Dearest Potato, I Went to Seoul!

Dearest Potato,

I took an embarrassing number of selfies with the flowers in Korea, but here’s one that was actually taken by another human. I love flowers! ❤

I know I haven’t posted about my other two trips yet, and the whole thing is written, literally waiting in the drafts, but I’m still trying to figure out how to get the pictures off my phone, which is currently broken. I still have my Chinese phone, but, like I told the store guys when I bought it, “I want a cheap phone,” so it doesn’t do anything nifty like hook up to your computer and download pictures. Nope.

Going to Seoul was actually an idea that I got from you! You made the airport sound so nice during your layover there that I just had to go, and seeing as I had a four-day weekend coming up (3 days for Qing Ming, or Tomb-Sweeping Festival, which is a day when people in China visit their dead ancestors’ graves–but only if they are close by and only if you are a male descendant, I think–and an extra day because I had my one day a month where I work until midnight/1 in the morning, so I got the next day off).

Also, about a month into my stay here in Beijing (has it really been five months? I CAN’T BELIEVE IT), my friend Kristine sent me a Facebook message inviting me to Korea, which I accepted. Before this, we’d met exactly once, at this panhellenic social where we randomly were paired up with someone in another sorority and had to give them valentines. So, we met, friended each other on Facebook, and had that kind of peripheral friendship until I decided to take her up on her offer.

Dearest Potato, Chinese Banks Led Me Down the Rabbit Hole

This was going to be a lovely and mushy letter about how much I loved our Christmas together in the Philippines and how much I miss you and Mom now that you’ve gone back to the States, but, you know, we can always do that later, because the point of these letters is to talk about what it’s like to live in China (for the most part) because you cannot be here with me.

Don’t worry. There’s plenty to come about the Philippines, because even though we were there together, you spent a not surprising amount of the trip asleep, seeing as you need more sleep more than any other human I have ever met.

However, right now, there’s a thing on my mind, and that thing is Chinese banks. Specifically, dealing with Chinese banks when you’re a foreigner and don’t have a translator/agent assigned to you to work this stuff out for you. Specifically, dealing with Chinese banks on somewhat of a tight deadline.

But let’s back up a little bit.

You know how Christmas (read: THE WHOLE DAMN HOLIDAY SEASON) is a huge deal in the US? We take crazy trips across half the world that we normally wouldn’t take (psst—go thank Mom for me because, seriously, Christmas on a tropical island was the most wonderful thing EVER). We take off large amounts of time from work and school so that we can take said crazy trips halfway across the world. We sing songs about family togetherness and the default winter aesthetic (read: so much snow) and throw back Hallmark holiday romance movies like pixie sticks.

Yeah, China doesn’t have any of that.

What China does have is Spring Festival, known to the rest of the world as Chinese New Year, which is about as big of a deal as it sounds. I have been jazzed about Chinese New Year since I realized I was going to China (I have been calling it Chinese Mardi Gras, and WE ALL KNOW how much I love Mardi Gras). Because Chinese New Year? In China? EEP. Right?

Wrong.

Chinese New Year, it turns out, is a great time for family togetherness. Aka your family in China. If you have family in China. It’s a time when everyone gets the hell out of dodge (which the Chinese Government wants you to do, by the way, because it’s too damn crowded for comfort in the Big City Life), heads for their hometowns, and spends the week watching TV/movies, eating dumplings, and setting off fireworks in government-sanctioned areas.

If you’re a foreigner, it’s basically a week off with no shops open, and you’re supposed to spend it getting really drunk in your apartment with your friends.

Or, you know, you can go traveling. I opted for the second option. As you’d expect, I’m not the only one who does this, so I decided that I would start looking for my package to go abroad (KYLEE TOURS ASIA 2015 IS A VERY EXCITING CONCEPT, OKAY?) in December. Would I have booked it earlier if I could have? Probably. But Spring Festival falls in February (actually, it’s the day after Mardi Gras this year, which is a small consolation for the lack of me and New Orleans being together during this magical time this year), so I figured I’d have a little bit of extra time.

I asked around about plane tickets, because those are a lot cheaper to get when you’re not using American sites. I got a lot of suggestions, and all of them said the same thing: you can pay for these things as long as you activate online banking at your Chinese bank.

Is it a little strange that my account (which comes with a built-in bank card, which works kind of like a debit card) has to be activated for me to use it online, but I figure, eh, what the hell? Different country, different banking system, right?

During this time, I also find out that I don’t need a visa to visit Japan, so I can just kind of waltz in with my passport (hello, American passport privilege) and stay for up to 90 days, which is lovely seeing as I have a week (give or take a couple of days, but that’s a later part of the story).

