Afternoon Delight

At 11:30, something magical happens on campus.

Teachers and students alike emerge from their dark office caves, blinking in the sunlight. They clump together in predictable groups of threes and fours, chatting amiably, and slowly start to amble over to the dining hall.

Dining hall etiquette follows a strict routine as well. Someone is put in charge of staking out a table, and marking it with a strategically draped outer garment or water bottle. Someone else grabs a handful of chopsticks for the group, carefully counted out and inspected for cleanliness. And we all get aluminum trays adorned with a scoop of rice and a hasty glop of stir-fried vegetable. (Some favorites are eggplant, potato, lotus root, cauliflower, and spinach.)

After lunch, everyone goes back to the dorms to "rest". For me, this involves an immediate wardrobe change. Jeans come off, pajama pants come on. I bounce into bed and get all snuggled under the covers. I'll typically treat myself to an episode of a TV show of my choice (currently watching: Prison Break, season 2), followed by five to ten minutes of reading, and a nice leisurely nap. Ahhhh.

Like clockwork, I wake up naturally at 1:45 or so, newly energetic and ready to face the afternoon.

Only three more hours til dinner!

Life is good.

Spinning

The best thing about my new gym membership is that it includes unlimited spinning classes.

For the uninitiated, "spinning" is a type of exercise involving a stationary bike with one wheel. In China, it also involves a darkened room, a disco ball, a stroke-inducing strobe light, and a spandex-clad muscle man instructor who will occasionally whoop with excitement.

It's basically the closest I've gotten to a dance club in China.

One important advantage of spinning is that it is a full-body workout. Your legs are obviously doing the bulk of the work, but the instructor takes care not to neglect your arms by throwing in frequent pumping motions, in time to the music of course. As Greenday and Pink blast in the background, we vigorously punch the air, wave our arms above our heads, even pretend to be shielding our eyes from the sun as we scan the distant horizon.

With these features, it's no wonder the class is such a hit with the regulars. Despite being offered twice each evening, the spinning class is so popular that you have to get there at least 15 minutes ahead of time to stake your claim to a bike. The preferred method of doing this is to drape a sweaty towel over the handlebars.

Does anyone know if what I've just described bears any resemblance to spinning classes in the U.S.?

Not without a sense of humor

Last weekend, some friends and I decided to hike Mount Tai. I knew it would a fun trip when I checked my China guidebook and found this:

"Tai Shan is not just a mountain, it's a god."

Besides the apparent awe-inspiring nature of the mountain itself, and the rigorous climb to its peak, my trip to Mount Tai had the added advantage of being planned by a close friend with a unique sense of humor. One of the first decisions she made was to have us all meet at 8 am. It wasn't until we had bought train tickets and were seated on the 9:30 train to the town at the mountain's base that she announced that we would not begin climbing until 11 pm (so that we'd arrive at the top just in time for the famed sunrise), and that she had no activities planned for the day.

Funny, right?

We therefore spent the day wandering around the faceless town of Tai An, watching helplessly as our morning vigour turned into afternoon laziness and then got completely sapped away by the dusty roads and endless sidewalks of the downtown area.

After an exhausting two hours of nighttime karaoke, we finally started to make our way to the mountain. My friend chose to have us walk thirty minutes to the trail head instead of paying $1 per person for a cab. Our feeble protests were met with a cheery response about the importance of cardiovascular fitness.

At 11 pm on the dot, we finally began to drag ourselves up the mountain. I could sense the beautiful scenery on either side of the path, but the light of my flashlight only illuminated the hundreds of other people struggling up ahead of me.

Unlike American mountains, which tend to sport rugged dirt "trails", Chinese mountains are completely paved over and boast regulation-sized stairways.

If you'd like to recreate my "hiking" experience, all you have to do is hop on a stairmaster, turn off the lights, and set a timer for three hours. For an even more realistic experience, make sure that in the last hour you increase the incline to near vertical.

