Cultural Occurences

(Ola)

Although Ms. Li’s blog post was very comprehensive, she forgot to mention a very important part of our day. Last night, for the first time ever, we went karaoke-ing. Karaoke is an extremely popular activity in China, enjoyed by all different types of people. All around the city, there are huge multi-story buildings housing dozens of karaoke rooms that you can rent for a few hours. We went with our guide Alicia and her two friends and were led to a low-lighted room with couches and a screen where you pick out what songs you want to sing. When we first walked in there were some scandalous Korean pop music videos playing that caused me to raise more eyebrows than I possessed. The difference in styles of music enjoyed became vastly apparent as soon as Alicia & pals began crooning. The Chinese lean towards more sentimental, folky- pastoral, high-pitched songs. We Americans jammed out to a wide variety of tunes from Kenny Chesney, Sinatra, Adele, ABBA, Beatles and Gloria Gaynor. Abby and I considered performing a song by Kanye but were worried that the lyrics would be a bit jarring for our elders. We all had a ton of fun and it’s an experience we’ll never forget.

The following day we visited the Museum of Stone Tablets. The tablets are hundreds of years old and depict various styles of writing that speak about important events, medicinal cures and cultural poems. We even got some scrolls with rubbings from the stones. The only problem now is transporting them back to the states. . . After some lunch, we visited the Muslim quarter of Xi’an. We went to go see one of the largest mosques in China and then walked around the bazaar to browse the goods. At one point, we stopped into a café where we were asked by the hostess if an eager customer could take a photo with us foreigners. We took some selfies and continued on. At this point, we’ve become quite used to this photo taking phenomenon because it occurs at least twice a day. I’ve become so brazen that when I see people staring at us in awe and trying to decide whether they should snap a not-so-covert picture, I turn to look them in the eyeball, smile and say ni hao. Someone’s got to break the silence. The most amusing occurrence is when people just look at us with a very perplexed expression as if though they can’t comprehend our presence.

It’s not uncommon to hear an older man or woman hawking up bucketfuls of saliva and phlegm only to deposit it on the street. In some cases, one might even wonder if they have accidentally spit up a lung. If you’re extremely lucky, you may even get to hear the sound of a stream passing close by only to realize that someone is literally peeing 2 feet away from you on the side of a busy intersection. Although at first shocked by this behavior, we have figured out why these ejections of bodily fluids are so commonplace. Obviously, when you live in the country, there are no facilities. Therefore, you go about your business wherever, whenever, only surrounded by peaceful livestock. Within the last few decades of rapid industrialization comes the migration of the elderly farmers and their mannerisms to the city. When you think of it this way, the behavior is not as shocking considering it’s what people have been used to for years.

We had a Muslim dinner consisting of a beef meatball, some noodles, lamb, and ripped up pancake chunks floating in a broth with pickled garlic cloves. The taste was definitely something we had never come across but it was good. After, we headed to the train station. The experience, as described by Abby, was a “trainwreck.” The registration and check in process and everything was conducted outside amidst the normal everyday life. There were so many swarms of people that it’s a wonder we didn’t lose anyone. Once we had made it inside and stuck our luggage through the scanning device, a trouble-causing woman pulled Ms. Li. I think she was just bored and trying to stir something up. She instructed our educator to open up her suitcase, claiming there was some can of hairspray or something embedded in the side of the suitcase. Ms. Li said she had nothing, saying she didn’t even have enough hair to use hairspray. The lady made Ms. Li put the suitcase through again and was still causing an uproar. Although she made Ms. Li open the suitcase twice, she didn’t rifle through it herself either time. We suspect that there may be some regulation that may not permit personnel to touch travelers’ belongings themselves. There were several watch points in the station and eventually some other worker noticed that this lady was just delaying us and came to apologize and let us through. We were running pretty late and made it onto the train about two minutes before its time of departure. Our car was just us, three Chinese, and a 30 something gaggle of older, rowdy French tourists. Ms. Li got to practice some fragmented French and we all enjoyed their joyous shrieks of partying.

We look forward to seeing what Beijing brings!