Well, dim the lights and get the popcorn, my little Potato, because here begins our story. Note that all of this should be read in the tone of me being five seconds away from losing it laughing and not losing it to anger.

Ahem.

Dearest Potato, Alpacas are Profane

Hi, Potato! Today, I’m going to teach you about curse words (because really, that’s the most fun part about learning new languages–right? Right? :D)

This all started when I was using my Wechat to talk to my roommate, and I ended up downloading the pack of alpaca-themed stickers (because alpacas are cute, okay?), and after I sent her a few, she told me that she couldn’t stop laughing, that the animal was very cute but was somewhat of a national joke, and it would be unfair for her to not tell me why.

So basically, caonima (tsao nee mah) or 草呢马, the slang for “alpaca” (the formal name for alpaca is yang tuo or 羊驼, pronounced “yahng toowhoa” which makes more sense because yang, or 羊, means “goat” or sometimes “sheep”), sounds a lot like 草呢妈, also pronounced caonima, which means “motherfucker.”

LOOK AT THIS FACE. SUCH A PROFANE FACE. This whole post is actually rated R because of this one picture.

Dearest Potato, Here’s How You Take a Shower in My Apartment

So, remember, China doesn’t really do shower stalls or anything, so usually there’s just a corner of your bathroom where the water comes out, and you shower in that and try not to splash it on anything else. There’s a drain in the middle of the floor where your water drains out, and sometimes you mop up the water off the floor after?

So, here are the steps.

Dearest Potato, Going Out in Beijing is Like Being in a John Hughes Movie

Dearest Potato,

I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while. It feels so weird for me to be talking about my life here when I’m so far removed from the Ferguson and Eric Garner protests happening in the U.S. I know I told you this already, but even though most major news outlets (CNN, BBC, etc.) are blocked here unless you have a VPN (and even then, that depends on how much the government wants to allow you VPN access that day), there have been a few people at work who have come up to me and asked me about what was going on. I don’t know how they found out, but people are listening. It feels weird to not be able to do more except share things on social media and pray, but that’s all I can do.

Dearest Potato, Work is Almost Back to Normal

I apparently spoke too soon when I wrote to you last week, because about an hour after I posted, I got a call into the office on Tuesday. The rest of the week went pretty weird after that, because I had a day of work, a day off, three days of work (I got called in on Saturday), and then Sunday off.

Dearest Potato, The Skies are APEC Blue

Remember when I told you about the APEC meetings, which mean I get pretty much a whole week off from work and public transportation is insane? The flip side of that is (I mean, besides the part where I get a week off to do whatever I want) is that, when there’s a long break, everyone leaves town. The government actually encourages it because Beijing is too damn crowded. That, combined with the fact that there are less cars allowed on the road and some serendipitous good weather, means that the sky is blue. Roommate told me there was a song out about it, about the sky being “APEC blue.” Apparently, blue skies happen around here very often, especially in the winter.

Dearest Potato, Things are Kind of Sad Right Now

So, before we start, thank you so much for sending me the video of Sandy! She’s very cute. There are a lot of dogs around here, stray ones and pet ones, though they all appear to have curiously short legs (shorter than I’m used to, anyway). I haven’t seen too many cats yet, though my friend swears they’re here somewhere.

The majority of this is not very sad, but I’ll get there.

Context

Basically, these things called the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Corporation) meetings are coming to Beijing, which is a really big deal because it’s the second time that China’s ever hosted these meetings, and a bunch of world leaders are coming to town. This means that this is all we’re talking about at work, all we’re reporting on at work (I’ll post a picture or something of our magazine at some point), and I know way more about free trade than I have ever known ever.

This is not saying much.

Anyway, since the meetings are coming here, we get a surprise week off from work (Friday-Wednesday, so I really don’t know what I’m going to do with myself–my first paycheck doesn’t come until December 6 because everyone gets paid monthly here, so I don’t have a ton of money), and Sunday was a workday.

Also, since so many world leaders are coming into town (and Beijing’s too crowded for the actual meeting to be held here–they’re having it in like the town next door), they’re trying to make it look nice for everyone, so they’re making less cars be able to drive on the road. This is done kind of the way that watering your lawn works during a drought. Usually, 1/5 of the cars can’t drive during the week. So like, if your license plate ends in a 1 or a 6, for example, you can’t drive on Monday (or something like that–I’ve kind of resigned myself to never driving here ever because the pollution is D: and the driving is D: and you can’t drive that fast anyway, because there are people on bikes–SO MANY BIKE LANES–GOOD BIKE LANES WITH WIDE PARTITIONS AND BARS UP AND STUFF–and people walking). This week, they’re doing odds and evens (so yesterday, only plates ending in odd numbers can drive and today, only even numbers, and so on). This means that the people who are usually driving are taking the subway (you know, if they haven’t stashed another license plate somewhere, because that’s a thing people do and I am not surprised at all), and it’s CROWDED.

