So today, things got better class wise. Though, this also unfortunately meant this would be our last day in Suzhou. So...yeah. The day began with our walk to the school building and a rather amusing incident.
Albert has been getting on pretty much everyone's nerves. He's the the kind of guy who wanders off from the group and would be the first one dead in any horror movie. Naturally his huge ego stops him from realizing that he isn't the most important thing in the universe and how annoying he is to the rest of us.
Now, he was walking the the front of our group, proudly, and we came upon a number of cement blocks that were about a foot high. He tried to be a cool guy and jump on top of it. Now, any guesses as to exactly how high a three hundred thirty (so he told us- I'd guess higher, honestly) black guy can jump? If you guessed three inches you are correct!
He jumped *into* the block falling on top of it and dropping the bottle of orange juice that he was carrying, causing it to shoot in front of him like a rocket, leaking orange fuel all over the place. Everyone in our group burst out laughing. Even the guards that were watching over the square were rolling on the group, which made it even funnier.
I normally don't like laughing at people, however, sometimes they really have it coming. This was one of those times.
Anyways, starting off the day with that incident left me in a good mood for class. The first half was Chinese Calligraphy, complete with brushes and whatnot. Now, I can hear you saying "But, Reven, you said you didn't like writing Chinese symbols." Well, this actually had brushes and was guided by the teacher, rather than the symbols teacher just saying "This is the symbol for tree. This is the symbol for forest." Big difference. Here are my results:
The K looking symbol, I believe meant strength and the two copies in the third row were peace? I'm not certain. I wish I had written down what they were. Anyways, beginning with the middle of the fourth row and including the end of the fourth row and the square on the left of the fifth row are the symbols for my name in Chinese, supposedly. Albert had his written and then asked what the symbols for "God's gift to man." Yes, really. Technically, his name does in fact mean that (his real name, not Albert) but who does that? Ughhhhhh.
After that we had a Tai Chi master show us how to do some exercies. Very calming. It felt like dancing underwater or in slow motion. He was really nice, though he spoke little English. After lunch, we visited the Suzhou Museum, which appeared to be mostly artsy stuff and stuff from ye olden days. Mostly ye olde Bronze age and Steel age. I took a few pictures but none really really stand out so I think I'll just upload them to facebook and let it stay at that. It was interesting but I would not have been heartbroken if we had skipped it.
We then proceeded to Master of Nets Garden which was beautiful. It was smaller than I had thought it would be but it was really a sight to see. Here are a few pictures:
Anyways, we had dinner (more chicken cutlets for the win!) and then went to this shopping area in Suzhou that is famous (infamous?) for its knockoff Western goods, such as purses and (grumble) watches. Now, you may be wondering why I was grumbling about the watches.
Well, since there were about twenty of us in the group, we split into two groups. I was in the guys group with Albert and the others. I mention Albert because he basically went orgasmic at the prospect of buying fake goods. He walked up to every vendor on the street and (fortunately due to his immense size) the stores did not carry his size.
And then we saw the watch place.
Now, I like watches as much as the next guy. They serve an incredibly useful function and some people cannot function without them. Now, Rolex watches, I find to be an incredibly huge waste of money. Albert, apparently disagreed. He went up to the watches place and haggled (as this is the thing to do in China when dealing with any kind of vendor) for a solid thirty minutes for a single fake Rolex (which looked like crap anyways). Now, during this time, NO ONE ELSE in the group was buying anything at all. Just Albert.
He seemed oblivious to this fact after he haggled the vendor down to some price and the proceeded to try to buy other fake watches for his mother and sisters. The eight or so other people in our group audibly groaned. He looked surprised and asked "Am I the only one getting anything here?"
"YES!"
"Oh, ok." And then he continued to haggle. After about twenty or so more minutes, the other members of the group including myself announced we were leaving (this is a common bargaining tactic in China and can cause them to really drop the price as a result- but in all honesty, we just wanted to leave). Albert really didn't pay attention and we walked out of the three story building (watches were on the third floor) and waited outside. We weren't going to leave him, though Campbell and Jim were ready to do that. He walked out of the building ten minutes later like nothing had happened. He didn't seem to notice our glares. Jerk.
We continued to walk around.
I should mention that in this section of town, salespeople follow you. If you make eye contact, if you talk to them (even in English), they will follow you like wolves and try to get you to buy stuff, up to probably a mile of distance. And they will keep talking to you trying to get you to come to their store. Now, this problem is augmented by the fact that Albert just spent Y500 on four fake watches and the people at the store probably called other vendors and sent their people out to find him and leech some money off of him as well. We had around three people around our party for a part of the time. The only way to get rid of them is to tell them to "****/Piss off!" That they understand, and Campbell and Tony had to do this to repel them. Man, they were annoying. The problem was augmented by the fact that their target (Albert) was roughly taller than everyone anyone else in the shopping center and weighed three times more than the average Chinese man and as such was very recognizable.
Thankfully, I knew that I'm not the only person irritated to Albert. Most people (I learned afterwords) really didn't like him before, but after today, he was on everyone's bad list. Good riddance. Tomorrow to Shanghai!
-Reven
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