Shanghai/Xiamen (12/24 - 12/25): Merry X(iamen)-Mas

Sunday I spent most of my time cleaning up my home and getting ready for Peter’s visit. Tam dropped by for a while with his friend James, and Sherry spent some time at my place too. Even Zhu Wen Jun and her ex-bf (who’s name I forget — nanquan guy from S.U.S.) dropped by for a bit.

Before I headed to the airport to get Peter (he was arriving at 9:30 p.m. via Beijing from SFO) I went to Zhu Wen Jun’s birthday dinner. Her birthday was actually Christmas day, but she had planned a dinner gathering for her friends the night before. Originally I wasn’t going to be in town for it, but since Peter’s flight got delayed by a day, I was able to attend.

Zhu Wen Jun cutting her cake

Lots of good food

It was mostly athletes there. One girl played basketball, her boyfriend did the Long Jump. There was Yo Yo who did fencing and one or two wushu people. The food was quite good (I’m generally not a huge fan of Shanghainese cuisine, but this wasn’t too shabby) but pretty soon it was getting time for me to leave so I said my farewells and headed out to the airport to pick up Peter.

He arrived pretty much on time and (after trying to find his luggage, which he eventually located) we boarded the shuttle bus back to my home. I realized that it was the exact same bus I had taken (at the exact same time of day) just 6 days before when I flew back from Hong Kong.

We hung out at my place for a while, Peter suffered through some allergies with my cat, and eventually we crashed. Oh, and Sherry dropped by for a bit too. What are the odds, I would have two different people, both from Mississippi, in my home in Shanghai on Christmas Eve? Probably not all that high …

The next morning we woke up early (around 7:30 or 8:00) and got ready to head out. Since my clothes are so organized now it only took me about 5 minutes to pack everything up and hit the trails. We grabbed a cab for Hongqiao Airport and, after a quick meal at the terminal, caught our 10:25 flight to Xiamen.

BTW, I timed our check-in at the airport. We walked in to the front doors of the airport at 9:00 exactly and we were ready to board the plane by 9:18 (and it was even a busy day too, with some delays at the security check). Too bad domestic flight security checks in back in the U.S. aren’t so speedy.

We arrived in Xiamen and took a cab to Pat’s place. Apparently we missed Raffi by about 30 minutes. He had just left for his trip to Japan. I bet he was arriving at the airport just as we were getting in our taxi.

We settled in for a bit, but Pat had to go meet up with a friend for coffee so Peter and I went to get some hairwashes. As Peter said “That was the gayest thing I think I’ve ever done”, mainly relating to the fact that it was men giving us the hair washes (for some reason all the salons around Pat’s place switched to men — not really sure why). Then we ran to the bank and waited for Pat to come back.

Peter getting his hair styled

After Pat returned we grabbed some (delicious) beef noodle soup and then hung out at his place. He wasn’t feeling too good so he got the IV drip, Stephen came back with Annie, and I also met up with Jo Jo to go over some work stuff. Peter spent some time playing “Jade Empire” on the X-Box.

Speaking of work stuff — I’ve been working on Jet’s first blog entry. We have the static page (more dynamic content coming in the future) on jetli.com in both Chinese and English and we’ve mirrored the site’s Chinese entry on Sina as well. We got some good response to the first blog entry which I posted very early on the 26th (or very very late on the 25th, depending on your point of view). You can view the blog here:

jetli.com/gfn/interract/blog

Jo Jo on the computer

Peter playing X-Box

After a while we left Pat with his IV drip and episodes of “Heroes” and the four of us went to get some foot massages at LFZ. Then back to pick up Pat and a dinner outing for All-You-Can-Eat Japanese food. Then we headed out to a Jiu Ba called “U2″ where Bo Bo (the angry clown) was working. It turned out one of the managers/co-owners/higher-ups was a former sales person at Xiaban so we got some decent service. After an hour or two of dice games and hanging out we headed back to Pat’s (Stephen and Annie had left by then) and spent the night chilling out with Ninja Gaiden and “Heroes”.

Stephen and Annie at dinner

Blurry Pat at dinner

I also got some Yang Ro La Mian downstairs, but it was probably not the best thing in the world because I ended up having some stomach issues during the evening.

It didn’t necessarily feel like X-mas, but it was a nice way to spend the day — just relaxing and hanging out with friends.