Day seven: “Black diesel oil, what do you think they were trying to say there?”

Day seven: “Black diesel oil, what do you think they were trying to say there?” quote by Jeff


(sorry in advance for this one, it's long...so much to write about Also, I added two posts today. Day six too. I'm almost caught up, I just have to do today still, which I might skip because I'm getting tired of writing :-) or make it really short (really!).

Not much going on today, mostly recovering from site seeing all weekend. We did make it over to the basketball court in the park across the street. It was really full and they wouldn’t let us in. I think it was because it was too full. I gathered from the worker that he wanted us to come back tomorrow morning, but I didn’t know for sure why. About a half hour later, it poured down rain (we were still hanging out at the park) and we noticed the basketball court was emptying out. “Wimps”, I thought, “it’s too rainy for them”. So we headed back to the basketball court to play. The old man there yelled at me. (There’s nothing like being yelled at in a different language about who knows what) I’m not really sure except that I think he was telling me he already told me to come back tomorrow. I think they booted everyone out when it was raining so hard (it looked like the basketball court had turned into a small swimming pool, it didn’t drain very well). It was also thunder and lightening after all. I couldn’t decide if we were safer in the park with all the small trees around us or in the 25th / top floor of a high rise building. I went for the park, besides it would stop sooner or later and we needed some fresh air and exercise. This picture is in the park, our apartment is in the background, the 3rd building from the right, on the top floor.

My posting today is about observations that we have noticed over the past week. I found out answers to most of my observations, but they are still different than the way we do things, so I thought I would share.

The Chinese are very superstitious. There is no 4th or 14th floor in our apartment. Apparently, 4 in Chinese translates to die, so if you skip that floor then it doesn’t really exist right? I don’t know the exact translation of 14, but I am assuming it has a similar translation and that’s why that floor is skipped too, although, there is a 24th floor.

Speaking of the elevator; we figured out that the reason one of the elevators is so shabby looking is because it’s the elevator that they use for transporting furniture or other big supplies to the rooms. They don’t want to risk beating up the nice looking elevator.

No fortune cookies, but we do get cut up watermelon following all our meals in sit down restaurants. We were in San Francisco last summer at the fortune cookie factory (where most fortune cookies are made) and I guess I assumed those cookies were shipped here or made in similar factories here. Bad assumption, I haven’t seen one fortune cookie, but I’ve seen a lot of watermelon.

Napkins are a scarce commodity. If you happen to get lucky and get one, they are always very small and you get one to share. They are about 3 inches square and really thin. Jeff talked to a friend at work and apparently the reasoning is that there are tons of people here and it’s expensive to give things away (which explains why there is no toilet paper in public places either). So we all walk around with dirty hands and faces…..maybe their children are neater than mine. I went to the market and bought a package of napkins and paper towels thinking I would just keep them in my back pack and we could pull them out when we needed them. Even those napkins were extremely small and thin. I’m talking like one ply toilet tissue. Have you ever tried to wipe your fingers or face clean after a sticky meal with toilet tissue, this is perhaps a bigger problem than the original one. The nicer restaurants give you cloth wash clothes to wipe with before and after your meal. I like that!

We had some time to hang out at the super market last night. We had to show Jeff all the interesting things. We wandered around forever looking at everything. Things such as the meat area had frozen turtles, bull frogs, eel, squid, and many different kinds of whole fish (just the guts taken out), and ducks and chickens with their heads still attached. We did finally buy some eggs. I’m pretty sure they are chicken eggs. I had to laugh because there are several different types of eggs, some really big, some really small, different colors, spotted, but the ones still covered in fowl poo were the best by far. This isn’t a local open air market; this is a store in the bottom floor of a large department store. It’s pretty upscale and expensive, but they had eggs with bird poo still on them. We decided to see if we could find some things from home and see how expensive they were such as flour or sugar (not that I was going to buy flour, I was just looking to see if I could find it) we found sugar (not powered like we wanted for french toast…since there’s no syrup either), but didn’t find flour. We found gallon size jugs of vegetable oil in several different brands. We tried to buy a small one and it’s still really large, they don’t come in small sizes. We also figured out if you buy the local products they are considerably cheaper. I was told cereal would be really expensive here, and that’s true if you want to buy a western brand, but there are several versions of Chinese cereal that are very reasonably priced. I don’t know what’s in it for sure, but it was about ¼ the price. So we paid $2 versus $10 for a box of cereal. It’s a little harder to buy oatmeal because I don’t know if it’s instant or traditional style and I can’t read the instructions to know how to cook it.

As far as eating, I am really proud of my children. We have been eating some really interesting things. Some of it, I could only guess what it is. We went out last night and no one spoke any English and there were no translations any where on the menu. We looked around the room and pointed at what looked good. The first night we were here, Riley insisted that we were going to eat at Pizza Hut or KFC (which are everywhere btw), we insisted that we don’t eat that way at home we are certainly not going to eat that way here. He was not a happy camper, but given the option gave up his stance and ate what ever it was that we found to eat that night and actually really liked it. If anything becomes of this trip it will be that Riley is no longer a picky eater (and the best part is he doesn’t see himself as a picky eater anymore either!!). Claire and Aiden have always been adventurous eaters, but this trip could push even an adult to act picky. They haven’t complained at all.

Here is a picture of a man who has made a make shift BBQ on the back of his bike. He is selling some sort of BBQ meat. Yummy! Not! We aren't that adventurous, but you gotta give the guy some credit for being a creative entrepreneur.

Speaking of food and restaurants, some of the restaurants have translations above the traditional Chinese writing. We have been enjoying some of the translations. One restaurant had the best translations (I wish I had written some of them down because they were obviously not checked by anyone who spoke English), one of its meals mentioned spicy,black diesel oil. I will write some of the funny ones down and share with you all later. They are pretty funny; language is a funny thing and the different ways of interpreting it.

I have to say I was nervous coming here, because I am somewhat of a scaredy cat. I get very nervous in down town Seattle and in any large city that we have ever visited. I do not feel nervous here at all. I feel very safe. The people are very friendly and there are always a ton of people around and very few that seem off. We have to walk behind the building to get to our apartment, they aren’t connected in the inside and our building is three buildings down from the lobby. If this was in Seattle, I would be nervous and would never do it at night, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem at all (except for all the groups of smoking people and occasional cars that drive through). Today the kids and I headed off down an alley type looking street to explore an area that I could see from our apartment that looked like it might have a playground for the kids. I was a bit nervous when we started down the street because it’s narrow and there aren’t gads of people, but once we got started there didn’t seem to be anything to be worried about. We found some old people sitting outside in their lawn chairs enjoying the cool weather. They talked to us a bit (they like to practice saying hello and interact with the kids). We found a fruit stand that I didn’t know existed and it was great. I would never have done that in Seattle or even Bellevue, I might be asking for trouble.


Here are some other random pictures:

This one shows the back of a local apartment. I think it's interesting that everyone has these clothes lines that project horizontally off their decks. I don't think anyone has a clothes dryer. (We do, but it doesn't work, so I hang my clothes up on the deck too, but I don't have a nifty clothes line).



















Here is the view out one direction of our apartment. Pretty spectacular view. Notice the old and new buildings sort of intermixed.

This fine looking building can be seen if you look down behind our apartment. This is a scary looking building. I haven't walked down this street yet, so I don't know what it looks like from the front.