More Hubei Province

Took more than 500 photos in Hubei, so thought I should post a few more of days two and three of the trip. After waking up to the sea of clouds, we went to a forest to do more hiking, much to everyone's chagrin. Our calves were all so sore from climbing the day before that our speed was greatly reduced. I hobbled next to the teachers most of the way, and stopped often to take photos. At one point, we climbed down a crevasse about 5 stories deep. The walls on either side of us were rock covered in bright green moss, which made for excellent photo taking. The other photos I have included were taken at the ancient palace and park that was once home to emperors of the Tujia ethnic minority. Most of the visitors at the palace were locals and were shocked to see so many foreigners. Many talked about my hair in front of me, assuming I could not understand. This rarely happens in Beijing anymore, and took me by surprise. It was a tad awkward, so I decided to look and smile at whoever was talking about me.

云海

On the second night of the trip to Hubei, we stayed in a hotel on the top of a mountain overlooking Enshi. Much to everyone's surprise, we woke up the next morning and discovered a sea of clouds next to the hotel (see photos -- describing it does no justice). On sunny afternoons, the clouds disappear and the city of Enshi is visible below. Looking at the sea of clouds felt quite like looking out the window of a plane.

Photo 1: Clouds, taken from the lookout point
Photo 2: Clouds and the railing of the lookout point
Photo 3: More clouds and mountain
Photo 4: The hotel on the top of the mountain
Photo 5: Me at the lookout

Enshi Grand Canyon

Just returned from a trip to Hubei province that was organized by the school for students in my level of Chinese. This post will only be about the first day, during which we hiked a series of mountains in an area known as the "Enshi Grand Canyon." Enshi is a region in Hubei province heavily populated by people of the Tujia ethnic minority (土家族). To get to the "Grand Canyon," we took a bus up extremely windy mountain roads, which resulted in motion-sickness for many students. For reasons unknown, our bus driver felt it necessary to drive a break-neck speeds up the rather narrow and unsafe mountain roads. Anyhow, we hiked for a total of about 4 hours, and by the end were completely exhausted. It felt similar to climbing the Great Wall -- up and down and up and down. The scenery was incredible, as can be seen in the photos. Although it was an overcast day, my nose got sunburnt -- one of the many joys of having pale skin. At the end of the hike we descended down staircases for about 40 minutes, which took a large tole on our knees and calf muscles. As a result, everyone was limping and wobbling for the next 48 hours or so. 

Photos (in no particular order):

First one was taken at the end of the hike while descending. Second one is a view of the mountains we climbed. Third one was taken before we started hiking. It is of my class. Fourth photo is of the walkway on the side of the mountain that we walked along. Fifth is me at some point on the mountain. All were taken with my new camera, Milton! 

Revival of the Blog

New name, newish look, same blogger. Back in China at Beijing Language and Culture University (北京语言大学) for a year. Currently on break for the national holiday and thought I'd post some pictures of a recent trip to Tianjin (天津）(120 km from Beijing, urban population of about 4 million according to Wikipedia). Drove there with my old host family and stayed about 36 hours. Tianjin has a massive ferris wheel that affords a nice view of the city. Waited in line for it for three hours. The ferris wheel ride itself takes a half an hour because of how slow the wheel turns. My host mama's cousin lives in Tianjin, and went to the ferris wheel with us. She is 60, has lived in Tianjin her entire life, and has never received much of an education from what I gathered from my host sister. In line for the ferris wheel, she leaned over and whispered in my ear, "I wanted to ask you... In America, do white people discriminate against black people?" I gave her the simplest answer I could think of to avoid confusion, and told her that I don't, but some people do. My host mama later told me that her tendency to whisper about potentially controversial topics is a habit leftover from the Mao era.

For lunch on Tuesday, my host mama's cousin brought us to a rather undesirable restaurant filled with cigarette smoke and people. They had no tables, as it was lunch hour, so we ended up going to a nicer restaurant one block down, attached to a hotel. We sat down, ordered, food came, and all was well, for a while. My host mama had ordered a bowl of white rice when we ordered our food, but it didn't come for a while and eventually she decided she didn't want it. When she told the waitress, however, the waitress said that the bowl of white rice (an estimated 2 RMB, or 31 US cents) could not be cancelled, as it was already prepared. My host mama said that that was ridiculous, and my host sister immediately demanded to speak with the manager of the restaurant over the matter. When the manager came, she apparently gave my host sister a dirty look before explaining to us that the order of rice indeed could be cancelled but the waitress didn't have the authority to do it. Although the matter could have been calmly resolved, that one dirty look and bit of sassiness from the waitress and manager set me host sister off like none other. In no time my host sister was yelling insults and the entire restaurant was turning around to stare at us. I learned 5 new words from that conversation, including "worthless creature" (lit. "cheap bones"). The argument ended in my sister telling the manager that if the waitress didn't come over and personally apologize, we wouldn't pay the bill. All this mess over a bowl of white rice. Just another day in China.