My route to work involves me taking two different subway lines, then getting out and walking for about 10-15 minutes (20 minutes if someone decides to walk and talk with me). If I get up before the rush, this usually means getting to work takes about 45 minutes. If I don’t, it takes 1-1.25 hours. I’m wondering if I can cut some time off now that I’m not getting lost too much (my phone compass helps so much, and when I can’t get to that fast enough, the sun helps too).

Also, since security’s tighter than usual, I have to carry around my passport all the time, just in case I need to prove who I am.

But this is not the reason for this post.

Sunday

On Sunday, I was having a lot of trouble with the Internet here (we have wifi at work which is nice because not a lot of people do, but it’s in all of its Great Firewall glory–you can’t use it for much, and the thing I downloaded to bypass it, the VPN, kind of keeps shutting off–apparently the government’s tolerance for them kind of shifts and gets really low around June 4…hmm…). I was supposed to be doing tweets (which are sent to the office in New York and tweeted from there, because Twitter’s not really allowed here unless you can bypass the firewall somehow), but I was having trouble with the link shortener (bit.ly is blocked here). So I ask around, and everyone’s telling me to cryptically talk to the girl who had my job before me, who works two floors down. I message her on our office system (our solution to pretty much every good email site being blocked–it’s called BQQ, which is our company version of QQ, which is basically the precursor to wechat, and is like 1994 AIM). She tells me that she’s so, so sorry I have to do this job, and if I just log out of my VPN on other devices, I can put it onto my office computer.

And I pay for my VPN, right? But it’s pretty sketchy, and they’re basically counting on the fact that I (1) have one and (2) will use mine at work. Which explains why everyone had been talking to me in riddles all day.

Anyway, she shows up at my office door with another dude, and in a scene that I swear comes straight out of Mean Girls, offers to “show me around.” My boss tells them good, Kylee needs to be shown around. Their version of this is taking me to a McDonald’s (cheapest coffee in the city, surprisingly–or maybe not so surprisingly XD) and telling me that (1) work is really laid-back and chill, and if I ever want to show up three hours late, I can, because monthly wages and not hourly; (2) I can’t ever count on anyone at work to give me a lot of notice EVER, because efficiency is not a thing–OH HEY IT’S JUST LIKE COLLEGE; and (3) they will happily sit with me in the cafeteria at lunch every day if I want.

(Right. So for 5 yuan a day, which is less than a dollar, I get a Chinese buffet for lunch–IT IS SO GOOD.)

So, after an hour, they take me back to work and we continue to argue over who gets what section (I got the business section very randomly, which apparently the guy really wanted and he’s been here for 2.5 years and should have had first pick).

Monday

So yesterday (maybe it will still be today for you because it’ll probably still be Monday there when I post this), I come to work and find out that I need to drop 300 yuan (they say the first month is the most expensive in Beijing–this is SO TRUE OMG) on another medical exam because they didn’t receive the original copies from the US. So, I spend all morning at this random testing facility getting blood taken, etc. (and they totally butchered the blood taking–my arm was like HALLOWEEN). I come back, the guy comes up and takes me to lunch, and we find out that the girl hasn’t shown up to work yet.

It’s not a huge deal, because skipping is pretty normal, but it’s production day (to all my Loyola Maroon friends reading, it was press night), and it’s not like her, but we have lunch (and they had those mung cake things…the ones Mom used to get for a us a really long time ago–really good).

Anyway, I go back to work and he tells me he’ll see me tomorrow, so when he shows up at my door when I’m about to leave, I know something’s wrong, and it’s probably about this girl, because when no one had heard from her by 1, they sent someone over to her apartment.

Anyway, she died.

She was only 25, and this has never happened, someone dying while they were working at this company, a foreigner nonetheless, so they called her family, but that was maybe 4am-ish US time. But she’d had a heart condition and had just come out of a 3-week hospitalization for pneumonia.

It’s so sad. And I had literally just met her the day before.

I think her family’s coming here, so send some prayers/good thoughts or something, because that has to be so terrible. And everyone here (everyone’s known her longer than me–she’d been here five months) is just trying to figure out what to do.

Anyway, I love you a lot, and if the government wasn’t being so ridiculous about wifi right now, I’d be able to talk to you over my apartment wifi, but work is apparently the only place I can do that right now.

Love,

Kylee

Dearest Potato, You’d Hate My Apartment (but I like it)

There’s this one Stargate episode (and I can see you rolling your eyes–stay with me) where everyone’s in the future, and everything is shiny steel and concrete and nothing hurts. Okay, well Beijing’s kind of like that…mixed with Bellaire in Houston. On speed. Seriously, if I close my eyes, I swear I’m looking at the street from the Sinh Sinh parking lot.

