Visit to Wuhan, China, 01/26/2016

After I filled my stomach with at least twenty Juicy Pork Buns, I left ShangHai on a cruise at the port of Huangpu River, which is a channel connected with the Yangtze River. Even though my space pocket watch would take me to any place, I decided to spend a few days travelling along the Yangtze River. The cruise travelled towards west, and the sky was getting clearer as the ship travelled further away from ShangHai. In the few days on Yangtze River, we passed many beautiful mountains and towns. However, when we got close to the next destination, Wuhan, the water of Yangtze River started to turn muddy again, and from a distance, I saw some shapes of tall buildings in the city of Wuhan, all surrounded by a heavy layer of photochemical smog.

Image from the internet: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pollution-in-china/2012/01/19/gIQAQGR3BQ_gallery.html#photo=1

Date Accessed: Jan 26 2016

I landed at the port of Hankow, one of the oldest river ports in China. There were also some old colonial-styled European buildings near the port, but not as many as in ShangHai. It was breakfast time, and after a little walk around the dock, I soon felt hungry again. I sat down in a small restaurant, and I was surprised by the variety of breakfast they had. The owner, in his Wuhan dialect accent, told me that breakfast was a very important part of Wuhanese people’s daily lives. He also told me that the noodle he was making was Hot Dry Noodle, one of the most famous dishes in Wuhan. The noodles were cooked and dried the night before, and once the guests ordered the noodles, he only needed to dip the noodles in boiling water for few seconds, then add some soy sauce and sesame sauce onto it. Usually the guests themselves would add few additional toppings according to their own flavour, and then mix the sauces with noodles. I also ordered some Chinese egg nog mixed with rice wine(it didn’t taste alcoholic at all), because the noodle, just suggested by its name, tasted really dry. I like the flavour though, and even after I walked out of the restaurant, I could still smell the sesame sauce. I guess it’s because every breakfast joint in Wuhan sells the Hot Dry Noodles.

Image from the internet：https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7148/6505019779_1f8d480dc1_b.jpg

Date Accessed: Jan 26 2016

I am a very “nostalgic” person, if I can use that adjective to describe personality. Whatever place I go, I always visit the old buildings and historical places. I heard that the Yellow Crane Tower had nearly two thousands years of history and there were many ancient Chinese literature about it, so I was eager to visit there. The tower was on the other side of the Yangtze River, so I decided to take the subway. When I took the elevator down to the underground, I immediately regretted my decision. It was around eight in the morning, and hundreds or thousands of people rushed into the metro. I tried to find my way to the right route, but it felt like there were millions of people around me, all squeezed together in a relatively small space filled with smells of sweat, food, perfume, and things I can’t identify. When the train arrived, even more people joined the crowd. Don’t know why, but it reminded me of some pictures in the Walking Dead or Resident Evil where hundreds of zombies walked towards you. I escaped out of the metro, and decided to take a taxi instead.

After the taxi was stopped by the heavy traffic on the Yangtze River Bridge for half an hour, I finally realized that I made another stupid decision. On top of the bridge, I saw the Yellow Crane Tower on a small hill right across the river, but I also saw millions of cars stayed still from the bridge to the street, and the lines of cars just seemed endless, moving few meters forward after a long while.

After another two hours, I finally arrived at the Tower. The visitor booklet told me that the tower was first built in 223 AD, but it was burnt down and rebuilt several times in history, and the current one was rebuilt in 1985. I was a bit disappointed to know that the Tower wasn’t really that old, but the paintings of cranes and scripts of ancient poems about the tower and the Yangtze river were amazing. Ancient poets used to stand on the top deck, and they were inspired by the beautiful broad river, the fog and the boats sailing across. I also stood on the top deck, and I saw a modern city under the smog( not fog), and big ugly looking vessels on the yellowish polluted water. Especially after spent three hours getting there, I felt exhausted, sad and a sense that something was missing.

Image from the internet: http://img.ivsky.com/img/tupian/pic/201105/02/wuhan_huanghelou-002.jpg, 

Date accessed： Jan 26 2016

I then roamed around and stepped into a very narrow and dilapidated-looking street. There was a very old woman sat in a small bamboo chair in front of an aged door, making small animals out of syrup. I asked her if she could show me the process again, and she seemed surprised. She told me that children used to like the syrup animals, but now there were so many other attractive things, and she was also worried that not many people knew how to make syrup objects now. I bought a syrup dragon on a thin bamboo straw (I was surprised by how cheap that was). She said I could eat the dragon, but it was so pretty that I would feel guilty to eat it.

