Nikki's Visit to China!

This month I was so blessed to have my sister, Nikki, and three of her most adventurous friends come visit me in China!

Weeks of anticipation had worked me up into an emotional frenzy before this trip. I was excited, nervous, worried, euphoric- having someone that knows me so well come into my life here in China was a completely  surreal concept and I just had no idea how to handle it.  But I've been missing home a lot the last two months and I just kept telling myself to, "Hold on, Nikki will be here soon."

 

 

 I took a train up to Shanghai to meet Nikki and her friends at their hotel. Probably one of the greatest memories of my life will be seeing my sister from across the lobby of this fancy Chinese hotel and not caring what kind of spectacle we made as we ran across the room gave each other a giant hug.  I love my sister so much!

 

And is it no wonder I love her? Look what she brought me!! Nikki and her friends loaded down and filled extra duffel bags with pounds and pounds of "can only be purchased in America" stuff for me and my friends.  This includes but is not limited to makeup, hairspray, moisturizer, self-tanning spray, Airborne, Vick's Vapor Rub, 3 lbs. of coffee, spices, tampons, a million kinds of candy, English books and magazines, Bath and Body Works stuff, tons of prepackages soup and dip mixes, popcorn, black tea, snacks,Vanilla, 14 ARTICLES OF CLOTHING, and an adorable handmade canvas and card made my sweet nieces.

This is truly amazing and every time I look at these pictures I'm filled with awe.  Nikki and her friends are fantastic and no one can ever tell me otherwise.

The girls had a amazing trip, experiencing some of the most beautiful...and the most challenging elements of China.  Our first stop was Suzhou, my home city.  I love it here and I was proud that it was one of the girls' highlights of their trip.  I really wanted to show them what my life is like here and to let them see
So Suzhou started with coming and taking a tour of Disney English then getting lost in a taxi with a driver that didn't understand them.  You take your life in your hands every time you get into a taxi so of course they almost got hit by a bus and got screamed at in Chinese. Typical.

The girls tried lots of Chinese food but I make them eat anything weird or make them eat street food.  I adore Chinese food and have loved almost everything I've had here.  It's absolutely nothing like the stuff we have back home, in fact I feel like American Chinese food will seem like a joke to me when I return.  I'm not sure that my friends left China as enthusiastic about the cuisine as I am but they did have some stuff that they enjoyed.  One night we went to a super fancy and expensive Cantonese restaurant that they really liked.  I think the girls definitely learned a lot about the passionate relationship that the Chinese have with food...and just how much they can eat at one meal ;)

Below are some more photos of Suzhou!

The quintessential old man's hobby, all over China you can see retired guys practicing the ancient art of water calligraphy. They use water and a brush to write these beautiful traditional characters onto the sidewalk and then they disappear in a few minutes. Poetic, I think.

Man on the street playing an Erhu (Chinese violin).

Suzhou is a city filled with beautiful canals and gardens.  We took the girls to the historic Pingjiang Lu, which is an ancient street that runs along a canal.  It has lots of local color and a cool atmosphere.  This is a photo of some fish a man was catching out of the canal.

The girls look so cute next these characters on the wall! They decided that the sign said, "Four hot babes." (It's really some kind of advertisement for a fish restaurant, but tell them ;)

One of Suzhou's must-see sights is Tiger Hill, a gorgeous and massive garden with classical architecture and beautiful grounds.  My brilliant, hilarious friend Ben met us there and was our tour guide.  Ben knows a dozen fantastic legends about all of the different parts of Tiger Hill and definitely understands the value of epic storytelling.  The amazing folklore is one of the greatest things about China, I was glad Ben was there to share it with the girls.  Note: the above photo does not capture the teeny tiny rock that the three of us had to balance on capture this pic!

Pretty girls at pretty Tiger Hill.

There are no dryers in China, everyone line dries.  The girls thought it was pretty funny that people hang their underwear out for everyone to see!  The next day they did some laundry at my house and I hung it up while the girls went to get coffee.  Nikki came home and was horrified that I'd hung her underwear up outside, I'm so used to it I didn't really think about it.  Amber was even more horrified when we got home later that night and she found her sweatshirt on the floor of parking garage below my balcony. It had blown off and been run over by a car. Yikes! Welcome to life in China.

