Day 40: February 12, 2013 Just My Cup of Tea

     Breakfast was far from disappointing. It was another huge buffet and I had some fruit, toast, pastries, and a ton of cereal. Satisfied, we all headed down to the bus, which first took us to a cruise on West Lake. 

          It was a very foggy day, but it actually made the whole scene very tranquil and looked really cool. There were a ton of surrounding mountains topped with pagodas and just a lot of beautiful views. After some exploring on the bow and the top deck, the 30 minutes were already up and it was time to move on. 

     We walked around a pretty scenic area and then made our way to another pagoda. This pagoda was called the Six Harmonies Pagoda and we managed to make it all the way to the top for an amazing view. The architecture of the inside was really pretty and the doorways were made perfectly for my height, which wasn’t so nice for everyone else. 

     After a long walk down, we met up with the group and headed to the Longjing tea place to taste test tea. They taught us some tea traditions and then let us all try some of their famous green tea that they refuse to export. We first got to try the tea by just eating it and then they filled our cups with water and gave us some orange peels to add in for some more flavor. The coolest thing, I thought, was when they did a demonstration of how green tea releases antioxidants and changed the color of this liquid from black to clear, killing all of the toxins. John and I decided to go in on buying some tea together to bring home for our friends and family. Between the 2 of us we got 1500 cups of some of the best tea in China in just 2 little containers and under $50! 

Tea class

     From there we went to lunch, which was once again a great meal and then headed back to Shanghai. After a couple of hours on the bus, we were back to the hotel and had some serious packing to do. We all packed our bags for our 9-day trip ahead and then packed up our entire rooms so that our roommates can move our stuff to the new campus while we are gone. We took a break for dinner, but unfortunately there is still nothing open due to the New Year so we ended up at KFC. After dinner I finished packing, figured out some more trip details, and did some blogging and responding to emails before I am unreachable for 9 days.

Day 39: February 11, 2013 The Chinese Underground

     Today held one of the greatest surprises since I have been here – AMERICAN STYLE BREAKFAST! I have never stuffed my face since I have been here as much as I did this morning. We only allowed 15 minutes for breakfast assuming it would suck as usual, but ended up being greeted by a giant buffet full of delicious food. I had fried eggs, sausage, pastries, fruit, and cereal and could not have been happier. After steeling a muffin for the road we loaded the bus to start our day. 

Temple

     We started out by going to a famous Chinese temple, which was cool to see the architecture and extravagant decorations as always. I made sure to rub the lion’s head and ball for good luck and then we were on our way to a river cruise.

     The cruise was nothing special but was still fun and gave us a different way to see our surroundings while hanging out on a boat. After the cruise we had yet another family style meal, which was the best yet. There was literally nothing that I didn’t love. Between breakfast and lunch, I don’t think I have ever been so satisfied by my meals since I have been in China.

Put people in hole, chopped off head, dropped in canal!

     After lunch we started on our 3-hour bus ride to Hangzhou. The first thing we did when we arrived was go to this cave, which none of us were expecting to do. This was definitely my favorite thing we have done so far. The caves were so cool to look at and were all lit up with neon lights, which only made them look more amazing. We climbed hundreds of stairs to get to the top for a great view and then made our way back down to get on a cart on tracks that took us back to the exit. The ride was really exciting, yet a bit scary since you had to duck down and lean side to side to avoid hitting your head on the cave walls. 

Cave entrance

     Once we got back outside, there was just a gorgeous view of all of the surrounding mountains. There was also what seemed kind of like an adult playground that would be way too dangerous for little kids. There were a few really sketchy plank bridges, swings, and slides that were a lot of fun. That was our only main event in Hangzhou for the day since we had such a long ride to get there so we just headed back and checked into our hotel.

