People often e-mail me and ask, "Michael, when it's 102 every day, what underwear do you like?" I reply that while I have done exclusive testing under multiple conditions, the results seem inconclusive. I present the following scientifically gathered data:

Boxers: while cool and hip, in extreme heat less than ideal. vanderwalls bonding in the boxers will cause them to shear, slowly ascending the corpus rearus and creating a wedgie maximus. Best worn under reasonable conditions.

Stretchy underwear (with cool insignia): while insignia attempts to make them cool and hip, intense cross polyhesional bonding creates an impermeable layer of material, or greenhouse fabric, around critical areas. Also best worn under reasonable conditions.

Conclusion: while no underwear is suitable for Hangzhou in the summer, it still must be worn. Effects can be minimized by replacing jeans with light pants. Shorts aren't the solution.

Despite how much suffering goes into underwear in general, at least underwear shopping can be a real morale booster. Observe:

*Excuse me, what size is this?

*Medium, but that's way too small for you

*Oh? What should I wear?

*I'm thinking at least extra-extra-large, let me look in the back

I apologize for any and all inappropriate imagery that was generated by this entry!

The Travel Gods decided that I was not sufficiently accommodating to my family on their China vacation. And so they arranged for my friend to invite to visit his home in the countryside this weekend. My karma has been balanced.

Perhaps it was the personality disconnect between my friend and me. Dressing in US military fatigues didn't help when he showed me his voyageur home made video of his girlfriend's cleavage. He's likes to pretend he's a gangster, except he has a snoopy backpack.

Or maybe the fact that he mostly brought me along to practice his English on irritated me. His parents speak dialect and Mandarin, he speaks dialect, Mandarin and sort of English, and I speak Mandarin and English. So why the hell did we have to converse in either dialect or English?

More than likely it was the environment. His own house was interesting. Three stories, bigger than my house in the states, and modern. Except floors two and three are devoid of anything. Far more stressful was the mining town his relatives work in. We visited. Might as well have had aliens land.

They mine rocks and then crush them. That's their life. When I walked in the house, the early twenties husband was asleep on the bed, an IV in his arm. A cold, my friend explained. His young wife, several months pregnant, alternated between laying on the bed next to her husband and wandering, comatose, around the house. Flies buzzed everywhere, dust layered. The moment I stepped in, I wanted to leave. I think they felt the same.

Instead, my friend insisted on playing baseball catch in the street. Miners stared. I felt like a moron. My friend showed off and threw the ball out of controll over my head. The ball hit the dirt, rolled lazily past a miner's foot, and into a puddle. The miner blinked. I retrieved the ball. Finally we left.

The food pushed me too. I hate surrending control of my diet because it usually ends like this: octupus tentacles and frogs for lunch, expensive fatty beef for dinner. I managed to dissuade thm from cooking the live eel in a bucket behind the house. It was from the nearby crick.

Unbelievably, we stumbled into the only foreign teachers in this remote town on Friday night. My friend was delighted--English he couldn't understand to listen to and foreign girls to ogle--and I was happy. I really know any foreigners in Hangzhou now. I wonder what my life would have been like if I had if I had somehow ended up in a town like that.

But what you must understand, and probably can't, is that the town was fine. A beautiful park. A huge modern high school with an artificial turf soccer field. A KFC and a department store selling Oil of Olay products. This is the contrast that foreigners can never completely wrap around, myself included. A modern city. Ten minutes outside, it's as if fragments of technology had invaded 100 years ago. Old men on electric bicycles bouncing past cattle.

And I understand ever so much more why working 60 hours a week at a tea shop is a good job in a lot of my peasant friends' eyes.


In other news, I lost my super cool umbrella, which was a crushing blow. Not only did it collapese on its own, but I was also rather fond of it. Other news soon.

Long time, no write. Aside from being true, it's also the result of a family vacation to China. But it's certainly not for a lack of material to select from in my dusty innards. I have thoughts on everything from West meets East (and Easternized West) to why Christian dating books are all garbage to why my mind goes blank when I sit down in front of this thing. So perhaps we'll just go Rumble and Grumble (ala ESPN, but perhaps less interesting).

Family Vacation
Some parts of China certainly shocked my family. Like the ones that weren't built for tourism or shopping malls. But I have to say that they did a good job of coming to a country where they can't communicate and dealing. I've never been somewhere that I couldn't speak, so I'm sure it must be frustrating. Highlights of the trip including my sister (the Panda nut) Emily getting her picture taken with a baby panda and eating a lot of pizza. Perhaps the pizza was my highlight.

It's bleepin hot here. I don't look at the actual temperature because I'd just be sad, but I can tell you that if I had an egg I'd cook it on the black top. If the humidity didn't disintegrate the whole thing first. Family did a pretty good job of dealing here too.