Tell Mom that there’s a Xiabu Xiabu a block away from me! 😀

You’re going to hate me for making this blog, but I find myself seeing Beijing on your terms (“She would LOVE this! She would HATE this!”), so I figured, why not? I originally would have made a vlog, but let’s be honest. I don’t have that kind of discipline, and my webcam has seen better days (Lappytoppy is almost 5 years old!).

Beijing is pretty exhausting. My new favorite game to play is “Why Am I Tired? Jetlag? Pollution? Both?” I went to bed at 6:30 pm last night, and I think that’s a lot less pathetic than it sounds, because it gets dark here around 5. Also, the temperature centers around 40F, which actually doesn’t feel too cold because there’s not a lot of wind? That might be my first two days talking, but I think the buildings might block it. THE BUILDINGS ARE HUGE. AND BEAUTIFUL. And the pollution casts this kind of dreamlike haze over the city. It’s not romantic. It’s just the way it is.

The glowier version of this is on my Instagram.

My room came with this!

You would hate my apartment, but I like it. My bedroom and bed are pretty big. I have lots of storage space because I didn’t bring too many bags (though I wish I brought less–hauling those bags on the subways was a NIGHTMARE and I’m pretty sure everyone hated me).

I found the mat in my closet. It’s entirely possible that it’s not a rug and I’m using it TOTALLY wrong.

I haven’t decided what to do with the hair and table, though it makes a nice drying rack for my towel.

My mattress is literally two inches thick and is basically a piece of hard foam covered with a soft sheet. There is no shower stall. The whole bathroom is the shower stall, and you kind of just sweep the water down the drain when you’re done. When you’re ready to take a shower, you plug in the water heater, but you unplug it when you’re done. We plug our drain with a soda bottle! But we do have a balcony. You get to it through my roommate’s room, which is bigger than mine, but she’s leaving it open for me during the day so that I can hang out on the balcony if I want. Also, there’s a TV, but I don’t think anyone watches it.

The balcony is out that window.

My bed stores things inside of it! I feel like this is college: level 50.

We have a washer but no dryer! So you kind of hang your clothes, and there’s this crank thing that pulls it up and down so you can dry them. I haven’t done laundry yet (I just got here haha), but I’m sure that’s going to be an adventure.

I haven’t used the balcony yet, because the government has decided to do a ton of construction work on the windows, so there’s construction during most of the day (but both Roommate and I are gone during the day), so it’s basically SAA and Loyola all over again. I think construction might just follow me wherever I go.

When it’s not under construction, the apartment building is quite beautiful.

There’s a guy on the right who sells fruit! I’ll let you know if I decide to buy some.

Like I said, cursed. XD

Tuesday was my first day of work, but I was really only there for an hour to do paperwork. They fed me lunch, which costs less than a US dollar, and it’s a buffet! You fill your tray with lots of Chinese dishes and eat with chopsticks. The guy showing me around was very confused because I (1) looked Chinese but (2) barely spoke Chinese but (3) ate with chopsticks like a champ. He finally asked me, very politely, why all of this was, and I just laughed and told him my life story, which was great because we didn’t have to make awkward conversation through the entire meal. Work is in a different district than my apartment, and public transportation to get there takes anywhere from .5-1 hour. It’s not so bad, though, because you’re just basically standing on the subway, which costs about $.25 to go wherever you want. It’s very fast, and it’s not too awkward because everyone’s in their phones the whole time!

Some things never change.

Pretty much the only adjustment I’m making here is language-related. The room is fine, the people are fine (I keep thinking something’s wrong with me because crime is apparently barely a thing here, but I still have all of my reflexes, watching my bag and stuff), the food is SUPER EXCELLENT I WILL HAVE TO DO AN ENTIRE POST ON FOOD AND NOT THE GOOD STUFF LIKE THE CRAPPY STUFF BECAUSE EVEN THE CRAPPY STUFF IS GOOD IT’S LIKE 99 RANCH MARKET ALL THE TIME I’M NOT JOKING, and my apartment gives me free drinking water! So even that’s not a struggle.

Yay for non-poisonous water!

Rule: the more Chinese on it, the less it costs.

The subway and I got off to a rocky start, but I’m getting used to it. But I won’t bore you with that now. I imagine you’re still pretty appalled that this blog is even a thing, but get excited! You have tons of posts to look forward to now!

Say hi to Sandy for me. And download wechat because that’s how everyone here texts!

Love,

Kylee

P.S. I’m going to fix the formatting. I promise. Love you!