Positive Jams

KGSM Student Radio

Earlier this week Bill from International Development told you two things: first, that there will be some kind of gathering among the students who went to Gustavus this summer, and second, that his office is going to set up a homestay for you so that you can experience life with a Chinese family. Great, you think, and expect to hear something about these things in the next few weeks. Well on Wednesday you get a text message from Charles, one of the UIC Students who came to Minnesota this past summer, saying that there is a party tonight, at 6:30, for anyone who was at Gustavus this summer and that you should attend.

You arrive at the party trailing Cynthia and Wendy, and are warmly welcomed by a group of students, some of whom you remember from your brief meeting at Gustavus in July. One of them, Kitty introduces herself quickly and Wendy tells you that you are going to her home this weekend for a home stay, you talk with Kitty for a while and agree to meet her at 3 PM on Saturday, at which time you will go to her house and make Jiao Zi, or dumplings.

You grab some pizza and make your way around the party, reintroducing yourself to Angie, Maggie, Raye, Nancy and all of the other students you met for a few hours this summer. On your third day here, this party is one of the warmest and most friendly receptions you can imagine having in such a foreign place. You find yourself wondering if the international students at Gustavus are given this kind of reception. It seems like everywhere you go people are interested, enamored, by your existence on this campus; your roommate runs the journalism club on campus and when you tell him you are interested in joining, in possibly copy editing for his news paper, he gets incredibly excited and rejoices saying that his club will probably be the most popular if you join it. When you message someone about dinner you often end up eating with nine people, all of whom want to learn about you, your family, your hobbies and the difference between UIC and American colleges.

You earn more points with the UIC students when you get up to introduce yourself and do so in Chinese. “Ni hao! Wo jiao Greg, wo lai zi mei guo Mee-nee-soota,” each phrase earning you a room full of applause. Everyone introduces themselves and says something about their major and their interests and then your master of ceremonies, Charles, segues into the next activity, something called Pose King. Pose King is a simple icebreaker game where by everyone at the party stands in two parallel lines facing away from each other and when the Pose King counts down from three you turn around and deliver your best pose, at which point a new King is appointed. After explaining the rules, Charles appoints you, Cynthia, and Eva—an international student from Korea, she did not go to Gustavus this summer but was invited because she is a friend of yours and Cynthia’s—as the kings. You are supposed to pick teams and then play the game. And then your emcee, and the only one who knows how to play the game, leaves the party. Now the entire party is in three teams, for a game that requires two, and are not really sure what to do. Eventually the teams are dissolved and everyone gets into two lines and plays the game the way you understood it with Wendy as the King. The whole thing jumps the shark when one of the students can’t make up their mind and appoints two new Kings and after another round the game is abandoned for a more relaxed social atmosphere and at the end of the night, you confirm with Kitty that you will meet her Saturday afternoon at 3.

***

The rest of the week slows down a little bit. You send in your absentee ballot on Thursday, and watch The Big Lebowski with your roommate thursday night. You are still having some trouble adjusting to the time change. You find yourself tired by 9:30 some nights and asleep by eleven most nights. You wonder how long this will continue, how long can it take to completely adapt to being a half a day displaced from your normal time zone. Part of the problem, you think, is that you haven’t been able to keep your self active beyond 10 ‘o clock any given night. The pattern has mostly been to go to dinner for a couple hours and then go back to the dorms by 9:30. At which point you sit on your bed and read or write or watch an episode of Arrested Development or anything to entertain yourself in your room. Your friends are doing homework in the library every night, but you either finished your homework, or still don’t have any. All of these activities, while interesting or engaging, put you to sleep quickly. Thursday you make it until 1AM but friday you crash at 9:30 again. You are looking forward to the homestay this weekend and getting out in the Zhuhai night life.

You meet Kitty at the prescribed time and head to her car. Her friend Adeline is in the back seat with you, and her dad, Eric, is riding shotgun. Driving in China is one of the more insane and dangerous prospects you have ever considered. Bill told you the day you arrive, “In China we drive on the right side of the road, usually.” and “In China, we stop at red lights, usually,” and watching traffic on the drive to campus from the ferry terminal, you get the impression that people just drive and get to their destination as quickly as possible, by any means necessary. Cars pass on the left and the right, U turns happen in the middle of the road and drivers consider themselves the most important vehicle on the road. It is the ultimate in aggressive driving. Kitty is learning how to drive, and you think this will be an interesting ride to her house.

