National Day and Beyond

At the beginning of October, we had an eight day holiday. It was a combination of National Day (October 1st) and the Mid-Autumn (or Moon) Festival, which is determined by a lunar calendar. This year it fell on October 3rd. It is advertised to be the day of the largest and fullest moon of the year. Families try to be together, but if they cannot, they look at the moon and think of one another. To take advantage of this unusually long holiday, we began to consider many possibilites. We wanted to do a little traveling, but our ideas seemed too expensive or too difficult. Finally, we were invited to join some of the other foreign teachers on a short tour in Hunan, a neighboring province. We decided to say "yes" because 1) they were going to a place we were interested in seeing 2) the price was affordable 3) we would have a chance to get to know the two Russian teachers who would be going -- along with Rich, me, and Selia from California -- Marina, a vocal teacher, and Oleg, and artist. The trip was arranged through Marina and some contacts she had with her government representatives in China. So after attending celebratory ceremonies at our school and watching the televised self-congratulating celebrations in Beijing of modern China's birth and phenomenal progress, we were off on an adventure over which we had no control Not our style.

The first challenge was at our school gate. We needed to get to a rather remote train station in Chongqing, about an our away by bus. We had a plan to do that, but we were accosted at the gate by several Chinese who seemed to be offering us a better plan for transportation. We should have known better, but we were drawn in for a time. Fortunately, some helpful students wandered by and clarified the offer for us, which was not a good one. So back to our original plan. We arrived at the train station about 9:30 p.m. and had some supper. Then we waited for our tickets to arrive from an unknown Russian representative. We got a little nervous when train departure was only about 20 minutes away, but in the nick of time, a lady arrived with the necessary documents. It was my first time to be on a sleeper train. We had been warned that traveling by train would be terrible, but this train was clean and fairly comfortable. The bunks are six to a compartment, a compartment being open to the aisle. I was lucky enough to be assigned to a bottom bunk; Rich had a top. Selia had the middle, which was a little claustrophobic she said. But I slept well. One strange thing was that the train stopped frequently, sometimes for an hour. Later we decided that it had to go through many tunnels and the tunnels only had one track, so the trains had to wait for the opposing traffic to pass through before they entered.
The next morning, after about a 12 hour ride, we arrived in Feng Huang, an old city that bore some resemblance to Venice. There we met our guide and our fellow travelers, all of whom were Chinese and most of whom spoke only Chinese. That was our first big challenge.

After lunch we spent the afternoon wandering the streets and shopping at the various outdoor stalls. We quickly learned that both Marina and Oleg were experienced shoppers and knew quality. Whenever we asked ourselves, "Where's Marina?" we always answered "Shopping."
THen the frustrations of touring began. We waited almost three hours for our bus to take us to the next destination, 5 hours away. When the bus came, it soon broke down. We pulled off the highway, and the bus driver fixed it with a screwdriver! He wasn't about to slow down after that, and the five hours were reduced. We arrived at our hotel at midnight, survived the mad dash for rooms (nothing assigned), and fell asleep. The next morning we would see Zhang Jia Jie, a famous mountain park.

The next morning I missed the start time by a few minutes because I had misunderstood the instructions, and I was embarrassed. I think our guide realized then that she had to be more careful to make sure we understood inmportant information. She made sure after that that we were watched over a bit.
Zhang Jia Jie was outstanding. It is most famous, I think, for its strange rock formations. Rich and I decided to try the cable car lift to the top and then walk down.
Considering that it was a national holiday week, the wait for the cable car could have been much worse than it was, 2 1/2 hours. People were friendly, though, and the time passed pleasantly. The ride was worth the price; we rode very near to the rock formations and felt like we were going to crash into one just before the we reached the top. The ride down, after some snacks, began simply enough, but after what seemed like a thousand hundred steps down and up and down, our leg muscles were screaming. And they screamed for several days. Squat toilets were excruciating. We even had to think twice before getting up from a chair. Ah, well. We're not as young as we thought we were.
The second day at Zhang Jia Jie we walked for 7 kilometers along a lovely stream. Picture the bike path along Ridley Creek but with fewer trees and mountain on either side. It was a great place for families; children could safely wade in the water and skip stones to their heart's content. By this time we had formed a friendly companionship with one of the families, a dad and a mom, a little boy, and a grandma. They showed us many things along the way, including sonme new taste treats at the periodic food stalls.
Satisfied, we had our final meal in Hunan and prepared to travel back to Chongqing. This time it was a two part train ride. The first train was extremely crowded, but we did have tickets and thus seats. We had been told that we would receive our tickets for the sleeper train when we exited at Huai Hua, another Hunan city, but when the time came, no tickets materialized. Long story short, our whole group was able to ride the train with no tickets, taking the beds of people who had just left the train. Our Chinese friends kept saying "Follow us, follow us," and what else could we do? Many people had to know what was happening -- the ticket takers, the conductors, the exit managers. I have never felt so Chinese as I did that night. Who knows the truth of what happened to our tickets or the money that was supposed to purchase them, but we did arrive home safely with a story to tell.

Now it's back to work. We are trying to get ourselves organized to do a little entertaining because we need to reciprocate for many kindnesses, but time moves so swiftly.
That's probably a very good thing:)