Nikki and I at a bar with my darling friends James and Nicole.

I was so relieved when James took half the day to help me lead the girls around and play tour guide.  It was nice to have some of the pressure off and just to be able to spend time with them.  And I have to say that when we left him to go to our dinner plans I felt a little like something small was slipping away from me.
My sister and her friends are wonderful women who were so good to me the entire trip and whom I like and enjoy hanging out with.  However, some of the trip was hard for me for a lot of reasons.
A hundred things happened that made me realize how much I've changed by being in China.  I don't know yet how to reconcile the new me with the familar parts of my old life and that makes me feel a little isolated.

 For months I've been fixated on the idea that here in China I am who I am right now. None of my friends know anything about me that I haven't told them. My relationships are all new, no one has seen me grow or change, or has seen me a my worst. This is a liberating fact but it also makes me miss my friends and family desperately. However, with my sister's visit I  felt an increasing anxiety that I had changed more than I'd realized, and troubled that this might drive an emotional separation between me and the people I love. 

 I always think of my life back home as my reality and my China life as a temporary condition.  But that's not the case.  The time I spend in China is not a hiatus, it's my life and it's shaping me as a person.
When James came down later to meet us at a bar, I remember seeing him and being overwhelmed with a flood of relief.  It was then that I realized that my friends here know and accept a somewhat different Ashlee than my friends back home. I've become accustomed to the familiarity of these relationships, and it's my previous life that is starting to seem alien.  While James, Ben, Nicole and others were with us I felt a little more like myself.
This has nothing to do with my sister and her friends but more with me trying to reconcile the character reformation that comes from living abroad.  It's one of the many reasons that I'm so thankful that my sister came to China.  Knowing that I have someone on the other side of the ocean that has seen my life and can understand what I'm talking about makes me feel incredibly lucky. I have a sister who loves me so much  she'd come all the way to Asia and try to relate to me.  She's an incredible person.  It assures me that no matter where I go, or how we change, my relationship with her will always be constant.  There is no friend like my sister.                

The girls' first illegal taxi ride!  Haha, they didn't know until after they got out of the car that Ben had negotiated with this guy to give us a ride in his van...he wasn't a licensed taxi.  They were a little horrified but then they had to do it again when we got stranded at the Suzhou train station in the middle of the night.  I'm sure that none of them pictured themselves getting into some strange Chinese guy's car. 
I didn't either before I came here.   

Lunch at Beijiang with friends! Nikki got to meet Karen, Jesse, and Karen's sweet little girl.  I made Nikki sit next to Karen because I was determined that two of my favorite people in the world get to know each other!

Beautiful PingJiang Lu!

We took a small boat to along one of the Suzhou canals.  We rode past some local women that got super excited to see so many foreigners in one place!  They started yelling at our gondolier that he should start singing to us.  Which he promptly did in a gravelly, off key voice.  Loved it! 

Relaxing at a tea house along PingJiang Lu.

In Shanghai we mostly did a TON of shopping! The girls loaded up on fake purses and tchotchkes (which Lara called Joanie Love Chachis).  We also ate crappy Western Food, went to another beautiful garden, and over course took in the sparkling skyline of The Bund.

Chelsea and I! My awesome friends Chelsea and Krit came down to meet us and, because they live in Shanghai and know it so much better than I do, helped me with navigation and market haggling.
 My first friends in China, love these girls so much!

On to the wondrous Beijing! Above is a panoramic shot of The Forbidden City.  I love Beijing and wouldn't recommend coming to China without visiting it.  It's about 5.5 hours away from me by fast train, definitely worth the trip.  We had a great time here! The girls hired a handsome local guide, Jason, to take us around and they booked a swanky hotel.  It was a fantastic, stress free vacation traveled in luxury style!  I'm not used to things being so easy in China! 