About the photos: First one is my host sister and me in the car at 6:30 AM on our way to Tianjin. Second one is me holding three 10-day old baby kittens born in some distant relative's hutong-style home in Tianjin. Third one is of the "Tianjin Eye," the enormous ferris wheel. Fourth one is me holding onto the lantern my host sister and I bought. Seconds after the photo was taken I let go and it floated up into the sky. People buy them, write their wishes on them, and release them at night. It is quite a sight to see hundreds of them in the sky at once. Boy next to me is another distant relative. He is 16, dropped out of school years ago, and is now doing some sort of labor-intensive work. Very mannerly, friendly boy, and very down-to-earth.

BLAAAA

MING IF YOU LEAVE FOR BJ ON THE FOURTEENTH THAT MEANS I ONLY HAVE ONE DAY TO SEE YOU. so not cool. 

p.s. the pictures are of some pandas and me at a Giant Panda research base north of Chengdu, in Sichuan province. Our spring trip was to Guizhou and Sichuan provinces. I was in Chengdu on my birthday at a Chinese cooking school learning how to make some delicious Sichuan food!

Really quick post about Hong Kong

I have absolutely no time so this blog is going to be quick. Last week I flew to Hong Kong (4 hour flight to the southern edge of China) to visit my dad. A few ways to to describe Hong Kong: hot, humid, modern, more capitalist than the rest of China, free, international, home of 7 million residents, full of courteous people, and gorgeous at night. By far my favorite city in China, although most Chinese people I've spoken with don't look at Hong Kong as genuinely Chinese, but rather a far away, ridiculously successful "special administrative region" (SAR, of which China has two: Hong Kong and Macau). It is its own little world, exempt from many of controversial laws and policies the rest of China has. Chinese people have to have a visa to go to Hong Kong, so most haven't been, but they all speak of it as if it was heaven. I have never heard a Chinese person say a single negative thing about Hong Kong. Anyway, here are a few pictures. The night one is a view of Hong Kong Island from across the harbor, in Kowloon. 

Yunnan Part 2

This will be a short post since I have overwhelming amounts of homework. After we left the village in the last post, we headed to quite a few other really small towns and villages. There was a four day period where nearly all we did was hike 5-7 hours per day up and down terraced rice fields (i'll include a picture), and that was mildly unpleasant because of the heat (in the 80s everyday). On one of our last days of hiking we ended up at a place overlooking nothing but terraced fields (which, because it is winter, are currently flooded with water) and mountains. It may have been the best view I have ever seen, but unfortunately that happened to be the one day I left my camera on the bus. Stupid me. 

I forgot to mention that right leaving Kunming we explored a small town where I saw two women with their feet bound. In 9th grade World Civilizations I was taught that there was no one alive today with bound feet, so I asked my Chinese history teacher about it, and she said that although foot binding was banned in the early 1900s, the practice still went on until Mao laid the smack-down on it in the early 1950s. I found that very interesting and almost didn't believe that I was looking at bound feet at first. 

Skipping ahead... in the beginning of our last week in Yunnan we rafted down the Mekong River, which made my mother very nervous even though I assured her we were A. Not in Vietnam and B. Not anywhere near the Mekong Delta and C. Not living during the time of the Vietnam War. The rafting was fun, and we got to have "water wars" with the other boats. The sun was shining, a few clouds in the sky, and the temperature was in the low 80s. A perfect day.

We got out of the river at a small village and spent the night. That night I got up in front of the whole village and told a joke in Chinese, which was pretty nerve racking. But I survived. We stayed three more nights in villages (you can only imagine how disgustingly dirty we all were, since we didn't shower for 4 days), and then returned to the capital of the southern most prefecture in Yunnan, Xishuangbanna. The capital's name is Jinghong. It was a sizable town (big enough to have an airport, but not big enough to have a Mcdonalds), and we stayed there during the next five nights. During the daytime, we went to school with Chinese students at the Jinghong Number 1 Highschool. This was by far the my experience on the trip, but i'll have to save that for my next post. Until then... bye bye. 

苏娥俐

p.s. 1st pic: a chinese teacher and me writing my joke. boys in the background playing basketball with the locals (who all love basketball). 

2nd pic: rafting on the Mekong

3rd pic: terraced rice fields through fog

4th pic: chilling with the local children

5th: a gramma with bound feet: proof that 9th grade world civ has failed me.