Wumart Games

Yes that whole great monolith is Wumart!

I am choosing to talk about one of my favorite adventures while in China for two reasons.  One, because as of March 17th, we are coming up on the two year anniversary of this event.  I can't believe how fast time passes.  The second reason is that it correlates somewhat with my post about being foreign in China.

Before getting into exactly Wumart Challenge is, and how it came into being, I first want to talk about Wumart.  Wumart is a hypermarket, and no that is not just a pretentious new word for supermarket.  These places are monstrous--it is literally one-stop shopping.  The building that Wumart is in consists of eight separate floors, the actual Wumart taking up two full floors; we simply referred to the entire complex as Wumart.

One floor (the second in the building) is entirely groceries--packaged goods, frozen goods, a butcher, fresh produce, bottled drinks, snacks and snacks and more snacks, bulk foods, an imports section, alcohol, etc.  The other floor (the third floor) consists of everything else you would need in your home--electronics, books, clothes, bedding, toys, cookware, appliances, bicycles, musical instruments, cleaning supplies, bathroom products, athletic equipment; the list goes on.  Now, you might not find a wide variety of different kinds of these products (for example, if I didn't like the only two styles of backpacking backpacks, I would have better luck at a store that specializes in out-doorsy stuff) but they will have some kind of product that will fit your needs.

I swear I have never seen so many different kinds of Oreos, candy, or Lay's potato chips in my life. 

So. Much. Produce.

Yes, you could buy frogs.  To eat.  And a whole bunch of other fresh produce. 

As for the remainder of the building, the first floor contained small independent shops...almost like in a mall, along with a few restaurants.  The second and third floor, as I said, contained Wumart proper.  The fourth floor was a parking garage, the fifth floor contained a spa, a full gym, a night club, and a KTV club.  The sixth floor was a movie theater.  The 7th floor consisted of both a pool hall, an arcade, and internet gaming cafe.  The 8th and final floor consisted of what I can only compare to a flea market--they sold small office type supplies or specialty items (like if you wanted something printed or written on a scroll or you wanted to buy supplies for Chinese brush painting).   We worked out in the gym in this building, the KTV was our favorite KTV club, and if we didn't feel like going to one of the clubbing districts, we would go dance it out at this club, because it was so near our home.  As for the shopping--Wumart would pretty much have all the necessities.  We were in and out of this place, for some reason or another, all the time.

So now that you have some idea of what Wumart is (though no amount of description or pictures can really do the place justice), let me explain Wumart Challenge.  One day Olivia, while buying socks in the same building she had dinner and worked out in, had this thought, " wow--there's so much to do here--you could literally spend all day in this place."  Then she vocalized this thought to Dave and myself, saying, "Can you imagine spending, like, an entire 12 hours here? I think it'd be possible."   And thus a crazy vision was born.   Ideas for how to  spend 12 hours in Wumart began to fly:  Some sort of scavenger hunt? Different challenges?  What if we put participants into teams?  How can we use each floor? How much would something like this cost each team? Dates? Rules? Themes? COSTUMES?!?!

I am not sure what exactly caused this to turn from amusing walking-home-from-dinner conversation to an actual plan.  Maybe it was the novelty of the idea?  Maybe it was the organizational juices flowing in some very detail-oriented people?  Maybe it was March and we were bored?  Or maybe it was too good of an idea to pass up in a context that would allow us to do something like this-this goes back to being foreign in China.  I have no idea if, had this occurred to a group of Chinese students or teachers, it would have been tolerated.  But I think we were allowed to do this, and we were even able to conceive of doing this, was in part due to the particular freedoms we enjoyed as foreigners in China.  I am not sure we would have been able to pull something like this off in America without considerably more planning.  I mean, you get in trouble for taking pictures in Target in America, so I can't imagine what would have happened had we tried something similar here (you know, without being part of The Amazing Race or something equally as funded and publicized).

It was decided that Wumart Challenge would begin at 8:00am on Saturday, March 17th (it was coincidental that this fell on St. Patrick's day).  We would begin our day with a full breakfast (as Irish as we were able to make it, given our limited food diversity).  When registering, each team was told that it must have coordinating outfits (this could be as simple as same colored t-shirts to as complicated as costumes) and some kind of flag that represented their team.  Each person on each team would also need to bring with them about 250 yuan for various costs.

Maybe some of us took our coordinating outfits more seriously than others....

