Just Another Night...

After more than two years in China and trips to 6 countries, I thought I was pretty prepared for pretty much anything that I might see around town…
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So it was after 8pm and I was hungry, my roommate was hungry, and I was craving barbecued eggplant. The do this wonderful thing where the stick a whole eggplant on the grill and just smoke the living daylights out of it. Turning it every few minutes, brushing on seasonings and oil, and after it looks like it's dead, they slice it open and smother it with more seasonings and heaps of garlic. Then they give it to you and you die of scrumptiousness. (I don't even know if that's possible, but for the sake of you realizing how amazing this is, let's say it's possible.)

We decided to go down to the old fisherman's village turned tourist trap to get the qiezi and decided to walk around for a while to decide what else we wanted to eat. We ended up with Thai green curry and these awesome skewers with bunches of green/red peppers and string mugua (mushrooms that I'll actually eat) wrapped in bacon and smoked over hot rocks and then lightly fried and brushed with sauce and dusted with spice… but in the process of all this had a great walk through the village.

I love walking through that village when it's not overrun by tourists and tonight it was pretty dead (remember that word). Nonetheless, I heard the ear-piercing horn of a motorbike trying to get through the narrow alley. I could feel the contents from the back of the bike within millimeters of brushing my elbow and looked down only to muffle a cry out.
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I had looked down to the back of the bike that literally almost hit my elbow/shoulder bag only to see a pig face glaring back at me. No. Not a pig. Not the whole thing, I would have SO preferred to see the whole pig. I'll even take a pig stepping on my foot over the face of a dead pig (with a little bit of neck skin), complete with tongue sticking out of crooked, nasty, yellowed teeth. I stopped and stared for a minute as the driver proceeded into a crowed and almost hit a couple other people and heard cries of "Gamahh!" and "Whaa!". I was glad I wasn't the only one recovering from a small dose of shock at the face. Pretty sure I'm going to see that face in a nightmare or something tonight.

That one I was NOT prepared for.
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We're walking home and I look up to see this creepy, well-dressed vendor lady standing there raising her eyebrow at me like she wants me to come buy something. Something about feeling like a woman is flirting with you, though, kind of turns you off from buying anything from them.

We turned the corner onto a dark back road and I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure that she wasn't following us or sending someone to follow us. A bike rider went by, talking loudly into his hands-free phone. We turned onto the next deserted, but more well-lit street only to have a van stop by us. Like the kind where you get ready to run or fight because it's just creepy? So my roommate is staring/glaring at this van as we walk on (mind you, the driver is paying us NO attention), when I look over and a black car is passing us, repeatedly opening and closing a door- while driving… That was the point where I gave up feeling like there was a shred of normalcy in the evening out. (Amazed that it took that long?)
There are nights where everything you see can only be summed up with one word: bizarre.

Aanndd such is the life of living in China. Where any given thing can happen at any given time and it's okay. It doesn't have to have a reason, it just is.

So, pig face fresh in my mind, I sign off to have sweet dreams of piglets growing up to be butchered and paraded around town on the back of a motorbike…Sweet dreams, my fellow sojourners, sweet dreams.