Welp, yesterday my dad got drunk. It was hilarious. He brought my sister and I to a bar that is fairly popular among foreigners and it was nice to hear people speak English hahaha. But yeah my dad isn't supposed to drink because of his health or something like that, but he ended up having 1.25 tequila sunrises and was definitely drunk. We were at the bar for about 3 hours, and he was still drunk on the cab ride home and after we got home. In fact, the last thing he said before heading into his room was, "Oh man, I am DRUNK."
I'll back up a bit though. Yesterday my day consisted of doing Yoga X again with my sister, eating lunch, and then heading out to a pretty well known market in Hangzhou. It's known for not only being very cheap, but also for having the most petty theft/pick pockets. So it's a trade off I guess hahaha. I ended up getting pair of athletic shorts for 40 RMB, which is a little more than six dollars. My sister got some sunglasses for 20 RMB (~ 3 dollars), a gold (fake of course) owl necklace for 7 RMB (~two dollars) and this odd hammer thingy that you hit people with and it talks (it was like a stuffed toy). The head of the hammer was also made to look like a pile of poop that is crying. Yeah I know, China can be weird.
For those of you who don't know, haggling is HUGE in China. Of course it depends on where you go to buy things, if you go to just a super market you're not gonna haggle for anything. But the place we went to is basically just a huge seven story building that consists of lots of small spaces for people to set up their shops for clothes. Each shop was probably about...10 feet wide by 15 feet long, and there were probably at least 100 stores on each floor. Like I said, huge. The point is, my dad is pretty good at haggling, and usually got things at about 25-40% of the prices the people were stating as their starting price.
After that we headed to a restaurant chain known as "s.he restaurant" for dinner. I don't really know why it's named that, I thought it was odd too. We met up with some of my dad's friends that Steph and I met the last time we visited my dad here. They're a middle aged couple and are super nice. The husband is a professor at several Chinese Universities and was just finishing up teaching a class for this semester. He'll be heading out on Sunday (today) to another province to teach an accelerated class for a month. So we all ate some interesting food but I couldn't take any pictures because my dad had said to only bring money and that's it because we didn't want anything to get stolen from us. I actually kept my hands in my pockets about 95% of the time we were at the market to make sure I didn't get pick pocketed.
After we ate we headed over to a Starbucks, believe it or not. We were all a bit tired so we got some coffee and sat and talked for awhile. We actually discussed a super interesting Chinese concept that I'll try to explain/translate. So my dad's male friend (who's name is Billy), still had a lot of stuff to do before leaving at 6 am the next morning, but still came out to see us before he left. The Chinese concept is used in the sense that he sort of...gave us respect? Made us a priority? Showed that he cared about us/considered us important? It's a very difficult concept to explain. But yeah, this all came about because I asked him if he and his wife were going to drink with us, and his reply was, "Oh I don't drink." Now this is a blatant lie. I've seen him drink, several times. In fact, the very first time I met him, he was drunk! I tell him this and he just looks at me and grins while laughing. But yeah, he was still willing to hang out with us and say good bye since we don't visit Hangzhou very often, so it was very nice of him to do so when he was leaving in less than 12 hours.
So then we headed to the bar. It was pretty nice, but fairly normal in terms of being more like a bar in the US. There was also a pool table so my sister gravitated it rather quickly. They were playing king of the table and there was a white dude and an Indian dude playing. The white guy won so my sister went up to the table to see if she could play. It took some prodding anyway, but she did. Actually at this point we didn't know it was king of the table, but I figured it out right as the guy (his name was Chris) walked up to my sister to play her, and as I saw people's names written on a small chalkboard next to the table. Thankfully the guy who was going to play decided he didn't want to play so my sister was the next up anyway.
So an interesting thing about the pool table at the bar, I believe it was technically a snooker table. It was almost nearly 12 feet long. Most tables in the U.S. are 9 feet long. Also, the pockets in the U.S. are generally around 1.75 to 2.25 times the width of a ball, but this table had pockets most likely 1.6 times the balls' width. Basically, this was a much harder table to play on. My sister lost to Chris, who coincidentally was British and pretty decent at pool as well. He was nice though and a pretty cool guy for a 50-something year old.
The bar was having a happy hour deal as well, which two grad students from the U.S. actually told us about. It was buy one get one free for all drinks, but you had to finish your first drink before you could get your second one. Also, you had to order your second drink before it hit 8:30. Since I was at the snooker table watching my sister play and my dad was at our actual table watching our stuff, he ended up finishing his drink first. My dad has gout, though it's not super bad. However he really doesn't drink anymore because of it. This resulted in my father being drunk despite not having that much to drink. My sister also ended up feeling a bit queasy halfway through her margarita, so I ended up finishing her drink, my dad's second drink, and having two beers of my own. I simultaneously felt like a baller for cleaning up everyone's mess, and an alcoholic. I ended up being just decently tipsy, even after downing my sister's drink and finishing my dad's, and a third of my beer, all in about two minutes.
But yeah, it was a good time, the prices were kind of steep though. A Budweiser? About $5, which if you're in a decently sized city, that isn't too bad. However say, a Guinness? Ten bucks. Most mixed drinks were only about seven to eight dollars though. These are all me just converting things to U.S. dollars by the way. So after I finished everyone's drinks, we headed home. Steph and I read for a bit and then attempted to pass out. Unfortunately drinking Starbucks at 7pm makes it really damn difficult to fall asleep, especially if you have three cups of tea at dinner. We ended up staying up and talking for quite awhile.
Anywho, tonight I still need to pack because I'll be off to Yellow Mountain tomorrow morning. We leave at 6:30 am and it'll take anywhere between 3.5 to 5 hours to get there depending on how fast we're driving. I'm looking forward to it, but I also won't bring my computer with me because hiking in the mountains with a laptop isn't really useful at all.
Oh and an update on the Chinese soap opera my dad watches. The dude who is the main character ended up being tricked my the main bad guy into becoming addicted to gambling, opium, and alcohol. His life has degenerated, his wife is worried, and so is his family. That's all I can really pick out so far, but the montage of him becoming addicted and shit is hilarious, though I know it's supposed to be sad and dramatic and all that. It's like, the bad guy gives the main char a cigarette, they both begin to smoke but the bad guy discretely drops his on the ground of the casino and grinds it under his heel while smiling menacingly and whatnot, I mean c'mon!
Anywho, bedtime! I'll talk to you all again soon. Lates!
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