videos of the music festival

amateur music night in Changchun

Friday night we went to a little music festival at Changchun university Some thoughts.

You gotta love the guy who came up with the chinese language. They didn't bother coming up with crazy complex words for things. They just put together little words and call it good. The word for school is 'xue xiao' (pronounced shoe-eh she-ow if you're curious). So when it came time to come up with the word for college or university they thought about it and went with 'big school', da xue. Don't make things more complicated than they need to be

A classmate of Emily's was in the show so we went to check it out. She was the bassist in her little VanTrap family band. Her older bro does lead guitar/vocals/writing and her younger brother plays the drums. Seeing an 8 year old french kid on the drums was a pretty big hit for the chinese crowd. It was tough to get quality video, but I did my best.

My personal favorite was the russian kid rapping in English to a chinese crowd. I couldn't understand a word he said, so I'm guessing the locals probably didn't catch much either. It's not everyday you see a russian guy in leopard skin pants and a darth vader t-shirt rapping in English in a remote ciy in China. You never know

The craziest bit was a deal where 20 people got dressed up in pokemon-like costumes and pranced around on-stage. I'm not entirely sure what the point was, but Nathan was pretty fired up about the girl who was dressed up as the pokemon character 'hussy' (in the white fur bikini) I don't think she made it onto the video which is probably ok.

The Frenchies

So I got invited to go biking with a group of folks (3 French guys and a Brit) around moon lake on Sunday morning at 8:30 am. I was excited to find a group of folks who would want to go mountain biking and the thought that there might be trails that we could ride on without dodging cars, buses, and pedestrians.

Turns out the Frenchies like to ride hard. 35 km on the trail and then another 20 km ride home on the road and I was pretty knackered. I haven't spent 4 hours in the saddle in awhile and had a hard time walking for the rest of the day.

This made for a great experience for me, but hardly blog worthy except for 2 little details.

1) When we get to the top of the hill, the frenchies turned into movie stars with chinese women flocking all around them. Not sure what those french guys do, but they drive women crazy all over the world. Someone needs to explain this to me.

2) The luge run. In the middle of the park they have a little bunny hill ski run with a small ski lift. If you're not into skiiing as much, they have the alternate entertainment of little luge cars riding on steel rails at the top of the hill. Unfortunately, they had a cable across the rails that I couldn't figure out how to dismantle or else it would have been go time.

called out

So we got to go to another wedding reception yesterday. I was told that when folks get married, they have to have a ceremony in the bride's parents hometown, the groom's parents hometown, and then finally in the townwhere they are living. It makes for a lot of parties, but I think they make some pretty good cash on the deal as meals are pretty cheap here in China and every guest brings a cash gift. Which you have to appreciate the directness of the Chinese. Don't screw around with registering for gifts and all that. Just keep it simple. We all want cash. You all have cash. Just drop your dough off in the slot and call it good. And while we're at it, lets skip the bouquet toss, cake cutting, and any other ridiculous ceremony. Lets just eat together.

So at this reception, they actually had sweet and sour pork as one of the entrees. The lazy susan couldn't quite go the full 360 degrees before that stuff was gone. Turns out the chinese food we always get in the US is not the chinese food they eat in NE China. So when this little goody showed up, my four kids went to work. Lucky for us there were a couple Chinese folks at the table who could ask the waitress to bring another round so the non-stouts at the table could give it a try.

Another strange thing happened at this reception. Our table was chatting away when we realized that we were the only ones in the room. 2 minutes before there were 150 folks eating away. Now, just a solitary table of 10 white folks. It was like a bad B-movie (the disappearing Chinese zombie movie). I asked a guy later what had happened. He said 'Chinese folks go to wedding receptions to eat. When the eating is done, no one knows what to do so we get uncomfortable and leave.' Apparently 90 minutes is how long it takes for every Chinese man, woman and child to eat at a wedding reception. At 7:29 the place is full. At 7:30, empty.

In the end, we decide maybe we should go as well (since it was already super late at 7:45). As we are getting ready to leave, Nathan asks why we always leave so much food on the table when we go out to eat and we have to finish our plates when we eat at home. I told him that in Chinese culture it would be considered bad manners to only bring enough food to the table that folks wanted to eat and that leaving food on the table was a way of saying 'you served us so much food we couldn't even finish it all'. He didn't say anything, turned to the chinese woman next to me and said 'so what's the real reason why everyone leaves so much food on the table at restaurants'. He was genuinely surprised when she said, 'it's like your dad said'.

