(no subject)
Well. THAT was a totally fucked up weekend.
Incidentally, we've decided to accept the position at the high school in Yibin （宜宾 for those of you pinyin impaired!). Just seems like a better job than the one at the university.
BACK TO BIDNESS.
We hopped a train Tuesday night to Xi'an（西安）, a 16 hour sleeper getting us in around noon. As the lonely planet is useless in every regard (the cheapest guesthouse it had was $20!) we of course decided to find our own lodging without the advice of the accursed thing.
We eventually were advertised a guesthouse by some woman which was $6/night, which we sprung for. Here's the thing!! It was a tiny little room that was way too hot with no bathroom and the door didn't work and the big kicker of the whole shebang is that it was in the middle of the redlight district! OH NO!! More precisely, the redlight/muslim district. WHAT A WEIRD COMBINATION. So as we walked down the street we would pass prostitutes accosting us from "barber shops" (there were five on our block alone!) and big islamic food restuarants which were all very good. It wins the award for sketchiest guesthouse, though Scott claims the one in BKK was worse. WHATEVER SCOTT.
So we explored the city - it's really a lovely city. It's one of the few cities where the old city walls are still there, and there's a lot of classical or faux-classical chinese architecture which kicks ass. It's a reasonably large city for China （中国）at 6.something million, but nothing compared to Chengdu which is double its size. However, the nightlife in Xi'an is more hoppin' than in Chengdu （成都）. We went out on a Thursday night and I danced with one girl for a while who later turned out to be a prostitute (also named Chen Li! OH MAN). The club was actually a really great club, playing NOT THE SAME MUSIC YOU HEAR EVERYWHERE ELSE OHMYGOD, but it was later that totally weird crap started to go down. Around 2 some girl came up and started dancing with me, then put her head on my shoulder, started to cry, and ran away. Disconcerted, I returned to my normal behavior. At 3 I saw her again alone sitting at a table crying and asked if she wanted to talk.
She starts talking about how she hates China and Chinese people (she's from Hong Kong), and her job brought her here and she hates it. Her friends had left to go have sex and left her alone. She suggests we go for a walk. We do, and a few minutes later she confesses that her father had died in a car crash that morning, and she hadn't told her friends. Seeing that she was down, their suggestion was that she get drunk and go dancing. Hmm. Either way, she says she was abandoned by her parents as a child and raised by her grandmother. She didn't know her parents until she was fifteen. Then they came back into her life and it was uneasy with her mother but OK with her father. Then he died.
She says that she feels completely alone in the world, and feels like killing herself.
I guess that really struck a nerve because I know the feeling of being far from home and feeling completely alone (anyone remember Chile?). She says she just wants someone to stay with her. I am happy to. We go back to her place and I sleep in one bed and she sleeps in another. The next morning she still seems really shook up (no surprise there), so I wind up spending all day with her, ditching Scott. As the day goes by her actual personality seeps through more and more and I find myself really liking her as a person. We pretty much stayed together until Scott and I left on Saturday afternoon.
I hope she's OK.
Incidentally, we've decided to accept the position at the high school in Yibin （宜宾 for those of you pinyin impaired!). Just seems like a better job than the one at the university.
BACK TO BIDNESS.
We hopped a train Tuesday night to Xi'an（西安）, a 16 hour sleeper getting us in around noon. As the lonely planet is useless in every regard (the cheapest guesthouse it had was $20!) we of course decided to find our own lodging without the advice of the accursed thing.
We eventually were advertised a guesthouse by some woman which was $6/night, which we sprung for. Here's the thing!! It was a tiny little room that was way too hot with no bathroom and the door didn't work and the big kicker of the whole shebang is that it was in the middle of the redlight district! OH NO!! More precisely, the redlight/muslim district. WHAT A WEIRD COMBINATION. So as we walked down the street we would pass prostitutes accosting us from "barber shops" (there were five on our block alone!) and big islamic food restuarants which were all very good. It wins the award for sketchiest guesthouse, though Scott claims the one in BKK was worse. WHATEVER SCOTT.
So we explored the city - it's really a lovely city. It's one of the few cities where the old city walls are still there, and there's a lot of classical or faux-classical chinese architecture which kicks ass. It's a reasonably large city for China （中国）at 6.something million, but nothing compared to Chengdu which is double its size. However, the nightlife in Xi'an is more hoppin' than in Chengdu （成都）. We went out on a Thursday night and I danced with one girl for a while who later turned out to be a prostitute (also named Chen Li! OH MAN). The club was actually a really great club, playing NOT THE SAME MUSIC YOU HEAR EVERYWHERE ELSE OHMYGOD, but it was later that totally weird crap started to go down. Around 2 some girl came up and started dancing with me, then put her head on my shoulder, started to cry, and ran away. Disconcerted, I returned to my normal behavior. At 3 I saw her again alone sitting at a table crying and asked if she wanted to talk.
She starts talking about how she hates China and Chinese people (she's from Hong Kong), and her job brought her here and she hates it. Her friends had left to go have sex and left her alone. She suggests we go for a walk. We do, and a few minutes later she confesses that her father had died in a car crash that morning, and she hadn't told her friends. Seeing that she was down, their suggestion was that she get drunk and go dancing. Hmm. Either way, she says she was abandoned by her parents as a child and raised by her grandmother. She didn't know her parents until she was fifteen. Then they came back into her life and it was uneasy with her mother but OK with her father. Then he died.
She says that she feels completely alone in the world, and feels like killing herself.
I guess that really struck a nerve because I know the feeling of being far from home and feeling completely alone (anyone remember Chile?). She says she just wants someone to stay with her. I am happy to. We go back to her place and I sleep in one bed and she sleeps in another. The next morning she still seems really shook up (no surprise there), so I wind up spending all day with her, ditching Scott. As the day goes by her actual personality seeps through more and more and I find myself really liking her as a person. We pretty much stayed together until Scott and I left on Saturday afternoon.
I hope she's OK.