Wednesday, May 30th-Taking it easy in Baihe

• Woke up with no power and no electricity
• The thing is, when you come out of the train station and it's only a dirt road that leads you to from the railway station to the hostel, you're already prepared for this but still it was kind of inconvenient

Baihe Railway Station with said dirt road

• I did get what I paid for though, I only spent 40.5 yuan for the room for the night which is a little more than $10 so I actually wasn't that mad 
• Plus, I actually got to sit down and actually study Chinese for the first time in probably two weeks so now I (might) know a little more Chinese if people speak in a perfect Beijing accent (which they won't but I can always hope)
• The breakfast buffet made everything alright
• Somehow without electricity the people at the hostel kept things going by serving this awesome breakfast buffet for 8 RMB (a little more than a dollar)

• It was actually kind of funny when I asked the old lady for hot water to drink (I didn't feel like getting diphtheria straight from the tap because I know that cold water is unsanitary in northeastern China) and the lady just pointed at the broth and said, "There you go"
• I went "oh" and like a good complacent American I slurped my broth like a true Chinese-loud enough for the entire room to hear
• Plus that was the best tofu I ever had (in the second picture on the right)
• In America the tofu is pretty bad but oh man I could eat that tofu every day and not feel like a sissy because it was so good
• I found out how good the staff at Chang-Bai-Shan Woodland Youth International Hostel are
• In a country where a lot of teenagers where some pretty ridiculous English t-shirts that make no sense, the guy at the front desk was up there singing to himself, "Wherever you go, whatever you do, I'll be right here waiting for you"
• I guess he couldn't see me around the corner from him but I had to hold my hand over my mouth because I was laughing so hard
• I can tell that just like Americans who sing it, he felt ashamed of himself for singing it because as soon as I got up he saw me and he had a surprised look on his face and stopped
• If I ever come to Chang-Bai-Shan again it's for the food at this Hostel
• After studying Chinese for a good 2 hours I got hungry and I had wantons and egg noodles for the first time in China and they were really good (all for 16 RMB-$2.50)

• I sipped the bowls dry they were so good
• If you're uncomfortable in your masculinity, get chap stick before you leave for China
• So I didn't realize how dry it can get in northeastern China and my lips got so chap it hurt to smile (and I like to smile a lot)
• Therefore, seeing that I had a lot of free time before a 36-hour train because I'm too cheap to buy an airplane ticket, I really needed chap stick and tried to find some in downtown Baihe
• Oh the Chin-glish in downtown Baihe was absolutely fantastic

This is what downtown Baihe looks like

• Downtown Baihe was actually quite handy-except for finding manly chap stick
• I found everything else I needed just fine-shampoo, mouthwash, shower gel, etc. but every time I tried to find lip balm it was always this girly looking thing with sparkles or the package had flowers on it
• I need something to keep my lips from getting chap, not more estrogen
• Now I know why at least the men in China don't smile-they're too manly to buy the girly lip balm
• I looked everywhere trying to find a place that didn't have girly lip balm and after about an hour of looking I finally gave up and just bought this blue lip balm with no glitter or anything
• I won't lie, this lip balm is pretty strong as I can smell it and now people are going to think Americans are effeminate
• I'll just tell people I have a Chinese wife or something, I think they'll believe me
• Traveled around a bit with two Chinese young people
• There were these two young Chinese people (a guy and a gal) and they wanted to go to a park and they invited me along
• The first impression of the girl was weird only because she held the door open for me, I said "Thank you" and she said, "It doesn't matter"
• After I gave her a strange look she looked up, said "Oh", looked back at me and said, "Sorry, wrong phrase"
• She was a horticultural student and she liked to talk
• We talked a lot about cooking and she was surprised that a male member of society like myself actually liked to cook
• It was a ton of fun to actually do something with a group of people (and have an intelligible conversation in English) 
• Plus she pointed out this really cool flower I never saw before called a "Bleeding Heart"

• Another game of "What did Bruce eat?"
• So the waitress recommended this, a guy gave his thumbs up when she recommended it, and it was quite tasty but I don't even know the type of meat that was in it