Most of the sites that we went to I'd already done, but it was nice to see them again and appreciate them in greater detail. The coolest thing is that we went to a section of The  Great Wall I hadn't been to yet! I'd previously been to Badaling, but this time we went to Mutianyu.  An awesome site, at the top of a mountain. And you get to take a toboggan on the way down! So fun!

Nikki and I at the Beijing Zoo.  Look closely, you can see a tiny Panda in the background.

Outside "The Legend of Kung Fu" at The Red Theater where we saw a kung fu show performed by real Buddhist monks!

The trip to Beijing reminded me how majestic and fascinating, not to mention enduring, Chinese culture really is.  We climbed to the top of a high bell tower to watch a drum ceremony, the performance was so powerful that I left thinking, "My god, I LOVE China."

Climb to the drum tower, terrifyingly steep!

In front of the drum tower!  Seriously, I can't believe my sister is with me in China. So I actually have a written Bucket List (more on this later) and during this trip I was able to cross off two items! 

1. Travel internationally with my sister.

And....

Order room service at a fancy hotel!

(Eaten in bed none the less!)

Saying goodbye to my sister was incredibly hard.  I had to make a million farewells in preparation to come to China but I was able to do it without tears or emotional scenes. Before she left, Nikki and I even made a pact not to cry because we didn't want our parting memory to be a sad one.  So much for that!
I walked the girls down to the front of the hotel lobby and just as Nikki was about to get into the taxi, she threw her arms around me one last time.  I don't know what came over me, but I involuntarily burst into tears!  The trip had been a whirl wind and I was suddenly in a panic that it hadn't been enough time! I didn't want to let her go, God knows when I'll see her again!  I cried my eyes out when I got back to my room.  I already feel like I know far too much about goodbyes, especially the indefinite kind.  But I'm thankful for my ties to my sister.  I'm thankful for the opportunity to miss her and to be missed by her because now I truly know just how precious she is. 
How do people make it through life without a sister?  Mine is my hero, my confident, my mirror, and my best friend! I love you, Nikki!  Thank you for journeying to China!

Train Chaos

“One of the great things about travel is that you find out how many good, kind people there are.” — Edith Wharton

My first few months in China I had so many frustrating, confusing and stressful train experiences.  And after my first few stressful weeks in Xiao Shan I was dreading the train trip to Suzhou. 
The night before I left on my journey to Suzhou I started asking my Chinese friend, Rachel, a bunch of questions about the Xiao Shan train station, I was determined not to have another catastrophic train experience like so many that I've had in China.  
After the first few inquiries she said to me, "What time are you going?"
Me: 11am
Rachel: Ok, ok I will go with you and wait with you until you leave on the train.
Me: Really?! Are you sure? You have to work tomorrow, don't you?
Rachel: No am the boss I am very free.

So the next morning we went for a nice breakfast and then went to the station.  When we arrived there were a ton of people outside the station, funneling into a small entrance, manned by a couple of guards.  The people outside were pushing and shouting.  They were obviously stressed that the line was moving too slow and that they might miss their train.  
"They are expressing their emotions," said Rachel.
Me- "I can hear that. They don't sound very happy."
 
Rachel looked at crowd, shook her head and started pushing to the front. She started gesturing to me and my suitcase and obviously saying in Chinese, "Let me go through. My friend is foreign and she'll miss her train!" The amazing thing was that people would stop shouting, look at me, and move over to let me pass.  She got up to the gate and did the same thing to the guard and he just smiled at me and let me though ahead of everyone.  I shuffled through, thankful and a little embarrassed and once inside Rachel showed me how to find my train and to tell when it's boarding.  The Xiaoshan is a chaos of crazy, with people packed in two small rooms.  Most of it you can deal with ok...until you see a baby peeing on the floor.  
As soon as people started shuffling through the boarding gate to get on the train Rachel said, "I will see if the guard will let go with you to find your seat." She walked right over to the guard and started telling him,  "Let me go through and help her, she is foreign and she doesn't know what to do."  
He just looked at her and didn't respond, I'm sure because he didn't want to say yes or no, so she walked right by with me in tow.  She proceeded to climb onto the train with me, convince some man to help me with me my bag and then she gave me a quick hug and turned to jump off.  She ran to the automatic door and just as she was about to step out, it slid closed locking her into the train!
It happened so fast all she had time to do was say NOOOOO into the glass as the train pulled away from the station! So there she was stuck on the train to Suzhou! 

