5 days on the Yangtze

Alot has happened since I last talked to you all. Last Sunday morning Laura, Matthew and I set out on a fateful journey, 5 days on the Yangtze. The night before we left for our first solo traveling in China we decided to go to the Chinese clubs by Matthew's house to celebrate the week long break for National Day and to just see what the clubs were all about. National Day is October 1st and is comparable to the 4th of July in the US. We went in several clubs and they were all very loud and crowded and had small tables everywhere. Literally everywhere. We couldn't figure out what to do in these clubs because they played very loud dance music, like in an American club, so it was too loud to talk. But, there were tables everywhere so there was no room to dance. Sometimes girls would stand in the foot of space in between the tables and dance a little bit, but it was very odd. After going in and leaving about 4 clubs we went to a club that said disco on it and we figured, if there isn't dancing in the disco club, there has to be something wrong with this country. Luckily we went in and there was an actual, if small, dance floor. Chinese people, as a huge generalization, are terrible dancers. Really just very awkward and bad. So it makes you feel like a good dancer even if you're not. After about 5 minutes on the over-packed dance floor Deborah, Matt, and I all took refuge on the small dance stages on the periphery of the dance floor. This is really the only place to dance. In my 5 minutes on the dance floor I was grabbed in more ways than I care to mention. For being reserved about sexuality, they are not on the dance floore. so, we decided to sit down at a wrap-around couch sort of table with a group of Tibetan guys. We ordered a fruit plate, which is just as elaborate as the cakes (it looked like a pirate ship) and rum and coke (which was very weak and expensive). After a night of dancing and talking to the Tibetan guys at our table the Tibetans invited us to a late dinner. How could we refuse? So we went to a noodle restaurant down the street where we could talk a little easier. We learned that the Tibetans were here going to school and had a test the next morning! Yikes! And I was thinking of not going because I had to get up early and get on a bus!
So the next morning we were set to be picked up by the cruise company at the East gate of our school at 6am. Laura and I caught a cab at about 5:45 and got there a little early. It was good did, because we had to go wake Matthew up. Then we drove around to pick up the other passengers and stopped at a hotel where we got on the bus for Chongqing. I takes about 5 hours to drive from Chengdu to Chongqing, but Chinese buses never do it straight; you always stop every hour or two along the way. Finally we got to Chongqing, dropped off our stuff at the travel agency and got to walk around the city for a few hours. There was a festival going on in the park with all sorts of sculptures made out of some sort of nylon material. The city was really busy because of the holiday too. There were street vendors selling every kind of street food imaginable too. We tried cantaloupe on a stick. Chongqing is a lot more hilly than Chengdu and it was really nice to finally get to see some geography. I liked the city alot. At 6:30pm we went back to the travel agency office and picked up our bags and walked to our boat. It is a big white cruise boat that reminds me of the ferries in Seattle, except a little bit smaller. to call us tomorrow. The boat pulled off at 8pm and we all went up on the upper deck to watch. After we took off we where we learned that to access anything above the bottom floor where our cabin was we had to buy another 55 kuai pass. I did right away because being able to sit on the front on the ship and be outside was definatly worth 55 kuai to me. Plus there were 2 other tea rooms with free tea and snacks and a restaurant and bar and back deck we could go in with the pass too. There was one other foreigner on the boat that was in the room next door to us. Her name was Jess and she was teaching English in Guangzhou. She had been in China for about 7 months and was really fun to talk to. We had 3rd class tickets which means we were on the bottom level and shared our room with 3 other people. The 3 people were a family, mom, dad, and 12-yr old girl, who were all SO nice. The dad is working on the subway project that will start running in Chengdu in 2009. They were also on our train and were infinitely helpful and just so sweet. We exchanged phone numbers at the end of the trip and I hope we get to see them again. We had to wake up the next morning at 5:30am to be off the boat and at the first tourist site at 6:20am. We sailed all night, so were docked by the time we woke up. Living with 6 people in a 12'x5' room (3 sets of bunk beds) with one bathroom was really not that bad, except for in the morning when everyone was trying to get dressed and eat breakfast in the space of about 45 minutes. I would always change my clothes as quickly and discreetly as possible, put instant coffee and hot water in my Nalgene and go stand out on the front deck and drink my coffee until it was time to leave. The first place we stopped was the Ghost City. The Ghost City is set in the mountains that created as a kind of "gate to the underworld" sort of thing. All the sculptures are very gruesome of menacing monsters or people being killed and tortured all sorts of different ways. It was very interesting though. And we got to take a ski lift to the top of the first mountain, which was a little scary as well. At 9:30 we had to get back on the boat. Boat time is spent a variety of different ways, most of which consist of trying to do homework and being distracted by any number of things. These are the kids and other passengers on the ship that will all gather round and talk to you and look at what you are learning and ask you all sorts of questions over and over again. They most common are: Why are you in China? How long are you here? How long have you studied Chinese? What is your major? How much is your tuition (they ask the price of EVERYTHING!)? Have you been to ? Are you adjusting? Do you like the food? Do your Americans like George Bush? Is America better than China? etc. There was one guy from Harbin who went even farther and kept asking: How do Americans feel about the war in Iraq? Are Americans scared of Osama Bin Laden? and other very political questions that are hard to answer even in English, so I tried to end that conversation. Mostly people are very nice and just curious I like talking to all of them. It makes me feel good about my Chinese. Even though I know I'm very bad, at least I can have some sort of semblance of a conversation. I know I'm getting better every day.

