4th Of July China Style

Veleta got in to Suzhou around 10:30 pm. on Thursday, so far she is doing well with the time change and jet lag although tonight she crashed pretty early. That’s to be expected though, she’s lucky she doesn’t have to work like I did the day after my arrival. So far we have seen the laser, fire, water show thing at jinji lake on Friday night before she ran out of gas, and ate out Saturday night with a friend from work, his wife and two of the Chinese workers I am working with. The dinner with the workers left me wondering how much English they actually understand when I speak to them at work. As I’ve said before they tell me I am hard to understand because of my southern accent. I felt bad for Veleta in this situation because the table conversation was centered on understanding Chinese and since she had only been here for one day she is not used to the trade off that takes place when you have conversations with people that barely speak English. Actually, I think my friend set up the dinner to help me bond with the workers and the fact that my wife would be here now would make it a little less awkward to go to dinner with the two workers that happen to be young ladies. The dinner felt awkward to me too because I had very little conversation with them while trying to keep my jet lagged wife somewhat entertained. So, I guess I will find out Monday if the experiment failed or helped.

After the dinner I was able to show Veleta a taste of the Suzhou nightlife which is what I was interested in doing since we will be traveling to Beijing next weekend and Shanghai the weekend after. Although with the world cup happening it turned out not to be a regular Suzhou weekend. All of the bars were packed full of people to watch soccer. I did manage to introduce her to some of the good people I have had the honor of speaking with while enjoying a cold one after a long week at work. We started out at the blue marlin then went to the tunnel bar and then headed downtown to the pub with a stop at the dvd shop. We ended up making it home around two thirty in the morning so I will deem Veleta a trooper.

On to the fourth of July, the day began with rain so Veleta and I chose to have a slow start to the day and really didn’t do anything in the morning. Some folks from work were getting together for a cook out with hamburgers and hot dogs around five so we had no place to be for a while anyway. The cookout was fine, actually one of the best burgers I’ve had in over two months, it was a little more uneventful fourth of July than I am used to but that’s to be expected when it’s a work function involving people that aren’t really long time friends. The biggest storm I’ve seen since I’ve been here blew in just as Jim was firing up the grill at his apartment and then came one of the most eventful things I’ve witnessed. The wind was blowing the trees and the rain sideways and the lightning was striking very close when we heard a very loud boom. I think we all assumed it was just a firework at first, which is common to hear on any given weekend. Jim’s apartment is on the first floor of a twenty something story building. Turns out the loud boom was a large piece of the building’s siding had fallen from high above with enough force to put a hole on the wooden decking of Jim’s balcony. It literally ripped nailed down decking boards out of the footers. The large piece of concrete just missed the grill and must of broke in half on the railing of the balcony as there were pieces on the ground below and some broken pieces on the destroyed decking of the balcony. This apartment building is probably less than eight or ten years old so this incident has made me think more about “made in China”. The strange thing is no one at the cookout seemed to be shocked by what happened at first, but I think everyone knew that someone could have been killed and that it was sheer luck that no one was standing on the deck when this happened. I wish I would have taken a picture of the damage to show you but I felt like that would have been inappropriate for some reason at the time. Now, as I’ve said, I wish I would have.

I forgot to mention while walking to the cookout I witnessed my second Chinese fight. The first was in Shanghai which involved a little slapping, choking and running away. But this one was two taxi drivers, one of them pulled his car up close to the driver’s side of the other car trapping the guy in his car. The one on the outside was screaming at the guy trapped in his car and then he began punching and choking. This went on for several minutes and Veleta and I watched the whole thing happen as we were walking by. I have no idea what the fight was over, maybe a stolen fare, regardless, I love free entertainment.

In the two months that I’ve been here I’ve become numb to the scooter accidents, the everyone has the right of way at all times mentality while driving, the people pushing and shoving to get to the front of the so called line, the holes in the sidewalks, the oddly designed steps and the smell of stinky tofu. While some of the Americans working here don’t seem to mind all of these things, I, personally can’t wait to get back to my “overprotective” safe country.