Thursday, March 03, 2005

Hangzhou Day 2 and 3

Despite sweltering heat, Hangzhou was a great time! It was jokes even! That morning I met up with Pei Bei's reluctant friends, Yang Ming and Violin (they insisted I just call her violin cuz her real name was too difficult... allegedly). They looked scared at first, me being likely the first black man they had ever seen in their life. And now they were committed to spending the day with me! But they loosenned up after a while. (Please note, they are in the typical, dyad formation: Chinese 1 girl with excellent english + sidekick who speaks ~ 0 english)
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They showed me around West Lake first. That's a beautiful place. With lots of... Lake and... Things in the Lake. And boats.. and plants.. and people asking me to buy stuff.
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Then we went to some museum type place where they showcased artifcats from ancient chinese civilization. Like caveman ancient! Old Chinese weapons were on display. And old chinese money! It was a Ancient Chinese-fest.
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Goldfish!
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Me standing next to a hobbit hole, showing off my chicken legs!
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But as Droopy would say, that is neither here nor there. My biggest surprise came when the lethargic pair wanted to decide what we should do for lunch. They asked if I liked Chinese food, to which I said, "Yeah!" then renegged a bit and said, "Well, it depends." They mulled over it for a bit then looked at me, looked at each other and asked, "KFC?"

I don't know if that was a racist thing like, "All black people like fried chicken" or a racist thing like, "All westerners like junk food!" But you know what? I enjoyed my goddamn KFC! I know I'm in China I should try the local flavour... but there would be plenty of time for that some other time. Do you know how crowded a KFC gets in China? Well, let's put it this way. The amount of Chinese people I saw at that KFC, far exceeds the amount of black people you would see at the KFC in NDG! By about 10 fold!

And that was that. I saw Pei Bei again that night and we chatted it up till all hours of the evening! Good stuff! Hangzhou was jokes, guy!