"Coffee, milk, tea" for the Laowai

Laowai = Lao3 wai4 = 老外＝ old outsider = foreigner

I was taking my usual metro ride from Longyang Rd. out in Pudong back to the Shanghai Indoor Stadium in Puxi. This requires me to get on metro line 2 and transfer to metro line 4 at Century Avenue. That’s the logistics of it all and is not the point of this story.

The time that I spend on line 2 is not that long since it is a quick transfer over to line 4. Line 4 is where all standing and waiting takes place. I had brought along reading [“The Return of the God of Wealth”] for Dr. Kim’s class so that I can at least be somewhat productive during an otherwise very unproductive time (unless you count NOT toppling over being productive. But I believe I have perfected the “Shanghai Metro Stand”). I step onto the metro 4 car, find a spot (standing of course), make it my own and pull out my book. This is where the story starts.

So there’s a guy, I would say probably mid 20s, early 30s, standing near me. Initially he is standing with his side to me, but he somehow turned so that he was facing me directly because he noticed my book. I am reading, but he makes his movements kind of obvious that he was taking something out of his backpack. I pause to look up because I am a naturally curious person. It was a stack of papers ... written in English. I thought maybe he was an ABC or some sort of business person (I’m always on the look out for those because I want to make contacts). Then I quickly realized he wanted to make sure that I knew that he was also doing something with English words.

He makes it a point to make sure that I saw that he was holding ENGLISH papers. Papers with ENGLISH printed on it. I do not think that it’s that big of a deal so I go back to reading my book. So I’m standing there reading and occasionally taking notes (all while standing on a moving metro I must add) and he is flipping through his papers and holding it up at such an angle so that it is quite noticeable. At one point he stops to roll up his sleeves and extends one of his arms to the point where the papers are knocking into my hands for a few seconds. I guess he wanted to informally compete to see who knew more English. I’m sorry fella, but I think I would pwn you. Quite easily too.

I am still reading but at the same time find this situation creepily funny. I was ignoring him but I could feel his eyes on me. Because I have to look up occasionally when people step on and off the metro, I noticed that he had taken his cell phone out. He might have been text messaging, but the way he was holding it kind of looked like he was using the camera phone ... on me. I just pretended to “sway” to the side and tried to hide behind a girl who was now standing somewhat between us. Next comes the best part where everyone that I had told the story to started laughing because of the pure hilarity and randomness of it all.

My stop is announced so I put my book and notes away in my backpack. In the back of my mind I’m wondering whether he would also get off at the same stop. Lo and behold, he does. I see him walk across the platform to look at the map of the metro going in the opposite direction. By now, I had joined the massive crowd of people funneling onto the escalator to get to the main floor. I’m squishing and squashing and as soon as I step onto the first step of the escalator, I hear from behind a low voice right above my right ear ...

“coffee, milk, tea...”

omgosh! it was the same guy! He was not whispering sweet nothings to me, he was whispering “coffee, milk, tea” to me! I did not know whether to laugh, run, or turn around and ask him what the deal was. I was stuck on the escalator so I kept facing forward. Inside, I was laughing and creeped out at the same time. I was also very confused. Did he really want to prove to me that he knew English? Was he practicing his English on me? And then I started laughing inside because I found it amusing that someone had made the discovery that I was a foreigner and was trying so hard to impress the foreigner. In the words of Karol N, “I guess that’s what white people get all the time, huh?”

p.s. Originally I heard him say “coffee, milk, cheese” but Sina said he was probably saying “coffee, milk, tea” ... which makes more sense. Though “cheese” would have made this story even funnier. I guess he needs to work on his pronunciation.

Leehom Shanghai Concert 2008

So amazing! So much fun! So awesome! And we call him Alex Wang now. To celebrate the fact that he is ABC like us. [and this is a long post, but worth your time reading it]

Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008 = Wang Leehom’s Shanghai concert for his 2008 Music Man Concert Tour. I didn’t work that Saturday because I requested it off. Thanks to Lisa for covering for me that day!

