Manicure Maladies

We didn't have any class this Friday, so two of my friends and I decided it was the perfect day to hit up our favorite approximately Western-style shopping mall: complete with Zara, H&M, an all-you-can-eat Japanese Teppanyaki restaurant (where a chef prepares things like STEAK and SUSHI on the table for you!!!), and a nail salon.  Part of the girls' day out involved getting super dressed up, so we pulled all the shots: dresses, skirts, pretty flats, makeup. Chinese girls typically dress in an over-the-top girly fashion, so our choice of attire was actually pretty normal by Chinese standards. I wore a new H&M lacey-sparkly pencil skirt with a blue Zara blouse borrowed from Lesley.

For all girls out there, a Shellac gel manicure at Lixing Guangchang is only $12 U.S.! That's an amazing bargain, since comparable treatment in the states ranges from $25-45 at least. The first time I visited Lixing's manicurists, the result was a beautiful green shade that lasted for weeks. This time I was going for a bright, coral-tinged red- just in time for spring.

Eleanor, Lesley and I rode the not-quite-so-crowed city bus for 30 minutes or so before arriving at Lixing. We put our names down for manicures, then perused the wonders of H&M until the time came for our appointments. I casually picked up a cropped Pink Floyd t-shirt and denim shorts, since the selection of spring/summer clothes I brought to Hangzhou is pretty limited- and I was craving some aspects of Western culture. Punk rock all the way!

We arrived at the manicurist's and settled down into the three cute little round seats as peppy Chinese manicurists gushed about Eleanor's pale skin, my blonde hair, and Lesley's awesome highlights, feeling like quite the superstars. Not only had we shocked them by nature of being American, but today our choice of attire was actually, by Chinese standards, above-par. The pampering began with all the usual pomp and splendor as our manicurists filed our nails into perfect square shapes and pushed back overgrown cuticles. It was paradise- especially compared to our usual daily afternoon activities of cramming for listening exams and writing essays.

The situation was about as perfect as could be expected, except for one unfortunate aspect. Although it was about 63 degrees outside on Friday, on the second floor of the Lixing Mall it had to be at least 85. The heaters were pumping out hot air like it was nobody's business, and were doing so without the least bit of circulation. The atmosphere of stagnant hot air was kind of nauseating, and coupled with the not-so-heavenly fumes of nail polish remover and whatever scary chemicals are hidden in Shellac (a kind of nail polish that won't chip for a month), I started feeling ever so queasy and light-headed.

The manicurist had just put the first coat of red polish on the nails of my left hand when all of a sudden the edges of my vision started filling with tiny, dense black specks. I stood up, grabbed my hand away from the meticulous embrace of my manicurist, and collapsed into a nearby pedicure chair with my knees drawn up to my chest, suddenly overtaken in waves of nausea. Whether my lunch had contained something not-so-great, or that Snickers bar at Watson's (a drugstore by H&M) just didn't agree with my digestive tract, or if the combination of chemical fumes and stale air and horribly uncomfortable heat just got to me, all of a sudden I was compelled to grab the nearest trash can and relieve my stomach of everything it had consumed that afternoon. In the middle of the nail salon. I threw up about four times, all right there in the middle of a Chinese mall kiosk manicure parlor.

By the time I returned, embarrassed and sickened, from cleaning my face up in the sketchy mall bathroom, I found the Chinese manicurists all matter-of-factly going about their business. One had cleaned up the bits and pieces that didn't quite make it into the trash can by wiping the floor with tissues. One had purchased a bottle of water for me and pressed it, and a few more tissues, into my hand. My own manicurist had picked up a vial of mint-scented essential oil and waved it under my nose, dabbing a bit onto my upper lip, temples, and the center of my forehead. Their calmness and apparent lack of  surprise about the whole situation was surprising, almost unsettling, but I really appreciated their help (since I felt like the China Plague had finally done me in). Maybe people throw up at Chinese nail salons on a regular basis- that's how nonchalantly they handled the situation. In fact, as soon as I wasn't visibly retching anymore, my manicurist promptly grabbed my right hand and proceeded to finish my manicure, all the while with the trash can right by my side, just in case.

