As my last post was so sumptuous to even garner fan mail, I would like to continue my count down of superlatives with today's entry, Most Horrendous Work Moment.

I work at basically a small REI (outdoor sporting good store), which is to say that I work at an upscale yuppie shop in China. As a result most of our customers are newly rich Chinese, who think it's exciting to pay 3000 kuai for rain resistant pants when 70 would work at the clothes market down the street. Most customers are 30 to 40 years old.

On this ill fated day, a forty something woman came to our shop looking for, none the less, pants. Our other workers were occupied (amazing in itself), so I found a pair for this relatively big Chinese woman. Not fat, just fat by Chinese standards. She donned the pants, marched out of the changing room to the mirror and took a good look. Then she asked the dreaded question, "Does my butt look big??"

I panicked. Reply too fast and it means I've already looked at her butt. Take too long, it means I'm thinking. Say it doesn't and her husband is 10 feet away. Say it's big and her husband is still ten feet away. All of this blew through my mind before suavely saying,' Uhh, looks okay to me."

She didn't buy the pants.

As I approach then end of my second semester here at Zhe Jiang Unversity of Technology, I thought it might be interesting to count down some superlatives. Today: My Biggest Waste of Money.

We have a pool on campus, which is really quite remarkable. So my roommate and I decided to split the 300 kuai membership fee and go swimming together. My first experience went something like this: I enter the shower room, full of approximately 200 naked Chinese men and find a shower. I then over hear this conversation.

*I am showering next to our Foreign Country Friend!
*Cool... look at how white his skin is!
*I know!
*You should look at his "honorable second!" I've heard foreigners are big big!

At this point I cut my shower with naked Chinese men short, and if you don't know what an honorable second is, then you're own your own. I never had a second experience.

In Summary: 1 shower with naked Chinese men (and 8 laps in the pool), 150 kuai

Daily life is thrilling. Okay, perhaps not, but I have mine down to a science. And perhaps because I live in China, and for no other reason, you'd be interested in what I do daily.

7:50-- cell phone alarm goes off and I turn it off and shuffle to class
8:20 to 12:00--Chinese language class (read: grammar, vocab, repeat daily for 30 weeks)
12:30--mount bicycle and head to work
1:00 to 5:00--I'm a salesman at an outdoor clothes store. Sometimes we have customers.
6:00--dinner in campus cafeteria. I eat noodles, generally alone
7:00 to 12:00--a combination of homework and watching Desperate Housewives with my roommate
12:30am-- sleep and repeat.

For Scintilation I mix in the following activities

• visit friend who works at a tea shop
• play baseball on the weekend
• rubber neck at stuff
• call home
• peruse inexpensive movies
  

Pizza Hut delivers in China too. Via electric bike.

中国通。Old China Hand. There are not a great deal of these people, often single white males, so called China-Experts. And there won't be all that many more in the future, either. When you've been here long enough, you can start to divide the foreigners you see. And they often divide into four groups. Tourists are obvious. They're loud, they walk in packs and take pictures everywhere, they eat at McDonalds in groups, stabbing at picture menus. Short term workers are obvious too. Often young males who have come to establish factories or advise projects, their expressions demonstrate that in two months they've learned everything about China there is. Ask them if they can speak Chinese, they slaughter the phrase "I want beer now," and grin. They eat at McDonalds too, not alone but in pairs or threes, again stabbing at the menu. The third variety is Long term workers. They've been in China, or the East, for years and you can see it in their eyes. They move slower, they flow with the crowds, and they eat at McDonalds, but they're alone. They often have a sort of quiet control, because they know that the tide will just wash over them anyway. I'm not sure what a China Hand looks like, I've never met one.

By far the most damaging is the short term worker. He comes to China on a foreign salary, giving him loads of cash to fling around. In addition, he comes on his own terms looking for what he wants. The second most common response his Chinese level is, "I Can speak to her..." and he points at some girl wearing an outfit a Chinese prostitute might wear, except the STW thinks it's normal. So not only does he come and harm Chinese society by bludgeoning his culture upon it, but the stereotypes these men create also damage the reputations of other foreign workers in China. And ripples move on to America and beyond, until the only possible reason a man is interested in Asia is because he is obsessed with Asian women.

