Sam At Large

Absolutely mind-blowing how large this station is. Much like the Beijing airport, they build everything huge here.

5 months old. Holes in her heart. Light as a feather.

I’ve always wanted to see a market like this.  This is where western consumerism hasn’t intruded into community life and it’s something I wish we had at home.  Although, imagining people selling live eels in a tub of water or cages of live chickens on the streets of Walnut Grove is pretty funny.

Today is my last day in Changsha before I go to Hengyang. It has certainly been an amazing experience to be here in this city of 10 million people… which is considered a second- or third-tier city, by Chinese standards.

Last night, the entire Changsha team, international staff and board members got together for dinner.  I ate stinky tofu. I wouldn’t probably want to eat it again, but it wasn’t as bad as some said it would be.

In the morning, I went with my co-worker, Tanya, to visit the local DVD market and computer market. The DVD market was impressive. The computer market is an experience all in its own.  Four floors in a department store-sized building that is essentially a flea market crossed with Best Buy.  If you want to build a computer or get parts or hard drives or USB stuff or speakers or GPS systems or cables or cameras or iPhones or iPads or cases or bags or blank DVDs… it was a little overwhelming, to be honest.  And that was just one of the markets in a four or five block area. There apparently are several more.  Prices were pretty good.  I especially like the software area that had Windows 2005 for sale.

I’m going out to the Walking Street a little later to have dinner and people watch. Should be fun.  In the meantime, I’m in my hotel room watching TV.  You would lose your mind with the ads, they are so funny.  Consumerism here is something to behold and has its quirks.  Like the fact that they always stick some Chinglish into their ads or signs.  So, I’m watching this ad for a cell phone that is an Omega… er, Omeca brand that is supposed to resemble an Omega… er, Omeca watch that you can buy locally.  As the various models seductively move the cell phone around their faces (WTF?), flashes of text appear in Chinese as well as English on screen. “Beautiful sun predicts perfect storm” is one of them.  That’s followed by some guy hopping into his Porsche 911.  I… Must… Buy… That… Phone…

Now there’s some sort of documentary on state TV (one of about 50 state channels, it appears) about how the government has such a difficult time relocating rural farmers despite it being in the farmer’s best interest. If only the farmers would understand that the beneficial government only has their best interests at heart. My goodness, TV here is awesome.

Not really a lot to report as I’ve been in meetings for the last couple of days.  But, I’ve a had a chance to sample some more of the local cuisine and it’s pretty darn awesome.

There’s another aspect to China that I didn’t know about until getting here.  Massage.  Not the weird type, before you get all worked up!  But honest-to-goodness massage that works you over like you’ve never been worked over before.  The people who work there have fingers of steel!  My masseuse — No. 72, because all customer service workers have number tags instead of name tags in this country — damn near killed me when hitting this knot in my back. One of my co-workers was on the other side of the room and she asked if the massage was too hard and did I want No. 72 to ease up a bit.

“Maybe,” I mumbled back as No. 72 kept working away.