One of the better exchanges on the trip:

*Dad: I'm tired

*Me: Here's some paper, go to the bathroom

*Me to Chinese friends: My dad has to be excused. I send him off.

Mother and Sister: hysterical laughter

Reasons why Christian dating books are gaaar-bahge

1. Where is this author from? Last time I checked, me and any girlfriend I've ever had were from far away places. Prompting the question, how can I ask her father for his impression of me since I've been young?
2. What the heck happens before age 24? Waiting until you're graduated from grad school (seminary, of course), have a high paying job, a house, and a 50 year plan to date would be cool. If it wouldn't mean you're a freak. What should I tell my 13 year old son someday when he tells me he likes a girl? "Well hold on there, sonny, you've still got 12 more years before you ought to think about something like that! Now here's some legoes."
3. Why the pressure? You know what every Christian dating book in history has in common? Nothing on breaking up. Because for God's sake, if you're dating you're going to get married! It's not like you could learn about life and yourself and each other in a healthy way if you dated and, dear God, broke up. These books make Dating some sort of (scary) instant long term committment pact.

In summary, these authors seem to exist in some sort of non-real Christian vacuum universe and would like to apply their utopian physics (perhaps chemistry?) to real life. Here's an idea: write a book applicable to a normal person that emphasizes principles like accountability, openess, growth, and how to evaluate your relationship. Feel free to tell me how wrong I am on this segment.

Sexism in Chinese Airlines (and why it's wonderful)

Chinese airlines have one rule: If you're not beautiful, don't apply. And it has marvellous results: every airline stewardess, steward, bag checker and ticket taker are gorgeous. I choose to look past the gross injustice in forcing perfectly talented stewardess to retire, rejecting good applicants because they're too short and grossly cattering to Chinese businessman. If I wasn't so hot (like sweating writing this) perhaps I'd do something (but probably not).

I'm sure I have more in my thinker, I always do, but I'm done for the day. If you have a brilliant comment about anything, post it or e-mail me it.

Upon completing my final paper, rewriting it, giving my oral presentation, going to work, turning in my final paper and realizing that I had finished my year at Middlebury's China school, the moment I had waited for since September, I felt...

nothing.

Perhaps the thought, "oh" popped into my head, but it's doubtful. Later yesterday night I know realized that I am a senior at Northwestern University which temporarily shocked me, before I returned to a state of vacuousness.

I'm not really sure why things are this way, or why the last 9 months immediately collapsed into a blur and folded into a box, but they did. I feel strangely and utterly detached, almost as if the last 12 months starting in July never happened, and when I go home in August this last year won't have counted.

Interesting Musings

• I have now spent more time in China in the last 15 years than most of my Chinese-American friends... for some, more than all their family members' time combined
  
• I recognize 3000-4000 characters, yet newspapers still give me problems
• it's starting to inch towards 100 degree heat

Summer Plans

• Take my family for a two week tour de force around China, with stops including Beijing, Si Chuan Province, and Hangzhou
• Stay here until august, continuing to work at my internship. I am subletting a bedroom from an art student. She's a girl, but she has promised that I won't have to model for David-esque sculptures. Plus, I had no where else to live.
  
• Travel with the Zhe Da baseball team to Beijing to watch them participate in the whole country competition
  

We should be a movie. One of those fabulous sports movies, where the group of misfits comes together and composes the grittiest, most loveable baseball team ever and wins the Big Game. Except we'd lose, because no matter how gritty we are, sometimes there is no substitute for catching the ball. You can ask our shortstop who had a routine pop up careen into his eye (somehow missed his glove entirely). Or you could ask all of us, who collectively amassed one hit in two games this weekend (but multiple beanings!). Or our pitchers, who aquired an ERA that is almost an unreal number. But, just like in little league, we had fun anyway! Especially me because...

I got to pitch! And basically got to pretend for one day that I was a real starting pitcher, uniform and all. I amassed the following stats:

6 IP (complete game--150 minute time limit)
5-8 Ks (not really sure for a number of reasons)
13 Runs Allowed
4-7 of which were earned

Why such uncertainty? Well it's hard to calculate when about 75% of balls put in play result in fielding errors and maybe 1 of 3 strikeouts is dropped and the batter runs to first base. So when the other team gets 5 outs per inning, it's a bit harder game. But it was wonderful and I enjoyed it a lot, especially because I may never get another chance. Foreigners are not allowed to play, technically, and our only games left are in Beijing in July. And if anywhere follows the rules, it'd be Beijing. But perhaps other teams will be merciful and let me play, just for fun.

For my final piece, I present, with flair, My Biggest Flame Out with a Girl.

The scene is my university's back gate, night time, street vendors making "small eats." Across the way, there is a fancy restaurant, the sort where a pretty girl wearing a qi-pao (traditional Chinese dress) opens the door for you and smiles, cutely. The setting is Zong Ke (me), feeling blue as he recently went through a breakup. The thought process is this: this stinks... hey? why not get the phone number of a girl who wears a qi-pao for a living?" And action.

