It was crazy to be the one taking care of my parents for the first time. They were staying in my apartment in China. I had done all the vacation planning and I did all the speaking at the restaurants or cabs in my limited Chinese. It was the first time I felt like a real adult and I feel they saw me as an adult for the first time as well. They came with full trust in me, when I asked what do you want to do while you are in China the answer was always, “whatever you want!”
I soon found that I had to make some major adjustments to the way I make plans to accommodate for my parents. When I am with my friends, we want to pack as much into each vacation day as possible and all at the lowest costs. However, when I told my parents that hostel prices must be up because of the Chinese New Year and was a 100 kaui Hostel ok, my dad responded we were not staying anywhere that was only $15 US! Then he added that maybe we should be searching for a “hotel” rather than “hostel”. I laughed that I have definitely been in China too long when I complain about spending $15 on a hotel! The other plan adaptation they suggested was after standing for our first 2 hour metro ride to Dongmen. My dad kindly asked, “Do you think we could call a cab to take us home?” Little did he know that calling a cab in China means standing in the road with your arm out. I learned this in Chengdu when our concierge saw me with my suitcases at breakfast and asked if I wanted her to call me a cab. I said thank you and then she proceeded to walk outside with me and stand in the streets to flag down a cab. I laughed I could have done that just as easily, well honestly maybe not; cabs sometimes don’t like to pick up foreigners bc they assume you don’t know enough Chinese to tell them where you are going. It’s annoying, even if it is often true. My parents kept looking in each taxi we took to see if we could get their number to call them to pick us to go to the airport on the way home. I think Hong Kong taxis have a dispatch bc I have heard the radio call in a hk taxi before, but never in mainland China. My mom reached up from the backseat and pointed to a phone number showing on the cabs dash. This turned out to be the radio station, to which the driver smiled and turned up the Chinese pop music. I said thank you and bobbed my head as if that was want we had wanted, unable to explain my mom’s behavior in Chinese. I turned around and told her to sit back and buckle up! Yep I am gonna be a good mom!
Dongmen, I don’t think I have written about Dongmen before. It is best described as wonderfully awful! It is a pedestrian street lined with stores as well as street vendors. No matter what time you go, the streets are always packed shoulder to shoulder with people. Street musicians and beggars set up every few feet and are increasingly more aggressive tapping you with their dish or following up until you give in. The worst is what we call Sketch Bridge. This is a walkway across the busy street from the normal Dongmen to the less classy section of Dongmen. The bridge is so crowded that you literally stand on each step for about a minute before you can move up again. People will squeeze through with merchandize or strollers or just garbage, making it one of the most dangerous places to get pick pocketed. Then when you get on the flat section, venders set up even though there is no room. This is also where people with diseases or physical deformities will expose themselves asking for money. One man I have seen multiple times there looks like he was born with no eyes, his face is completely flat with the exception of a mouth and nose holes. Why would I continually put myself through this torture? The tailor and fabric market is on the other side! She does amazing work. I took my dad there the first day to get a suit made and get 2 pair of pants for me as well. Randomly we ran into AnaRae, who was there to pick up some clothes from the tailor as well.
In china loyalty is very important. So Mrs. Wang is AnaRae’s tailor and whenever she sends people to her they have to say my American friend told me about you. After the tailor AnaRae took us to her bag lady to get a good deal on some suitcases. I have another bag lady for purses. We have an agreement that she will give me and my friends good deals if we bring people to her. So whenever you talk to your friends about something you need, one of us will say, “I have a guy for that!” In my little village I have a milk tea lady that holds up a cup everything I pass by, tempting me. Then when I come up to her I don’t even have to order she know exactly what I want! Roz has a cigarette man that does the same thing. In the US no one ever remembers me much less than what I ordered last time. But here everyone recognizes me bc I am a foreigner. AnaRae says all the time when she bargains, “No, I am not a tourist I live her, I want to Chinese price! I buy things here all the time, I know you remember me!” oh day I will be able to bargain like Chinese people.
