Asia Trip Day 18: Chinese Fried Chicken (1/5/18)

We returned to the massage parlor again to get another round of massages. Xuezhu was feeling some soreness in her traps and back, so she got a special massage. After the massage, they put a special carriage over her back. It held some smoldering logs, which heated up her back. There was a wooden lid covering them, but it could be opened or removed if it gets too hot. 

We returned back to her parent's house for lunch. Her mother cooked for us vegetables with dried shrimp, and chicken with taro. The vegetables were very savory from the salty shrimp, and reminded me of a similar dish my mom makes.

We then went to the mall area to get our haircut. Xuezhu usually waits until she visits China to get her haircut or colored, since its much cheaper than in US. We snacked at the KFC at the mall, because I wanted to try it out. Xuezhu told me that fast food restaurants like McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and KFC were considered to be really fancy when they were first introduced. She had a friend in elementary school who had a birthday party at McDonald's, and she thought she was really rich. Each burger was about 20 RMB (~$3 USD), which was relatively expensive for food in China. 

 

On the metro, they commercials for a KFC chicken sandwich with fresh shrimp. It looked pretty good, and I knew that if my dad was here, he would want to try it. The combo meal was about $6 USD, which had the sandwich, 2 pieces of fried chicken, and a drink. It came with a pack of chili powder. The sandwich had soft baked chicken, tiny shrimp, some lettuce, and thousand island dressing. There wasn't any texture to the sandwich, and the flavors were mild. It wasn't too good, so you're not missing out on anything. 

The KFC worker behind my left shoulder

Something interesting also happened a few minutes into our meal. Apparently, some man spilled water on some girls (intentionally?), causing one of the KFC workers to flip out and try to pin the man to the wall. They punched each other in the face a few times and there was a lot of yelling. Everyone was watching bewildered, and I didn't know whether to act or not. It was the bystander effect, where people don't act on something because they assume someone else will. I didn't want to get involved because I didn't entirely know the situation, but I think would have intervened if it got ugly enough. Eventually another guy came in to break it up, and the man left. 

We then went to get our haircut. Well, I got a haircut, while Xuezhu got her nails done and her hair dyed. She got a golden-gray dye to her hair, but only bleached some of her hair to get highlights. I got a haircut similar to what my mom gives, which is short on side and long on top. My sides were getting a little bushy, and its always difficult to fix my bedhead without completely wetting my head (which was a reason why I wore the gray hat for most of the trip).

After the haircut, he used a lot of hair gel and hairspray to give me the spiky, bedhead hairstyle again. It is a lot of work and product required to look like I just got up, when I do that anyways. 

A multi-game cabinet

Not my photo, but I didn't take one

We then checked the arcade that was in the mall. It was far bigger than the other mall, and was even cheaper. I used 100 RMB (~$15 USD, only bill I had), and got a huge basket of coins. I think the conversion was something like $0.10 per coin. We played a Rambo shooting game. It was based on the movie, and even played movie clips to set up the next level. The guns were heavy so our arms did get a little tired from playing. We had enough coins to beat the game, but it was getting late so we had to go.

We returned back to her parent's house and watched the movie "A Dog's Purpose" through their cable. It was about a reincarnating dog spirit that lives and dies in different ways, based on how humans treat them. In the middle of the movie, her mother made us some soup noodles as a late dinner. The soup was made from wild pigeon that was given to Xuezhu's father by a PhD student who's family hunts. They also gave them bear meat, which I also didn't take a picture of. Lastly, Xuezhu started feeling nauseous and got a headache, likely because of the product that was used in her hair. 

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