At about 9pm that night we stopped at another spot. This one was a temple called Zhangfei temple and was completely outlined in red Christmas lights. I liked this temple the best of all the ones I've seen so far because it had a very nice outdoor garden with a pagoda that over looked the river. Mostly temples are just big, pretty concrete buildings, so I liked the outdoor aspect. I don't know exactly what Zhangfei temple commemorated, but there were lots of beautiful calligraphy tablets in all different kinds of script inside the different rooms. We bought baozi (a delicious steamed beef-filled dumpling) and spicy potatoes on the way down from street vendors. That has been one common theme of everywhere we go on this tour. There are street vendors selling the same trinkety Chinese souvenirs everywhere and they are always really pushy. It is a little annoying. I didn't buy anything.

The next morning we had to get up again at 5:30am. At 6:20am we got off the boat again to go to the White City. We would have had to pay another 120 kuai for tickets to this and after a while all the temples start to look the same, so we decided to opt out. Instead we walked around the city of Fengjie, where we docked. It is a very small town by Chinese standards. However, it still has apartment buildings everywhere, but this is probably because it is a whole new city that has been built in the past few years above the flood line of the Yangtze. It is really interesting to see all the new construction. When we went down the Yangtze is at the 2nd flood stage (of 4), so most of the old on-the-water cities have been knocked down and covered by the rising water. However, there is still a good 70m or so left to rise in the next two stages, so all the newly constructed towns are built way up on the hill with stair going up from the water that will eventually be covered. There are signs everywhere too, announcing 156m (3rd flood stage) and 175m (the final height the water will have risen). We found this old abandoned smaller temple on the top of a hill and looked around for a while and had breakfast on the side walk. I had the most delicious chao mian I have ever had in my life and am going to try my hardest to copy it. I watched her make it and it didn't seem too hard.

After we got back on the boat, at 10am our tour guide came by and told us we would be going through the first gorge in a few minutes. The first gorge is called Qutang Xia and it was astonishing. Huge misty cliffs overhanging the water with sunshine breaking through the clouds. However, I did realize that one of the reasons I like beautiful places is that there are not that many people. This was not the case here. Everyone was crowded onto the front deck taking pictures and there were two ladies yelling into megaphones talking about the gorges. Fortunately, after about 20 minutes we were through the "official" first gorge and most of the people went back to their rooms. So Matthew, Laura, and I sat out on the front deck in the sun, ate lunch, and talked to some of the other Chinese tourists that stayed out on the deck. That was very nice. For lunch we had the best Chinese approximation of ham and cheese sandwiches. They were disgusting. The bread was good and the cheese, although probably not good, was certainly passable and tasted excellent considering I hadn't had cheese in over a month. The ham was the downfall and Laura and I threw ours away. It was like some sort of spam like product that was almost grainy. Yuck!