Playground

     We were expected to be let down after the Holiday Inn, but this hotel was also really nice. I took about an hour to catch up on some blogging for the trip and then it was time for yet another family style dinner. The dinner was once again amazing and I had no complaints. The bullfrog and tofu were even really good! After dinner Adam, Bryan, John, and I finished some booking details for our trip and emailed our ME 375 teacher to try to get an extension on our homework due over our trip. The homework isn’t posted and it is due in the middle of our trip where we are going to have limited internet access the entire time. With no response, we are just hoping for the best and that we won’t be having to do homework while in Hong Kong. 

     After that we decided to go explore the city, which once again was pretty dead. We did make our way down the lake and walk along the shore for about hour or so which was really relaxing and made for some really good conversation. Once we got back to the hotel, we helped Tyler’s girlfriend come up with a Valentine’s Day gift for him and then called it a night. Although we were not expecting much, we decided to give ourselves a longer time for breakfast in the morning just in case it was as good as today’s.

Day 38: February 10, 2013 The Leaning Pagoda of Suzhou

        After getting everyone loaded on the bus, we were on our way not much after 9:00 this morning.  We were introduced to our English-speaking tour guide, David, who will be taking us around for the next 3 days. He talked for about the first 30 minutes and told us what we would be doing for the day once we made it to Suzhou. 

     The first place we stopped was Tiger Hill where we got to see this 2000 year-old leaning pagoda that was really cool. Seeing the architecture up close was really interesting, especially to a group of nerdy engineers like myself. We walked all around the park for some different views of the pagoda and the rest of the park and hill and then made our way to the next location, which was lunch. We had a family style lunch once again that had some interesting things including duck tongue. There were also some really good dishes like the fried weever fish and what tasted like orange chicken.

Tiger Hill Pagoda

      After lunch we made our way to a silk factory where we got to see a how silk was made as well as enjoy the beautiful products that were made there. They showed us the production line that was basically 2 big machines with silk worms floating in water. The silk worms are in groups of 8 to 10 where they have their strings of silk attached to the machine, which winds them up. I was pretty amazed at how almost prehistoric it seemed, but it worked just fine. We then moved on to the next room where a lady was stretching the cocoons from the silk worms around an arch to dry and use for quilts. 

     The next room was full of what looked like a bunch of clouds. There were endless amounts of the stretched cocoons and the ladies even let me stretch some myself. It was actually pretty fun and harder than it looked. After that we made or way into the room that had all of the products they made. They had everything form silk sheets and quilts to lingerie and clothes to scarves and ties. I ended up giving in and buying a scarf as per usual and then headed back to the bus. 

     Our next destination was the Humble Administrator’s Garden, which was really pretty but absolutely packed. We definitely got a lot of surprised looks and pictures taken of us while walking around in a group full of 40 Americans. Besides that, there were a lot of cool pagodas and water views in addition to a section with banzai trees where one was over 1000 years old. 

Humble Administrator's Garden

Bonsai Madness

     After we were all done at the garden, we finally made it back to our hotel, which was more than a pleasant surprise  - we were at a Holiday Inn! Catriona and I were amazed at how nice our room was, including the unbelievably comfortable beds, until Adam and John walked in saying how their room wasn’t the same. We walked down the hall to their room to see that they had gotten lucky and somehow gotten what we ended up calling the executive suite. Needless to say, that was the room to hang out in all night since it had a nice couch and a ton of open space. We had about an hour until we had to meet up for dinner in which we all just hung around, and then made our way to the restaurant on the bus. Dinner was delicious with another family style with tons of great food and nothing too strange. After dinner we ended up just hanging around the hotel in the suite until we decided to go explore the city, which was pretty uneventful. The night market was already closed by 9:30 so we ended up just going to McDonalds for a late snack and hanging out in the hotel the rest of the night. 

Suzhou at night

Day 37: February 9, 2013 Happy New Year!

