Our day trip to Hankou and Wuhan Heaven and Earth (Wuhan Tian Di)

This past Saturday Nathan and I took a day trip to Hankou, one of the three original cities that merged to form the modern day Wuhan. Hankou literally means "The Mouth of the Han," and is at the confluence Han River and the Chang Jiang (what we call the Yangtze) River. We went to the FedEx in Hankou to attempt to deliver some packages. I am actually still in shock that we found it. First of all, it took about five or six taxis before we finally found a driver who understood what we were trying to say and said he knew where the FedEx in Hankou actually was. Then, when we were finally in Hankou, he dropped us off at this giant department store, gesturing that the FedEx was on one of the upper floors of the building. Not knowing how to argue with this, we paid and got out. We wandered around the department store for a bit before asking one of the door guards if he knew where the FedEx was. He said something about it being on the fourth floor (or at least that's what we thought he said), but after finding only kitchen appliances and bedding on the fourth floor, we returned to ask him again, thinking we must have misunderstood. This time he took us over to some elevators on the other side of the entryway (we had been taking a different set of escalators prior to this) and again, he held up four fingers and said what we understood to be "fourth floor." We pushed the up button to get onto one of the twenty or so different elevators, and got in. This elevator, however, didn't have buttons to go to floors 2-4, it went straight from 1 to 5-30 something. A few other people got on too and so we just decided to get off whenever they did and catch an elevator back down to ask a different door guard how to get to the FedEx. The others on the elevator with us got off at floor 14, and so did we. We looked around the corner to see if there were more elevators that could take us to this mysterious fourth floor, and lo and behold, FedEx was right there. I don't know how we were so lucky! Through another long and challenging process we finally got our packages packed and some paperwork filled out and hopefully, someone will be coming to our apartment on Monday to pick up the packages for delivery. 

After this adventure, we stopped at a little coffeeshop to re-charge, and then caught another taxi to Wuhan Tian Di (or Wuhan Heaven and Earth), a park and shopping area we were told by our Chinese tutor is a good place to go in Wuhan. It was really beautiful--the park area was right by the Chang Jiang river and was full of beautiful gardens and fountains and forest areas. After a few hours of walking around, we stopped in the downtown area for a nice dinner. We found a Taiwanese restaurant and had some really flavorful and spicy fried tofu with vegetables, with a side of sauteed cabbage. It was a really wonderful day. Here are a bunch of pictures:

The path from our apartment out to campus

Some academic buildings

Not entirely sure what this place is but Chinese men always seem to be repairing old chairs and tables and the like out here.

The entrance to Culture Street, an area with a bunch of shops and restaurants.

Burton's, a Western style bar/restaurant, is on the left. Al Arabi, a Middle Eastern restaurant, is on the right. 

LuoYu street, where we go to catch the bus or get a taxi. It is constantly full of subway and other construction.

You can see here the motorbiker going in the opposite direction of traffic. We have decided there are so many people driving motorbikes here because it is easier to not follow traffic laws that way by just scooting in between cars and around traffic jams. Although it is not above vans and taxis to drive up on sidewalks in an attempt to get around traffic jams.

After a harrowing visit to FedEx in Hankou, we sought out a coffee or tea shop, and this is what we found. 

Nathan's espresso and my hot honey milk.

Outside the jazz bar across the street from Wuhan Tian Di.

I would tell you what this says if I could :)

This was some kind of museum with both a Chinese and a South African flag in front, as well as...

some awesome statues.

Just a warning at the entrance to the park/beach area at Wuhan Tian Di. No strong men allowed!

Kite flying is a big part of the whole area.

There were kite vendors everywhere.

We couldn't decide if these were actual wedding photos or a wedding photo shoot. 

There were all sorts of paths through the fluffy reeds out to the river, the Chang Jiang. This is apparently what the Chinese call the Yangtze River.

Cool bridge

"I want a picture that shows how tall the reeds are in comparison to me , but also with the river in the background."

Nathan getting all artsy.

Wish we knew what this building was for...

"Water and Stone Battle Formation" You could jump from platform to platform.

Walkway over the water

Good advice!

One of the cooler kites. Giant octopus! 

The downtown area of Wuhan Tian Di

Making an attempt at Christmas decorations.

And then, on our way out, a parade of Christmas clowns, women elves with fake snare drums, and a Santa sleigh with these people dressed in silver spandex with giant silver horns... still wondering what they were supposed to be.

