ed two teachers to come, so Danthemanstan agreed to come. Well, as always, things changed a few days before the trip, and it switched to an overnight trip to a lake. Well, that would’ve had Danthemanstan missing a World Series game featuring his beloved Yankees, so it was just the students and me. It turned out just fine, they had the whole trip planned; I didn’t do a single thing that one might normally term as “chaperoning.”We started the trip at the ungodly hour of 05:30, when we met in total darkness to board the bus. Our group was about half of my class and then about ten or so of their friends from our campus, some of which were my students last fall. We went with a travel agency, so we were joined on our bus by a few middle-aged couples and a hearty, jovial group of grandpas and grandmas, as the elderly are affectionately called here. I went right to my seat, pulled my hat over my eyes and did what people should be doing at that hour.
Our first destination was Da Ci Yan(大慈岩), a national park in northern Zhejiang province, the coastal province south of Jiangsu, where I live. We hiked up to a couple different points along a ridge. It wasn’t quite mountainous, but was a pretty are filled with steep, forested hills. There were many archetypal pagodas on cliffs overlo
oking valleys. One of the big features was the two-sided Buddha, which was pretty impressive, if not a bit out of place due it its obviously recent construction.Our next stop was a cave named Ling Xi Sheng Jing (灵栖胜境).It wasn’t too inviting, as all of the ponds leading up to it were at that nasty stage between needing to be drained or filled. But, the cave was pretty impressive and expansive. I would’ve liked to spend a bit more time there, but we were herded through it in classic Chinese tourist fashion. I recognize that tours I have been on in many countries rushed me through the site, but in China this rushing is exacerbated by the fact that you are also being pushed and shoved the whole time, due to the inescapable throngs of visitors. Walking around the caves and the national park was really enjoyable. My students and I talked a mostly Chinese with some English mixed in for my convenience. They were all girls, as the two boys from the class didn’t make the trip. I really enjoyed talkin
g with them outside of class, as they really let down their guard, and we could joke around, they could teach me some dirty Chinese words and phrases. I try to make my classes pretty light and enjoyable (while still prohibiting Chinese) but the classroom itself just adds some seriousness on its own. Just these conversations alone made the trip a joy.As I have to with many things in China, I just laughed and sighed during the bus ride. The tour guide, for some cultural reason I am still working on understanding, was constantly blasting trip updates through the bus speakers as well as begging for people to come to the front of the bus to sing or give some sort of performance. There were also some call and answer type games. This type of in-bus entertainment is pretty normal here, but in no way aligns with my idea of what should occur on a bus, train, or plane. Thank god for iPods.
I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the hotel we stayed at, as the trip was fairly cheap. But I guess economies of scale combined with some travel agent kickbacks makes for such. I had an awesome dinner with the grandpas and grandmas (all the students went cheap and brought their own food). It was great food, and I had a heck of a time trying to understand the flurry of questions from my companions. They seemingly predated the implementation of standard Mandarin in the schools, so I could barely decipher even the most basic phrases in their Changzhou dialect. Regardless, they were (like most Chinese) very hospitable and continually passed the dishes to me and showed me how to scoop out the spicy snails, which were superb. I passed the rest of the night, after some prodding,
playing cards, drinking beer, and eating various snacks with some of my students. They did their best to teach me the most popular Chinese card game, but as we weren’t betting, I wasn’t too worried about doing it right. Typical Chinese snacks (read: lots of spicy tofu) and warm beer isn’t really my idea of a great night, but being able to see some of my students’ personalities come out was well worth it. By the power of numbers I wasn’t able to head to bed until showing them that I could clearly out-drink any of them, including a few boyfriends along for the trip. It took only four or five beers to show them that an American fraternity is a little better practice than a prison-like Chinese high school.On Sunday morning we headed to Qian Dao Hu (千岛湖)which is a man made lake whose name roughly translates as lake of a thousand islands. We took a boat to only two islands, and spent very little time on the boat. I was hoping to island hop around the island, but that didn’t happen. In fact I got the impression there are much fewer than a thousand islands. It was cool and misty, so didn’t make for the best day to boat around a lake. There were some passable temples and stone bridges over streams, but I wasn’t too impressed. I did have a riot shaking a rope bridge with some of the more
adventurous students while the rest of the girls shrieked and clung to the ropes. I couldn’t help but laugh and take a picture when we passed a stream and a few of the grandmas from our group were bending over picking some a reed like plant and filling plastic bags with it. I’m guessing it’s good for cooking or some herbal medicine (and isn’t sold at the supermarket?). I doubt they had any detrimental impact, but picking plants from a park/nature preserve is a bit unsettling. Arriving back on campus after an equally annoying but eventless bus ride, I was quite happy to have gone on the trip, especially to get to know my students better and see them hang out/interact with each other naturally. I also was satisfied with my role as chaperone’s complete lack of responsibility.
No comments:
Post a Comment