I felt horrible! Rachel had to stay on the train and get off at the next city (30 min. away) then wait for another train back! I felt like such a stupid jerk for allowing her to get into this situation because she was helping me! Though I must say I was pretty impressed with how quickly she recovered and laughed about it. Something like that would've ruined my day, but Rachel just smiled and started texting her office and telling them she'd be late. Very late.
Then she made me sit down in my seat while she pulled out her tablet and balanced it on the back of my chair while she stood in the aisle and worked.
Before she got off at the next stop I offered to pay for her train home but she mumbled some half truth about not having to pay, wished me a good trip and left.         
She was so good to me and after some seriously stressful experiences in China, her kindness meant so much to me.  In truth, coming to China has renewed my faith in how really awesome people can be.  Since I've been here I meant some crazies but there's been more people, Chinese and foreign alike, that have shown me real kindness.  Living abroad is more challenging then I ever thought, and I'm thankful for all of my good friends and acquaintances.
Once when Jesse was helping me at the bank and I was thanking her profusely she said, "It's ok. Anytime you need help you can ask me.  I can imagine how hard it is to come to a new country. And I think at home you probably help people too."
Me- "I especially will now, because I know how impossible it is to survive on your own without friends. When I go home I feel like I want to walk around with a sign on that says, 'Who needs help?"  
I'm in a strange phase of my life where I have to rely a lot on others, but I'm learning a lot too about how important each of us are in the lives of others. 

Wuxi with Jesse and Ben

This weekend Jesse invited Ben and I to travel with her to her hometown, Wuxi, and celebrate a local holiday with her family.  I asked her several times what the holiday was but the best answer I could get was, "Just some food festival." So on Tuesday morning the three of us met at the train station early in the morning and took a train to her nearby city.  Then we stood on a crowded bus for 45 minutes and traveled to the small town on the outskirts of Wuxi.

 Jesse was very nervous about bringing us home.  She warned us over and over again that we are the first foreigners to come to her town and that no one in her family speaks any English.  She was worried that everyone was going to gawk and make a big fuss over us.  We told her not to worry about it, we get this everywhere we go and we're used to it. And of course it's no problem for me because I love attention ;)
Her family did fuss over us and her relatives wanted to take pictures with us.  She was horrified when they finished their meal and then pulled their chairs up around our table to watch us eat.  (And in truth being a foreigner in China can sometimes be like living in a fish bowl. Which is unsettling, but Jesse's family was just excited and curious.) Sometimes she outright refused to translate between her family and us because she was embarrassed.  It didn't matter, I know she's proud of her family and her home and was excited to show everything to us.

I've never eaten so much food in my life.  Chinese hospitality = force feeding your guests at all times.  This is a photo of the first meal we had which included about 20 different dishes.  We stupidly ate everything, not realizing that we would have to continue eating like this for the next 40 hours.  Every time I turned around a snack or a drink was being pushed into my hands! The food that Jesse's mom made was amazing.  I never ceased to be impressed with Chinese food.  How can there be so many things I haven't had? So many things that seem gross that are actually tasty? I loved almost every single thing I ate.  Of course this included like fifteen types of fruits and vegetables I'd never seen before and strange things like pork stomach, beef stomach, a super fatty pork that they'd been curing for two months, and...water snake.  Jesse tried to convince me that it was fish but when I saw these snakes swimming around in a bucket at the market the next day and asked her if it was the same thing we ate, she said yes.
Me- "It's a snake!"
Jesse-"Yes...I guess it's like a snake."  
Blech. Seeing them swim around gave me the heebie jeebies but I'd probably eat it again because it tasted pretty good.
Another note, nobody at our table had their own plate everybody just eats out of the main dishes. Our drinks were served in our small bowl (mine later got rinsed and filled with rice.) Also, it's normal in China for bones, fruit peels, prawn skins, nut shells, anything you want to spit out of your moth, to be discarded onto the table.

