Before I write about what happened today, I would like to briefly recap my experiences with my host family since the last time that I wrote.
I believe that I ended my last blog preparing to play a Thursday night Wii Golf with my host parents. Actually, the golf game was a much bigger event than I was anticipating. My host parents and grandparents (Waigong and Waipo) all wanted to play, and my other set of host grandparents (Yeye and Nainai) came over to the apartment to join in. The first game was played between myself and my host parents. Unfortunately, I had never played Wii golf before, and had no idea how to properly judge the strength of my shots. I was +7 after the very first hole! Yeye and Nainai found my abysmal playing absolutely hysterical. Fortunately, Nainai played me in the next game, and did just as badly, so I felt a lot less self-conscious. Of course, I lost both games...
Friday night karaoke has already been written about, so I'd just like to briefly repeat how amazing our Chinese friends are at singing! It's my theory that speaking a tonal language helps to develop an accurate pitch. I also think that music in general is a bigger part of Chinese culture than American. Ning, my host sister, is constantly humming along to some tune!
Saturday the group went to the beautiful West Lake, and to the Hefang Cultural Shopping Street. By far the most interesting cultural experience for me was trying to navigate the public transportation system in Hangzhou. Because Ning had an important astronomy competition Saturday, she did not accompany us to the West Lake. Instead, her best friend, Bella, and a second friend, Susie, went with me. Unfortunately, this meant that when the others were picked up by their host parents, I had no direct way of getting home. Bella and Susie thought the simplest thing to do would be for the three of us to take a taxi. In China, this is much easier said than done.
Because the West Lake is a very popular tourist destination, it is incredibly difficult finding an empty taxi. Bizarrely, even when we did manage to flag down an empty one, the taxi drivers seemed to be following specific routes. We were repeatedly told that Ning's apartment was "too far" from the West Lake for the taxis to drive us. So after an hour of this, Susie went home (how she managed this, I have no idea), and Bella decided that the two of us should take a bus instead. I have never seen more crowded busses in my life. Every time a bus pulled up to the stop, a huge mob of people would swarm it. Busses were filled well beyond capacity. Some were so full that a few unlucky people had to jump off to avoid being crushed by the doors.
Several busses came and went, but the crowd never lessened. Bella decided to try a taxi again. Unfortunately, by this point we had been trying to get some form of transportation for two hours, from 3:30 to 5:30. And what happens at 5:30? The cab drivers all go home for dinner. And for the few that remained on the street, Ning's apartment was still "too far" to go. So Bella and I ate "zongzi" at a cafe while we waited for the cabbies to come back to work at 6:30. "Zongzi" are Bella's favorite food, and they are really delicious and filling. They are essentially big squares of fried rice mixed up with an unidentified meat...and exactly what I wanted after walking for two and a half hours! But as it turned out, even after 6:30 it was impossible to get a taxi. We finally managed to get through to Ning's family, and got picked up by my host mom at 7:00. What an evening!
According to Bella, the fact that Hangzhou lacks any kind of subway system makes it extremely difficult to use public transportation, since there are always mobs of people trying to squeeze onto fairly limited numbers of taxis and busses. I definitely learned that the hard way!
Yesterday, Ning, her mom, and I went to the National Silk Museum (Hangzhou is particularly famous for its silk). It was surprisingly small for a national museum, which increased its intimacy. The exhibits were quite detailed on all aspects of silk production. Since I didn't know that much about silk, I was really interested in learning about the different weaves that went into different types of silk (for example, certain weaves produce a shinier surface than others). It was also interesting seeing the models of the process - the amount of effort that goes into making goods is simply enormous! But my favorite exhibit included examples of the clothes worn throughout the ages. Whereas Westerners think of monarchs wearing "royal purple," traditional Chinese emperors wore yellow. In another example, Ning explained to me that the loose, shapeless style of the Qing era women's dress indicated social repression. In earlier, freer times, clothes had been more form-flattering.
Once we had finished with the silk museum, we headed over to a celadon museum. We didn't see too many of those exhibits, but we did get to make our own pottery! It was fun, extremely messy work. Neither Ning nor I was any good at it, but we were proud of our meager efforts nonetheless.
Dinner was notable mainly for the fact that we ate duck tongue. It was very chewy and rubbery, and I am mildly traumatized by the fact that my host family decided to follow up yesterday's tongue with the rest of the animal tonight. The Chinese are much less picky about what parts of the animal they eat than Westerners are...
Now, on to today.
After homeroom, Ning dropped me off to meet the others for our first "handiwork" lesson. Today's class was kite making. The teacher, Mr. Wang, was a very nice man, who seemed to find it amusing to fail to mention important instructions until after we had messed our kites up in some way. In many respects, kite making seemed like it should be a straightforward class, since we were making diamond-shaped kites, and not fancy ones (although Sandy made a pretty successful fancy one). Unfortunately, after slaving over our kites for hours, we discovered that none of them were balanced properly, and so they did not fly. Such is life.
We went straight from handiwork to lunch, which was good (as always!) Then we went to Chinese. Class started with a review of what we had learned in the last lesson. Sadly, we had never actually learned any of the words we were supposedly reviewing. The teacher tried to teach us how to use our "review" words in phrases, but only Liam, our Chinese translator, was able to follow what he was saying. He also tried to have us translate simple phrases from English into Chinese, but he only understood what we were saying if we were able to come up with the exact phrase that he had prepared (I think the more people know English, the more they can understand the sentence structures that an English-speaker will come up with and get the gist of the sentence, but the teacher doesn't know much English). It was at this point that the teacher more or less gave up. We went to a fruit store instead, and bought fruit. We ate the fruit (bananas and a strange Chinese mini-orange). Then we walked around a couple of nearby streets, and scouted out potential shopping sites. It was very pleasant. We returned to the school, listened to a Chinese song, and then class was over.
I went back to Ning's class for geography, and spent last period playing pingpong with Ning, Bella, and Alaina. I managed to win a game against Ning, which was pretty exciting.
Tomorrow, I look forward to Chinese painting...and a trip to the movies after school!
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