My first week in China

So I left for China at 7:00 AM on June the 16th through the carrier Air Canada. I really don't know what I did to Canadians but they sure did a number on me. I was OK on flight number one, but man was the second flight a doozy. I had my seat moved, as it was a lovely seat in the back of the plane, and a baby was given priority over me since it was close to the bathroom and babies demand satisfaction. Babies were king on this flight, as the second seat I was transferred to was in the war zone of a singing quartet of boisterous babies. It was like listening to a scratched C.D. for twelve hours. Also my t.v. screen broke and there was turbulence. When I landed I felt like I was in some sort of a time warp, like I was in Star Trek and they beamed me to the wrong direction. Fortunately my roommate was kind enough to have a driver ready to pick me up and escort me to my lodging; otherwise I may have never made it out of the airport. My liaison was like a Sherpa and I was climbing Mount Everest without an oxygen tank and a bad ankle, and with my hand on her shoulder we eventually made it to the summit. I got home and slept for about fourteen hours...now that was magnificent.

On Day Two, which was kind of day three due to the time change, I woke up and was happy as a clam knowing that the Lakers were about to play the Celtics in the NBA Finals. There is a communal breakfast area with a t.v. at my flat for everyone that stays here, and I convinced the staff that they must watch the NBA Finals and change it (for once) from BBC News Report. To the disdain of an Austrian businessman my wish was granted, and within a matter of minutes I had everyone cheering for the Lakers. As most of you know, the Lakers did not win, in fact they got smashed by the goofy green Celtics who I have as much love for as a mosquito. I decided to work out afterwards to take out some of my disdain for Beantown, and for some strange reason was overcome with the idea of going to the Beijing Zoo. I know, I know, with all of the marvelous attractions in Beijing. Why the zoo? In my Mandarin classes at Pepperdine taught by Tian Yu I have been nicknamed PANDA (long story), so in order to give my respects to my brethren I deemed it only right that I must pay my respects to the powers that be.

I took a taxi to the zoo, and was lucky enough to bump into two incredibly cool Americans named Justin and Victoria. Both had attended Peking University for a study abroad and were back to visit their old friends. Within minutes I was walking, laughing, and getting to know these two incredibly cool peeps. They were fun-loving and sarcastic with a similar sense of humor to me: and as we watched magnificent beasts from all over the world we also marveled at one of my other favorite images. CHINESE COUPLES WEARING MATCHING OUTFITS! It is uncanny, I mean one, then two, then three, and by the time we had finished we must have seen a baker's dozen of matching couples with attire choreographed perfectly from head-to-toe. I will tell you, it just never gets old. We eventually made our way to the Holy Temple of the Giant Panda. The panda is king out here in China. Watching the locals (the zoo was almost all Chinese people) take pictures and adore the panda was fantastic. One of the pandas pressed his nose up against the glass so that you were literally a foot away from the king of the Beijing Zoo. People stormed the exhibit like a bunch of groupies in the 80's seeing Bret Michaels from Poison at a McDonald's. They thrust their babies close to him, loved his every move, and gave him the respect that he deserves. LOL.

After the zoo my new friends took me to an all-you-can-eat chicken skewer joint where they were met by a half dozen of their compadres. Each skewer is fifty cuai, which is fifty cents. Here in China the native currency is the RMB with a roughly 7:1 ratio to the dollar. So half an RMB is fifty cuai, now I am not going to pull out my calculator, but you do the math. Food, taxis, and basic amenities here in China are incredibly cheap. After eating about fifteen skewers (not joking) I decided to call it a night. I reserved a later date to meet my new amigos, and was off on my way to sleep. The next day was my get stuff done day. So I went to the mall and bought a cell phone. The way to do it here, is the cell phones are kind of expensive (mine was roughly $1400 RMB), but the minutes are very inexpensive. The funny part about my negotiation is that the people at AnyCall (my carrier) could only read English but not speak it. So we conducted our negotiations with pencil and paper. My monthly plan is $50 RMB, which I am told will cover me nicely. Thursday was rather uneventful as I just had to catch up with stuff and get acclimated to my new environment.

On Friday I met my new bosses for the internship that I start next week. I will be working for a small start-up company that a Pepperdine MBA student started a few years ago. This businessman is from China but also speaks perfect English. Everybody at the company was very nice, and I think my introductory meeting went very well. I can't really write too much about the company as it is still in the infancy stages and I may have to keep a tight lid on things. But I will ask next week what I can write regarding the details. Afterwards I ate at a fast-food Chinese joint that was shadier than a tree and immediately felt ill. Twenty minutes later I was at home as sick as Old Yeller. Fortunately, I recognized that I had eaten something that did not agree with me quickly, and was able to vanquish my adversary before it really did a number on me. I knew from that point afterwards that in terms of fast-food I can only trust the good Colonel. In Beijing, KFC is everywhere! I mean Colonel Sanders might as well be the mayor of the city. And there is a KFC a block from where I live that I have been eating at like a third-grader eats at the cafeteria. I know that fast-food is not healthy or even that good; however, I have eaten at KFC three times already, and the Colonel has never let me down. I may have to write him a letter of appreciation when I get home. Speaking of fast-food, American fast-food is everywhere. Within a block of where I live there is: Starbucks, KFC!, McDonald's, TGIF, and Dr. Pepper's Pizza. Every one of these places does a legendary amount of business.

