I can’t really figure out how to link the post directly… So here it is!
We bounded up to the VIP line with huge smiles, waving our passports in front of us. The boxy grey building ahead looked decided less impressive than most of the surrounding pavilions, but as we bypassed the snaking two-hour queue toward the entrance, I couldn’t have felt more patriotic. We were here: the USA pavilion.
It was my second time visiting the 2010 World Expo, another long day of exploring country after country, from Asia to Europe to Oceania— the world seems much more accessible when reduced to the size of a theme park. But something about this pavilion felt different.
We could hardly contain our excitement as we were ushered into the first large waiting room. It felt like we had entered little bubble of home in the middle of China. A large screen projected a scenic montage of beaches and mountains, waving grain and majestic forests, national monuments and iconic landmarks alike.
“Look, it’s New York!”
“That looks like Colorado!”
“That could be Malibu!”
We had seen countless videos similar to this— tourism montages of beautiful scenery. This time however, instead of a vague desire to hop a plane to the UAE or Barbados, I was filled with a sense of pride, even exclusivity. We stood as a small minority in the sea of Chinese faces, savoring the familiarity. Whether or not we had been to these particular places didn’t matter— they were from the US and they were ours.
In a way, it felt rather strange to be so proudly American.
I’ve spent much of the past month and a half striving to become more Chinese— learning to navigate the world of food, bargaining and travel like a native.
To this end, even the littlest things become milestones: using more Mandarin and fewer hand gestures (although a combination of the two still seems to work best), finding the best street food (late-night eggplant and mushroom skewers or handmade noodles), and perfecting the art of using a squatty-potty (a complex process that requires balance, coordination and your own supply of toilet paper).
But even with my best attempts to blend in, I’ve found there are certain, inescapable consequences of being to being “waiguoren,” or a foreigner, in a land where you can’t help but stick out.
Open stares, inflated prices, unsolicited pictures— I quickly learned that the Chinese hold very different standards of personal space and privacy, and that by virtue of being different I was subject to the full execution of their curiosity. Most of the time I’m not sure whether I should feel like a celebrity or an animal in the zoo.
My giddy patriotism cooled a bit as we made our way through the rest of the pavilion. I had heard rumor that the USA pavilion left something to be desired, and this wasn’t far from the truth.
We all had a good laugh about the cheesiness of the video presentations, which featured scene after scene of ethnically diverse actors clad in a rainbow of conservative 90’s fashion— think middle school textbook pictures. A middle-eastern girl, a Chinese boy and a Hispanic boy played in a circle. An African-American boy helped a little blond girl drink from a water fountain. Elderly neighbors helped a young girl plant a garden.
“This is America?” we laughed, incredulous.
“Where does that actually happen?”
The montage ended with actor after diverse actor smiling and saying “Ni Hao” to the camera. America had come to China, and the result was a bit embarrassing to say the least.
I probably would have continued to scoff critically were it not for what happen when we finally made it to the gift shop. I had wandered away from my friends to the other side of the store when I was, as we’ve come to call it, “photo bombed.”
A group of high school girls ran up to me, excitedly pointing to their cameras. “Picture! Picture!” I smiled and flashed a peace sign with each one of them individually. And then with the older woman and her husband standing nearby, respectively. And then with another man who happened to walk past.
Still seeing spots, I seized the lull in camera exchanges to say a quick “xie xie,” and power-walk over to meet my friends again.
It was then that I began to wonder if I had been too quick to write off America’s (albeit cheesy) embrace of diversity.
These days it seems America and China are always portrayed as locked in an intense economic power struggle. But as an American student living in China, I feel can say with some degree of neutrality that, for being portrayed as so intrinsically tied, the two countries have a lot to learn about each other.
Perhaps, when all is said and done, patriotism is the wrong response. Perhaps, when all is said and done, what’s really needed is a bit more cross-cultural playing in a circle and cross-generational garden planting. 90’s attire optional.
We went back to explore the World Expo for the last day of our long weekend— Monday, Oct. 18— the beginning of the last week the Expo is open to the public.
We saw the following pavilions:
We didn’t go inside the South Korea Pavilion (below), but we watched a performance outside it, featuring a group playing traditional percussion instruments and a group of break dancers.
