Spring Holiday Travel: installment 2

This is the second in a 3-part series about our travels during Spring Holiday around China. Buckle your seatbelt, because they don't have them in most cars here.

Chengdu 成都 (Sichuan Province): 2008.01.21 - 2008.01.26
This big city was the site of our In-Service Training, where we attempted to get up early and attend sessions that will re-inspire us for another semester of teaching English. For the most part, it worked.

We arrived at about 1:30 AM after various flight delays. Our good friend T* was going to give us a room in the extra apartment she has access to, so we went over to the cab line, and I attempted to tell at least 2 drivers the name of her school, which is a 5-minute cab ride from the airport. The first 2 had no idea, so a seemingly helpful chick about my age discussed it with us, then with them, then with T* on the phone, and we exhaled. Then we were told Y40 as a price. What?! By the meter it should have been about Y10. In my textbook Chinese, I yelled, "Can you use the meter?!" and was told "No!" So, I called T* again because her Chinese is great, but neither of us could convince the cabbies to use the meter. This helpful chick worked for the cabbies and I'm not sure what her job was, besides stand on the curb and be stubborn. Nick got pretty angry because she stopped listening to us, and then she said she'd consider giving us a fare of Y30. We stood and huffed for another minute before agreeing and hopping in. We'd never been to the school before, so we didn't know which gate to go to. We were so tired at this point we just ignored the cabbie's questions and got out where he dropped us off - of course at the wrong gate. After yet another call to T*, we walked to a corner, turned left, and walked town a deserted street at 2 AM in Chengdu. At least it wasn't as cold as we'd thought it would be. Finally T* met us and took us back to the place; she had turned on a heating blanket in the bed, and I don't remember anything else except getting up around 10 the next day.

That day was Tuesday, and we had to get to the Peace Corps Office by 2:15 for vaccinations, then our language tests at 4 PM. We got to the hotel, and were able to check in. In the lobby were many other volunteers, checking in and smiling and laughing about our travels so far, and experiences teaching. This is one of my favorite things about Peace Corps.

Nick got vaccinated, then we went upstairs to the library (Peace Corps China has a great resource library of language learning materials, English teaching resources, and environmental education stuff). Nick went to his language assessment on time, but I missed mine because I misread the schedule (I'm still not sure how this happened). Luckily, I squeezed in and took up some time from another volunteer, but he graciously conceded to my mistake. The LPI, or language proficiency interview, is given by either the language coordinator at Peace Corps or a local English expert contracted for the day. Mine was given by a sweet lady who I had not met before at the Pre-Service Training, and we had a nice conversation about my travels thus far, meeting and marrying Nick, and what I did back in the States. I feel like I fumbled around for words, which she pointed out at the end. She told me I was clearly at the level of "Intermediate High," and that I had great pronunciation but need work on grammar and vocabulary. Nick's interview went well also, and his tester gave him the advice to practice narration in various timeframes. He got "Intermediate High" as well. If you're interested in the specific language functions needed to attain a level in Chinese, look at these guidelines.

The rest of the week we went to sessions with names like: Starting and Developing Women's Groups, Starting Resource Rooms, Green English, Traveling Outside China, Traveling Inside China, WID-GAD (Women in Development/Gender and Diversity), Religions, Cults, and Secret Societies and their Impact on the Chinese State, Medical Session, Chinese Calligraphy, Teaching Multi-level classes in a Creative Way, Chinese Cooking, Modern Chinese History, Chinese Idioms and Slang, Practical Hanzi Reading, Funding, Current Events, Music and Movement in the Classroom. So we learned quite a bit. Most of the sessions were concurrent, so we couldn't attend them all. I even snagged a grading rubric for the TEM-8 (Test for English Majors, Band 8), the highest national exam to pass in English (Reading, Writing, Grammar). I'm ecstatic that the first criterion for a high essay score is "well-organized," since that was our main focus last semester. Now the students will take what they learned for paragraphs and apply it to longer pieces such as essays. I think I'm going to ignore the word "composition" for now, since that word is phased out around 4th grade in the US, and replaced with "essay." They still use it in China, especially on these TEM exams, and I still don't know what it means.

