First Day - Tumen Bar - Dagong Zoa an!

The past two days have really been a blur.  It is presently 6:30 in the morning here and it is the first time I have felt like blogging in the past few days.  There has been so much going on and so many things to do in a very short period of time.  It is so scheduled but after 8 at night everything closes - it seems that we have to go into town for anything to do after about 8pm. 

Our first day was rather boring because we were sitting around a lot but at the same time it was interesting.  We met a younger chinese guy who had just graduated a few years ago from college.  His American name was Ben.  He gave us presentations on Gold East for about 3 hours.  They were very informative and I am not sure I have ever seen a presentation that detailed.  I feel more knowledgeable about the process here than I have ever before at a mill.  We also talked a good bit and just shared our culture with each other.  He also told us how to say a few useful phrases in chinese (Chin Dong - Gold East).

After the presentations we went to lunch of which I did not eat very much.  We had a big breakfast so neither Tab nor I were extremely hungry (granted, the food choices were not helping to make us hungry).  I am not sure if it was the cold chicken leg or the intestines that did the trick?  I'll typically try just about anything once but after seeing the look on Tabs face when she tried the chicken I decided that was enough for me!

We then left very quickly from lunch - we get about 40 minutes to get on the bus from the mill, get to lunch, eat, and get back on the bus.  It is very systematic which slightly bothers me but maybe I will get used to it.  We got on the bus and were then taken to the main office building where they took us up into the stacks.  We were told we would not be wearing uniforms but I believe the chinese changed their mind.  Let me tell you, Tab looks great in a blue shirt and pants work jumpsuitish thing!  They are having to custom make mine as the only shirt they had that comes close to fiting me in the body is about a foot to short and looks like a belly shirt on me.  Maybe I should take it and claim i'm the next buddah....people might be rubbing my belly?  Anyways, they told me it would be about 10 days so we'll see how it turns out.

We then saw the paper machines and toured around.  It was very difficult because the men leading us around speak very poor yingwen (English).  The machines are amazing and have about 4 times the production capacity of anything I have seen in the states.  It was so cool to see a paper machine that had an average running speed of 2000 meters/min.  That is a crazy amount of paper!!!  After our tour we sat around for a while and tried to learn chinese from a phrase book we had.  At exactly 5:05 everyone filed out and went to the bus stop to head home for the day. 

After a bit of rest and relaxation, Tab and I called a meiguo ren (American) man named Kirk we met in the gym a few days ago.  He offered to take us into town and show us the ropes of how to get around and such.  We gladly took him up on this offer as we were going stir crazy within the confines of the mill.  We waited in front of the guest house for him and a driver in a little rickty car drove up -- I thought my car was bad, this thing looked like it would fall apart at any second.  Kirk spoke a few sentences in chinese to the driver and told him to take us to Tumen Bar which is a bbq restaurant (somewhat?).  When we arrived it appeared to be a very run down shackish type place.  There was a single table with no chairs and all of the meat cooking was done on a little grill out front that looked like it had been out of service for years.  There were 3 beers on the table for Kirk, Tabatha, and myself before I was able to fully take in the place and a bunch of chairs seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.  I was a bit shocked at this.  The beers I was also shocked at.  I have never been a fan of beer but it seems to be the drink of choice here in China.  I think this comes as a byproduct of the water not being particularly safe to drink.  After a while, some of the locals started coming up and sitting with us, having a drink, and it was very exciting just to hear stories of Dagong (the city where this restaurant was) and also of where these people came from and what the 'real' life was like here in China.  Granted, before we were really able to talk to them, we had to go through somewhat of an initiation and take a shot of mijiu which is a rice liquor.  It tasted awful and has to be the worst thing I have ever tasted.  After this, the locals taught us how to play a card game which I don't quite know the name of, it sounded like bu keuh - it was very interesting and is like a mix of poker and rummy.  Its very interesting!  We played for a few hours and then returned to 'Chin Dong' (Gold East) and went to sleep. 

I have so much more to talk about but as I have to be on the bus in a few minutes I better run!  Until then Zai Jian!
Posted by rwpridge ( May 20 2008, 07:18:16 PM GMT+08:00 ) Permalink Comments [4]