A Taste of 'Merica

I love living abroad. I'm sure you've been able to gather that from what you know of my history, bouncing around the globe from place to place at every opportunity I get, but I truly do think that travel is addictive. If you've ever read one of my favorite books, Bewildered Travel by Frederick Ruf, or indeed have traveled to a truly unfamiliar place by yourself, you may understand as I do the value of being completely lost in a place, disoriented and in awe, depending only on your own intuition to navigate and explore. Ruf frames travel as a religious experience, which I think is true in the abstract sense. In a more concrete way, traveling to places that are truly different from the one where you were born and raised forces you to confront all of your prior convictions, even the things that you haven't even realized you were convinced of. Living outside of them, for even a short time, lets you question those convictions and discover that there are ways of life completely contrary and foreign to your own, and I think realizing that there is something powerful and beautiful in that is the deepest lesson that travel can teach. I often find myself pausing when in other countries (usually in large, bustling cities) to look around and notice that I've stumbled in on a completely different ecosystem from my own, another world with all of its own problems, triumphs, and defeats that has been functioning completely outside of my awareness before I came and will continue to bustle along after I've left.

Then again, another thing that traveling does is make you truly appreciate the things about home that you miss most while you're away. As counter-intuitive as it may seem to some people, I never love being home more than when after I've traveled to some spectacular location. To give a slightly silly example: when I was in Greenville over Christmas break, I think my parents became somewhat concerned about how moved I was by the great customer service we got nearly everywhere. This is typical of the polite, friendly Southeast, but is far removed from the brusque treatment given to customers at nearly every British establishment (that is one English stereotype that is almost completely true). That's not to say that I don't love living in Oxford; I truly do! Rather, having the cashier at Publix ask me about my week and compliment my blouse made me emotional because it was something I had never truly appreciated until I became accustomed to tight smiles and averted eyes at Tesco. Living outside America has truly made me a more patriotic American; not because of some lofty political insights, but because the less than stellar parts of living abroad have made me love the conveniences of being home.

Anyway, that's a long and uncharacteristically philosophic introduction meant to convey the fact that while I do love being immersed in other cultures and ways of life, I also appreciate the allure of home, even while I'm abroad. The past week and a half has been a true mixture of both, so let's start with the cool Chinese stuff first (since most of you are reading this from the comfort of highly-efficient American air conditioning!).  First, the week before this one at work was pretty run-of-the-mill, working on translations and researching various hotels and other possible investments for the company, but I did go to two interesting dinners that were completely foreign. On Tuesday, I went with two friends to a restaurant that serves traditional Sichuan-style food and also features a show of, among other acts, Sichan Opera, or mask-changing. The three actors all wore different painted masks (only one breathed fire!), and then they carried out a complex dance, where at intervals they would wave a hand over their face to reveal a different mask that had somehow appeared without explanation. It's a beautiful art, all bright colors and deception, and I had an absolute blast! After dinner, the three of us went into the Jinli district, an area of Chengdu that has been refurbished to look ancient and features ponds, lanterns, and other vaguely cheesy yet still beautiful details characteristic of China's past. It was crowded and overpriced, but was still an interesting after-dinner walk.

Later in the week, Mr. Chen and Florence invited me to dinner again, this time to a seafood restaurant. I love most types of seafood, but I was pleasantly surprised by the kind that this restaurant offered. When you first enter the restaurant, you have to first walk through a large room filled with fish tanks, which is where you order your dinner...right from the live fish, shellfish, eels, frogs, and other creatures swimming in the tanks! Here's a photo of Mr. Chen picking out a crab for us to give you an idea of the craziness of the experience:

When I was asked my preference, I told them to go ahead and order for us, so we ended up with crab, welks, small conches, and mussels, cooked in a variety of sauces and mannerisms. I ate far too much, but enjoyed every bit of the food, as well as the friendly conversation that always accompanies a dinner with two of the nicest people I've been lucky enough to meet in Chengdu. That night, I went to bed with a full belly and a happy heart!

Friday night after work, I went with a coworker to meet some of his friends to play mah-jongg. When I was in Beijing, I'd learned to play the rummy-like game with tiles, but the version played here in Sichuan is slightly different and played at a much quicker pace. My friends were also playing for money, so I decided to just watch, and for the first few games it looked something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIcxV-VOPlE . Although I slowly started to figure things out, I was still confused as to how the money changed hands, so I watched and drank tea and ate noodles rather than taking part.

