Suzhou: City of Silk

Yesterday our group went on a day trip to Suzhou, a city about an hour and a half away from Shanghai. The bus ride seemed to take FOREVER, but it was worth it!

We started off at Tiger Hill, which was the burial site of Wu King, Helu, and legend has it that three days after his burial, a white tiger was seen “guarding” the site. It was a really beautiful park and I wish we had had more time to walk around, but we only had an hour since our bus ride took much longer than expected. The group I was walking around with finally discovered my awful sense of direction when I led them in the complete opposite direction of the exit where we were supposed to meet the bus. Oops! However, my mistake made it possible for us to walk along a small yet very scenic river. I’m glad we went the wrong way because it was my favorite part of the park!

After a delicious lunch, we went on a short bus ride to a silk factory. Suzhou is responsible for a large proportion of China’s silk production, so it was only fitting that we got to see how it was done. Basically how it goes down: Silk worms eat (only) the leaves of mulberry trees. So they pretty much just crawl around and eat all day, all the while excreting this string of silk from their mouths. 

A Silk Worm!

Eventually, the worms roll these silk strands around themselves to make a cocoon so they can eventually evolve (can’t think of the proper term here… looks like Pokemon terminology is going to have to cut it for now) into moths. Little do they know that they are just going to be boiled to death as soon as their little cocoon is complete. But anyway….as mentioned, after each cocoon is done being formed, it is collected and then sent through this machine that kind of looks like the machines at Krispy Kreme where the cocoon is “cooked.” This 1- kills the silkworm and 2- loosens the silk strands and helps them become more separable. After this, some ladies will get them out of the water and move them to a different area where groups of 8 cocoons are gathered, and then the silk strands from each one are woven together and formed into a huge spool. After this, I’m not really sure what happens, but I DO know that it goes into a huge machine/loom thing, which kind of looks like a giant printing press, and somehow silk comes out of it. It was really cool seeing all of this because I never realized (or even really thought about) what a process it is to make silk! They had some pretty awesome silk products there, namely the pajamas, but everything was very expensive so I didn’t get anything. When I’m rich I’ll come back and buy all the silk I can handle. ;)

Silk Robe Thing

After this we went on a short boat ride through the city and saw a neat little river town, as well as some beautiful scenery and parks. It was no different from any other boat ride, really, but it was very calm and pretty. I wish we could spend more time in Suzhou, but since it was only a day trip, we had to go back on the bus for our nearly 3 hour bus ride… For some reason, there was ridiculous traffic on the way back. Everyone slept on the bus, but I was productive and read all but 50 pages of Slaughterhouse Five.

This week is the Moon Festival, so we only have class this Monday and Tuesday (oh and we also had class today, Sunday, to make up for it… blah). I think a small group of us might try to go to Hangzhou, which is similar to Suzhou, for a couple of days. But who knows where we’ll end up… I just hope we go somewhere where we can see the mountains and greenness of China.  I’ll write about wherever we end up going, though, and will take lots of pictures!

Stinky Tofu and Snub-Nosed Monkeys

Another rainy day in Shanghai. It rains at least a little almost every day, but this entire weekend, and today, it rained pretty much all day. It is at least possible to sneak out during periods of lighter rain to get meals, and we have figured out a decent enough strategy for timing it. (It works usually…. But sometimes we do get caught in the middle of a huge tsunami.) There isn’t really much to do when it’s so rainy, and I’m done with class, so I will probably read, study Chinese, and take a nap—but not necessarily in that order! :) I need to go to the grocery store as well, so depending on the weather I might try to do that today or tonight.

Today’s [strategically planned] lunch was a giant bowl of noodles with roasted beef… about $1.50. Ordering food here is difficult because the menus are normally in Chinese, but I can usually play it safe by ordering things only with the characters I know (different kinds of meat, eggplant, tofu, vegetables, noodles, rice…) but just because I know the different characters doesn’t mean I know exactly what it is going to taste like. It’s usually good, but occasionally I am stuck with something gross. The worst thing I‘ve ordered so far was chicken with some type of weird seaweed… Not the normal tasty kind of seaweed. Ick. But anyway, today’s lunch was a success! I probably won’t even be hungry for dinner.

