Gone bay, bye Joe.

My stay in Dalian ended dramatically, thanks to "ganbei" and baijiu. "Ganbei" is Chinese for "cheers", only it's a much more serious proposition than a toast. When someone salutes you with a full glass and a "ganbei!" you're politely expected to consume the contents of your glass, or risk offending the inviting party. Baijiu is a 120 proof wonder potion that probably has many useful applications other than human consumption. Combine a few ganbeis and biejius and a bastard child of intoxication will soon be birthed. Fortunately, I managed to limit myself mostly to ganbei and pijiu (beer) collisions. Still, it was enough to make for a not so pleasant 800 mile flight South to Huzhou, my home for the next 4 months. Greeting me at my arrival dinner were 4 ganbei trigger happy women, representing my various schools to be. Luckily, this was a putaojiu (wine) party rather than a biejiu party, so I did my best not to offend anyone by participating in every requested ganbei. By the end of the night, I was initiating the ganbeis, to show my respect, and I ended up in a showdown with the lead teacher of the group. She protested that her glass was too full, at which point I offered that she only drink half. After we drank our respective half and full glasses, I overheard one woman whispering to another, "He is true gentleman."
As a disclaimer, I have only experienced a sliver of life in China, so anything I say is not a blanket statement. That being said, nearly every one of my personal daily interactions has been an unorganized, bureaucratic maze of confusion. Chalk some of it up to the language barrier, but I'm starting to get the impression that people are just acclimated to constant chaos. I already have enough examples of head-scratching moments to write volumes, but I'll illustrate my point with one shining specimen. When we arrived in Huzhou, one of my fellow teachers arrived at his assigned apartment and was greeted by an angry Chinese woman who was still living there, while preparing to move all of her worldly possessions down four narrow flights of stairs. The following night we had a gathering at his apartment, which was interrupted by the same angry woman, who burst into his bedroom to grab her bras that were drying in the window, while yelling a continuous chain of what is safe to assume was profanity. We found ourselves congregated in his kitchen, along with the angry woman, the landlady, and the next door neighbor. Since, none of us speak any Putonghua (Mandarin), all we were able to take away from the encounter, through body language, was that the next door neighbor wanted us to give free English lessons to her son, and the furious former tenant would be sharing the apartment with us for the night. The latter did take place, but without any drama, as the landlady seemed to have calmed her down. It seems that there's never any organized plan, and things are expected to haphazardly unfold, somehow for the better. So far, they eventually have, but probably more so than any other place I've been, China requires a sense of humor of epic proportions. To be perfectly clear, these frustrations are more observations of an outsider than complaints. Most of the people I've met have been incredibly helpful, and besides, a few misunderstandings don't even come close to counteracting the thrill of paying 45 cents for a pair of sandals. Not to mention, $5 for a 1 hour full-body massage, to be explained at a later date.
To briefly describe my new home, Huzhou is located in the Northern Zhejiang province, where there are guesstimated to be a total of 30 foreigners, including Mr. Lucky Promise. This means double takes galore, as people take a second or third look, or in most cases just one long continuous stare, at the rare sight of a non-Chinese person cruising down the block. (People are not surprised when I tell them I'm half Chinese, usually pointing to their eyes as the give away. Still, they can't seem to comprehend how I'm unable to speak any Putonghua, as if mastery of the language is built into my DNA, waiting to emerge once I step foot in the homeland.) Anyways, as uncomfortable as the non-stop gawking might sound, people are usually friendly, some bursting into laughter, and others offering up whatever English words they know, usually "hello," or if you're lucky, "I love you." The city has a population of about 1 million, which is small by Chinese standards. It's roughly the physical size of Oakland, but with the feel of a safe small town. One exception to this feeling is the fact that the streets are littered with what I've come to refer to as 'silent assassins', or electric scooters, silently zipping through every available square centimeter of pavement in the city, sidewalks included. Ive already been clipped by the side view mirror of one of these little vehicles of mayhem, and I live in constant fear of having my toes run over with no audible forewarning.
One of the most entertaining aspects of life in China is attempting to make sense of the most random possible combination's of English words and phrases that seem to appear on just about every article of clothing. For example, "Run if you see my gun," "bad boy girls," or my personal favorite, "Too young to be born." I assume the inverse must be true, and clothing in the U.S. with Chinese characters features equally ridiculous combination's of words that just cant be translated correctly. More importantly, I wonder about all those non-Chinese speaking people who get tattoos of Chinese characters, while not being entirely certain of the exact meaning. And you thought that you were showing the world you're a Pisces.