Valentine's Day in China

February 14, 2011

Was it really two years ago?

We went to downtown Changzhou (常州) on Valentine's day.  I didn't know that Valentine's day was observed at all in China, but it certainly was.

There were men everywhere carrying large bouquets, the bus, the sidewalk, riding home with a bouquet or two in the basket of a bicycle or moped.

The most popular were glitter-tipped roses.


Most of them were red roses dipped in silver, red, or pink glitter. But there were elegant-looking black roses and blue roses, and other unnatural colors that were quite intriguing.

Most bouquets were wrapped in the patterned cellophane we're used to seeing here in the States.  But there were a few fancy fabric-wrapped ones, like in this picture.

A few feather bouquets, plush animal bouquets were to be seen as well.  I was genuinely surprised by the popularity of plush-toy-on-a-stick arrangements.  They were often seen in flower shops: both mixed into bouquets of live flowers (as above), and on their own, as a complete bouquet (as right and below).

 Hello Kitty's general popularity in China surprised me.  (Hello Kitty is Japanese, and the Chinese as a rule dislike Japan.) Hello Kitty dolls on sticks in a bouquet surprised me even more.


The flower shops on the particular street we walked passed all had about the square-footage of the dry space an old Volkswagen Beetle would leave in a snowy parking lot.

Every flower store had enormous, displays out front, each individual display was lovely, but from a distance the overwhelming size and bright colors made each one look a little gaudy.  Some of the flower displays were probably six feet high.  Most were shaped like hearts, and colored-in by flowers, candy, and stuffed animals.

The jewelry stores were open late that night, advertising engagement rings, and the usual sparkly gifts.  (I could tell by the pictures. Reading Chinese is hard.)

There were surprisingly many couples in the jewelry stores, they all looked either extremely blissful, or extremely stressed out.

Overall, us foreign girls (all Americans) decided that seeing Valentine's day in China would ruin us forever.  And that our future boyfriends would despair.  I made a cartoon to illustrate:

THE END

P.S. If anyone has any V-day pictures from our trip, facebook me!

A Day in the Life...

I have gotten several requests for pretty much, my schedule.  Sooooo, here ya go.

A Day of Miche (Meagan Michelle) Lee’s Life in China

Prologue: I’m on a SVU study abroad in China to teach English to little kids.

7:10 Wake up twenty minutes before my alarm, because I still go to bed early after recovering from jetlag, and I decide that I’m not going to breakfast.

7:30 My alarm finally goes off, I take this time to peel myself out of bed and do my morning routine, viz. brush teeth, pee, get dressed, take vitamins (because I haven’t gotten sick yet but I’m paranoid.)

8:00 or 8:30 (only on Tuesdays and Thursdays) go to Kung Fu or Chinese class. (Otherwise, my roommate and I make French Toast with peanut butter.)

10:00 E.L.E. Class---I go into a classroom full of 9 year olds and teach them my choice: either a song or some random word games.

11:00 LUNCH! I love lunch.  Even if all the food looks weird, it usually tastes delicious.  Everyday you have the option of rice and soup, to go as side dishes with the main courses.  Usually there are two dishes of either meat or tofu, and then two dishes of cooked vegetables.  For dessert they either have raw fruit, or some sweet veggie, like yam or pumpkin.

12:00-3:00 Prep time!  Email, decorate your class room, get ready for your lesson, clean your room, watch Big Bang Theory on DVD . . .

3:00-5:00 Primary Class: the finest time of day.  This is teaching time.  The 8 year olds come to the class room and we are in the lesson, and teach them words and phrases that they need to communicate. I love teaching.  It’s my favorite thing about China. The kids learn your name and enjoy yelling “HELLO TEACHA MISHAAAAAA!” They’re easy to love. You learn the individual children’s strong-points, weaknesses, and personalities. The other day, I had my kids play a prank on my next-door teacher, Doug. They all pretended to be zombies when they walked to his class.

The kids who learn English the fastest are the kids who speak it the most---this makes it very motivating to get them to practice speaking. Sometimes it’s a struggle to stay one step ahead of them,  but  it’s always a worthwhile challenge.

5:00-6:00 Dinner time!!! I love food. Usually some variation of what we had for lunch.

6:00 or 7:00 (every other night is free time, Mondays and Tuesdays are meetings and program practice for teachers.)

For free time you can hop on a bus for fifteen minutes to go to downtown, where a myriad of noodle shops, bakeries, stores and shopping are.  You never really know what adventures may befall you.

For example, I went to downtown Shanghai and decided to bleach my hair.  I haven’t decided if that was a good idea or a bad one yet, but nevertheless, I’m now blond. And by blond I mean My Little Pony yellow.  I really hated it the first day, but it’s kinda grown on me now that I’ve had an opportunity to play with it a little.

