Tulous, Silk, Canals, Dogs and an Election

The cold nipped at our heels as we boarded the train. 32 hours long, that’s what we’re told when we asked how long this ride will last, and in our minds that’s just a number. That’s nothing. Then we boarded; there are bunks on the right side and a small hallway with Murphy bed style chairs on the left. It’s cramped. The hallway is barely wide enough for us to walk down it comfortably. Each bunk has three beds, awful decorations. I’m still wondering who chose the puke green bed coverings with tiny embroideries of flowers and vines. The windows are clothed with white curtains that a local brothel probably turned down, because who really wants belly dancers poorly sewn into their curtains? I climbed to the top bunk and threw my bag in the overhead rack. I laid down, almost banging my head on the ceiling and realized how long 32 hours was going to be. We hadn’t even left the station yet. I took a nap in the top bunk, in the shadows above the window. 3 hours later I woke up, and we still had more than a day stuck on this train, the kuai train or the fast train as the translation says. But that’s not really what it means. Kuai here means the absolute slowest way to get there. It will stop to let other trains pass it at the stations. It will stop at the stations to let people off. The steady rhythm of the train moving was soothing; it lurched around corners and rocked back and forth. If you look out the window while the train is turning, you could see the train stretching endlessly into the distance. Meals seemed to be separated by eternities; they’re a break in the monotony of the train, huffing into the distance. The rhythm seemed to have become one with my own breathing. But the dining car is different. It’s tackily furnished, like something out of a 1950’s diner. Its walls were pink, they still had the awful curtains, red tables, booths, a kitchen in the back and Chinese people who were very interested in the waiguoren that were sitting at all the tables but four. The only thing that set this restaurant apart from the rest of the diners was the scenery. It was an ever changing landscape; foggy mountains, to rundown cities, to bustling cities, streets cloaked in night, with car lights piercing the darkness, to rushing rivers. Dew and rain rolled down the windows, clouding our window to the world. I returned to our train car and tried playing cards with people, and killing time other ways, but our arrival still felt as far off as it did when we first started. I went back to my bed, hitting my head on the ceiling this time, and feeling like I was suffocating. The bed was barely three feet wide, and my feet hung off into the hallway, over everyone’s heads. My ears popped and I knew that it was going to be the beginning of an extremely long night and tried to fall asleep. I woke up early, which depressed me, still 13 hours to go. More card games, then the train was delayed. 14 more hours now. It now felt like I had spent my whole life on this train. There was nothing but the train. There had never been anything but the train. The train attendants would occasionally push a food cart past or try and sell some ridiculous pair of socks. The other Chinese on the train didn’t react as bad to the train as we did. American’s are used to having their own space, but the train definitely taught me how to deal with people for long periods of time. And then the sun began to set again and the lights of Xiamen appeared in the distance. The train was nearing our destination. It was here. We were here. We stepped off the train and a burst of warm air didn’t just greet us, but embraced us. It was the start of our adventure. We were finally in Fujian. The stale air of the train and the smoggy air of Beijing were behind us. We were in Xiamen, where the air was cleaner… at least in comparison. We all felt dirty. We wore our sweat and grime and stains and smells just like we wore our clothes and craved a shower to get it off of us. The hotel was nice, with some very sketchy staircases, but it was still quality and I only cared about the shower. Tomorrow was going to start the real adventure.
Our first stop was the Coca-Cola plant. We saw the machines, and watched the beginning of capitalism sneak its way into the country through corny commercials. I bought myself a coke thinking that right from the plant, coke would be fresh, and delicious, but I was wrong. I guess coke gets better with age. The plant was interesting. It was placed in one of China’s special economic zones, where foreign companies could set up shop and work. These special economic zones are one of the reasons that China’s annual economic growth has been 10% for the past 30 years. China has made conditions favorable for the development of business in these zones. But that was behind me soon enough as we got on the bus and started driving through Xiamen to get to the tulous. Xiamen looked like a futuristic city. There were unique monuments, and bridges built exclusively for the buses above the city. Each building was clean and brilliantly lit. We drove further and further out and the landscape changed. Less port, more mountains. Every mountain had been shaped over time by the peasants and the farmers into Mayan temple look-a-likes so that they could be used for farming. Generations of people shaped the land, just as the land had shaped the people into who they were. The mountains were multi-tiered now, except for an occasional grave dug into the side of the mountain, extending upwards like an arch built into the mountain. Fruit trees stretched up and down the mountains. The road got less and less paved. I finally figured out what the date was after having the train mess up my sense of time. November 4th. We were getting a new president today. This brought on discussions about each other’s views on the election. There were plenty of different views. But our discussion was cut short by the bus driver driving into a ditch on the winding roads up the mountain. The whole bus lurched forward and he started going in reverse, fast, to get out. The tail