My what a Beautiful Day

It was a beautiful brand new day in my new apartment, and I’d slept surprisingly well on such a hard bed. It was nearing 10: the earliest I was told I would be picked up. One thing about the Chinese, in general, they aren’t the best at being on time. They’ve got CPT, but not CPT (Colored People Time) but rather CPT (Chinese People Time). To differentiate between the two I’ve separated them into two types: CPT Type A (Asians) and CPT Type B (Blacks). Now CPT Type A is different from the Type B variant in a few ways. While Black people know about this affliction and do little to solve it as a people, Chinese people know about this disease and have tried to learn to live with it. As such, rarely will they give you an exact time to meet. It’s usually between 10 and 11 or around 3/3:30. Only semi-frustrating. The good thing is if you aren’t ready at say 10:15 when they told you between 10 and 11, they won’t be mad or disappointed but rather simply wait for you to ready yourself and then you’ll get started. Well, this morning I was ready at 9:59, just in case. 10:40 seemed an eternity away. Zhang (張西益)(the driver of the previous night ) was set with the task of driving me around and showing me what’s what. So off we went.

Driving was an interesting experience to say the least. Won’t be owning a car while here I’ll tell you that. It’s almost as if everyone (including pedestrians) decided to not follow the rules of the road equally. Those lane markers, just suggestions, left hand u-turns from the far right turn lane with a red light: perfectly acceptable if the intersection is big enough. Who looks over their shoulder, we’ve all got mirrors?? And oh that horn sound? Yea that means I’m a car and coming towards you but a half step out of the way without turning to acknowledge my horn is A-OK by me! WOW, what an interesting lil system they’ve got going. The more we drove, driver sans seat belt, the more I eventually realized about my surrounding. The fog from last night hadn’t lifted, and there was dirt like EVERYWHERE. Like things were just kinda dusty and dirty. Hmmmmmm, I thought to myself, that’s odd. Maybe I’m just seeing things. And I let it be.

We went to the Police Office to let the government know that I had indeed arrived. (….) and 張先生 (Mr. Zhang) Straightened everything out. I was then shuttled to each of the 5 campuses at which I would be teaching and how to get there. This took all of about 2 hours. I picked up a phone (China Mobile +86 159 034 66533) and some Chinese Herb medicine that I was told to drink with hot water. So, when in Rome… Gave the hot water some flavor, so it wasn’t too bad. One weird thing I was told, the people of 太原 believe that there is a fire inside each of them and drinking cold water could help put that out. So they drink boiled water like all the time. Takes some getting used to. I also found out why they see a fire in all of them. 太原 is or was (haven’t figured that out yet) is a coal-mining district (煤 mei) and that fog I’ve been seeing everywhere… smog… how nice.

Cough…Cough…