The Eagle Has Landed

Well I made it, although it would seem that my body still thinks that I'm on the east coast of the United States. Due to the fact that Guilin is thirteen hours ahead of Richmond, I anticipate that it will take at least a week for me to get used to this time zone. My erratic sleeping patterns have so far supported this theory. Despite a first day flight cancellation, which led to me having an overnight layover in Detroit, the trip went relatively smoothly, relatively being the operative word. I made a critical long flight blunder in that I did not download enough reading material on my kindle. After finishing reading what little I had on there, I was forced to choose from the movie selection provided for me on my personal TV, a devastating first world problem. During the 12.5 hour flight which took me over Canada, the North Pole, Russia, and Mongolia before finally landing in Beijing, I managed to watch Forest Gump (great movie I had never seen before), Goodfellas (ditto), The Purge (made me want to purge whoever directed that pile of crap), Rush (better than I thought it would be) and The End of Watch (not a fan of the home video style of filming). I arrived in Beijing at 3:30 PM and had a six hour layover before my final three hour flight to Guilin. By the time I boarded the plane, I had been awake for over 24 hours and was planning on trying to catch some rest so that I wouldn't be a zombie when I arrived at my final destination. After takeoff I began to settle in but just as I was about to fall asleep, a teenage Chinese girl (or maybe she was in her mid to late twenties, who knows, Asian girls seem to age much slower) sitting next to me pulls out her phone and starts playing What Does the Fox Say at full volume without bothering to put her headphones in. Are you kidding me? The only thing I could do at that point was laugh. I guess that song is making an attempt to fill the void left by the immortal Gangnam Style. Somebody needs to explain to me how the fox song became so popular. Gangnam Style was a bit silly also, but at least it's a song you can bob your head to while drunk at a party. Attempting to sing along with the fox song could lead to some people mistaking you for having a seizure. Anyways, about 20 minutes after the song was over, the plane ran into a particularly violent patch of turbulence. The intercom came on and, since this was a domestic China flight, told everyone in Mandarin what I assumed to be along the lines of "we 're experiencing turbulence please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts." A couple seconds later the intercom comes back on and, in English, says "Everybody please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts the plane...has been destabilized...." WAIT WHAT?! The announcement sent a jolt of panic through my body that immediately pulled me out of my half awake half asleep state. Frantically I began looking around and noticed that nobody else seemed to be worried. I realized then that it must've been an imperfect translation. I was one of maybe three white people on that plane so I doubt the flight attendants even realized the scare they gave me. Falling asleep after that was out of the question, but at least the rest of the flight went without incident. I arrived in Guilin at midnight and was taken to the Chinese Language Institute (hereafter CLI) where I immediately collapsed into a much-needed sleep.

Quick tangent: On the first two legs of my trip I flew on Delta airlines, an American company, while on the last leg I flew on China Southern, a domestic Chinese company who is a partner of Delta. After experiencing those two flights I came to notice the enormous gulf of difference between the service of American vs Chinese airlines. The flight attendants on American airlines seem to all have the looks and demeanor of an angry, beaten down elementary school bus driver. They make you feel like they're doing you a favor by simply doing their job. On the other hand, China Southern (annoying passengers and translation problems aside) had young, attractive attendants who always had a smile on their face and were constantly checking on people to see if their needs were met. Now, I do realize that Chinese airlines have a more extensive history of plane crashes than American airlines, but I take solace in knowing that all of my needs will be met right up until the point that I become vaporized in a fiery explosion. Come on America, get your shit together.

So now I find myself staying in a temporary room at CLI as my apartment isn't ready for me to move into

Local street art

quite yet. The atmosphere in Guilin is quite different than what it was when I left last summer. Right now it's the Spring Festival in China, which is a two week celebration that coincides with Chinese New Year. This is a family-oriented holiday where schools and many businesses go on vacation. CLI is pretty much empty and many of the restaurants that I would normally go to are closed, making getting food a bit of a chore. Despite these obstacles, there is a certain independence that I feel when I'm alone that I really enjoy. While I do love travelling with friends, sometimes I feel that it can cause you to descend into groupthink, which can stagnate and dumb down the experience a bit. While it's always good to share an experience with someone else, I believe it is equally important to make an effort to form your own opinion of your situation and surroundings; something that can only come through self-discovery. I'm sure in a week I will be bored out of my mind and ready to start making some more friends but right now I'm pretty content.

Aftermath of the firecrackers

I've been spending a lot of the daytime walking around the city taking in the many different sites, sounds, and smells. One custom of this holiday that is taking time for me to get used to is the practice of people lighting off firecrackers at random times throughout the day. It catches me by surprise every time. There is never any warning and it occurs seemingly everywhere, on people's doorsteps, on the sidewalks, people throwing them out of moving cars, etc. It begins around 8 AM and goes late into the night. The streets are littered with red paper that had previously been wrapped around these firecrackers. The city seems to be in a constant mode of celebration, which I find to be pretty cool. I'm thinking I'll go buy some of these firecrackers and start throwing them out of my third story window just to show people that I'm down with the spring festival too. I don't see any way that could end badly.


"Going Native" Experience of the Week
Getting woken up at 7 AM by some guy standing outside my building playing the flute, then deciding to go on a run and getting chased by a flock of chickens.

Mandarin Improvement Sign
Explaining to the lady checking me out at the supermarket that she had charged me for two cans of shaving cream when in fact I had only bought one. Baby steps people.

Funny Sign of the Week
I didn't see much in the way of funny signage this week so again I'm going to use one that I saw the last time I was here. Finding a new sign each week may be harder than I thought. Here it is:

I saw this sign while I was touring a famous cave system in Yangshuo, about an hour outside of Guilin. I'm not sure if they're trying to say don't touch the cave walls or don't beat other people around you. I showed tremendous self-control and refrained from both just to be safe.

Reason Why I Like This Place
Buying lunch, dinner, and other miscellaneous items for the past six days has cost me a grand total of $50 US.

Random Tangent
With all the celebrities that are out there nowadays sometimes it's hard to keep track of who's alive and who isn't. It seems every month some famous person is committing suicide or overdosing on drugs or getting in a fatal car accident. It happens so often that these instances become just another headline and we, as consumers, have become somewhat numb to it. It is because of this trend that I felt surprised at how sad I was this week to learn of Philip Seymour Hoffman's death. If you asked me a week ago to name who I thought were the best actors in the industry today his is a name that I think I would have forgotten to say, and I'm not exactly sure why. He is on a short list of actors who, for me, can make a movie better just by his mere presence (other people on that list would include Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Christian Bale and a few others). Due to the age we live in, artistic license in movie directing often takes a backseat to making a quick buck. That's why there's about 573 vampire movies because I guess that's cool now and everything that becomes a box office hit then gets turned into a sequel or trilogy. Because of this laziness the onus often falls on the actors to make or break a movie. Hoffman's acting prowess allowed him to play characters that ranged from Scotty J. in Boogie Nights to the embattled Father Brendan Flynn in Doubt to arguably his best role as Truman Capote in Capote. I encourage whoever is reading this to check out his IMDb page here and read this obituary written about him on Grantland. Oftentimes when somebody dies before their time the people who remain behind search for a meaning or a lesson behind it. As far as lessons go I can think of two: first being that the rich and famous are not without their own problems. Secondly, heroin is bad news bears and you shouldn't ever do it. Deep stuff I know. Rest easy PSH.

On a lighter note here is a video of Seattle Seahawks fans celebrating their Superbowl win but still refusing to jaywalk. I love how they go nuts when the walking sign is illuminated.  Good for them, hard to believe they live on the same coast as Raiders fans.