—
Some random photos from different places in China.
——
I take my last train ride to Beijing tonight at 8:00. I am so sick of sleeping on shady, dirty, stinky trains. It’s my last city and my last week in China. It’s going to be bitter sweet to go home.
——
As soon as I fly into Minneapolis I’m making my parents stop at a Burger King.
——
We stayed at an art residency out in the middle of no where the other night. It was beautiful and none of us wanted to leave. Our professor said that if we wanted to stay another night we could but we would have to miss the Great Wall which none of us were willing to do besides him. We had to sleep on the floor though. However, the floor isn’t much different from the rock hard beds here. I’m looking forward to my big squishy bed when I go home.
——
I stepped across the Chinese border into North Korea the other day for like .5 seconds before the Chinese guard started to freak out on us. On the other side of the bridge were Korean guards with guns. It was kind of funny and scary at the same time.
—// China got a little too crazy for me today//
So… insanity happened to me today. I some how found myself in a very nice room with the president of the art academy here in Dalian while 6 other Chinese men sat around the table. Not only was I the only American but I was the only girl. There was a translator there to translate what was going on. How did I get here? I have no idea. The president of the academy saw my partner Sun and I working and said that he wanted to have dinner with me. While we were eating he was telling me that he loved my eyes and my teeth. He made me smoke chinese cigarettes with him and he lit each one for me. My hands were shaking the whole time. He made me pick out the alcohol all of us were going to drink during dinner. I picked this tall glass bottle that was in the shape of a Chinese missile. Later on I found out that they don’t make this type of alcohol anymore and that it was originally made for the Chinese army. While we are eating my partner Sun has to serve everyone tea and bring them napkins as a sign of respect. I couldn’t start eating until the president ate, also as a sign of respect. The president kept making me cheers him and take shots with him. I was starting to get drunk and all the while I had no idea what was going on because no one spoke English except for the translators very broken English. He asked me what I thought about China and made me say any word I knew in Chinese. I had to do what he said as a sign of respect. If he wanted me to try something at the dinner table I had to do it. Each time the waitress came into the room she would have to knock on the closed door before entering. When she came in she served the president at the head of the table and then me. The president said that if I came to Dalian for graduate school he would take 50% of my tuition and he wouldn’t make me take the Chinese test. He also said that if I stayed in Dalian a little longer he would give me expensive tea, alcohol, and cigarettes. Two and half to three hours later I was finally out of the dinner. I have never been so flattered or creeped out at the same time. China got a little too crazy for me today.
—
Here are a couple photos from today. One picture is of our gallery space here in Dalian. Our show is in two days and I must say Sun and my project is fricken awesome. Another picture is some of the Dalian campus. The third picture is of Sun, Mary, our ceramics professor, and me. The ceramics professor (his name is too hard to spell) taught us how to do some carving on plates today. The last picture is the plate I made today. I got too excited while doing it and put a whole in it. Whoops! The professor is awesome at carving surfaces and each one of his plates in China sells for 20,000 chinese dollars. In America that is roughly 5,000 dollars.
—
A “nice” chinese toilet. Note the missing toilet paper and missing toilet seat. I miss American bathrooms.
// I love China//
So there is this little theme park right next to the art academy here in Dalian. It was the theme parks four year anniversary today so there were fireworks going off throughout the night. I was a crapy partner tonight because all I wanted to do was sit outside the studio, smoke cigarettes, and watch the fireworks. I love China.
—
My partner and I are making good progress on our project. The projects theme is stereotypes and we decided to talk about each others government. We are making George Bush sitting on a bunch of missiles making the nixon peace signs. He is going to have a ton of money falling out of his pockets too. Then we are making Mao Zedong being held up by little chinese people. Originally I wanted the people of China to be smooshed by Mao Zedong but my partner Sun said that is too crazy for China. So we had to alter it. Our chinese partners and other friends we have met took us out to dinner at a little chinese restaurant. I ate duck brain there and intestines……… yum? The picture of the group of chinese people are some of our partners. Mine is the one in the back with the black shirt on standing up. :)
—
By farthe finest tumblr
theme ever
created
by a crazy man
in Russia