Nothing too exciting has really been going on here other than classes, eating, and homework/studying, so sorry if this post is boring—but I’m trying to get in the habit of regularly posting. Bare with me while I try to find interesting things to write about! For now I’ll just mention one dish in China that I think I am going to man up and try soon with Maggie. Jessica says she won’t try it, but Maggie and I are going to take the plunge when we come across it. Two words: Stinky Tofu. (Or in Chinese, still two words: Chou Doufu.) Anything you can imagine about it is probably close to accurate. It apparently smells like garbage or manure, but people still eat it…but then again people here seem to eat almost anything. Anthony Bourdain (the guy who eats everything) apparently threw up when he tried it. I'll let you know how I handle it when the day comes.

Here’s a link to read a little about it (go Wikipedia!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinky_tofu

Also, today in Chinese class we got to watch part of a video about China’s wildlife, and the golden snub-nosed monkey was one of the animals featured. Look how cute it is!!!!!

I love Shanghai!

So, after two unnecessarily difficult weeks in Shanghai, I finally have access to the internet and am able to post… There is so much to write about but I will try to keep it somewhat short! I’ll even try to maintain some type of chronological order:

Traveling to China was just as anyone would expect 21 hours of traveling to go…Frustrating, boring, and tiresome. On the plane though, I was lucky enough to be seated next to a student at Washington University who is originally from Shanghai and will be here for a month. So we chatted about normal things and China and will probably get together at some point while I’m here, which is sort of neat. Then my plane landed almost an hour early in Beijing, which was nice. After a long taxi ride, I finally arrived at the hotel, checked in, met my roommate, and crashed.

Photo Taken by Jessica

Our group did and saw a lot in Beijing, and I’m not going to go into much detail because we just did the typical tourist thing. We went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, which was interesting but everything sort of looked the same and since we didn’t have a tour guide it was kind of hard to appreciate everything. We did see some pretty sweet Emperor’s thrones though. The next day we went to the Great Wall and I hiked up probably about a mile stretch of it. It is so steep! It’s a lot worse than it looks in photos, let me tell you....I think we climbed about 3-4 towers higher than the tallest one you see here. It was really amazing and definitely the highlight of my time in Beijing. The same day we went to the Ming Tombs, which was an interesting site but I was not too terribly impressed. That night we went to a really exciting acrobatics show, which I guess was similar to Cirque du Soleil. They did some crazy stuff! I almost had a heart attack at one point because I swear I thought this one performer was going to fall to his death. But he was okay. The next day we went to the Summer Palace which was really beautiful. We walked around for a few hours but we were all so sore from the Great Wall and all the stairs and hills at the Summer Palace just seemed so daunting. But we all survived. Our last day in Beijing was a free day so my friends Maggie and Jessica and I just sort of hung out, walked around and explored a little bit. Overall, I liked Beijing and am glad that I went but I am definitely glad I am studying in Shanghai instead.

Which brings me to where I am now—and I love it here! Even though the first two weeks have been just a tad bit confusing and complicated (and a little strange), I am finally settled in and ready for the semester. Way too much has been going on here for me to even begin to write about, but I’ll fill you in on some general things about Shanghai:

First and foremost, the humidity is ridiculous! Just walking 1/2 mile to the convenient store results in me being drenched in sweat. And because here we mostly get around just by walking, it gets a little bit miserable, but I’m adjusting well. As I’m sure you assumed, there is tons of air pollution and smog. In general, Shanghai is not exactly the cleanest city, so that combined with the poor air quality means it can be pretty stinky here! One of my first days here, I woke up early to go running, and I almost threw up twice just because of the smells I came across. Ick! So now I go running on the on-campus track, a much cleaner environment. (On a side note, I also go running in the evening now too because it is much cooler and less humid than it is in the early morning… Usually about ten people from USAC are there when I go running so it’s almost like we have running parties! We stand out so much from all the Chinese people.)

