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We sat in on a medical school
class, and then visited a rural health clinic that Amity had recently
established. The clinic was operated by a woman who had been trained
in the Amity medical school. It was only a few days before the
Lunar New Year when we went to see the clinic, and we were greeted
by a traditional Chinese dragon dancer and firecrackers. I also
had my first close encounter with a water buffalo in this small
remote village. They’re very docile, more like cattle than
the buffalo or bison of North America.
In addition to the field trip to the Amity projects, the teachers
conference in Nanning provided a chance to spend time with friends
from our summer training and more recent friends among the Amity
teaching corps. You tend to forget how easy it is to have a conversation
when both people are native speakers of the same language and
there are no obvious landmines lurking among the discussion topics
(e.g., “What do you think about Taiwan?”).
After the Amity conference, Kate and I spent the next two weeks
traveling on our own. On our first day in Nanning, the weather
had been so warm that no coat or jacket was needed at all. The
weather was cooler after than, but still very mild. It had been
cold in Fuyang, so we were quite happy to stay in the much warmer
climate of Guangxi.
Our first stop was in Yangshuo, a small town on the Li Jiang
river. The scenery was quite spectacular, with small peaks or
mountains rising abruptly from flat ground. We had seen some of
this terrain on the field trip; it was unlike anything I had seen
before. Because of the scenery and mild climate, Yangshuo has
become a popular tourist stop. We met a number of other foreigners
there, and many of the restaurants advertised Western style food.
We took a private boat tour up the Li Jiang, just the two of
us and the boatman. We saw many women doing laundry on the banks
of the river, some wearing high boots, others wading in the water.
We saw several fishermen on narrow bamboo rafts, some with cormorants.
A cormorant is a large black bird that dives into the water to
catch fish. The fisherman puts a ring or loop around the cormorant’s
neck so that it can’t swallow the fish. The cormorant gives
the fish to the fisherman, then goes back for another. I presume
the cormorant gets to keep one when he’s caught enough for
the fisherman.
We also rented bicycles and toured much of the countryside outside
of Yangshuo. The bicycle rental was 10 yuan ($1.25) each per day,
maybe the best bargain of the whole trip. We saw our first banyan
tree while touring on bicycles. It was about 1,800 years old,
according to the brochure. For Texas readers and others familiar
with live oaks, the banyan tree puts out long, low-hanging horizontal
branches like a live oak, but then puts down additional trunks
to support them. After several hundred years, one tree becomes
a small forest by itself. We also saw orange trees, sugar cane,
a cotton field, haystacks, and lots of water buffalo in the fields.
From Yangshuo, we went to Guilin, a larger and better-known city,
also on the Li Jiang. A number of these small, abrupt, nearly
vertical mountains are located in the heart of the city. We climbed
to the tops of two of them, Fuboshan and Solitary Beauty Peak,
taking lots of pictures. Fuboshan sits right at the water’s
edge, so we could look almost straight down at the river below.
Though we were in the center of a substantial city, the river
activity was much the same as in the rural areas—fishermen
on bamboo rafts, some with conical nets; women doing laundry;
men and boys fishing from the banks; and the occasional swimmer,
though I would think the water must have been at least as cold
as in Barton Springs (for those familiar with Austin).
Solitary Beauty Peak is inside an 1,000-year-old walled enclave
called the “Princes’ City” because it was, for
many generations, home to princes who ruled over this region.
Much of the Princes’ City has been preserved as a museum
of China’s history, but it also now houses the Guilin Teachers
College. It would be a beautiful and historic setting in which
to teach or go to school.
We spent most of one day in the Seven Star Park, so named because
of seven peaks that are situated in roughly the same positions
as the seven stars of the Big Dipper. We climbed a few more peaks,
went through an enormous cave, and then went to the zoo. The Seven
Star Park zoo’s main attraction is a panda. The day was
cool and pleasant, and the panda was very active. We spent a lot
of time with him and took many pictures. There were deer in the
zoo that were not enclosed, but free to roam. I was able to photograph
a deer from no more than four or five feet away. Outside of the
zoo, roaming the hills and trees, were a large pack of monkeys.
We saw lots of them in the trees and rocks, and several would
come down to get peanuts from tourists.
Our last stop in the Seven Star Park was at a large Buddhist
temple and monastery. It was late in the afternoon. The monks
had gathered in the temple, chanting. I could hear the sound of
drums, cymbals, and bells, and every few minutes the monks would
pass by the open door in a procession. The music, chanting, and
the ancient setting all served to make the monks seem very far
removed from 21st-century life. But when the ceremony was over,
they poured out through the door pulling cell phones from their
pockets.
We celebrated the Lunar New Year in Guilin. On the eve of the
New Year we went to the Centre Square downtown to mingle with
the crowd. There were bumper cars and rides for small children
and the inflatable things where children jump and climb. We followed
the movement of the crowd over to the Waterfall Hotel, a posh
new luxury place just off the square. Suddenly there was water
cascading from the roof down the entire face of the hotel. This
waterfall continued for about 15 minutes or so, with colored lights
to brighten the effect.