Us, waiting in line for the India Pavilion. We were there about an hour…
Inside the Israel pavilion… there was a cool, imax-type video. Thanks to the advice of a Chinese volunteer and the kind Israeli representative, we were let into the VIP entrance and skipped a 2 hour line wait.
Inside the Moroccan pavilion.
We even got a look at the inside of North Korea…
The sign on the wall said, “Paradise for the People”… I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. hahah.
And at last… the inside of the American pavilion! Walmart, Disney, Chevron, GM… welcome to the land of corporate sponsorship…
And every tacky souvenir you can think of.
Pepperdine IP: Crossing boundaries, changing lives! :)
For dinner we had pizza at an Italian cafe and for dessert, real Belgian waffles. We also went into the Burmese, Netherlands and Caribbean Joint pavilions, making a total of 8 pavilions. We also sat in on part of a musical performance outside the Caribbean pavilion.
Biggest disappointment of the day: there was a 4 hour wait for the Japan pavilion at the beginning of the day so we returned at the end of the day only to have them close the line just before we got in. But all in all, it was such a fun day!
My uncle found this shout-out to my Shanghai blog post for the Graphic. Thanks C-trip!
Of course, there’s plenty more where that came from… Cheap plane tickets are a perfectly acceptable form of bribery. Wink, wink.
Dear beloved people who read my blog:
I’m sorry.
I’ve come to the reluctant and long-overdue conclusion that I am really bad at blogging. It’s not that I don’t have plenty of topics to write about. I have a rather lengthy list that I’ve been promising myself I would post once I had some free time… Yep, free time. hahaha. Hence the long gaps between blog entries and the lack of basic information shared (i.e. classes, learning Mandarin, the Jia/my room, etc.).
It’s coming… Sometime soon… I promise. :)
I just got back from my first trip of the semester. We had a 5 day break, from the 1st to the 5th of October, and some friends and I adventured to Huanshan (Yellow Mountain). I can’t even begin to tell you how amazing it was.
Planning and preparing for a trip on top of all the other craziness of a regular week was a challenge, but Friday came around and, armed with a double-lined fake North Face jacket and a slew of Chinese-brand snacks, I grabbed a taxi to the bus station and we were on our way.
Seven hours later, we arrived in Huangshan. We stayed at an amazing hostel in the Old Town of Tunxi. It was pretty new and hotel quality— very clean and spacious. The owner, Steven, met us at the bus station. He was soooooo incredibly gracious to us and we really owe a lot of trip’s success to his help.
We explored town and ate dinner, family style, at a local restaurant for the rest of the night.
Saturday we woke up fairly early and took a bus out to the village of Hongcun, about an hour-ish from Huangshan. Besides the amazing landscape, Hongcun is famous for being a slice of old-world China. The village architecture is preserved from the Qing Dynasty, and merited Hongcun’s classification as UNESCO world heritage site. It started raining on us while in the afternoon, and we were all ready for some amazing dinner that night. After dinner we had a tea party with some of the amazing local green tea— Huangshan is the premier green tea growing location in China— and played Bananagrams.
Sunday was the first day we went up to the mountain. There are 4 ways up the mountain: to hike up the Eastern side (steep, long, amazing views), to hike up the Western side (really steep, really long, really amazing views), or to cable car up either side. We planned to take the cable car up the Eastern side and hike down the Western side, but we accidentally took the wrong bus and ended up at the trailhead of the Western slope. Unfazed we marched onward. Or rather climbed onward. Climbed up stairs for 7 km. It was pretty intense. My poor friend Alejandra was sick already, and after climbing part of the way with us, opted to go down and wait at the bottom of the mountain for us to come back. The spectacular views made the pain well worth it, though.
We climbed back down the same 7 km of stairs and, exhausted, took a bus back into Tunxi, where we crashed for the night. We stretched out our sore muscles and entertained ourselves with strange Chinese game shows.
Monday morning our group split into mini-groups. All together there were 10 of us (5 guys, 5 girls), and to make things easier we had booked everything separately. We were splurging on a room at a hotel on top of the mountain. My group (Me, Briana, Carly, and Michael) went up to the mountain early in the morning because there was some uncertainty surrounding our reservation. The other group ended up canceling their reservation and staying another night in the hostel because a few of them ran out of cash.