9:00-11:00 Get home, watch a movie, eat some snacks that I couldn’t resist buying, watch more Big Bang Theory, read, shower, do my nighttime routine and pass out!

Day over.

Hi! From Shang-Hai

I would like to thank those of you that emailed me while I'm here in China.  My dear friend Teekay has been kind enough to post my blogs for me, because the Chinese government apparently doesn't believe in Google.


For those of you interested in flight info, I flew from SLC to LAX 1.5 hours, then to Seoul, Korea 14 hours; then to Shang-Hai 1.5, then a three hour bus ride.  There were layovers between each flight ranging from 2-3 hours each.  My travel time totaled to 28 hours.

Just know that it is the most bizarre thing to know that you fell asleep on the night of Wednesday February 9, and wake up on Friday, February 11. So weird.  So weird.

But, after arriving in Shang-Hai in the morning, we drove 3 hours to our little school in Chang-zhou (Chawng-Jow.)

I remember very little of this event, as I tried to sleep some on the bus, except that the city kept going and going and going.  In Star Wars episodes I, II and III they hold 'congress' in this place where the whole planet is a city.

That is what this Shang-Hai reminds me of.  Huge buildings just keep passing by.  You keep expecting it to end, but they just keep coming for hours and hours. I was looking out of the window of our bus and was so amazed by the sheer expanse of Shang-Hai.  I'm used to looking out the window and seeing the Rocky Mountains framing the sky---even in Virginia, the Blue Ridge hills would breach the seam between earth and heaven. But here, the mountains seem to  be man-made. It's so strange to not be able to see some sort of wild, even without mountains towering over you, in places like Phoenix Nevada, at least you can see the untouchable desert.

Here, there are sky scrapers and apartment buildings.  The only way you can tell the difference from the outside is by the clothes hanging out to dry.  Apparently, clothes dryers are an absurd waste, and so the Chinese do not see the beauty of them.

People really do stare at Americans.  I went to the grocery store yesterday. There were these four teenage boys, probably ages 12-14, and they stared at us for quite a while at the grocery store, and followed our group around a bit.  We are apparently quite the novelty.

There were these two little tiny chubby asian brothers at the grocery store too. They were staring at us with their mouths were absolutely hanging open.  They looked even chubbier because they were all bundled up in winter coats that made them look like mini, red Michelin tire men. They were so cute!

Some of the surprises that greeted me were as follows: There are no traffic rules---honk if you plan on doing something crazy. Squatters really aren't that bad. So far. THE BUILDINGS ARE NOT HEATED.  Luckily, our room has a heater (that sucks.) The beds are shorter, I'm pretty sure.  They are also wider.  Top sheets are unheard of.  Mattresses don't exist---we sleep on foam pads about two inches thick, which are surprisingly comfortable.

We are rooming in twos. My roommate's name is Emily, and My next door neighbors are named Monica and Claire.

Well, the first night, Monica and Claire were testing adapters and blew their fuse.  This means that they do not have a heater anymore.  So, Emily and I put our beds together, and all four of us shared two beds, and 5 blankets.  We were the warmest people the first night.  Pretty sure.

We woke up on Saturday morning to the sound of fireworks.  We are here for Chinese New year.  This year is Year of the Rabbit.  All the buildings are decked out in red and gold on the inside.  I'm not sure whether that is just the way it is, or if they do that especially for New years. 

We went to a Chinese grocery store, which was really cool, they have ramp escalators inside.  Oh, and the grocery store is not heated on the inside.  Neither is the shopping mall.  All the buildings are cold.  Oh, and they have a huge meat section.  They sell poultry with the heads still on, and in the seafood section, they have squid, octupi, live eels, and the biggest surprise: live bullfrogs.

Another funny adventure in the Chinese mall.  I had a bunch of Asian teenagers ask to take pictures with me.  One of them was so excited to meet an American, I was worried she was going to pass out.

It was a lovely adventure, and I've been pretty daring with the food, I've tried several things that I had no idea what they were.

My water heater does not work, and I have not showered since Wednesday. I type this on Sunday, so I have not showered for four days.  (Yes, 4, I didn't live on Thursday.)

For church, our group met together and since all of us happen to be LDS, we had our own mini-sacrament meeting.

The power keeps going out, which is annoying---especially since I was surprised to find out that I am among the few people who knows how to flip a breaker.

I am supposed to start teaching classes, not tomorrow Monday, but Monday next.  I'm super excited to meet the cute little Chinese kids. :D

I am going to go back to my very cold room---where there is no internet.