Zhoushan

On Friday right after work (ok, I left work 30 minutes early), I took a taxi to Shanghai Maritime University, where I met Kevin. Using Kevin’s car, we drove around Shanghai picking up the rest of the group. At about 8:30, all 6 of us had piled into Kevin’s 5-seat Kia Sportage and were ready to go. I lucked out and got to sit in the front the whole trip. I kept offering to switch, but I think no one really wanted to share the backseat with the biggest person on the trip – as they told me, “with Americans you are skinny, but with Chinese people you’re fat” (this was also the explanation throughout the trip for why I didn’t think it was as cold as they did).

On the way, we watched the show Friends with Chinese subtitles. I’m not exactly sure why they like the show because it seems like most of the humor comes from silly puns that probably don’t translate well, but Kevin had several DVDs worth of episodes in his car. The girls said they were also fans of Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives, while the guys preferred Prison Break.

We arrived at our hotel in Zhoushan at 3:30am and checked into our rooms (two 3-bed rooms for a total of 160 Yuan, a little over 22 dollars), which were Spartan but comfortable. On Saturday morning, we snuck under a fence into a nearby beach and walked around – it was pretty cold so none of us swam. We stumbled upon an intense-looking sand sculpture contest. Here’s a picture of one of the more impressive ones:














There were also bigger sand sculptures, including some that you could walk on.

For lunch we ate 海鲜面, seafood noodles. These were essentially an assortment of shelled things thrown into a boiling pot of water (shells and all) with noodles, seasoning, and vegetables added. Here’s a picture:














For 15 Yuan, about 2 dollars, the noodles were pretty good after I got over their initial strangeness. We visited a Buddhist temple in the afternoon. It was pretty, but I think I’ve seen more than enough Buddhist temples while I’ve been in China. Dinner was much stranger than lunch – there were things I ate that I didn’t even know existed in the ocean.

On Sunday, we took a pretty long ferry north towards Shanghai. I taught them how to play Egyptian Rat Screw because I was tired of losing at their card games; however, in the very first game we played, I was the first to lose. Next time I’m bringing a Scrabble board; that’ll get ‘em (joking).

I got home exhausted at about 8:30, picked up my dry-cleaning, ate dinner, and crashed.