There really must be something to Eastern medicine- after thousands of years of practice,  the Chinese have definitely figured some things out. The mint smell did wonders for the state of my stomach, and helped counteract the effects of the wide variety of delightful odors circulating the Lixing mall. As the manicure was finishing up, my manicurist was explaining (in Chinese) that it was a good thing that I threw up, since that way the "bad stuff" was out of my system.  I felt gradually better and better as the mint did its job, but just to make sure, I crept back downstairs as soon as the primping was over to breathe some fresh, cool air.  Surprisingly, I felt great- great enough that our original dining plans did not even change, and we went to the Teppanyaki restaurant as planned. Heck, I ate an all-you-can-eat Japanese steak dinner that very evening, almost to apologize to my stomach for dealing with so much abuse that day.

Teppanyaki restaurant (on a previous occasion.. I stuck with Sprite last night!)

More Teppanyaki love

Looking back on it, it's actually a pretty funny situation.  How many times in life does one throw up at a Chinese nail salon? Hopefully, for me, just this once. But maybe I'll go pick up some mint essential oil, just in case.

Peace, happiness and Pink Floyd

"This week will bring you peace and happiness." That could be the message of a fortune cookie, but sums up the past week pretty well. While my classes have been getting steadily more and more difficult and mid-terms are just around the corner, overall I feel like the past week was a "good" China week. Of course, study abroad has its ups and downs, and it's easy to let the downs become overwhelming at times. Nevertheless, my lack of illness, BEAUTIFUL weather (highs in the 60s and 70s, no rain) and a few nice cultural activities thrown in have made this week unexpectedly nice, and reminded me that study abroad isn't all bad, after all.

Right now, I could be writing any one of several essays due next week regarding Hangzhou's history, the developments of the Chinese missile program in the 1950s, the Chinese housing market, or the Pepsi-Cola company's future prospects in China. Instead, I'm going to pass on a few snippets of what made parts of this week so great, and others pretty darn amusing.

Making "Twin Happiness" 双喜 paper cut-outs with Chinese third graders... so cute! The MIC program took us all to an elementary school on Tuesday to play with and attend class with the students for a couple of hours.

1. Nutritional awareness- 11:45 pm, Thursday night

My roommate (smacking loudly on some sort of dried fig): "Xia xin, it seems that you don't like fruit. I never see you eat fruit. This is bad, because fruit is good for you."
Me (in pajamas and crawling under the covers): "I love to eat fruit, just not in this dorm room."
Roommate: ".....................oh. Well, you should eat fruit in the room. Fruit is good for you."

2. It's a mystery...

About every ten-thirty minutes in Hangzhou, very loud military-looking jets of mysterious origin fly over the Zhejiang University of Technology campus. Actually, another one just tore through the airspace outside my dorm as I sit here typing this post. I broached the issue during my "One-on-one" class, where the sound of supersonic jet engines was making it difficult to hear what my teacher was saying about the Long March 2E rocket.

Me: "Feng Laoshi, why are there always military jets flying over our campus?"
Teacher: "What military jets?"

Hmm.

Feng Laoshi, my one-on-one class's teacher, is actually really awesome. When we're not discussing developments in the Chinese space industry, we have had some nice, long talks about the nuances of punk, rock, and "lo-fi" British music. He's into indie music, but is also a fan of Coldplay and Pink Floyd... LOVE IT!!!

3. The Temple of Soul's Peace

The Lingyin Temple was built in the third century AD and is the most important Buddhist area in Zhejiang province. I was sent there on Wednesday for my Hangzhou history class, and the scenery was so beautiful- it was about 70 degrees, bright, and all of the flowers were blooming. It was so lovely that I ended up buying a small black beaded bracelet from one of the souvenir shacks outside the temple. "What is the meaning behind this bracelet?" I asked the shopkeeper. "It will bring you peace and harmony," she told me. Who doesn't need more of that in their life?

