Ay.... I haven't written in a long time due to the following: lack of an apartment, excessive amounts of shtuff to do, and laziness. But, I'm back, and the giant post I have to write now is punishment enough for being AWOL.
The Apartment Search
First of all, we have an apartment. Luckily, it isn't the one we looked at that had no mattresses and was in a building surrounded by the old-world Chinese version of a barbed-wire fence: a cement wall with shards of glass sticking out of the top. Although that one actually would have been fine (neighbors seemed nice, it was cheap, clean, and had everything we needed), where we are now is a lot better. It's a big apartment complex south of the university (about a five minute bike ride, but I'll get to that later...). There is a little garden/courtyard area in between the buildings where people relax, and parents and relatives play with little kids. One morning I came down at about 5:30 (still jet-lagged) a there was a group of old ladies doing some sort of exercise that seemed to involve standing around talking and hitting themselves and each other. The apartment we're in looks pretty upscale, but everything is pretty much Styrofoam. Also, when we moved in, it hadn't been cleaned, and there was no running water. That first night was rough - by the time I woke up I felt covered in a thin coating of dust, yet I couldn't shower (the water got fixed by about 3 that day.) The closest bathroom was 13 flights down, and a little walk from the front door of the building. And it wasn't western style, if you catch my drift... I also didn't realize that toilet paper, like running water, is a luxury, and isn't just handed out for free... in fact, it isn't handed out at all...
China-1, Charles-0.
But, anyways, the apartment is all cleaned up now; we have cable, internet (mind-numbingly slow, but internet nonetheless), a kitchen with an awesome stove (I have never seen a stove go this hot before - my egg cooked in about 15 seconds), three bedrooms, a washing machine, a sun area to dry our clothes in, and a refrigerator. It's a lot better than a lot of people live here; I'm happy.
Shopping in Nanjing
Part of having your own apartment is getting stuff for it... For all of our cooking supplies, eating supplies, cleaning supplies, clothes-washing supplies, and other supplies, it was off to XinJieKou - the shopping district in Nanjing, home to sprawling electronics stores that occupy three or four huge buildings, a giant clothing store called "Fashion lady," a bunch of American fast-food restaurants (Pizza Hut, Papa John's, McDonald's, KFC, Starbucks, Etc...), and, a consumerist Mecca: Walmart China. Walmart China is a scary, scary place. Think of the biggest, most crowded Walmart in America, multiply it by about three in size and congestion, add a food market that makes fresh food, Chinese-style vendors yelling at you through loudspeakers attached to their belt, and the fact that this 2-level megastore partly represents to a lot of people China's assimilation into world culture and the world-market, and there you have it! Walmart China... The store is almost addicting. Chessin and I found ourselves coming back three days in a row. On wednesday it was eating utensils, cooking equipment, and cleaning stuff. Thursday was towels and things to hang our clothes out to dry on. By Friday we were looking for stuff we didn't even need - basketballs, a rice cooker, an electronic dictionary... ENOUGH! Walmart China, like morphine, is a nicity that needs to be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, it seemed like there were a lot of Walmart Junkies every time we went. Hopefully I don't take that route. Since then we've found some local supermarkets with most anything and everything we need, and if and when we decide to make a plunge and buy that rice-cooker, you really can't beat the 25 bucks they're asking at Walmart.
Other than XinJieKou, there seems to be a neverending amount of little clothing, grocery, food, and electronic shops everywhere we go. The clothing stores are also much cheaper than the upscale stores in XinJieKou, and much more hilarious. It is honestly impossible to walk down the street and not see a bring-you-to-your-knees, pee-your-pants funny faux-English T-shirt. The scientific term for this phenomenon is "Engrish." I'll try to think of a few examples, but the best ones are so bizarre, they're impossible to remember 2 minutes later. The snippets I can recall is stuff like "Newfound Glory Tube, Temptation Garage Life" with a picture of a muscle car, (on a girl) "I Treasure your Pleasure. Bad or Good? You Tell ME", and a whole array of shirts in abercrombie font saying things like "Abrecomebie". Also, in the same catagory, there is a hospital near my apartment called the "Nanjing Stomatological Hospital." Check me in!
Biking in Nanjing
After talking about it for 4 days, we finally bought bikes. Vendors sell them used (and possibly picked up at the dump) on the street here - but when you buy one of these 10 dollar bikes, you really get what you pay for. I sat down on one of the used bikes, or "jiu de zi xing che" (pronounced "jodzi-ingch" here), and it brought back memories of a "little-tyke" tricycle my father ran over that I still rode around - it barely worked, required laborious pedaling, and felt ready to disintegrate at any moment. We decided to opt for a new bike from a bike store down the road where the store owners spoke slowly, wanted to help us (when my chain broke a couple of days later, they fixed it for free), and looked like they needed the sale. Chessin and I purchased 2 beautiful new bikes, equipped with a front basket, chain protector, back seat-area (for your groceries or, more commonly in this student-area, your girlfriend) and built in locks for about $60. We were ready to explore the city.