      Today was the first day I actually got to sleep in! Catriona was awake so I was in and out of sleep after about 10, but I didn’t managed to make myself get up until almost noon. I got up and changed and then headed downstairs to meet up for the girl’s lunch we planned with Dianne. We walked over the one of the malls and headed upstairs to a nice restaurant that was apparently made famous for it’s great dumplings. We got a huge variety of things including some Chinese pears, cucumbers, rice, noodles, and of course dumplings. The dumplings were so good that we ended up ordering more! We had a great talk amongst everyone and it was really great to interact with the girls from the other class that I don’t get to see much. Dianne was so sweet and insisted on paying, demanding that we allowed her to so she could “save face” (a huge cultural thing she has been stressing in class since our arrival). Without much room for argument, we let her pay, took a group picture, and were on our way. 

Mall decorated for Chinese New Year

     
     Kara, Kathleen, and I wandered around the mall for a little while completely mesmerized by the decorations. There were hundreds and hundreds of red lanterns that were almost impossible to look away from. After somehow making it out of the lobby, we headed back to the hotel with only a couple of hours until our group New Year’s banquet. In the short time we had, I managed to shower and head to the train station with Adam and Bryan to square away the rest of our tickets for our trip. With that stress off of our shoulders, we met the group at the restaurant for a great celebration. 

     I got the privilege to sit next to the other class’s Chinese teacher, Susan, as well as a student on our trip named Sanford who is originally from Taiwan. It was really cool to see Sanford’s appreciation for the holiday here and how excited he was to be able to celebrate it in China for the first time in 10 years. It was also really nice to have him at the table because he could actually tell me what I was eating, which was definitely a first. Susan also helped out a lot as well and even gave me some travel tips for Hong Kong. 

Group photo

    
    After dinner Dianne made a little toast and thanked everyone for their help, especially the leadership team and Sanford. She gave out some gifts as well as received the typical little red envelope full of money for a New Year’s gift. Generally the older people give them to the younger people, but Sanford said we could just pretend like we don’t understand the culture and do it in reverse. 

     After a great dinner and celebration, we headed home and made sure to buy some fireworks on the way considering it was clearly the thing to do as they were going off everywhere around us. I gave in to my first McDonald’s meal when Bryan asked if I wanted anything brought back because it was just too easy. Unfortunately it wasn’t very good after sitting in the bag for a while, so I guess I will have to go back another time. Not to worry, within an hour we headed back to McDonald’s for ice cream and ended up with delicious strawberry Oreo McFlurrys. 

     After dessert we went to shoot off the fireworks, which we were expected to be awful since they were only about $2 for 7 of them. Surprisingly enough, they actually shot up really high and were super loud. We shot off a few at a street corner and then decided to find some fun places for the rest. After a few more stops we decided to head back on campus and shoot one off of the snowman built in the middle of the quad area. It flipped around on the way up which was a little sketchy but went off as well as the others and left the snowman covered in black. After setting off a few more, we headed upstairs to get some stuff done in our rooms. 

Roof top perch

     Not too much later, around midnight, an unreal amount of fireworks started going off and we all ran to the window down the hall to check it out. Without much hesitation, John and I decided to sneak back up to the roof. With my practice from the night before, we were up there in a matter of seconds only wearing shorts and a t-shirt but luckily John was nice enough to lend me his coat. As soon as we got outside we were awestricken by how close the fireworks were and how they were just going off in any direction you looked as far as you could see. We continued to look around just dumbfounded and made a pathetic attempt to capture the madness in a picture when we saw another person come out onto the roof. I initially freaked out a little thinking we were going to get in trouble, but it was just other kids from the group trying to join the fun. It ended up being Joe, Catriona, Bryan, Justin, John, and I just sitting at the highest point on the roof, which is on top of the air-conditioning system. We sat there for quite a while until eventually there was so much smoke from the fireworks that it was making the new fireworks hard to see. We decided the New Year is anything but good for the air quality but such an amazing site to see. We eventually made our way back inside and packed for our 3-day class trip to Suzhou and Hangzhou that takes off in the morning!

Day 36: February 8, 2013 0.5(-5 ± 131/2)!

