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Q: Most surreal (non-negative) experience?
When I first came here, I was sitting on my bed in my apartment, watching videos I'd brought with me, on the computer... jsut like I would back home.... and suddenly realising that I'm 10,000 Ks from home in a land where outside, virtually no-one understands a thing I say - and I have no idea what they're saying.
However, that surreal feel has now been over-shadowed by the other night... returning by train about 9pm. Looking out into the dark of the countryside, and seeing a set of headlights beaming towards me - and suddenly being transported back in time - thinking I was catching the train home from work (past that stretch of bush in between, with the road running alongside)... which was about 15 years ago (or more...). I actually had to remind myself I'm in China - here and now!
Have you had anything like that - where you actually need to remember where you are?
Sitting on the throne waiting for the flaming laze-ji to pass. No phone, so I thought I'd practice my Chinese by reading the pinyin on the plastic shopping bag hanging from the door knob.
Tried to pronounce it, get the tones, wondering why it seemed so weird.
After several tries, I realized my error - the word printed on the bag was English.
Before torrenting was an option for movies, I bought VCDs a dozen at a time. The first time I managed to torrent a movie, I had to keep pausing the movie because "something" was wrong. Video quality fine, sound quality great, but "something" just wasn't right. Halfway through the movie I suddenly realized that that was the first time in five years that I had actually seen a movie without the subtitles.
Mr_spoon:
That first story... I'm dying here!
This has happened to me so many times, and I always feel like a complete idiot.
Sitting on the throne waiting for the flaming laze-ji to pass. No phone, so I thought I'd practice my Chinese by reading the pinyin on the plastic shopping bag hanging from the door knob.
Tried to pronounce it, get the tones, wondering why it seemed so weird.
After several tries, I realized my error - the word printed on the bag was English.
Before torrenting was an option for movies, I bought VCDs a dozen at a time. The first time I managed to torrent a movie, I had to keep pausing the movie because "something" was wrong. Video quality fine, sound quality great, but "something" just wasn't right. Halfway through the movie I suddenly realized that that was the first time in five years that I had actually seen a movie without the subtitles.
Mr_spoon:
That first story... I'm dying here!
This has happened to me so many times, and I always feel like a complete idiot.
When I first moved to China. I kept hearing weird noises. After a few hours I realised I could hear a big cat roaring. I thought that it couldn't possibly be a tiger in the middle of the city. I got up and looked outside. I could see the park. I heard another roar. I looked closer at the park and then I realised. The park was in fact Tianjin zoo.
From moving back and forth all the time and constantly switching between languages, I've had multiple occasions where I inadvertently started speaking French to Chinese people, or English to French people, etc.
Since I've moved back to France, I've also had some occasions where I would wake up in the morning thinking I was still in Beijing, and be scared for a split second because I had no idea where the hell I was.
ScotsAlan:
I have seen this. A British guy speaking to a Chinese guy in Chinese, the Chinese guy answering in English. Strange.
Walking into a bar with hotwater, in rural China, to find a shrine to the isle of man TT motorcycle races. Hotwater and I both spent a decade on the Isle of man. I was a marshal at the races. A deputy sector marshal. We had a long drunken chat with the boss and he knew more than us about the races.
Drinking whisky under a Manx flag... Surreal. And me with Manx passport.
We will go back soon with loads of TT race stuff for them to put on their wall.
Also... Being able to buy Scottish whisky anywhere. How can a nation of 5 million make a drink so good it is in almost every bar on earth? Surreal.
I had a surreal experience last night.
I was coming home and standing at the zebra crossing waiting for a break in the traffic when all of a sudden all three lanes of traffic stopped at the crossing to allow the pedestrians to cross.
What was even more surreal was that the cars that stopped were a Mercedes SUV, an Audi and a BMW.
As we reached the middle of the road, the traffic coming the other way also stopped, this time it was 2 taxis and a motorbike.
Well done China!!
I think for me the most eye-opening point was when I went to a big museum in Beijing and the whole thing was obvious propaganda and nothing was older than 2 hundred years. "Where's all of the things from the 4000 (5000?) years of culture?.... OMG they really did burn it all..."
Peeing in a bucket outside at night because my in-laws don't have indoor plumbing. I married shandong shanpao.
Karma101:
why did you go OUT to p in a bucket? what do they do with the bucket full of it?
I was intoxicated one winter night and stumbled into a grocery store in Hangzhou in 2012. So many people were wearing their Chinese styled winter pajamas. I thought I was dreaming I was back in Thailand and the people decided to wear pajamas for some strange reason. (they dont wear them in Thailand as it never gets that cold there).
The first time I had a dream in Chinese, and the first time my inner dialogue was in Chinese (walking down the road thinking to myself "这些人怎么这么奇怪"), both made me feel quite odd, indeed.
