By the evening Michelle was all good and cuddly when we watched Harry Potter. I think she realised that I don't really care if she doesn't like me, I will not try and consolidate our relationship.
Yesterday morning we went to the foul market again. This time it wasn't as hot but the smells still get to me. Especially the smell of poultry, yuk, makes me want to become a vegetarian. Anyway, new observation from the market: guy standing topless behind his meat counter, smoking a cigarette while cutting up meat for his customers. Hungry yet?
In the afternoon we had a delicious lunch, not even the market can alter my appetite it seems. I have truly comed to love Chinese food. Well, most of it anyways. I love the seasoning they use, which is so different from ours. I love how they prepare, in ways we would never dream of. I just love it. However, I think I have reached the point where I no longer love rice.
After lunch Elisa took me to the post office so I could post some of my stuff back to Denmark, as I have way too much. Not even 40 USD for 7kg, something different from Qantas' 70 dollars for 2kg. I wanted to post everything that I won't need here back, BUT I was not allowed to send my adidas hiking shoes, or my D&G bikini back without their receipt because it could be fake.
One thing that truly fascinates me, is how they have people hired to do absolutely everything. In the parking lot, there is a ticket machine and often an employee who is there in case you can't reach the ticket machine. At the post office, there were three guys packing things into boxes, three girls sitting behind the counter to handle payments, two guys who would deal with post within China, two people selling books and postcards, two guys sitting immidiately as you entered the door doing whatever and one guy walking around just checking that everything was okay. So 13 people and the post office was really not that big. But then I have to remember that there is so many Chinese, so of course they need jobs.
In the afternoon we spontaneously decided to go out for dinner. We drove to another plaza a bit further away than our regular one. This was even bigger. There was some kind of talent show on for kids and it was ghastly and yet very entertaining. I think I was really amazed how five year olds can act and look as ten year olds, and how excited the parents got, and how much make up the kids were wearing. It was really horrible, even a five year old boy was wearing make up!!
Anyway, we had dinner at an outstanding restaurant where the staff spoke English! A rarity in China.
After we had ordered the waiter began bringing the dishes to our table. He brought in a bowl covered with a lid. He opened the lid and I saw living shrimps. He then poured something over them, which my host dad told me was a sauce made out of red wine, ginger and something else. This sauce would drug the shrimps and hence make them unconscious, while you ate them. So pretty much you eat the shrimp while they are still technically alive, but they are not conscious. Of course I had to try it! When will I ever have such and opportunity? It was interesting but in a good way. Overall the dinner was so delicious. The best meal I have had for ages. I didn't eat a lot and there wasn't a lot of dishes but the ones we had were just amazing.
Oh and at the restaurant they even had a Western style toilet! In case you didn't know, in China they wee in holes. Seriously though, I am not kidding.
At dinner Will told me about how there was an event on at the theme park next door, so we went. The theme park is called Window of the World, and it is things like this theme park that is the reason why I have come to love China. Basically, as the name hints it, you have the entire world in one park. They have made replicas of world famous icons. So yesterday, I went up the Eiffeltower, walked down to Arc de Triumph, visited Munich and Octoberfest, went sledging in the Alpes wearing a light jacket, wellies and shorts, went for a walk at Marc's sqaure in Venice, before finishing our tour somewhere near the pyramids.
It's all good fun for me, because I have seen most of these places in real life, so I had a big laugh about it all, but for them (not my host family, because they are educated people and they have travelled a fair bit, mostly in Asia though) this is somewhat like the real deal. They were posing for photos in front of the Eiffeltower, or the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
While we were up the Eiffeltower I looked down on all the mini replicas of icons I had been and seen, and those few I haven't been to yet. There was the Notre Dame, next to it the Operahouse in Sydney, and just there was the sfinx, and the windmills of Holland .. I quite literally had the entire world at my feet. It made me wonder how many of those Chinese, who were pushing me from both sides in order to get to the elevator, would actually make it to any of those places. How many of them will just settle for the view from the 1:3 scale Eiffeltower replica, with parts provided from Germany but otherwise made in China. Maybe it's just because I am the way I am, but I could never be pleased with just that. Something even worse I thought about was how many of them HAVE to settle with Window of the World. How man will never have the opportunity to leave China, to go travelling and explore places. This is the scariest of all. I know that some of them have no desire to leave China and why should they? Everything you want, you can find in China, even Mount Matterhorn. But then there is people like Becky, whose heart was broken when I told her that I had been to Paris thrice. I can't describe the look on her face, but it made me really sad. I didn't dare tell her that those three times had been before my 18th birthday. I guess the reason why it makes me so sad is because I love travelling as much as I do, and I can't imagine how my life would be if I had to spend every day of it in Denmark.
I looked up from those haunting thoughts and looked straight at the lattice surrounding the viewing platform at the top of the tower. But I didn't see a lattice. All I saw was a cage.
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