Crooked Tongues and Stories from the Hump Bar

I walked around the town of Kunming this morning.  It's a decently developed area.  Almost every third store is a barbershop though...Odd.  I still feel pretty intimidated to try and buy anything or talk to any of the shopkeepers at this point, but it was nice to get the lay of the land.  Learned pretty quickly that in China there is no such thing as pedestrian right-of-way.  You just have to insert yourself into the crosswalk at a timely moment and hope nobody runs over you. Scary!  

After walking aimlessly around the streets for a while I went back to the little supermarket where I bought toilet paper yesterday to buy some soap.  It was less than forty cents to buy one of the highest priced soaps in the shop!  Oh man! My inner Jew is so satisfied. :-)  I walked around the store for a while just to get an idea for how much things are supposed to cost here, and to practice dividing every price by 7 to see what it's American equivalent would be.  The exchange rate is about 6.7RMB to the dollar (Hey, math is hard for some people.  I really did pass third grade, I swear!)

Right before I left I passed some gargantuan vats of candy sitting at the front.  The White Rabbit candies in particular caught my eye as a treat I've always enjoyed in America.  It looked like they had about seven different kinds though, unlike the plain white ones I'm used to seeing.  I decided to buy 2 of each, just to see if there were any differences between them.  Turns out they are all similar in texture (reallllly chewy. like "is this gum or candy?" chewy) and similarly sweet, but the flavors are ridiculous and like nothing I've ever tasted in the ones from Oakland Chinatown.  They had plum flavored ones and another that tasted like corn!  Can't say I was a fan of that one.  The best was the Taro one.  Then there were others that tasted so foreign I couldn't even place a distinct flavor.

Various types of White Rabbit Candies,
also called "Golden Monkeys"

Today was also a big day; I had my first day of Chinese class.  I almost missed it because I accidentally fell asleep right before lunch was served at 12:30 (3am US time) and didn't wake up until 1:20 (4:20am in the US), ten minutes before class was supposed to start. No idea how my body knew I was supposed to wake up then, but so glad I did. I booked it down to the dining area to see if there was any food left.  They had already cleaned everything up but I begged the chef to let me take some leftovers from the kitchen and she was more than willing.  Unfortunately she kept shoveling more and more food onto my plate, insisting that "this dish is best!  You need to try!"  Not really what I was going for at that point, considering I had all of seven minutes to wolf down my lunch before class.  Not sure if I'm even physically able to do that.  (...for anyone who hasn't sat down to a meal with me, it can be an epically long experience, no joke.).

I ended up being a little late to class, but my teacher either didn't notice or was pretending she didn't.  Her name is Xiong Yao, which in English means Bear Jade.  It turns out she's 22 years old.  She started me out with the basics:  What's your name, are you Chinese or American, I am a student, What do you like to do, etc... Smart move considering I haven't taken Chinese in almost four years.  We practiced a lot of speaking and reviewed some pinyin.  She said I have a decent accent, which I kind of don't believe but she probably said so because she's comparing me with people who have never studied Chinese at all.  She mentioned that Italians in particular tend to have issues with the pronunciation because they have "crooked tongues."

First Day of Class Notes

After class I hung out with the other students and we all ate dinner together.  I met some new people in the dining room.  A guy named Josh from Alabama, John from England, and Steven from LA.  Steven is by far the coolest. He has been at Keats school for about 2 weeks and is planning on staying for almost 3 more.  After that he will be studying at Kunming University for a whole year!

Steven told me all about his work at Victoria's Secret.  He was pivotal in how they've designed the layout of the store, and how the employees interact with the customers, etc.  He told me that at the V.S. headquarters they have models in underwear walking around all the time, racks of matching underwear sets lining the hallways, and HUGE pictures of Heidi Klum and Tyra Banks (of course) all around.  Said he thought the working environment was paradise at first but has since become disillusioned.  Haha, guess that's what happens when you mix work and play!  :-P

He also told me about some of the fun things to do in the area, and gave me the dirt on the thriving nightlife here.  Apparently Asians know how to throw it down.  (Wait, whaaattt??)  His favorite is this bar called The Hump Bar, which is a bar attached to a Youth Hostel.  My immediate thoughts were "Oh, duh.  They weren't kidding around with the name."

Check out those chairs!  Lap dance indeed.

He said that at bars here everyone plays drinking games, and it's normal for bartenders to have stocks of playing cards and dice for loan.  I can't say if that's the case in the US considering my unfortunate under-aged status, but I don't get the impression that it is quite as big a part of our bar scene.  

The thriving nightlife waiting to be explored
...also happens to be the view from my room

We swapped stories and he taught me a whole lot of the games he learned at the Hump Bar, including one called James Bond.  Sounds like one could get pretty sick here if they aren't careful, given the cheapness of liqueur combined with the Chinese peoples' penchant for guzzling copious amounts of beer.  He also told me about another bar that's country-western themed.  He said the last time he went there they had Chinese entertainers dressed all western-y, and they were singing American melodies but with Chinese lyrics.  Sounds insane!  I will definitely be checking both of these out in the near future.

Then he told me about a really sad thing that happens in Kunming:  Little girls are often kidnapped and then forced to sing in the streets for money which they then must hand over to their kidnappers.  Turns out that I saw one of these girls yesterday squatting and singing for money on the bridge by the school.  I thought it was so cute before.  Now I just feel bad.  Steven said that in the Main Square (big marketplace area always bustling with people) you can't barely go 50 feet without seeing one of these young girls.

Tomorrow I'm going out with some of the students here to get a Hotpot dinner.  I've never had it before I don't think, but from what people have been describing to me it sounds a lot like Vietnamese Foh (soup with noodles and you choose ingredients individually to put in.  It cooks at the table.)  Afterwards a few of us are going out to explore the night life! 

Saturday the school is taking people on a field trip to the Golden Temple, a local temple where everything is made entirely of copper.  Def partaking in that adventure!

Golden Temple, Kunming, China