Classroom Happenings

So in an effort to add a little more everydayness to this blog, I’m going to share a couple of fun things that happened in class, more specifically in my Oral English class, this week.

Wednesday afternoons from 2-6pm I teach two consecutive Oral English classes. These are my freshmen students and they are undoubtedly my most excited students of the week. I think this is because they are just starting their college education and so they have yet to be inundated with papers and tests and general college-y responsibilities. During the week of the American Presidential election I taught a short lesson on American government and politics and after our discussion assigned them a 2-3 minute speech on an American President of the their choice. I split them up into two groups of ten students each so that the presentations would take place over two weeks and only take up half of the class period each week. This Wednesday the second group of ten students went and one student chose to give her presentation on George W. Bush. As soon as she pulled up her Powerpoint (interestingly none of them call a Powerpoint presentation a “Powerpoint” but rather they all, including my fellow teachers, say “PPT”) all the students started giggling. On the screen was a large picture of W. Bush. Now there are some pictures of him that I too, would have started laughing at, but this was just an ordinary, presidential picture. I then started hearing whispers of “xiao Bush” spread throughout the classroom. Apparently the Chinese name for George W. Bush is “xiao Bush,” which, if you remember from my last blog entry, means “little Bush.” It makes sense in the context of being the son of H.W. Bush, but it also has the connotation of “cute little Bush” or “little childish Bush.” Fitting, or no? Up to you to decide, but it was certainly funny and unexpected.

After the presentations were finished for the day, I used the second half of class to do a short lesson on Thanksgiving, along with a game and discussion. The discussion included a prompting question of “What are three things that you are thankful for in your life?” I gave them a few minutes to discuss with a partner and then brought it back to the whole class to share their answers with me. I got a lot of the same—thankful for friends, family, and teachers—and then one of the only two boys in my second class stood up to give his answer. He said that he was thankful for his mobile phone, an answer totally out of alignment with all of the other answers I had heard that day. We all laughed and then I asked him “why?” And then, as all my students have an uncanny ability to do, he turned this seemingly superficial answer into something endearing and memorable. He said that a lot of students like himself come from small, countryside villages and are very far away from home. As such, their parents miss them very much and having a mobile phone allows them to be able to stay in contact with their parents, letting them know they are safe and healthy. To be fair, he then followed this up with the second thing he was thankful for being his computer because, and I quote, “I find college life to be quite boring, and I do not like studying, so computer games and surfing the Internet gives me something to do with my time.” I guess Chinese students are not so different from American students after all.

The last thing I’ll share tonight (it is Thanksgiving after all, and Nathan was so kind to surprise me with some nice Spanish wine and Irish cheese) came in response to the assignment I gave my Oral English classes for next week. This is their midterm and it is a 2-3 minute speech, which I have given them ample practice doing, on a topic of their choice. Now I wrote this assignment on a Powerpoint slide because Chinese students apparently do not remember their homework unless it is on the board so they can take a picture of it either with their camera or their phone (seriously, students will pull out a camera in the middle of class to take a picture for their notes instead of just writing it down). On this slide I wrote something along the lines of “Prepare a 2-3 minute speech on a topic of YOUR CHOICE.” This morning I got an email from a student asking, and again I quote, “The topic ‘my choice’ is the main idea. And can I expand it to other topic about CHOICE, such as ‘Never hesitate when you make a choice?’” I thought I had sufficiently explained the concept of the speech in class, emphasizing that they could give a speech on whatever they want—their favorite animal, a place they want to travel to, a sport they like—but apparently the message did not fully permeate. I explained this again to the student in response to her email, asking her to please make sure her classmates understood this distinction but even so, I am looking forward to seeing how many presentations revolving around this supposed topic of “my choice” that I hear next week.

Xiao Mao

This past Saturday Nathan and I went to a gathering of some of his students. We walked over to the sports stadium on campus to meet up with them, not entirely sure what to expect from the afternoon. Tesla, the student who had invited Nathan and me to this event, had simply said in his message that their class was meeting to play some games and do some activities. It is worth noting here that the classes in school are structured a bit differently than in the US. When you enter college as a freshman, you are put into a “class” with other students with your intended major. You then have all of your classes with this same group of students over the course of four years. So suffice to say, they get pretty close. This group of Nathan’s was one such group of freshmen students, intending to major in physics and looking to schedule some bonding time to get to know each other better and all that.

