Darn Those Sketchy Street Vendors!

Wow it’s hard to believe that my time in China is already half over! Today happens to be the midway point for this unique adventure, and therefore I think a good day to update the blog. Most of it will unfortunately be a rather unpleasant, but somewhat comical story:

This past weekend on Saturday night I was in downtown Chongqing (pictures below) which is about a 50 minute bus ride from the University with a group of six fellow students. We arrived a bit early for dinner and therefore decided to grab a snack. And, while there was a great supermarket with all kinds of American snacks about 50 yards away, a few of us decided to eat some spicy, sketchy looking “lamb on a stick” from a conveniently located street vendor. At the time, the meat tasted fine and myself and the other students enjoyed a nice night in the city shopping for DVD’s and clothes, and eating at Pizza Hut for a taste of home.

When we got back to the University, however, my stomach began to hurt. I was hoping it would be just another stomach issue that could be resolved by Tums, but as I watched a movie with my roommate and a couple friends, the pain in my stomach slowly began to increase. By the time I was ready to go to bed around 1:00a.m., it had compounded to the point where I wasn’t going to be able to sleep. Therefore my roommate convinced me to throw up (thankfully in our dorm rooms here we all have our own private western style toilets!). So I tossed the pizza, which was relatively expensive by the way, and popped some NyQuil hoping to pass out for the next 8-10 hours. Unfortunately, this plan backfired because I woke up about half an hour later feeling very groggy, disoriented and extremely nauseous. I limped my way to the bathroom, puked a second time for about 5-10 minutes and basically for the next 6 hours I puked 3-4 more times, dry-heaving. My body became very achy, and a fever flared up accompanied by a migraine. I tried eating oatmeal around 6a.m. but my stomach wouldn’t have it. That went too. To top it off, by the morning the food was coming out the right end but the wrong way!

Then at 8a.m. I called Robb Willett who came with another Chinese friend and they helped me limp up to the campus hospital which was about 10 minutes away. They translated my symptoms to the doctor who had me take a blood test. After discovering how dehydrated I was, they put me on an IV drip for 9-10 hours. And, while in the States this wouldn’t have been too eventful, the Chinese hospital was a bit different. The room they put me in was only a little larger than my dorm room and already had 3 other patients in it with 3-4 visitors. The bed I laid on was a bit dirty and had unwashed sheets with urine and bloodstains, as well as saliva from past patients. There were ant’s crawling on the ground eating crumbs, flies buzzing around the room, and the bathroom was a stinky squattie pottie with no soap, paper towels, or hot water. The IV equipment itself thankfully wasn’t that sketchy, but everything else was and I was in terrible shape being dehydrated, dizzy, nauseated, and exhausted though unable to sleep. To make matters worse, my fever wouldn’t go away so the nurse had to give me a shot in the butt in front of 7 other Chinese people! My bed was in the middle of the room and she had me roll over and pull down my pants. The shot wasn’t quick either. It took about 15 seconds to administer and made me sorer than I already was for over 2 hours! (While this was humiliating it was rather hilarious and my friend Tracey who is a Chinese student here who stayed with me in the hospital to translate taught me “Wo pigou tong!” which is “My butt hurts!” and the nurses got a kick out of me telling them this when they asked how I was feeling.)

When I finally got out of the hospital that night around 8:00pm, I tried to eat some rice porridge for some sustenance but my stomach said no and I puked twice more off of a 30 foot balcony outside the restaurant. Thankfully, however, when I got back to my room I was able to take a long, hot shower and once I took the 3 Chinese medicines the doctor gave me I slept rather well for 9 ½ hours. The next day I went back for another IV for about 2 ½ hours. For the next two days all I ate was rice, crackers, and bananas and I stayed home from class to rest. And now, five days later, I am slowly getting back to being healthy, though my diet is still rather meager. While this experience wasn’t glamorous at all, it is something I will always remember and I will definitely be more appreciative of American health services.

Aside from this painful experience, everything else over here has been going well. My classes have very little homework so I find myself with a lot of free time. Somehow, however, I feel as though I almost always have something to do especially since I am in the International Dorm and have made friends with the Minnesota students and other foreigners. I’ve spent time playing soccer, ping pong (losing to Chinese freshmen girls on the tables outside the other day was humbling), playing badminton, reading the Bible (Robb, Andrew, and I are reading it in 90 days), tutoring and being tutored 2-3 times a week (Tracey is teaching me Mandarin, and I’m helping her English pronunciation and teaching her “big” words), watching movies/tv shows (a group of us are watching “Freaks and Geeks” right now – a classic one-season-wonder TV show about the 80’s), and exploring the city and 2-square mile campus.