Nanjing is a biking city. There are way more bikes than cars. At any given intersection, during a random time of day, there may be 10 or 20 bikes coming from each direction. That number is quadrupled in rush hour. Also, they're not just bikes; they are semi-electic bicycles, mopeds, scooters, some hybrid in between, and sometimes straight-out motorcycles make it into the bike lane if there is too much car traffic. Riding around is nuts. It involves sometimes going in and out of cars, driving onto the sidewalks, and dodging people, other bikes coming straight at you, cars in the wrong lane, old women on little scooters with their grandchildren on their lap, guys on mopeds talking on cell phones weaving back and forth, people unloading food, little dogs running away from their coddling owners, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. There are no explicit rules - there seem to be two lanes of bikes on either side of the road going in opposite direction, but it's ok if you're in the wrong lane - sometimes you just have to get somewhere. You cross the intersection either with the light, or when you can -- this skill involves an extrasensory ability to sense when and where cars are coming based on the lights they have and where pedestrians are. Also there are few "t"- shaped intersections - most are some sort of "double-Y" with random streets coming in random directions. This makes it even harder to figure out what's going on. I think I'm getting the hang of it, though. We biked through the city to the major park in the middle - it's filled with many beautiful paths surrounded by gardens and next to the city wall. At one point, on the way, we ended up (with many other bikers) in a lane of the Shanghai-Nanjing highway. It wasn't dangerous at all - just sort of funny that bikes were allowed and common on such a major highway (maybe that's only in the city though...).
Having bikes really changed my view on the city - and I understand a lot better now how it's laid out and how most people spend their public time - we've found so many cool spots riding around. One negative aspect is that with new possibilities for exploration, I've also found new, better, and more dumplings to fill me up beyond an acceptable dumpling-saturation level. You give a little and you take a little.
Eating in Nanjing
Have I mentioned the food here is good? well... it is. Really freaking good. I think the coolest thing we've found so far - in terms of food - is this awesome open air food market. Strange looking, foreign vegetables cover one half of this huge market place, and the rest is divvied up between all these really cool looking shellfish, amphibians, fish, meat, and tofu. We found cucumbers the size of my torso, the freshest ginger I've ever seen, a big tub of live bullfrogs (not particularly happy), what looked like live shrimp with long claws swimming around in a tank, and monstrous sides of beef hanging from salty hooks.
Besides the open air markets - where we get (and will get) food for the house - we've also been to some pretty sweet restaurants. Nevermind the dumpling vendors (I think I should stop even saying the word dumpling... I gotta get off that stuff, man!), we've been to this pretty delicious duck place, this amazing Muslim/Uyghur/Xinjian restaurant, a bunch of little noodle places, and loads of street vendors selling things from rice gruel (for breakfast) to cold noodles to lamb skewers - all of it, for lack of a better description, really FREAKING good. They take their duck seriously here. One morning when I was out on some street getting breakfast I herd this really loud QUACKKK right by my feet and jumped (causing a bunch of people chilling with their wheelbarrows to laugh at me) to find about 6 or 7 ducks just lampin' next to me, some of them sprawled out and others sitting down. I may or may not have had one of these happy little fellahs for dinner the next night. But eating that duck gives credence to the sloagan "good cheese comes from happy cows." I definitely believe that happy cows make good cheese, because happy duck seems to make good... duck. The big Muslim place we went to was a little more upscale than some of the little hole-in-the-wall Muslim noodle shops we go to in the street - but it's also a little bit better, and still only about $7 a person for a big, delicious meal. We ordered, over the course of two visits, lamb skewers, this delicious pickled cucumber dish with garlic and sesame, a fish stew, this amazing warm and sweet corn salad, and sauteed lamb with onions and amazing spicy seasoning. This restaurant is one of those places I'll never forget - I can still sort of taste the lamb on the back of my tongue if I think about it (maybe I just need to brush my teeth more...). As for the little noodle shops - most of them serve fresh pulled noodles in some sort of fresh stock with strong, spicy flavoring. The spice here causes a cool sensation - it numbs the mouth, which is really sort of interesting after and during a meal. Also, the noodles are indescribable - the texture, freshness, and flavor is something that you just have to taste to understand. I can't say anything else.
Sporting in Nanjing
I CAN describe the sports in Nanjing. So far, save a 6'4", absolutely ripped guy Chessin and I saw at a Gym near our apartment who was probably a professional athlete, sports seem to be mostly leisure thing. There doesn't seem to be a lot of seriousness in the badminton, volleyball, biking, basketball, ping pong, tennis, and soccer people play in their free time. That being said, Chessin and I went to the local gym to play some badminton. Wearing our squash outfits, and sweating and grunting we duked it out for about an hour on a court we reserved. A couple of guys waiting for our court, both wearing jeans and one of whom was smoking a cigarette, challenged us to some doubles. Thinking we were pretty hot shit, we happily and (maybe) snidely accepted. These guys didn't even know how to play. I think we got a total of about 15 points in two games (that means we lost).
China - 2, Charles - 0
A sidenote to that story is that on the way to play badminton we found a really upscale fitness club (about 600 bucks a year - which is a lot here) with squash in it. Wanting to play, but not wanting to pay, we asked about possible coaching opportunities in exchange for a gym membership and some money. That's still in the works- but it's a possibility...
The First Day of Classes
Finally, today was the first day of classes. The teachers are friendly, the facilities are nice, and the other students seem ok. It's true, some of them are kinda offsetting like the group of korean kids who sit in the back and won't speak louder than a whisper, or the Russian kid with an underbite who looks really mad at everyone, but I've met some nice people. A German girl gave me an oreo! It was kind of soggy, but it's the thought that counts.
Anyways... I now have homework to do and noodles to eat.
I'll write more soon.
Zai Jian!
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