Zhou Dynasty

Another Update It's been a few days since I touched a computer that's able to go online. I'm having a bit of trouble accessing my gmail account from China now. I don't know why but I can sign in and view my inbox but as soon as I click on one of my mails, it disconnects me from gmail. I think the government here is blocking gmail now, boo-urns. Since my parents arrived in China, we've been having a lot of fun. We're in Xiamen now. Dinner and sauna in Shanghai I went out to dinner one night with my parents and some of their old friends from the teenage years. We went to a restaurant owned by one of their friends, called Xing Gang or Star Harbor. I thought the restaurant would be pretty fancy because we usually go to fancy ones with their friends. But this one was beyond fancy. It was like, super fancy. It had a luxurious European style setting and every private dinning room had different styles of furniture. The food was good too, ranging from raw crab in wine sauce to this weird stuff that birds puke up. Yeah, apparently there's this stuff that birds puke up, it looks like clear colored beef jerky but they cook it in a soup and it dissociates into little threads. It doesn't taste like anything but the soup is good. This part might be rated NC17, if you're sensitive to material relating to naked men, don't read this part. Another one of my dad's friends owns a sauna place in Shanghai so we went there afterwards. They call these things "saunas" but its the equivalent of a "spa". The service was really good, TOO good. There are always at least 2 people serving you. Even when I was taking off my clothes there was a guy taking it from me and folding it neatly. Its really weird to have 2 Chinese guys standing next to you to service you while you're completely naked. I just wished they would leave and let me do my own thing but it was their job to provide their service to naked clients. The place also had a big Swedish spa and a cold spa. The cold spa is the weirdest thing. I could only last in that icy water for 15 seconds max, felt like I was going to turn into an ice cube if I stayed any longer. Anyway the weirdest thing that I did was had a sea salt scrub. They just call it a "back scrub". My dad's friend told me to try to "back scrub", I don't know if I would recommend it to any of you guys. But basically you're naked on a bed and a guy scrubs your ENTIRE body clean and rubs some kind of herbal salt on you. When I mean ENTIRE body, I mean the entire thing, genitals and all! If I were to say that it was a bit uncomfortable it might be an understatement. But to get a taste of what I mean by uncomfortable, have a guy lift up your scrotum to scrub you clean and you'll know what I mean. It was an interesting night. I got home at about 1:30AM smelling real clean and walking a bit funny. Hongqiao Airport: Leaving for Xiamen My family and I left for Xiamen and we checked almost everything except for a small bag containing a sweater and a bottle of sake. We were thankful that the check-in lady was nice enough to let us check all that crap in because I think everything was over the weight limit. When we got to the security check, they had me open up the small bag. The security lady takes out the bottle of sake to examine it and tells us that we can't bring it as a carry-on. My dad and I jokingly said "Why don't we just drink it here, we'll share it with you." Surprisingly, after examining the sake, she motioned that we can drink it if we want. We were just joking of course but we felt like throwing the bottle away would be a such a waste a dishonorable to my dad's friend. So we opened the bottle and started drinking the sake at the security check. Our family sat down on the stairs and drank the whole damn bottle while everyone watched. They must've thought we were alcholics. After drinking the entire thing we proceeded to the waiting area, by this point my mom's face was completely red, my dad and I were starting to feel the buzz. When we got to the waiting area I had to get rid of some of the sake taste by eating some peanuts. Peanuts made me thirsty and lead me to buy a couple cans of Tsingdao for me and my dad. When we were boarding, our entire family was buzzing and by the time we sat down in our seats, we started making fun of stewartess who told us to fasten our seatbelts. I think the people around us thought we were either crazy or drunk, but somehow they knew we were Americans.