As we wanted as many people to participate as possible, Dave and I took over the planning of this event, so that no one team would have an advantage by knowing  the particulars about each challenge.   We also forfeited our right to compete in most of the challenges. We sent an email to all of the foreign teachers detailing the premise, cost, and requirements for competing in Wumart Challenge (again, without being too particular about what exactly they would be challenged to do).  We received a positive response from eight people, so we grouped them in four teams of two people per team.  We chose team mates randomly and sent an email back to everyone about two weeks before the event with the teams, giving people enough time to work on their coordinating outfits and flags.

After our Irish Breakfast (which was mostly eggs, bacon, french toast, and a lot of orange juice with booze in it) we made the teams march in a parade (complete with music and flag waving) the 1/2 mile from our apartment complex to Wumart--much to the amusement of the general population.  We stopped for a pre-challenge photo-op on the pedestrian crossing bridge in front of Wumart and then headed in and up to the fifth floor (which has a huge empty space in the center, and was relatively quiet during the day) for Survivor-esq torch ceremony and directives.  Each team was given an envelope.   In the envelope was a schedule for the days events/challenges.  We explained that each task must be photographed/videoed for proof of completion, and that teams must arrive at designated locations at the proper times.

Wumart Challenge Schedule

We then blew out our torches and the teams headed to the first task--The Scavenger Hunt.  This task took our players to the second and third floors of Wumart. They had to decipher the clues on the list and then locate (and photograph) these items.  Now, we had noticed that in China, things seem to move around and change a lot, so Dave and I did not actually make this scavenger hunt until the night before the event.  And we asked vendors if certain items would be present on the following day.

Torchlight ceremony (where are the torches you ask?  Well, they're tea lights sitting in tea cups in the daytime, so you can't see them at all) and Dave explaining some instructions and rules.

Scavenger Hunt Clues!

As you can see from the schedule above, we made them run all over the place  The idea was to try and get them to do some sort of activity on each floor.  Dave and I made a KTV room our home base--while teams were completing the scavenger hunt and birthday tasks, we hung out and sang.  The teams then met us here for lunch (which they were to bring back from Wumart's hot food vendors).  They were then asked to compete in solo and group songs, to be judged by myself and Dave.  We made them draw pictures of what Wumart meant to them (the results of this were hilarious).

Scavenger hunt photos from team Liv and Justin (top and bottom)

That is dedication. 

We made them clean squat toilets and get their nails done on the first floor, (Scavenger hunt on the second and third floors), a relay race in the parking garage on the 4th floor.  We made them sing with us in KTV and complete several work out/athletic challenges in the gym all on the fifth floor--we came back to this floor at the end of the night to dance in the night club.  We made them see a move (John Carter--I believe this was the only English movie playing at the time) in the movie theater on the 6th floor and compete in arcade games and a pool tournament on the 7th floor. We made them hunt up a birthday gift for a fellow teacher on the 8th floor, and bring it wrapped back to us--we would judge the best wrapped gift.  Basically we ran them all over the building.  And we stayed in Wumart from the time it opened its doors at 10am until they kicked us out at 3:00am, 17 hours later.

KTV Sing-Along

Billiards challenge (left), ping-pong challenge (center), and arcade games (right).

Time for refueling at Ajisan's (left), Parking Garage Relay Race (center), and heading into the gym to workout with Dave (right).  Below is a video of yet more embarrassing things we made them do--test out the speaker selection by dancing it out in the middle of he floor. 

What started off as an off-hand (and brilliant) remark on the comprehensiveness of Wumart turned into a 17 hour adventure in ridiculousness.  The best part is that when were finished, not only did we have this great (if totally random) day filled with competitive absurdities, we all also knew all the nooks and crannies of Wumart.  We actually decided that Wumart Challenge might be a good thing to have brand-new teachers participate in when they arrive in Hangzhou.  But why just stop with Wumart?  Why not have them explore different parts of the city?  We never made this Hangzhou Challenge into a reality, partly due to the fact that we only had two new teachers the second year.

Wumart Challengers at 10 am (left)......and then at 3am, 17 hours later (right).

I think Wumart Challenge is a good example of why being foreign in China is such a unique and overall positive experience.  We would not have been able to do this in America (partly because we don't have a Wumart, and partly because it likely would not have been tolerated).  But when our contestants did meet with resistance in Wumart, they quickly explained what they were doing, and they received assistance and encouragement from Wumart employees.  So happy anniversary to all the participants in Wumart Challenge, the strangest competition in which I have ever been involved.

Also a huge thank you to all the employees in Wumart whose day we probably made just a tad more challenging by having all these over-enthusiastic foreigners running about, but remained so patient and nice about it.  I leave you with the video below; our 3am post-event euphoria/exhaustion.