end of the bus hung over a cliff, but I wasn’t scared. I put my faith in the bus driver, just like I do when I drive with other people in China. It’s a little trick I learned from riding with my dad… kidding. I swear dad. I am. Sort of… but we got out of it fairly unscathed and arrived at the tulous 4 hours after our departure from the coke factory. The way to the tulous that we were going to stay at had been littered with other tulous that sold out and let tourists stay there. They paved the roads, because convenience breeds tourists. But the richer experiences are always the ones that were hard to get to. Unfortunately Chuxi, or the name of the village we stayed at, will probably do the same within the next decade, if not sooner. The bus pulled up to one side of a ravine. We got off the bus and I saw the inspiration for practically every single movie, video game, book and whatever else that takes place in the jungle. The trees were all palms, or persimmon trees. At the bottom of the ravine was a river and a small waterfall, with stepping stones at the top of the waterfall to cross the river. Across the ravine raised high on the cliffs, above the trees, were round buildings, built from the yellowish earth around them. Tulou breaks down into earth building when you translate it. The tulous rose over the trees like a halo above a pure, untouched part of China. My tulou was enormous, yellow and square. It’s yellow because the Hakka, or Kejia in mandarin, people moved down south to escape political turmoil, but they weren’t welcome in the south either. So to protect themselves, they built villages all in one building, surrounded by earth to protect themselves from those who didn’t want them in their land. They placed their windows high on the wall to help defend themselves. I walked inside my tulou and the sun had already set behind its walls, despite the fact that it was still light most everywhere else in the village. The smell of cooking meat and other foods, dirt, animals and a tinge of urine assaulted me. I wished that I hadn’t gotten sick on the train, and could smell all of the tulou, but I could still see, so that sufficed. The roof was open, a small village in the center on the first floor, animals under overturned laundry baskets and other baskets, waiting their turn to die, old rickety buildings in the middle, and along the first floor overhang were little rooms; one had a TV where a little kid was watching cartoons. 10 of us were ushered into one small room where we ate a small feast. We talked about the election in America some more. The polls were now officially open on the east coast now. We’ll have to wait until November 5th to find out the results. It was kind of surreal that people are choosing the fate of the country I’m going home to, while I’m sitting in the middle of rural southeastern China. But it was dark after dinner, and I was getting my room in the tulou. Bi Laoshi led us to a staircase completely in shadows. I couldn’t even see the steps. Chris, Kyle C. and I were the first to go up into the blackness of the steps to our rooms. The wooden boards on the inside of the tulou were slightly shifted from their original position. Kyle and my rooms were on the top floor of the tulou, four stories up. My room was stark naked. There was an antique bed, discolored earthen walls that felt like concrete. There was a broken TV with no plug to plug it in, but still glowed eerily in the middle of the night, there were nails, 8 of them, nailed into my wall half sticking out, and their shadows danced from the wind blowing the lone light bulb hanging from the ceiling. There was a wood ceiling that would put wooden floors back home to shame and a wooden floor that was disgusting, dirty, stained, and plain out gross. I can’t describe it in words. I left my stuff in my room and went out to explore the city, armed only with my trusty flashlight. It was now pitch black outside. The village was basically lots of tulous with stores defining streets between them. Gavin and I met up and explored the allies ‘till we found a shop. Its clerk was an older woman holding a baby. We were talking with her when a puppy came up and started playing with me. I asked the older woman what its name was and she said, “Gou,” or “Dog” in English. This naming was a trend throughout the town, that and “Xiao Bao,” which I still have no idea what it means. I blame the accent. Gavin and I found Chris and the three of us went into a shop where the older couple inside sat us down at their table and served us tea. We talked with them for a while. There weren’t any parent aged people around town, or older teenagers for that matter, and the reason was that once they’re old enough, they leave the village to go work in the cities so they can bring money back to the village. This is what the couple in the shop told us, as well as everyone else, in the village. Gavin did most of the talking here, he figured out the accent a lot faster than I did. I was still getting used to it. We walked out thanking them for the generous amounts of tea, and Gavin and I went out on our own again. We went to a different tulou, and walked right into a person’s house. There was a small girl practicing her characters and an older woman and an ancient looking woman. They greeted us and served us more tea. It was delicious. It was fresh. And Gavin started talking with them, and I’d chip in something every now and then, but we got to the topic of America and politics in general. I was still getting a hang for the accent, but when I saw my chance I used my stock market line. I don’t know why, but after I said that, everything they were saying made sense, “sh” was now an “s” sound, etc. etc. Confidence, it helps. We got onto the topic of Mao, because of the poster of him over the table. Our host loved Mao dearly. If you were a peasant, then you probably would. He redistributed the land, giving land to those who had practically nothing. But we kept on talking with our hosts, while they kept refilling our thimble sized teacups with their cup sized kettles. I liked the tea, but they