Beautiful hilly scenery

The third building of the temple, which also functions as a museum

Lovely Mulan-style flowers blooming near LingYin

An incense burner in front of the temple

Me, at the temple site. Asked a friendly Chinese couple to take this pic for me :)

Wuzhen: 15¢ Life Insurance and Chinese Bliss

Just look at that clear, blue water!

This past weekend, I accompanied a few of my American classmates and their Chinese roommates to Wuzhen for our partially-reimbursed “small group travel” experience. Wuzhen, a reconstructed historic canal city in Zhejiang province, is about 20 minutes + bus ride away from Hangzhou by high-speed train and two hours away by long-distance bus. It was quite the China adventure!

Getting to Wuzhen required a “30 minute” stretch of public transportation that turned into 1.15 hours with traffic and bus stops- because of this, we missed our train and needed to re-purchase our train tickets for a train one hour later.  The train ride was less than 30 mins, which brought us to a local bus stop. There, we piled into a tiny short public bus to take us to Wuzhen, on which perhaps fifteen to twenty Chinese people were standing in the aisle for upwards of an hour! Eventually, we finally arrived at our lovely Wisteria Hostel within the Beautiful Scenery Zone.

Wisteria Hostel’s beds consisted of bunks, with wood planks spanning across the frame, and a thin blanket passing for a mattress on top. Sheets and a comforter were provided at the foot of the bed.  The three American students shared our six-bunk room with three random Chinese girls from other parts of Zhejiang province. The hall restroom featured a row of squat toilets with no toilet paper and bad plumbing, and the showers were pretty terrifying. Still, though, the hostel was in a convenient location within the Scenic Zone, and the Chinese roommates were so thrilled to be there.

The pretty Wuzhen area was very touristy and was sort of reminiscent of Disney world.  Apparently there was originally a real city in Wuzhen centuries ago, but the government came in within the past couple of years and completely consumerized and reconstructed the place. Now, tourist traps and silly museums abound. My personal favorite of these museums was probably the Ancient Bed museum, closely followed by a collection of coins from around the world. Not sure what these things have to do with Zhejiang history or even Wuzhen, but Chinese tourists love it and arrive by the hundreds to check it out. 

Despite the lack of authenticity, Wuzhen’s scenery was really beautiful, and I took plenty of pictures of the completely re-built buildings, canals, and pagodas.  I wasn’t the only one taking pictures.  The hoards of Chinese tourists were particularly fascinated by my blonde hair, and came at me with or without asking permission to take picture after picture of the blonde Lao Wai (foreigner). Maybe the weirdest one was a fellow on a public bus on the way back to Hangzhou, who literally had his video camera out filming the backs of my and my friend Eleanor’s heads- for an hour. I asked him, in Chinese, what the heck he thought he was doing- to which he merely gave me a startled expression and resumed his filming.

But even more crazy was our return travel arrangement. It was Saturday night, and we had all settled down at the Lotus Lounge bar to enjoy a tasty Western desert and one overpriced cocktail each.  Around 10 pm or so, one of my friends casually asked the Chinese roommates: “what time are we leaving Wuzhen in the morning?” The unexpected reply: “what time do you want to leave?”  We were shocked- the thought of booking a return ticket had not even crossed these Chinese college students’ minds. “We were thinking maybe after dinner,” one of them pointed out, looking up from her knock-off Angry Birds cell phone game. We expressed our desire to leave earlier due to lots of homework, and the roommates again were shocked. After rounds of chatter and Internet browsing on one roommate’s iPad, we finally came to the consensus that we would leave the Scenic Zone around 8:00 am, catch a bus to the WuZhen Bus Station, and hopefully find a cheap long-distance bus to bring us back to Hangzhou. If that didn’t work out, we would take another bus to the Wuzhen Train Station and try to book a train. It seemed insane at the time, but surprisingly enough Sunday morning we were able to squeeze onto an 8:45 am bus to Hangzhou that landed us “home” around 10:10 am. We were actually back in our dorm in time for lunch, and once again, we foreigners were the crazy and confused ones- the Chinese people know much better how their system works.