     Today definitely wasn’t my favorite day so far. My whole morning was consumed by cramming for my exam, which turned out to be a total waste. I definitely failed it, but at least its over! I was pretty unlucky in that my calculator happened to be dead and one of the key numbers I needed was along the lines of 0.5(-5 ± 13^1/2). That was really the only problem of the 3 I knew how to do, but couldn’t even finish it because the math was too hard without a calculator. Other than that I got rocked and left the test feeling pretty low. It was hard too be too upset, however, considering we now are done with classes until the 25^th! 

     As soon as I got home I did some laundry for the trip in my sink, which is quite an ordeal. I continued to figure out exactly what we want to do. That didn’t last too long as we went out for a group dinner at this famous restaurant called Grandma’s. It is so popular that you have to go and get a ticket and then come back in a few hours to even get a table. We had to wait a while for a table but the timing was actually perfect to figure out what we wanted considering there were probably a couple hundred things on the menu. We ended up with 10 or so dishes for the 6 of us which turned out to be perfect. We somehow managed to get 10 absolutely amazing dishes. The fried eggplant had to be my favorite but the cauliflower and veal were really close behind. With not a bad thing to say about the whole dinner, we decided to skip out on karaoke and head back to the hotel. 

     We somehow came upon the idea to do a power hour, and tried to stop by our favorite Family Mart for beer and didn’t even know what to do when they were closed - this whole New Year’s thing is no joke! Who knows if we will even be able to get food for the next few days. We found a 7-Eleven close by and snagged some beer and headed back. We stumbled upon a good throw back power hour and put Plant Earth video on the TV for the perfect combo. Our mines were blown by the crazy cliff dwelling animals and yet brought back to life with the perfect music. 

     We ended up headed over to a new bar called Dada, which was definitely the weirdest bar I have ever been to. There were Chinese cartoon characters all around yet almost all of the people were American. I even saw a guy in a Notre Dame shirt! There were little TV’s set up for people to play video games on and an awkward dance floor with a projection screen behind it. We got a couple drinks and somehow Adam and I ended up playing this Fish game until half of our group had left. When we finally made ourselves walk away, Tyler and John came with. Adam and I decided to walk back while Tyler and John got a cab. 

     Adam came up with the brilliant idea to grab a road beer so that we could shatter the bottles like Tyler and John did on the way out. The plan didn’t work out so well when I had only taken a couple sips by the time we got home so we had to come up with another idea. I still don’t know how this came about, but we decided to see if there was anyway we could get on the roof of our hotel. We took the elevator to the highest floor, took another flight of stairs one more, and then the first door we tried led to the roof! I, being the bad ass that I am, started to punch out the wooden window, when Adam realized there was just a latch you could undo. That made the process much easier, and just like that we were on the roof! We immediately saw a ladder to take us higher and made our way to the next level while making sure not to die considering the entire roof was covered in snow and ice. When we made it to the top we carefully made our way down the slope to sit by the HOTEL sign and take in the view. We finished our beers and decided to go through with our original plan and shatter the bottles. Adam’s took a crazy bounce and may have landed somewhere on one of the walkways in the hotel so I decided to move to the other side. I got all the way to the edge and chucked it and it just exploded when it hit the ground, which was actually really satisfying. After that we decided to head back downstairs before we got in trouble to find all of our friends’ rooms empty. We started our usual country hour when eventually Jess and John walked in. Apparently they had made their way to Perry’s and didn’t realize we didn’t know. We told them about our little adventure and they were super jealous and decided we would all have to do it again sometime. With that, we all hit the sack.

Day 35: February 7, 2013 New Year's Dinner Minhang Campus

   I got to sleep in a little bit this morning, which was a pretty nice change. When I woke up, I went over to the café to grab some breakfast/lunch and then hung around the hotel working on some trip details. Before I knew it, it was time to get ready for our banquet at Minhang, which is where we will be moving in a couple of weeks. 