wouldn’t stop refilling, even when I told them to. We left eventually, wishing them long life. Gavin and I then went up a path leading into the mountains, but more importantly the bathroom. After a disturbing experience in the place that they called bathrooms, we continued up the path, shining our light in front of us, to watch the trail. It was precariously perched over another ravine and a tributary to the bigger river. On the other side of the trail were ancient buildings, not quite tulous, but not stores either, with small allies coming to the trail we were on from every angle. It was nice; we could see the stars and the moon, something that I missed dearly in Beijing. We kept walking up the path when three black dogs jumped out from an ally raised above the trail. They turned and looked at us. And I froze. These dogs looked like wolves. All of them in Chuxi look the same. Their faces were just as surprised as ours were, and then they trotted down the path. We kept walking and we saw a newborn puppy. It was sleeping and we shined our flashlight on it. It was absolutely adorable. We were staring when its mom came from the ocean of darkness around the island of light on the pup. Her hair was standing straight up, and its eyes cut a hole in the night. We walked away warily and took a picture in the night when I heard footsteps behind us. I shone my flashlight back and there were the back of that mother dog’s eyes, hanging just outside the reach of the flashlight. Its head was cocked curiously. We started walking forward and the eyes were just out of the reach of the flashlights. We began to run; the experience was getting a bit on the unnatural realm of the spectrum. The dog began to chase us and we crossed the tributary on a small bridge, dashing into people’s gardens to get away. The eyes were gone now. The earth beneath us was soft, and the palm trees leaves were swaying in the warm breeze of the south. We looked for the dog and it was back on the path, walking back to its pup… or waiting for us. We warily returned and a doctor pulled us into his house to serve us tea. He began talking to us of Nixon and the good he did China, and I told him today was America’s Election Day. He nodded, but didn’t really seem to care. He heated up more water with his electric teapot and poured us more tea. Everyone was so generous. I went my separate ways from Gavin after that and walked into another person’s house. We talked; her son was off working in a big city. We got to the topic of the election and she had no idea there was one. I told her I heard Obama was winning, and she didn’t even know who he was. She zoned out and stopped caring about what I was saying. I walked out before she made tea and returned to my tulou. I told ghost stories to creep Chris out but only ended up creeping myself out. I sprayed my room with 100% DEET and went to bed thinking happy thoughts. Ha-ha…
Now here is where I’ll apologize in advance for my language. Damn rooster. It woke me up at 4 in the morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep because it wouldn’t stop. I walked out to the plaza at sunrise to meet the other students who were woken up by the rooster too. The bustle of morning life is very relaxing. Four or five people are lining the streets with rose petals for tea, chickens and dogs wander the streets. The dogs aren’t even scary in the daytime. One lied patiently in front of a table set up on the main bridge, where a man was cutting up meat. Flies buzzed around, as he took the cleaver and cut slices for the next meal. In the daylight I saw that there were hardly 100 people on the street. Someone said that in the whole village there were only 700 people, but I have a hard time believing there were that many. Breakfast was a rehash of dinner, except fresher. We then crossed the stepping stones and climbed back up to the bus landing and were off to visit a middle school. The children all stared at us, in a slightly mocking, slightly awed manner. Some said, “Haaaa-loooooooooo,” which is a phrase I’m starting to hate. We were split up into groups and I was put in the 7th grade P.E. class first. We started off jogging 100 meters in a line; everyone had to stay in the line and couldn’t cut. So I was walk/jogging to keep myself from stepping on the heels of the people in front of me. We ran around half of a dirt track, because the other P.E. class was using the other half, cutting across the middle to finish the lap. Stretches followed and then a game, like tag. It was intense, Nick S. fell and scraped himself up really bad, and Ian was just awful and kept getting tagged by all the 7th graders. Next up was a relay race, run to the end of the basketball court and back, but Ian, Trace, Mike and I were put in the girls division. Just by luck, I swear. We demolished when our turn came about, but there was no satisfaction in the victory. I told them to run “Kuai Dianr” and then everyone began chanting it, without the Beijing accent of course. The girls lost. We then did push-ups and finished with leap frog. Right as the teacher dismissed the class, the bell rang. There was no clock, no watch on his wrist and I couldn’t believe that he was able to do that. It was insane. Chinese education is guaranteed for 9 years to every child, but in Fujian, because so many nationalists fled to Taiwan from Fujian, the school systems receive money from the people who fled because they want to have an impact on the future. This makes the education here a higher quality than other parts of the country. But I digress, English class was next. I got the book they were using and I read a dialogue aloud with Warren. It was a girl and her granny, the granny was sick because of the bad quality of the air due to the new factories releasing bad gases and chemicals into the air, but she wasn’t going to go see a doctor, she was going to inform the newspapers instead. It was just too unbelievable. The class started with skits. The teacher then started a lesson on the differences between American and British English. Or as he would say, “Engrish.” He couldn’t say “L’s.” He