A weekend in the "real" China

This weekend we had an IUP trip to 东北, Northeast China. Our trip began on Friday afternoon with a subway ride to the train station. Someone on the subway had a box labelled "dog meat" in Chinese- ahhh! So awful! Then after waiting around at the train station for awhile, we boarded the train and got settled in our nice "soft" seats. On Chinese trains, there are usually 5 kinds of tickets (ordered from most to least luxurious): soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, hard seat, and standing. During a regular weekend, I'm too busy going out with friends to do various things that I don't get to read, but this weekend I finally got back into my 2nd Game of Thrones. It was so nice to read for the whole 5 hour train ride! (And now I'm almost done with the 2nd book!) Then we arrived around 10pm in 盘锦 (Panjin), a small Chinese city of about 1.3 million people. It was pretty ugly, hugely industrial, and very polluted. After arriving at the hotel, Kate (my roommate for the weekend) and I just went straight to bed. Apparently some people tried to go out and get some food and a drink, but even finding a restaurant was hard.

The next morning, we had a surprisingly decent buffet breakfast at the hotel. Then we hopped on our bus for our first activity, visiting the Red Beaches of the Liaohe River Delta. On the way, we saw lots of wind mills, oil rigs, and agriculture. Our tour guide presumably gave us an introduction to the city, but I couldn't understand anything she was saying and was distracted by her fake eyelashes (she wore them everyday) and her enormous eyes (a lot of people wear these giant colored contacts that make their eyes look huge so they can look more like an anime character/be more attractive- it's funny how those two things are the same here, right? haha). Then we arrived at what we thought were the Red Beaches, but was actually just a stop along the way. I think the tour guides were buying tickets for us, but I'm still not totally sure. While waiting, we checked out the wedding that was about to happen in the parking lot of this buidling along a river. It was probably 50F with the wind chill so not really an ideal day for a wedding in my opinion, but apparently a lot of people consult various ancient Chinese calendars to pick the most "auspicious" day for marriage based on their astrology, so it's possible this couple didn' t really have a choice for the day, haha. Anyways, the entrance to wedding was graced with a beautiful blow up arch:

Yes, it actually say "WEDDING", in english. And has the names of the bride and grooms in the middle.

Apparently these are quite popular, as this was another blow-up wedding arch we saw outside our hotel on Sunday, complete with a picture of the happy couple.

Unfortunately because of the strong winds, everything set up for the wedding kept blowing over. In the midst of the wedding chaos, my friend Jake stole a rose and gave it to me, which prompted a series of photos taken by both my friends and the official wedding photographer (who was seriously LOVING the huge crowd of foreigners hanging out by the wedding venue). My friend Wayne and I (even though Jake gave me the flower) took a number of "proposal" and "we're so in love" photos together. Unfortunately I only got this one:

 

After the brief photo shoot, we explored the scenery nearby the wedding, which included a number of strange animal displays: 

I think this is a jellyfish?

Sheep

My personal favorite, the deer

45 minutes later, we re-boarded our bus to go to the real Red Beaches. Of course just as we left the wedding, the firecrackers started going off and the Bridge and Groom arrived, so we missed most of the actual wedding. To get to the Red Beaches, we could either take a car or a boat so obviously we chose the boat. The scenery wasn't spectacular, just cruising through a river delta surrounded by tall sea grass-like stuff. Pics from the boat ride:

 Then we got on car/train thing to go the last bit of the way to the Red Beach (it was soooo cold). The beaches are red because of the kind of seaweed that grows there. In the fall, the seaweed turns red with the seasons.

Kate and I, Roomies for the weekend!!! <3

Awesome chinglish translation: "Besides footprints and smile, not leaving anything here"

After that, we thought we were going to lunch, but we dismayed when our bus stopped at a random bird reserve. However this is what happens when you're on a mass tour with no control. The lunch was not delicious, again typical with a mass tour. Then we drove for a little over 3 hours to our next stop, Shenyang 沈阳, your typical 2nd tier Chinese city of 8 million. Driving through the city, we thought, "wow, it's a real city with subways, shopping malls, high-tech rainbow light-up high rises, even a Chanel store!" But of course our hotel was in the middle of nowwhere next to the biggest construction site ever. They were rebuilding the major street our hotel was on, which was a 4 to 6 lane avenue. The entire street was torn up for miles, leaving a 20 foot deep pit in the middle of the avenue. Charming really.

