Fireworks and McGuyver

(EVENTS IN THIS POST TOOK PLACE Monday, Feb 9)

In the past few days I’ve met a few other fellow teachers here, Jesse and Adam A. My housing situation has its advantages and disadvantages. Most of the other foreign teachers (something like 90% or so) all live in one area up north called 花逢園兒 hua feng yuar. I, however, live down south, which is fine by me. Living down here on my own forces me to go out on my own and practice my Chinese. Of course this situation makes it difficult (or expensive) to hang out with co-workers daily outside of work. Jesse, knowing this fact invited me to attend the huge fireworks displays held all over town with himself and Adam A. Though the celebrations were in multiple places, they knew where and when the good/big ones were.

As the time to go out neared I called. Oddly enough Adam and Jesse were at Jesse’s wife’s mother’s place eating and her mother cooked wayyyy too much food. They invited me and since I’m hardly ever one to deny free food, I graciously accepted. I hopped in the shower, got dressed and headed on over.

I got there and the feast began and boy was it yum. They had two small dogs (NO, NOT TO EAT, Roger, as pets), one cute as anything, the other, mother to the cute one, had a face only a grand-mother, or blind mother, or a non-partial deity could love, Ugh. It was ugly. But we ate, drank, and were merry before bidding our hosts a good night and heading out (a tad late) to the fireworks. Though mini shows were all over, conducted by fireworks wielding citizens, you could tell you were nearing the big fireworks shows as it became harder and harder to walk. Companies got permits from the city to have certain amounts of fireworks; and the bigger the company, the more the BOOM.

We passed one after another in search of THE big show. As we got closer and closer we realized more and more people were walking in the other direction. Proof that we had missed the number one show. We turned around to head back and settle for number two. (For me, this wasn’t a disappointment, I had nothing to compare it to, plus fireworks are one of those events in which usually if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen em all. Check it)

On a bit of a sidenote, I need a new belt. The one I wore out this night was doing a poor job. So poor in fact that while taking video of the event I overheard Adam A. talking to Jesse about my saggage. I asked him what he’d said to be sure and he was actually excited to see that I was sagging. He said, “It’s good, this city needs some sense of fashion… some style… something to mix it up”. You see, 太原 has a few issues. Chief among them is the individuality factor; or rather the lack thereof. The vast majority of haircuts girls and guys resemble the pop stars of China. That is to say big, and/or covering and eye. And for some reason the dress style in stuck between 1985 and 1995. Punk-ish, pre-emo, leather jacket, tight pants for the guys; lopsided belt not going through any holes, long leg warmers with different colors and patterns for the girls. It’s weird. There are time pockets all over this place.

After we finished that show it was too crowded to catch a taxi so we walked around. Now after this night, citizens setting off fireworks could be fined or arrested so EVERYONE was getting rid of em tonight. This made for very entertaining late, late shows. We found one of these shows between two buildings. Now my favorite part about this is the location. Being so close to the building on occasion the fireworks would ACTUALLY bounce OFF the buildings (concrete luckily… what’s that? OF COURSE I got video of that.). And if you’re lucky you could see some misfire and almost hit people on the ground (only almost hit us once, no biggie). It was an entertaining night.

Jesse, Adam, and I, headed up to an international hotel with a coffee shop and relaxed and talked. We spoke on philosophy, Chinese characters, learning methods, teaching methods, gossip on the other teachers, foreign or otherwise. Needless to say, we were out late. Eventually however, it was time to go home. We left the hotel to find cabs waiting downstairs. Another bad thing about living in the south on my own, there’s no one to help me get home, and me not knowing my address or what street I live on was going to make getting home much more difficult. After about 10 minutes of communicating with the driver (I say communicating instead of talking b/c at this hour, my Chinese listening skills weren’t so great, so much of what he said to me was lost in translation). I finally heard something that sounded familiar and told him to drive there.

Somehow I manage to get home and am met with yet another dilemma. I live in a gated community. At this hour, that gate is locked. I know because I tried to move it and got absolutely nowhere. I walked to nearby gates… nothing. At this point it was either sleep outside for the night or think WWMD (What would McGuyver do? (this thought crosses my mind more than you would think). In my head, a scene played out in which McGuyver folded some currency, grabbed a stick, spat on it, wrapped the paper money rubbed some dirt on it and used a bit of McGuyver magic to disable the locking sequence so he could get in only realize he had to disarm the bomb with bullets firing toward… you know what? You don’t need to know what happened in my head. At any rate, at this point I decide I’m gonna climb the fence. It’s not that high, simple enough. Just need to make sure I don’t stab myself on the spires atop each piece of the side fence. As I get onto the brick bottom and hold the fence ready to hoist myself up, a car drives up to the gate and honks it’s horn. This horn triggered the gate to open to which I said “REALLY…” and hopped down and followed the car in.

Boy was I glad that car came though, I haven’t hopped a fence in years and kind of feared for my well-being. Phew.