Image from the internet: http://www.hschinese.com/vi/node/2607, Date accessed: Jan 26 2016

She gave me a bamboo chair, and I spent a long time watching her making a new rabbit. The sun was warm, and I wish time would stop at that moment. After a long busy, anxious and tiring day, I felt so relaxed, peaceful and full at that moment. It was so comfortable and I gradually felt sleepy…...   

Visit to Shanghai, China 01/22/2016

Visit to Shanghai, China 01/22/2016

Before I could find food in Raytown, the mothership informed me, through my space pocket watch, of my required attendance to the secret extraterrestrial conference in Shanghai, China.  Teleportation between the United States and China is accomplished by tapping the space pocket watch three times. I tap the watch and buildings seem to gradually crash into each other as they grow taller and taller, the sky becoming covered by skyscrapers as the hands of the watch rotate rapidly, sending me 13 hours ahead to time zone UTC+8. The sparkly modern city grabs my attention as I stand observing the change in air quality and traffic. Everything here is in rapid motion, even in the evenings- cars and bicycles speed through traffic lights, and people are rushing to unknown destinations. 

Shanghai has various architectural styles and a rich collection of buildings and structures.  The Bund, called Waitan in Mandarin, is a famous bend on the Huangpu River, and is lined with historical buildings illuminated by yellowish lights. Colonization in the twentieth century caused the Beaux Arts styled historical buildings to be very different from traditional Chinese architecture. Both foreign banks and commercial buildings were constructed by the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Belgium, and other countries, and Shanghai soon became a major financial center in East Asia. Many financial institutions moved out in the 1950s after the Chinese civil war, and although the building heights are restricted in this area, the Bund has remained a commercial center that has developed into a significant tourist attraction. A short distance across the shimmering Huangpu River, the Oriental Pearl tower catches my eye. Abutting the Huangpu River and located at the tip of Lujiazui, the three large spheres along the height of the tower illuminate the surrounding clouds and reminds me of my hometown three billion light-years away. But the Pearl tower is not the tallest building in Shanghai. The Jin Mao Tower, and the taller Shanghai World Financial Center, ranked the world’s third-tallest, far surpass the height of the Pearl tower. And even more astounding is the Shanghai Tower; completed in 2015 and Shanghai's tallest construction, it has a height of 2073 ft. with 128 floors. It is China’s tallest building and second worldwide.

The traffic noise is not as loud as the growling in my stomach, and I soon smell a delicious herbal fragrance emanating from the entrance to the underground. I move along through the crowd of people drifting in and out of the entranceway. People do not bother to apologize when crashing into each other, and they seem careless, almost to the point of rudeness, but not quite. The only personal space one has here is the layer of sweat glistening on the skin. I suddenly regret that I have chosen to enter the underground, until I spy the bullet train appear at the huge shiny platform. With a ding, the broadcast in English and Mandarin reports that the “subway” has just arrived at East Nanjing road. People on their cellphones mindlessly walk in and out of the subway carriage, disregarding their surroundings. Perhaps this phenomenon is a byproduct of urbanization?

My stomach continues to growl, forcing me to enter a mall connected to the subway to forage for food that is lactose-free. Shanghai is an international city has attracted all kinds of foreign restaurant businesses, including fast food restaurants like Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Starbucks, and Carl’s Junior, as well as restaurants that serve Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, but the majority is foods from other parts of China. I have been told that Guang Ming Cun, whose literal translation is Bright Estate, will satisfy anyone’s desire for authentic Chinese food. People who are born and raised in Shanghai, speaking their own Chinese dialect called Shanghainese (which is very different than the official Mandarin Chinese) are known as Shanghai-landers. This famous restaurant has attracted generations of Shanghai-landers. I determine that the best way for a one-hundred-and eighty-nine year young alien to blend into the culture and environment is to join the Shanghai-landers and enjoy an authentic Chinese dish at this “old” (by earthlings standards) restaurant. Most of the dishes in Shanghai contain lactose or sugar to make them sweet, but as I peruse the menu, I luckily spot one of the most famous Shanghai dishes called Xiaolongbao, a Xiang-style floury but translucent steamed bun which encompasses a bit of salty pork and contains no sugar. Each table has many small bamboo steaming baskets filled with the small buns, and the patrons at the restaurant are gingerly retrieving the buns with chopsticks. I follow their lead and begin by nibbling a small hole to slurp out the broth, and proceed to dip the Xiaolongbao into the small dish of vinegar that accompanies it. I fall in love with the deliciousness of it, and I cannot stop eating…