This time we hiked up the Eastern side of the mountain. We had planned again to take the cable car, but in order to save money (and avoid a 4 hour line) we opted to hike up instead. The Eastern side was definitely more crowded, but only slightly less steep. Unfortunately for us, our long weekend coincided with the Chinese National Holiday, meaning we were joining in on the largest mass-migration of people on Earth. At times we felt more like we were fighting crowds at Disneyland than hiking, and I was often worried about being shoved off the narrow stairs, but the views were still spectacular.
Lovers inscribe their names on a golden lock and lock it to the gate. http://www.chinaodysseytours.com/special-topic-about-china/huangshan-lover-locks.html
Once we got to the mountain, we checked into our hotel room. It was tiny and cold— not quite worth the 4-star hotel rating or price, but for the location, we couldn’t complain. From there we went on another expedition out to some of the trails on the backside of the mountain. The view was spectacular and it was a bit less crowded.
We found a quieter area and sat to watch the sunset. As the sun went down, the mountains turned every color from green to blue to purple to red.
After a restless night in our cold room, we got up at 4:30 and hiked out to see the sunrise.
From there we checked out of the hotel, hiked back down the mountain, and made the journey back out to Tunxi to meet up with the others in our group. We spent the rest of the day freshening up, eating lunch, buying souvenirs (I have soooo much good tea now), and walking around town. We found a nice park to walk around, before heading to the airport to head back to Shanghai and a mountain of homework.
In total, we hiked 34 km (about 21 miles) of stairs up and down, up and down. Needless to say, I’m sore, and I want to go back.
Note: The above pictures don’t do the scenery justice AT ALL. But imagine several more layers of blue mountain ranges fading into the background each of them and you’ll at least be a little closer. :)
Also: A few more pictures can be found on my Flickr account, if you’re interested: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32484353@N05/
It hit me outside the shopping mall next to Jing’An Temple.
We had crossed the street and suddenly found ourselves among a small crowd gathered around a tent-pavilion for Tissot Swiss watches.
A larger-than-life Nicole Kidman and a flawless Asian model looked down at us from their respective window displays as we craned our necks through the crowd, pulled closer by the rhythmic beat spilling out of the pavilion.
Then we realized what we were looking at— and laughed, hard.
Inside the tent a posse of tiger print-swathed, shirtless male models flaunted their wrists in time to the suave Mandarin of an emcee.
Photo courtesy of Lynn Pham
Where am I?
I’m in China right now?
It had taken three days for that revelation to sink in, and when it did it was entirely different than I had expected it to be.
When I hopped on the plane at LAX (with a dream and my cardigan), I couldn’t have told you what I expected to find when I stepped off again 17 hours later. It probably would have been some vague notion of street-side dumpling vendors and seas of bicycles. But however hazy my expectations may have been, I guarantee fauxhawk-sporting Chinese models weren’t in the picture.
Of course I had read all about how China was booming and had been told that Shanghai was a very international city. What I hadn’t realized was that “international” translated to a trendy local populace with a penchant for Tissot, Burberry and Ferrari.
What’s more, I had assumed that the realization that I am living in China for a year would arrive with a wave of intense culture shock. But there I was, standing in what could have just as easily been Rodeo Drive or 5th Avenue in the heart of consumerist America— culture shock was no where to be found.
At least, that’s what I thought.
I suppose I should confess at this point that I hate the idea of being a “tourist.” The way I see it, I have more than enough posed pictures, and overpriced souvenir trinkets to last me a lifetime.
Don’t get me wrong— I love to travel, I just want to be more than a spectator wherever I go. Ultimately, I came to China on the preconceived notion that I would be forced out of my comfort zone. While some might view culture shock as an unfortunate consequence of being abroad, I find the prospect of encountering the strange, new and unfamiliar exciting.
So I set out that morning eager to learn and immerse myself in all things Chinese, only to end up confused and somewhat miffed at the general lack of what I perceived to be “Chineseness” around me.
Where were the shady dumpling vendors? The bumper-to-bumper bike traffic?
It wasn’t for a few days that I began to notice the small things. The patches of crumbling buildings and mountains of trash tucked away between glistening high rises. The shrunken, legless girl laying on the pavement with a tin can as high heels click by heedlessly. The blood stain on the road where an old woman was struck down by a taxi.
I’m in China right now.
And suddenly there it was— culture shock had arrived, not in the tsunami wave that I had anticipated, but rather in a slow tide that snuck up and took me by surprise.