would then ask a question and follow it up with “Yesno.” “American English is pronounced the same as British English, yesno?” except he would say it very fast and harsh. It was hard to understand. We returned to the Tulous and Nick S. and I climbed a mountain, to a pagoda overlooking the village. One of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen. I stood looking out over the mountain when others came up. The American election had been decided. Obama had won the popular vote. 4 in the afternoon in China, 4 in the morning in America, I was standing at the top of a mountain overlooking one of the most incredible views I’ve ever seen, and news of Obama’s victory reached me. It was incredible. I climbed down the mountain and had dinner, which was the same as the other meals, and walked out to the plaza. I met up with Maryanne and Bridget and crossed the waterfall, and laid in a grove of palms, overlooking the river and mountainous land. The sky was black despite the fact that it was 6 and the stars were out. More stars than I’d ever seen before. We laid down there in that grove, and stargazed, when a meteor shower flickered across the sky, leaving streaks of light in the night. We laid there watching for what seemed like hours, when Chris, Sophie and Warren came out to join us for a game of flashlight tag. We headed back to the tulous when Bridget and Maryanne realized they lost their key. I went with them and retraced our steps to find it. It was right where we were lying while we were stargazing. But I got a call from Chris saying he also lost his key. We searched the whole city and jungle around it for the key, but there wasn’t a sign of it anywhere. So I was getting pumped to have a roommate in my creepy room. My iPod died so I couldn’t listen to music to calm myself down at night. But as we were going up to my room, he saw his room. The door was wide open. The key was right in the lock. He had forgotten to take it with him. I visited Gavin’s room and it was even creepier than mine. There were old pictures from a wedding long past, the light bulb was burnt out, there was a breakfront with a desk and broken oil lamps and sodium chloride injections and notes on old paper, crinkled and worn. I’m glad I didn’t have to sleep there. A rooster went off, and I looked at my watch. 9:30 at night. Damn roosters. Back to my room.
I tried falling asleep to the sounds of cicadas and crashing waterfalls, but dogs barked and howled in the night and a mosquito buzzed around me, but 100% DEET kept him there. I sweat from the heat, and was chilled by the breezes that came through my window on the top floor that couldn’t close because it had no glass panes. And the most annoying fact about my lack of sleep that night was the fact that I forgot my razor for the whole trip, and my invisible beard kept pricking my neck and jolting me awake. I got out of bed at 6:30 and climbed the mountain with the pagoda again to watch the sun rise over the mountains. I already missed the first rays of daylight, but the sun wasn’t over the mountains yet. I sat up there with other students who had the same idea as me and watched the village, fade from black and glow in the rays of a new day. I was happy to be away from the damn roosters. It was peaceful. Jang and I then went and started climbing the tiered mountains to pick persimmons. Not to my liking, they leave a dry taste in your mouth afterwards, but Jang liked them, and I liked picking them. We returned to the village, and I saw an old woman carrying a stick with buckets on either end of it over her shoulder. She had a sundried face, tan and wrinkled, wearing old clothes and a pair of bright purple children’s boots. The image just stuck in my head, as I had breakfast and we left the village. Her struggling up the slopes in the village stuck in my mind. This was goodbye to Chuxi. If and when I return, it won’t be the same place, just another tourist trap like the rest. But I really hope not.
We took the 4 hour bus ride back to Xiamen and took a 4 minute ferry to Gulangyu, a small island that the Portuguese had up until 1949 when they were forced out and the mansions and everything was given back to the people. The architecture is a mix between Iberian Peninsula and Chinese styles with some other influences from Europe. It is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I showered upon arriving at the hotel. 2 days of grime, gone and it felt incredible. I then went out to the giant statue of Koxinga overlooking the bay. Gavin and I went off on our own and walked around the entirety of the island. Darkness comes quickly here, and it was dark before we started our walk around. While we were walking around the island, we saw an abandoned mansion. And after staying in Chuxi for so long, Gavin and I were inclined to walk in and check it out. It had a high stone wall around its premises, big, heavy iron gates and looking through those gates I realized that the mansion looked eerily similar to the Resident Evil mansion. I was beginning to have second thoughts about entering, but Gavin pushed open the gates and was like it’s not that bad, go in. And so I walked in, standing in the entrance for a bit, taking the atmosphere in, when the sound of clanking, like metal, fell from the roof, and I jumped back, startled, but what startled me more, was when it got up and ran across the garden. “Gavin, I’m getting bad vibes from here, let’s go.” “Naw, that was nothing, let’s keep going.” So we keep going, walking up stone steps into the next portion of the garden, shrubberies on both sides of the path, the moon casting a tree’s shadow on the path and it waved and clawed at us. From the shrubberies came glowing eyes, the back of cats eyes… I hope they were cats, and they followed us through the garden. I walked faster to the door of the mansion. It wasn’t so much a door, as it was a metal gate, the kind that makes diamond shapes, and is just to keep people out. But it was partially open, and Gavin pushed it all the way open. Inviting, eh? I looked in and there was only one light bulb, hanging in the center