Bicycles, booty, and boys: all kinds of silliness

Life in China is frequently dirty and impolite and generally un-PC, but sometimes there are really pretty and/or moments when I think wow, how could living in China get any better than this?

*Getting a bingsuan(a cold egg pancake wrapped around other good stuff) and biking to Weiming Lake, then sitting on a rock in the shade next to the lake, eating my delicious bingsuan lunch and studying a little.

*A few days after buying a bike with the assistance of my tutor, I go back to the bike shop and ask for a bell, having just looked up the word for bell in my dictionary. The only bells they have say "I (heart) my baby" on them, so I get that one, figuring that the bicycle is my baby. The man attaches it to the handlebar for me and I ride off to get ice cream, ringing my bell happily.

*Riding from Hanyu class to Kouyu class, I pass a line of schoolchildren in matching tracksuits and yellow hats who are visiting Beida for who knows what reason. When they see me, they all yell "hello" and wave, excited to speak English to a bona fide foreign person, and I ring my bicycle bell at them and hello back.

All evidence points to the fact that, as I had previously suspected, having a bicycle makes life awesomer. Today I rode it across campus, then took a bus to Wudaokou, then took the subway to Xizhimen, then wandered around until I found a market that I had read about in my Insider's Guide to Beijing. I was the only white person in the market. And on the bus. And on the subway. And, as far as I can tell, in the whole Xizhimen area. Hence it was a time for lots of staring, and occasional accented "hello"s from Chinese who want to try out their English, and comments from the crossing guard to random other people about how I don't know when to cross the street and that this is somehow related to the fact that I have white skin (if I understood correctly), and the most intense patronizing I have undergone as of yet from a woman who was selling me pants and assumed that since I am not fluent in Chinese, I wouldn't understand complex concepts like "big" and "okay" unless she employed her incredibly limited English to translate them for me, despite the fact that I had previously used said words, in Chinese, in conversation with her. This might have been the most frustrating thing ever and I might have wanted to admonish her sharply in my (not-too-shabby) Chinese, but I didn't because I wanted those pants so I couldn't do anything to make the vendor dislike me.

Another thing I discovered today is that apparently my butt is MONSTROUS. I knew before that Chinese women were not so (to use the technical term) bootylicious, but it took an attempt at buying jeans today for me to realize the extent of the difference. The difference is: Chinese women do not have hips. I don't think I'm terribly large by American standards, but when I tried on the largest capris on the rack, I still couldn't even put them on all the way. Good times. At the place with the condescending saleslady, I got linen pants that are size XXL. Sweet. It's okay, China, I'm content in the knowledge that with my breadth of hips, having babies is totally more convenient. But you don't need that all that much anyway because you can only have one child each, ohhhhh take that!! Just kidding China, you know I love ya.

Today when I was riding on campus a man stopped me to ask if he could be my friend. I am totally popular. I decided that if I wanted a Chinese boyfriend I could probably just walk around campus and yell "who wants to be my boyfriend" in Chinese, and that would probably take care of it real quick. Everybody loves a waiguoren! China so silly.

In like 2 hours I'm leaving campus to head to the airport, upon which I shall depart for Xinjiang for May break! (Wikipedia it, it's totally an interesting place) I am super psyched. I'll be back in a week, so don't expect any blogs for a little bit. But then expect a really big one, because I'm sure I'll have a lot to tell! Feichang hao!