Five Notably Strange Things

Since I haven’t been posting much lately, I have seen a lot of things that I have not been able to write about yet. I may never write about some of them because I might forget or more important things might come up, like taxes, FAFSA and my Fulbright midterm report.

So, here are five notably strange things that I have seen or experienced in the past two weeks:

1) At The Forbidden Palace in Beijing, Chris and I saw a boy who was about 7 or 8 years old pooping into a plastic bag that his father was holding. When he was done, he just stood up and they all kept walking.

2) In Tiaoyuan Xincun, we were walking down the street and saw a man crouching next to his baby, who was about a little less than year old. The baby could stand up but only with help. The man was smoking a cigarette and from afar I thought maybe he was trying to brush something off the baby’s face while holding the baby up with the other hand. And therefore, putting the cigarette unusually close to the baby’s face. When we got closer, he was actually trying to get the baby to take a puff of the cigarette. There was no mistaking what he was trying to do but I still cannot believe it.

3) Somewhere around Qianmen, I was assaulted by an old, possibly insane, man with a cane. He hit me in the butt with his cane as we walked by and then laughed when I turned around to see what had hit me. This is unusual for China, thankfully. Yuck.

4) Dog W.C.’s in Macau. And yes, by W.C. I mean public dog bathrooms. Chris will be posting more about this on RedKemp.

5) The view of Hong Kong from The Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon. This is notably strange only because I never thought that I would enter one of the most expensive hotels in the world. I mean, they have a fleet of Rolls Royce limos. It was about as much of a contrast as I could experience after spending my time interviewing street cleaners in the Mainland. Also, we ordered a drink that was about 10 fluid ounces that was called “The Platinum Journey” that cost about $12 US and tasted like a lot of alcohol mixed together. The only thing “Platinum” about this drink was the price and the view that came along with it.