New Year's dinner with entire group and President of SJTU & faculty

Pinwheel of Death

  
     Right when we got there we practiced our performance for later in the night. It made us all a little nervous considering the practice didn’t go so well and the people watching didn’t seem very impressed. Not too much later we got seating assignments and got placed in the very far corner, which we thought was a bad thing but actually turned out to be really nice. We could actually hear each other talk and could be a little more rowdy than the people sitting near the middle surrounded by the SJTU staff members. The three graduates students at our table were all really nice, but one was a lot more outgoing than the rest. He immediately thought it would be funny to teach us dirty Chinese words which we thought was great and will definitely keep in our memory banks for future use. We did a lot of cheers and got the tables around us into it by tapping on the lazy susan with our glasses, which is apparently a very northern thing to do.  In China this is called gan bei, and when you cheers you finish your whole glass since the word is basically translated to mean bottoms up.

Pig foot!

     With that, the food started to come out and there was a night full of eating, talking, and tons of performances. We ate everything from bullfrog to bamboo and saw performances ranging from gangnam style to traditional Chinese dancing. Our program was actually the second group to perform and it turned out to be a hit. We started out with our dance troop doing a well-known Chinese dance with a mash up of American songs including YMCA, Cotton-Eyed Joe, and the Electric Slide. From there, everyone else joined in and sang Hail Purdue and then ended singing the Chinese friendship song called pengyou. Everyone was amazed that we took the time to learn the words and all joined in to sing along.

Our group performing

     The performance was followed by the first of many photo shoots of the night and then we returned to our table to continue socializing. After all of the performance were done, they had a fireworks show outside which was pretty shocking. Originally, we thought it was just people banging there tables trying to start a gan bei so we were pretty surprised when there were fireworks going off right outside of the dining court. Madame Ma, the president of SJTU, made sure to make it around to every table and when she stopped at ours it was seriously unbelievable. Within a few seconds, our entire table was swarmed by cameras taking pictures of only Madame Ma, Jess, and I. We could tell it was very political because Madame Ma picked up my glass just to cheers Jess for the picture and made sure to keep eye contact with the camera while shaking our hands. This was honestly one of the most overwhelming things I have experienced since I have been here but it was really interesting to observe first hand. When she left our table, the students said the reason they were so excited was because there are not a lot of girls at SJTU so it was rare to see 2 of us sitting next to each other. 

     After the chaos settled, they started raffling off prizes. A few people in our group won including Jess, Nathan, Zach, and even Dianne and Weiqi. Dianne and Weiqi both freaked out when their names were called because the prizes were supposed to be for students and Weiqi technically wasn’t even invited. They were pretty happy though when everyone got really nice prizes from speakers to hardrives and back up batteries. 

     When Jess returned to our table one of students decided to play a joke on her and tell her that since she won she had to gan bei with everyone at the table, which was probably 10 of us. He went and got her 2 tall beers and somehow managed to keep a straight face until about halfway around the table when Jess finally realized what was going on. She then made him gan bei with her and quit until Zach also won a prize so we told him he had to do the same. Many beers later, our table was definitely one of the most fun at the banquet but sadly enough it was time to head back to campus. The bus ride back could’ve taken all night as far as I was concerned because I would do anything other than study but unfortunately it went by even more quickly than the way there. The rest of the night was consumed with studying for my ME 375 exam and making sure to get a little sleep in there as well.

 2/8:

Day 34: February 6, 2013 Suit Up!

   Today was our last day of class in Xujiahui! We did final presentations for our ME 497 class and then got to leave when we were all done. The exciting news was that I got my picture in the Shanghai paper from the interview yesterday.

     We all laid low after class excited to have nothing to do and then participated in our first of hopefully many “suit up nights.” A lot of the guys here have gotten suits custom made since they are so cheap, so we decided to have a few nights where everyone gets all dressed up and goes out to a nice dinner or bar. Although Jess and I didn’t have suits, we were still allowed to participate as long as we threw on something nice. 

