Today at lunch the Yulin history scholars that we were eating with tried to get us drunk. And they succeeded with Dylan. So in China there's basically no drinking age and at every meal we order Chinese beer, which is much better than crappy American keg beer at parties. Today we were lunching with our Yulin hosts, and one of them kept on doing cheers with us. And in accordance with Yulin custom, once you clink cups you can't set it down until you've drained your cup. I kind of skirted that custom since I didn't particularly feel like chugging beer, but Dylan did it every time. And every time he said, "This is my last one," but it never was. Our host also explained to us that a cup can never be empty, so the waitresses were constantly bringing in more bottles of beer and refilling his cup. And each time his cup was refilled he'd have to chug it. When Paul (our professor) was out of the room, the Yulin guy told us that if Paul hadn't told him not to get us drunk then he would've given us Chinese hard liquor. haha. Well, even without it he did fine.

Dylan told me a few hours later, after a three hour nap, that he had never been hung over at 5 in the afternoon before. We found out later from our professor that the guy who kept on chugging beer with Dylan was very well-known for being able to hold his alcohol. Apparently he can drink three bottles of Chinese white wine, which is really intense alcohol, not to mention pretty disgusting.

Whenever we dine with people, they offer us cigarettes each time. And after we refuse, they always tell us that we should smoke. Not that it's good for us, but that we should do it. Wtf.

So anyways, that was just a taste of the cultural differences we've been experiencing. I have to pee really badly now and don't feel like doing it in this sketchy place, so I'm going to hightail it back to the hotel. Tomorrow we're headed to Yinchuan. I'm sure I butchered that spelling.

Oh and bumper cars in China are 100x more fun than bumper cars in the U.S. It's good that people here have no safety precautions or legal bindings that make rides no fun =]