12/1/2008

Today is my 100th day in China!  Its crazy to me to think that my first year of teaching here is already a little over 1/3 of the way over!

This weekend was the International Tourism Festival (or something like that) in Guangzhou.  The Shenzhen Municipal Education Board had a bunch of tickets for foreign teacher, so I snagged one as soon as I read about it.  

We showed up at the meeting spot in Shenzhen, and soon discovered that this was to be one of those dreaded Chinese style tours that one can find anywhere in the world at this point.  Stupid hats, stickers with our bus numbers, a group leader carrying a large sign with the bus number whom we were expected to follow.  The works.  Not to be discouraged, we all embraced the idea with gusto.

After dinner (also on the SZMEB's tab), we headed to the stadium to wait for the opening ceremony (and JACKIE CHAN!) to begin.  Two hours and one absurd spectacle later, the show was over.  I was a fan.  But it gets better.

On the way to the buses to grab my backpack so that I can go check into the hotel a big group of us were all staying in for the weekend, I noticed that the doors to the field of the stadium were wide open.  I couldn’t convince anybody to go in with me (and, of course, still had to get my bag) and so walked on past.  But on the way to the hotel, we had to pass by again, and I just couldn’t resist the temptation a second time.

Not only was I able to walk on in without any hassle (along with one of my friends, Frank), but we also managed to get onto the stage and get one of the workers to take pictures.  After leaving the stage and going backstage (only to discover that Jackie had already left, unfortunately), we realized that all the costumes were just sitting there!  A handful of ridiculous pictures and exploring later, Frank and I left the stadium quite satisfied and met back up with the crew at the hotel.  Fast forward to the end of the night, when Gwen, Evan, and I were the last to head home.  Instead of going straight back, we decided to hit up one of the high-rise hotels to see if we could get to a high floor and look out over the city.  After walking straight through the lobby to the elevators we went immediately to the top floor, only to find an expensive looking Italian restaurant.  The place was shut down for the night, so we wandered through the dimly lit restaurant to a table by the window, and hung out for a while looking out over the city surrounding us.  Beautiful.

This is one of the things I love about this country.  In America, never would this be allowed.  One cannot simply walk into a stadium post-show and wander around backstage to their heart’s content.  Here, it wasn’t a problem.  A bunch of the extras from the show even walked around with us for a few minutes and posed for ridiculous pictures.  Nor could we have walked into a nice-ish hotel and hung out in the deserted restaurant at the top on our own.  There are simply too many rules and worries about whether people have negative intentions.  Here, it apparently isn’t a problem in the least.  China wins again.

Most of the rest of the weekend consisted of exploring Guangzhou and all the excitement the city had to offer, but nothing topped the stadium exploration experience.