Da Fen: City of Art

Da Fen, a beautiful town filled with art and recreations is about 30 driving from our apartment. The buildings in Da Fen are painted pink, orange, and multicolored. While at Da Fen we saw 5 Mona Lisas, 2 Obamas, 3 Ches, 4 Audrey Hepburns, 1 Beckham (spelled Bakeham) and 1 Alan Greenspan (former chair of the federal reserve). We saw hand painted copies of Van Gogh, Degas, Andy Warhol, and Picasso.

While roaming the art filled allies I spied a “hippie store”. Hanging outside were an amazing pair of red flower patterned pants. I tried them on and asked how much they were “zhe ge duo shao qian”. After bargaining and finding another pair of grey capris I wanted I decided I really needed her to cut down her price, so I started to walk out. She immediately dropped the price about 50 yuan, or 7 dollars. We haggled some more but she thought I wanted them “tai pian yi” (too cheap) and I thought she was trying to sell them “tai gui le” (too expensive).

I should mension she was beautiful and was the first Chinese I had ever seen with curly hair, in fact it was so curly she probably couldn’t fit anything bigger than a chopstick threw each curl. After her price did not come down enough, I started to walk out for real. We walked out and around a corner and were inspecting an ice cream cart when she walked up behind us and offered us a cheaper price. We walked back to her store and finally settled on a price after much laughing and repeating of our preferred price. I now have two new pairs of pants that are “hen ku”.

Da Peng

Mid-Autumn Festival Speech

While I was sitting in an empty room at the law school trying to memorize a poem about being far away from home and the Mid-autumn festival a man came into the room and said hello, in English. I replied Nihao (hello in Chinese) he asked me what my name was (in Chinese) and we had a short, very short, conversation in Chinese. Then he switched to English and told me that he thought that maybe his professor was my mother because she had said that she had two daughters and one son, and he had realized that maybe I was her daughter. I replied that yes I was her daughter. We both continued our work, I laboring over “du zai yi xiang wei yi ke” and he murmuring to himself in English.

After a couple of minutes he said something along the lines of “Today is maybe the Mid-autumn festival party. I have to give a speech.” At this point, I, not quite understanding what he meant, though he had asked me to give a speech at the Mid-autumn festival party. He quickly cleared up the confusion then continued, “I think maybe I (emphasis on the I) have to give a speech, and I maybe was thinking you can listen to my speech and tell me if I have any problems with my pronunciation.” I agreed and he handed me two sheets of paper with tiny blue cursive writing on it.

He began, “Welcome Dean, Welcome professors, Welcome students, and especially, Welcome new students” He went on talking about STL (the school) and how it had its flaws but that the students were the ones who were going to improve it. He talked about how you don’t abandon a baby or a child because it is not a grown person yet, and how the students had been called upon to modernize the Chinese judicial system. He said that the school would give the students wings of freedom and power. He recited all of this with a blank expression staring at the white wall behind me. Once he had finished we both returned to our work.

A couple of minutes ago he came up to me again and asked me to pronounce a j then a g. He seemed baffled, but said them correctly. He then wrote “give” and “jeep” and had me pronounce those. He is now trying to understand Isabel’s name. She came in to tell me we are leaving.

Last night at the Mid-autumn festival party, he recited his speech in front of everyone, staring at the white wall behind me.

Dancing in a Typhoon

Jacek, Isa, and I wandered around the “exercise room” in our apartment complex. This exercise room is actually two clustered groups of very strange exercise machines, strangely placed outside. The machines include sculling contraptions, strange wood platforms screwed together that appear to be for strengthening arm muscles, and yellow circles with the yin and yang sign on them that spin when pushed. After long consideration, Jacek decided that these swirly circles must be to improve your inner chi, because no other obvious reason was apparent.

As Jacek toned his abs, Isabel stretched her calves, and I worked my back incredibly hard (I would find this out the next day when I awoke to find that my back muscles felt like they had been put through a cheese processor), incredible amounts of rain began to fall from the grey sky. It was raining neither cats nor dogs. It was raining more along the lines of hippos, possibly even whales, and definitely the remaining bursts of Typhoon Koppu.

We scrambled to the nearest shelter, which happened to be a very scrawny tree; in fact, we probably would have stayed dryer if we had stayed without “protection”. We sent a scout out, usually Jacek, to find another relatively dry spot. After multiple dashes through the torrents of rain we made it safely and soaking to our apartment.

Once inside the dry haven of our rooms, we hurriedly swapped our more than damp clothes for a dry pair, removed our shoes, and as we sprinted out the door onto the slippery marble tiles, shouted to Dad, “We’ll be back!” Outside we splashed in puddles, observed goldfish from a very close distance, according to the rushing guard, too close. We climbed over Elephant chess tables, hopped on smooth stone “foot massage” paths, and to the astonishment of little, old Chinese women, who rushed by huddling under their umbrellas, dragging their protesting grandchildren by the elbow, tried to build dams out of twigs (fun, but unsuccessful).

Once we were soaked to not just the bone, but to the bone marrow, we slid up to our 14 floor apartment laughing and shouting, “We danced in a Typhoon!

Safari Park- and lack of Xiong Mao

To get home from the law school we take the 43 bus. The bus stop is next to a 10 foot wall covered in vines. On the other side of the wall a tall wooden structure is visible. On Thursday discovered that we live a 2 minute bus ride from the abode of three giraffes. These giraffes live as part of the Safari Park which happens to be about three minutes from our apartment. On Thursday we went to the Safari Park. We saw beautiful birds, monkeys, chickens, elephants, penguins, zebras, donkeys, tigers, deer, raccoons, peacocks and fish. After being dragged through the maze of animal cages by a very, very reluctant horse, we climbed and slid on raised platforms over tigers, lions and bears, oh my. In fact, we fed the lions raw chicken on a stick, held baby tigers, and bobbed apples with the huge bears.
In a small part of the swan lake huge plastic tubes floated in the water, calling to us to figure out what they were. A man explained to us that we had to climb in and he would push them out in the water, then we tried to run in them. Basically they were huge hamster balls, but in water. They were so much fun!

(Stirling took this picture)

In CHina! September 3 (China time)

It is 3:54 pm in Utah, +14 hours= 5:54 am in CHINA!  The internet in the airport is in Chinese so I have to guess on what to click.  The air is really wet, even inside the airport.  The chairs are blue, so is the ferry counter, for which we are waiting to open.  In about two hours we will be on a boat to Shenzhen! (and hopefully more sleep)