I had to take care of some visa issues earlier that Saturday. Not to mention that the business class’s module 2 assignments were due Saturday midnight. So you can guess what many of us were doing on Friday night. Homework. Sina and I went to the Shanghai South Railway station to pick Jing up, who had traveled from Hangzhou to Shanghai for the concert. And we continued doing homework that night. Haha, it felt like I was back at UCLA again in apt. 304. Or back in the Hedrick or Sproul study lounges. A group of friends sitting around a table with their laptops, books and papers spread out. Typing away, listening to music. And every once in awhile stopping to ask a question or to chat about something off tangent.

So that Saturday morning, I woke up early to meet Lisa, Ryan and Nancy at the Science and Technology Museum metro stop. After much bureaucracy and red tape, none of us were able to complete the process. I was the one who got closest but because I didn’t bring my police registration (thank goodness that I went with Sina to do it, otherwise who knows what would have happened. And thank goodness that it was near the lunch hour so they didn’t ask me too many questions as to why my registration was so late, ~2 months after arrival in China when the policy is within 48 hours of arrival. Hence, no fine...because they were hungry?) Nancy has to return on Monday to drop off that final form and then they can start processing me so that Papa Mao can know my every movement.

I got back home and Sina and Jing were about to leave to go out sight seeing because they had submitted their module 2s. I decided to stay in and finish up work. I took a short nap afterwards because I was so tired from lack of sleep the night before. The meeting spot was going to me me/Sina’s apt. Jing and Sina inform me that they were still at People’s Square but they were on their way back on the metro. Daniella called me saying she just got off at the Shanghai Indoor Stadium metro stop and I gave her descriptive directions to help her find our apt “look at the wall on the right, are their shards of glass sticking out of the top? now you will turn left at the street with the woman sewing on the corner.” Karol was still doing homework...

Pretty soon, we realized that we had to get going to the concert because the tickets said it would start at 7:30pm (which really meants 8pm) and it was currently 6:30pm. We made a trip to the nearby grocery store to buy some “Leehom water”. His face endorses a brand of bottled water here in China; it’s called Wa Ha Ha water. We asked a worker to take a picture of us holding up the bottles and he probably thought we were crazy.


Me, Karol, Sina, Daniella, Jing at the Hua Lian Supermarket with our Leehom Wa Ha Ha water bottles!

We made the short walk across the main road to the Shanghai Stadium area. It’s great to live so close to the stadium because we didn’t have to travel too far. When we got there, there were so many vendors selling random things. Glow sticks, “food” and artist paraphernalia. However, as we were looking through everything we were wondering why Ayumi Hamasaki’s face was on everything. And why people were walking into the Indoor Stadium instead of the Outdoor Stadium (which are right next to each other). Turned out Ayumi was having a concert that night as well. We bought what we thought were lamb meat on a stick but it was really fatty meat on a stick. We kept walking towards the stadium that our ticket said “Shanghai Stadium” aka “outdoor.” And then we saw more Leehom paraphernalia. It was so much eye candy. We wanted to buy stuff, but didn’t want to carry it with us during the concert so we skipped out on that. But Sina and I got "glow sticks".


All of a sudden, we hear music coming from inside the stadium! But we were still outside! And we didn’t know where we were supposed to go to enter for our seats! We asked security and then bolted in the direction he told us to run. We ran around the entire stadium and it was later that we realized we went the long way when we could have gone in the opposite direction and save ourselves time. We kept running and running until we got to our gate and the 3 sets of security check points allowed us in. Then we had to find our seats in the dark. Sina and Jing’s tickets were two rows in front of me, Karol and Daniella. We bought them at different times. Some people were in our three seats and as I was trying to figure out how to get them out, a couple foreigners around us started helping us out. One girl asked me whether we were in row 14 (yes!) and then an old guy behind the row (probably with his Chinese mistress) helped us by looking at the seat number of the three people who weren’t getting up. Eventually, they stood up, apologized and left. And the three of us sat down happy.

When Leehom appeared on the stage after the opening singer the crowd went crazy!!! I went crazy!!! I mean, I have seen him before, and even closer in person (darn that table for separating us!!) But this was his concert!! I was super excited even though he was tiny. But there were the projected images. But wow. I was enjoying every moment of the concert. Every song, even the ones that aren’t my favorites. During his “Change Me” song, “imposter” Leehoms appeared on stage for drummer, and guitars. The funny part was that the drummer dropped their sticks, but the music had kept going. But these look-alikes were just there for the effect, you have to know the music video to know what I’m talking about. Also another highlight was when the Chinese guy sitting in front of us started freaking out when Leehom’s “Can You Feel My World” song started. He was doing this awkwardly cute shoulder dance that the three of us started imitating because it was so awkwardly awesome. And during the encore...

