March 2018, China’s Prom King, Japan, and the Winter Olympics

College Hunk Contest

I got forwarded a message that appeared to be an open audition for foreigners for China’s Netflix. When I told my friend I wanted to go to it, she thought I was a crazy person. In fact, the mandarin said that was a national beauty pageant contest for the equivalent of a college prom king.

But of course, we went anyways. The waiting room was the only time in China I’ve felt short, as half the kids were models. All the guys had makeup on and most were wearing some Chinese streetwear look complete with likely knockoff yeezys or those chunky balenciagas. In my little audition group of 10, the most handsome ones had the least personality, but really all of them were pretty shy and respectful. I had my lil wayne t-shirt on and beatboxed for my talent–one of the guys who was good at dancing came out to dance alongside my beat. I made it to the second round but we didn’t feel like waiting around for another 6 hours and had an Escape Room (in Chinese) scheduled, so my dreams of fame were deferred.

Around Beijing

Gauri came to visit! We had some pretty bougie adventures.

She also got to see the most polluted day so far, mainly because of dust storms that happen every spring. It felt like the whole world had the Flux app that makes everything sepia turned on.

Naz dropped by too!

Seder at the Beijing Moishe House was mostly depressing as folks didn’t feel comfortable enough to actually start talking and the host felt awkward so just sped stuff up, but one moment when everyone read the 4 Questions in their native languages (we heard English, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Mandarin, and Sichuan dialect!) had me giggling with how cool it was to so clearly be exposed to how international Judaism is.

You can learn to snowboard in a mall.

Sometimes your badminton class gets interrupted by fan dance practice.

I saw Black Panther on campus and my Chinese language partner’s first reaction was “how the hell is someone allowed to drink coffee in a museum exhibition room?”

I joined the PUBG chat group on campus and played a few times with them. One day when I logged into the group’s Discord-equivalent chatroom (YY) some guy was confused and banned me. I think it shows how welcoming this campus and community have been that getting kicked out of this group was the most rejected I’ve felt from a Chinese group.

A Chinese friend who’s going to work for Netease has homework where she has to get to a certain level in their mobile MMO.

The best play I’ve seen so far was a Mandarin Hamlet production. The lead graduated from the Military School of Arts and did the voiceovers for lots of Marvel movies. There were lots of Chinese allusions I didn’t get. When Hamlet died a ten-year-old kid started bawling.

Seeing Hamlet was like seeing an old friend while in an underwater vehicle and through the window you recognize him by his body shape and movements, but all you hear is him breathing. Though it made me really happy to understand the ‘to be or not to be’ speech.

Winter Olympics

With the winter Olympics a two-hour flight away, my dad met me for five days in Pyeongchang.

In the first round US v. Russia hockey I screamed “Kovalchuk sucks” and got a very aggressive response from three 40something Russians in suits who told me repeatedly to “shut the fuck up” even after I tried to be nice. A marginally more friendly Russian explained that you can’t talk about specific players when you heckle. Also when the US lost in the quarterfinals to the Czechs Russians were screaming at us “you go home now!” But the women’s hockey gold medal game was the best.

The figure skating events were the first time I’ve been at a professional sports event with a female-dominant audience.

At a long track speed skating event, we found ourselves sitting next to two 23-year-old Army officers based out of Okinawa and a 40-something Air Force Major with his wife. After the young officers were each five beers deep, the Major handed them a bottle of water and told them to have some. The guys were like, “is this just water?” and he told them to just sip it, which of course turned out to be soju. Then the wife said, “um…you told me that was just water!” “But last night the beer line was too long so I had to take countermeasures” the Major replied.

One of the Army guys majored in Chinese at West Point. Even though there were plenty of mainland Chinese in the audience, we were the only ones screaming 加油 (add oil!) for the skater from Taipei. She gave us a wave. They also spent the whole time talking about how attractive various skaters were which was depressing.

Curling is dope. After watching ten hours of the sport plus a few hours of “chess on ice” youtube tutorials you start to get a bit of sense for the tactics. During the US men’s semifinal, we were sitting next to some Americans who were humoring me answering my questions. When I asked if the ice melts over the course of the match one woman responded “I didn’t find it that way”…she was one of the American women’s team members.

During another match, the American fans at the curling match (mostly friends and family of the athletes) cheered “Box of beer! Box of beer!” every time

The big hit of the Olympics for the Koreans was the women’s curling team. They were all in their twenties and grew up in a small town together. When the team won I was on the plane waiting to take off, cheers went out through the cabin and two couples around me kissed.

The Chinese team also screamed “hard” in English when they wanted to brush the ice harder.

Japan

In late March I spent five days with the family in Japan. The udon was very good and there were mangoes on sale for $200 each.

An arcade had a subway driver simulator complete with a little costume and conductor’s hat you could put on. There were also lots of games that combined buying cards you had with playing on the screen, and some others where you used a stylus to draw spells. Lots of guys in suits walk around these arcades after work.

In all, I think China suits me more than Japan would have. Some quote in a book I read said that “Americans love Japan, and can’t stand the Japanese, while they love Chinese but can’t stand China.” I’m not sure quite how that holds up but I did get the vibe that you’d more often encounter open, loud, obnoxious personalities in China than Japan. The big moment that stood out to me was just how quiet the subways were, how considerate everyone seemed and focused on not bothering others, compared to China where like in ny you’re guaranteed something interesting is going to happen on a 30-minute commute. Then again, China really needs some batting cages.

batting cage guy

The last night I got off the train at the wrong stop and ended up staying the night in a Manga Café. There was unlimited soft-serve but you could hear other people snoring. Also unlike Chinese internet cafes, there was pretty much no gaming infrastructure, nothing was installed on the pcs.