of a four way intersection hallway. One direction was where we were coming from, the one across from us was a rickety staircase, old, like an old cottage’s staircase that fell into disrepair, the walls followed suit. We walked into the island of light. To the left was a hallway that extended to darkness, with only the light that a static-y TV makes coming from one of the open doors. To our right was a hall that had a door that had fallen driftwood in front of it. “This is the most scared I’ve ever been,” he says, but how could I believe that with that goofy smile on his face. I put my hand in my pocket and started running my pocket knife through my hands. Gavin wanted a picture of the door with the driftwood. He whipped out his camera and the flash went off. From the darkness, down on the other side of the hallway, came this bloodcurdling scream. My blood curdled. I finally understand that expression. I turned around; Gavin and I were afraid, legitimately afraid. Emerging from the darkness was a short, old Chinese woman, graying hair and arms flailing, running like a demon at us. She started yelling in the dialect, not even Chinese, and we tried to justify ourselves. “Women yiwei zhe shi yi ge gong yuan. Duibuqi mafan ni!” but she wouldn’t listen to any of it. She just waved her hands in our faces, when from the staircase came a man, wearing a red shirt. He just floated down the steps and said, “Ni yinggai zou ba.” He didn’t have to tell me twice, I was heading for the door, Gavin was still trying to justify ourselves, but I dragged him out. The old lady pushed me as I pushed Gavin out the door, and then grabbed the door/gate. With a creak and then a clank it was closed. I looked back into the mansion, through the diamonds, and they faded into the darkness, walking backwards as they looked at us. It wasn’t a normal fade either. They were there, and then they weren’t. We got out of there and continued our walk around the island, slightly shaken up. When the communists took over they took the Portuguese land and gave it to the people, as I’ve already mentioned. So the mansions then became communal houses, and apartments, but some were left alone and fell into disrepair. Apparently this one still had people in it. Dinner was at a small restaurant, and they treated Gavin and me like kings. They gave us their best looking waitress, and she talked with us, ignoring the other customers. After the meal, she invited us to the back room, which we politely… accepted. We left after just talking for a bit, and continued the trek around the island. We went to a bunch of beaches. And then we stumbled across another mansion. Gavin wanted to go in, and I told him no, and walked off. Not again. So I ended up going to the beach and wrote my Chinese name in the sand next to a couple that was proposing to each other in the sand. After they left, I looked at the sand. It was beautifully written in English, like calligraphy. The one thing in the message that would’ve killed my mood was, “Will yu marry me?” YOU… But I digress. I ran into Warren and we climbed the mountain that Koxinga was perched on, and goofed off climbing. I went back to the hotel to rest, the days are really busy. I was finally getting used to having a patchy beard. I couldn’t wait to get a razor. I woke up and went with Warren, Chris, Gavin and Kyle C., to McDonalds. I had pancakes. PANCAKES! I don’t think I’m getting my point across here… 3 months with no American food and pancakes… with a chocolate milkshake. It was like… I can’t even say. It was just too good. But afterwards Kyle and Gavin and I wandered the island, where we stumbled across the mansion that Gavin wanted to go in when I left him the previous night. He didn’t go in because the gate was locked, but he asked around and nobody was there or had been there for a long time. The three of us hopped the 8 foot tall fence and fell into the courtyard. This side had no way to get back over, no footholds or anything. We were stuck inside now. So we walked up a staircase to the second floor. The metal gate was just like the night before, except it was rusted shut. So, I put my backpack on the ground and slid through the small opening with the others. The inside was a mess. Shutters, doors, glass, porcelain, all lay broken on the wooden floors. The walls were stone and were beautiful, but vines and other foliage clung to them. We went further into the mansion, and there was an enormous garden, forced between a cliff face and the mansion. The garden was untamed, crawling up the walls that contained them. We went down to the basement, and found a bamboo ladder. Our ticket out. The basement was dark, even though it was 9:30 in the morning and there were a couple windows for light to get in. There were shattered vases holding up some of the stairs. We walked back up to the top floor. The place had obviously been looted. The only room that hadn’t been was a room that was boarded shut. There was a mattress and a chair there. The sun shone in the windows and showed the motes of dust hanging in the air. We kept walking through when we hit one other room that hadn’t been completely looted. There was a closet with something rustling in it, and random stuff thrown everywhere. Windows, sofa cushions, broken items, papers, and in the middle of all the mess was a nice table with a marble surface and wooden legs. On top of it was a portrait of an old man, sketched in pencil and it looked as if it was aging right before me. A golden frame around it, and the face followed me. A small thing of burnt incense sat in front of it. Its ashes recently fresh. It was like the Portrait of Dorian Gray, or maybe I should say the Portrait of Dorian Lee. It was the scariest picture I’ve ever seen. We left, bamboo ladder in hand, and right at the entrance where we came in, were now bottles of metallic yellow dust, submerged in liquid. They weren’t there before. I squeezed through the gate, set up the ladder and escaped. I could not have imagined doing that in the night. It was creepy enough already. The rest of the gang was waiting back at the hotel.