• Plus the best part of these restaurants were giving me free food (so I got another good helping of dog meat before I head to Hohhot) for what I hope is just being good hosts but I think it might be out of pity that I look like the sad attempt of mating John Ritter and Kelly Osbourne

May 29th, 2012-Chengbaishan-most beautiful frozen lake I've ever seen

• Old people in China are a lot like old people in America
• I was taking a nap at about 6 am this morning (I had woken up at 4 AM because some train officer accidentally shook me awake due to the fact that I switched beds with an old woman so she could have the bottom bunk but I don’t know how he could have confused the only white guy on the train with anybody) anyways, taking a nap, and all of a sudden these two old couples just started yelling at each other
• The first thing I thought was, “Ah sweet, old people kung fu, let me get my camera” but then I looked and they were just talking having a good time except at a really loud speaking level
• I guess Americans and Chinese are alike in some ways, like how our old people yell for no reason
• However I figured out the perfect way to make them (rather) quiet
• All you have to do is give them a deck of cards and all of a sudden they talk at normal levels

• • So this means the next time you see old Chinese people talking, just throw a deck of cards in their like a grenade and they’ll start playing really cool card games that even this laowai can follow along with (and I’m pretty dumb)
• I love Chinese people who wear English shirts that make no sense
• Meet Mr. "Must Wanted"

• Chang Bai Shan is a rip-off
• Yes it’s a beautiful park but I mean come on people, don’t fall for the ways of the imperialist Americans and charge for every little thing
• It’s 100 RMB for admission, 85 RMB for a bus to a staging area which doesn’t get you to the top of the mountain or to any attraction so that means you have to pay an additional 80 RMB for a 4WD to the top of the lake 
• I’m telling you, every day American capitalism is winning the war and pretty soon China is going to be a lot like us menacing American capitalists if this keeps happening
• I won’t lie though, the shuttle ride was worth it in it of itself
• Imagine if you will, a Gran Turismo F1 racing track with a very thin guard rail where every turn could send you hurtling off the edge in a fiery crash
• Now imagine that instead of a sleek F1 racing car with excellent gripping wheels, you’re in an old Toyota shuttle bus whose center of gravity is way too high to be taking 40 mph turns
• Well this shuttle bus made about 30 of those turns up the mountain and 30 down and it’s a thrill ride no one will forget (we didn’t even have seatbelts)
• I remember most the times where the driver would turn WAY too sharply and all of us in the shuttle would go “WAH!” and fly to one side of the car off of our seat to the other side
• And to justify myself for paying the exorbitant fee for seeing Heaven Lake I declare it the most beautiful frozen lake in the world

• • I knew that the Lonely Planet travel guide recommended going in mid-June at the earliest but I thought being really late May I would be ok
  • Nope, definitely wasn't
• Turns out, the beautiful Heaven Lake is frozen in late May and everything around it is dead so it’s great if you’re into the whole emo thing but if you like seeing green when you go to a park then definitely go in mid-June
• I did get to see my one sliver of unfrozen lake so I’m happy as now I can say I saw Heaven Lake

• Why do the Chinese have no respect for mountains?
• Whenever we in America see a mountain we’re like, “Oh what a beautiful mountain, let’s make a national park and protect it” whereas the Chinese are like my dad and say, “Wow, that looks like a great place for a cell phone tower”
• Even on Heaven Lake, the purported crown jewel of natural beauty in northeastern  China (and trust me there aren’t many) there’s a cell phone tower

• • I can’t really complain though, I’ve had 5 bars of service with China Unicom everywhere I’ve been
• The other natural features were working alright
• The “Deep Green Pond” is probably one of the most aptly named natural features I’ve come across in a long time as it really is a deep green pond

• Changbai Water Fall was actually really neat looking

• • And I found the place where they keep all of the alive trees!-Dell Park

• I finally found out my Chinese cell phone number
• We were sitting around the shuttle bus trying to find the one guy who of course suddenly goes missing when everyone is ready to leave the park, and someone asks me if I gave the guy my number (because I went to the park with him)
• I said that I not only didn’t know his name, I don’t even know my own cell phone number and now after 6 days of owning this Chinese cell phone, I finally know the number

