再见

China is cold, so everyone is bundled up when they walk around now. Poofy coats are in. Today I saw a small woman in an enormous poofy coat, beanie hat, scarf, and gloves waddle down the street. She had a bag of steamed, stuffed buns in one hand and was eating one with the other.

I leave tomorrow, so this is really the last time I can make fun of the Chinese directly. After this it will just be blatant racism.

The big news in China over the past month, hasn't been the riots in the south, but the pandas. And I've decided China would be a lot easier to handle if the Chinese were furry. They're already pretty cute in their poofy jackets and stuff when they're not spitting and pushing etc, but if they resembled fuzzy toys or pandas, it would be almost adorable.

People have been asking me if I'll keep up the blog once I leave. I'm not quite sure. Maybe. Probably. I tend to spend a lot of time online and get bored. Hopefully this will be my last blog in China. I highly doubt I'll be blogging if I somehow am unable to leave the country tomorrow, but you never know.

I'm currently trying to jam all my stuff into my bags. A couple years ago I was having a conversation with a friend of mine on returning to America. We were talking about how much stuff we had brought back from China and what a bitch it was getting through the airport. After China I spent a semester in Sydney and she spent a semester in London. Her observation was this:
"Isn't it funny that you cry when you leave China and you cry when you leave England or Australia but they're for entirely different reasons."

I was notified yesterday that I won a drawing for 300 kuai worth of vouchers at a restaurant/bar (lot of good that will do me now, I'll go later tonight.) Anyway, I went to go pick them up today. As I was walking into the gate of the office building I tripped. I didn't get my hands out in time so I fell flat on my face and my nose bumped against the pavement. As I was groping around trying to stand up while making sure blood wasn't gushing from my face, I noticed the guards feet out of the corner of my eye. It was a pretty hard fall. My nose didn't bleed, but it is a bit swollen now and although this country has kept me sick for the past 2 months, I am somehow finding it harder to breathe. If it's still a problem when I get back stateside I'll check it out.

Anyway, this guard saw me fall. He watched me struggling on the ground and sit there checking for blood. He never offered to help, he didn't ask if I was okay, he didn't even laugh. He just stood there watching me. I wanted to cry then for a number of reasons.

I don't have any final words or anything about China, but I'll leave you with this:

When I first moved into my apartment in Shanghai my roommate and I were talking and she was asking me what I was doing in China. I told her I'd studied Chinese in college and I'd been traveling since graduation, and I really had nothing else to do this year. Her reply was, "Ah China. They'll always accept you."