On Friday we had a somewhat frustrating language simulation. The Chinese teachers gave us situations and role played and we had to respond to them correctly to pass. These included being robbed with a knife, telling a taxi where to go, being approached on a train by a stranger who may have wanted to sleep with you and/or steal your train ticket.
On Saturday our Chinese teachers and Site Manager took us out to a banquet, which included a simulation where the teachers pretended they were our bosses and we had to act appropriately. Afterward, we found an automatic Mahjong table in the same room, much to my delight. When you turn it on, it mixes up the tiles inside where you can't see and organizes them into neat rows. then it raises them up to the playing table and you can start playing. In the middle are a pair of dice in a glass container. When you push a button, some air or something blows them around and they roll. When you're done, you push some buttons and the middle opens up. You push all the tiles in there and it falls inside where they get mixed up again… I really need one of these.
Later, some of us went downtown to the really affluent part of Chengdu where there are huge shopping malls with extremely expensive brand name stores. The clothes and stuff at these stores are way more expensive than in the US. We sat by the huge Mao statue in the center of Chengdu city. There's a museum of Technology and Science behind him. We walked around and it took forever to find something affordable to eat.
Then we went to club called Jellyfish where the drinks were way too expensive. We bought baijiu and beer at a WoWo next door and drank before going in. I drank too much and danced… Later that night there was an awkward episode involving me hugging the western style toilet upstairs and my host family being worried about me.
Sunday my host mom/sister took me to Jinsha, which was really interesting. It's an archeological site where they found tons of artifacts from before the Shang Dynasty. We got an English tour guide to help me out. This was the first time since getting to China that I really learned something about Chinese history. I really need to do more research.
There was a strange "4D" movie in a little theater there. It was all computer animated and you had to wear 3D glasses. It was one of those theaters that blow air and water at you, shake you, and poke at you. It was all completely superfluous to the documentary, which was about the Shang Dynasty told in an epic story form. When someone shot somebody with an arrow, a peg in the chair would shoot into your back. For some reason they had to show snakes running around during a flood, and in the seat something moved across your butt. Then you were flying with a bird and air was blown at your face. When the emperor handed down his crown to his son, he ascended into the sky and turned into a bird, which flew around for a bit and pooped in your face for some reason. Water droplets fell from the ceiling simulating being pooped on.
I went home and packed for site visit.
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