Walking Nanjing Street in the Bund district of Shanghai - during National holiday. This is easily the most number of people I've ever seen in my life.
Every day I think I become a little more Chinese. It began innocently enough by using an umbrella when it was sunny out. Then one of my Chinese friends offered me a ride on the rack on the back of his bicycle- which is what all the other Chinese kids were doing- so I wobbled along the mile or so as he pedaled to the gate. Then I watched the Sex and the City movie for free from a Chinese website. I've had my first complete conversation via text message. I am currently sipping my strawberry-banana yogurt through a straw they gave me at the supermarket. And soon I will have a charm to dangle from my cell phone.
Chinese-fication is a gradual process I readily am embracing (except for the tendancy to throw trash everywhere... grrr) but the last few days were a complete and total break from that.
Last night I returned from Shanghai, land of Pizza Huts on every corner, English bookstores selling copies of National Geographic, Starbucks, KFC, skyscrapers, business deals, money, poverty, constant heckling, beer on tap and posh hotels. Everything is so westernized, foreigners everywhere. We'd stopped in Hangzhou on the way to catching the train to Shanghai and at the West Lake (which was CRAZY with tourists) waves of people would say "hello" sometimes followed by a "Welcome to Hangzhou!". My experience has been that most Chinese think America is a wonderful, beautiful place full of nice people. Maybe part of this is their familiarity with American corporations which have provided more jobs, but they really do view America positively. Shanghai was this break from being the white celebrity as white people were so common. Everyone spoke a little English, it had permeated society so fully. Spent lots of money on some clothes, nice hotel, purse, earrings. In Lin'an there isn't a whole lot to spend money on- so I got some of that out of my system. But it also made coming back into Hangzhou kind of a harsh reality when the daunting language barrier was raised again and we had trouble even telling our cab driver where we wanted to go.
On a TOTALLY unrelated note, I found this Japanese TV show when watching Chinese music videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua6LLcqmDnQ
Watch.. if you dare.
No comments:
Post a Comment