We had seen many businesses closing early on New Year’s
Eve, and we had been led to believe that virtually everything
would be closed on New Year’s Day, so that it might be hard
to find a place to eat. When we ventured out on New Year’s
Day, that turned out not to be the case. The schools were closed,
and many offices were closed for the week, but most retail stores
and restaurants were open for business as usual, and many were
having sales. It is traditional to buy new shoes and new clothes
for the Lunar New Year and to wear them on New Year’s Day.
We spent much of New Year’s Day in a large downtown park
by the water. The park was crowded with well-dressed families,
many of whom were posing for family pictures, another New Year’s
Day tradition.
The fireworks went on far into the night. Fireworks in most cities
had been prohibited until this year when the government lifted
the restrictions in some 200 cities, one of which was Guilin.
When the restrictions are lifted, it seems that anything goes.
There were fireworks going off all over the city. People stood
on the streets shooting Roman candles over the traffic. People
leaned out of hotel windows with fireworks. They lit long packages
of firecrackers that put up a continuous racket. When we were
kids, we used to buy firecrackers in packages that were maybe
18 inches or two feet long. Here they sell them in tight rolls
that are nearly three feet in diameter. Everybody sets off fireworks.
It’s not just adolescent boys. It’s preschool children,
adults, old ladies—everyone. And it’s not just for
the Lunar New Year. They shoot firecrackers at weddings, for the
Lantern Festival (on the 15th day of the first lunar month, which
was last week), or just for fun. I don’t think there has
been a week since we’ve been in China that we haven’t
heard firecrackers. (King Hardwick would have had a fit. King
was the police officer [we only had one] in Chase, Kansas, where
I grew up. He hauled a friend and me down to the city office for
shooting off firecrackers on Halloween when we were about 13.
Our “punishment” was to read the city ordinance restricting
fireworks. We were delighted to learn that fireworks were only
permitted in Chase on the Fourth of July—and Christmas!
We were glad he’d stopped us on Halloween before we ran
out of firecrackers, because we were really looking forward to
Christmas.)
From Guilin, we went to Hengshan in Hunan Province. Hengshan
is one of China’s “five holy mountains.” (Another
is Taishan, in Shandong Province, which we saw in November, so
we’re two of five, so far, on holy mountains.) The town
of Hengshan is quite small and rather remote. There are temples
on the mountain itself, but the most prominent one, Nanyue Temple,
sits at the foot of the mountain. The mountain and Nanyue Temple
seem to be the main reasons for the existence of the town. As
we walked along the streets, every shop and restaurant had a large
display of fireworks for sale. It seemed impossible that the town
could sell or use such an enormous supply of fireworks. We began
to understand when we got to Nanyue.
Nanyue Temple is a very large walled complex with perhaps 15
or more individual shrines around the perimeter of the grounds,
each with a statue of the Buddha, drum, bell, candles, and receptacles
for incense. There were hundreds of people in the Temple on the
day of our visit. Some made a complete circuit of the grounds,
praying or making offerings at each shrine. We met a young man
who was there with his wife and child, his parents, and other
members of his family. He wanted very much to have a picture taken
with Kate and me, but said it wouldn’t be appropriate until
they had completed their rounds of the Temple. We crossed paths
with him and his family several times, each time asking if it
was OK to take the picture then. It never was, and I respected
his sense of propriety about completing their duties of veneration
before stopping for snapshots, but we finally left the Temple
to head up the mountain without earning a spot in their family
photo album.
It was pretty quiet in the outer areas of the Temple where the
shrines were located. It was much busier and noisier in the center
of the grounds. For a small fee you could beat a very large ceremonial
drum at one enclosure, and at another you could swing a hanging
log to ring a very large bell. The main activity, however, was
taking place at a brick building about the size of a small two-story
house. There was a raging fire inside the building, and a steady
stream of people would approach the windows to throw in bags of
fireworks. There was a constant roar from the fireworks that was
audible all over the grounds, and the fire sent up a thick column
of black smoke that made it appear that the temple proper was
burning to the ground.
On leaving the Temple, we started up the road to Hengshan, the
mountain. We walked about a third of the way up, until we came
to a cable car that would take us about another third of the way
to the top. We bought cable car tickets before we got a good look
at the crowd of people waiting to get on. It was just after the
Lunar New Year, lots of people were off work for the holiday,
and busloads of Chinese tourists had come to Hengshan for the
day. Standing in line is not a Chinese concept, not for ordering
food, not for buying stamps at the post office, not for boarding
buses, and certainly not for getting on the Hengshan cable car.
Several hundred people were wedged into a funnel-shaped mob pressing
their way toward the entrance to the cars. If you stand quietly
in line (actually, there is no line), two-dozen people will immediately
push in front of you. So, if you have any notion of ever getting
on the cable car, the only option is to join the pushing and shoving.