Later that night my new friend's Justin and Victoria took me out clubbing to a place called "Vic's" located right by Worker's Stadium. Now this was a party! I got there late as eardrum-blaring music rattled through this gargantuan-sized club, and was sent a text by Justin to ask for Table A-1. A-1 was the best table in the house located right next to DJ booth, and there were about twenty party people who were friends with Justin and Victoria. A bevy of beautiful women surrounded me, as well as some incredibly interesting and entertaining guys. A few of them had been in China for a long time, in fact one was a surgeon who has lived in Beijing for six and a half years, and everybody welcomed me into the clique immediately. The adult beverages were mixed with the most mysterious mixer I have ever met: GREEN TEA. And it was lovely. The vibe of the club was like a Chinese version of Spring Break Cancun, and loud rap music was played all night long. FYI- SOULJA BOY IS NOT DEAD!!! I thought we had killed him off in the States (not literally of course), but the peeps out here love that infamous song of his. It is like he just came out a week ago! They all do the dance, and the crowd goes nuts for his awful song. The funny thing is not one of these peeps has any idea what it means (THIS IS A WARNING: if you want to know what he is saying go to http://www.urbandictionary.com/). I hate Soulja Boy. Probably more than the Celtics... So I am just going to say that it was a great night minus the Soulja Boy shenanigans and I plan on meeting up with the posse many times again before I leave.

On my way out of the club I heard some ruckus and saw that there was a fistfight. A Chinese guy that looked like a combination of "Jabba The Hut" from Star Wars and "Grimmace" from McDonald's (wearing a pink polo shirt) was beating the living tar out of some poor Chinese guy that weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. A mob of people watched and did nothing, except for the scandalous women who looked like they just got off of work from a Massage Parlor, who screamed like banshees. After knocking this poor guy down Jabba/Grimmace proceeded to kick and stomp the skinny guy. Appaled and shocked that nobody did anything, I decided to get into the middle of the skirmish and break it up. Probably not the best idea. After shoving Jabba/Grimmace I was spit on by one of the massage parlor girls, and the guy who got beaten bled on my shirt... But Jabba/Grimmace decided to get the heck out of dodge before the cops came jumping in a taxi, and the string bean was beaten but not severely injured. So I did do a good deed, and felt better afterwards. Even though I really do not like getting spit on. Spitting is very common here, and I will go into detail about this another time.

The next day I woke up feeling a little less than perfect, and jumped in a taxi destined for the Red Square. I dawned head-phones the size of pineapples, a tank top, board shorts, black shades, and sandals. So sorry comrades, but I may have set American tourism back twenty years by looking like the most ignorant American this side of Chevie Chase in "European Vacation". The square has an incredible amount of history, and I will be going on the full tour sometime next week. My Saturday walk was just to get an appetizer of the square now, knowing that I will come back for the main course in the future. After that I went for a swim in the pool, the building that I live at has a huge pool, and I have started to take up swimming. I work out every day to deal with the stress of moving to a completely foreign land, and I feel that swimming especially has been very therapeutic for me. The only problem is that there are no swimming lanes in the pool, and none of the other swimmers can swim straight for more than five feet. So going from one end of the pool to the other is like playing the video game "Frogger". But I am up to the challenge.

So my friend Julie Metral, who is from France but studied abroad at Pepperdine, has a very close friend that is just finishing at Tsinghua University (where I will be studying in the Fall), and invited me out for dinner with her and her fellow students. I expected this to be a normal night out, but as soon as I walked through the door at the Spanish restaurant Mare I knew that luck had smiled upon me once again. There were eight pretty girls all dressed like it was Prom night, and two guys who seemed to be (and were) completely mellow fellows. Within minutes I was cracking bad jokes and laughing like a hyena as the dinner party turned out to be a laugh-a-thon. The food was native Spanish paiea, and the drink on tap was a freshly-fruited Sangria. Luojia (pronounced LU-JA), was my host for the evening and she turned out to be great company as she was smart (she speaks French, Mandarin, English, and some German and Spanish); has a sarcastic sense of humor; and has really cool friends. It was an awkward site though being in a Spanish restaurant in China with a bunch of French girls, but hey...when in Rome right. Another highlight was that one of the guys, whose name is Sun is going to plug me into the basketball games and soccer games that occur regularly at Tsinghua. I cannot wait! I have not decided if I want to buy a Yao Ming jersey or a Shaq jersey, but I will be sporting one of them on a court near you (if you live in Beijing) very, very soon.

After eating my face off, we descended upon a Mexican restaurant/bar that looked like a spin off of the illustrious Cabo San Lucas bar owned by Sammy Hagar. Music blasted, tasty beverages followed, and bad jokes were ever-present. One of the highlights of the night, was that some dumb American had taught all the French girls all of these horrible curse words. So I would be having a normal conversation, and all of the sudden the worst and most incomprehensible saying would spout from the mouth of one of the Frechies. I still am completely befuddled. After leaving Margaritaville we grabbed some grub and then headed off to some dance party. But by then I was a little tired, and while the girls were dancing on stage I managed to get out of dodge with only a few handshakes. I texted Luojia that I needed to go because I had stuff to do Sunday morning (writing this blog for one), and thought that it would be no problemo. I guess she did not check her phone because here is the text that she sent me later that evening: "OH my god I thought you were dead was looking for you for 20 minutes!!!!!!" I apologized via text and have not talked to her yet today, and she may still be a little upset. But I am no Mario Lopez, and I was not about to parade my way through the dance floor and up on stage by the D.J. booth to alert here of my leave of absence for the evening. I'm sure it will be all good. Although she will probably strike down upon me with one of the horrible American sayings, that I cannot write in this blog. But just thing of the worst thing you have ever heard and multiply that by fifty.

So now it is Sunday, and I am finally done writing...Hooray! The weather looks good so I am going to grab some groceries down the street. And then I am going to continue my quest for "Hoop Dreams" as I ball til' I fall in the Orient.

love and respect,

Matthew S. Atkinson