The Road to Shanghai

The weather has been just as ghastly as we were told it would be in July, but it seems to be cooling off a bit. Thank God for air conditioning! I can't imagine how anyone lives here without it. Fortunately, the Chinese don't have the same prejudice about AC in the summer that they have about heating in the winter. Unfortunately, it isn't just the unbearable heat and humidity that makes it so unpleasant outside; it's also the smell. Garbage collection is kind of erratic, and people tend to just toss garbage in the street, and right now the heat is cooking all of it into a pungent mess. Yuck! The other unlovely thing is the half-naked men. I can't quite figure this out. The women obviously dress in much lighter clothing in the summer, but they stay dressed. The guys, on the other hand, pretty much take everything off that they can get away with. I can't tell you the number of men I've seen walking around in their underwear! (My informal survey reveals (pun intended) that Chinese men are about evenly divided in their preference for boxers or tighty-whities.) Of course, some of the guys are mighty cute, but I still wish they'd get dressed.

Our trip home was wonderful, but incredibly hectic. That's because my darling husband tried to pack in about twice as many things to do as we really had time for. Nevertheless, it was a blast. The first neat thing was walking around LAX waiting for our connecting flight and seeing all the lovely varieties of Americans - and not being stared at because I'm a blue-eyed blonde! I think I appreciate American diversity more now than I ever have. The best of all, of course, was seeing friends and family. I guess I won't recap the trip since this is supposed to be a weblog about our time in China, but I do want to tell everyone how great it was to see you. And, I have to say what a pleasure it was to meet Paul's fiancee. Jo is a complete sweetheart - smart, funny, and divinely tall (sort of Greek-goddessy). Paul obviously has great taste in women!

So, what have we been doing since we got back? Well, first we spent a few days in Shanghai so we could see our dentist and spend Shabbat at our Shanghai synagogue. Then home to Nantong. The first thing I did was unpack the memory foam mattress pad I bought in the States and put it on our rock-hard Chinese bed. What bliss! No aching back every morning! (Not that I'm going to stop going for my weekly massage, but now it will just be a pleasure and not a necessity.)

Since we've been back, we have added two new activities to our repertoire of things to do for fun: karaoke and ballroom dancing.

Karaoke is a different experience here than in the US. Instead of a cheap sound system in a noisy bar where you sing in front of a room full of strangers, there are private rooms with fabulous sound systems and you just sing with your friends. I'm not sure what it is about the sound system, but it makes everyone sound like they're singing in the shower. Some kind of reverb, I guess. Anyway, it makes even a poor singer sound pretty good and a good singer sound amazing. Most of the songs on the playlist are Chinese, of course, but there were enough English-language songs for Norty and me to sing a few. It was a lot of fun.

We went dancing last night. The place we went is like an old-fashioned dance hall in the US, but with lots of neon, flickering colored lights and disco balls. It isn't a bar, so people go there just to dance, not to drink, and the dance floor is huge. No live music, but the sound system was very good, and not too loud. It costs 3 RMB (less than 50 cents) for 3 hours of dancing! The place was packed. I would guess that most of the people there were in their 30s or 40s, so this was definitely not a hip hop kind of crowd (thank God!). I just love Chinese-style ballroom dancing. It's similar enough to Western-style dancing that I could pick it up fairly quickly, and, for some reason, Norty finds it a lot easier. Just like our dancing experience in Shanghai, I found myself dancing with a lot of Chinese men. One of them, in particular, was a really good teacher, so I think I was doing pretty well by the end of the evening. Unlike Shanghai, this time a couple of the guys made passes at me while we were dancing. Fortunately, they both understood "no" even when spoken in English, and they both apologized and we went on dancing with no further problem. I don't think they were really very serious about it, anyway; I just think they were trying to see what would happen.

So, we are becoming quite the social butterflies. Karaoke, ballroom dancing, playing pool at Captain's bar, dinner with friends - a never-ending round of frivolity and fun! This is way more social life than we had in KC!!

That's it for now. Love to everyone.
Terry