Nick, a UC Irvine student, and I met up with Winter at nearby restaurant. Winter arrived with a group of his high school friends and interestingly, two of the girls that came with him were dressed in military uniforms. Nick commented that meeting girls in military uniforms in the middle of Shanghai could only happen when he hung out with me.
Uniforms?!
The uniforms intrigued me as well because I had seen students at Fudan wear military uniforms and I had heard from a Fudan MBA student that students were required to undergo military training at some point during their college years. The two girls in uniform attended Jiatong University, which is also in Shanghai, and they told me that freshman have to go through mandatory military training for two weeks. “Military training” was explained to me as a lot of running and marching, which all the students apparently hated. This was far from the strict military training I had imagined, though after a second thought, I cannot imagine Fudan students doing any sort of hard military training.
The girls Winter brought with him were fascinated with me and Nick, which led to some pretty interesting moments. At first everybody was a bit shy, but as I began to ask questions, the conversation started flowing. I learned their strange English names of which Beryl and Shining were the two names that stood out. It seems that some family member chose their English names and I believe they had no idea what they were doing. Lunch conversation veered onto the topic of dating and relationships as they always seem to. Winter and his friend spoke of having multiple ex-girlfriends, which was extremely surprising and made me out to be the inexperienced one at the table.
Group picture
After lunch, there was talk about going to karaoke (KTV). I had never gone KTVing before and was actually quite nervous about it. I have an irrational fear of singing and dancing, which has carried over from god knows when. To make matters worse, Nick left me as soon as we arrived at the KTV place because he had only slept a measly three hours and suddenly felt sick. The whole KTV was embarrassing, as expected, with me singing terribly off key, and not knowing the words to many of the English songs I selected. It was still good fun and the other people were very encouraging and kind, easing the blow to my pride a little. I am not sure why, but it seems that Chinese students are all quite decent at KTV. Maybe they practice a lot? Especially the girls, they were extremely impressive in all the songs that they sang. After my first KTV experience, I swear I am never going go through such an ordeal again sober.
She was the best out everybody, if only I remembered her name
Not quite sure how this happened because I can barely understand mandarin
After KTV, we went back to their dorms, and I got see firsthand the normal student dormitories. Their dorms were about the size of my room, except that they crammed four people into them. Suddenly my dorm room in San Diego seemed luxurious. After KTV, I also began to notice that Beryl was a little bit too interested in me. I could never escape from her for too long and at times it got awkward. Nick later agreed that she did seem far too interested.
We ended the night with dinner at Ajisen, a Japanese ramen chain, after meeting up with Nick again, and some other UC students. What I thought was going to be a lonely moon festival, turned out to be one of the most interesting and hospitable days I have had in Shanghai.
I think I can check off meeting and befriending local students off my Shanghai to do list after today. Who knew I would accomplish that goal so quickly?
Moon Festival Album
-muffinman
