It's a small town after all.

I taught at my part-time job today, and at the end of my last adult oral English class, one of the students asked me if I taught at TUFE. I was surprised b/c I don't know him and I didn't tell my students which university I teach. I said yes, and he asked me if I know this guy Tang Tao, I was like, wow, I do, actually. It turns out this student of mine goes to TUFE and is a 3rd year Finance major just like my friend Tang Tao; they're classmates. But still, I was puzzled how he could know that I know Tang Tao. This student told me that he saw my photo on the internet! I was a little shocked and worried at first, but it seems he saw a group photo from our trip to Fragrant Mountain last month, which either Tang Tao or one of the other girls had posted on some blog or facebook-like site. So he recognized me. Still, it just shows that I have to be on my best behavior, I never know when someone I know or who knows someone I know will recognize me. My, it was bound to happen...I teach at so many places throughout Tianjin.

The Land of Milk and Shopping Malls

This morning, I tried the Mongolian milk I bought from the big supermarket RenRenLe. I looked and looked yesterday and could not find any reduced fat milk, so I had to settle for a carton of Mongolian brand milk. When I added this milk to my cereal this morning, I was completely surprised at how delicious it was. This doesn't taste at all like the whole milk we get in the States. It's much more rich and flavorful. I don't know if in China, they have a different breed of cows, or whether it's because they're mongolian cows, or if because the cows still graze on grassland, but I thoroughly enjoyed the fatty milk. There's no way to describe the complexity of taste.

Later in the day, I went to downtown Tianjin, a huge avenue called Binjiangdao. Man, when I got off the subway and saw all these 4 or 5 story shopping malls and wide paved avenues, I was in seventh heaven. THIS was what I expected TJ to be like. It turns out that my university is just really far from the city center, that's why some roads are not paved and buildings look rundown. Binjiangdao totally reminds me of Mongkok in Hong Kong. There's tons and tons of 4 story malls with escalators. In one of the malls, there are hundreds of little shops full of cheap clothing, handbags, shoes, and jewelry. You can bargain with the shopkeepers. In the malls and on the streets, there are little food stands selling stinky tofu, kebabs, ice cream, and fruity iced drinks, just like in Mongkok. There are also tons of chain clothing stores like Kappa, Esprit, Baleno, and Giordano. Most of the brands, although they were priced much higher, were unfamiliar to me; they must be Chinese higher end brands. Because I was afraid to bargain and a lot of the listed prices seemed comparable to the U.S. when converted, I didn't end up buying anything. I figured I had plenty of time here to explore and shop around. Nevertheless, I'm definitely going back to Binjiangdao, it was such a long shopping avenue that I gave up and turned back before reaching the end.


Binjiangdao is also where I tried my first "ma huar" and "goubuli baozi."
Ma huar is this sweetened snack that is fried until completely crisp like a cookie and lightly covered with sesame seeds. It's actually not that great, since I don't like such oily fried snacks. The goubuli baozi is a small bun (bao) filled with pork and steamed in a metal/bamboo steamer. It comes out looking exactly like Shanghai soup dumplings (xiaolongbao), but I was disappointed to find the inside lacking the delicious broth of their Shanghai counterparts. Also, goubuli baos are made with a real yeasted bread dough, not just a chewy wrapper, so there was too much bread and not enough meat or broth. I wanted to take a picture of the baozi and in front of the goubuli sign, but I forgot my SD card. All in all, I'm not blown away by TJ's two most well-known foods so far.

I'm in Tianjin and connected!

I arrived in Tianjin last night (9/8) and got settled into my dormitories. The experience so far reminds me of Vietnam, when I went to visit with my Dad in 2002. I'm a little alienated and overwhelmed in this completely different world. This is supposed to be the land of my ancestors many generations back, but I'm experiencing even bigger culture shock than when I went to Argentina or Spain.

Vents
I don't understand how things work, why there is nothing written on paper, why websites are not always updated at a modern university. I also don't understand why the older parts of the campus have been left to be taken over by weeds and crumbling brick walls nor why people choose to build new buildings from scratch instead of renovating the old ones. I also don't know why occasionally walking along a campus road, you'll smell a whiff of rotting trash or sewage. It's a whole different way of doing things here.

Several of the streets here are unpaved or full of potholes; I thought the 4th largest city in China would have entirely paved streets. But I guess I'm technically on the outskirts of Tianjin, perhaps the downtown area is much more developed. Another irksome thing is the pollution, which is thicker than fog over the Golden Gate bridge. I literally cannot see one city block ahead of me because the haze and pollution is so dense.

The outside of my dormitory looks a bit rundown, and I was initially anxious when my host and driver pulled up in front of this building. But when you go into the rooms themselves, they're actually not too bad. Definitely not state of the art or modern, but simple and practical. I have my own bathroom. I share a kitchen, fridge, and washer with my other 2 hallmates. There's a wall-mounted AC system in my room, and a flat screen tv with all the regional broadcast channels in China. I can watch over 50 channels of Chinese language tv from the Mongolian channel to the Xinjiang channel to the Guangzhou channel in the south, but there's only one CCTV channel in English. I appreciate the special treatment that us foreigners get, it's actually quite good by China standards (the Chinese students have 2-4 to a room, no AC, and have to use public showers).

Things I'm Grateful For...
I LOVE my internet. I just got it this morning! People said I just go to the CNC place to buy an internet card, and I could get online. So I fumbled my way there, got a little stressed out by the cashier who spoke really fast and asked me stuff I didn't understand, but finally I obtained an 80 yuan card good for 31 days of unlimited internet access. I'm so happy I can communicate with the outside world now! (side story: my hallmate who's been here a year now, said that they lobbied a long time last year to get internet set up here. They didn't have in-room internet before and had to bring their laptops to Starbucks and the on campus wifi locations, even in the middle of the cold, snowy winters. I'm so thankful of their efforts!)

First meals
The school contact who picked me up from the airport was thoughtful enough to have a McDonald's Spicy Chicken sandwich waiting for me when I arrived at around 6:30pm local time. I would have starved otherwise on that 2 hour ride from Beijing Airport to Tianjin. Another great experience was my first Chinese breakfast of "da bing" with egg and some sort of spicy hoisin sauce I got off this little street stand for 1.5 yuan. It was crispy and flakey like green onion pancakes, and served piping hot with egg and a spicy sauce. I look forward to eating the roasted corn and BBQ kebabs on the street stands in future meals. I LOVE street food!

The Ganxun Spot
Right next to our dormitory building is the Ganxun Cafe, where you can get different varieties of brown sauce veggies and meat over rice for 6.5 yuan. It is close, cheap, and the portions are big enough for two meals. But it can get a little monotonous, since I've already eaten there twice today: lunch was beef, bell peppers, cucumbers, and onions in brown sauce; dinner was the exact same mix of veggies except with tofu instead of beef. They have chicken and eggplant options too, but I'm getting tired of the same brown sauce flavors. :P It's a little like the Chinese restaurant I went to in Bolivia, where the entire restaurant had 9 dishes: chicken w/ veggies, pork w/ veggies, beef w/ veggies, chicken fried rice, pork fried rice, beef fried rice, chicken chow mein, pork chow mein, and beef chow mein. Ganxun is close and comforting, like Ivy Noodle in New Haven, but not the best tasting.