On the Friday that just passed I along with what seemed to be all the foreigners in Shezhen went to Ghuangzho, which is about two hours by bus away from Shezhen, to attend a Tourism Concert of some sort.  It was a very intersesting trip.  We were given a very nice dinner, that included eel and snake dishes, the snake just tasted a bit like fish I thought, I was a bit disappointed about the lack of "snakiness" taste.  Then after dinner we all went to the stadium to see the concert.  After about 45 minutes of chinese speeches from local government officials the show finally started...with floats advertising the different provinces and cities in China, which would have been helpful had the names not mostly been in Chinese.  After this there was an actual concert revolving around a story set in the chinese past where a hero undetakes a sea voyage to retrieve a lucky vase or mirror(it was kind of unclear on that part)  anyhoo each new part of the story was presented in song by what I can assume were at least fairly well known singers since they all got cheers when they came on stage and lots of dancers backing them up.  Overall I would give the whole perforance a 6.5 maybe, EXCEPT for one thing which made the whole thing worthwhile, one song was sung by a performer who I did know, even though I had not known he was a singer as well as an actor.  We got to see Jackie Chan sing live, and it was alot of fun.  Apparently he is the Tourism Ambassador for Ghuangdong, which is the province we are in.  Anyways, that was the whole point of this post, just letting peope know I saw Jackie Chan sing a song live in concert.  He was only on stage for perhaps 6 minutes but it made the whole trip and concert well woth the time and effort to get there and back.  Though the Chinese government did provide tickets, transportation there and back, and dinner gratis, which I thought was very nice of them so xie xie to them.

BaiJiu
So as a product of both American high school and college I have had my share of alcoholic beverages, well...several peoples shares.  And also I have been a poor high school and college student as well, so I am more than used to dealing with less than top of the line alcohol.  I still have fond...or at least some type of memory of Popov brand vodka.  For those who are not college or high school age I will elaborate.  When you go into a grocery store there is an aisle just for liquor.  Now as you walk down said aisle the alcohol is divided by type, tequila, gin, etc.  NOW, when you get to the vodka aisle you see Smirnoff, Absolute, etc.  Now look down, nonono, keep looking down, bottom shelf.  There it is, the handle of vodka in the plastic bottle.  The one that only costs 8 dollars.  Ah Popov, how truly revolting and yet it brings a tear to my eye as I recall all the fun that this most disgusting of brands gave me. 
Now you may be asking yourself why I am talking about this, is this simply a walk down memory lane?  Well no, because in China I have met Popov's older cheaper long lost twin.  It goes by the standard name of BaiJiu(pronounced Buy-Joe) and it is actually a type of alcohol like vodka and gin.  However, while there may be high quality Baijiu, I have not found it and since it all tastes more or less the same to me I stick to the flask sized bottles that cost .50 cents US.  This stuff is very bad and very good and very cheap.  It pervades all types of mixers and is very alcoholic.  After a while, when your taste buds no longer function it doesn't actually taste that bad...well that's not true it still does but by the time you don't notie the taste you are already fairly tipsy so that helps.  
There is no real moral to this post, I just felt that I should share my find with the rest of the world.  Chinese red wine, named Great Wall, is also an interesting drink, though the beers so far hae been nice, not great but consistently good.

So this last weekend, I went to a place called Window of the World with my neighbour Dan.  Window of the World is something like an amusement park, with the theme being wonders of the world.  It has scale models ranging from a four story version of the eiffel tower to a 4 foot capital building.  They also have a few rides, and an indian shooting rane with the chinese who work there dressed in warpaint, feathers, and other indian regalia of the type that I would have worn when I was little for halloween.  I had been very curious about the place since I heard about it when i first got here.  I asked my contact teacher about it and she said that there are several palces such as this around China.  The reason being of course that most chinese do not have the chance to leave the country to see the actual versions of what they can see at Window of the World.  
Now I don't want to nay say or anything of the like but it didn't really sit right with me.  I have sen several of the actual things that they had replicas of at Window of the World.  BUT, there are still several that i have not seen, including several replcias from southeast asia that I hope to see soon, and several from Europe that I want to see, an example is the Colliseum.  The replica they had of that came up to about my waist.  To me you can't use a replica for these types of things.  A HUGE part of the awe and reason that people find these sights so amazing is because of the sheer scale of these monuments that people have achieved, especially considering that most of them were made long before modern technology came along.  It just seems that if you only look at the pyramids, the Colliseum, the Easter island statues, Machu Pichu, etc as something that you oly need to see to say that you have seen them then you are missing the point.  you can do that from the interent, just look at the pictures.  But if you want to actually SEE them then it shouldn't just be to say I kow waht they look like, it should be because you carea bout what they are and how they were made and the history behind them.  I mean these arent just buildings, these are monuments to human achievement.  Anyways, next time I'm just going across the street to Happy Valley, which is just a simple amusement park.

