Laura's Visit

During my vacation with Clay, I got word from Dave that our great friend Laura Hermann was coming to visit. Dave and I had been conversing with some of our friends from TU about visiting, and Laura came through. It’s great having people visit, because it allows me to share my experiences with people that share my (American) perspective. Furthermore, my rather leisurely work schedule allows for me to travel around when people visit.

We went to visit the home of Edison, another enthusiastic English learner that Dave and I both had the pleasure of teaching. He lives in Yangzhou, which used to be of incredible importance during the Grand Canal’s hay day, and he reminds any willing ear of this all the time. This makes him a great host. In general, all Chinese people tend to have weighty pride about their hometown (kind of like people from Texas). I’m not really sure why, except that maybe it’s due to a somewhat myopic worldview because most of them are very limited by travel. I always suggest looking to guidebooks or non-Chinese sources when making travel decisions here, or else you might end up at some pile of dirt that the locals claim is the greatest mountain in China. Yangzhou turned out to have a pretty nice garden, which are great places to observe Chinese people being Chinese. Visiting Edison’s high school was really interesting and we even met a cute girl that he was pretending he didn’t have a crush on. Chinese people might be immodest about practicing English, but they’re quite shy about love, relationships, etc. His family was, of course, outrageously kind and generous, even putting us up in a hotel because they didn’t think we would be comfortable in their beds.

The next leg of our journey didn’t go quite as well. To make a long story short, we fell victims to the problems I opined about in this post. I have learned some more about the train ticketing system, which is getting better, but we were out in Guilin and Sichuan provinces in south central China, and those system haven’t been upgraded. The big problem was when we were delayed for seven hours due to a mudslide, making a six-hour trip thirteen. Dave was able to sleep during the delay. Laura and I couldn’t manage it, but were giddy with sleep deprivation, and amused ourselves. This enabled (or forced: depending on your perspective) us to check into an hourly hotel at four in the morning for three hours. The hotel owner asked if we wanted separate rooms, we said no. I can only imagine what he was thinking about the young, lascivious foreigners. Then again, he does run an hourly hotel-which are the hotbed (pun intended) of “illicit” activities in an otherwise conservative and private society.

Eventually, we made it to Chongqing and found Jimmy. Jimmy was the travel agent Dave selected based on his English slogan: “Jimmy makes it happen”. Well, despite all our skepticism, Jimmy did make it happen. He was a great guy, with good English and maybe the most honest travel agent/tour organizer in China. So, after taking in some of Chongqing (hot, dirty, and crowded) we loaded the boat. The cheapest beds were six to a room, and that’s where we were. The room was pretty nice for the price, had air conditioning, and the beds were softer than the average Chinese bed. The shower was small and not exactly clean, but Laura was a trooper and didn’t complain about it too much. We didn’t luck out so much on the roommate card. There was a mom and her son, who we think may have been mentally impaired, and did have some back deformations. This was obviously not a problem, but his overbearing mother who was doing everything to make the room perfect for him seemed pretty non-conciliatory, so we treaded lightly around the room. She didn’t seem eye to eye with Dave’s view on keeping the windows closed when the air conditioning was on. Now, Dave is an expert, he won a Goldwater Scholarship for physics, so I tend to trust him on heat transfer and gas properties questions. But, we took the high road and just sweat it out for three nights. A dad and his young son took the other bed. The dad was adamant about smoking in the room (while covering up the “not” on the “do not smoke in the room” sign, and I lost my temper, but only yelled at him in English. On the other hand, the son was fun to practice Chinese with, as he hasn’t developed an unintelligent accent yet.

Apparently, while on the Yangzi River Cruise, vacation has been redefined as getting up at 5:30 to make the 6:00 a.m. stop to visit some village. This wasn’t really a choice, as the music and announcements were load and I didn’t have earplugs. We only did the tourist stop once, and went on some super cheesy motor dragon boat ride through some gorges. The scenery was beautiful, but I’d argue not worth getting up at 5:30. In case PETA needs a new project, the two monkeys tied to a raft we passed would certainly qualify.

In today’s China, the Yangzi is referred to as the Chang Jiang (Yangzi is another name used in one area, but became standard in English). Jiang means river, and my dictionary says chang means “length, long, always, forever, constantly”. Well, the name’s right, the river is long, and also pretty wide, calm, brown, silty, and has a fair amount of trash. Not a whole lot, but too much; there are actually garbage fishers trolling the waters in some of the more populated areas. Of the three gorges, the first and second were daunting and austere. Gorge number three didn’t impress me as much, but maybe that’s just because I had been through two already. The cruise had a calm, slow feel, perhaps because of the river, or the fact we were stopped almost all day each day visiting tourist villages. Laura may have missed out on them, but Dave and I have become a little desensitized to them.

We spent most of our time on the cruise doing what you should do on vacation, chilling. I bargained for beer at the stops, and Dave got a big bag of sunflower seeds, and with our VIP passes to the upper deck (which wasn’t exactly what you think of when you hear VIP) we were set. We hung out a lot with Huang Can, a 16-year-old girl from a town in Sichuan (where the cruise started). She is on the list of the most courageous people in China. Her English was at conversational level, and with Dave’s Chinese and cell phone dictionaries, we were able to have some great conversations. Not only courageous, but also precocious, hanging out with her was a blast. She was traveling with her mom and grandmother on what was her first trip outside her province (albeit Sichuan is pretty big). She actually ended up taking the bus with us to the next big city and gave me and Dave Chinese practice time, and gave Laura a chance to ask all the questions that being in a foreign country stirs up. We also met some British travelers, and as they were the only other foreigners on the boat (except a creepy southern European looking guy) we naturally gravitated towards them and shared stories over some meals.

On the last day we visited the Three Gorges Dam. Dave and I were both really excited about this, but Laura isn’t nearly as into potentially catastrophic infrastructure and social engineering projects. It’s big, and the locks were pretty impressive. There was no funny “dam tour guide” ala Vegas Vacation and the visitor’s information center should’ve been labeled gift shop. I was disappointed that I couldn’t learn more about it (read: Ken needs to learn how to read Chinese) but it is the world’s largest hydroelectric plant, and they are in the process of adding four more turbines to the 28 current. The overview pamphlet did recognize the “achievement of relocating 1.3 million people. I’ll let you make the judgment on classifying it as an achievement. There were markers on the banks throughout the cruise marking 175 meters. This is the level the river will reach when the dam and reservoir are filled to capacity, which is supposed to be this year. It was easy to see even without the markers, as construction stops well above the bank, and in some places you can see where whole towns used to be. The heightened level is supposed to reach 500 kilometers (310 miles) upstream. Oddly enough, there was Mao Zedong merchandise for sale everywhere around the dam and at all the lookouts. The plans for this damn have been around for a long time, but I am pretty sure it was the development and industrialization that come from not running an autarky that allowed for the damn to be built. On the other hand, sell what sells: I can’t argue with that.