When we got to the stadium, we were met by hundreds of students who were rollerblading around the large concrete field that surrounds the stadium itself. They skated with impressive footwork around mini cones they had set up in various line formations. Chinese pop music blared from the large stereo speakers that stood amidst the hundreds of pairs of locked up shoes lining the area. We think it must have been some sort of competition event, but whatever it was, it was quite fun to watch as we dodged skaters whizzing by from all directions. There were also two large, white fluffy dogs watching the spectacle, which of course made Nathan and my day infinitely better.

We finally found Tesla, one of Nathan’s male students, amidst the crowd and he led us around the skating event to a field on the side of the stadium. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, just chilly enough for a sweater but warm enough that a coat was unnecessary. His class was all there—maybe twenty or twenty five students—sitting in the grass, eating sunflower seeds and chatting. As we approached the group, they all stood up and clapped for us, something we are getting to expect when we encounter any students, either in the classroom setting or outside of it. We went through some introductions for my sake and then jumped into the games. Tesla and another boy, Leo (who Nathan gave the name to because the kid apparently likes Leonardo diCaprio movies a lot), helped us by translating the rules and such.

           

We played a couple of games familiar to me from my time working as a camp counselor, including The Human Knot and Red Rover. But perhaps the best part of the afternoon (aside from the dogs of course) came at the end of the “Xiao Mao,” or “Little Cat,” game. The game basically consists of one person in the middle, the little cat, who has to go around to different people in the surrounding circle and try to make them laugh by saying “Meow” as creatively or goofily as possible. They have three tries to do this. The person they are trying to make laugh has to pet the meow-er’s head in between each attempt and say something along the lines of “Poor little cat,” all without smiling or laughing. You can imagine this game is right up my alley. Anyway, after several rounds—one of which consisted of Nathan being the one in the middle and merely having to walk up to one of the girls before she collapsed on the ground laughing—one boy was stuck in the middle, unable to get anybody to laugh time and time again. By the loose rules of this game, that means he lost. And as we had found out from the few games we played before Xiao Mao, when you lose at a Chinese game, the rest of the players pick your punishment, and this generally takes the form of having to do something embarrassing in front of the group.

Of course, the conversation in which they were discussing possible punishments was all in Chinese, so I zoned out and started watching adorable and tiny, brown-curly-haired puppy that was prancing around the field behind us like a rabbit. After a few minutes Tesla, who was standing next to me, leaned over and said they had decided to have the boy ask someone to marry him and they were deciding now who that someone would be. From the way they were gesturing in Nathan and my general direction, we inferred it was between the two of us foreigners. Sure enough, after another couple of minutes of discussion, the boy walked over, with the rest of his classmates giggling in a semicircle formation around him. Everyone pulled out their phones to take pictures and videos of the coming proposal. He stood in front of me, looking like he was attempting to gather his thoughts while a few girls to the side kept pointing to the ground saying “Get down on one knee! That’s how they do it!”

And so he did, and the proposal was far more elaborate than one would expect from a dare/punishment. I think the highlight of the whole thing would have to be a tie between the non-stop giggling by his classmates (and by the proposer as well—I don’t want this encounter to come off as a malicious punishment he endured for he, having a class clown-like personality, was getting a kick out of it as well) and him saying “I know I’m not as tall as Nathan…but I would always do everything I could to make you happy.” The whole speech was four or five minutes long and ended with ample applause and laughter. Certainly an unexpected scenario for the afternoon out with a bunch of students, but I think that Nathan and I got just as much joy out of it as they did.

Pictures from Chengdu and Jiuzhaigou (finally!)

Pandas in Chengdu, doing what they do best... eating.

A red panda

Nap time!

At the panda research center

The first path at Jiuzhaigou National Park

I thought this tree looked like a witch's hand

One of the Tibetan villages along the way

A glimpse of the unreal blue water

And just in case you forgot about the pandas with all the beauty of Jiuzhaigou, here are some baby pandas. Apparently we caught them at a good stage in their development. Just a few months before this point they look like naked mole rats.

The Opening Ceremonies, The Chinese BBQ, and The Kitchen Rodent

The past few days have certainly been an interesting bunch and so I thought I’d share a few vignettes of some of what’s been going on. The stories are threefold: The Opening Ceremonies, The Chinese BBQ, and The Kitchen Rodent.

