Yangtze Pics

Cruising down the Yangtze

On Friday morning I left with a few others to go on a Three Gorges Yangtze River cruise. The bus ride to get to the boat was filled with old, loud, Chongqing people. A sign of things to come. The foreigners’ ears were ringing as the others screamed up and down the bus at each other, over the cacophony of a James Bond movie that had audio playing both Chinese and English simultaneously. After Bond, there was a Chinese comedy DVD, which I'm sorry to say, had a strange Jerry Lewis feel to it.

The first stop on the bus was to see a waterfall. Maybe Canada and the U.S. should take a page from China’s book and start charging people to look at Niagara Falls? In China no scenic spot comes without a price tag. For some unknown reason, the bus also stopped at some warehouse/store named Carpenter Tan, where the main products on sale were expensive wooden combs. Can anyone explain how a comb could be worth a few thousand renminbi? Once we finally got onto the boat there were a couple of hours before stopping at another tourist trap. This one was the shrine of Zhang Fei, or something like that. More pictures were taken.

Our cabin on the boat was tiny, but at least there was a western style toilet seat. Too bad hot water was lacking in the shower. We would become quite acquainted with our cabin as the trip grew longer. What was supposed to be a 3 day trip turned into 4.

From Saturday morning to Sunday evening the boat was docked in one place as a thick fog had descended over the Yangtze. By Saturday night there was a mutiny brewing on the ship, as dozens of angry passengers berated the couple of crew members standing behind the main service desk. I have no way of knowing what was being said, but it must have mostly been about the passengers not believing that it was too dangerous to keep going in the fog. After all, we started in fog, ended in fog, and had fog, fog, fog and more fog in between.

We took buses through the hills to get to the 3 Gorges Damn. It seems to me to be quite the prototypical China thing to do to make a huge pile of concrete into a tourist attraction. No mention anywhere of the millions of homes lost because of the building of the damn. And definitely no mention of the actual and potential environmental impact of the project, but there was a lovely little garden for the tourists to walk through as they snapped their pictures.

Sports Day

All the universities in Chongqing have their intramural sports competitions on the same couple of days. I and the other foreign teachers were driven out to catch the opening ceremonies of our school's competition. We arrived late, and all we saw were some Chinese style group calisthenics.

Yangren Jie

Today I visited the wackiest place you can find in Chongqing. Named "Foreigner Street", I thought we were going to a street where there would be a series of foreign shops and restaurants. Little did I know that it would actually be a strange Disney-like theme park, where the main attraction is strange toilets/sinks/bathrooms. Google Chongqing and one of the first things you will find is an image of the lovely shaped sinks.

The park was complete with a parade that included Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and "It's a Small World After All" blaring on the sound system. Unfortunately I was too busy eating some yummy Indian food during the parade to take any pictures of it.

Shopping Sucks (even more than usual)

Can someone explain to me why Chinese people have such small feet? I see men all the time who are as tall or taller than me, but I can't find a decent pair of shoes in my size. Now I don't have large feet, exactly average for shoes sold in North America. So can anyone give me a reasonable explanation as to how Chinese people don't constantly fall over from the sheer tininess of their lower extremities in contact with the ground? I think it must be super duper balance, which would also account for all those gold medals at the Olympics. If you see how they like to squat on curbs and the edges of any other large, inanimate objects, you may agree.

http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/1505340.htm

Chinese New Year

I recently returned to Chongqing after spending the Chinese New Year with a family in Hunan province. I was invited by the woman who works in the foreign affairs department at the university, Juliya, and we stayed most of the time in her family's old apartment in a town named Taoyuan. It wasn't always the most fun, but was packed full of the essential Chinese cultural experiences, and I was definitely in parts of China where no foreigners would ever go.

The morning of New Years day sounded like a war zone, firecrackers going off non-stop. We woke up just before 6:00am, b/c in that area of China it is the tradition to have a big family meal before sunrise. We were then off to the rural village where Juliya's husband grew up, to visit the tomb of his parents. It became very obvious why Juliya's husband loves reading and is a professor - it allowed him to get away from that kind of desolate, rural life.