Visit to Raytown, Missouri 01/08/2016

Upon coming to the United States (or what a lot of United Staters like to call, “America”, and as a result the Staters prefer to call themselves “Americans” even though I’m pretty sure America is a whole continent that just a portion of which is the United States, or some consider it to be two continents because the United Staters separated it with their Panama Canal to make two continents: North and South) I was surprised to learn just how big the “Middle West” was. The Middle West begins in the eastern side of the country just past the mountains and stops in the middle of the country before you even get to the western half! The part of the country that starts in the middle and continues on into the western half is called the “Great Plains” or as people from this area seem to call it “Tornado Alley” because of all of the quick land cyclones that pass through. Here, on the edge of the Great Plains and at the end of the Middle West is Raytown, Missouri. Raytown is a suburb of Kansas City, (even though it is surrounded by Kansas City from all sides and I thought suburbs needed to be on the outer edges of a city, not on the inner edges of a city to count as suburban. However from what I witnessed most of Kansas City looks like what I would call a suburb: Single-family individual houses each with their own driveway and garage and their own green grass lawn to maintain and a side-walk to keep clean) and Missouri is one of the 50 states of the United States. I was told that Missouri was so average and “in the middle” that for 80 years a person could predict who was going to win the election for president of all of the states by referring to whomever won the presidential election in Missouri. I don’t think it’s that way anymore.

I think Raytown was started by a blacksmith, because the city sign that I saw featured an image of a blacksmith at an anvil declaring “Welcome to Raytown”. I assume the blacksmith’s name was Ray. When I asked people about Ray and his town’s history, most people didn’t want to talk about the past. Not the distant past. People seemed to want to talk about the recent past and how much things have changed recently since “they could recall”. Some things have changed for good and some things have changed for bad, depending upon who you ask. The older people who tended to be “white” (what they call people from a European descent. Or rather they call them Caucasian even though they mean many more different people than those that just come from the Caucasus Mountains in Russia. I read somewhere that the U.S. census now considers anyone whose heritage comes from Iran and northward and towards the west into Europe and across North Africa to be Caucasian. Which is surprising to me because the people I met in the Middle West of America like to refer to the places from Iran westward across to Africa as the Middle East. Which is even bigger than the size of the Middle West! It’s twice the distance from Tehran to Cairo as it is from Pittsburgh to Kansas City!) remember when all of the businesses were local and family owned and you couldn’t drive so fast through town. They also remember there was a movie theater(cinema) and a rollerskating rink(wheels on your shoes!) and a pool hall(like billiards but different) in the downtown strip next to Fox’s Drugs. I didn’t need drugs but I was told Fox’s Drugs have the best milkshakes around. I’m lactose intolerant and so I didn’t go inside. The newer people who tended to be “black” (what they call people from African descent [but not usually North African descent], or what is considered more “politely” as African-American even though they don’t call white people European-American, they usually call them by their immigrant country or language of origin: Irish-American, German-American, Italian-American for examples. The President of the United States could be accurately called African-American because his father was from the African country of Kenya and thus Barak Obama was the child of an African immigrant in America. I believe his wife Michelle would be considered just “black” because her parents weren’t from Africa, they were from America which should make Michelle Obama an American-American, but people here insist that that isn’t how it works.) remember how the dangerous bridge over the train tracks was removed and the local schools have been renovated and the public park behind the elementary school has been redesigned to make it more safe and accessible for people in wheelchairs. The black people seem to be happy to live in Raytown and to send their children to highly regarded public schools. The white people don’t seem to be so happy that there are quite so many black people living in Raytown.

image courtesy of kctv: http://www.kctv5.com/story/29392667/raytown-police-warn-of-robbers-preying-on-craigslist-sellers

Nerdfighterfication's Welcome to Raytown Youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMDob9erOck&noredirect=1