I would like to congratulate the short term foreign beer drinkers of the world! Quite an accomplishment you've made.

Above is my campus in the spring, a plum blossom tree.

I have two main rules that I live by in China:

1. Don't see the inside of a police station
2. Don't see the inside of a hospital
   

Unfortunately, I have broken the second rule for a second time. Perhaps my quota is now filled. It was interesting to see what a Chinese hospital is like (previously I just saw a tiny medical clinic), and it's not much like Western hospitals. I was sent to the internal medicine department where a doctor sat in a room. The patients then pushed into the room and all lined up to see her. She asks you your problems, and everyone listens. "Diarrhea for two weeks, huh? How often?" Me--often enough. Ten other Chinese patients, "ohhh, interesting!" She then proscribes some sort of test that you preform (minus points for filthy bathroom) and return with the results. They are then publicly analyzed. And some sort of medicine proscribed.

On the whole my impression was all right. It was a standard hospital, not an elite level, and while the service basic, it was at least available and professional. Privacy, you must understand, is not part of the Chinese professional package. And they can handle high level issues as well. Last year a girl broke her collarbone and required surgery. It was done and set perfectly. Still, send me home for open bypass surgery. Or a colonoscopy: 200 Chinese people, "Cool! Pink!"

Above is Yellow Mountain, more or less China's premier tourist mountain. They say you won't want want to see other mountains after this one. I went during China's travel holiday (Golden Week) and they're right. I never want to travel again.

Double Killing. Think I am in trouble? Think again, because now all that means is a double play. Yes, it is true, I have found baseball in China and it is better than the Field of Dreams. After searching for 8 months, literally, baseball came and found me at my job. And now ever Friday, Saturday and Sunday I am fabulously occupied with the ZheJiang University Baseball Team.

We are bad. My first time over I was selected to pitch because the team only has 3 pitchers. Two were gone on break and the other had thrown the entire previous day. And working from my constantly morphing delivery, I baffled batting practice with 50 mph fastballs located in the general vicinity of the plate. But hey, only nailing one guy isn't so bad is it? And I did bring the heat to actually break the catchers' mitt. Even Johan Santana doesn't actually break gloves. The mitt might have been from 1869, but I don't think that matters.

Watching the Chinese players arrive was my own personal Sandlot. There's fat ones and tall ones, a couple girls, and one that can't throw the ball in the air. Worm burners, every time. But when Worm Burner isn't working his outfield magic, he's an oncology major, so he should be all right.

In other news, the Chinese and Korean women's soccer national teams are playing in Hangzhou this weekend. And the Chinese team is visiting our university on Sunday, so I might have to go over and see that. But I hope for the Chinese women's team sake, they do not win in a dramatic shootout, which will require the last women to rip her shirt off in excitement. Instead of popularizing the sport like in America, the whole team would probably be banished.

Let's examine this method of celebration--does it make any sense? I have never seen any other women rip her shirt off in excitement, though perhaps this is for the best. "283 pounds? I met this week's weight loss goal, Yes!" Everyone would need therapy after that. But lets constrict the field to athletic celebrations, though weight loss perhaps might bizarrely qualify anyway.

Do baseball players rip off their shirts? "No don't celebrate yet! I still have some more buttons to go..." Or how about football players--nope, they're not allowed to take off their helmets. Perhaps that is why football executes so many jiggle-based celebrations. Basketball? They'd rather celebrate by whomping a fan or two. Ice hockey, I'm going to just say no. So why do soccer players?

Perhaps the first shirt ripping celebration was practiced by the Dutch, where as we all know, anything is legal. Then in an effort to not be out done, Germans had to go ripping too, prompting the entire French squad to develop the "Synchronized Shirt Strip" which is performed while speaking the most beautiful language on earth. I don't know.

Perhaps it is just best to hope for a 0-0 tie, preventing the need for any celebration whatsoever. Might be a relief to everyone, anyway.