The Opening Ceremonies:

This Thursday through tomorrow (Sunday) is the All-School Sports Meet here at CCNU. I tried asking my students what exactly this “all-school sports meet” entails but I mostly received blank stares. What I’ve gathered is that there are various events ranging from the long jump to badminton which any student can enter and then compete in on game day. I’m not sure if there are prizes or what but all the hullabaloo surrounding the Sports Meet, to me, indicates some sort of honor given either to the individual or department the student is from if they win. A few of my students were participating in the track and field events so hopefully this week I can get more information on the award side of things. Regardless, a few of us Americans decided it would be worth it to wake up early Thursday morning (even though classes were cancelled and our four-day weekend had begun) to catch the Opening Ceremonies at 8am. By 7:45 the Sports Stadium, a building of 1980’s sterile metal architecture, was packed with viewers from age two to eighty. Huge helium-filled red and yellow lantern balloons lined the stands and a round, metal platform stood tall in the center of the field. By 8am the festivities had begun and groups of students and teachers began marching around the track to Chinese patriotic music blaring from the loudspeakers. We could not really tell which group was which or how they were even divided—it could have been by event, by department, by extra-curricular activities, or a combination of all three. Anyway, for the next hour+ these groups marched around the track, some pausing in the center of the long stretch in front of the main stands to perform a dance of some sort.

Two groups stood out in particular. The first was a group of students whose affiliation is still unknown. I’m assuming they had some loyalty to Apple because before they broke out into their dance they raised a giant picture of an Iphone over their heads. What made their performance memorable though was that as soon as they dropped the Iphone display, Michael Jackson’s Beat It came blaring over the speakers and they broke out into Thriller-esque Jackson moves. This was quickly followed by the song Gangnam Style and the accompanying PSY dance. The enthusiasm and obvious effort put into organizing this medley was much appreciated by all in the audience. The second group was what we can only assume was the Student Communist Group or Communist History Group because they came marching around the track with the front row carrying large framed pictures of Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Marx, and Engels, with the group of students trailing behind the leaders holding a large sheet imprinted with Marx’s face high above their heads. Suffice to say they did not perform any sort of dance as they passed the center stands.

The Chinese BBQ

After the Opening Ceremonies, Nathan and I met up with one of his department heads to go to a BBQ for the teachers in his department. We drove over to Forest Park (about twenty minutes from campus) with two teachers, one of whom was actually a guest teacher at Augie from 1999-2000. We were excited to finally see a park area in Wuhan, since pretty much all we have seen with the exception of East Lake has been huge buildings and other typical big city fare. The park itself was beautiful (though we had to pay to get in) with fields of wildflowers overlooking the lake, orchards of bonsai trees, and lotus gardens. We drove further in, passing vendors selling hammocks resembling fishing nets and various spices and barbecuing paraphernalia. Finally we reached the designated BBQ spot, a forested area nestled into a curve of the lake. We wandered a bit looking for a space a to set up camp, but being a beautiful afternoon, it was quite crowded. As we walked, a woman who we finally deduced must work for the park in some capacity, approached us. She was dressed in long, flowing pants with a similarly styled tunic of the same deep purple linen. These garments (aside from the color) is the typical garb of street-cleaners  garbage collectors, and other such public workers in Wuhan. She led us to various sites to set up, but our department head was insistent that we found a spot with a good outlook over the lake. After much animated conversation, we finally we found a spot that was acceptable and the woman quickly brought over a small, rectangular grill. She threw a handful of flaming kindling into the grill and disappeared. Now, as our hosts admitted, BBQ is not an inherently Chinese tradition but rather one they have recently taken from Americans. As such, they are still trying to figure out the art of working a grill. Nevertheless, the experience was quite enjoyable. Before grilling we had to take all the food over to these long, public sinks located every 50 or so meters for washing, as you must do with any raw fruits or veggies in China. The food was quite different from the typical American BBQ—instead of hot dogs, burgers, and brats we had skewered eggplant, mushrooms, tofu, chicken, steamed buns, shrimp and cucumber all coated with sunflower oil and hot chili powder. Just when we thought there was no more food to be had, more appeared from somewhere. We munched on the kebabs as they were finished and conversed with each other about different traditions in Chinese and American culture. At the end of the afternoon there was (unbelievably) food left over and so we all took a few bags full of fresh veggies home with us.

