"Best Sonny"

A few days ago, I woke to a beautiful, warm, sunny day--a rare commodity in the chill of mid-autumn-- and decided that it was a good day for some excitement. So, I decided to go buy a cell phone instead.  But that's the thing about living in China: buying a cell phone is no longer an annoying-but-necessary task; it's an adventure!

I resisted buying one of these at first; I figured if I could get away with it in the states, I definitely could here.  However, I have since found pretty much everyone and their grandmother has a cell phone here (or as my boss says, "even everyone's grandmother has the cell phone"), and apparently they haven't discovered email yet, so until I got one, I had essentially no social life.  That is not of course to assume that with one I would have a social life, but that is neither here nor there.  Anyhow, luckily the clerks at the first cell phone store I found were very excited to help me buy a phone with my broken Chinese, so it was actually a rather fun process ("excuse me, do you know how to say 'sim card'?").  Additionally, I am now the proud owner of a brand new, 100% authentic "Best Sonny" brand cell phone.  Trendy and cheap!  Although, it was hard to resist the slightly more expensive "Kokia" phones.  Good ol' Chinese copyright law! (I love 20¢ DVDs!)

As I was still enjoying the nice weather, and high on the feeling that today was an auspicious day, I continued on an exploratory jaunt around town.  Soon after, as I was passing a restaurant nearby, the person working at the door pulled the old Duck-Inside-and-Tell-Everyone-to-Come-Stare-At-the-Foreigner maneuver.  As this is fairly standard procedure downtown, I simply continued on my way, but this time was soon chased down by a rather enthusiastic and uncharacteristically brave English student, who insisted that I go back to the restaurant and chat for a minute.  I eventually acquiesced, and let myself be dragged back into the restaurant, where I promptly met everyone that worked there (including her brother, the boss =)), and was fed a wonderful free lunch with the staff, who were all on break.  I will admit, as well, I had to break tradition and eat some meat during that lunch, as it was the first time I had ever had a chance to eat 乌龟 (WuGui), which after some discussion, pantomiming, and eventually some drawing,  I learned means "turtle".  It was an exciting cultural experience, but I must be honest, the actual turtle "meat" (I don't know how they get away with calling it that) rates about a 3/10 on the deliciousness scale.  Yuck!

Once we finished eating our various delicious and less-delicious dishes, "Anna Bear" (people here have funny English names) had to take me around to see all the touristy sights around town, which I hadn't the heart to tell her I had already seen.

First, we saw the "Spring and Autumn Tower", which is around 750 years old, and quite tall.  We didn't go inside the tower-proper, as it was not open at the time, but the surrounding palace buildings were still pretty neat.

Then, we saw a large statue of a famous ancient general, "Cao Cao".   Apparently the statue was built almost 10 whole years ago.  Not as cool.

We also ran into a child biker gang, which was rather intimidating at first.

 But it turned out they liked having their pictures taken.






And I also made sure to take a picture of one of the little turtles on sale in the park, just so I could try to feel bad later about eating him:

Turns out I'm heartless.

Sorry little guy; you are even worse than moon cakes.