At noon we got off for a tour of the little three gorges. This is supposed to be the highlight of the trip, and it was cool, but I think it has lost something with the rising water levels. We got onto a smaller boat and went through some pretty gorges. It was beautiful, but we were definitely the center of attention. Everyone wanted to take pictures with us or of us. Matthew started joking around and telling people he was charging 10 kuai. You kind of feel like you like you are in the zoo or something. But the sun was out and it was a beautiful day to be on the water and the scenery was beautiful and I didn't mind at all. After about 2 hours we got off at this floating dock and got onto even smaller little boats and put on giant, garish orange life jackets. There were about 25 people in each boat. The little gorges were so huge and close and we got to see wild monkeys running along the shore. It was a little touristy too though. They had these people standing in a boat on the side of the river signing as you went past and another guy on the shore playing a trumpet sort of instrument. I didn't really get it. But, everything in China must be taken with a grain of salt and most often the good FAR outweighs the bad. On the way back we made friends with some people from Harbin, which is a province north of Beijing. There was a girl and her dad, two other men and a woman. I'm not sure about the relations of the other people. We talked mostly with the girl because all the other people had VERY heavy accents and we couldn't understand them at all, so she would translate. They were all very nice but this was by far the most frustrating conversation I've had so far. The man with the heaviest accent kept asking really difficult questions about American politics and if we were married and other weird questions and when we didn't understand everyone would start talking at once trying to say it a different way. No you should say this! No it's not that it's this! and they would all start shouting and you couldn't understand anyone. Then we would finally get it figured out and alot of times I would answer that it was very different in America and people thought alot of different things and some people liked, say Bush, and some people didn't. After that they would think that I didn't understand the question again and try to ask me again and I would say the same thing, augmented by what I personally thought, which seemed to satisfy them. However, after a long, difficult conversation we did get invited to dinner on our boat's restaurant, which is pretty expensive. That turned out to be it's own adventure. I had heard before I came to China about "Bai jiu banquets", but that night I actually got to experience one. We sat down and they started by pouring us all a shot of baijiu. If you have not had baijiu let me just say it is the foulest most horrible thing I have ever experienced in my whole life. It doesn't taste that bad, but after you drink it the badness just keeps growing and it eats your soul and stays with you for hours. It is made from rice and is about 56% alcohol and is a 10 kuai for a liter. Needless to say, you get what you pay for. The picture to the left is of the "bia jiu" guy from the ads on the sides of buses. Lucky for us they only bought one bottle so everyone only had to drink one small glass. The key is to go slow and take small sips because they keep toasting you all night. After about an hour or two, I had successfully limited myself to a glass of bai jiu and a glass of beer and we all got up to leave. We went and sat up on the back porch and talked for a while and it was a beautiful night. The girl was very nice and if I ever go to Harbin, she gave me her phone number and I would love to talk with her again. She was studying chemical engineering too.