The Kitchen Rodent

Well I have long-suspected that a rodent of some kind has been living, or at least visiting, my kitchen, but this has been confirmed this weekend. Tonight, Nathan and I were cooking a lovely dinner of eggplant with yellow bean curd, and Chinese cabbage with cucumber, white beans, and glass noodles. While cooking the eggplant, I reached next to the stove to grab the container of oil to add a bit to the steaming wok and I saw a gray ball of fur pop out from the side of the stove and quickly run back. I let our a yelp and backed away with a jump. Nathan looked at me and asked with concern, “What happened?” No sooner had he asked the question than we saw a small gray rat/mouse run out from the other side of the stove, around the perimeter of the counter, around the back edge of the sink, and disappear around the other side of the counter which was from our vantage point, hidden by the fridge. As we witnessed this, both Nathan and I had jumped back with various yells of shock and general distress toward the kitchen door, unsure if the rat/mouse was going to jump onto the floor and charge at us, or if he had some hole he was looking to jump into to escape. After a moment’s pause we slowly crept forward to turn off the burners on the stove. Hearing no more rodent noises, we approached the sink area to see if he was hiding on the counter previously blocked from our sight by the fridge. We saw nothing and so assumed he must have crawled down through the hole in the counter where the gas pipe snakes down beneath the sink to reach our hot water heater. After taking a few minutes to recover, we resumed cooking and have thankfully not seen him since. We will, however, be seeking a means to get rid of our little friend tomorrow. I wish this did not have to be so, but considering the diseases rodents are able to carry, I do not wish to share residence with such a creature. Never a dull moment in China I guess. At least he didn’t jump into any of our food as he ran across the counter!

Thoughts on learning Mandarin

Well it has been almost two months since we arrived in China, giving ourselves up to absorb and indulge in this foreign experience. I wrote my first blog entry just a few days after getting to Wuhan and as such it reflects some of the immediate shock and nervousness I felt after realizing the extent to which China is different from any other foreign country I’ve been to in terms of the language barrier. Since then, I have found this issue of language to be no less pervasive but I have realized that I think it would be quite possible to live here for a year knowing only a few key phrases, numbers, and having a keen ability to both utilize and interpret the universal human language of pointing. This was indeed a comforting realization to come to for it took the panic out of daily interactions. However, though perfecting these kinds of basic communication skills has been important in settling in to life in China, both Nathan and I wanted to at least make an attempt at a deeper connection to Chinese culture and community. So we found ourselves a tutor and have begun the slow and arduous process of learning Chinese. This has been a simultaneously interesting, rewarding, and frustrating endeavor and so I thought I would share some of my early reactions to learning Mandarin.

Admittedly, I have not devoted a large part of my academic career to language learning. I took four years of Spanish in high school and a once a week Chinese tutorial with my roommate Maggie the last term of college. But one main difference I have been coming to terms with between learning Spanish and learning Mandarin is that in studying Spanish vocabulary, each word means something different. This may seem obvious, but consider then that in Chinese, one word has at least four different meanings, dependent upon the tone used with it. And there are some words with the same tone that mean completely different things. For this reason, Chinese people often have to trace the character for the word (because all the characters are different) in the palm of their hand in the middle of a conversation. The classic example would be the word ‘ma.’ With the first tone, pronounced high and level, ma means mother (妈). With the second tone, which starts medium in tone and then rises to the top, ma means numb (麻). With the third tone, starts low, dips to the bottom, and then rises to the top, ma means horse (马). Finally, with the fourth tone, which starts at the top and falls sharp and strong to the bottom, ma means scold (骂). With the way my mind works, it is a whole lot easier for me to sit down and memorize a hundred different vocabulary words than only twenty five words with four different tones and at least four different meanings each.

This brings me to the next problem I’ve encountered with my Chinese language learning—actually using the tones and using them correctly. This problem takes two forms. First, when speaking English, I have what some would describe as a fairly monotone voice and so I am not naturally inclined to use different intonations in order to express my emotions fully. Because of this, I might be really excited about or interested in something, but unless you know me, you may not be able to tell this simply from vocal cues. This is problematic when every word in Chinese demands tonal attention. Nathan and I were discussing which would be worse—a monotone inclined person like myself having to overemphasize every word, or a hyper-tonal person trying to funnel their excitability into the correct tones. We didn’t come to a conclusion on this point. However, recognizing this personal challenge, in my study I am overemphasizing the tones until they begin to flow more naturally off of my tongue.

