2/9-10/09

This post will be a mix of two days. 

So you might have seen the video I posted of the fireworks. What an odd experience that was. The last day of spring festival was really big. Once the sun went down people started lighting fireworks and didn't stop until the early morning. The whole city was just exploding in fireworks. A bunch of us took the subway down to tiananmen to see if anything was going on.

The subways here are really nice. Very very modern. The cars feel like they're floating on air. I haven't been on a subway/train since England but from what i can remember their trains were very shaky and jolty. These subways are so smooth. They also have this really bizarre, totally redundant advertising space. When the train is speeding through the tunnel on the wall outside is a screen that appears to be moving with the train. I'm still trying to figure out just how this technology worked. Some people thought it was just one long LED screen and the picture just keeps up with the train, but others thought it was just a bunch of permanent images that you speed past giving the illusion of motion, like a really high tech zoetrope. It was cool however they did it.

So the stop we tried to get off at was closed that night so we had to get off early and walk to Tiananmen. There were crowds of people, more than usual, just milling about not doing anything in particular. We thought we were walking to some festival or show but we weren't. Like everyone else we were just milling about the streets watching kids throw firecrackers and waiters outside restaurants launching roman candles. It was a little disappointing but at the same time an unforgettable experience. We didn't understand how it was safe to be launching millions of pounds of fireworks in the heart of a city in a country that just declared a drought emergency. We found out the next morning it wasn't safe at all. 

This is the Mandarin Oriental Hotel burning down..... we didn't see it. It's on the east side of the city, and we're on the west. And you couldn't see half a mile through the smoke that night..

We stopped in at KFC on the way back to the subway. KFC here is weird. Infact, all western fastfood chains here are nothing like their American counterparts. I didn't eat any, but the fried chicken was all dark dark crappy(er) meat. And they have more sandwiches. And weird crab balls. Today we found a Dairy Queen. It only sold milkshakes and hot dogs. I don't really understand why they don't serve it the same way as the U.S..I'm sure they've spent millions of dollars on marketing this stuff to China but....is this really the best they came up with. To be fair, I've never seen a bigger or more busy KFC. So something's working. 

OOK

Yesterday. Again pretty normal. Class in the morning. Free in the afternoon. Actually today was really boring. By which I mean i have nothing really to talk about. OH 

Wednesdays we don't have class in the morning, so we all went out to Wudaokou. It's a pretty western bar area. Everybody wanted to eat at different places so Nash, Dan and I found this little hole in the wall restaurant. It, like most things, was strange. Everything on the menu was deep fried. Deep fried (insert meat here) was all you could get. And every picture on the menu was the exact same thing. Literally. They copy and pasted the same picture 20 times.... my pork loin was great. It came with a bowl of miso soup and some rice. Nash's chicken sucked. He wishes he had had mine....

After that we went to some bars, ate some chuanr and called it a night. 

chuanr (pronounced chwar) = meat on a stick. It's typically sold out of windows or street vendors . This particular chuanr was cooked over a coal filled steel I-beam on a street corner. We think Bo got sick from eating it.

That's about all I have for today