Since Korea was covered, why not visit a new country? China seemed like a nice place to visit. Actually, Summer's younger sister was getting married and we visited during our Fall Festival vacation period.
This post, currently, is about one of the longest days of my life. It was my first full day in Hefei, Summer's family's city. I spent my first night and the next day of the trip in Shanghai, traveled to Hefei by train, and made it to bed around 1 that night. That same night I went to Hefei, Summer's father had asked me if I would like to climb a mountain together with him. I said "yes, of course," and we were set to wake up at 6 the next morning and depart for the mountain around 6:30.
I woke up, a bit groggy, but the climb was quite nice. Unfortunately, I didn't bring a camera on the mountain trip. Summer's brother, Harry, did, but I forgot to get any pictures from him. Therefore, I will just detail a few memories from the mountain.
The mountain was called "Big mouth mountain." It didn't really have a peak, but rather a ridge at the top that one could walk along when it was reached. The walk up the mountain was completely paved, meaning there was either a cement staircase or sidewalk everywhere we walked. I didn't bring any water, but we bought some of the most expensive water in China. I guess someone had to lug it or drive it up all the way the mountain, so it cost $1 (usually, water costs about 16 cents). I also learned the word for spider in Chinese: "zhi zhu." It was a nice walk, though a bit tiring.
We travelled back, and I got to take a nap from around 9 to 11 that morning. Next, came a lunch date we had with Summer, Summer's sister, Amy, and a family that she works with. They have a son, called Jerry in English, who they wanted to meet me (all of the English names listed for Summer's family and friends are names that I gave to them upon request). The lunch was at a shabu-shabu place, pretty standard for the most part. There was some beef and lamb meat, along with vegetables and sauces.
There was one interesting item sitting on the cart nearby, though. I looked over and did a double take, certain that I had seen something I never thought I would see. What was it? BRAIN:
PIG BRAIN
It was a pig brain, known in Chinese as "zhu nao." It is know to make one smarter by eating it. But why, would anyone ever want to eat it? That's what the western person asks. The Chinese people don't seem to ask that. The brain is cooked in the boiling hot-pot until it turns a modestly more appetizing gray color. To tell the truth, it was pretty tough to get down. I cut it with my chopsticks, and there were fibers. That's what got to me, the fibers. I didn't think that a brain would have fibers. Anyway, the texture was a bit like dry tofu, but with fibers.
The lunch also included comedic hijinks. Whenever noodles are ordered, a lady wearing all white comes out to take the unstretched noodle, and stretch it via swinging it all around her like a fancy ribbon dancer. The whole process takes a theatrical three minutes. I asked if the noodle ever hits the floor, and she replied that no, the noodle never hits the floor (through translation). I watched closely, and I saw it briefly strike the floor. I'm sure of it. Anyway, the stretched noodles are boiled and eaten, and are quite good.
After our first order of noodles, most of the way through the meal, some of the wait staff came out to greet me. They also sang a traditional Chinese song, gave a gift of some moon pies and extra fruits, and gathered for a photo:
Jerry (front), me, and the waitstaff
So that was pretty nice of the restaurant. I don't currently recall the name of the restaurant, but it's something with 'hot pot' in the name, along with about 10,000 other Chinese restaurants. Going back to the noodles, as I mentioned before, the boy Jerry really loved them. He always wanted more noodles. It was our third order of noodles that the noodle lady asked me if I would like to swing a noodle around. I didn't really, because I had done it before, but everyone insisted. I finally succumbed to pressure, and swung it all over the place. I wasn't really as smooth and gentle as the trained noodle lady. My noodle was swinging everywhere, breaking, and hitting people in the face.
After everybody was stuffed, and the boy was finally sated with noodles, we went on to the next adventure. The father of the family and Summer's sister had to go take care of some other business, so it was Summer, the mother, Jerry, and me who went to a carnival held year round in the city. This carnival was a bit interesting, though very similar to any small state fair or carnival I have ever been to. Outside, though, there are these disheveled looking old guys who walk around holding a chained monkey, exploiting them for money. It made me really sad to see it, so we repeatedly told them to go away and that we didn't want to see it until they finally left.
We went in and found this place with a coy pond. They have the coy, and then you pay a dollar to get this baby bottle on a stick with a weird looking brown liquid inside. This bottle is then dangled above the coy to entice them into coming up and sucking on it. They are pretty good at sucking on the bottle, but they really jerk it around. Anyway, here's the bottle contraption:
Coy feeding pond
We also went to an area where people can rent "pleasure boats," and ride them around a "scenic lake." We let Jerry drive the entire time, and he didn't really know how to drive a boat. Luckily, the small, 4 person boats are kind of like bumper boats and it doesn't really matter if they graze against each other. I think regulations may not have been really strong in this particular small boating lake. We had to have life-preserving vests on the vessel, but there was more than one time I saw a baby driving a boat. Like an honest less than two year old baby. I unfortunately didn't get any photos of these naughty, nautical babies.