A real difference between China and the US customs I have recently found has to do with the discussion of salary.  Now I am the first to admit that I have discussed salary with friends and family on occasion, and in the case of my salary I felt no real compunction about not talking about it since the main reason I came here was not for the pay.  For the record I make 5000 yuan a month or about 667 dollars. In 2005, the average salary was 2450, and keep in mind that I do not have to pay for my room.  Anyways, the reason I thought of this is because at dinner tonight the manager jsut came out and asked how much we make a month.  We did not answer and she told us that she made 2000 yuan.
It is a very weird feeling for two reasons.  The first is that I feel bad that I fly in out of the blue and start making more money than alot of people here, even other teachers, and that does not include that fact that I live in the same amount of space as a teacher and his/her family.  The second has nothing to do with China nad more with making me think about waht I am going to do when i get back to the U.S.  I have no idea what kind of job I am going to get or anything like that.  I want to go to graduate school but after some research most grad schools do not accept students until after they have at least 2 years of work experience under their belt.  I also am coming to realize that even when it comes to grad school I do notknow whether to go after an MBA or an M.A.  There are some schools that have Masters programs that you can go to straight from your undergrad but I don't know if that is the best option, though I do miss college every day.  I know that St Mary's has one such program but again, who knows.  -Sigh- And I miss people back home alot, AND Thanksgiving is coming up which is reminding me that Christmas is coming up which I will be spending over here.   -Sigh-x2 
On the up side I did just buy all six seasons of 24 for 30 kuai(or 4 dollars0 and while the quality is not great at least I do not have to be left with cliffhanger endings, those kill me and I am already addicted to a few shows that I downlaod as they air.  And I did go surfing again which was fun even if I did get rocked by a good number of waves.  Life.

So I was thinking about the comparison between China and India, in terms of certain social norms.  India seemed much more repressed as a society when I visited there, what witht the prevalence of arranged marriages and the whole flare up over the Richard Gere kiss.  China on the other hand seems much more open, pop bands, cheerleaders, and what not.  
But this week as every week I played a music video before I started the lesson and this one had a scene where a boy kissed a girl and had a girl in a bikini.  Now I teach 14 and 15 and the odd 16 year old so I was really suprised when the scene brought forth a suprising amount of "oh my god" or as they say "oh my gaaah" which can be very funny in its own right.  Anyhoo, after that reaction I went into my lesson about eating out at restaurants and at the end of the lesson asked about whether for dates you go out for cheap or expensive food.  Now these kids all know about boy and girlfriends and a good way to embarress them to be quiet if a boy and girl are talking to each other is to say they need to stop talking to your boyfriend/girlfriend.  Now while I had my first girlfriend freshman year of high school which would have made me 14/15, I figured that maybe they started a little older.  The general answer I got was that they were not allowed to date until after they were at least in college and in some cases after they graduated because it would interfere with their studies.  
See unlike the US, after middle school, which goes until you are 16, high school entrance is dependent upon how well you do on entrance tests, which is one reason why some kids do not care about class anymore they know they don't have the test scores to get into high school.  Same with college, in Shenzhen, a city with 15 million people there is only one college.  Now while I am sure that just like teens back in the US(not me of course but bad teens) they don't always listen to their parents and may have a signifigant other, but it hamemrs home the point I am trying to make which is that for all the ways that Chinese popular culture is mimicking US culture underneath that veneer is a completely different country.