The second major tonal problem so far is one that I think most English speakers would have with Chinese. My confidence with the new words I am learning is still pretty low, especially because I’m not always sure if I’m remembering the correct tone to use or if my pronunciation is understandable. Sometimes I am understood, but sometimes when I’m out at a restaurant or a market and I try to communicate beyond saying “hello,” “goodbye,” or “thank you,” I am met with a tilted head or confused look from the waitress or storeowner. So I will repeat myself, but at this point I am questioning whether I am saying the word correctly and so, as I would do in English, I inadvertently add a lilt to the end of the word, intimating a question (“am I saying this word right?” or “do you understand what I’m trying to say?”). However, this does not work because it changes the word entirely if it was not meant to be said with the second tone (the low to high, lilting tone). Instead of the end-of-the-sentence-lilt, the Chinese add a neutral tone “ma” to the end of a sentence to ask a question. So in this whole process, I end up further confusing whoever I am communicating with. This also happens with the general arc of a sentence or a group of sentences. We have a certain way we phrase our thoughts and use tonality to express an emotion or emphasize an intention, and though I’m sure there is some sort of equivalent in Mandarin, it is not the same as it is in English largely because of the different usage of tones.   

I have noticed the inverse problem holds true for my students, which makes me feel a bit better about my own struggle. With the exception of one or two students, when they speak English, it is with an unbreakable monotone. Each sentence is flat and you do not get a sense of whether they are making a statement, exclamation, or posing a question. And I think this is for the same reason I am struggling with the flow of Chinese sentences—we simply use tones for different purposes in both languages.

Anyway, those are a few of my initial thoughts on learning Mandarin. Progress is slow, but it is certainly rewarding when I am able to communicate with or understand someone in a way I was not able to previously.

National Holiday Trip

One of the adjustments to living in China has been changing my expectations for a holiday schedule. By this I mean the realization that we are teaching classes on Thanksgiving and Christmas, two days I am used to having 1 to 3 week breaks scheduled around, having time to spend with friends and family, eating food, playing games, and just generally relaxing.

However, as one would expect, China has its own national holidays, one of which took place just two weeks ago. The National Holiday begins on October 1^st and is a 7-day holiday that includes various festivals, fireworks, concerts, and general government organized celebrations. The Holiday itself is to celebrate the founding of the People’s Republic of China which took place on October 1, 1949. All of China, including Hong Kong and Macau, recognize this week-long holiday, and most people do not have to work during this time.

Luckily for us, teachers and students fall into the category of people who have the entire National Holiday off. As such, Nathan, Becca (another American teacher here at CCNU), and I decided to take advantage of this vacation time and plan a trip. Nathan has a friend studying at a university in Chengdu, Sichuan province so we did a little research on the area to see if it would be a worthwhile place to visit. It did not take us long to discover that Chengdu is one of the few places you can see pandas in China and so our decision was pretty much made for us. We booked a few hostels and a train ticket and were on our way a week later.

Trains in China, slow trains at least, have three different seat types: hard seats, hard sleepers, and soft sleepers. Both kinds of sleepers were sold out by the time we bought our tickets so we were left with the hard seats, which we weren’t too upset about since they are the cheapest tickets. The seats were pretty cramped but certainly provided more leg space than an airplane. None of us set too high of expectations for the train ride and we knew that we were traveling over the Holiday so it would be crowded. We had been told by other teachers to expect people to be sitting and standing in the aisles and that we would probably have to kick people out of our seats when we boarded. Our expectations fell even further when, after we had been on the train no longer than five minutes, a toddler squatted down and peed on the floor right next to us. This all got cleaned up and the child was scolded by his parents, but we kept all our belongings on our laps after that. Overall though, it was not a bad experience. We left around 8pm Thursday night and we spent most of the 15 hour ride playing cards and dozing on and off. For the first half we had some very friendly Chinese people next to us, one of which spoke some English, so we chatted with her and played with her friend’s baby (who was enchanted by Becca’s blonde hair). By around noon the next morning we were in Chengdu and we set off to check into our hostel and meet up with Nathan’s friend, Clay.