We took the ferry back to Xiamen and were dropped in the botanical gardens. Warren and I were intent on getting lost. We had four hours in an enormous park. Our only goal was to get to the temple on the other side before the four hours were up. So Warren and I got lost. We wandered through the Flower Galaxy, ran up and down hills and found lost amphitheaters. But we looked at our watch and we hadn’t even reached half way, with 2 hours left. So we decided enough goofing around. We were told that a peak called Wulaofen was next to the temple at the end. So we began climbing a mountain, following signs pointing to other signs, so we could find one that had this name on it. We got to the peak of this mountain. Our line of sight was over the skyscrapers in Xiamen. We were really high up. We were on the peak of a mountain, and we couldn’t find anything to point us in any direction. We searched the ground for people that looked white but there was no one. So Warren decided he was going to climb down the mountain, not follow the path back down. He stuck out his hands and legs so it made an “X” and he started shifting down the mountain in this vertical crack extending to the bottom. I watched him, when all of a sudden he started spouting profanities, as he began slipping down fast. He jumped out and landed on a small ledge seventeen or so feet above the path below. I looked down there and couldn’t just leave him, so I did the same thing. Knowing where he slipped I was more careful, but now I looked at where he was and I was not going to jump. And I tried, but couldn’t go back up. And he couldn’t jump back up to go up either. So I had two options. Fall, or jump to his ledge and wait. He put his hand out and told me he’d pull me out of my fall. So I let go, and began sliding down, jumped, grabbed his hand and he pulled me to his perch. Sliding down tore up my pants, the aesthetic parts of my camera and my arm, but I was fine. And we sat there for about 2 minutes when Warren looked at me and said with his Kentucky accent, “Sterling, I’m going to teach you how to fall.” He gave me the basics and expected me to do that if I were to fall. He then began running down the face of the mountain, and jumped right before the bottom into a standing position. I followed suit, and we were down. We were alive, but now situated in the valley of the cactuses. We wandered through there for a while until we saw our bus driver and he pointed us to the peak. It was really nearby and we still had an hour and a half, so we went down the other path, passing through a secret garden, taking a secret staircase in the secret garden, up to a secret path where a modernistic building was being built. It was all white, and very boxy with lots of windows. So if two cases of breaking and entering weren’t bad enough already, Warren and I went in. Of course the door was wide open. The only thing in there was a staircase. We walked up it and started looking out the windows. On the right side of the building was a pond. We went to the other side. There was a cliff that had a bigger drop; the top of the cliff was only 6 feet from the window. If you could jump the gap then there was another path. So Warren and I both got in separate windows, and jumped. We made it with plenty of room to spare, and then continued walking down the path, which abruptly stopped. So we blazed our own path. We actually ran into a homeless man sleeping in the woods, who had made a wall, from barbed wire he hung over clothes lines. Very sketchy. There was a sign in the middle of nowhere. As we slowly read the characters we both slipped and fell. The sign said, “Watch your Step.” Well thanks. We found the main path and started climbing up the mountain. People started looking at us, covered in dirt and our own blood. We asked them if this was Wulaofen and they said yes, so we dashed to the top and asked which way to the temple. They pointed the way we had just run up. We slouched as we started down the way we had just come. Somehow we had circumnavigated the whole mountain. We blazed new paths down the mountain, running down the rocks and jumping over gaps. The temple was just like every other temple in China so we waited to get on the buses to the train station.
Upon arriving at the train station we went through the joke that is Chinese Train Security. During Shiyi in October, I carried a three foot blade through the metal detector and it didn’t go off. But I digress; the train people looked at the group and pushed us through the line at the very front of the terminal. We had nowhere to go and it was their mistake for putting 54 waiguoren and their teachers into a gated off area where the whole terminal can see they’ve been cut. They all stood up and looked at us angrily. Over 1000 people were in the terminal waiting to get on the train and now they were furious. I tried to talk with one of the people on the other side of the gate, but they wouldn’t listen to the explanation. 1000 faces all merged into one. There was a small metal gate separating us from the mob. If looks could kill, the lot of us wouldn’t be recognizable. But what aggravated me was that when they opened the doors for us to go to the landing to board the train most of the people didn’t act honorable and respectable as if it were a mistake, but ran, talking loudly to their train. And I walked to the car, watching them make fools of me, as the mob looked on having just watched my fellow classmates confirm that we had wronged them by running. Bi Laoshi was furious, and I was too. But I have no authority to the rest of the group so I stayed quiet. We got on the train and I rested, it was a long day.
