. It made me really miss my brother when we were doing that. I wish I had more time to talk to him.
Another interesting tradition people over in America don't mention too much is that on New Year's Eve you have to turn every single light in your house on, and not turn it off for 24 hours. I was totally ok with that. The lights were all on, and outside the fireworks were booming, but I slept just fine. I was cold and exhausted from all the being sick and entertaining guests, so I slept like a log. Good day! The next few days there were always people coming in and out of the house to see grandma, and sometimes Hui would have gone to another house with his parents, so I was doing more entertaining. One day they had a huge lunch party where they had three whole tables full of people eating, and it was so busy, that the four of us didn't eat until everyone else was done (of course grandma ate with everyone else, she was a big reason why they came).
It continued like that up until the last day we were there. We had different people coming to the house to eat, and we were going to different people's houses (or restaurants) to eat. Every time a new car of people showed up, we would set off a big long string of firecrackers, and every time we showed up at someone's house, we would be greeted the same way. Of course I personally was greeted at every house by hi Emma, here eat some hongshaorou, and I just replied by smiling and thinking "you are my favorite person in the world today".
the view from the second floor. not much to see in the winter
two big tables, ready to party! That little red bucket down there is where grandma keep her little pet turtle. I think he was enjoying some sun at the time.
When we left, we were given a lot of nice gifts (mostly food) from Hui's parents to take back to Hangzhou with us. They gave us a ton of home made pumpkin seeds, some dried duck, pork and tofu sausages, and some dried salty fish. Hui's uncle also gave me a really nice tea box filled with some really nice tea. It made me so happy, it was so thoughtful of him! I really loved my time during the spring festival. It was actually a lot of work, and not all play, but I enjoyed both the work and the play, and I just loved being around Hui's warm and wonderful family. I can't wait to go back next time.
our lovely pumpkin seeds
the tea box from Hui's uncle
Ahhhh my cooking! We really loved eating all the food they gave us!
I know, I mentioned before I am a huge Kingdom Hearts fan, but I am a HUGE Kingdom Hearts fan. I just found out from one of my favorite youtubers, thegamersjoint, that there is going to be a Kingdom Hearts world tour concert. There will be one in Tokyo, one in Singapore, one in I think Paris, on in LA, on in New York, and one in Shanghai. HOW AWESOME WOULD IT BE IF I WENT TO THE ONE IN SHANGHAI?! Hui and I are going to work really hard to get the tickets, and though I am trying not to get my hopes up since there's only one concert in Japan, MY HOPES ARE UP! I mean that would be just the coolest thing ever. The concert would be on May 28th, 2017, which I could totally do. It would be really tiring on a Sunday though. They've said on the website to wait for the summer to get more information on the Tokyo and Shanghai concerts, so that concerns me. I'm kind of afraid they are going to sell lottery tickets or something like they did at the Japanese D23, which would really suck, but its too late, my hopes are up, which means IT HAS TO HAPPEN! I must get my butt to that concert.
Now, for the other news that has me so hyped and excited out of my mind right now. I am going to do something totally history making and earth shattering. So, you may or may not know, but Shanghai Disneyland is opening next month on June 16th. Well, I am here to tell you, Hui and I have tickets to Disneyland, but its not for the 16th, or the 17th, or the 18th. Because Hui works at the best company in the whole wide world (because of what they have done for me), Alibaba, we got some very very special tickets, and we already booked the hotel, a really expensive one, so its all official. We are going to Shanghai Disneyland on JUNE 11th! Yes, that's right, I AM GOING TO DISNEYLAND A WEEK BEFORE IT OPENS HOLY CRAP! I've known this for two weeks now, and I still threw my hands up and screamed when I typed that. OMG I can't believe I am doing this. Don't worry, I will take plenty of pictures. I just have no words for this, NO WORDS! Hui was just all low key when he told me. He was like, yeah, its 100 kuai cheaper, and the lines won't be so long, so I thought it would be a good time to go. BOY! Do you know you are the best boyfriend in the world? The only thing is, I wish I could bring my best friend with me. That would make it even more special. I miss her so much. I hope she and I can go to Shanghai Disneyland together someday.
To make thing even better, while I was in the middle of writing this blog, I found out that I'm going to see Captain America Civil War tonight. I've already got my shirt on, and I'm all ready. LET'S DO THIS!
So, today I took a train to Hangzhou, and as I was getting on the escalator I accidentally bumped my suitcase up against a lady's foot a little tiny itty bitty bit. Then, of course, I said excuse me (in Chinese), but she was too busy looking at her foot and internally "owww oww omg it hurts so much" when, yeah I saw the foot, and there wasn't even a mark or anything at all. Then, completely ignoring that I said excuse me, says to her friend "what country is this girl from that she can't even say sorry in Chinese?" omg! I was so mad, am still so mad that I want to just go and make cube steaks! I've actually never made cube steaks in my life, I just know making them includes a lot of hitting meat, which is exactly what I want to go and do right now. It would be totally fabulous.
First off, what is wrong with you woman?! You care about yourself so much, that you don't even bother to listen to an apology before yelling out loud to everyone that I didn't apologize to you. Second, what on earth does where I'm from have ANYTHING to do with my ability to speak Chinese?! Really, just typing this I have made about sixteen cube steaks in my mind. I don't know why sixteen, but I am super mad, so I don't even care! Anyway, woman, how do you even know that I wasn't Chinese?! Huh? There are Chinese people who are white too. I don't care if other Chinese would call this woman "uneducated". Even if she were educated, I'd still say she's an asshole.
Now, enough about that. The point of me writing this blog is to help me calm down anyway, so let me teach you all a very valuable lesson that will help you out a lot in China. I will say I have mostly adapted to Chinese culture really quickly, and I already match it very well, but there is still a tiny bit of American inside of me that always wants justice (I am batman, confirmed), but in China it probably isn't going to happen. If your Chinese is good enough that you can understand these kind of scornful remarks like I can, just look away and let yourself calm down. I have seen how the situation goes time and time again when you're not calm and make a remark that you'll later wish you hadn't. When you come to China, you are often going to come in contact with the type of person who is so proud that they can't admit that they are wrong even if what they are saying makes no sense. If you mouth off to this person for your American sense of justice, there's a good chance they'll start a fight with you, make a scene, and then you'll both be off to the police, and I can tell you, the police won't care about your "justice". In this situation, you'll both be in trouble, because all the police men and all the workers in the train station really want is peace. With so many hundreds of thousands of people going in and out every day, they will do anything to have as much peace as they possibly can.
They say "you can't argue with a fool", actually I believe it was Mark Twain who said that, but its been said a lot, and I think that's the best policy. If you go ahead and fight with them, then ultimately you're no smarter than they are. Plus, you can still get your justice, but in a way that's much much more safe for you. Wherever you're going, you know when you get there there will be someone you can tell all of this to, and who will totally agree with you, and give you a big hug. I don't know about you, but I always cry when I get really mad, because inside I'd love to be punching someone in the face, but my good sense stops me from doing that, so when I got in my taxi I just started crying, and I so wanted to just let all of it out on the taxi driver, because the ride is so long. I didn't though, because I thought he probably wouldn't understand Emma style angry Chinese rambling, so I saved it for Hui when I got back, and he just laughed and gave me a hug, and now I feel all better........but gosh now what am I going to do with all these cube steaks?
