Mr. Lee is the CEO of the hospital. My guess is he is in late 40’s maybe 50’s. But a very outgoing and jovial type of guy. He took me and the coworkers out to dinner about three times in a row.
A typical dinner costs about 6 RMB. I bet he spent 300-400 each night, maybe even 500. It was all a good time. People asking questions about me and we had people singing and making jokes. One of the pictures on Flickr was a few people said oh this girl likes you and they wanted me to go over there and take a picture with her.
SO they wanted me to pretend to kiss her check… so I pretended and then she put her hand up over her face to block it. It was all staged nicely and made for a fun pic and a fun way to pick on her by everyone. Next door to us was a bunch of #1’s… like the big shots of the town based on real estate, government jobs, land owners etc.
I kind of feel like a little American trophy. Hey we were able to get the westerner to come all the way to our small town to treat our people…and at my hospital. So, the other people want to say hi and he gets a ego boost from it. A couple times we go to his little chateau in the back of the hospital and ate nice food and drank there really strong white wine.
Follow that up with these particular tea tables. It has a cut out for where you pour the tea and a drain for the excess water that is used. Quite nice wood its made from too. Someone pours us tea (loose tea and sometimes flowers in it) and that person always tops you off if you get low.
It’s kind of a honor to pour the drinks for everyone. So a couple times over the course of my time here, I’ll get up and refill tea for everyone. They seem to like that a good bit.
The glasses are like a dual shot glass size. When we are drinking there 40-52% white wine its more like drinking vodka. They love to have you ganbai (drink it all at once). I will from time to time, but normally even if they do, I will make the hand gesture for little drink.
I mean the other day we went over and he had a$300 bottle of wine, so it was NO only small sips with all the toasts. When it comes to the alcohol drinking, you really only take a sip when you are toasting. It can be as simple as raising the glass to the person next to you and saying something nice, or you can address the whole table. Mine our usually,” thank you for the hospitality, and I look forward to getting the locals better.” or something like that.
I’m getting pretty familiar with the main streets in the town. Luckily there aren’t that many. However, co workers will take me to a side street and I’m all WOW didn’t know this cool place was here. My military buddy Chew Lu has a car and drove us around a bit. He wants to ride bikes together, and based on the roads he took us on, well I would like that a lot.
Beautiful mountain driving, but the hills aren’t to bad in the area we are at. If i hadn’t already wrote this, I got stopped a couple times to take pictures with people 🙂
People do like to karaoke after all, not just a stereotype, but like all people, some wont go up. They love Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and katy perry. But really taylor swift. Karaoke consists mostly of chinese songs but in characters so I can’t sing along. It’s to bad the lyrics aren’t pinyin, because I would totally embarrass myself and try pronouncing and singing.
I have done, I’m so Paid, Sexy Back, Jewel, Elton John (lion king song), hit me baby one more time, evacuate the dance floor. And of course I’m dancing around and being silly. Don’t take yourself to seriously.
As long as I’m happy and look like I’m having fun, they are happy too. I’m not faking it, it is fun. What’s weird is that at KVT (karaoke) and at this one dance club that Kurt and I found but didn’t stay at, you can only buy beer by the dozen. So strange.
Chew Lu took me and Catherine to a bicycle shop to have tea in the back of it. These are some nice bikes too, not trek, but I think a european brand ( 10-20000 RMB).
