Ni Hao, Y'all!

So I said I would blog a lot from China, but it just isn't happening. The problem is that blogging from China is now much tougher since they, uh, turned off our blogging site. So my only access is to email these posts in, which is prone to lots of spelling and grammer mistakes (not to mention me saying things that should have been edited out), so please bear with me.

It has occurred to me on this trip that Chinese folks are simply much closer to their food than Americans. Where we prefer our food processed to the point of chicken's having hypothetical body parts called "nuggets," the Chinese would much prefer to actually recognize what they're eating, right up to the point where the put it into their mouths. The fish has the head, the chicken still has the beak and claws, and the baby pig still has its eyelashes (and probably its nuggets). My co-workers tried to get a chicken foot in my mouth at lunch today, but I would have none of it.

After work, I ventured over to the Shenzhen train station to buy tickets for Erin and I to travel to Nanchang next week to pickup Grace. I had the train selected, I had the dates, and I had the type of seat I wanted. I went to the first counter, said "English?" and the kind young lady behind the glass yelled something akin to "Get off my lawn!" and pointed at the next counter.

I went to the next counter. I handed the girl a slip of paper with my order and asked, "Do you speak English?"

"A little" she replied, albeit shakily. She immediately looked back at me and said, "No soft seats." I said, "But this is for tickets for next weekend...not today."

"No soft seats."

Crud. I called Erin. She gave me three other trains to check.

"No soft seats" (said with slightly more venom this round).

Erin began researching hard seats on the Internet. Since the average Chinese dude purchases a hard seat, I couldn't imagine it being THAT bad. But then she read stuff about it being standing room only...people sitting on the floor...urine...etc, and we decided that wouldn't work. The problem was that it took half an hour of us arguing about it on the phone to come to that conclusion, all the while I'm standing in front of the train station with 2,000,000,000 of my fellow man staring at me because, well, I was there.

Eventually we decided that a sleeper cabin was the way to go. We kissed and made up on the phone, and I headed back in to talk with my old friend, the ticket girl.

"OK. I want this original train, but I want a soft sleeper instead."

She nodded. This was going well. She then asked if I wanted a top and bottom bunk. I replied that two bottoms would be ideal, and she told me to get out. I took a top and bottom. Hopefully we'll still get to watch a lot of the countryside go by...and all without the horror of having someone sit (or pee) on our laps.

After the train adventure, I set out for dinner. I went to the Chinese equivalent of a Benihana. Do you know what will draw the attention of a table full of Chinese people away from the guy twirling the knives and cooking the rice? A fat, single white dude at the end of the table in a T-shirt and shorts trying to figure out how to cut a chicken breast in half with a pair of chop sticks.

Tomorrow it's off to Dapeng Ancient Town and Xiaomeisha Beach. Should be a hootenanny.