From here, Nathan had to ask the next logical question. 'If there is all this food left over on every table, what keeps us from picking out the sweet and sour pork from every table and taking it home with us?' Dee explained to him that this wouldn't be a good idea because it would make us look 'desperate'. This required Dee to explain what being desperate is, which is a surprisingly difficult word to explain to a 10 year old. In the end he came up with 'so we aren't taking the pork home because we don't want people to think bad things about us'. Dee said 'yeah that's pretty much it'. He ended the conversation with 'huh, that's not very normal for us.'

Out of the mouths of babes. . .

the flight back

So I realized that I begin most of my stories with 'so, . . .) I'm just having a moment of self realization.

So I came back from a whirlwind trip to the US last weekend. My brother got married to a wonderful woman in Petoskey and I had a chance to be part of the festivities. It was great to see the family again and to see Robert in a great place.

The return home was a little less enjoyable. The eternal flights, the jet lag, and all that. It didn't help that I was carrying about 300 pounds of food contraband in my carry-on luggage (turns out you have to pay if your checked luggage is over 50 pounds, but they never weigh your 2 allowed carry-ons.) I took this loophole to its ridiculously logical conclusion and had the world's heaviest roller-bag/backpack combo in history. A stewardess wanted to help me get my bag in the overhead compartment at one point and I tried to warn her that this might not be a good idea. I think she's alright by now.

So in the GR airport I get flagged by the security checkin. I'm thinking they are going to tell me that the little conveyor belt can't handle bags this heavy. Instead they tell me that I'm not allowed to have liquids in my bag. Of course I knew this which is why all my liquids were in the checked luggage. That's when I was informed that gels and pastes are considered liquids. Turns out that Nutella is considered a paste. All 25 pounds of it. I start to panic at the thought of throwing 25 pounds of Nutella away. The guard suggested that I should just move the nutella to my checked baggage (he obviously was unaware of my packing genius which got both of my checked bags to exactly 50 pounds and no extra room to squeeze in anything new.)

As a side note, the box of velveeta cheese that I had packed was not considered a liquid, gel, or paste. Which begs the question, what exactly would the authorities call it? It's clearly not a solid, but it is oh so yummy.

So I go back to the front counter with my nutella cases to try and get my checked bags back off the plane. I figured it would be worth the $100 penalty to be overweight on my checked luggage in order to have nutella in China. Oddly, when I walked up to the counter the woman asked if I was Jeff Stout. (this happens to me a lot so I didn't think too much of it). I said 'yes'. She said 'come with me'. I said 'Uh oh'.

Turns out my luggage never made it onto the plane. It was sitting open next to the giant scanning equipment. She asked me what I was thinking sending this stuff through the scanner. I said 'my wife wanted me to bring a couple of things back to china with me, but I didn't think it would be an issue'. At that point she held up a small bottle of bike chain lube and asked me if I knew what it was. I said 'bike chain grease'. She said I was wrong. In her world it was an extremely flammable liquid that could be used to make a bomb. She then asked why I lied when the checker inner lady asked me if any of my bags had any explosives packed in them. I said 'because I thought it was just chain grease'. Apparently she thought my smile at the thought of this ridiculous situation was inappropriate to the gravity of the situation. She made me give her my passport so she could make a photocopy and send a report immeidately to the fbi. I would be on a watch list for a good long time. I'm not sure what this means, but she was pretty excited about finally putting somebody on that list.

To complete the 'am I in america or china right now' madness, she ended with the question 'and what are you hiding in the gallon jug of syrup'. You can probably see where this is going, but I said 'syrup'. She said 'why do you need to bring a gallon of syrup anywhere and why is that thing setting off all kinds of alarms in our system'? I said 'my kids like syrup? and maybe your machine is a racist?' She didn't think that was funny at all.

In the end, Aunt jemimah and the bike grease got thrown in the trash. This nicely made room for my nutella (turns out one gallon of syrup weighs 25 pounds. A pleasant coincidence) The bag was repacked, checked and I went back through the security checkout and had a delightly short conversation with the original security guard about how my nutella made it into my checked luggage safe and sound.