I was significantly better at bargaining when we went to Hong Kong, because we could argue in English. I took my parents to the temple street market and they were so impressed with my bargaining, until my mom realized that this was a lot like yard sale-ing and got a little too into the shopping. Dad dragged us away when we collected too much to carry. The language got a little tricky in the Chinese restaurants in HongKong. Bc I know enough mandarin to order at a restaurant, but Hongkong people learn a different Chinese pronunciation Cantonese. So I didn’t know if I should try English or if my Chinese dialect would translate. Either way the Chinese restaurants in hongkong where not as impressive and we never did get any rice! Macau was even more of a language dilemma. The official languages in Macau were Portuguese and Cantonese. The closest I knew where Spanish and mandarin, both of which were no help. Luckily the hotels and most of the taxi spoke English. But that meant we could only eat at the hotels, which was delicious but expensive.
We did a little sightseeing in Shenzhen, but mostly we spent time meeting my Chinese friends. Everyone was so excited when I said my parents were coming to China for the first time! They all came to Shekou for the first time to meet my parents, even though I had invited them to my apartment before with no luck! Paul was the first friend I introduced them to, he was also my first Chinese friend in China. Maybe me and Heidi were walking along the streets of Longhua drinking beer at noon on a Sunday just because we could! That’s when Paul come up and introduced himself. I realize now how lucky we are that he was such a kind and genuine guy. That’s not usually who you attract walking around drinking in the streets. Next they met my friend Rose who I met on a bus home from our National Day vacation in Guilin. That was her hometown and she was heading but to Shenzhen for work. We stayed up and talked the whole 10 hour bus ride and decided to be best friends! My most recent friend is Simon, On Thanksgiving I was on my way to meet a Chinese family for dinner and he came up to me on the crowded bus and started talking. I was the most cautious about him and told him we could start with email and I would upgrade him to qq and then cell phone privileges for good behavior. He has since then introduced me to all his friends who I absolutely love! He has also taken upon himself to teach me to cook for myself and even invited himself and his friend Amy over to cook for my parents. Had it not been a holiday vacation for most people, they would have met some of my teacher friends too. They all loved my parents and even asked if in Chinese tradition they could call them Uncle and Aunty.
I was so concerned about trying to pack as much China sites in as possible, I forgot who I was planning the trip for. My parents are country people who don’t like the crowds or business of the city. Sitting around the dinner table with my Chinese friends was their favorite part of the trip. And that showed them much more about China than we would have gotten from any tourist site. My mom kept saying over and over that she felt so much better about leaving knowing I had so many people here who love me and would take care of me. The only resistance they gave when I talked about staying another year was, “but we will miss you, and we wouldn’t be here!” That’s the best argument I’ve heard to convince me to come back home. But I am not ready for my adventure here to end.
I soon found that I had to make some major adjustments to the way I make plans to accommodate for my parents. When I am with my friends, we want to pack as much into each vacation day as possible and all at the lowest costs. However, when I told my parents that hostel prices must be up because of the Chinese New Year and was a 100 kaui Hostel ok, my dad responded we were not staying anywhere that was only $15 US! Then he added that maybe we should be searching for a “hotel” rather than “hostel”. I laughed that I have definitely been in China too long when I complain about spending $15 on a hotel! The other plan adaptation they suggested was after standing for our first 2 hour metro ride to Dongmen. My dad kindly asked, “Do you think we could call a cab to take us home?” Little did he know that calling a cab in China means standing in the road with your arm out. I learned this in Chengdu when our concierge saw me with my suitcases at breakfast and asked if I wanted her to call me a cab. I said thank you and then she proceeded to walk outside with me and stand in the streets to flag down a cab. I laughed I could have done that just as easily, well honestly maybe not; cabs sometimes don’t like to pick up foreigners bc they assume you don’t know enough Chinese to tell them where you are going. It’s annoying, even if it is often true. My parents kept looking in each taxi we took to see if we could get their number to call them to pick us to go to the airport on the way home. I think Hong Kong taxis have a dispatch bc I have heard the radio call in a hk taxi before, but never in mainland China. My mom reached up from the backseat and pointed to a phone number showing on the cabs dash. This turned out to be the radio station, to which the driver smiled and turned up the Chinese pop music. I said thank you and bobbed my head as if that was want we had wanted, unable to explain my mom’s behavior in Chinese. I turned around and told her to sit back and buckle up! Yep I am gonna be a good mom!