We also played some carny games. The only one we played was throwing darts at balloons, but I saw another one here with some interesting signage. I'm not sure what the YOID is, but I didn't lean over it.
"ATTENTS DECISIONIS FINAL"
"Noleaning over REDLINE or Game YOID"
After this, things got super dicey and nauseating. Probably all carnival stories go this way, but just bear with me. We did a series of rides that are pretty standard for carnivals. Pictured is one where there are two seating carriages at the opposite ends of a giant beam that is swung around:
Trustworthy Carnival Ride
We did about two more rides, and then came one called "Challenger." This ride possibly was made before the infamous 1986 disaster with the spacecraft of the same name. Anyway, we decided to ride. The boy, Jerry, and his mom were OK in their seats, being reasonably-sized Chinese people. I was not. My shoulder harness came down to an uncomfortable position squeezing my chest to the point that I couldn't fully inhale. The guy said some stuff in Chinese that I didn't understand, and I figured I would be OK. I wasn't. The ride may have been the worst three minutes of my life. It just spun our capsule around in a circle while the capsule itself was allowed to rotate. It was extremely nauseating, and coupled with the fact that I couldn't really breathe, I felt horrible. The ride mercifully ended, finally, and we went to find a place to sit and rest. I had to hold my head in my hands to keep it from spinning. I also couldn't stop sweating for the life of me. I just couldn't. My entire shirt was soaked, and my pants were getting there. I felt awful.
Jerry's mom decided to drive us home so I could get a shower and some rest. I didn't make it. After just a few minutes in the car, I felt the nausea lead to a pressure in my stomach. I told them I need to throw up, which I can also say in Chinese "wo xiang tu!" She stopped the car and I lost my entire lunch out the door. Anyway, after that I felt a bit better.
We made it home to shower and rest, but didn't have much time to rest. It did feel really good to shower, at least. I wanted to stay home, but Summer and I hadn't seen our friends whom we had dinner plans with in a long time, so we decided to have the dinner.
It was really nice to see our friends, Frank and Ruby. He is a policeman, and she is a journalist, and they just had a baby together. Frank is also large and baby shaped, like his baby. We had a really nice dinner with his little brother and her wife as well. We went to a restaurant where they give you a sheet of paper, the menu, with like a hundred boxes on it. You check as many boxes as you feel like, and then each one is usually really good, and only costs a few bucks. The dishes are things like dumplings and various animal dishes.
Frank is a really silly character. He jokes a lot and comes up with nicknames for everybody, though he's kind to me because I think he wants me to like him. He doesn't really speak English, so I have to use my poor Chinese, or ask Summer to translate. He also is somewhat pudgy, and can eat about twice as much as I can. I'm a lot taller and I would say bigger than him, but he can really pack in some food. We had a huge dinner, and after that he really wanted to take us to a Chinese street barbecue. I questioned how anybody could still eat, but we went. The street looks like this:
Street barbecue, the barbecue is on the right side
He ordered a completely ridiculous amount of food. And, it was parts of animals I never would have guessed could be ordered. The first course was pig ear cartilage, which has a nice kind of crunchy texture to it. Everything was on sticks. Lamb, vegetables, beans, stinky tofu, and a lot of stuff I'm not really sure what it was. There was one slightly disk shaped thing on a stick that everyone wanted me to eat. They wouldn't tell me what it was, so somehow my mind went automatically to the nether-regions of the sheep. The meat was really tender on one side, but super chewy on the other side. It turned out it was testacles. I didn't finish mine, but at least I tried. A bunch of beers later, and everyone eating as much as they could, our table looked like this:
The best foods come on sticks
After, I really wanted to go home and sleep, but everyone demanded a massage. I finally acquiesced to the pressure, and off we went. We went to a reputable, all-night place in town, and we were all seated in a room on reclining chairs. It was really great. We soaked our feet, got a shoulder massage, foot massage, and back massage. Not a bad deal for around $20 a head.
My only problem was with the back massage, because something I had eaten that day had made my stomach upset, in the diarrhea way. I did my best to hold it until the massage was over. It was bad, but finally the day was over. A semi-successful event filled day in China.
THE END
(except for the diarrhea, which lasted for a few more days)
No comments:
Post a Comment