So as you can see I am incredibly slacking on my blog posts about my vacation, but I HAVE to write those next week. Today is Thursday and I am almost finished with my work day... I wanted to write about a few things though, including how Chinese people eat (next post though). The structure for this post will be as such:
Cooking
Work Censorship
Diligence of some people at work
Manners pertaining to those of a higher work position than you
Over my vacation I did not cook once. Joanna and I ate Sichuan food almost EVERY day, but at different restaurants. We ate things such as Sichuan fried green beans (our FAVORITE), oven baked spicy fish (we almost tried turtles...gross), fried thin potatoes, cucumber salad, spicy pork with black fungus mushrooms, dumplings, and more to come once I look at pictures. We discovered the secret ingredient to Sichuan food: the mouth numbing Sichuan peppercorn, a delicious but dangerous additive to Sichuan food. Basically this little sucker numbs a part of your mouth after you bite into it. It is sold in Chinese shops in the US, but everywhere around here. I have not tried cooking with it by myself yet, but Lily and I have used it in a few of our dishes. You either like the feeling of biting into this, or you don't. I think Joanna liked it, I sure did.
This weekend I am going, once again, to cook at Lily's. The plan is to make some more spicy food and I am going to try to cook 鱼香茄子, which is an Eggplant dish... I guess something like sweet and sour eggplant and the thin mushrooms that I like. Lately I have been creating random dishes based on what I feel like eating (and recently I have been eating lots of mushrooms because they are super healthy and good for you and because we don't have these variations in the US). So in the next post I will inform you all how the cooking went. I realized yesterday that I have been making it my goal to become a master (in my own eyes at least) of cooking food that I like to eat from here. I have a feeling I will not be able to eat all these great dishes in the US the way they are made here, so why not try to make them myself? This will also allow me to keep up my "healthy" eating habits (which now include Nutella and peanut butter and lots of Spicy Cheetos and chocolate thanks to my sister who brought me junk food from the US). I can't say how much I love Chinese food and Joanna can vouch for me on how amazing it is.
Work Censorship
I would briefly like to mention that Midea has blocked all personal e-mail addresses from being used at work because supposedly it is a "safety breach". The way I get around this is by using a VPN I recently received from a friend. A week ago MY usual VPN stopped working and I thought that was going to be the end of facebook and youtube for me, but then I got another one and all is well. Because how else would I be able to write blog posts and gchat at work?
Work Diligence
I believe that I have covered how diligent and into their work Chinese people are (of course that's just an assumption, but from what I've seen at work, it's true), but I want to talk about their "duties" to their job. Let's take my friend Lily for example. She became sick a week ago and ended up having to go to the hospital to figure out what was wrong with her. The first time, the doctor told her she just had a bad cold. Then she was told, in another hospital and 3 visits after, that she had pneumonia. Now I'm not sure about you guys but I know if I had pneumonia I would not go to work for about a week, AT LEAST until I got better... well guess what? She went to work the day after she was diagnosed and just went to the hospital for an I.V. in the mornings... and she did this for about 5 days! I asked her why in the world she didn't stay home and she told me it was because her boss thinks no one can do as good of a job as she can!!! Or that no one CAN do her job (she's the only one who deals with these specific suppliers, so if she is gone, our company won't get their supplies...) Oh come on, anyone can order products. After talking with Audre I realized maybe SHE is the one who wants to be indispensable to her boss. Better yet, Lily was not able to go on her annual vacation because August was so busy for her (if you don't go on vacation when the company takes one you get an extra 1000Yuan in addition to the 1000 you get for your annual time off) Audre and I agreed we would STILL rather go on a week or two long vacation rather than make extra money. Pool Lily. Oh and here is the kicker, everyday she has to dance after work. Dance? Yes dance! In short, our headquarters is moving to a new building, a really nice one, so that calls for a grand celebration! Every division will perform something and get tested to see if they make it to the final show. Of course it's cool that this show will be live on CCTV (a program like ABC, for example, in China if I understand correctly), but everyday? She works from 8 30AM until 5 30 PM and then dances until 9 or 10PM. Furthermore she has to practice dancing every weekend (after work until 9PM on Saturday and from 2 until 9PM on