The good times, part 2

Alternate title: The one time there wasn’t pollution

Alternate title 2: The Mormon exhibit in the Chinese museum

Alternate title 3: Bucket lists!

Once upon a time it snowed and the sky cleared right up.

These stairs almost fucked me up the day I left.

Wait, there was a hill over there?

It was the final week before I was to leave Jinan, and Jane and I decided we should get out and do stuff. Before then, she was busy or in a non-touristy mood or something. And of course I was jet-lagged the first week.

So we headed off to the museum of the Shandong province. The Shandong province is like a “state” that Jinan was the capitol of, and it had some of the oldest cultivated areas and relics in China.

That’s it, that fancy building

The city!

It wasn’t this deserted inside, so I guess most people used public transport.

We paid $5 or so for an audio tour guide, but had trouble getting it to work at all. The first exhibit was just a whole bunch of Buddhas. The representation of Buddha has evolved over the centuries, but I’m not showing you that. Boring! Moving on.

A gong ringer (?) was just hanging out in the hallway.

There was a whole bunch of stuff like this…

I love this one.

We went into a part of the museum which chronicled the Cultural Revolution, which freaked me out and I didn’t want to take a lot of pictures. I was excited to be leaving China in a week; I didn’t want to get thrown into prison for God-knows-what. They are sensitive about that Cultural Revolution.

Some of the literature that was handed out during that time? There was a revolution pre-Mao too (IIRC).

More of the same? This doesn’t look like Mao.

Bad-ass old guns

Cats and skulls and Hitler’s head on a swastika

You know, this museum might have been fascinating if any of it was in English.

Maybe the Chinese-Japanese wars?

“But Jaimie, you said you didn’t take a lot of pictures of that section?” Yes, I’ve spared you the gazillion pictures I took of the other sections.

The atrium of the museum was very pretty

And then we came to the history of early man. Low light, bad photography. I adore stuff like this. Not the bad photography, the… you know.

I just didn’t have the aperture for it…

Every historical museum is going to have about 1000 pots

I’m skipping more here. There were miniature models of old houses, full-size models of old boats, and another wing devoted to modern oil painting.

The Mormon exhibit

The last exhibit we came to was this. And it was in English!

Kenneth E. Behring, owner of the Seattle Seahawks

The whole thing was like this really fucked-up and weird exhibit of South African and/or just plain African animals. This was the most popular exhibit while we were there by far.

Two Chinese guys asked us to take a picture for them… but not of us. Of the Elephant. Hey, thanks!

Creepy-ass exhibit

This literally would never happen.

I found a plaque towards the end that explained Kenneth’s history: he got an honorary doctorate from Brigham Young… which isn’t that a positive indicator that someone is Mormon? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just, Mormons and China…?

I don’t know. Forget it.

While researching the exhibit just now, I found this article explaining things. He seems like a nice man.

Shortly after this

I had my huge fight with Jesse, the fight to end all fights. These fights don’t necessarily involve yelling, and this one didn’t. But I’ll talk about that next time.

The next day I went out with Jane to do some more stuff, which felt rather awkward since the whole time I was thinking her husband is a nut and he probably didn’t tell her anything about the night before. (It was true: I confirmed it later.)

But Jane is, of course, wonderful, and we checked some things off my bucket list.

Bucket list #1: We went to a cat cafe

This chica was one of the cool ones who made the pumpkin pie, along with her partner Tyler

I remember Tyler’s name because he was really into martial arts, so much so that some Chinese senseis ripped his muscles so he could sit in a fucking perfect lotus position, which he showcased at Thanksgiving during mafia. One of the guys — the guy that dumped Emily and sicced their dog on us — once referred to him as “Crouching Tyler Hidden Dragon.”

That’s Emily. I caught her mid-blink, which makes her look like a sleepwalker, which is perfect I think.

OKAY OKAY SHE WAS NICE.

We scored with the grumpy cat

Bucket list #2: Fish nibbled at my feet in a spa-situation

I actually think this particular fish-nibbling spa was a scam though. The amount of nibbling that happened was negligible. Jane’s fish had just been fed or something because they weren’t going for her feet at all, so we switched tanks halfway through. Yeah, they nibbled at my feet, but maybe that’s what starving fish would do anyway.

FEET.

You know what? I don’t care enough to research further. It’s off my bucket list whether I really got the true experience or not. Maybe it shouldn’t have been on there in the first place.

Bucket list #3: Conveyer belt sushi

I’ve seen this in enough anime that it’s something I wanted to do. That night, we met Jesse in the mall (my favorite mall) and went to one of these places.

This is not my picture, but it convey[er]s what the situation was. Except we were sitting in front of the conveyer belt. The food came to us.

When we got to the restaurant, I told Jane that I didn’t want to sit next to Jesse, and she rigged it so I didn’t have to, which was boss.

I hope I can do that fight justice. Part of the confusing thing about it is I remember so little of it. It was a 2-hour thing that went in circles a few times. We were both drinking. I’d only had 2 glasses of wine though, so I was lucid, but it’s possible he’d had quite a bit more. I think he’d just had 2, like me. Otherwise I would have cut the argument off.