Jesse's parents had bought tons of sugar cane to snack on. You chew on the pulp until the sweet juice is gone and then you spit it out.  It's messy but yummy.  It's one of the many snacks that was offered again and again. I'm sure I have five new cavities. 

 Jesse's father! I liked him so much! He is an attentive host and avid Mahjong player.  Later that evening he came home in the middle of the night from playing with his friends.  He got confused about which rooms we were staying in and, in the darkness, crawled into bed with Ben.  Jesse was mortified but it was pretty hilarious.   

 After lunch Jesse's brother and six year old nephew drove us into to see the city (about 40 minutes away).  There we visited the wealthy area of Wuxi which included the Long Wish Hotel which claimed to be "The World's Tallest Building in Rural Areas"

The hotel displayed an impressive collection of art pieces and you could pay to go up through various decorated floors and all the way to the top.  Jesse's family refused to let us pay anywhere.

Super beautiful, intricate jade carving.

 Jesse's nephew didn't speak a word of English, but it didn't matter he played with us and held our hands everywhere we went.  Right as Ben knelt down so I could take a picture of their matching plaid shirts the little boy said, "He has a big nose!" in Chinese.

 Gold sculpture. Apparently it's a big deal.

 We watched a film in a u-shaped room about the wonders of Wuxi.  I was sold, Wuxi is awesome. 

Walking on these gold tiles "means you'll have better development and a promising future."

 View of greater Wuxi from the top of the fancy hotel. 72 floors in a elevator that rises at 8 meters per second, or ears we popping!

 After the hotel they took us to a nearby mountain where Wuxi had built a mini replica of The Great Wall for hiking. There was also a fake Tienanmen Square, fake Arc de Triomphe and fake Statue of Liberty.  Jesse and her brother thought is was weird too but it was a beautiful day to be outside so none of us minded.

He's learning Kung Fu so he spent a lot of time showing us his moves.

 The tall building in the center is the hotel.

 Tired from a full afternoon out in the sun!  So sweet!

 We returned to Jesse's town and we walked over to the main shopping street which was bustling for the holiday.  People were everywhere eating street food, selling things and playing mahjong.

 Jesse insisted on taking us to her favorite hole-in-the-wall noodle place where we ate a delicious bowl of super spicy soup with cilantro and peanuts.  Jesse said, "But you can't tell my mom I took you here because she'll be mad that we're eating out when there's so much food at home."  Eating there was a mistake because when we arrived back at the house there was a bunch of relatives and a huge meal waiting for us.

Family portrait! Jesse's mom in the green and the others are her aunts and uncles.  They were so nice, and very excited to eat with us.  They were eager to talk to us about China and to tell us about their lives, and of course to tell us about different people they know that have gone to America.  Jesse did a lot of translating that night! All of her family told us to come back again and her aunts hoped that we would visit their houses too ;)

Jesse's house was fantastic and I was most excited that is was surrounded by rice fields that her family owns.  They harvest the rice in the fall and it feeds them for the entire year.  After dinner we sat outside and talked for a long time and the weather was perfect.

Good Morning!  We had rice porridge and some drinkable yoghurt for breakfast, plus some leftover meat and vegetables.  I really had no room for anymore food, but how could I refuse? They have a room with big windows where they hang laundry and we sat up there and had tea.  All day neighbors and relatives kept dropping by to say hello, it was nice to feel like we were in a small town.

After breakfast Jesse's mom asked us to come with her to the market.  Little did we know that she was buying MORE food especially for us to eat.

 Bought big bags of mangoes, oranges, tomatoes, and dragon eyes which we realized later were gifts for us to take home. Dragon eyes are kind of like a grape with a peel and a pit. Jesse warned me not to eat more than ten of them because, "They are too healthy, they'll make your nose bleed."  Um...ok.

We went into a huge indoor market with long counters where venders were selling all kinds of foods.  Here Jesse's mom is buying meat that she had ground up for dumplings.  (I took this picture mostly to scare my sister. Nikki, quit freaking out.  They shop here every day and eat this meat EVERYDAY.)