I also witnessed drunk, middle-aged Chinese men singing Karaoke, and understand how they get so drunk. They drink baijiu, more than 50% alcohol, out of teacups, and at dinner parties there are endless toasts. Each person goes around the table and forces everyone individually to drink. At the dinner party I attended there was a special toast for me - something about improving Chinese-Canadian relations, as well as a mention about Dr. Bethune.

Stone Forest - Shilin

Just as it sounds. There was the main area where all the Chinese tourist groups went around, with people selling the usual tourist stuff, and then there were more secluded areas. Sticking around till dusk was a good decision, as the place became much more surreal.

Wild Elephant Valley and Nature Reserve

There were no elephants to be seen, but you could have a picture taken and photo-shopped to make it look like you were standing in front of one. Best part of the place was the cable car ride.

Xiding

From Jinghong we got in a little Chinese style mini-van and left for a small town named Xiding. Starting out early in the morning it was difficult to see outside the windows, and there was little to see besides flat, desolate farmland. Then once we got passed another town, where most tourists stop for the day, the landscape and scenery improved (though the road got noticeably bumpier). All of the sudden we were seeing mountains pop up through the clouds of fog.

Up one mountain we rode, our final destination being where the town holds its weekly market (plus a nice, white pagoda). There was nothing spectacular about the market itself, but there were some Hani women in their finest head gear. Our driver took us to the restaurant in the area, where he seemed to be friends with everyone, even helping prepare the fish for lunch. We had what I consider to be just about the tastiest meal since living in China, accompanied by travel companions from the UK and Austria.

On the way back from Xiding we stopped off at a small Buddhist monastery/pagoda, and then a tiny village on the side of the road. It felt a little strange walking into this village for no good reason, and then being accosted by a few women wishing to sell the white folk all their tourist nicknacks.

Xishuangbanna

Our next stop after Kunming and the Western Mountains was Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture. It is the southern most part of Yunnan, bordering with Burma and Laos. Quite different from other areas of China, the Han Chinese are not the majority in the area, the largest ethnic group being the Dai, and it feels like you have entered a new country that is half Chinese, half Thai. The name of Xishuangbanna was established in 1570 during the Ming Dynasty, at which time the area was divided into 12 sub-districts, or "Xishuang" (meaning 12 in the Dai language), for the purpose of collecting taxes. In the Dai language, a "Banna" is one thousand Mu, a unit of measurement in Chinese similar to an acre.

From Kunming we took a 10 hour ride on a sleeper bus (I didn't fit in my bunk) to Jinghong, the capital city of Xishuangbanna, which by Chinese standards feels like a little town. There is nothing much going on in the city itself, but it is a hub for travellers looking to explore the surrounding countryside. We simply sat around in a foreigner friendly cafe and met other people who were looking to share the cost of hiring a driver for the day.

Kunming

Over the Christmas/New Year holidays I had a visit from the beautiful Miss Tanya Erassova. We spent a week traveling through Yunnan province. Our various modes of transportation were complete with trains, planes, and automobiles.

Our first stop was in the provincial capital of Kunming, aka Spring City - it never gets too hot in the summer, and never too cold in the winter. Kunming itself isn't all that interesting, just another big Chinese city, but it was nice to be able to differentiate the sky from the clouds for a change.

We spent one day just outside the city in an area called Xishan (Western Mountains). Getting there was interesting, and provided the first instance in which I realized that my guide book was not to be trusted. Once there we climbed high up the mountain in search of something called the Mini Stone Forest, only to discover that there were just a few small rocks next to the path.

The first 3 pics are from Xishan. The last is from the centre of the city, and needed to be taken quickly, because of all the people begging the foreigners for money, intent on ruining our pictures.

Chengdu - Part II

Our hostel was in the small Tibetan part of the city. Walking around that area there were many men dressed in monks clothes that would come up to us with a picture of a burned down monastery accompanied by an explanation in Chinese and Tibetan. They would get fairly pushy, stroking your arm, and one even rubbed my belly. All this seemed kind of fishy, but we gave some money to one of them, and then subsequently tried to explain to all the rest that we'd already given their friend money and to leave us alone. The first day we had lunch at a Tibetan restaurant and they would walk inside and harass us. The Tibetan people working in the restaurant didn't take too kindly to them, which made us even more suspicious of what was going on. (There was also a shop we walked by where anyone could by monk's robes)

So basically we were good little tourists in Chengdu. We went to a mausoleum/museum/gardens commemorating Guan Yu, Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, who were these important guys during the 3 kingdoms period in China (~200 AD) who took an oath of brotherhood. Rememberance day in China (at least at int'l schools) is about these kindof guys. We also went to a Buddhist monastery where monks still live though its a tourist attraction, to a Tex-mex restaurant, and to see the pandas.