The next morning we were under the impression we had one more stop that we did not have tickets for and so we were going to sleep in. However, this was not the case. Our tour guide came and woke us up at 7:20 and told us the boat would be docking in a few minutes and we had to get off at 8am to go see the Three Gorges Dam. The dam was amazing. It was on a scale I had just never imagined before. I bought an information book about it. It hasn't been completed yet, but most of the main structures are done. There is a 5 part ship lock and everything there is literally the biggest in the wolrd. The tour was kind of fun too. It was like a Chinese fire drill for 5 hours. We would all get on the bus and drive to the visitor center, or an overlook, or the aquarium or something, we would have 20 minutes to look around and take pictures and then we would have to get back on the bus. We kept being the last ones on the bus and I really think a lot of the Chinese tourists just got off, took a picture of themselves there, and got back on. We went to 3 different park/visitor center sort of areas, which were all beautifully maintained and really nice. This picture is of Laura and I by Slept-Under-the-Sea-for-8-Million-Years Rock that was found at the base of the Three Gorgers Dam excavation site. The aquarium, however, was a little depressing. It was all these fish stuck in little concrete cages with ladies yelling in megaphones all over the place. When there was a fish that was not on display alive, they had one preserved in formaldehyde for you to look at and they sold smoked fish in the gift shop. It had this over all "come see them before they all die" sort of feeling. Not to say that all China's ecological conservation and protection projects are like this, there definatly are some very good ones too.

Next we got on bus number 2 to go to Wuhan, which is 4 hours away. On that bus I finished reading my book about the dam, finished reading "Rivertown", and watched Titianic in Chinese for about 2 hours. Finally we arrived. Then we got on another bus that took us to our hotel. Our day was full of busses and it was nice to finally be at our destination. Our hotel was "3 stars" and didn't pretend like it wasn't. It was comfortable, but not too nice. We met another woman there and picked up our train tickets without problem. That night we found a place to have dinner and ordered way too much food. But it was so delicious we ate almost all of it. There was this fish that was cooked with peppers and some sort of sauce that was SOOOOO good. Then we walked around Wuhan by our hotel. It seemed alot quieter than Chengdu and so pretty soon we went back to our hotel and went to sleep.

The next day we woke up and went on a quest for Mao Zedong's Villa, which is supposed to be on East Lake (Donghu) in Wuhan. We effectively took the local bus all the way through the city to the right spot. Taking the bus was really cool too because we got to see all different parts of the city on a double decker bus. We also went across the "Big Yangtze River Bridge" which is famous because it was one of the first big infrastructure accomplishments of the Communist Party. We got off the bus at the lake and wandered around this beautiful park that felt more like the US than China. We finally found where Mao's Villa was and the PLA (People's Liberation Army) guard told us it was closed. I'm not sure if it was because it was national break time (12-2:30) or because it was actually closed, but we didn't have time to wait around until 2:30 so we decided to walk around a bit more. I saw a McDonald's and tried to read the signs for those who are interested and they were just regular McDonald's signs. They say things like "Full Beef Flavor". Maybe I'm just getting used to all the noise and pollution, but Wuhan seemed alot quieter, greener and more pleasant than Chengdu. I liked it alot.

We caught a bus back to the hotel through horrible Wuhan traffic and a taxi to the train station and met our family (from the boat) again. The train ride home was long and uneventful. We played some cards and I did some homework. When we finally got back to our house in Chengdu we got another surprise. Laura and I walked in the door and found that Li Juan had locked our bedroom doors before leaving for Yangjuan. She sometimes is weird about locking things and I think she doesn't trust our neighbors (which is very Chinese), but I didn't think she would lock our bedroom doors. We both have keys but left them in our rooms because we figured we would never need them. We didn't know what to do so I made us lunch so we could sit and have a little food for thought. So we sent Li Juan a text message in Yangjuan and went down to find the guards of our complex to see if they could help us. We went to the enterance in the back because we figured they weren't as busy. Also they are girls and girls are typically alot more helpful and patient than boys are. We effectively communicated the problem, that we were looked out of our bedrooms but could get into the house. The she led us to this huge monitor room with all these computer screens that watch all over the complex. In reminded me of Austin Powers for some reason. She kept asking us what building we were in, what unit, what floor, what number, and apparently they all had different answers because we kept saying "building 15, number 312", which is where we live, to all of the questions and they kept laughing at us and asking again. It is very unnerving to be laughed at by a small Chinese girl wearing a camouflage outfit and black patent leather flats with bows on them. Finally they came up and were trying to help us, but then Li Juan called and told us where the extra keys were. So we got into to our rooms. It was a very fun trip but I am also very happy to be back home.