The Great Wall, The X-Files, and a Race

Another pleasant weekend. On Friday, Lili, Bai Kunning and I went to the Korean place for lunch, followed by a trip to the bootleg DVD store where I bought the first X-Men movie and season 2 of the X-Files. So much dorky X-Ness! So exciting! As it turns out at least two of my 7 X-Files CDs are no good, so they will have to be returned (this often happens - you get what you pay for, I guess), but that still leaves so much X-Files goodness. I think I'm developing a problem - I just keep watching one after another until I'm so spooked I'm afraid to leave my room. Part of the problem is that I keep thinking “That was so scary -I’d better watch another one to calm myself down.” This strategy: not so smart.

After my afternoon of X-Dorkness, Lili and I joined a group of mostly fourth-year students and a couple of their teachers for Karaoke. This was a lot of fun, although the teachers made us sing a lot of Chinese songs with extremely fast subtitles, many of which were in traditional characters. We all knew the words to “Dui mian de nuhai kan guo lai,” however (my family knows this as “the Chinese harmonica song). The only other time I'd ever sung karaoke was at my uncle Greg's wedding. This was not like that - it wasn't one person onstage singing by himself: everyone sang together from the couches in a small private room.

I enjoy spending time with boys - it’s still fairly novel for me and I'm sure I am learning valuable social skills most people pick up when they are fourteen. However there are times when one wonders whose idea it was to let college boys wander free. We're in a country where not only can anybody at all drink in bars, but beer and even baijiu are available in the campus convenience store. Friday was the 21st birthday of one of the boys present, and he decided it would be a good idea to have 21 drinks - fortunately over the course of the day, not all at once, but nevertheless there was much vomiting. He at least made it to the bathroom - another boy, after too much baijiu (how much is too much, you ask? ANY BAIJIU IS TOO MUCH BAIJIU) threw up right in front of everybody in the karaoke room. Fortunately the teachers had already left, but still it was highly gross. Why on earth do you need to drink to that point? It can't possibly be pleasant. Then the vomity boy asked for a breath mint and when Lili gave him one he attempted to kiss her. EW. EW, vomity boy, that is not okay.

Another good way for boys to not endear themselves to me is to make a constant effort to ensure that no one thinks they are girls or, god forbid, homosexuals. There is something so funny and yet so pathetic about a boy who makes a big scene when people are singing a Chinese pop song, saying that the men in that group are all gay and he, the boy who is making the scene, is a MAN. A REAL MAN. “Are you a man?” I asked him at one point. “Because it is so hard to tell.” And then when somebody chose “Bye Bye Bye” by N*Sync, he was all over it, dancing and singing and it's just so stupid.

On the way home, two of the boys, strapping Yale men, decided to race back to the dorm, so I raced too. I got off to a good start, but the first boy caught up to me and said, "Do you run cross country or something?"

"No," I said.

"I'm a bit worried. I think you might win."

"No," I said again. He passed me, but I kept running steadily. The second boy caught up to me, but eventually I left him behind and overtook the first boy again. "You win," he panted. I left him behind and kept running. When I got to the dorm I found the second boy waiting for me in a cab."I win," he said. "Didn't I win?" he addressed the cab driver, who nodded. "Can I borrow 11 kuai?" he asked, turning back to me.
"Sorry," I said, "my wallet's in my bag - I gave it to Hesin to hold. I only have 2 mao." (a mao is 1/10 of a kuai.)
"Oh," he said.
"I guess you'll just have to wait for the others to catch up," I said. "In the meantime, the race is to the dorm. Bye." And I ran off, feeling a little bad for leaving him, but after all I couldn't have been much help under the circs.

So I won the race, which just goes to show that having to be in Special Gym in middle school is no indication of anything.

On Saturday we went to the Great Wall, which was extremely beautiful. It’s higher than you might think, and surrounded by mountains - quite a sight. We climbed up many steps to the top, then climbed many more steps, then finally climbed down and had a lunch of fried pancakes - not half bad. I don't know why I have so much more to say about Karaoke and the X-Files than about climbing the Great Wall, which is something I'll remember all my life and whatnot, but after all it is just a wall - we climbed it, and it was nifty, and that's sort of that. That evening Lili and I went out for a dinner of chuanr - stuff on sticks. Very spicy, very sketchy, and very inexpensive, it reminded us of our time in Sichuan, where we ate a lot of delicious chuanr. They had many different kinds of tofu - tofu pi, which is a flat, rough sheet of tofu; soft tofu, hard tofu; also many types of vegetables and non-chicken eggs. On our way back we bought sweet sticky rice on sticks from a street vendor - always a nice treat. If you ever come to China, buy food from street vendors. But don't do it right away; wait a couple of weeks until your stomach is absolutely indestructable. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and the cheapest, dirtiest restaurants are often the most delicious. That's where you'll find the dog.