17 February 2009: Zhengzhou

I am feeling much better about myself today after blow drying my hair and using my straightener (I kept from Australia--I'm so resourceful.)

Last night after Shaolin Si we went to a hot pot restaurant. It was HUGE--three floors, apparently 100 tables but I suspect there may have been more. They put some water in a tray then this fire in a copper thing and a cone on top. Somewhere there is a bowl surrounding the fire that has water in it. My friends ordered very thinly shaved meats (lamb, beef), vegetables (spinach, that mystery vegetable that is white with holes in it [drawing of lotus root], mushroom something that to me looked like red lettuce crossed with seaweed, white mushrooms that look like sprouts, tofu that to me looked like brain, and noodles. The idea is to pick up the food with chopsticks, swirl it around until it cooks, and pull it back out and eat it. Usually they placed the food in the bowl of sesame sauce. Oh I forgot--I think we had meatballs made of something like spam. Sweet flavor. I liked it. It was such a fun meal. I had trouble holding on to the stuff I cooked. My friends asked for a fork for me, and it wasn't easy to come up with one. I didn't use it except for the slippery noodles. At the end the water is a soup which actually tasted pretty good.

K on the way out we all had a hard time leaving together so I spent some time on each stair landing. Let me tell you, I caused QUITE A STIR. I don't exaggerate when I say everyone that noticed me stared. I just smiled at them as sweetly as I could. One waitress smiled back.

The TV is on. The channels actually remind me of Italian television,which doesn't surprise me because both are state owned.

Something which does surprise me though is I haven't seen evidence of price fixing, except I saw a store yesterday that said "______ Monopolized Store." I just know that price fixing has been a feature of Communist systems. I have a lot to learn but it seems there is a blend of capitalism and communism. Richard told me last night unemployment is something like 30% and for recent university graduates it's even higher--like 50%. I'm glad he can be in Australia.

I learned some characters and numbers yesterday. In the building with 500 monks because they are numbered. 一 二 三 四 that's 1-4. I don't know 5. 6 looks like a running man. There's some busy character that comes first to let you know it's a number, then if I haven't remembered incorrectly [abstraction of busy # character] 二百一十三 means 213. 百 means hundred and 十 means ten. I really think I could learn this language especially since I seem to associate characters with meanings and sounds. Well I was feeling confident like that last night until the computer's auto-Chinese speller showed me there can be multiple characters for given sounds.

Distance is a heartless tyrant.

开封 [Kaifeng]

The boys took me on a scary Ferris Wheel. Oh dear. It was in the Zhengzhou public park. While walking in this park we came across two men (one old, one young) playing table tennis. Liu Jie asked if we could borrow their paddles and we hit a few serves. :)

We left Jackie and Amber (Wang Li Juen...I think, Li = victory and Juen = beauty) in Zhengzhou. Jackie has an English (ILS?) exam on Thursday so he stayed. This event spawned the tyrannical distance complaint. They didn't fill me on too well on the day's plans so it was unexpected. It was mildly like leaving Australia again. I hate goodbyes. But maybe now there won't be as much doting :) (I asked about the monopolized store. It's the mobile phone company, state owned.)