I reached the top at 2 am, and was promptly greeted enthusiastically by several entrepreneurs hoping to rent me a stylish "one size fits all" military coat designed to keep out the wind. Because I was exhausted and covered in sweat, and the temperature at the peak was quite literally freezing, I accepted. I quickly found that my coat had been playing an important role in Chinese history for quite some time. I liked imagining that the pungent odor it sported was that of its original wearer, perhaps a guard standing along the Great Wall. Taking care not to let it touch my face, I curled up against the icy stone wall of a conveniently located tunnel and slept.

Soon enough, it was time to head over to the "sunrise viewing area", along with a thousand other spectators who had magically appeared in the two hours I was asleep. To secure a good view, we got there early, and I found myself perched on top of a boulder with both the wind and the pressing crowd threatening to throw me off the mountain at any moment. (The Chinese aren't big on security railings.)

For about forty-five minutes, we stared at this:

Pretty, yes, but we were all cold. The universal annoyance with nature exhibited itself in the following exchange, shouted by anonymous spectators in the crowd:

"Hey, look! A bird!"
"Poor thing - the wind is too strong for it."
"Quick! Someone shoot it!"

Then, just when we were about to give up, this happened:

For the record, I attribute the sun's hasty appearance to the angrily shouted threat posed by the young man next to me:

"Hurry up, Sun, before I "sun" you!"

This followed by an over-the-shoulder remark from his friend:

"Nice. Subtle."

My sentiments exactly.

Good American

Do you recognize these dashing young men? No??? Tsk tsk. This is Westlife, of course. The popular Irish boy band. Any self-respecting American should know that.

Just as we have certain expectations of what it means to be Chinese, so do the Chinese have certain expectations of what it is to be American. Unfortunately, I have an unpleasant tendency to violently crush these expectations. While my appearance is generally satisfactory ("yellow hair! blue eyes! oooo!"), my taste in music and TV leave much to be desired.

One of the main ways in which I fall short as an American is my limited knowledge of essential cultural references. Take music for example. A "good" American would know the words to all Mariah Carey songs, and be willing to sing them on cue. I do not, and am not. A good American would be familiar with the collected works of both Westlife (sooo hot right now) and the Backstreet Boys. I am not.

My TV watching preferences are also problematic. While I am eager to keep up with the latest episodes of "The Office" and "30 Rock", I am less than familiar with "Desperate Housewives" and "Grey's Anatomy", and am therefore unable to either vouch for or against their veracity. The situation had gotten so dire that by Chinese New Year I was quite literally shamed into watching "Prison Break", a local favorite among young Chinese of both genders. My popularity has skyrocketed as a result.

Another area in which I am seriously deficient is my lack of enthusiasm for basketball. I am often able to fake my way through a conversation in this arena by embellishing stories about my one experience seeing Yao Ming play in Boston, but the sad truth is that I know very little about NBA teams or players. When I confess to this personality flaw, faces fall. Smiles fade away. In short, I am a huge disappointment.

That's why it was so rewarding to have two American boys tagging along with me for the past week. Street vendor wants to talk basketball? No problem! I'll just ask the guys! I now have a standing invitation to a home-cooked meal in Shanghai, largely due to my ability to make small talk with a local cab driver.

Now I just need to find a big Mariah Carey fan to follow me around, and I'm all set.

Scandalous

It's official. Spring has arrived in Jinan. Flowers are budding, and the trees on campus look like they're floating in clouds of pale green. The heat was officially turned off on the 15th, and I don't even mind. The basketball courts are once again filled with students until 10:30 at night, and girls all carry around their badminton rackets since it's finally nice enough to play again. The past few days have been sunny and temperatures have been hovering around 80.

But all is not well in paradise. The environment is right, but something is missing. Something important.

Spring clothing.

Apparently, the Chinese believe that temperatures lower than 90 degrees demand sweatshirts, winter boots, and heavy pants. At least, that's what they're wearing around campus these days.

Needless to say, I find this completely unacceptable.