Jesse said that this market has been here her whole life with the same vendors since she was five years old so she knows all of them. 
Jesse- "See that man over there? He used to be very handsome. Now he is old."
Since everyone there knows Jesse it didn't take very long before the curious staring to turn into small groups of people surrounding us and talking at us excitedly in Chinese.  Who are these foreigners? Are they your friends?  Jesse hated this and quickly whisked us away.  I told Jesse not to worry about it and to just relax.  But I have to say it's nice that Jesse is not the kind of person to invite her foreign friends home so she can parade us around like status symbols.  She wanted us to come home with her because she is genuinely our friend and wants to share her life with us.  Love her.

On the street there were all manner of things (mostly animals) being sold for Chinese Medicine.  Lizards, tortoises, goat heads, snakes, scorpions and a bunch of other scary stuff.  This is the only picture I managed to snap. Illegal wildlife trade is a huge problem in China so I didn't dare take a photo of anything else, plus seeing animals sold like this gives me a very creepy feeling.  

Back to the house we helped make dumplings for lunch.  Jesse and her dad showed us how to fold them the Wuxi way.  Her dad was amazing at it.

Cooked and covered in her mom's homemade spicy sauce plus some vinegar.  Delicious. Of course they weren't happy until we'd each eaten like 10 or 15.

After lunch Jesse's mom decided she wanted to take us to a hike up a nearby 'mountain'. This meant that Ben and I climbed onto the back of motorbikes with Jesse and her mom to ride for the ride.  Several things about this:
1. I've decided I love motorbikes and I want one when I get home.
2. If you think you get stared at walking into a market in Wuxi, wait until you're a foreigner riding through town on the back of a motorbike behind a middle aged Chinese woman. I saw jaws actually drop open.
3.  Jesse is terrible at driving motorbikes.
Jesse's mom tried to keep pace with her but Jesse drives so slow that her mom kept getting frustrated and just driving off.  More than once she forgot how to use the breaks and almost lost control.  She asked Ben if he wanted to drive and he said, "No way, I don't know how to drive this thing and I so do not want to be responsible for crashing your parents' bike."

This is a pic I took from the bike, behind Jesse's mom, and below are some photos I took of the countryside.

 Mountain was, as expected, a paved road that we quickly strolled up.  But the hill was covered in beautiful tea fields.  Here Jesse is showing us which part of the plant is picked.

 At the end of the path was a temple that Jesse's mom frequents.  Jesse isn't religious but she said her mom comes here on holidays to pray for her family.

 The temple was super beautiful, one of nicest ones I've seen. And an incredible view!

 I always feel weird taking photos at temples because it's a religious place, and it seems disrespectful.  But believe me it was lovely. 

Throwing coins and granting wishes.

We rode back to the house and once again Jesse was going too slow so her mother speed off.  We arrived at the house and Jesse and Ben were no where to be found.

We waited for about five minutes before Jesse's parents and her brother started looking at each other nervously.  Where were they? (I think they were most worried because they know about Jesse's quality driving skills.)
Jesse's brother said to me, "Are you...." he trailed off, paused and started again. "I am speaking English."
Me- "Yes, I know."
Another pause. Brother- "I don't speak English." 
Me- "Oh."
Then he just opened the car door and pointed for me to get in so we could go look for Jesse and Ben.
We drove half way back to the mountain and we couldn't find them!  Turns out that they were delayed because they ran into a bit of a problem.
Jesse had pulled to a stop but she forgot to put her feet down. Immediately the bike started to fall and as they went down Ben realized that with his weight on the bike it was going to crush Jesse's leg. So he bailed, diving/falling off into the dirt on the side of the road.  Jesse was able to catch herself but Ben looked like a total spaz flying off the back of the motorbike. When he got back and told me this story I said, "Please tell me there were a ton of people watching."
Ben- "Oh yeah, there totally were. There were a whole bunch of cars going by.  I just made a lot of peoples' day."
Me- "No kidding! They are gonna go home and be like, 'You'll never guess what I saw! Some foreign guy just fell off the back of a motorbike! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
They didn't tell Jesse's parents that it happened, but everytime I think about it makes me laugh out loud.
Bwhahahaha!