home again home again

I'm back in the United States after 28 hours of planes, trains, and automobiles. Access to blogger was cut off without notice on May 14th. I tried to get there from Jiao Da's library, from Starbucks, and from hotels in Shanghai and Beijing, so I assume it was a decision made at either the ISP or national level. Now, I'll post each of my journal entries as soon as I finish working on the photos I took that day.

Meanwhile, here are a few things that struck me immediately after I touched ground in the States:

We have drinking fountains. There are a few dispensers for boiling water in the Beijing airport, but in general, public places in China don't have drinking fountains.

I was paying cash for everything in China. It's going to be a little odd to get used to using a debit card again.

Urinal partitions are actually high enough here. The ones in China were so low they might as well not have existed.

Airports are worried about different things. I got through the security checkpoint in Beijing in about thirty seconds; all I had to do was take the laptop out of my luggage. But Heaven help you if you fail the temperature camera test. Transferring flights in San Francisco, I had to take my shoes off and empty my pockets. After I got through the metal detector, the officer on the other side said, "Male, no alarm," had me wait in a separate area, and sent me through the chemical sniffer. Apparently not setting off the metal detector is just as bad as setting it off now.

All the English-language signs are perfect. I really miss the random terrible translations. I may never see another light switch marked "Smallpox."

Soda is awful here. All the soda I drank in China was sweetened with sugar. I'm not sure whether it was beet sugar or cane sugar, but it was far better than high fructose corn syrup.

There' s no more negotiating for prices. You can't just walk into Dillards and shout "Tai gui le!" at the staff.

I don't get stared at any more. Thirty white people is a spectacle in China; people's heads track you like video cameras. The worst part was when you get within a few feet of or talk to the locals and they cover their mouth and nose because they think you have swine flu. I think I understand how people of Middle Eastern descent feel in U.S. airports.

I miss playing Frogger. Take 16th Street in Lincoln, add four lanes going the other way, and take out the crosswalks, and you have something approaching downtown Xi'an. You have to cross lane by lane at a constant pace. Sometimes you have to wait on the lines between lanes while cars pass in front of and behind you. Sometimes it's best simply to follow the locals. Always it provides an adrenaline rush.

In Chinese, there's a vocalized pause (the equivalent of "um," "uh," or "like") that sounds like the word "nigga." Native speakers will use it two to four times in every sentence, for endless amusement to us English speakers.

There are clothes dryers here. I spent nearly a month without seeing a single one in China. My clothes often took up to two days to hang dry, and my towel never did fully dry out. I'm never going to take warm, dry clothes for granted again.