Chengdu - Part I - Getting There

This weekend I traveled to Chengdu with Jesse & Chris. Chengdu is the closest major city to Chongqing and is the capital of Sichuan province. We were supposed to leave at 5:50pm Thurs evening, but somebody (who shall remain nameless) was mistaken about which train station we were supposed to leave from. First, we went to the North Train Station, arriving at about 5:30, only to be told that there are no trains that go to Chengdu from there. We then taxied it to Chongqing North train station, getting there 2o minutes too late. In Chinese the 2 stations don't sound as similar as in English.

So we exchanged are tickets for the 12:30am train, which was a bad idea. Hindsight being as it is, the best thing would have been to take the 6:00 am train. Our tickets got us onto the train, but did not provide us with seats. This wouldn't have been all that bad, but keep in mind that we were on the train for 5 hours, and this train was filled with people who had already been on it for as long as 30 hours. It was loud, (what were these people talking about at 2:30 in the morning?) filled with smoke, (even the train employees were smoking at that time of night), and crammed tightly so that the aisles and spaces between cars were filled with seatless people.

Jesse was standing next to a baby, which was in its assless pants. This meant that he had a birds eye view of how babies in China relieve themselves on Chinese trains. At around 3:00, after a few stops, I managed to get a seat. Seated next to me was a wisp of a man, not much more than a skeleton, who looked slated to have died a few days beforehand. All in all, not a pleasant experience. Jesse said it was only his second worst train ride in China, so that gives me something to look forward to :P

TV Interview

Yesterday I had my five minutes of fame and was interviewed about Halloween. As we were waiting for the crew to set up the stage I was asked by some other people to enter a soundproof room and read a few lines of English. A couple of the lines had the acronym MUN, so I assume that refers to Model United Nations. I'd be interested to know where my voice will be heard.

For the Halloween interview there was also an Irish teacher with me. He carried most of the load answering questions, since he knew about the origins of Halloween, traditional legends and games etc... I didn't have anything nearly as interesting to talk about, just the basics of trick or treating costumes. Our interviewer was very nervous and she kept forgetting her questions and fumbling over her words. I think it was her first time interviewing people on camera. When the team is finished editing I will receive a copy of the interview.

Halloween and other developments

Last night I went to a Halloween party in the district closest to the school. It was at a restaurant called A Taste of Singapore. It's a foreigner friendly place with owners who speak English. The food was disappointing; a buffet with Western style Asian food... strange how the fake Chinese food costs more than the real food in China. My costume was a bit unimaginative, and I have just decided to name it Zionist Zvi.

On a different but related note, I may be interviewed on some school tv program run by journalism students from the university next door. They get different foreigners to talk about random Western things, and I will probably have a conversation about Halloween. So quick, tell me what fun things I should make up to tell them.

English Corner

My neighbour university is a foreign language institute. A couple of times a week they have an "English corner" where students come to practice speaking. Tonight I subjected myself to the onslaught of questions for the first time. There were the typical, mundane questions...where are you from, how long have you been in Chongqing, what do you like most about China... then there were some more interesting and in-depth questions.

One young lady lept out of the gates with "are you Christian?", to which I simply replied no, but then there was the follow up question "why not?"..... well you see my family is Jewish..."Is Jesus your God?" ... uhhhmmm no... "what do Jewish people believe in?"uuuhhhh, well............. etc.

Then there were a few who thought I should be an expert on the American financial crisis. All in all an interesting experience, but not one I really need to repeat.