• Chinese people are really nice
• While I was at the park, I got asked to take another photo just for being white (they said I was Canadian but I didn’t react fast enough to correct them of their grievous mistake) and they saw me later about to be charged 10 RMB for a bottle of green tea (which is outrageous)
• Well I walked away and they came running up to me to give me that bottle of green tea that they bought for 3 RMB because they’re awesome
• They even gave me their QQ number, how nice
• It was a fake QQ number (they were 30+ year old women and they gave me the number for a 20 year old man in Sichuan and I didn't even catch until later that they both wrote down the same number) but the thought still counts
• Never order spare ribs if you’re a beginner at chopsticks
• So I felt brave and decided to order a dish that I saw way back in my beginning lessons of Chinese 红烧排骨 (Braised Spare Ribs)

• • They were actually really good except for the fact that I kept fumbling these huge pieces of meat with my chopsticks like the dumb foreigner I am
  • It got so bad that a random stranger actually came up to me, took my chopsticks out of my hand, showed how he held chopsticks, put them back in my hand, and left
  • I think his trigger was when I picked up one piece and not a second later dropped it into the sauce and splattering everywhere around the dish including on my shirt
  • The tea was pretty good even though I'm not quite sure what it was made out of and it came in a dirty water color (I'd have it again in a heart beat in case you're curious

May 28th, 2012-Leaving Dandong/Eating Dog Meat

• Expired bread for breakfast this morning
• I didn’t feel like paying 15 RMB for breakfast at Hanting Express and I know that there’s always people around with little food carts in China wherever I go and even though China’s food inspection isn’t on par with America’s, I figured I’ll try my luck
• I decided to go into this food mart and I just bought a piece of plastic wrapped short bread for 5 RMB thinking, “alright, I know that this can’t kill me” and so I was about to dig into it but then I noticed that it had expired 2 days ago
• I was about to take it back but then I thought about all the handrails I’ve touched, street food I’ve eaten, and hands I’ve shaken while in China and I thought I’ll be fine so I ate it all (it was about the size of a manly man’s fist) and there was no mold on it so I felt safe
• Had to get a girly umbrella
• So I saw that it was supposed to rain in Baihe/Heaven Lake when I go there on May 29th and seeing that I lost my umbrella I had to find another one
• Well I don't exactly know of any "umbrella stores" in Dandong but luckily the hotel I was staying in sold them for 30 RMB but all they had were girly designs and I tried to find the least girliest
• Hopefully I can get away with it because I'm going for the whole "3M Scotch Tape salesman" look but...I don't think that will work

• getdentalimplantsinfo.com likes my blog
• I was checking the sources of traffic for my blog this morning and one person was referred to this website by, and I’m not joking,  getdentalimplantsinfo.com
• Testing the limits of the iron Spencer stomach
• Today for lunch I had 3 fried eggs on a stick, a plate of dog meat, and clams and oysters along with a big bottle of beer

• • Met  Zheng Jingui 郑金贵at a North Korean restaurant 
  • So I heard that you can get dog meat here in Dandong and I just had to try it so I went down to the tourist wharf to try and find an authentic North Korean restaurant
  • If anyone is ever interested, you can check to make sure that you’re at a North Korean restaurant by looking for Chinese and North Korean flags above the window (I thought I would just look for starving people based on the years of American propaganda I’ve seen but apparently that’s not the case)
  • So I was trying to order dog meat with my crummy Chinese (I had to confirm to this girl that I was ordering dog meat by going “woof woof” with the lady) and I got to the dog meat but she couldn’t understand that my order was done and Jingui came over and helped me
  • Jingui was a real nice guy, he was in China to interview for a job (and it’s so coincidental that social science majors in both the US and China have a hard time finding jobs)
  • Engineering ftw
  • The dog meat was pretty good but at 65 yuan it was pretty expensive for an entrée
  • It was worth it just once and to see what real North Koreans look like (they wear lots of white make-up) so I’d recommend eating dog meat at least once (as long as it’s legal in your place of residence) 
  • I'm sure it's not Lassie or Old Yeller either, there would be more meat if it was