After checking into the hotel, we went out to dinner, which was hard to find because we were trapped in the maze of construction. Finally we ended up at a dumpling restaurant that was supposedly famous. I didn't think it was that good, plus it was smoky and the service was abysmal (it took us an hr to get food and there were only a few other tables). From there, my table of people went to a bar called 88, which was recommended to us by the concierge as "where all the foreigners go" in Shenyang. It was the definition of tacky, as most true Chinese clubs are, with almost no foreigners, which was actually preferred anyways. The waitresses were wearing pink fur dresses. The decor was industrial, but not in the typical New York/Berlin industrial way, more a movie set "industrial" with lots of gears, pipes, screws, wheels, etc. scattered throughout.

Live Performers

We made lots of Chinese friends, who insisted we mix our own drinks (thankfully I had a long island, already pretty mixed up as it is) with their own vodka-tea concoction that seems to be the standard bottle service drink. (My friend Kate's mojito was not improved by this new addition). We danced on the stage a few times, but were kicked off by some performers- 3 foreign girls and 1 foreign guy, all wearing skimpy clothes. Most of the songs in the earlier part of the night were performed live by various Chinese singers who worked at the club, but most of them really had trouble singing english lyrics such as Usher's "Scream", haha. Quite entertaining. The highlight of the night was definitely getting an aiyi (cleaning lady) to do the Gangam Style dance with us.** Also a great night because I went out with different people from IUP so I made new friends and danced for almost 4 hours straight!On the way home, Kate, Alex, and I got lost in the maze of construction at 3am in the freezing cold for about an hr, not such a fun end to the night. Thankfully our wonderful friends left the warmth of the hotel to come rescue us. 

The next morning we had a disappointly disgusting breakfast at the hotel, and then went to the 故宫 (Imperial Palace) of Shenyang, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. I actually think it is a lot cooler and more authentic than Beijing's Forbbiden City. In Beijing, the Forbbiden City has been "restored", which actually involved them rebuilding and changing a lot of it; whereas in Shenyang, they left things looking closer to how they actually were. Plus I thought of lot of it was much more ornate.

Throne

We also saw, outside the palace, a guy doing water calligraphy. They use a bring stick with a calligraphy brush shaped sponge on the end and they just draw on the ground with water. It's really pretty. 

Then we went to Marshal Zhang's Mansion. Marshal Zhang was a warlord who controlled most of Manchuria (Northeast China) post Qing Dynasty, pre-PRC founding (1911-1949 approxiametly). He partnered with the Communists during WWII to defeat the Japanese so he's kind of a national hero now, even though he fled to Taiwan with the Guomingdang (Nationalists) in 1949. His mansion was cool because it was a combination of European style and ancient Chinese architecture.

Then we hopped back on our bus and drove to the train station. However our tour guide didn't realize the train station was under construction (like everything else in Shenyang) so we almost missed our train because we had to wait for the buses to come back and take us to the correct entrace. But don't worry, we made it. Got some homework done on the train and almost finished my book, plus napped! Went out for a burger and a drink last night to unwind from the trip.

Today we didn't have school so that we could recover from the weekend so we went shopping for Halloween costume accessories (I'm being a Ghost/Zombie Bride- we have 2 nights to dress up for so I need two costumes). I bought a variety of tacky sparkly jewelery, tights, a veil, jeweled head piece, fake eyelashes, spider and cobb webb fake nails, etc. So good. The best part was that the market we went to was in the Russian district of Beijing (who knew that even existed?). When we first got there, I thought, "wow, everyone's Chinese here is really weird. There must be some strange regional dialect within Beijing". Then I realized they were speaking Russian. Frequently I am mistaken for Russian (like this weekend on our trip) so of course the salespeople's go-to language with us was Russian, which was hilarious for us.

Anyways, now I've seen Dongbei, and am all set for Halloween! Lots of exciting things happening this week so stay tuned!

**NOTE: If you've been living under a rock for the last month and don't know what Gangam Style is, first watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0 . Then watch this parody my friends made about life in China as a foreigner (it's gotten over 300,000 views!!!): http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDYwMTg3ODQ0.html