Sunday) Imagine, dancing all day every day and not having ANY time for your personal activities of choice. Although Lily told me she really does not want to dance, her boss told her "he would like her to" (notice the passive aggressiveness in this statement, if that's the correct word. He didn't say "You have to dance", but what he did say implies "I want you to dance in this performance and if you do not you are letting me down and letting the company down. Worse, it shows that you are not committed to this job and don't value my requests.") And so Lily has to dance. I did go watch a practice of the dancers in my division (mostly recent graduates who JUST started working for the company. This is similar to their "initiation" and duty to the company, because my supervisor told me her first year at Midea, she ALSO had to dance in a show) and the dance was cool. There were a lot of partner moves, jumps, ballet moves, falls to the ground... I thought it was well choreographed, and it should be considering each division brings a choreographer and a "dance director" to make their dance the "best". Thus this is the buzz at work. Today is the day everyone finds out which division makes it into the final performance (the tests are actually going on right now) and if my division gets a spot, I'm pretty sure I'm going to celebrate after work with these young-ins (which are all my age actually).
...4 DAYS LATER
So I slacked off and did not finish this blog before the weekend like I wanted to, oops! Sorry! I have a ton of things to write about again (now that the weekend has passed) but I have to teach tonight and have a ton of work to prepare, so this will be semi-quick.
I decided on this title after talking to a friend who told me "Chicago will always be there" after I told him how much I missed my city (he just came to China a week ago and is also from the suburbs). He's right, so I tweaked the quote a little and made it into this title! Sometimes I really do miss the US, but for the most part I do not think about it that much. I do miss some friends though and am a little jealous that I'm missing out on certain things... but then again how many people have been to China and are seeing and doing what I am doing? Not too many. So let me continue where I left off...
Work Hierarchy and drinking in general
I went to dinner with a manager from work (not my manager) and I noticed that everyone at the table did not drink any of their beer until the manager made a toast. The first one is designated to the guest of honor (in this case the person of higher work status than anyone else). Then everyone toasted to him. A Chinese traditional toast is holding the cup of whatever drink you have (not even necessarily alcoholic) with two hands, and directing the toast to them "干杯" which means "cheers" or "bottoms up". Then when you clink glasses yours should be lower to show respect. Sometimes people don't want you to be so formal or believe they are of the same status as you, so they try to make theirs lower...and for fun the two people cheers-ing go all the way to the ground! I saw this at dinner between two co-workers. I think this is a pretty cool tradition because it shows how much honor and respect you have towards someone. But damn, sometimes I just want to chug my beer!!! If one person drinks their whole cup, then the other ALSO has to drink their whole cup... It's like "Muahahahha who can drink it ALL and who can drink the most?!" Furthermore, drinking is actually a skill here. I feel as if a lot of people in the US can drink...some girls don't like beer, but they still drink it if it's given to them. In China, you have to accept the drink for your own benefit and for that of the person who offered it to you. The women do not drink beer here, so when there is a toast around the table they barely touch the drink to their lips, but at least they accept it and make somewhat of an effort. If someone wants to make a toast with you and you do not want to drink, you still toast and go through all those aforementioned formalities, but you do not clink their glass, instead you put your fingers around the glass and your fingers block the glasses from clinking... this shows no disrespect, but shows that you just can't drink anymore.
When I went to KTV on Friday night with Lily (my 姐姐
) and her colleagues, we played drinking games (and we all know I drank a lot since I can't gather the courage to sing without being tipsy!!! This pertains even more to China and I'll say why later) and at the end of the night I had to drink 4 glasses in a row. To me this was not a big deal at ALL, but everyone was staring at me after like, "WOW". I have heard the phrase "good at drinking" many times here, but I have finally come to understand that it means you can drink a lot, and keep going when most others cannot. I heard my supervisor describing someone like this at dinner, then I heard it a lot at KTV, and then I heard it the next day too! So it's safe to say, I'm good at drinking! Bahahahahahhahaha! That just sounds funny to me, as if it were a sport and something to be super proud of!