• So we had lunch and we walked around Dandong because we had so much free time and he told me all about China’s problems
• He says there’s too many people here but I tried to console him saying, “but hey, now you have more chances to marry a good Chinese woman!”
• He said, “Oh yes, Chinese women are very good. They’re beautiful and they cook very well”
• Beer, clams, and beef on way to train station
• So I was walking, minding my own business after leaving Jingui and here are these two fat guys and a skinny guy sitting on the street saying, “sit down, sit down” kind of looking like people who had been convicted of assault and battery at some point in their lives
• So of course I sit down and they pop me open a beer, start asking me questions, and feeding me oysters, clams, and beef on an open bit BBQ

• • At first I refused the beer but the beer looked so refreshing and seeing that it was a BBQ I just had to enjoy it
  • It was actually really good beer, it was something called Bang beer but it was really strong because an hour after I finished this huge bottle I was ready for a nap 
• Chinese people will feed you until your stomach bursts
• On the train ride from Dandong to Baihe, I share a little section with 5 other people where we sleep and in my section this time were 3 older woman who would not stop feeding me delicious food (with the exception of this mini-hot dog with cheese which I would not recommend)
• They were really fun to try to talk with in Chinese, luckily they were a chatty bunch so I just sat there and listened to what sounded like them complaining about their latest ailments (just like old people in America!)

Sunday, May 27th, 2012 - Dandong Fun/Exercises in Chinglish

Still trying to get used to safety razors

• I figured that when I start teaching in rural China this fall, I better start getting used to not having reliable electricity so I started to try to use safety razors after 5 years of using an electric razor
• This morning I gave myself 7 nicks and at least it makes me look younger (like I have a lot of pimples on my face) so it's no wonder why no Chinese want to take a picture with this foreigner

Websites I found blocked in China

• I woke up really early so for fun I wanted to see what websites I couldn't get to if I didn't have a VPN so here are a few and I realized that information would be a lot harder to find if I weren't American so thank you Uncle Sam
• Facebook
• Anything with Tiananmen Square Protests
• Wikipedia
• Blogger
• Here’s some more that I didn’t have time to check because I had some exploring to do:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

Dandong looks a lot like my hometown of Rockford, IL

• Just take all of Dandong, put it in north central Illinois, and you might not be able to tell the difference
• You can almost think of Dandong as Detroit with all of the buildings with busted out windows and dirty roads but you just feel really safe anyways for some odd reason

• But at least Rockford has no smog 
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  • I think that because I was outside in Dandong for maybe 10 hours today, I may have shaved off an extra 5 hours of my life because of all of the pollution I took into my system
  • Not only that, at least Rockford has toilet paper in every bathroom stall
  • I don’t know how I forgot about the 20 times I’ve been told that Chinese bathrooms don’t have toilet paper but I forgot (I had been spoiled in Dalian and Beijing where they’re used to having westerners and their customs)
  • New rule, if your country is going to take over the world someday, you have to have toilet paper or else we’re calling it off
• Trip to Great Wall of China
• Dandong has a piece of the Great Wall they call “Tiger Mountain Great Wall” and I was going to take the bus but because of the 4 AM sunrise I couldn’t sleep so I decided to try and walk there because my Lonely Planet guide said it was about 12 km away which for me is about an hour walk
• Well I checked the taxi fare just to make sure it would be worth my while to take a taxi but they wanted 60 RMB and I said screw that so I started walking down a road 
• Yeah, it turns out it was about 29 km away from Dandong and Lonely Planet was wrong out of their rear-end
• I walked for an hour and didn’t see a single sign so I asked someone in Chinese how far is it and they said about 15 km 
• Well I hailed a taxi and it turns out it would have taken me about 3.5 hours to walk there from my hotel and I ended up only saving 10 RMB on the taxi fare
• Great Wall was awesome/my thighs will never forgive me
• It was worth the 70 RMB admission just to say I went once

     