乌镇美不美？Is Wuzhen pretty? Question used to make everyone smile for the camera :)

Did you know that when you purchase a long-distance bus ticket in China, the one yuan ($0.15) “service tax” added on top of the price tag actually covers a life insurance policy? No joke. In case of a devastating crash, fiery explosion, lightening strike or other disaster (heaven forbid) that might harm our lovely bus, my family would supposedly be reimbursed up to 50,000 RMB, approximately $7,800, for my loss of life. Good to know I’m worth so much to the Chinese government!

On a spicier note, cooking class last week produced a beautiful, spicy, fragrant rendition of the classic chicken-and-peanut stir-fry that you can find at Big Bowl: Kung Pow Chicken! It tasted so much better under the guidance of our funny, short-haired and fussy Chinese cooking teacher than at any American “Chinese” restaurant. I’m feeling so intense in my cooking skills at this point J It’s a specialty of Sichuan province in central China, and I’ll actually be visiting Chengdu in Sichuan over spring break. Chengdu, just so you know, is home to spicy food and PANDAS.  It’s going to be an awesome trip- and we've actually ALREADY booked the return tickets!

Kung Pow Chicken (宫保鸡丁）

Stir-fry: sesame oil, garlic, chicken, hot peppers, thick green onions, savory sauce (equal parts soy, rice vinegar, cooking alcohol, sugar and flour to thicken), a dash of water and salt, fried peanuts.

The secret to making the peanuts extra-crunchy is to boil them in oil and then allow them to cool to below room temperature prior to cooking. Who knew? For this purpose, our cooking teacher put the just-boiled peanuts in a plate on the open window ledge, since the outside temperature at the time was hovering in the low 40s.

The (new) Cold War 空调战争

Hangzhou, China. The rainy capital city of Zhejiang province in the southeastern part of the Middle Kingdom, and my home for the next couple of months! (to all friends, family and whoever else is cool enough to be reading this... I'm SO sorry about the long delay in writing my first post! I'll be better in the future, I promise!)

Rather than detailing the grueling 30+ hours of travel time it took for both me and my matching set of cheap red Target luggage to arrive in this lovely dorm room, or going into detail about my immune system’s unending battle with all sorts of nasty Chinese cold/flu/stomach-issue-causing/拉肚子 buggies during my first few weeks here, or even commenting on the abundance of excellent Chinese eatables (and lack of Western ones) in this lovely city, I'd rather start by telling a little story. More on Chinese illnesses and foods will come in later posts, I promise- especially since I'm taking a cooking class here!

OK, I couldn't resist. Here's a pic of my Ma Po Dofu, or Grandma's Spicy Tofu, the first dish I made in my Chinese cooking class:

Peanut oil, soft tofu, spicy sauce, ground pork, chives, two spoons of water and a pinch of sugar, stir-fry until hot.

Back to the story.

So this is Zhang LiHui, or Ivy, my adorable Chinese roommate. She’s 22 going on 13 and absolutely precious- maybe 4’8” tops. Here we are at West Lake, the main tourist attraction in Hangzhou:

Allow me to explain that the two of us will be sharing a very small box of a dorm room (that makes even Stockard seem pretty luxurious) for the remainder of my term in China. Thus, I have done my best from the get-go to become “best friends” with Ivy- picking up an extra Chocolate Pudding milk tea at Hei Long on my way back from dinner, keeping my side of the room as “neat” as can be expected, watching Sweet Home Alabama together one particularly boring, rainy Sunday, even painting her nails bubblegum pink. It’s been pretty fun. That is, except for one thing: (cue dramatic music)

THE HEATER.

Here it is, the hard-working little device forced to pump warm air into my dorm room. Those are some of Ivy's clothes hanging on the clothes line in front. Hangzhou is special in that not a single building outside the ritziest hotels has the apparently Western luxury of central heating- or any heating, for that matter. In fact, our own dorm is FREEZING in the hallways and classrooms at any given time. Going to class, I pile on five layers, including my coat, scarf, gloves, Uggs and three pairs of socks, and shiver through a 42-degree two-hour class session. The heater on the wall in my room has been a lifesaver, and my room has become a sort of warm and cozy sanctuary of peace.