Another facet of IST was the open mic night, hosted by 2 volunteers from Lanzhou, K* & T*. They started it off with a choreographed duet, and the other participants followed suit. There was much singing (one about getting rabies!), some guitar-playing, a story?, a poetry recitation by country director John Darrah, some forward flips, and a hilarious comedy skit by volunteer W*. I'm not going to re-hash it, but it involved commentary on Chinese culture, teaching, and making fun of Nick in front of all the volunteers and staff. He had a bit about reading e-mail that started "Admin officer ... delete; country director ... star; forward from ... dammit!" The profanity started because in planning a newsletter, someone had hit a 'reply all' with some boring recipe. Nick was bored that day, so he did a 'reply all' to the previous 'reply all' asking that those replying refrain from hitting 'reply all' so he doesn't have to read things that he'll read again in the newsletter. W* played it up like Nick's e-mail was an act of revenge, and said "And if you're going to do that again, next time, just sign it 'I'm a douchebag.'" Nick was, for the rest of the conference, referred to by everyone as "the douche." Maybe it will die down soon ...

One last event that took place at IST involved the sweet girl from Chongqing; she came to Chengdu with her boyfriend R* after all of the travel plans back to Chongqing fell through. The last night of IST, we all went to the Pan Am bar (with much discussion of its French origin, and how to pronounce the name: "'pan-am" vs. "pen-'ahm"). For an hour they have Y10 cocktails, which is unheard of in a big city. We (minus Nick, who didn't want to watch others drink) went over there at about 10 PM to find it dead, but the hour had begun. Volunteers took advantage and started in fast. This whole thing was interesting due to the people there - a Trini guy who worked for World Bank, other Americans, British people, and lots of Peace Corps volunteers. After one volunteer, A*, had a few drinks, he explained to me his favorite phrase in Chinese: dou keyi 都可以. It's the response to a question asking "Which one?" when you think that something is limited to a single item. But this phrase literally means "all/both you may," and indicates that you can have it all. Maybe a modern day translation would be "It's all good." Anyway, I agree with him. Later on in the night when I had decided to stop drinking, the sweet Chongqing girl brought me yet another drink, claiming "That guy bought us drinks, now he wants you to dance with him." I'm not sure if there was some deal that she made, or what, but all I knew is that I had to a) get rid of the drink, and b) brace myself for dancing with a large man whom I had never met. I endured it for a few minutes, then got the heck out of there and went back to the hotel. It was still a good night; I just don't like dancing with strangers.

The day after IST closed, we packed our stuff, and once again went to Starbucks (this time a freezing and small one attached to a posh office building) to wait before going to the train station.

Kunming 昆明 (Yunnan Province): 2008.01.27 - 2008.01.30
Twenty-something hours after leaving Chengdu, we arrived in Kunming. Our plan was to get off the train, go straight to the ticket window, and buy overnight train tickets to Dali, as it was almost Chinese New Year, and public transport would be jam-packed. We got up to the window in a mere 10 minutes, only to be told that there are no night train tickets (either no trains or no tickets; not sure), so we had to buy day train tickets for about 12 hours later than we wanted to leave.

We headed over to our hostel "Hump." Not really "The Hump," just "Hump." Hey, I wasn't there for the naming. It was a good hostel, though you really roll the dice getting a room that isn't directly impacted by either noise from the lobby/restaurant, or noise from the club nearby. We were lucky, though some friends D* and T* weren't. Their room came with complimentary earplugs, and they still couldn't sleep until 2 AM when the bass turned off.

It was here that I was bitten a dog, well, rather a puppy. A guy had a puppy in the lobby/restaurant that lots of people were playing with. I finally went over to pet it, where it instantly flipped over to show me it's stomach, and chomp down on my thumb as hard has it could with tiny needle teeth. It didn't bleed at first, but I squeezed it a little and it bled a tiny bit. We went to dinner anyway, and I didn't worry. At dinner I recalled to Nick that Dr. Joanne told us any suspicion of rabies exposure warrants a fast trip to Chengdu for the 2 remaining rabies shots (we received a pre-exposure vaccination upon arrival in China). I worried, and ate faster. When dinner was over I went straight back to the hostel in search of the owner, who had left. The girl at the desk told me that he was her friend, and that the dog had recently received 5 vaccinations. I exhaled, and was thankful that this little sucker was part of the 3% of the Chinese dog population vaccinated against rabies. We hung around Kunming for 3 days for no reason really, but it was nice. We saw the Yunnan Provincial Museum, a local market, the inside of a really fancy Haagen-Dazs, and the "snack street," a string of outdoor eateries and good smells.

