Bones to Pick

I’m surprised by certain attitudes I come across in China. Attitudes are hard to explain and describe, but this past week my teachers said some things that make certain Chinese attitudes very clear.

Example one.
During my Chinese speaking class, the teacher started talking about China’s Taiwan. “If you go to China’s Taiwan this, and in China’s Taiwan that, and China’s Taiwan is very whatever.” My English classmate Andy, who is not afraid of anything, said, “China’s Taiwan? What about Taiwan’s own Taiwan?” (Andy is my hero.) The teacher said, “China’s Taiwan. Do you have a problem?” Yes, I do.

Example two.
During my Chinese listening class, we were discussing the Chinese phrase for “world famous.” The teacher asked us to give some examples. We mentioned the Great Wall of China, the Terracotta Warriors, and Qingdao beer. Then one student said, “And Jackie Chan!” The teacher frowned a little and then completely straight-faced said, “No, Jackie Chan cannot be considered world famous. See, in Africa they don’t know about him. In Africa, they have no movies and no TV. They are very poor. Jackie Chan is not world famous.” WTF??? My teacher is a graduate student.

I’m not even going to comment on these examples… I will leave that up to you.

Travel Update

It's hard to get online while traveling! Here's a quick update of what I've been up to and where I plan to go:

After staying with my friend Bei, I took a bus to Yulin where there is a cool section of the Great Wall as well as some rock gorges that have Buddhist temples in them. From Yulin I took a bus to Taiyuan where my friend Lei lives. We visited the ancient city of Pingyao together.

From Taiyuan I took a train to Datong and saw the "hanging temples" on a mountainside as well as more Buddhist caves. I arrived in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, where I am currently, by train from Datong yesterday afternoon.

This afternoon I'm taking a train to Baotou, also in Inner Mongolia. From Baotou I would like to take a train overnight to Tongliao, then on to Shenyang, and then to Dandong. Dandong is on the border with North Korea and seems like a very interesting city. After Dandong, I plan to go to Beijing and stay for a few days before flying home!

Based on the past few weeks of traveling, I'm sure these plans will change!

At Bei's House

Right now I am in Fugu, Shaanxi, China at the home of my friend Bei. In just a few days, I hope to travel to Yulin, just south of Fugu, and see a few things there. Yulin has some unreconstructed sections of the Great Wall as well as some Buddhist caves. From Yulin I want to take a train back to Xi'an so that I can take a train to my friend Lei's hometown.

Fugu is not quite as I remembered it from when I came in February. The local government has been working hard to improve the conditions here. Fugu has new parks along the Yellow River, new apartment buildings, plans to build a bridge, and the city seems a little cleaner.

It is great to be with Bei's family again. They are so kind to me. The last time I was here, I of course could not speak any Chinese. But even though I can now, they won't let me speak it. I understand when her mother says to Bei, "Tell Caiti in English that..." and Bei tells me in English. It's slightly frustrating. Bei's family does speak a local dialect, but it is similar enough to standard speech for me to understand.

When I leave Bei's home, I hope it's not the last time I see her and her family.

Dunhuang

Last week I did not have class on Thursday or Friday because of a holiday in China similar to Labor Day. For some reason, the school decided that Friday's classes would be rescheduled for Sunday. They can't do that, can they? Haha...

So my friends and I also took Wednesday off (as well as Sunday- who goes to class on Sunday?) to travel to the north of Gansu Province to the city of Dunhuang.

We took a sleeper-train on Tuesday night and arrived in Dunhuang on Wednesday morning. Dunhuang is a tourist city, which we're not used to. Luckily, it was the off season. The busy season started the next day, though. We saw some Buddhist caves as well as sections of the Great Wall.



The part of the Great Wall that we saw had not been reconstructed, which seems miraculous since everything else in China has been. We saw one pass of the wall which was pretty much a square boulder with a hole in it. There was a fence around it, so it wasn't that exciting. The second part of the wall we saw was made with mud, rocks, and hay. Because of the wind in the desert, some parts were only a few feet high. Most of the wall here was surrounded by a fence, but a small portion was not. It still wasn't that exciting, but how could I visit China without seeing part of the original Great Wall?




Thursday afternoon we rode camels out into the Gobi Desert and camped out in tents for the night. (Camels really do spit, and they smell bad, too.) The sand dunes were huge. We picked the highest one and climbed to the top. It took several hours and was extremely difficult because the sand was so soft. We climbed up peak after peak, gradually getting to the highest one. It was difficult to breathe at the top, but when we got there, we watched the "sunset."


That's in quotation marks because in some parts of China, it's not damaging to the eyes to stare directly at the sun. It looks like a bright, full moon, actually. As for the sunset, the sun disappeared in the polluted sky well above the horizon.



There are no words to aptly describe the Gobi Desert. It's how you might imagine it, though. Sandy, dry, few living creatures, etc. It's hot during the day and cold at night. In fact, when my friends and I climbed the sand dunes, we climbed along the ridges. One half of our bodies were hot from the sun, and the other half was cold. Some parts of the desert stretch for miles in complete flatness. Other parts, near the edges, are miles of sand dunes.

So we left Dunhuang on Friday tired and sore as well as sun burnt, sand burnt, and wind burnt. But it was definitely worth it.