This next week our group is going on yet another traveling adventure to the city of Xian which was the capital city of China during six of the early Dynasties and is home to the Terracotta warriors. I’ll update again sometime after that with hopefully some sweet pictures!

A couple more observations:

1. Charades or other games like it would have been great to play before coming over here as we continue to struggle to explain what we are trying to say using body motions and hand signals.

2. Since such a small amount of Chinese people own cars, they walk nearly everywhere here. And besides the times we opt to take a motorcycle taxi (a little freaky – I’ve only done this once), or a campus bus, we also walk everywhere. Therefore I find myself walking up to 3-4 miles in a day sometimes. Quite a different story than in the States considering at home I’ve definitely driven from Ashton to class before!



Downtown Chongquing. As you can see I'm nearly a head taller than most people and am therefore able to see over the masses that were there during the holiday weekend.




Some delicious little fruit pancakes we found in downtown Chongqing.






A couple of friends in downtown Chongqing showing me their beautiful smiling faces.






A statue of the infamous Mao ZeDong on the SouthWest University campus. I still need to walk around campus and the local city BeiBei and take some pictures.

A break from "real" classes for a trip to "Chinese Hawaii"

Andrew, my roommate, and I from the top of the rural version of the Great Wall.

So the Chinese people conveniently have a week long holiday when we should be having our second week of classes, and therefore I spent the last four and a half days in Hainan or what is known as the “Chinese Hawaii.” Unfortunately, the islands aren’t nearly as nice or as clean as Hawaii, and also tend to get typhoons! Furthermore, the trip was planned by the foreign exchange director at South West University known as “Dirty-toothed Di” (as Robb Willett so kindly nicknamed him) and therefore all of the accommodations went significantly downhill since the SPU professors weren’t in charge.

Overall, the food was subpar, we had to buy our own beverages every meal, we switched hotels 3 times, the body wash in the bathroom smelled like urine, we couldn’t put toilet paper down the toilet…, and we spent multiple hours a day riding in a tour bus with a driver who kept loudly grinding the gears when shifting, and a tour guide who spoke broken English. Not exactly the equivalent of spending a weak at a Kannapol’i resort in Maui.

Yet, before I bash the trip too much, I will admit that there were a few redeeming qualities. The first day we were there it was 85 degrees and sunny with warm water and a sandy beach to body surf at and enjoy “cold beverages” with lime for a reasonable price. Also, at one of the hotels we stayed at they had this large round pool that was about a foot deep and had probably close to 1,000 little fish in it and when you put your feet (or your whole body as some of us did) into the pool they gracefully swim up to you and nibble all of the dead/dry skin off your body (while this sounds dangerous, its actually quite relaxing especially since the water is about 80-90 degrees [see pictures]). The closest feeling I can relate it to is having dozens of cat tongues licking you at once – quite ticklish at first but you get used to it.

Another redeeming quality of the trip was driving out to a river that was about an hour from our hotel where we had a giant water war while sitting or standing on these bamboo rafts while natives paddled us down river. This sounded like a waste of time to us at first, but it actually ended up being one of the most exciting activities we did. Furthermore, though it rained off and on a few of the days, we went to the beach for at least a few hours every day and we were able to pool hop (enjoying really nice hotel pools) by playing the “oblivious white American card” and pretending we were hotel guests.

Now it is Friday morning at 10:45AM and I have a three day weekend to let my sunburn heal and get over this cold I’ve been battling for the last week or so. Below I’ve written out some of the observations I have made after a month in China.



Early Observations of Cultural Differences

1. The pedestrian never has the right of way here. Cars, motorcycles, mopeds, and bikes never slow down and wave you across the street even at cross walks. Furthermore, red lights don’t guarantee that people will stop, and people are always honking horns because this is the customary way of telling someone you are passing them. Observing this showed me very quickly why Chinese drivers have so much trouble in the States. It’s not that they’re necessarily bad drivers, they’re just used to a different system.