The water is very contaminated and very obviously unsafe to drink. Luckily I knew this when I got to China, so never drank any faucet water, but I must say I was still very surprised on my second day in Shanghai when I was brushing my teeth and dark brownish red water came out of the faucet… not a very nice welcome to the city, for sure. They sell 5L jugs of water in the stores here for very cheap, and there is a dispenser thing in my room, so I just use that and fill up water bottles to take around. It’s definitely better than having to buy bottled water every time.

Everything here is so cheap!!! 100 RMB is about equal to 15 USD so I’ll just list some of the prices of things here and you can do the math…. (Y = Chinese Yuan sign… I can’t find it on Character Map) 5L jug of water: Y5.50; my cell phone: Y200; T-Shirt: Y10; Dinner (depending on where you go, but my favorite thing so far): Y4; Chinese textbook: Y30. You get the picture. The only expensive things are American products (and other imports… but most notably American brands). For example, the iPhone here costs $900. So if I need anything American, it will be a lot cheaper to just have it sent to me from there. We need to work out some kind of trade agreement with China aside from ASEAN, for real.

THERE ARE NO CLOTHES DRYERS. Because of the humidity here, hang drying clothes takes 3-4 days. I worked out a trick though and have been hang drying them in my room with the AC on. But I have to be careful because we only get 60 free kwh of electricity per month. My AC is usually set to about 26 degrees Celsius, which is nearly 79 degrees Fahrenheit! But trust me, it is definitely an improvement from the outdoor conditions. Luckily I’m not a very hot-natured person because if I were I would either be constantly miserable, or poor by the end of my trip. (Electricity here is pretty expensive!)

One more random but strange thing here is that babies here don’t really wear diapers, and instead wear shorts without a butt, then just go to the bathroom wherever they please throughout the city. Kind of gross, but the city spends a lot of time keeping the streets and sidewalks clean, so to date I have not stepped in any baby poo, which I’m very thankful for!!

I’ll post more general observations throughout the blog (a food one is coming soon), but for now that is it! I’ll fill you in on my program a little bit and my friends here, but then I am going to bed. I spend most of my time with my two very good girl friends Maggie and Jessica. Maggie goes to Wisconsin Whitewater and is originally from Fuzhou (in China), so she can speak Fuzhounese fluently. Their language is different from Mandarin, though, but she is still very good at communicating with the Chinese people here. Luckily I have her, because she’s the only reason we’ve been able to avoid ordering weird foods at restaurants like pig stomach and chicken feet. Jessica is from California but now is living in Shanghai with her family because her mom works for Apple. They will be here for two years. They are both really fun and we get along very well. There are a lot of other great people here from all over, and I love everyone! All of us have spent so much time together, and it feels like I have known them for way longer than 3 weeks.

My classes are actually very boring except for Advanced Chinese and China Phenomenon. In Chinese, she only speaks Mandarin to us, so sometimes it is hard to understand, but luckily I have Maggie to help me! I think I am going to pick it up much more quickly this way though because it forces me to really pay attention and try to understand what she is saying. China Phenomenon is interesting because it kind of gives an overview of everything China. I struggle to sit through my other classes, though. Each class is once a week for 3 hours (except Chinese… 3 times per week for 4 hours) and for the most part, the teachers don’t speak English very well. I almost feel bad for them because it is really hard for everyone to pay attention because we usually have no idea what the teachers are talking about, or why they are talking about it. But it’s ok! I think just being in China is going to teach me the most valuable and important things, so I’m not too worried about the bad classes.

And that’s it for now, because I have class at 8 in the morning and it’s after 1:00 AM here! Sorry for the super long post, but now that I’ve caught you up, the rest will be much shorter. Many more posts to come! :)

Photo Taken by Nick