The next day, I had no plans until dinner, and I'd decided to make it a very American Saturday. After being in China for two weeks with no contact with other foreigners, no coffee, and no Western food (except the peanut butter and Nutella I occasionally ate spoonfuls of!) I was long overdue for a taste of home. Again, there are some experienced travelers who would scoff at me, but I love America even more when I'm not at home, so I will scoff right back!

The first order of business was to take the subway into the very center of the city, where there is a beautiful Starbucks with surprisingly fast Wifi. I spent the morning sipping on an Americano, and I really do mean that I sipped: with the exchange rate, it cost about 4 US Dollars, so I savored every drop of espresso and hot water!

stereotypical Starbucks shot

I was reading scholarly articles that I downloaded for my DPhil research, but I took a break to help a nice Australian backpacker (and the first foreigner I've met here) get directions to his hostel. After almost four hours, I was hungry and ready for a break, so I strolled out onto the street until I found a McDonalds, and then allowed myself three of my guiltiest pleasures for lunch: fried chicken and french fries with Diet Coke. I spent the rest of the afternoon strolling around the shopping district of the city, people watching and window shopping in the expensive Western stores. Then I had enough time to go home and lay down for an hour before I had to get ready to go to dinner.

One of my friends at Oxford has an old friend (also American!) that now lives in Chengdu, so he'd helped us exchange contact info. When I told Ari that my Saturday was all about a taste of home, he told me about this small Italian restaurant that has sprung up in the city that was offering a tasting menu of authentic Italian food and wines that evening. Needless to say, I jumped at the thought of a formal dinner with wine to boot! The crowd ended up being a good mix of Chinese and foreigners, and the meal was absolutely delicious. Afterwards, we took a picture together in the small but undeniably Italianate restaurant:

Ari had also told me about a local bar that serves a variety of European beers, so we finished up the night with a trip there, where I had a pint of a delicious Belgian wheat beer. I didn't stay for long, since it was almost midnight and I had to be up early for church the next morning, but we met some friends of Ari's from Singapore, and I went to bed that night full, tired, and happy.

The next morning, I went to church with Grace and out to lunch with some of the friends from church, and then spent the afternoon with everyone at a furniture store owned by one of the church ladies. We sipped tea, nibbled on fruit, and relaxed, and I helped some of the children practice their English. It turned into a whole day, including dinner, and I had so much fun chatting with everyone and learning about their lives. Here's a picture of me with 'Jessie', a four year old girl who is practicing her colors (in Chinese and English), and my friend Alicia:

Then, all too soon, it was Monday again, and back to work. I do have to say that this week has been significantly busier than the last few, but I'll only tell two short stories.

The first happened on Tuesday. I'd been informed Monday afternoon that I was to go to a meeting at one of the Group's other companies on Tuesday, but hadn't really been given too much information about what it was. When I got there, I found out that representatives from a European company were coming to learn about the company and discuss possible future business ventures, which sounded interesting to me. Before they arrived, I was given a short introduction about the company itself and what they were hoping to do with the Europeans. Then, when the guests arrived, we sat down in a conference room and my boss's boss started speaking Mandarin and then paused and looked to me to interpret! Having been given no prior warning, I stumbled a bit at the beginning, but recovered and managed to convey most of the information on both sides for the first part of the meeting, which was just a general introduction, etc. This was followed by a technical explanation of the Group's products, which was blessedly interpreted by someone who knew a lot more industrial vocabulary than I do, but then I was expected to translate for about an hour on the projects for which the Europeans were looking for a joint venture partner, which included wind tunnels, of all things. Here, I started to develop a major headache, since I know very little about wind tunnels in English, and much less in Chinese! By the end of the meeting, which lasted all afternoon and included a dinner where my presence and interpretation was still required, I had a crushing headache and was more tired than I have been in a long, long time. That night, I crawled into bed around 7 and didn't even make it all the way through a movie before I fell asleep.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent preparing for a meeting with the Group's President and Vice President, who were in town and wanted to hear about my progress on the European hotels, as well as some other miscellaneous business I've been helping my boss with. As meetings in China tend to do, ours ran incredibly long, and I was asked to sit in on another discussion about a possible investment in the US, so I didn't end up being released from work until almost 9 pm! Which brings me to Friday, today, which is blessedly an easier day (hence the blog writing breaks). I did, however, find out that I've been ask to accompany the Group's President on a trip to visit the project currently under construction in Hainan, aka China's tropical paradise: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hainan+china&client=firefox-a&hs=eEr&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=fflb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=_7nRU6CeGYep7AbakoFQ&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAg&biw=1142&bih=675 . Needless to say, I think I shall have some interesting things to report next week!