I made it home and celebrated christmas in october with my wife and kids tearing up over granola bars, crystal light, chex mix, hot chocolate mix, and yes big beautiful jars of nutella.

potpourri

So it’s been a bit since we've posted. I think the problem is that after the driving day post, you keep waiting for the 'crazier than that' day to come and life provides daily doses of craziness but nothing to top that. So here's a collection of thoughts/pictures from the last couple of weeks.

Signs: You just have to laugh at the signs. I don't always get my camera out fast enough to catch them, but every once in awhile you have to snap the photo.

Shanghai Airport. Somebody needs to explain to the Chinese that when English people put 'you are here' on a sign, it’s part of a map as in ‘you are located here relative to these other landmarks’. In china, they want to be like the west. So they have signs that tell you where you are. ‘You are here’. ‘ Oh, thanks for the info’. From an epistemological perspective, you can't really argue with them. They get extra points for delivering unequivocal truth in advertising. I am indeed here.

Shanghai hotel. So I landed in shanghai at like 11:30 pm. I was tired and just wanted a hotel. I walked out of the airport and stood under the sign that said ‘buses to all hotels’ for about 20 minutes and realized that just maybe there wouldn’t be any buses coming this way. So I just started walking toward the ‘airport hotel’ sign. The hotel was only like $80 a night for some reason (no smart alec comment coming explaining why the hotel was so cheap. It just was a cheap hotel attached to an airport). So they gave me my key and told me I was in room 8713. I took the elevator up to the 8th floor only to realize there was no room 713. Turns out at this particular hotel the room number was room 13 on the 7th floor of an 8 floor hotel. 8713. I’m not sure why I would have thought anything else. I discovered that obviously intuitive solutions probably depend on the intuition of the person being asked to use the product. So the picture of the hotel room is with the round bed. Kind of a cool room with a ridiculously uncomfortable bed.

Shoe shopping. So right next to our apartment is a little ‘industrial park’. In china, this means little shops on the street where work is done in the shop and on the sidewalk. Heavy on the manual labor. I think I mentioned before that the corner shop makes HVAC ducting. By hand. Dudes with sheet after sheet of galvanized steel bending sheets on a brake press and then drilling/riveting ducts. Great big industrial ducts, little tiny adapter ducts, and the occasional flower watering pot. 7 days a week these guys are getting after it. I’m guessing they make peanuts, but they are committed. So next to the duct makers is a cell phone store. Our Chinese friend took us into the cell phone shop and then out the back of the shop. Behind all the store fronts is a large cafeteria with steps leading upstairs to a clothing store. Not sure how anyone finds this place for the first time, but we were in. This was clearly where the Chinese buy cheap Chinese junk. They had thousands of square feet dedicated to shoes. All types. All brands. All cheap. I’m not sure, but I have a hunch that the 29 RMB Adidas’ are not really made by Adidas (29 RMB=$4). I was also surprised to see that Nike, with all their work developing their brand recognition would be so sloppy as to manufacture one of their shoes with a backwards N. I guess Nike is not as tight a ship as we all thought they were.

Another airport photo. Changchun airport. Capitalism and marketing has not penetrated all of china. Yet. If you’re going to sell this and that at the airport, what would you call your shop. Why ‘the generic shop’ of course. Simple. Elegant. To the point. We’re not selling anything special here. Nothing to write home about. No niche products. Just everyday junk that you might want. Or you might not. Whatever. I don’t own the place, the government does.

Last story that I don’t have any pictures for. We were playing soccer again as a family at our local neighborhood soccer field (the one with the new slit in the fence every time the last slit gets re-wired). In the middle of our game, we saw some college kids coming over to the open grass field behind the soccer pitch to practice throwing discus. After playing for awhile, I couldn’t help but notice that the discuses were landing pretty close to the fence, but didn’t think much of it. Until one of the discs hit one of our bikes. Then I got mad. Turns out when you live in a country where you can’t express yourself and somebody does something to tick you off, you just kind of snap. I slipped through the slit in the fence, grabbed the discus and walked over to where the folks were standing. I yelled at them for awhile figuring that if they couldn’t understand any of my words, maybe a prolonged look at the vein on the side of my neck about to pop might get the point across. Of course I went back through the slit and they started throwing shot put as close to our bikes as they could (let’s see if the cracker will snap again. Hee Hee). We ended the soccer game shortly after that and got the bikes out of there before there was an international incident. My wife fears that I may have reinforced their stereotypes of Americans as hot headed nut jobs. I resented that.

Til next time. . .

driving day videos