     We decided to head back down to Xintiandi and go back to this place called Dr. Bar that we scoped out last time we were there that looked really nice. We had a group of 10 or 15 and walked into the bar looking pretty fly. Not two minutes later, this older white guy yelled over at us to relax and “take our fucking ties off.” Everyone went down a few buttons and ordered a drink, which were very expensive. I had my first Bellini, which is champagne and peach schnapps that was delicious. Not after too long, the older man made his way over to our table and explained that he was actually the owner of the bar as well as many others in the district. He is actually a very well respected architect and is responsible for building 70% of the Xintiandi district. We all had a good time chatting and whatnot until we decided to make our way elsewhere.

     We ended up just going back to the hotel and a group went out to the bars but myself and a few others stayed behind and watched some SNL: The Best of Will Ferrell and booked some hostels for our trip.  With that it was time to call it a night to prepare for a long day of studying ahead.

Day 33: February 5, 2013 Chili itself can chicken...

  Pretty uneventful day as far as they go. Normal day of class with some group presentations but then we were fortunate enough that our teacher was asked if one of the major local newspapers in Shanghai could interview our class for a story in the paper. She agreed and had them come in and ask questions about our impressions about Shanghai; what we thought of the food, what surprises we had, and so on. After a good conversation she took down some names and a lot of pictures of us with the paper cuttings we made. The winner would get the paper cutting that was made for us at the Shanghai Museum of Arts and Crafts. The story is supposedly going to be run tomorrow and we are all going to try and get papers to see if we made it! 

     We had to stay after class for a little while to practice our performance for this dinner Thursday night and then got to go home. After some blogging, I went on a random dinner exploration with Adam and John to find something new. We found a place that kind of reminded us of a diner and decided to check it out. We got beef and eggplant, noodles, and cheese wontons and it really hit the spot. We even talked about how we are surprised how lucky we get on ordering great meals all of the time. We sat and talked for a while and then headed home to take care of some stuff. I finally got caught up on blogging and some online lectures and then had a “trigger pulling session” as we like to call it, and booked our flights and hostels for our trip. We can’t wait!

Day 32: February 4, 2013 Super Bowl Monday!

     Today was my first experience of what we like to call “Super Bowl Monday.” We got up at 6 am so that we could get to our 6:45 reservation at the Shanghai Brewery. We had a nice table for the same group of us that was at Wuzhen the day before, and had a good place to watch the game. We got some eggs and hash browns for breakfast that were pretty good but once again really overpriced. It was a deal that it came with a free beer though. 

   

    We watched the game and of course the halftime show, which we all thought was pretty good. The disappointing part, however, was that there were unfortunately no American commercials. We got over that pretty quickly but I now need some tips as to which ones I need to YouTube! 

     After the game we made our way back to the hotel and hung out until Adam and I decided we wanted to go grab some stuff from the market and ended up with a giant thing of peanut butter and bread, which was much needed. We then got home and grabbed John to watch Top Gun with us. We pushed me and my roommate’s beds together and made what we call a “mega bed.” I was out probably within the first 5 minutes and everyone else soon followed. Catriona came home to find us all passed out, which was pretty funny. 

     After the movie was over Adam, Matt, and I went to go grab some dinner. We went to this place that Adam swears by and it perfectly hit the spot. We all split some sweet and sour pork, dumplings, and eggplant and all got plenty of food for a great price. We left money and walked out and then realized 2 workers were chasing us down the street. We accidently read the check wrong and left 65 yuan instead of 85 and were very confused. 

     Once we got that all squared away we headed home and got some homework taken care of. I put together a power point presentation and then had to start my online homework that I should have not left to the last minute. It took me until quite a while to get done and then I could not get it to upload for hours and eventually gave up and hoped it would submit over night before the 7 am deadline. Thankfully, I got very lucky and it actually uploaded so I had no issues. I haven’t been so tired in a long time and absolutely passed out when my head hit the pillow.