I woke up in Wuyishan, famous for its tea. We rode a bus to Dabu a small town that relies on tea and rice for its economy. It was raining when we arrived and I imagined the streets were going to be flowing with tea. They weren’t. The houses in the town were made of mud and the streets were full of uneven cobblestones. I was rooming with Robbin. When we opened the door to our room, there was only one bed. It was in the host family’s bike garage. The baby had a small Naruto bike. I tried talking with my host family but I couldn’t understand the accent. The reason that China has different accents is because there is no alphabet that tells people how each word should sound. If someone says “shi” as “si” and that’s how people begin to say it, then that’s what the word is going to be. It’s one of the downsides of having a logogram alphabet. We began a hike to kill some time. Through slopes, muddy because of the recent end to the 5 day rain, through mountains, through rice paddies, up waterfalls, through the jungle; we hiked all over the place. And by the end Kyle H., Chris and I were the only ones that came out clean-ish. The hike seemed to last forever. We had a talk about what makes good teas. Tea leaves that grow in mountains that are foggy are the best, that’s why Wuyishan tea is known throughout China. We returned to the village, but I didn’t want to do anything so I stayed in the house and tried asking the baby some questions, but he was afraid of me. Apparently I’m scary. Or maybe it was just my awful beard, I don’t know. I looked at my watch. It was the 8th. Happy 3 month anniversary Jessica!
I woke up the next morning, cold. Robbin stole the blanket in the night, so he was warm and I was cold. We were off to a different town to pick our own tea leaves and make our own tea. The town was right by a river, and they had built most of their town in between the river and a stream, making a very scenic environment. We walked up a hill through trees and one pitfall to the tea patch. Our tea harvest was about to begin. Gavin and I started competing with Bridget, Maryanne and Warren, but we lost. To everyone. Apparently we’re not good tea leaf pickers. Our basket was quarter full, and the wicker basket was small in comparison to everyone else’s baskets. We walked by where the process began and saw the cutest little puppies. They couldn’t be older than 3 months. They were wandering around in a courtyard of sorts, but we walked by them to continue making tea. Basically to make tea, the leaves have to become as dry as you can possibly make them. Viola, you now have tea. But the process is a long one that takes about a day. They now have machines to do it, so picking is the only real hard part. By the end of the process our tea was bitter and awful, mainly because we skipped a lot of steps to see all of them. But then they gave us some of their tea. They poured water into a cup of tea leaves, then steeped it and poured all of us a thimble sized cup of golden liquid. It was bitter at first, but then it left a sweet, dry taste and was really good. They served us lunch, and then gave us a tea tasting session. The tea pourers were careless with my tea, and always spilled the boiling water on my pants and hands. I wouldn’t say the pain was worth it, but I can now tell the difference between good tea and bad tea. I don’t know why one is good and the other is bad, but that’s what they told me, so I’ll believe them. We began to play with the puppies and they were adorable. They were doing that puppy strut of barely being able to walk. And they all were so sleepy and fell asleep in peoples laps. Gavin, Maryanne, Bridget and I went to go grab some snacks for the bus ride, giving each other fake tattoos that came with the junk food. We returned to the courtyard to see people in a panic. Cliff walked by saying that one of the Chinese kids around the place had tortured one of the puppies. I walked over to the puppy and Catherine was standing there, looking over the puppy she had just saved. The pup was shivering and crying in pain. Catherine told me, a glossy look to her eyes, the kind that holding back tears give, that two Chinese boys about 8 years old took the dog and held it under the water of the nearby river for extended periods of time and pulled it out by one leg, only to swing it around until they slapped it back into the water. Catherine saw the kids doing this and ran at them telling them to stop, but they ran, still holding the puppy by the leg, but couldn’t run fast enough, so they threw the dog into the woods. By the end of the story, her eyes were red and her voice quivered with anger. I couldn’t believe that two kids would do this. One of our Chinese guides, age 14 but looked 10, was angry too, but the rest of the Chinese walking about the small tea picking village didn’t seem to care that much. The Chinese teachers with us tried to show they cared, but walked away and seemed to pretend that nothing had happened. Bi Laoshi mentioned that dogs don’t really have much use in China, trying to show their point of view. They only bark and keep things away from the house, other than that, nothing. Chinese are very pragmatic and dogs aren’t. But it still didn’t keep me from getting angry. The dog was covered in another student’s jacket to warm it up. It wasn’t getting any better. Her shivering was becoming visible. We gently pet it, trying to make it not hate all humans. Its cute little puppy face was in pain. It moved a bit and we all let out a sigh of relief. But it tried standing and it couldn’t. It wasn’t going to make it. We made a small circle of people that cared if it lived or died and waited out its last hours. Every breath it took was characterized by a sharp, high pitched puppy scream. But as if by a miracle, it rose and stumbled away, alive. It was going to make it after all. The kids that did it came back, but were chased off by our young guide. They ran away. I went to the river and skipped stones to let the anger out. We headed off to the train station and got on a train to Suzhou. Train rides were starting to become a reprieve from the restless days.