The Yunnan Provincial Museum was quite interesting. The first floor was a temporary exhibition of local artists' calligraphy, which was quite good. The second floor was an exhibition of all the local artifacts unearthed, many within recent years: stone tools, awesome sculptures of fighting animals, and lots of crafted pots for holding the local currency, the cowry shell. Also, some interesting work was done documenting the religious practices of ethnic minorities, centering on bull sacrifices around a lake. Pictures showed about 100-200 people standing in a circle by a lake with a bull in the center. I assume some words are said and rites performed, then a few men just attack the neck of the bull with machete-type weapons until it has expired. I don't quite understand why. While we were looking at the exhibit, Nick told me that another volunteer was the guest at a similar ritual near her school. S* stood back, wondering what would happen to the bull when the men attacked it. I can see her wide eyes; after the bull was sacrificed she still stood back, understandably. It was dark out at this point, and before she knew what had hit her, someone ran up and smeared blood onto her forehead. I may ask her to recount this incident to me sometime.

The third floor of the museum had some treasures, like cool sculptures and some ivory tusks. It also had a short hall of the history of Buddhism in China, complete with Buddhas and other gods. Toward then end was a statue with Vishnu and a female god, uh, engaged. I didn't see it at first until Nick looked up under the statue (which looked like they were dancing). But there it was. And only a Y10 entrance fee to the museum.

The Haagen-Dazs shops in China are like posh dessert cafes, with coffee, desserts, and some sort of chocolate fondue special for Y205. We skipped that, but we did get coffees and some ice cream, as well as the complimentary water-in-a-wineglass with lemon. We spent too much, about Y80, and got a page-long receipt. It's the most "posh" we've been over here in the Chinese "posh corps." We probably won't do it again; it just wasn't worth it.

During our time in Kunming, we hung out with 2 other volunteers (the blog of one) who had stopped there to get visas to Vietnam. We hadn't really talked much before, as their schools are in another province, so we had a great time finding rice noodles together, then sitting together watching TV (rugby, gaming tournaments of CounterStrike) while he ruminated about how to resolve his stomach problems. Keep calling Peace Corps? Jump up and down again to test for appendicitis? Visit a local hospital? After we left, he ended up going to a local hospital, doing bloodwork to find no irregularities, then getting on the bus/train to Vietnam anyway.

Our plan was to buy tickets from Kunming back north before we left, but found out that during the holiday times, you can only buy train tickets 5 days in advance. So no firm plans to get home up to this point.

Dali Old Town 大理古城: 2008.01.30 - 2008.02.01
The train to Xiaguan (bigger town near Dali Old Town) was something new to us: a double-decker. It had lots of sleeper cars, but during the day they sell 4 "seats" to each bottom bunk. Ours didn't quite fill, so it wasn't so bad, until we realized that the heat was blasting, and only a few of the windows opened. When I ventured to the aisle to go to the bathroom, I found people huddled around the open windows for some cool air (it was only about 40F outside). The resilience of old Chinese ladies in wearing 4 layers in a sweltering train continues to amaze me. Near the end of the trip, a man started making small talk about teaching, the US, the flowers of Yunnan, and eventually the upcoming US elections. I didn't know what he was talking about for at least 2 minutes while he tried to explain what he was saying. My Chinese vocabulary thus far had not included the words president, government, vote, or election. It still doesn't contain most of those, but the guy eventually pointed to himself and said "Hu Jintao" and pointed to me, saying "Busa" (=Bush). I got it. He then said "O-ba-ma" and something else which could have been either "McCain" or "Clinton." We all laughed. He then asked this with gestures and words which I partly understood: "Isn't Obama half-black? Isn't he a mix from a higher race (indicated by a horizontal hand) and a lower race (same horizontal hand, placed much lower)?" More nervous laughing from me. How do you answer something like that? He is mixed race; most Americans are. To consider a mix of races, giving one the distinction of being higher or lower, is something I won't confirm.

Out of the train station, we hopped on a bus, got off in Dali Old Town, and headed over to the Number 3 Guesthouse. This is one of the points where I realized we were following the Lonely Planet a little too closely and not branching out to ask the questions we should have. I had made reservations because I was scared about space, but there was lots of space in Dali. When we were about to check in, we found out that there was no hot water at the hostel because "the weather is bad." What? Then I looked up, and we had a solar heated tank above the bathrooms and kitchen. Okay, the sun would probably come out tomorrow. We headed off to a restaurant and ordered all local Bai minority food - great chicken, home fry-ish potatoes, and some fried cheese. The cheese came out looking like some puffed pork rinds, but it tasted pretty good. When we had just started eating, a white guy banged on the window, and it took me a minute to recognize him as another volunteer. Then he and 4 other volunteers shuffled in as a pleasant surprise. They stuck around, and we agreed to meet later.