Leehom: So which song should I sing?
Audience: 唯一!! [Wei Yi, The One and Only]
Leehom: I already sang that song! How about 唯二? [Wei Er]

[Yi means one, Er means two. Trust me, it was cute]

Also when he was calling out to the audience, “Any friends from [place]?” Karol and I yelled out when he asked, “Any friends from Taiwan?!?!?” And then he said “Any Hong Kong friends?!?” but he said it in Cantonese and kinda totally butchered the pronunciation. Even though he can speak it better than he did that night. We were disappointed he never asked “Any friends from America?!?” We would have gone crazy yelling. In order for him to hear us ... because we were sitting far away. LOL.

I took many pictures and many videos. But some came out blurry. But they are still worth a thousand words each to me. He sang all his popular songs including a new song “搖滾怎麼了“ [What Happened to Rock and Roll]. Forever Love, Can You Feel My World, 唯一， 心中的日月， 蓋世英雄， 大成小愛， 一首簡單的歌， 放開你的心， 龍的傳人， 改變自己， 花田錯，愛你等於愛自己，竹林深處，落葉歸根, 在梅邊 ... and more. Really, so much fun and so awesome. I want to go to another Leehom concert. He’ll probably sing the same songs, but who cares. I enjoy them. And you know how some artists sound different in concert than they do on their albums? Because they’re singing live (no lip-syncing). Leehom was singing live, you could tell. But it sounded so close to the album voice. He did some improv here and there, but the sound was so much the same. He has perfect pitch. Plus, he kept bringing out instruments to play during the concert. He brought out his guitar, piano, violin, drums ... he even started beatboxing at one point.

After the concert, we went outside to the vendors and bought some posters and cups. Leehom overload!! One guy who was selling posters was trying to get us to buy this one poster of Leehom that wasn’t exactly too flattering. He told us, "Leehom, 帥的不得了!" [Leehom, So handsome you don’t even know what to think!]. Karol and I thought it was hilarious the way he was selling his posters. We bought some from him, but not that poster. There was one guy who was selling bags; cheapy souvenirs but we were still interested. He said he could give it to us for 5RMB each. We said no. Then he said 2 for 5RMB each. We said 2 for 4RMB. He said no. So Sina told him, "Come on, give me best friend price!" [running joke among us]. He said, "We are not friends..." And that was when we were all like, "wow ... burn..." We walked away to the vendor next to him and started bargaining for Leehom cups. He wanted 10RMB for each. We told him no. We would pay 5RMB for each. He said something to the effect of "I sell these for 20-30RMB each. I will give it to you for cheaper because the concert is over and I don’t want to carry them home." We said, "Fine, then sell it to us for 5RMB each and you don’t have to carry 5 extra cups home." He said, "10RMB and I give you a free poster." We told him that we had already bought posters. Eventually we got the price down to 6RMB per cup + free poster. As we were walking away, he was telling his friend (the guy who refused to sell the bags to us for 1RMB less), "those girls bargained hard." But who knows how much those cups really cost.

We walked a little more and came across another vendor who sold us the bags for the price we wanted. Score! We grabbed some ice cream at the stadium’s Coldstones (yes, the American ice cream chain) because after each concert they have buy 1 get 1 free ice cream if you show them your concert ticket. While we were eating ice cream, we were still stuck in this Leehom dreamland phase. We kept talking about how awesome the concert was and how awesome Leehom is and all that good stuff. Actually, we are all still stuck in this Leehom dream phase.

Now here are some of the pictures. I had to steal some of these pics because my camera ran out of battery on the last song of the concert:

me, Daniella, Karol (foreigner with Chinese mistress behind us)
Daniella & Karol

me & Daniella

Karol & me

Sina & Jing

me, Daniella, Karol

LEEHOM!!

Leehom with his glittery hair and silver leather glittery pants

The seats we wish we were sitting in

Karol on her first date with Alex Wang

After the concert @ Shanghai Stadium
Seats: Section 17-2 ... a.k.a far away, but still tons of fun

Wow. Such an awesome night with good friends, good fun and good music!