Chris and I and a few others got a train all to ourselves, separate from the rest of SYA, surrounded by countless other Chinese people, on the same style of hard sleeper car as every time before. We arrived in Suzhou, famous for its silk. We learned how silk was made. They take the cocoons that silk worms make around themselves to become moths and boil the worm alive to get the silk out. It was an interesting process, but I saw it all too quickly, and ended up wandering the silk store with Warren for a long time, looking at all the things I don’t need to buy. We were given 110 kuai for the next three night’s worth of food, and were told to go wander the city to eat. Gavin and I ended up going to a Xinjiang restaurant. It was amazing. We had to go to a concert afterwards, so Nick S., Chris and I rode next to each other on the bus, and laughed ourselves to tears. It’s one of those funny things that are only funny when you’re incredibly fatigued and you go back and tell someone about it and they’re like, “That’s not funny.” We were all beginning to get a bit tired. But it definitely got us in a good mood, we couldn’t stop smiling throughout the whole performance of Suzhou traditional music called Pingtan. But at the end of it, Karina became really ill. She ended up having to be carted to a hospital to have an emergency appendectomy. Pretty lucky we weren’t still in Chuxi. We went back to the hotel and rested.
I woke up at 9 trying to catch up on some sleep because we had a later start this morning, only to go down to breakfast and find out it was over. Only in China, will breakfast only last 2 hours, but no matter, I still got some bread. We hopped on another bus and were driving off to Zhouzhuang, or as I called it, “The Venice of China.” It’s a city of canals. It’s absolutely wonderful. But right as we got there, I got in that funk of mine. It happens every so often, where I just get angry really easily, and I know I can, and it makes me sad. So I wandered the town a bit by myself. And it was beautiful. The buildings were old, but kept up well, the bridges were nice. There were boats in the canals, not quite gondolas, but not quite rafts either. They were a mix of the two with more colors. Gavin and I ended up walking around the town, exploring everything. He tried to cheer me up and succeeded. We were riding a seesaw when a small crowd of Chinese people started filming us. Gavin was like, “Is there a problem?” “No.” “Oh well do you know who I am?” “No, who are you?” “I’m… a YAN’GUIZI!” And they all burst out laughing as he put his fingers up against his head, pretending they were horns. They loved it. Everybody loves it when foreigners depreciate themselves. They feel guilty after they laugh though and give ridiculous compliments to make it up to you. Gavin and I then went around pretending that we were college students and they believed it. I think it was because of the massive amount of facial hair I have. Well in comparison it’s a massive amount. I really couldn’t wait to get back to my razor. We had dinner along the canals. When the sun dipped beyond the horizon and the light disappeared, every single Chinese lantern hung in the trees along the bank went on. They reflected the shops in the water and it was as if a carnival had erupted from the water. Later that night, Gavin, Kyle, Maryanne, Bridget and I went for a raft ride. Gavin invited a pair of Chinese women in the boat too. They took awful pictures. The moon was full and there were a few stars in the sky. All of this could be seen in the canals. It was absolutely beautiful. If only… The air was cold, it was nipply, and Bridget and Maryanne’s room was so warm, as it soon became the headquarters for Charades. Afterwards I went back to my room and slept.
Chris and I had planned to take a walk and discuss the deeper meaning of life and other things, so we woke up early and walked the canals edges and bridges. It was a good talk. We were then swept away from Zhouzhuang, which I loved, but was beginning to grow tired of, and were taken to a vocational school. There were 1600 aspiring elementary school teachers, and only 3 of them were guys. Gavin and I got a picture with two of them at the same time. That’s like finding a shiny Pokémon in Pokémon. They were VERY happy there. They then held a party for us and I watched the games. Out of the blue, (no pun intended,) a girl came up and gave me a gift. It was calligraphy she had written. It was very nice. We talked and exchanged compliments. Her name was Blue. Someone gave me a blue flower and I gave it to her saying, “Gen nide mingzi yiyang.” She blushed and all the other girls couldn’t stop talking about it. Shi Laoshi told me I was very charming. We left shortly afterwards. We had another night wandering around Suzhou. There was another round of Charades in Bridget and Maryanne’s room that night too, with more people this time. Too many people in my opinion, so I left early to get some rest. The trip was tiring me out. Just one more day after this.
The last day was a blur. We visited a company, an orphanage, a factory, but it all blended together. We got on the train and we were on our way home. It was the actual fast train, not just the kuai train. There were no stops. Only an 11 hour ride to Beijing over night. We were only going to be awake for three of these hours. Gavin and I were talking about how good it was to be going home. Not back to Beijing. Home. Other people were counting down the days to winter break, but I was happy getting back to the place where I felt I belong. I went to brush my teeth on the train and when I finished and looked in the mirror, I didn’t see myself. It was scary. I didn’t see Sterling Weiser. I saw 史华林. I woke up the next morning and got off the train with everyone else in Beijing. Getting off the train, I felt that something big was going to happen. I got back into the routine, back to the cold nipping at our heels and walked home.