Zong Ke saunters past the restaurant on his way to the fruit store, and notices the girl smiling at him. Unfazed, he buys fruit and then walks back past her on his way home. Then the thought process strikes! Why not ask her for her phone number? Zong Ke starts pacing on the sidewalk, pondering how stupid this idea is on a scale of 1 to 1802. He finally decides to not ponder and heads for the restaurant, realizing that the girl has seen him pacing for the last 17 minutes. Slightly fazed, Zong Ke heads onward. Upon reaching the door, Qi-Pao girl is talking to someone and Zong Ke has to open his own door, fazing him slightly more. She turns around, smiles, and asks, "would you like a table?" Zongke completely fazed, "Um, not really a table, no." "What would you like then?" At this point my internal pressure overflows, my face turns red and I can no longer speak Chinese, "um, no, no, nothing at all, I gotta go! bye!" Qi-Pao Girl opens the door, and Zong Ke zooms out.

End scene.

Never again can Zong Ke eat at that restaurant!

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.

For your viewing pleasure, I present some pictures from my China-crossing trip. Alas they are not in order, but I shall provide witty captions.

High school seniors in Hong Kong. They interviewed my in startlingly good English about Hong Kong's air pollution, to which I generally replied, "uhhh."

Sunset in Gui Lin, you can see a glimpse of the odd hills. They're everywhere, and really are beautiful, but I have no idea how they happened. As with most things, probably "carved by tiny glaciers millions of years ago."

Modern Junk. Ok, the ship is a Junk (pronounced yoonk) against the background of a modern Hong Kong. The city is truly remarkable, absolutely squeezed into the foot of a mountain. It appears to be one huge interconnected shopping mall in some ways, with signs warning everywhere, "smoke and be fined 5000 HK Dollars." No wonder it's clean.

You want Hong Kong's antidote? I present The First Normal School, the stomping grounds of Mao Ze Deng. Many Chinese landmarks are rebuilt (having either fallen down or been burned down by zealous Red Guards). Amazingly, this rebuilt school operates normally today, which would explain the eruption when I almost wondered into the female students' dormitory. Mao would not approve.

Last (actually my first destination) is Lu Shan, site of the Lu Shan conference. Now site of the worst place I have ever visited in China. I did escape with one nice picture, I suppose.

Si Chuan food is famous for being spicy. Unfortunately the little known truth is that Hunanese food could make an seasoned sichuanese veteran cry. I recently learned this truth.

Hunanese food is prepared in different ways, depending on the quality of the restaurant. If it is your standard family joint, before serving each dish is sniffed by the house grandma. If at least one of her nose hairs is singed, the dish is declared fit. However at the five star restaurants, a much more advanced method is used. Imported chefs from Mexico and France are both feed two mouthfuls. If either the Mexican blinks or the Frenchmen cries, the dish is a success. Bonus points if the Frenchmen attempts to surrender.

The food having driven me out of Hunan, I arrived in Gui Lin last night. This morning I went in search of a bike to rent. Fortunately I ran into a friendly local that lead me to a push cart stand with a sign, "We Rent The Bike." Delighted to have rented the only bike in all of Gui Lin, I headed off to see some mind warping scenery. Gui Lin is famous for these odd hills that seem to be blasted up out of the ground.

In route I managed to use the only bike in Gui Lin to run over probably the only thumbtack in Gui Lin. Being a genius, I looked at the silvery thing in my tire and promptly pulled it out. Poof--no air! I then got to walk to the only bike shop in about 5 miles, but all in all it was still a good day. I find that traveling with myself is like buying a bond. You know that nothing is going to go wrong, but probably not the return of traveling with friends either.

Returning to my regularly scheduled, highly polished broadcasts, I am on vacation. Which means I have infinitely more potential to land in ridiculous situations than usual. So far I have visited Lu Shan, the site where Mao strung Peng De Huai out to dry.

While Lu Shan is no longer a communist party hot spot, it can claim two superlatives: world's biggest tourist trap and world's most advanced cross walk signs. The tourist trap is run by the entire city and is specifically designed to skewer everyone. Are you an elderly Chinese and a big Mao fan? Take pictures of yourself sitting in the director's chair. Do you like picturesque landscapes? Buy the obscenely expensive 180 kuai entrance ticket (wait, everyone does that), hike down a mountain and then be forced to take a cable car up or die. Are you an ignorant foreigner? Have your two locals give you "the Tour" and have them lock your stuff in the trunk of their car. Then argue about the ever increasing price and have them ask, "where is your stuff again?"

The cross signs, though, are exciting. Oh yes, the little green man actually walks. And then walks faster, breaks stride, and finally becomes a little green blur. The light then turns red, implying imminent death (probable) if you weren't smart enough to follow the man's example.

On to Gui Lin tomorrow!