Clearly I had underestimated this city, with its strange synthesis of the old and the new, the modern and the traditional, the thriving and the suffering— the growing pains of a country in the midst of rapid change.
It has been a week now since I first arrived at Pudong airport and crossed into what has become my new home. And I can say more definitively now than I could have when I left Malibu that I have no idea what to expect of this year. After one week, I’ve learned more than I’ve ever known about China, and at the same time, never been more confused about the country. When culture shock comes, it rushes in like a flood.
One thing I do know for sure though, is that I can’t wait to dive deeper.
We went to the World Expo yesterday!
We left around 4, after our last session of Mandarin Intensive. The first pavilion we went to was the United Arab Emirates. And by “went to,” I mean waited in line for 2 hours. It was totally worth it though.
A close-up of the outside of the pavilion.
One room inside the pavilion— meeting the people of the UAE/
The most AMAZING imax-type video show. It made me want to go to the UAE.
Then we went through Qatar, because it was right next door and there was no line.
From there, we were all starving and set off in search of food. We crossed over to the other to the other side of the Expo to the European pavilions and went off in search of the Czech pavilion, which Michael said merited the Best Food award on whatever article he read online. But the food was expensive (very) and lots of meat, so we wandered some more until, faint from hunger, we stumbled into an Irish pub restaurant. It wasn’t very good, but it was food.
Rejuvenated, we went on to the Spanish pavilion.
Outside of the pavilion.
Live flamenco dancer... in a cave? ...with bones? ...and lots of cool video projections.
The creepy GIANT robo-baby. Random.
Those were the only 3 pavilions we went inside for the entire 6 hours we were there, due to the fact that we spent so long looking for food and that the entire Expo is GIGANTIC. But because we wandered so much, we had the opportunity to see a lot of different pavilions.
India
Sri Lanka? Don't quote me on that just yet...
Russia
Poland
Croatia
Turkmenistan
I hope to go back and see some of the ones I missed before it closes in November!
Whoever established the luggage weight limit is a very cruel individual…
(The ones on the left are my textbooks and the right, for fun.)
Also, I have a developed a deep, passionate love for spacesaver bags.
I love this bag.
And, really, what’s not to love: it’s a duffel bag, it’s a backpack, and I could probably fit inside it.
Not only that but it carries with it the distinct aroma of ’80s sweat and mothballs. Seriously, it’s overpowering— think Richard Simmons in your grandmother’s closet.
To make matters worse, my dad decided to make good use of a gag gift and treated the bag’s waterproof lining with a liberal coating lavender-scented “Monkey-Butt Powder.” Which, although it did wonders for removing the slight stickiness of deteriorating plastic, was the olfactory equivalent of moving Richard out of the closet and into a nursing home.
But I think it’s wonderful— and not just because of vague hopes that I’ll be less likely to get robbed. Smell and all, I love this bag because of where it comes from.
I love the fact that instead shopping at Walmart, or some other seedy discount store, I dug through giant, dusty Tupperware boxes buried in the corner of my garage. I love the fact that I found ticket stubs in Chinese and sugar packets from Hong Kong tucked away and forgotten in the pockets. I love that it brings things full circle.
You see, this bag (and the larger, grey one that shared the same Tupperware space) was first and last used on another trip to China— a three-week adventure my parents took in the ’80s. Since then, it has moved from box to box, state to state, musty attic to dusty garage corner, awaiting the day that it would be pulled out, dusted off and taken on a new adventure. And now, twenty years later, it’s going back to China with the next generation of the Jaynes family.
I can only imagine the sights we will see— the bag and I. The cities, the wilderness, the airports, the taxis. The new and exciting things we’ll experience as we travel across the continent of Asia.
And I can only imagine the strange, new smells it will come home with. Those of unfamiliar and exotic foods, of dirt and grime, of poverty. And of course, of all the days when infrequent showering and a scarcity of deodorant will make even Richard Simmons run for cover.
Sure, a few inflexible parts may be broken and we may need a few patch jobs along the way, but the adventure will be well worth it. And eight months later, we’ll return, filled to the brim with a jumbled mixture of the new and old. New perspectives to old ideas, new passions for old interests, new family and old friends. And above all, memories.
These will be the memories that last. These will be the memories that sustain. And perhaps, another thirty years down the road, they will be pulled out, dusted off and relived again.
