My Shandong Buddy

The university conducts short courses for distance learning students, who are working professions, once in a while, and they were conducting one for this summer so I sneaked into their lectures thinking to make my USD465 per month of expenses worth its while.



It is here, while attending Medical Imaging lecture, that I got to know my first Mountain East buddy.

She's from Yan Tai 烟台, another city in Shandong. (Ya, I know you must be asking where the heck is that... I will educate you a bit on my next blog, ok?)

I regconised her straight away as someone not from Jinan because she's so lady-like and doesn't speak like an annoying horn. In fact, she's exactly like one of those typical nice and traditional chinese girls that you see from chinese costume dramas. She is very intelligent, self-ascertained and stand guards her own tradition. I like friends like that... knows her culture well, not ashamed to be old fashion and still pretty much ignorant about the poisoning darts of capitalism.

She's already 27 and a practising physician at her local hospital and carries a cool classic name : Yang Fei Fei 杨飞飞 though she thought my name is a lot cooler.


Yang Fei Fei's dorm

Anyhow, I guess Yang Fei Fei and I clicked a bit because we're both non-local and feeling LONELY in a weird place as such. But, largely, on my side, it's due to 2 reasons:

1. I want to feel a chinese girl. I want to get in touch with my chinese side! I want to be the chinese girl that I never got to be!
2. Yang Fei Fei thinks like someone who's from 2000 years ago that have accidently got on a time machine and travelled here and that she somehow lost her original ancient outfit. She's so disconnected from the rest of the modern world! It's like I've found E.T and she befriended me! The thought of hanging out with an ancient human being who's lost in time just THRILLS me!

Breathtakingly beautiful chinese ancient wooden string instrument - GuQin

Being the ancient girl that she is, Yang Fei Fei told me that she wanted to pick up playing 古琴 GuQin, a beautiful piece of ancient musical instrument. I've heard about the mystical sound of GuQin and the important role it played in many major historical events, but I've never seen one in real life before, and since I like antiquity so much I went shopping to look for one with her.


College students having a session at a music shop

We visited a few music shops, but none of them have GuQin. And I was constantly confused by another popular wooden stringed instrument, GuZheng 古筝。

I kept telling Yang Fei Fei: There, that's a GuQin!
Yang Fei Fei will go: No, Yeng! That's a GuZheng!
Yeng: Oh, soli soli.


GuZheng 古筝

Yang Fei Fei enquires with the shop owners most of the time in some language I can never pick up. (They always sound like arguing to me.) Somehow I've got a feeling those shop owners don't know what she's talking about and that even more so makes me suspiciously conclude that she's really not from our time.



There are also some other really nice chinese musical instruments.
How I hope I can play ALL OF THEM.
I'm especially hooked on wind instruments.


Musical instruments are cheaper here in China.



Reminds me of one of my other out-of-the-world cool Malaysian classmates that can play this cute wind instrument made with HuLu - bottle gourd/calabash.

Yo, very cute oh!

Anyhow, we failed to find GuQin because no one knows what we are talking about, and I really think it DOES NOT EXIST anymore. The shop owners don't seem to know this instrument and they suggest us to have it custom made. Wah, where got money to buy one big chunk of nice hard wood to make one woh! Gee... not to mention the workmanship!

Yang Fei Fei says she's just gonna pick up QuZheng. Poor ancient girl.