Chuxi Tulou Village

This blog will be relatively short, since I have rather massive amounts of 作业 (homework) to do. We arrived in Xiamen, The capital of Fujian, and stayed there in a hotel for one night. The shower I had that night was one of the best I have ever taken. Xiamen could be described as a little Shanghai (still, it has over a million people), with bright lights, new freeways, and signs of modernization all around. I quite liked it, but it lacks the history that Beijing is so rich in. Anyway, the following morning we headed, for the first time, into real rural China. Our destination was Chuxi Tulou village. A Tulou is a huge building in either a circular or square shape that houses many families, and has a large courtyard in the center. It is kind of like the rural Chinese equivalent of an apartment, except they are hundreds of years old (the literal translation of the word "Tulou" is earth building). Needless to say, We kissed our Showers, hot water, and flushing toilets goodbye when we left Xiamen. We stayed in the Tulous for 2 nights. The first day, we just explored the village and fields, and the second day, we traveled to a slightly larger, nearby village to visit a middle school. The chinese students were thrilled to see us and the school even set off firecrackers when we entered. We got to participate in gym and English class. Gym class was fun, but it was extremely hot and we were all soaked in sweat by the time it was over. We had a relay and my team won, so I high fived a couple of boys and they got all excited and ran off to tell their friends. It was funny. Right after gym class, we learned that Obama had won the election, which made most SYA students pretty happy. The Chinese students were completely oblivious to the fact that an election had even occurred that day:) English was rather interesting. The class recited in unison (in a shouting voice) their vocab from the previous night, and then the teacher proceeded to play a tape in English and call randomly on students to answer questions about the material they had heard in the tape. Most were following along, but there were of course those few who were called on, stood up to answer, and had nothing but a deer-in-the-headlights look on their face. I think that undoubtedly happens in every language class on the planet. After we left the school, we headed back to the village and talked to the mayor about how the village was run. It was interesting, and the one thing that stuck with me from his speech was when he said (through Mr. Bissell translating) that the villagers must like the mayor and think that he is a good person, because if they begin to think otherwise, they will find a way to get him out of office. Mr. Bissell asked him how they went about "overthrowing" a mayor they didn't like, but he said he wouldn't tell. He also mentioned that in this particular village, a family may have 2 children if the first one is a girl. After the mayor talked, I went back to my Tulou and took a nap, then went to explore the village more. Later that evening I went with some friends to wash my hair in the river. Probably not the most sanitary thing, but it was fun, and my hair felt exponentially cleaner after washing it. I've got to go do homework, but will hopefully get another post up tomorrow. 

The pictures are of my Tulou (pronounced Too-low), A lady and her grandson (she loved having her picture taken and was fascinated with us), A view of part of the village, A building on the campus of the school we visited (with Chinese students peering down from balconies to see us), and My friend Kara and me at the school. Our friend Mike also got in the picture, but we didn't realize that until a while after the picture was taken, haha. 

Toodles,

苏娥俐