2004-10-26 - 10:12 p.m.
So this last weekend the SIAS teachers were allowed to go on a trip to the city of Kaifung. This was an overnight trip. Crissy had decided to allow me to go out without them (after all I allowed her to go to the longman grotto for the national holiday, so turn around was fair play).
We left at 8am. I was slightly concerned about the trip, but I was told it was only a 2 hour bus ride. 2 hours is easy, no big deal. The toll highway is usually very lightly crowded, and the ride is usually fast and smooth.
After about 30 minutes into the trip, the bus pulls over to the side of the road, and makes a rather sudden unexpected stop. Well unexpected for everyone except the driver. The driver saw the traffic backup, and pulled over. So we are now on a "sit" way, no longer a highway. We sit. We sit. We sit. At the 20 minute mark the bus drivers shuts off the engine. We are now surrounded by traffic all trying to take the same exit we are trying for. Other traffic goes past. At this point I decided to try to get off the bus and stretch my legs. So here I am off the bus, walking around trying to talk to others. Most of the chinese can't speak a word of english, and my chinese is relegated to asking how much that is, and saying no, too expensive... At one point I think I bought a cow from a local farmer, but I'm not too sure.
I had a wonderful conversation with a chinese road worker who spoke enough english to ask, "where you from?" So in his fresh cement, I managed to draw a horrible map of america, and then showed where Arizona was. So here is this sidewalk in china with drying cement and a bad american map... I wonder how long it will be there. At the 45 minute point we found out the chinese equalivent of the Secretary of State was driving on the toll road we wanted to go on, and he didn't like traffic, so we had to wait.
At this point, I had noticed the other traffic zooming past our little offramp was very sporadic, and usually had several long time periods before a large vehicle, or a honking car would zoom by. So I did what any good fun loving american would do.
I walked out into the middle of the freeway, and started singing and doing... "Y...M...C...A It's fun to stay at the Y M C A!!!" I did three whole verses, and was trying to get the local chinese out of their cars, and I really wanted the road crew who was watching to join me, and show solidarity. (the other foreign teachers were dying. Rolling in the isles, some took pictures).
Well as you can guess, having an american in the middle of their highway was enough to make the guards who were holding us up to decide it is time to get rid of the crazy american. So our trip resumed. My job was done.
Kaifung is a smaller city, total inhabitants about 1 million. It is a very famous city in china (though, now that I think about it almost every city in china is "very famous.") It has been the imperial capital for 7 different dynasties, and now it is one big tourist trap!!
We stopped at the Dragon Pavilion, which was a large tall shrine, surrounded by lots of tourist shops. Each shop carried the same goods as every other shop. There were price tags on items, but they were suggested starting points for bargaining. I only got a couple of post cards here. Though we did find a great animatrotic dinosaurs who were eating each other. The best one was the TREX wannabe who was eating the smaller dinosaur on the ground. Lots of fake blood, and the ROAR, and whimper... wow... it's a whole family experience!!! I also really loved the Monkey King sculpture, and the monkey waterfall. The monkey king is one of my favorite chinese myths (a normal monkey who was too clever, becomes a god, and then is too smart for the other gods. He is very arrogant. the other gods call on the buddha to teach him some humility, which he does.) So the sculpture was fun, but I didn't know the monkey king looked like a power ranger reject!!!
So we are off for lunch at the building of the local power company's resturant. So it was an enlightening experience, I think we had to charge it on our account. The food was shockingly good, but boy did it give us powerful gas. And some of the food was really hair raising.... (done with the puns)
We went off back to the dragon pavilion, and walked on the streets outside of the amusement park. Have you ever been to disneyland? just like the shops when you first get into it. Cameras, films, and overpriced trinkets, and each store has the same items.
But I had to stop and look on the lakes. You see about 20 years ago, people were excavating the site of the imperial palace, and they dug 2 very large pits on each side of the dragon pavilion. Well it rained very heavily, and violla you have instant lakes. So the government decided to drain the water finish the escavation, and make man made lakes. They are a rather pretty shade of green. I couldn't see anything living in the water, but I could see people swimming across the lake. I am from flagstaff AZ, and I was wearing 3 layers (tee shirt, long sleve shirt, and nice sweater) and here they are swimming in speedo's. (I'll let that image sink in... old chinese guys in speedo's and cold water......)
I found one place that interested me. mainly because it was DIFFERENT! Going off an alley from the main road was a warehouse. This warehouse appears to be an art school, or an artist collective. There were many booths, with different artists. Now some of them painted the scroll wall hangings that were in the shops on the main road, but most of them painted different scenes. One had a copy of a famous chinese picture of 2 young women during the revolution, one had a hand woven wall hanging of Mao, several were doing landscapes, there were many who did the traditional chinese bamboo, or flowers. But the one I reallllly liked is the one who was not being like the others. It was a woman who was painting women. They were not polished, and artifical, they were bright watercolors, and I decided to buy one for criss. I pointed to it and asked how much, she said 300 RMB. I wrote down 200 RMB. She looked over my shoulder to her 'boss(?)' and he finally shook his head yes. So he walks over, and takes down a different painting than the one I pointed to. The woman takes down the painting I pointed to, and then they proceede to take down the 2 pictures between them. So I purchased 4 pictures of women (I liked them all) for 200RMB or 50 yuan each...
It is getting late, I'll continue tomorrow.
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