Lately I've been feeling homesick one minute, then totally happy and content with being here the next. When I feel most homesick is when I'm tired, groggy, lazy... and I guess simply parochial. It's difficult to not be close or narrow minded at times, when there are so many aspects of China that purely disgust me. Let's review what they are:
Nasty men showing their stomachs
Putrid smells of people who don't bother to shower, or stinky tofu on the street
Asinine comments from ugly ass men and boys on the streets, including "Hallllooo!", as if you speak English anyway, you pig
Obnoxious, spoiled children who believe they have a right to yell up and down the hall at 8AM
Crying babies. I don't have a child right now for a reason (well MANY reasons, but one being I don't want to hear crying 24/7) So to my neighbor- close your door, play with your baby, feed it, change it, do WHATEVER it takes to shut them up.
Crowds, especially in the metro and downtown Beijiao where I live
The stupid, loud music the stores blare to get attention of customers. It's a mix of techno, dance music, jumbled fast tracks... I will have to make a video of this so everyone can see for themselves
Shampoos, beauty product selection.
The customer service (To demonstrate... yesterday Lily and I went to get ice cream and I ordered something with melon ice cream. The waitress brought me vanilla or something and Lily told her it was the wrong one. The waitress said "we don't have melon" and I told her to take it back. Then we waited for the next waitress to come to us, and lo and behold, THEY HAD MELON ICE CREAM. Lazy asses. I've noticed Chinese people, in general, don't like to own up to their mistakes, instead they ignore you (ahem Audre) or simply lie... but they're NEVER wrong. With this said, I can't generalize for ALL Chinese, but I will say this has been the case with many people I've (and my friends) dealt with.
"Exotic objects of intense curiosity" That's me. [Even though in the US, people tend to be curious of what nationality I am... big eyes, dark long hair, dark skin ("Are you mixed?" I've been asked before, no joke. I take that as a huge compliment, yea it was in the middle of the summer when I laid out on The Terrace all day, but so what?) Here it's staring with some sort of fascination, not checking out like the typical stares I get in Madison (I do not mean people stare because I'm so hot, don't misunderstand me hahahahha. I mean because when people in Madison DO stare, it's because of your looks... could be good OR bad). Sometimes I'd like just to walk through somewhere without people looking at me or taking pictures!]
The aforementioned list makes me sound like a complete b!tch, I know... but no one can say that unless they have lived in the outskirts of a big city, in a town that consists of factories, housing, some restaurants, and mostly pollution and filth (oh and did I mention rats and cockroaches at night in the market are next to my apartment?)
Equally important, though, are the things I absolutely LOVE about the Middle Kingdom and henceforth, will miss when I leave
Fat babies (albeit loud, the baby who lives across the hall from me is so fat, it's hard not to smile when I see him)
Food (I am becoming a pretty good cook. I'll even take credit for teaching Audre how to make my FAMOUS tofu yesterday which turned out delicious) but I love some of the food here: hot pot, DongBei, Sichuan food, cheap beer, EVERYTHING spicy... YUM I'll stop because my mouth is already watering
Prices for certain things. Everyday I go to the market after work and buy myself a great dinner AND a beer (most of the time) and all in all, it costs less than $3. Chinese things are also pretty cheap
Shopping (this can either be placed on the HATE list, or LOVE list) because some things are so cheap and easily found here. Conversely, it's hard to find Western-like clothes that you can try on and fit, AND are not WAY OVERLY priced... I will put it on the LOVE side though because I've already bought bags and bags of random things here.
I believe the good outweighs the bad, but some things I don't think I'll ever be able to get used to... like the way of doing certain business, hierarchy and miscommunication (or lack of it) and all the spitting.
On another note (a much lighter note for that matter) my sister is coming to CHINA! I cannot believe she will be here and will get to experience everything I have been going through since I've been here (well we will only be in my town for about two days, but still). I don't want to be over zealous, but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna cry when I pick her up at the airport in Shanghai. It will be a shock and a comfort I've been missing for about five months now! I won't mention all the plans we have for traveling at this point in time, but I will say we should be hitting up more than 6 different cities ALL over China... one which I am particularly excited about because it is VERY different than "typical" Chinese. I don't want to jinx anything and the timing will be crunched already, so we shall see. I am a little nervous about the Chinese trains though, because yesterday when I bought my tickets to Shanghai, my friend told me I will find the train "annoying" and that there are standing tickets. Ummmmm standing for 20 hours or more on a train? Apparently so. Nevertheless, I am ecstatic about seeing my sister and traveling and meeting people... By this time next week, I will happily be in Shanghai (hopefully... who knows with Chinese manufacturing and people), nothing can be too organized though.
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