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Go here for all my tentative forays into cultures that intimidate me. I don't like change.

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When one is deprived.

this is what a diet of turnips, soft tofu and braised turtle will do to someone with a western palate when they finally reach McDonald's. Look at the tears of joy. #westernpig #culturalhegemony #mcnuggets

Journey to the train station

I got up in the morning and had a wash, grabbing an apple while I stuffed my things back into backpack again. It was now time to go to the family I would be living with  for the next year.

I didn't get to see much of Shanghai, and what I did was just concrete mostly. The train station looked enormous and inside was overwhelming. I had to go through a series of metal detectors and X-rays to get in, and after 10 minutes of being there I'd had 500 yuan stolen from my pocket. 

My contact bought my ticket for me, which I needed to show my passport for, for some reason, and EVENTUALLY got onto the right train, which was clean and quiet. 

After just over an hour I arrived at a deserted platform, somehow I managed to shift my enormous bags out of the train before the doors slammed shut and made my way to the doors, where I saw my new family waiting. A pretty young wife, a well dressed father and the kid I was to be looking after, who was extremely cute. I crouched down and shook his hand. 

"Hello", he said.

:)

 

my second day

Second day in shanghai and due to some messed up arrangements I was to be staying a second night with my Contact and travel to my new city the next day. He left me napping in the afternoon and came back with a late breakfast of tofu soup and some delicious little flatbread things with a savoury paste in them. Yummy. It was then a case of killing time until lunch

I sent my mum and friends more emails on my phone while my host made endless calls to au pairs and families trying to make arrangements. I overheard plenty that was a bit worrying, a boy had had an epileptic fit, a condition he hadn’t disclosed and was now stuck with no money for a ticket home and a family that refused to have him. Eesh. 

Shanghai was busy and very hot, we walked to a local café and I got some noodles and some soup. 

The soup was just what I needed. I read ‘The Bell Jar’ that day until dinner, when Contact made us a simple dinner and went to bed. Apparently no hotel would take me and I didn’t have the energy to think about how much I didn’t want to share a room with a strange man (who had spent the entire day telling me that my hair was 'too dry' even though I am simply mixed race, and then bitching about his colleagues and the other au pairs)
. About an hour after I fell asleep I woke to the sound of screaming  in the room. I rolled over and realized it was coming from my contact, a man in his 30s. He was screaming, crying and shaking a few feet away from me. He yelled a lot of stuff that seemed like begging and for the first time since arranging this I was glad I didn’t speak Chinese….

After the screaming subsided into tired whimpering I rolled over and tried to sleep, and as I was drifting off I was treated to what Id been warned about in China because of my …distaste for expulsions of bodily fluids, especially vomiting or spitting. I heard a man all the way from the street hock up a massive loogie and heard the messy splat of it hitting the dusty pavement outside.

I rolled over and gagged into my pillow

I want to go home.

A warm American (?) Welcome

First Blog Entry

After a rather long flight via Russia, I finally arrived at Shanghais Pudong airport, looking and smelling like like gently warmed ass, Im sure. As I stepped through what felt like the 80^th set of security checks I made it through with too much luggage strapped to my body and became even more disconcerted when, leaving security a clutch of women started twittering and snapping pictures of me as I stared wearily at them. I was later informed that there had been a celebrity on my flight, by the people who were meeting me. My contact was a very small man standing way back, waving frantically at me, with a lumpy, and, I guessed from the state of his multi-coloured t-shirt and haircut American kid. He had the gut of a 40 year old diabetic. He was in fact 18.

Before I could say anything, my contact whipped out a camera and said something about ‘for the website’ taking something that I later saw resembled  a picture of the only surviving soldier emerging from a bombing raid somewhere. 17 hours in a metal box in the air doesn’t do your complexion many favours.

As we made our way to the vehicle just outside said lumpy-teen introduced himself, let’s call him Fred, he was from Georgia. He described himself as a ‘good American’. Oh dear.

Now.

I rather like Americans. As well as a large proportion of friends and family originating and having connections there, I and those know who me know about my certain…penchant for American men in particular. A real soft spot for southerners. The reasons for my dislike for lumpy old Fred, which I will detail below, are not born from some archaic, Anglo snobbery. No, no. I disliked him because he was cunt. See below for various quotes. Keep in mind I’m a liberal.

·         (On Guantanamo Bay) “I think its fine to America to torture anyone who threatens our freedom… they weren’t given a trial for years but the system isn’t perfect, they should just get over it.

·         (On Political leanings) “I’m a republican (ProTip: Embarrass young Americans’ by asking specifically what policies they favour) “….i don’t exactly know….all of them”

·         (On abortion rights) “im gonna surprise you with my views on that, actually. I believe they should be killed if they’re disabled because they don’t fit within society then. That’s choice”

The drive home felt like being trapped in a studio with Rush Limbaugh. I couldn’t believe people like this actually still EXISTED. After 45 minutes we arrived in some residential area of Shanghai. I couldn’t make out much in the dark and decided to just take up  the smaller back-pack part of my luggage. My Contacts apartment was up 6 flights of stairs. Sigh. All half assed attempts at chivalry evaporated, but I suppose being by far the tallest it was to be expected. I felt a little like a turtle on its hind legs, doddering up the stairs. We were let in to a teeny apartment, where I was told a cousin was sharing his bedroom with him, where I’d be (hoorayyyy) a kitchen, and a cupboard, which was actually a bathroom. On the table was a ton of fruits, still dripping from being washed in colanders, and Rush Limbaughs computer. He was leaving in a few hours to go back to the airport to fly to Hong Kong and renew his visa. I hadn’t told him to fuck off yet because I didn’t have an adapter for any of my chargers and wanted to let my mother know I wasn’t dead.

Contact went to bed, it was about 2am and soon he’d be off to take young Rush back to the airport. We were left alone at the table. Rush produced a white, half full bottle with a Chinese label. It was rice wine, he said, cheaper than water over here. He offered me a drink. I pulled the red cap off and the smell seemed to take the lining of my nostrils off. On the label, it said 50% proof. I politely declined, and it was good I did; I had enough trouble trying not to vomit without that sloshing around my guts as the night went on.

Predictably, the talk turned to sex. I told him about my dating situation and he talked about his ‘hot Asian girlfriend’. Now, I’d been warned prior to my visit over here by friends who had done similar stuff that men coming to teach and work were doing it primarily for the semi-racist reason of having what they charmingly referred to as ‘yellow fever’. Sigh. Again, benefit of the doubt I asked him exactly why he’d come here in the first place

“to tell the truth, for the women. I love women of colour’

Urgh. I asked him what exactly it was about Asian women it was he liked.

“heh, well Asian girls’ll do anything, and they’re so darn tight’

O__O

What followed was a boast of the last two girls he’d had, and how he’d torn them and how big his….thing was. I fixed a smile on my face and a couple of hours later the time came for him to fuck off. As him and the Contact gathered his stuff he had me add him on Skype and promise to keep in touch. As I watched him get into the car downstairs I blocked him, and half hoped the car exploded on the way.