When you eventually arrive at Kitty’s home in one piece, you find yourself in a gated high rise apartment community. There are green areas in between buildings and it looks a lot like what we might think of as a cluster of high rise condos in America. You make your way to her building and spacious three bedroom apartment which she shares with her mother and father, and grandmother. Her mother and grandmother are preparing dinner when you arrive and Kitty gives you a tour of the house and shows you to your room for the night. Eric is a doctor, and apparently works tonight and wont be home for dinner. He will come back later that night and take the three of you out to the bars in town.

Kitty’s grandmother gingerly emerges from the kitchen with a bread board, rolling pin, and loaf of dough she rolled into a long, round roll, off of which she is now breaking small pieces. Kitty teaches you to take one of the small pieces of dough and flatten it down to a small round object which are then rolled into the round, thin wafers used as wrappers for the dumplings. There is a large bowl of minced pork and cabbage sitting on the table and once there are enough ready you can begin wrapping this mix into the wrappers. At one point, you are told that you are better at wrapping jiao zi than most Chinese, and later that you are better at using chopsticks than Adeline; both of these comments give you a sense of pride, but also one of belonging, as if your hosts have not only welcomed you, but accepted you as one of their own.

That night you drive around Zhuhai with Kitty, Eric and Adeline, looking for a good view of Macau so that you can see China’s Las Vegas. You can’t go in because you only have a dual entry visa and if you leave now your visa will expire before you are supposed to leave. After snapping a few good photos of the city, you head to an italian restaurant, just off the coast near the classy 5 star hotel district of Zhuhai, that Kitty tells you is a gathering spot for foreigners. Eric stops the car and you all get out, are you really going to hang out here? You walk up to the door with Kitty and Adeline, a host greets you in english and asks how many are in your party. Kitty says something in mandarin to the host and she walk away and comes back with three business cards. The card is presented to you with two hands, and you accept it, turn it over and look it over before thanking her and leaving.

Eventually you end up on what Kitty told you is called Bar Street in Zhuhai. Eric parked the car across the street from an interesting looking place called 88 Bar, and you get out. Looking down bar street you see bars on one side of the street, and a small park across the street in which some retirees are practicing tai qi. You aren’t sure why but Kitty et al. find it comical that you took a tai qi class at your college back home. Looking down bar street you see lighted lanterns hanging from poles lining both sides of the street, and embeded in the sidewalk are colored lights that give the street a sort of chic uptown hipness. Each bar has greeters standing outside asking, sometimes begging you to come to their bar. Most of these bars look like any other bar you could go to in any urban area. Eventually you agree stop at 88, a classy joint with loud music and large chandeliers that remind you of the house lights at the Varsity Theater. About two hours into your time there, a chinese pop singer takes the stage. You can’t speak much chinese, but you don’t need to speak a language to tell that a pop singer is taking himself way to seriously. His voice was adequate at best and the music underlying his voice was the same over-produced noise so common to contemporary American-Idol-esque popular music, but Kitty and Adeline seemed to like it. The rest of the night’s music consisted of 90’s hip-hop and R&B you hadn’t heard since 1999, some of it you were glad to hear again, some of it, not so much.

***

The next day, Sunday, you head back to campus. Before you can get back, however, you have to make a few pit stops. The first of which, is a stop at a restaurant where you will have lunch with your usual crew in addtion to Kitty’s uncle and his family. The restaurant, a typical sichuan restaurant called laosichan, has some of the best food you have eaten all week, but there is a lot of it. The typical method of eating at a place like this is family style; everyone sits around a large round table and grab whatever looks tasty; or, someone sitting next to you, in your case, Kitty’s father, will grab something that looks good to him, like a heaping ladle full of seafood, and put it in your dish. All of the food is delicious and Eric keeps giving it to you, ladle after ladle of great sicuan food and after finishing bowl after seemingly endless bowl of food Kitty eventually tells you to just stop eating if you aren’t hungry; an empty dish signifies that you are still hungry, not that you are finished eating. Toward the end of the meal, Kitty’s uncle toasts you and says that you must have asian blood because you are so proficient at using chopsticks and drinking baijo and you get that same sense of acceptance you felt at dinner the night before.