Because I refuse to wear winter clothing on a perfect spring day, I have been quite literally turning heads on campus. Is it my stunning beauty? Do I have food on my face? No. It's because I wore (dun dun DUN) a skirt! Short sleeves! Shoes that aren't sneakers! This apparently makes me a radical. Teachers in my office cautioned me against catching cold. (Um, it's 80 degrees.) My friends gushed over how beautiful I looked. (Apparently my winter clothing is hideous). Several boys did comical, yet sincere, double takes as I walked by.

Of course, all of this unwanted attention makes me rather uncomfortable, but I refuse to sacrifice my values and comfort to conform to ridiculous clothing standards. I'm not wearing anything scandalous. Just seasonally appropriate. An informal poll suggests that spring clothing does not come out on campus until May 1.

There is no way I'm waiting that long.

The weaker sex

Shandong University is split into six campuses which are spread across the city of Jinan. I'm on the Western campus with the medical students. In other words, I'm on the nerdy campus. These guys are stuck in school for five years instead of four, and seem to enjoy waking up at the crack of dawn to stand outside in the cold memorizing the names of body parts in a variety of languages.

Luckily, we are just a fifteen minute walk away from the Southern campus. The students in the Southern campus are...wait for it...gym majors. In other words, they're a bunch of tall hunky guys with a lot of free time. Many of my med student friends were busy this weekend, so I was more than a little excited to receive a call from a gym major friend of mine inviting me to accompany him and his equally hunky roommate on a two day hike up a famous mountain.

Um, yes please!

I had two days of nervous anticipation (which jacket? how many snacks? which backpack?). And then, in the middle of the night, waking me up from a pleasant dream, I got a text. Cancelling! I was disappointed, but fine, whatever, things come up. This afternoon, however, my insecurities went on red alert when I got a call from one of the guys asking if he could borrow my camera for the weekend. Gee, what could you need my camera for? I was polite and all, but seriously? No way my camera is going up that mountain if I'm not!

The kicker came this evening, with another text "clearing things up". I guess they realized they'd botched things up with the camera question. And I'm not sure if I feel better or worse for knowing the real reason for getting voted off the island. This is the text I received (translated, of course):

Alexis - I'm so sorry, originally we wanted to go together, with my roommate too, but now he's not going and I can't watch out for two girls all by myself. Climbing the mountain is extremely difficult. It's too bad about this time, there will be another chance soon.

So apparently, being a girl, I'm too weak to make it up the mountain without help. Hm. Yeah. Even though I know this is like, the Chinese way and all, I still pretty much just wanted to punch him. I don't get to go because they think I'm a pathetic weakling?? Hmph. He's skinny - I could totally take him. But, you know what? Whatevs. Instead? Tomorrow I get free sweet potatoes, and on Sunday I'm going to the all-boys campus where they wish they could go mountain climbing with girls. So there.

TV

If my time in Sichuan taught me anything, it's that Chinese families love watching TV. The TV is often turned on first thing in the morning, and remains on until the last person goes to bed. It stays on during meals, and is the focal piece of the living room. What could possibly be so riveting, you ask? Kung fu soap operas! These dramatic mini-series, set in imperial China, feature "classic" tales of love and glory, as well as actors that seem to have been chosen based solely on their ability to widen and narrow their eyes.

Every few hours or so, there's a short break from these exciting adventures and the news is broadcast. The first fifteen minutes of every thirty minute segment is devoted to canned images of President Hu Jintao smiling and cordially shaking hands with various foreign dignitaries. Sometimes, just to mix it up, he'll be shown surrounded by smiling children. But mostly, it's him nodding wisely at a long conference table, while the news anchor says something like "President Hu met with such-and-such leader today, and pledged his support for the continued good relationship between the two countries." Oh good. Because I worried that something was actually happening in the world.

When the "real" news comes on in the second half of the segment, the nationalist propaganda machine really starts churning. Did you know that nothing bad ever happens in China? The rest of the world may be corrupt and evil, but China is always working hard to clean up other people's mistakes. Bird flu? Psh - who cares about the health threat to humans and livestock! The important thing is that friendly and concerned government officials are making "strong and effective efforts to contain the disease".

With these attractive viewing options, it's no wonder that family life revolves around the TV.