2. Breakfast food here is disappointing. We’ve had many buffet breakfasts during our travels (some better than others) and most of the time its this bland tasting steamed bread and watery rice porridge along with some gnarly looking steamed vegetables and cold noodles. The most filling food has been hardboiled eggs. Thankfully, however, there are some bakeries here in Bei Bei that make a variety of breakfast pastries, though most of them are quite sweet. Oh what I would give to have French Toast with powdered sugar and bacon on the side or blueberry pancakes with sausage or…. my mouth is starting to water I better stop.

3. Doing laundry is quite frustrating EVERYWHERE we’ve been in China. While food, drinks, and other items are significantly cheaper than the States, doing a load of laundry at a hotel would cost around US$25. Therefore, I bought laundry detergent for about 3.5 yuan or .50 cents in a local 7-11 and washed clothes in the sink/shower for about an hour in our luxurious Shanghai hotel bathroom. This was a bit time-consuming and the clothes took about a day and half to dry, but at least I didn’t waste 175 yuan! Furthermore, laundry at the University isn’t much better. Thankfully it’s free, but the only dryers available are spin dryers that don’t use heat and still leave one’s clothes damp and heavy. Consequently my roommate and I have two clothes lines in our room and have also hung some clothes outside on the second floor balcony. (pictures below)

4. Taxis are very cheap here especially when multiple people are riding with you. We took over a dozen taxi rides in Beijing and most of them cost around 20-25 yuan to get anywhere within 5 miles. Split 3-4 ways, one typically spends less than $1 per ride. Additionally, the underground subway systems in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing are phenomenal. In Hong Kong it would cost maybe $1.50-2.00 to get all the way across town, and in Beijing you can go anywhere in the city for 2 yuan or around 30 cents! (The buses only cost 1 yuan and were also convenient.)

5. Eating at a restaurant is different here. Besides the obvious difference in dishes, almost every meal is family style. Additionally, in Bei Bei at the university you can get a delicious meal for about 10 yuan a person (about US$1.50) – that same meal would cost about $10-15 in the States. Plus it is not customary to tip here so meals are even cheaper. And, while cheap Chinese meals are often tasty, unfortunately there isn’t a lot of variety.

6. There are a lot of people in China. Smoking is prevalent in China. Smoking is legal practically anywhere in China. Therefore one runs into the smell of smoke almost anywhere including inside our dormitory, on the bus, at restaurants at the table next to you, in the elevator, inside hotel rooms, etc.

7. While the Chinese people have adopted multiple western ideas, for some reason they have yet to succumb to the idea of the Western Style toilet. They have what we call squatters or “squattie potties.” Thankfully I have yet to use one, though with some of the food over here you never know when you’ll have to go!

8. Finally, the majority of Chinese people have no concept of God. Providence, sovereign grace, and God’s will are completely unknown concepts for them. Instead, they talk about luck, good fortune, and happiness. For instance one of our professors on the first day of class said “I hope you are very lucky in China and lucky in life.” And another said “I hope you have a happy journey in China.” This is clearly a different philosophy on life and has no doubt proven to be a tough barrier for missionaries trying to reach the Chinese people with the Gospel (more on that later).

Pictures from Hainan, Shanghai, and Beijing

A night shot from Shanghai that a British dude took for us.


Something got lost in translation here seeing that this sign was indoors.


A picture Professor Steinke took of me inside the Forbidden City.



If you enlarge the picture and look closely you might be able to see the ravenous baby lizards that hover around the lights at night munching on misquitos and protecting innocent bystanders from getting misquito bites.



In Beijing, we rented a paddle boat one night and went out on the lake that sits in the middle of the various bars, night clubs, and shops.


A dissapointing part of the Chinese culture known by us as the "squattie potti."



While we did see a lot of awesome things in Shanghai, the streets also held some sad sights.


Another depressing sight to see.


An alley in Shanghai.






Yum yum!


Andrew, Josh, and I opted for the full body immersion into the fish hot springs. It was a bit awkward but totally worth it.


Doing laundry in the dorms.


They loved my right foot and helped remove some of the dead skin that came from playing soccer.


A picture of the beautiful buffet breakfast we had in Shanghai. While there were fried eggs, most of the dishes you see there were full of noodles and sketchy looking meat.


A cool picture my roommate took of me when we touring the fishing boats in a Shanghai harbor.


Our two clothes lines stretching across our room!