I’ve been trying really hard to deny it, even to myself, but I’m going to go ahead and say that I’m well and truly homesick. The two-week point is where this usually happens. So last night and this morning I was pitiful and weepy.
I thought about staying in my room all day in my PJs and watching Netflix, but I decided the sunny day could not be wasted, so I put on my big girl panties and determined I’d figure out the bus system. It’s actually quite easy, and very cheap. 1 Yuan, which equates to about 14 cents, will get you on a bus and let you ride it as long as you like.
My rather random method was to find a bus that looked like it went somewhere cool, and get on it. Armed with a laser-printer print-out of the near-campus routes, I chose bus 32 because I missed the first one that went by, and got on it. It took me to what I’m pretty sure was near to Kunshan’s city center, where I got off because most other people were getting off.
To give you some context, Kunshan is considered a small city. The population is somewhere north of 1.6 million. To give you further context, my hometown of Durham, North Carolina (which is considered a fairly large city, at least in North Carolina) has a population of about 260,000. So the small city of Kunshan is six times larger than Durham, the city of my heart and home. It’s big.
Pink flamingos are classier when they’re topiaries.
I walked around for a bit, aimlessly, admiring the topiaries and the apartment buildings. For a big city, there is a surprising amount of green space and a lot of tiny little shops.
Found a little mini-park and sat in the sun for a few minutes.
At some point, while walking, I decided that I should find Auchan, the large supermarket, which was marked on the bus route. I began walking that way, but I got distracted by a big mall.
Parkson Mall is an indoor-outdoor mall like you might find in the U.S., with some key differences. There aren’t really stores on the inside, just sections. I didn’t buy anything, so I’m not sure how they handle who owns what, but it seems like the whole thing is one big department store spanning 3 floors and a big city block. The outside is even more impressive and looks more like what you might find in the U.S.: lots of little storefronts and an entertainment area.
If they had this in America, my nieces would like malls better than Disneyland.
The entertainment area included a huge lake with a fountain (which wasn’t turned on, sadly) and a bunch of kid entertainment. The weirdest one was the koi pond that people were fishing in. They’d catch the very sedate koi and then put them in buckets full of water. I have no idea what happened to them after that. Maybe they threw them back because a lot of those poor koi looked exhausted/almost dead before anyone even caught them.
Poor koi.
After my brief mall adventure, I continued on to the Auchan, supermarket of all supermarkets. The thing is freakin’ huge. Here’s the parking lot full of mopeds. (You have to pay to park a car, but not a moped.)
This particular supermarket had food, yes, but also: jewelry, electronics, quilts and blankets, scarves and mittens, cigarettes, liquor, tanks of live seafood, prepared food, cleaning supplies and toiletries.
It did not have an international section, proper ice cream, or deodorant. (Dude, no place has deodorant here. It’s like it doesn’t even exist. Hope mine holds out for another two weeks.)
The supermarket also had this creepy weird thing making balloon animals for the kids.
I looked around for a long time but ended up only buying two bottles of sauvignon blanc, because I am a basic-ass bitch.
For the whole day, I was a bit of a tourist attraction myself. There are very few big, tall white people with blue eyes wandering around in China with a bottle of wine in each armpit, especially in “small” towns like Kunshan. Several teenagers merrily sang, “Hello!” to me as they walked past. One man stopped me as he was walking by to say, “Hello! What’s your name? See you later!” That was probably all of the English he knew, but I am not judging because he knows more English than I know Chinese.
By the time I made it back to the university, it was almost dinner time, so I went downstairs for a bowl of noodles. I had just sat down to eat when a colleague came rushing up to me. “There’s a group of students here who want to see the campus, and they need an escort. I’m already late for dinner. Can you show them around?”
So I finished the evening giving a lame, bad tour of DKU because I’ve only been here for two weeks and there are really only two buildings on the whole campus. They seemed very appreciative, though, and even wanted to be friends on WeChat and take a picture together.
So, look, I know I didn’t, like, take myself to Disneyland Shanghai or something, but at least I left my hotel room today and didn’t spend all of it weeping and watching the Great British Baking Show. Give me credit for that, at least, huh?
Now off to drink some of my wine. And by some, I mean half… of what I bought… which is two bottles, so half is one bottle. Hell, maybe I’ll drink them both. DON’T JUDGE ME.
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