Villaged and Shanghaied

I am a complete man magnet in the south of China.

In the village (more to come about it later) on the final night of our stay we invited the entire population of the town to have a bit of a farewell party. Several of the men of the village saw me playing with one of the kids (I was swinging her around through the air) and they all came up to me at once. At first I was afraid that they were angry, but in fact they wanted to know how much I weighed (102kg) and then they wanted to show me the biggest man in their village (85kg). I picked up their biggest guy, at which point every one of the men around me started feeling my limbs, particularly my thigh muscles amazed them.

Then the three biggest men in the town insisted on arm wrestling me (I won). They then insisted that I arm wrestle their biggest guy with my left hand only while he got to use both of his arms (he won). Then they made me lift the two biggest guys at the same time. Everyone in the town cheered (we all won).

Two days later in the Stone Forest (more to come about our trip later) the owner of a restaurant came up to me and our group to inform us all that I was very handsome.

Several men on the train came up to me as well, including one who gave me the best compliment I’ve ever received. We were sitting as a group outside of our cabin, and this 20ish guy walks up to us, looks at me and announces, “You are so….you are so..MAN!”

It turns out that guy was a recent college graduate who now runs a Communist Youth program (more about communism to come—sorry about all the apologies for non-posts, I’ve only recently gotten my computer back).

We finished our first day of class at 3PM today; my class actually went a bit long because we’d fallen into an interesting conversation about Richard Cory, the song by Simon and Garfunkle, not the poem (more to come about class).

The six teachers, and many of the Chinese kids have decided to go see a movie about the Rape of Nanking, an old movie that’s just been translated into English. Before the movie starts we needed to pass about an hour, so we stepped into a mall. It looked like a small mall from when I first walked in, but have now realized that it is, in fact, 13 stories tall with a huge inner atrium; it is the single biggest, most terrifying mall I’ve ever been in.

I’ve also realized that I’m terrified of mannequins. Because they’re terrifying.

Also, I am officially in love with Shanghai. The French colonial buildings (the school in which we’re teaching was built in 1913, and is in the colonial style) make stark contrasts directly next to the sky scrapers. And this city is chock full o’ skyscrapers. And the tall buildings don’t look like the ones in, say, Manhattan or even Hong Kong; they are all intensely futuristic and oddly shaped—the tops of towers end in spires, and flowers, and balls, and arches, and glowing lights. Across the side of most buildings are splashed three story high definition TVs.

The food is amazing; you want a delicious pork bun, that’ll be seven cents please. Would you like a gigantic (and furiously spicy) Hunnan dinner (the best Chinese food I think I’ve ever had), that will be two dollars please.
And the smog. There is so much smog. The air becomes hazy about a block away. The whole sky is gray, and you can stare at the sun anytime of the day. Yet it gives the whole city almost a blade runner appearance. I love it.