Total Strangers

With the start of the Zhejiang University trimester (and intensive Chinese language classes) still a few weeks away, the Valpo group definitely enjoyed our four-day weekend (ending today). I still feel as though I’m somewhat on summer vacation as homework for the weekend was only a few pages of reflection writing and reading Confucius’ Analects (with rather dense, though helpful, commentary).

One of the neat aspects of studying abroad at a large university is the presence of dozens of other foreign students. Our group from Valpo now includes a German student, two students from Rhode Island U and occasionally students from Long Island U. We’ve met students from England, Italy, and Cameroon.

For the first few nights of the long weekend we explored Hangzhou’s night life. It took us a couple tries to find a bar with a dance floor. The first bar we visited consisted of young Chinese nonchalantly sitting or standing around little tables while colored lights and thunderous music filled the smoky air. The bar we finally settled on was similar but provided a dance floor and a live band covering a variety of American and Chinese pop music.

On Saturday night we went to a ‘KTV.’ KTV is a cross between a karaoke bar and a hotel where our group rented a room (drinks included) for the night equipped with a karaoke machine. We shared many laughs as we sang everything from Beyoncé to Backstreet Boys.

It is also worth noting for my Nutella-loving friends back at Valpo that there is a little crêpe shop just about 100’ from my dorm which makes banana and Nutella crêpes for ¥9 (about $1.50). Actually the abundance of cheap ice cream (including eye-brow raising flavors such as Rye or Wheat) along with numerous little bakeries have definitely increased my desert and pastry intake over the past few weeks.

The highlight of the weekend though definitely had to be Sunday evening.

Sunday morning started off normally. I awoke before seven, went running up the hill behind campus, then returned to the dorm for a breakfast of eggs and noodles. After breakfast I revised my reflection papers, followed the UO vs MSU football game (Go Ducks!) on ESPN Gamecast, read the news, and emailed. After a mid afternoon snack I decided to take my laptop outside to write (the humidity has decreased to a reasonable level finally). I had hardly began my email when a young Chinese couple walked over to me and greeted me in English.

They introduced themselves as Mr. Egg (he likes eggs, though it is pronounced more like ‘Agga’) and Llena. He’s an English teacher and she teaches preschool. Anyway they were participating in a contest to find foreigners and whoever had the most pictures with foreigners wins an iPhone 6 (not sure on the details, but it doesn’t matter). Anyway we get to talking, the common conversation starters: location, vocation, education, time in Hangzhou…

Five minutes later the rest of the Valpo group walks by, returning from a shopping trip to Wal-Mart. They come over and we all get to talking, two more friends of Agga and Llena’s shows up as well. As our group had no evening plans we ended up spontaneously joining the four Chinese and a group of Italian students for dinner at a nearby ‘American’ restaurant/sports bar called the Vineyard (which serves a very interesting potato-carrot veggie burger). Boisterous conversation continued over drinks and cheesy peanut butter bread (yes it is a delicious thing). Dan explained American football to one of them, we talked about sports, hometowns, and shared the occasional crude jokes.

But that’s not all.

After a couple hours at the Vineyard we took taxis across town to a mall/cinema complex where we met another half dozen Chinese at a Starbucks. It turns out that Egg organizes one of many informal “English” clubs around Hangzhou which are drop-in affairs (often meeting in parks or cafes on weekends) aimed to gather Chinese (and native English speakers) to practice and speak in English. So now at this Starbucks I found myself getting dating advice from two young Chinese women. (I had also just divulged pretty much my entire relationship history to them too.) We talked about hair styles (as they couldn’t believe my summertime long-hair and beard photos) and sexual orientation. I didn’t imagine China would be the place where the LGBTQ topic would be addressed so casually.

We then finished off the night at KFC (some of us hadn’t eaten at the Vineyard) where I ended up talking to an electrical engineer (and briefly met a Chinese-American from Detroit who’d worked on hybrid vehicles for Ford). The engineer and I talked a bit about Chinese and U.S. politics, particularly in relation to the economic/construction/housing policies.

So the best evening thus far in Hangzhou was filled with six hours of impromptu conversation with Chinese strangers (with exceptional English) on topics ranging from dating to sports to LGBT issues to politics to careers.

Leaving KFC we walked past a couple of nice cars, just parked in a row amongst the pedestrians. Well not just nice cars, a Maserati, an Audi R8, and a Ferrari California. A few minutes of ogling by the guys ensued. Then we took a taxi back to campus, it was 10:30pm, so much for that email I started at 3…

Welcome to China.