China, Day 1: Culture Shock?

This post was written on Sunday, July 11, sometime around 8:00 PM China time.

Today was our first day in China.  We are in CHINA.  I think we keep repeating it to ourselves, but don't quite feel the effect for some reason.  (I chalk it up to us blogging instead of sleeping and thus lacking the sufficient energy to appreciate the novelty of being in a country neither of us have been to before.)  Somehow it hasn't sunk in? XD

We left this morning early early in the morning and met Maiko-san in the lobby.  She gave us some breakfast that she bought yesterday (ah, she's so nice~) and helped us get a taxi to the bus stop.  I'm really going to miss her and our tour group... that was so much fun!  going to miss them too. they really made the rest of our japan trip very fun  Anyways, we got our tickets to the airport and went through security... etc, all that, without any problems.  Yay ^ ^  No special upgrades today, though XP  It was a pretty short flight, less than 3 hours, so it was fine.

As we arrived in Beijing, I kept looking outside (while nodding off), but all I saw was clouds until the plane jerked as it hit the ground.  Somehow like that, we were suddenly in China.  (I'm kind of disappointed I couldn't see Beijing from above... but somehow I think that might not have worked anyways, even if I hadn't been nodding off.)  A cloudy and drizzly Beijing welcomed us to China.

Our first view of beautiful, sunny Beijing.

yeah when i looked out the window for the first time, all i thought was "smog" lol

After going through customs, we walked slowly past a lot of chinese people looking for our supposedly noticeable driver.  instead, we found a man wearing a pink shirt that had our names written in pen on printer paper -_- if we hadn't looked closely, we would've walked right past him. he was nice though. didn't speak a word of english, but christine chatted him up while we drove us to the hotel.  The hotel is decent--clean--and kind of in a suburban area with not many touristy places close by. 

one definite change we noticed from japan and china is the level of politeness, particularly women in particular.  the lady exchanging christine's money just shoved it at her (threw it through the slot, really) and the bellhop that met our car at the hotel was talking on the phone and therefore, didn't help us with baggage until he  was done talking and the baggage was already out of the car.  when we asked for suggestions at the hotel desk for places to explore, the lady didn't even look up from her work and gave us a map instead (after we asked).  Yeah, she was kind of... well, I asked her if there was anything around, and she was like, "Like what?" and I was like, "Places to see?" and she was like, "What do you want to see?" and I'm thinking to myself, "What do you THINK I want to see??"  Luckily, one man at the concierge desk (the lady was at Information) came over to help us, and he was super super nice.... so, lesson of the day: we should only talk to the males, because the Chinese women are mean and bitter :<

the nice concierge suggested that we try silk street marketplace for souvenir shopping and food. as we walked there, we couldn't help but notice the different atmosphere---cars swerving crazily as pedestrians walk randomly in the streets and lack of street fashion AND surprisingly, some things are reallllllly expensive over here.  luckily, at the marketplace we stopped at, the essentials like water are cheap, but tea and snacks like chips are ridiculously priced.  Especially the foreign food.  Pocky is pretty cheap, less than $1.00, and some of the Asian chips are similarly priced.  The western brand chips like Pringles are pretty expensive though, like $6 or $7 for a small can.  I even saw a bottle of milk tea for about $15.  Somehow, I feel like Wei lied to us about things being cheap XD;...

Silk Market, from the outside.

Inside Silk Market, but you can't quite see the rows and rows of stalls.

silk street reminds me of a giant chinatown in LA except with dozens of tour buses parked in the front.  it's funny to think that in other places, you want to shop for authentic souvenirs.  in china, you shop for things you can get elsewhere but at the cheapest price you can absolutely bargain for.  for the 6 or so floors of merchandise, people were bargaining for silk ties and scarves, jewelry, clothes with brands from D&G, abercrombie and fitch to the obscure, converse shoes and whatever else imaginable.  and of course, handbags----i've never seen so many (un)authentic ones in my life.  each stand even had catalogs of the real designer bags so that people could browse and ask for those specifically.  although the market was significantly less loud than shibuya 109, the store people were like  wolves.  the second you expressed more than a glance at an item, they'd pounce and wonder where you were from, what you were interested in, how much it cost. we were looking at one leggings stand and the lady says (in chinese) that the leggings were 300 rmb, which converts to $50....for leggings!!!! 

Yeah, it was weird, she was like, "What are you looking for?  Stockings?  They are 300 RMB, final price, no bargain."  It was pretty crazy in there... we are so not used to this kind of culture =\  Tiffy managed to get some leather gloves for pretty cheap, though :3  I had to be kind of mean, but in the end she got some real (we think) leather gloves for less than $10, and they're perfect for Tifa ^ ^

ate dinner in the shady food court on the lower basement floor lol so we at least ate authentic chinese food (pork and chive dumplings) at a reasonable price.  drank pearl and rose milk tea and then headed back before sunset came lol it's too scary to be in china in the dark

It wasn't that shady, just very... different from Japan.  The food court had several shops lined up on the sides for different kinds of food, and a bunch of tables in the middle -- kind of like the mall food courts, but not quite as clean.  The dumplings were good, though, and one lady helped us (sort of) pick what to order for our food.  What caught my eye was when I was watching the guy make our drinks.  First of all, unlike America, where people say, "May I help you?" or "What would you like?" or in Japan, where they welcome you and then ask the equivalent of "May I help you?", the servers here just stare at you and ask very straightforwardly, "What do you want?" (translated literally)  Anyways, the tea we got was a mix of powders that he just dumped into the cups, all using the same spoon, and he took the pearls out of a container on the counter and the ice from the freezer on the side.  When it looked like Tiffy's drink didn't have enough liquid, he just took some out of mine and poured it into hers, and mixed everything together with the same stirrer.  It was just kind of weird for me to see that, because I'm so used to people being very careful and meticulous about being clean, hygenic, and separating orders.  Very different culture.

Some Engrish for you :3

so now here we are in china...it's different. things are more expensive than we thought (even more than japan?!), people are more rude than we expected and we really don't want to spend money lol

i miss japan.  It's kind of sad, but we really do miss Japan.  I think we were totally spoiled ;;

ok, going to head back now to doing my laundry in the bathtub and watching mtv mandarin

Yeah, so we did our laundry in the bathtub because it's too expensive to send out, and we've been watching MTV, which is showing us a lot of cute songs and videos, but we don't know the names for them XD  So I've been taking notes and stuff, hopefully I can look them up when we get internet.  I'll post some of the more interesting ones :3  Well, that's pretty much our day.  Oh, and on our way back from the market, we saw a guy randomly vomit near (not into) a trash can.  It was weird.  And we saw this huge bear dog.  Oh, and Tiffy defiled government property XD  (She accidentally tore a bill in half, and we had to ask for tape to fix it.  By the way, does anyone know the Chinese word for "tape"? o.O)

Bear dog, with owner's legs for reference.

 

Okay, it's pretty early, but we're going to watch some more MTV and then crash XD  We're meeting our guide at 8:30 tomorrow.  Tiffy... what if he's cute?!

no jinxing now :P

 Bonus picture: A very comfortable Tiffy wrapped up in the bed XD