We spent the next couple of days exploring Chengdu with Clay and some of the friends he had made at his University. We went to a couple of markets where we were able to practice our bartering skills. The markets were filled with jade jewelry and bronze Buddha sculptures. There is a large Tibetan population in Chengdu and so we browsed shop after shop of Buddhist merchandise from shops selling clothing for monks to workshops where huge religious sculptures were being carved from wood. We also ate at a Tibetan restaurant which was delicious! Nathan and Becca had yak dumplings (which are apparently very good) and I had some potato dumplings. All the dumplings came with this delicious sauce which was almost like a salsa. Very spicy and tomato-y. For our entree we all split what I can best describe as a Tibetan calzone. The shell was made from a pizza like dough and the inside was filled with grilled vegetables. We also ordered a pot of traditional yak milk butter tea. It tasted pretty much how you would imagine—like butter in tea form. I rather liked it before the meal, but it wasn’t the best drink to have to accompany food.  

Thankfully our hostel was only about a 15 minute walk from Clay’s university, so we were able to move freely between the two places without paying for cabs. Our first hostel was very comfortable. The beds were what we have grown to expect from China—rock hard—but the decor was inviting and the employees were very helpful. We saw a sign near our rooms for the Sichuan face-changing opera and so one afternoon we asked one of the receptionists about it. He helped us book tickets for that night and so we ventured into a more downtown area of Chengdu to see the show. The theatre itself was fairly small and there were small electronic screens on either side of the stage with English translations. The show was not necessarily what I would have thought to call an opera as there was really only one song sung in the entire hour and a half. However, there was plenty of music and dancing. The music was interesting because it was very clearly pulling on traditional Chinese instrumentation and motifs, however there were many modern elements added to it, most notably some club-like dance beats. The lights used during the show were another really great use of modern technology. There were several points where the lights created an almost holographic illusion. This was used once for a sort of time-warp or blackhole image. There was a knife thrower, funny jokes by the Chinese jester of the show, and some Cirque du Soleil-esque acrobatics. And finally, for the last 15 or so minutes, we figured out what the whole face-changing concept was all about. With traditional Chinese military march music blaring in the background, four actors wearing HUGE elaborate headresses, silk costumes, and carrying brightly colored silk flags came running out into the audience. They would come over to different audience members, shake your hand, stare at you for a moment, wave the flag across their face and voila! When the flag passed over their face, their mask was changed to a different design. They did this several times, and then more actors came out with, if it is even possible to imagine, even bigger, more elaborate costumes, to continue the face-changing magic. It was definitely money well spent. And, as we were walking out afterwards, we were stopped by a man from Singapore with a British accent who interviewed us for a China tourist documentary he and his crew are filming.

This year the Mid-Autumn Festival (also called the Moon Festival) fell during the National Holiday. The Moon Festival celebrates the end of the fall harvest and falls on the 15^th day of the 8^th month in the Chinese calendar. By our Western calendar this is the end of September or beginning of October. It is a very important holiday across China, Taiwan, and Vietnam and is traditionally celebrated by carrying or hanging lanterns (symbolizing the moon) from buildings with wishes or riddles inside of them, large family gatherings, and eating moon cakes. Moon cakes are an interesting Chinese baked good. Typically they have a chewy and sugary pastry dough crust and are filled with some kind of bean or fruit paste with a salted duck egg yolk in the very center to symbolize the moon. Mooncakes can also be made with a meat filling which, for me, sounds like a surefire way to ruin a perfectly good pastry. Despite looking a bit rubbery the cakes are quite pretty—they are usually no bigger than your average American biscuit and are imprinted with the Chinese characters for “longevity” or “harmony.” We spent our Moon Festival seeing pandas, but when we went to Clay’s university later that day one of his Chinese friends, Serena, had bought all of us mooncakes to try. Mine had some sort of fruit paste in the middle. It was like an extremely dense, less sugary sweet, jelly donut.