It took us an hour and a half to get from the top of the funnel
to the inside of a cable car. The ride up took about five minutes.
By then it was around 3:00 p.m. It would take another two hours
or so to make it to the summit, which meant we would be walking
back down in the dark, still facing the cable car crunch. After
a few minutes thought, we walked around to the other side, got
back on the cable car, and went back down. We reached the bottom
of the mountain at about 5:00 p.m., a little before dark. We didn’t
reach the summit, but we walked about 15 km (9.3 miles), not counting
our time at Nanyue Temple. We were serenaded in our hotel that
night with fireworks just outside our window.
From Hengshan we took a bus to Changsha, a city of about six million
people, also in Hunan Province. Buying the tickets wasn’t
very difficult, even with my inability to speak more than a few
words of Chinese. I’ve learned, however, that I’m
going to need to learn more Chinese to understand what kind of
tickets I’m buying. We were on the milk run through all
the little back roads that could be found between Hengshan and
Changsha. This bus stopped to pick people up and let people off
out in the country, miles from any town. Still, it was only about
a two-hour ride. Kate sat by the window; I had the aisle seat.
We hadn’t been on the road long when the woman across the
aisle from me bent over and started throwing up on the floor.
There were some buckets in the aisle (I hadn’t known what
for until then), so I put one under her. That poor lady was awfully
sick, but she wasn’t alone. Her little boy, about ten or
so, was sitting next to her and soon began filling the bucket,
too. She had another boy in the seat behind her, and he joined
the chorus, too, though sadly without a bucket of his own. Fortunately,
it was a mild day, some windows were open, and the smell was not
too bad.
The good weather did contribute, though, to our next misadventure.
Because it was a warm day, I took my coat off and put it in the
overhead bin above our seats. When we got to Changsha, everyone
was in a rush to get out of the bus, so I grabbed my coat and
hurried off. We took a taxi from the bus station to our hotel.
You have to show your passport when you check into a hotel in
China. When I reached into my coat pocket for our passports, there
was nothing but lint in my pocket. I had kept our passports and
foreign expert certificates in a small resealable plastic bag.
I was pretty sure that they must have slid out of my pocket when
I retrieved my coat from the overhead bin. Being foreigners in
China with no documents (they didn’t seem interested in
my Texas drivers license) is not a good thing. We spent the next
hour or two talking with the Changsha Police about our lost documents.
They then referred us to the Hunan Provincial Police, but their
office was closed for the holiday and wouldn’t re-open for
another five days. Finally we were put in touch with officers
from the Exit and Entry Division (we both thought she said Accident
and Injury Division) of the Hunan Provincial Police. It was all
quite courteous and friendly, and all totally devoted to filling
out lost document paperwork. We could not get anyone to call the
bus station to ask about our documents or even to give us the
address of the bus station (Changsha has several bus stations,
and ours was on the outskirts of the city). The next morning,
we were given lost document certificates that would be necessary
for obtaining replacement passports and foreign expert certificates.
The police were finally able then, also, to tell us the address
of our bus station. We went directly there, found the security
guys, along with a traveling student who spoke some English, and
within ten minutes were told that the bus driver had found our
documents and that they were back in the bus station in Hengshan.
So, being more lucky than smart, we got our passports back that
afternoon, and all was well that ended well.
Our last stop before returning to Fuyang was in Wuhan, Hubei Province,
another city of six million or so. We were pooped and getting
colds by then, so we didn’t stay long. Our main activity
in Wuhan was eating American-style pizza at the Pizza Hut. Our
ride back to Fuyang was another Chinese surprise. This time the
bus had no seats at all. Instead, there were three rows of double-decker
cots, one row on each side and one down the middle. They were
horizontal up to where a Chinese waistline might reach, then angled
up for the back and head. The area beneath your head was where
the guy behind you would put his feet. If all passengers were
small, this might be relatively comfortable, but the cots are
pretty short for an American of average height. My shoes were
too big to fit in the little recess under the next guy’s
head, and it was too cold to take them off. So it was knees up
for about seven hours, though still not bad while it was light
enough to read. About halfway home, we had a forty-five minute
stop in a tiny little place where the only things to do were to
use a frigid outhouse and stand on the sidewalk watching it snow.
We got back to Fuyang about 9:00 that night. All in all, we had
a great trip. There were some unintended adventures, but anything
you live through is good for a story.
We’re back in the classroom now with our freshmen oral English
students. We were a little disheartened at first to find that,
after a month out of school, many of them seemed to have forgotten
what English they knew. They looked at us with the same gaping
incomprehension we’d seen at the start of the first term,
but it’s getting better already.
You can see a colorful photo of us and read a little more about
us on our home page
on the Mission Connections page of the Presbyterian Church (USA)
Web site. We are having a wonderful life in China.
Shalom y’all,
Don Lindsay
The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
246
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