And one more final picture of Leehom just for fun. If only they were selling this poster. I wouldn't even bother bargaining the price:

SO AWESOME!

Omgosh! Leehom's concert was amazing! I had so much fun! I'll post about it soon since I'm so tired now. But at the same time so awake from all the adrenaline.

SO AWESOME!

Almost

Guess who is going to a Wang Leehom concert in less than 24 hours?!

Hangzhou - Paradise on Earth

Darleen, Christian and I left Shanghai for Hangzhou Sunday evening. We had to do one of those dashes through the train station that you see on TV. We weren’t late, but we certainly weren’t early either. Unluckily, we had to ride the entire train ride backwards because of our choice of seats. It wasn’t too fun. But we tried to sleep it off during the under 2 hour ride.

Once we arrived in Hangzhou, we were surrounded by taxi drivers who wanted to take us to our destination. Totally trying to gyp us because we were foreigners. They told us that they could take us to Hangzhou Dianzi University for 100RMB. Uh, no. Patricia had told us that it’s about a 30RMB ride. We were feeling very discouraged until a guy was nice enough to tell us that we should walk a little down the street where there were real cab drivers who could take us to the University for about 30RMB.

Once at the University, we sat around and caught up with Jessica and Patricia. They had not seen much of the other MAIS people because they’re in Hangzhou so they were excited to hear all the Shanghai stories. Darleen, Christian and I had planned on finding a hotel to stay at but because of the holiday and because Darleen had forgotten her form of ID we had to be illegal in Hangzhou. China has this policy where foreigners have to be registered with the local police whenever they move to a different province, even for a few days. So we called up Jing and asked her if we could use her apt for the 2 days.

The next day we hit up the West Lake area. This is the must see place in Hangzhou. And it certainly was! There were crowds of tourists milling about and traffic was pretty bad. We had a difficult time getting a taxi. We had to separate into two taxis and I did one of those, “Follow that cab!” moments. We had just pointed to a place on the West Lake map and decided that that would be a good place to go. However, once we got to the Lingyin Temple, we saw that we had to pay a fee so we walked around for a little bit instead. While we were walking around, we saw cable cars that would take you to the top of Northern Peak. We agreed that was more worth our money, so up we went!

This is the view from the top of the peak.





After coming back down, we walked around the lake and enjoyed the scenery. I highly recommend visiting Hangzhou’s West Lake if you ever get the chance to come to China. We also randomly wandered into the West Lake Expo Museum. Which was actually interesting. There were some artifacts (probably replicas) from when West Lake held a mini-expo. We even stood atop a map and pretended to be Godzilla. After playing at West Lake, Patricia took us to a place she knew where you could do bargain shopping. I’m not very good at it, but it was still fun walking through all the random stores.

The next day we felt like we should do something “cultural” so that we could show people that we didn’t just go to Hangzhou to shop. We looked through the travel book and found another free museum, China’s National Silk Museum! whoohoo!! It actually turned out to be pretty interesting as well. At the end of our museum walk, we even took the time to paint some silk handkerchiefs. I don’t remember who has those pics of us painting. While we were painting, crowds of Chinese people would gather around us to watch “the foreigners” paint. They would sometimes even discreetly (or not discreetly) take pictures. I overheard one lady tell her friend, “here’s the camera, I’m going to stand behind her and look over her [Christian] shoulder and you take the picture.”

The plan after the museum was to go to the shopping place again, but because we had such a difficult time getting a taxi again, we eventually had to just head back to the University to grab some dinner in order to make it to the train station in time. On the ride back (I had switched train tickets with Patricia because I thought that her ticket would get home faster but it turned out it took longer because there were stops vs. the original ticket I had was non-stop) I sat next to a girl named Lily. And the two of us had a nice conversation. She was just as interested in life outside of China as I was about life inside of China. Some of the topics we talked about were Chinese and American politics, the Beijing Olympics, Taiwan, the One-Child Policy and old people. It was cool because this was the first time I was able to have this type of discussion with a Chinese person.

After a quick two days in Hangzhou, it was back to the hustle and bustle of Shanghai. Patricia came back with us, so we tried to do some of the sight-seeing things around town. That will be posted another time.