Enter Ivy. Apparently, in southeastern Chinese countryside culture, it is not at all kosher to leave the heater running 24 hours a day. I was unaware of this until one day the first week of class (weather outside: 37 degrees and sleeting). Upon returning from my Business Chinese lecture, I opened the door to our room to a blast of freezing air. The heater had been turned off, and the window was thrown wide open, with a bit of rain falling on the floor of our room. It was so cold! Ivy was right there, sitting on her bed and munching on some sort of Chinese candy. I asked her what was up. “The air in here isn’t fresh,” she replied matter-of-factly. “Why’s the heater turned off?” “We need to let it rest. It’s been working so hard!” she said. I tried explaining that in America we leave the heater on and the windows closed during bad winter weather. “It isn’t so bad,” she replied. “Put on thicker clothes, then.”

Well, this was not going to fly. I promptly closed the window, turned the heater on high and explained that not only was I freezing after sitting through a cold classroom, but I also have a circulatory medical condition that makes my hands and feet particularly susceptible to the cold- and hence I need my room to be warm. She shrugged and repeated her statements from earlier.

The next day, all was well until I returned from my class to find the window yet again open and the heater yet again turned off! I corrected the situation, again told Ivy that it would be best for the window to stay closed and the heater on, and suggested that if she really needs “fresh” air, she need only go outside. She told me the heater was tired and needed to rest, and suggested I add a sweater.

This back-and-forth continued every day for the next week. Clearly the method of civilized conversation was getting me nowhere, so I decided to move on to more drastic measures. Ivy usually kept the heater remote (which is difficult to use, being all in Chinese) on her desk. One day, when the weather was again bad, the window open, the heater off, and Ivy not in the room, I took the remote and put it on my desk shelf, next to the nail polish remover and the instant coffee. She wouldn’t find it, right? WRONG. The next day, the remote was back on her desk, and situations had not improved.

 

I tried hiding the remote again. And again. In my makeup bag? Found it. Behind the picture of me and friends at Red Rose Ball? Found it again. In the inner zipper pocket of my suitcase? She must have rummaged through my stuff pretty thoroughly, because she found it there too. It was getting bad, and the room was still cold.

So, I upped the game again. One drawer of my desk locks closed with my suitcase combination lock, and inside I keep such items as my American cash, health insurance info, passport, and nail file (couldn’t think of a better place for it). Monday afternoon, between spells of street food-induced nausea, I put the remote in there. On a whim. The room warmed up, and I was happy.

Ivy returned to the room late Monday night and woke me from my semi-ill slumber. I pretend to stay asleep as I heard her begin rummaging through my desk, opening drawers and zippers with reckless abandon. The girl is persistent! Eventually the noise died down, I fell back asleep, and the room stayed warm. Jessica: One, Ivy: Zero.

But it continues! This morning around 8 am, I was putting on mascara at my desk when Ivy opened the window. She then came up from behind me, tapped my shoulder, and asked: “Xia Xin, the air in here is not at all fresh, and the air conditioner needs to rest. We need to turn it off. Where is the heater remote?” I feigned ignorance and lack of Chinese ability. “I have it,” I replied with a sweet smile. “No, where is it?” she said. “Oh, don’t worry. It’s comfortable in here. The heater is good for my health!” She humphed and returned to her desk, muttering something about “rest” and “fresh air.” I again began to attempt to rationally explain the reasons why leaving the heater off and opening the window when it’s in the low 40s outside is not a great idea, but to no avail. Feeling pretty bad about all of this extreme passive-aggressive behavior later in the day, I pulled out the remote this afternoon and turned down the temperature several degrees- but still didn’t turn it off.

Fortunately, the Hangzhou weather forecast says that this week we might actually break into the 50s. If so, that would be amazingly balmy and I might just break out a green swimsuit for St. Patrick’s day. (You think I’m kidding.) If the weather does again take a turn for the worse and the sleet comes back, I’ll need all of the luck and well-wishing I can get as the heating wars rage on!

Wishing you all lots of love from Chinarrr,


Xia Xin (the bad, belated, passive-aggressive blogger)