Dongmen, I don’t think I have written about Dongmen before. It is best described as wonderfully awful! It is a pedestrian street lined with stores as well as street vendors. No matter what time you go, the streets are always packed shoulder to shoulder with people. Street musicians and beggars set up every few feet and are increasingly more aggressive tapping you with their dish or following up until you give in. The worst is what we call Sketch Bridge. This is a walkway across the busy street from the normal Dongmen to the less classy section of Dongmen. The bridge is so crowded that you literally stand on each step for about a minute before you can move up again. People will squeeze through with merchandize or strollers or just garbage, making it one of the most dangerous places to get pick pocketed. Then when you get on the flat section, venders set up even though there is no room. This is also where people with diseases or physical deformities will expose themselves asking for money. One man I have seen multiple times there looks like he was born with no eyes, his face is completely flat with the exception of a mouth and nose holes. Why would I continually put myself through this torture? The tailor and fabric market is on the other side! She does amazing work. I took my dad there the first day to get a suit made and get 2 pair of pants for me as well. Randomly we ran into AnaRae, who was there to pick up some clothes from the tailor as well.
In china loyalty is very important. So Mrs. Wang is AnaRae’s tailor and whenever she sends people to her they have to say my American friend told me about you. After the tailor AnaRae took us to her bag lady to get a good deal on some suitcases. I have another bag lady for purses. We have an agreement that she will give me and my friends good deals if we bring people to her. So whenever you talk to your friends about something you need, one of us will say, “I have a guy for that!” In my little village I have a milk tea lady that holds up a cup everything I pass by, tempting me. Then when I come up to her I don’t even have to order she know exactly what I want! Roz has a cigarette man that does the same thing. In the US no one ever remembers me much less than what I ordered last time. But here everyone recognizes me bc I am a foreigner. AnaRae says all the time when she bargains, “No, I am not a tourist I live her, I want to Chinese price! I buy things here all the time, I know you remember me!” oh day I will be able to bargain like Chinese people.
I was significantly better at bargaining when we went to Hong Kong, because we could argue in English. I took my parents to the temple street market and they were so impressed with my bargaining, until my mom realized that this was a lot like yard sale-ing and got a little too into the shopping. Dad dragged us away when we collected too much to carry. The language got a little tricky in the Chinese restaurants in HongKong. Bc I know enough mandarin to order at a restaurant, but Hongkong people learn a different Chinese pronunciation Cantonese. So I didn’t know if I should try English or if my Chinese dialect would translate. Either way the Chinese restaurants in hongkong where not as impressive and we never did get any rice! Macau was even more of a language dilemma. The official languages in Macau were Portuguese and Cantonese. The closest I knew where Spanish and mandarin, both of which were no help. Luckily the hotels and most of the taxi spoke English. But that meant we could only eat at the hotels, which was delicious but expensive.
We did a little sightseeing in Shenzhen, but mostly we spent time meeting my Chinese friends. Everyone was so excited when I said my parents were coming to China for the first time! They all came to Shekou for the first time to meet my parents, even though I had invited them to my apartment before with no luck! Paul was the first friend I introduced them to, he was also my first Chinese friend in China. Maybe me and Heidi were walking along the streets of Longhua drinking beer at noon on a Sunday just because we could! That’s when Paul come up and introduced himself. I realize now how lucky we are that he was such a kind and genuine guy. That’s not usually who you attract walking around drinking in the streets. Next they met my friend Rose who I met on a bus home from our National Day vacation in Guilin. That was her hometown and she was heading but to Shenzhen for work. We stayed up and talked the whole 10 hour bus ride and decided to be best friends! My most recent friend is Simon, On Thanksgiving I was on my way to meet a Chinese family for dinner and he came up to me on the crowded bus and started talking. I was the most cautious about him and told him we could start with email and I would upgrade him to qq and then cell phone privileges for good behavior. He has since then introduced me to all his friends who I absolutely love! He has also taken upon himself to teach me to cook for myself and even invited himself and his friend Amy over to cook for my parents. Had it not been a holiday vacation for most people, they would have met some of my teacher friends too. They all loved my parents and even asked if in Chinese tradition they could call them Uncle and Aunty.
I was so concerned about trying to pack as much China sites in as possible, I forgot who I was planning the trip for. My parents are country people who don’t like the crowds or business of the city. Sitting around the dinner table with my Chinese friends was their favorite part of the trip. And that showed them much more about China than we would have gotten from any tourist site. My mom kept saying over and over that she felt so much better about leaving knowing I had so many people here who love me and would take care of me. The only resistance they gave when I talked about staying another year was, “but we will miss you, and we wouldn’t be here!” That’s the best argument I’ve heard to convince me to come back home. But I am not ready for my adventure here to end.
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