• The stair climbers that they have at American gyms have nothing on these steps at the Great Wall
• Sometimes they didn’t even have stairs and it was more like rock climbing with two hand-rails on either side of you which made it really fun (no sarcasm, it actually was pretty fun to do some rock climbing on the great wall of China)

 

• The museum was cool if you understand Chinese
• If you have my proficiency or less in Chinese, I’d say skip the museum and save the RMB because the picture below basically sums it up. (It’s supposed to say “green”)

• Got to see North Korea
• Even took a photo of a North Korean soldier guarding the fence like he was expecting an attack from an American imperialist at any second
• It was funny in that he saw me took a picture of him, I waved and screamed out, “HI!” and he squatted with a pen and a piece of paper and took notes

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• I ACTUALLY MADE A GOOD DEAL WITH A MERCHANT!!!!!
• So my negotiation skills are improving in the fact that even though I’m a foreigner and pretty easy to rip off, I actually made a pretty good deal for this North Korean currency souvenir
• This little old lady by the North Korean border was selling some Won (North Korean currency) in a spiffy portfolio and she wanted 50 yuan for it
• I said, “Ehhhh” and she said, alright, alright (I think) and said 40 yuan, so I took the deal thinking I got ripped off but at least I got a good souvenir
• • So this lady was an unofficial saleswoman and the official store up at the main entrance to the great wall had the same souvenir but for 110 yuan (the lady lowered it to 95 yuan but I just wanted to see how much people were selling it for to see if I got ripped off)
  • Then later at my hotel room with the bloody towel, I checked and the 6850 won in this portfolio is worth 36.7518 yuan so it wasn’t that bad of a deal at all for me
  • Yeah I lost money but if you factor in that I got it in a nicely put portfolio and I’m helping small businesses *cough cough* then I think I made out alright
• Met Yang Yue 杨悦 and Qi 
• On my way out of the Great Wall, for the first time since I’ve been in China, someone asked to take a picture of me
• I felt so honored because for the longest time I thought that I was so ugly that even the Chinese that haven’t seen a white guy before don’t want a photo of me
• The funny thing is that it was Yang Yue took the photo with me and Qi held the camera, well Qi looks like a boy and Yue is definitely a girl, so I thought Yue was just going to keep her distance because I thought they were dating or something, but Yue she got really close to me and so I looked at Qi and I made a hand motion like, “no”
• And of course, Yue was wearing an English shirt that wasn't quite right

• They were really nice and Yue spoke really good English so we had a chat and she helped me find a bus to Dandong for 6.5 RMB which saved me 90% of what I was going to pay by taxi to get back
• They took me to this really awesome restaurant called 石锅拌饭 which basically means stone pot restaurant and it was absolutely delicious
• I did get a chance to show them my lack of chopstick skills and they got to practice English so I think we’re even
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• Then we went to the tourist wharf which is home to the bridge that goes from Dandong to North Korea
• That’s where I told them about American customs like how in China if two women hold hands it means they’re best friends but in America that means they’re lesbians
• She laughed at that and said, “No, me and Qi are not lesbians” and it took me that long (about two hours) to realize that Qi was a girl
• Plus I was surprised that she knew the word “lesbians” but not “salary” or “earnings”
• Museum to Commemorate US Aggression
• This museum was awesome in the fact that it was in English and there was just enough things to go "what?" to make it funny
• This one about those darn Americans and their running dogs





• Alright guys, we need to "rosist" U.S. aggression hahaha




• And only resistance can "toach" the imperialists a lesson hahaha

• Plus I got more of my pictures taken which I won’t lie, it did make me feel really good
• The thing was that it was about 12 old women all in a row owho wanted to take pictures of me and the last one I think has a white guy thing because she was all up on me and I think she got a picture of me giving her the stink eye
• And even more Chinglish

• And by the way, they think they won the Korean War, but based on the fact that this kid was wearing a US Army t-shirt at the museum, I think capitalism (or should I say imperialism) is gaining the upper hand

• Pagoda
• And Dandong has two beautiful pagodas (one was closed due to construction) with nice views