Like I said, we spent our Moon Festival at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. It is hard to put into words how adorable the pandas were—they were simply unreal and incredibly silly-looking. Nathan and I decided that they basically look like humans in animal suits. All of them—in the entire park—were laying on their backs, eating. Many had piles of bamboo just strewn across their bellies, either as a stockpile for more eating or because they were too lazy to throw the shoots they finished eating away from their body. There were also red pandas which look kind of like a larger, fluffier raccoon. These guys were much more active and roamed fairly freely around the park. We even came across one on the tourist walkway, coming toward us from the opposite direction. The Research Base also had baby pandas which we were lucky enough to see at a cute stage in their life. I would advise any reader to not look up pictures of newborn or even infant pandas for it will ruin any standard of cuteness you may have in your head for baby animals. They are like naked mole-rats at that stage. However, after a few months, they are little fluff balls pawing around for food.

After our several days of fun in Chengdu we embarked on the second part of our vacation. One of Nathan’s department heads had told us of a beautiful National Park about ten hours north of Chengdu in Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan. Wanting to see some nature, we planned a trip. We learned two important things about traveling in China on the bus ride to Jiuzhaigou.

1.)    Chinese drivers are crazy. We had witnessed their erratic driving in the context of Wuhan-driving, but driving through the mountainous countryside was an entirely different experience. Passing on a two lane road was an all too real game of chicken in which two vehicles (often times two coach buses) would compete for a spot on the road, trying to pass in the wrong lane even around corners and even when another car or bus was in that other lane coming at us. I eventually had to stop watching the road because I was certain we were going to get into an accident and end up in the rivers below the mountains we were driving up and around.

2.)    Traveling when all of the rest of China is traveling is not the best idea if you are hoping for a peaceful trip where everything goes according to plan. About an hour outside Jiuzhaigou we were stopped by the police for two hours because there was too much traffic on the road (we’re assuming this is linked to the problem laid out in point #1). After these two hours had passed (thankfully this occurred during dinner time so we were able to get out of the bus and get some food) we got back on the road and not thirty minutes later were stopped again. This time we were not told why we were stopped or for how long we would be. After about an hour and a half we started up again. Just in time too because we were starting to think it might be quicker to just get out and walk the rest of the way. Then, on the bus ride back to Chengdu, we got caught in this massive traffic jam where we were creeping along and intermittently stopped for random periods of time, sometimes in tunnels under mountains or on bridges (a particularly frightening experience considering how many bridges have collapsed in China in recent years). It took us between 2 and 3 hours to make it out of this traffic jam, which was stressful because unlike the jams on the way to Jiuzhaigou, we had no concept of how close we were to Chengdu and when we looked out the windows of the bus at the extent of the jam in front of us, it snaked on as far as we could see. Turns out the jam was because there were a bunch of multi-lane roads merging into a one-lane road, back into a multi-lane road, and then merging again into a one-lane road into order to then merge onto the highway. You can imagine this situation was not helped by nobody obeying any sort of traffic rules.

Jiuzhaigou itself was beautiful though. We got to the National Park around 7:30am after our day of travel the day before. They offered a bus to the top of the park where all the “scenic” sights were, but we opted to walk it. But literally everyone else (and there were hundreds if not thousands of Chinese people there) took buses up. Which turned out to be nice for us because we were the only people on the hiking path. We were stopped several times though before we made it out onto the path and were asked if we were really sure we didn’t want to take the bus. The hike was wonderful. The first area we walked through was wooded, but the path followed a river most of the way up. The river had some of the bluest water I’ve ever seen—an unreal cerulean that made the water look as though it were dyed or had bright blue tarps laid out underneath it. We encountered waterfalls every ten or twenty minutes and finally broke out into a grassland full of wildflowers and surrounded by mountains. The sides of the mountains were covered in pine trees, filling the air with a clean, woody scent. After all the pollution of Wuhan, just breathing the air in Jiuzhaigou was possibly the best part of the trip.

Unfortunately, my computer charger broke this week so I cannot load my pictures until I get that fixed (I deleted the pictures from my camera after I loaded them onto my laptop and I am writing this blog entry on the tv/desktop computer provided in the apartment). I’ll give a few more details of the sights when I am able to post the pictures because I fear I may make the waterfalls and Tibetan villages and mountain valleys seem plain compared to their actual wonder.

After a 15 hour bus ride back to Chengdu and a 19 hour train ride back to Wuhan the next day, we were all sufficiently exhausted and ready for a break from traveling. I feel proud, though, that we were able to travel to these two places—buying bus and train tickets, navigating taxis and hostel and hotels—in a foreign country and knowing very little Chinese. It certainly boosted all of our confidence, I think, and gave us an even broader perspective on Chinese culture.