KTV
So this weekend I was invited to go to KTV (as I already mentioned) with Lily and the people she dances with. It was really fun, I must admit, mostly because I got to drink and listen to REALLY good singers. I can't believe how ALMOST everyone (EVEN THE GUYS) here are amazing singers. It's really a pleasure to hear some of these people sing older Chinese songs. This is why my facebook status says, "
I ♥ 中文歌曲 and I'm not even joking!" Therefore it is so hard for me to sing in front of these great singers.... Especially Lily! She is so good! I kept asking her to sing more and more Chinese songs with the 笛子(a type of a Chinese flute). I really love traditional Chinese music with a little bit of contemporary edge to it. Two favorite songs of mine are titled 爱情买卖 and 不想长大 . I basically have been listening to about 12 Chinese songs on repeat at home. I think before I leave I will make it my goal to sing a song in Chinese at KTV.
The next day (Saturday) I went to a wonderful lunch with Lily, her two suppliers and Audre. After lunch they drove us to Daliang (a bigger city next to Beijiao where I live) so I could buy a new phone since I drunkenly lost mine two weeks before... Lily, Kobe (a new student and new friend of mine) and I shopped around then went home. I picked up Monika at the bus stop (she came to Beijiao!!!!!) and then we went to KTV again with Lily's suppliers! (I say suppliers because as I think I've mentioned, Lily works for Midea's distribution center so she has a few suppliers which she orders things from and one of them was from Shanghai visiting our area) It was so much fun! We went to a new FIVE STAR hotel that has a KTV inside. Ok, if we did this in the US I think it would cost about $5,000. We had our own waitress, our own huge room (bigger than my whole apartment), velvet couches, endless beer (we took the leftovers home after we left) and tons of food. Kobe and Lily sang lots of songs, I sang about three because my voice didn't even come close to anyone's in the room!!! Oh, and Monika and I sang every song together because we both think we relatively suck at singing. Interestingly enough, the manager of the KTV came and drank with us and she only gave Monika and I her business card. "Umm lady, give it to the guys who are paying" is what we were thinking, but she only gave it to the foreigners in the room (as if we can afford going to this place by ourselves... yea right) The night was a really fun and drunk-filled! Everyone had a great time and as the days go on, I'm so grateful for my
姐姐. She always invites me to these things without hesitation, but she says she is only this nice to her family, which I am now a part of. And this time I got to bring along two friends of mine! Monika and I were curious just how much the bill was, but we were too drunk to look at it considering we weren't paying.
The next day Kobe, Monika and I went to Lily's to cook (and I did some of my laundry there because I have no washing machine). I made 鱼香茄子 and it turned out really good (I followed a recipe I found online) and I also made mushrooms with soy sauce and green medium sized peppers (which are similar to jalapeños) and a day after Lily said, "嘎妹，记着下次做菜少放盐！" which means try to use less salt in your cooking next time. Bahahahahha! But I love salt and soy sauce so to me it tasted delicious, to Kobe and Lily it was toooooooo salty!
That is all for now, on Friday I will do MY BEST to finally finish my posts from my vacation with my sister and upload new pics on this thing!
Lastly, tomorrow is my six MONTH anniversary of being in China. Holy SHIT, time goes by too quickly.
One more thing, just now I found out that our department is going on a trip this weekend to some beach or place on the coast of China! We are going to be doing things such as swimming, fishing, surfing, watching the sunset, etc... I'm pretty excited but now I had to cancel my weekend plans of going to the water park (I don't have to go on this trip with my company, but I should because I probably won't get to go to this place otherwise) and I should meet and bond with more coworkers!
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