Museum

Yesterday I finally went inside the museum that sits just outside the university campus. It commemorates a coal mine that was turned into a prison by the KMT. In November 1949 the Communists came and "liberated" Chongqing, but just before they arrived all the political prisoners in this jail were executed. Most of the museum is dedicated to pictures and stories of the prisoners who were killed. Not exactly the most fun thing to learn about on a Sunday afternoon. I managed to get off one picture inside the museum before security guards told me photographs are not permitted.

I’ve been meaning to write a longwinded account of my time here in CQ now that I’ve been here over a month. So here are some of my observations. More to common later.

The weather at the beginning of October here is still like the middle of summer in Toronto. Still highs in the low 20s for the next few days. I've been told that even in the winter it will remain humid here, and that the area only has 2 seasons, summer and winter. Of course their winter will feel like fall to me. The air is not too bad on the old campus, since there is so much foliage, but when I leave campus I can definitely feel a difference.

I like being on the old campus because it is fairly small and quiet, and is where all the graduate and post-graduate students take courses. The new campus is large and expansive. All the undergraduate courses are there, and in September you can see the freshmen marching around in their baggy army uniforms. All college students are supposed to go through a month of basic training, but it does not appear to be anything strenuous or useful.

Leaving campus one gets to experience the craziness of driving in China. CQ city probably has a population of about 12 million, but there is no subway system. More than half of the vehicles on the city road are buses. Lanes are simply suggestions, three lanes turn into four of five, passing on the shoulder is common place, as is driving on the wrong side of the road. Pedestrians don’t obey your signals, or you might just get run over by someone nonchalantly driving through a red. Using your horn is a must to let other drivers know you are simply there, or passing them so as to make sure that don’t change lanes into you.

The food here can be quite different than what you find in Toronto Chinese restaurats. Everywhere you go they ask if you want lajiao, which means a chilly pepper puree they enjoy spreading around. Even if you decline the food is most often spicy. There is also the special characteristic flavour of the area called mala, which means spicy and numbing. If you bite into the peppercorn that is used, an area of your mouth will get tingly and numb. Some aspects of the food are better and some are worse than the Chinese food usually found in Toronto; I won't be finding any Cantonese style dimsum or baked buns.

National Day Celebrations

Last night the foreign teachers were invited to a banquet by the Chongqing Department of Foreign Affairs. Turns out dinner was buffet style, and it was like going to the Mandarin but not having any tables to sit at. It was the most non-Chinese people I’d seen in Chongqing. At one point a trade commissioner from the Canadian consulate introduced himself, and in typically Canadian fashion was telling me and Jesse that there is an ice rink on the 6th floor of some building downtown where we can rent skates and hockey sticks. He said he was from Saskatchewan and looked to be about 6’5”, and also considering I don’t play hockey, so I’m not sure if I’ll be going to this ice rink anytime soon.

On a different note, the ladies who come to clean my room always seem to get a good laugh at my expense. Foreigners are still are a great source of amusement for people in this area of China. I am very good at hearing when someone is asking me if I understood （听懂了吗）, unfortunately at this point I don’t actually understand much more than that. I did understand that the cleaning ladies wanted me to open the windows of my room, which I’m not a huge fan of doing since there are no screens on windows anywhere… I’ve been told that mosquitoes survive year long here.

Gele Mountain

It seems I was lulled into a false sense of security by my first week in Chongqing. This week there will be highs between 34-37 degrees C, the warmest it’s been since I arrived. Today I went with a group of PhD students to climb Gele mountain, which is very close to the campus. Little did I know when I accepted the invitation a few days ago that the high for today would be 35. While walking up the mountain it was quite a bit cooler because of the forest, but I was still dripping buckets. One other good thing about being in the forest was that I was breathing the cleanest air one can get in the area. Spend a reasonable time breathing Chinese air and you appreciate why people are spitting all over the place.

When we finished climbing the mountain we arrived at what is called a nong jia le 农家乐. It was basically a huge house that some big shot in Sichuan lived in. It’s now been converted into a strange country style retreat, where city people with money go to on the weekends to eat, play mahjong/cards, and generally lounge around. They play a simplified version of mahjong in the area, where they win with hands that I’ve been taught aren’t worth anything, so it took me a little while to adjust strategies. They were quite impressed that I knew how to play, and they altered the rules a bit after I joked that their winning hands were so ugly.