We all met up at the "Bad Monkey," an expat bar with Brits behind the counter. Upstairs in a loft were a few tables, one big one with all our friends and two other Americans they had met that day: a girl who had recently quit her job at an NGO in Chengdu to go back to grad school in the US (K*) , and her boyfriend who worked at the Panda Research Base in Chengdu. They had quite the hookah and some great conversation. One thing in particular was our shared frustration with another volunteer who put together a newsletter for all the volunteers in China, the "Rice Paper." Sounds like a clever idea to inspire, entertain, and keep volunteers in contact, right? Well it sort of was, until the editor failed to send any articles back to the authors for them to proofread. This included me, who wrote an article that was completely edited for content and the theme changed. I never approved the changes and was pretty embarrassed to have my name on it in the widely-distributed newsletter. So, we came up with an idea for a parody of the newsletter to be entitled the "Chao Fan," or "fried rice." It would include a column by an elderly volunteer who transferred from China where she continues to recount stories that end with "and then we escaped." We all had a laugh - if we still had our laptop with Adobe Illustrator, I would definitely be more serious about publishing it.

The next day in Dali was rainier still. The previous night, K* had told us that she and her boyfriend took a 3-hour guided horseback ride up the nearby mountain for only Y40, so that was our plan for about 10 AM. We met 2 other volunteers at 9 AM and went for banana pancakes and tea (real mint!). The rain never let up, and we didn't want to sit on horseback for 3 hours in the rain. We walked toward the lake instead, and at the east gate of the town were convinced to take a taxi to the shore. When we got there it was still raining, but windier. We started at the lake and walked out on a dock. Then we took some pictures where we pretended to have a great day, and walked back to town. It took about 30 minutes, but it was nice just to use our legs. The whole walk we were both rained on and whipped by the wind.

We spent the afternoon buying bus tickets out of there and hanging out at a coffee shop. Dali Old Town must be overrun with Western tourists in the summer time because there were Western restaurants (not chains though), coffee shops, and dessert shops everywhere. We chose one with a fireplace we could sit near, and spent about 4 hours there. Nick played cards and talked to a guy floating around China looking for English teaching jobs. I read fashion magazines from the US and People magazine, and tried not to inhale the clouds of smoke wafting over from a nearby table. An Indian-looking American girl and some Europeans had acquired a large blunt and were passing it around openly. When we left the coffee shop, an older Chinese lady with a shoulder bag stopped in the doorway and leaned toward Nick, offering him something. Let's just say that other vendors yell and bargain; this lady leaned in and offered. Is Yunnan's reputation for marijuana consumption justified? Check.

That afternoon I also went shopping for souvenirs and gifts. They have traditional colored fabric here, made in batik style. That means various sections of cloth are stitched up in patterns, then the cloth is dyed. Because the stitches bunch the cloth up tightly, those parts don't get dyed. It sounds like tie-dye, but it's much more of an art. I wanted a few of those for our apartment and as gifts. Another volunteer K* went with me, and she had shopped the day before, so she was prepared to bargain. Bargain is sort of an understatement: she got rock-bottom. We stopped at one batik shop where we picked out the ones we wanted. Our strategy was to pick them out, ask how much total, then bargain down the final price. Large, single-bed sized batiks started at 65, and table-cloth size started at 45. My before-bargaining total was 175, and K*'s was about 160. I started my desired price at Y140, and she went for Y120. I eventually got Y150 and was pleased. K* just stood there saying "120" and seeing if the guy would give in. He never did, so she just left her bag there on the stool and we walked away. He didn't come after us, so he didn't really want the sale. We stopped by another small alley batik shop with a single woman vendor. K* looked for a minute, asked how much (Y85 for a medium one!!), then walked out. By the time K* had walked back twice to look, and walked away twice, the lady was yelling "Y35!" down the street. K* wanted 4 of them, so she picked them out and then said "all together, Y120." The lady dismissed it and explained that Y35 apiece was her lowest and that she had made them herself. K*'s stone face never changed, and she wanted Y120. We waited, we pretended to leave, we went back, and then the vendor caved. Mission accomplished. She got 4 table-cloth sized, different colored batiks for $5 apiece in a tourist mecca. Maybe I'll call her next time I'm buying oranges.

That night we all (about 10?) went out for pizza. Having gone now 3 days without a shower (no hot water = no showers for us), the girls decided to go get our hair washed at a salon. In China people often get haircuts, and women often go to a salon just to get their hair washed and a head massage (Y10 in Dali, Y4-5 other places). So, on we went, unshowered but with very clean hair.

Look for matriarchal culture, a beautiful gorge, and Mao Zedong himself in the last installment.