​Journal Entry #15: Friday, May 28, 2010

This day was to bring what the team later laughingly referred to as “The Amazing Race – China Now” edition.  Our taxi was to arrive at 7:30 a.m., but at 7:00 a.m. the horn started blaring. The driver was there and wanted to get going.  He did not speak any English and I had a very difficult time telling him he was early and we simply were not ready.  I finally called Amy on the phone, explained the situation, and handed the phone to the driver for Amy to explain better.  A few minutes later, Amy showed up in person. She told me that she thought she needed to be there!

We finally loaded the small taxi with all five of us.  Now, we are larger than most Chinese, make that all Chinese!  In fact, no offense to my dear student mission team, but we are larger than most Americans (and I include me in that description).  We put one of us in the front and four of us in the back seat.  We were packed in there like a clown car!  About four blocks from the apartment, as soon as we were off campus, the taxi driver got out and indicated that we had to get out!  He did not want to take us any farther!  I called Amy on the phone and again handed the phone to the driver.  After a lot of animated and loud Chinese gibberish he handed the phone back and she said he could only take no more than four of us and that one or more of us would have to get out and take another taxi.  I took the girls with me, hailed another taxi and we headed to what seemed like a far-away destination across town.  The train station was so far away from the buildings of the city there was actually vacant land in sight.  We arrived and the driver let us out to still walk about 400 yards to the terminal building.

The new train station was huge and beautiful.  It was a newly constructed station just to service the new High-Speed trains that were beginning to be put into service connecting selected cities across China.  We were traveling to Guangzhou.  Guangzhou is the third largest city in China, so service to and from that city was very available.  When we arrived we had no student hosts with us. Not knowing where to go and what to do, I went through the terminal seating area showing my ticket and asking aloud if anybody spoke English.  Finally, a business-suit-dressed adult woman showed me her ticket, which seemed to indicate that she was on the same train and that we could just follow her.   We had about an hour to wait so we sat and I tried to thank her in words – but nothing seemed to be getting through.  She just smiled and kept waving her hands to watch and follow her.  We stepped across the aisle to get some breakfast snack food to take on the train with us.  I bought what I thought was apple juice in a non-refrigerated bottle. It turned out to be an apple-flavored milk!  It was really pretty tasty, but the recurring thought that what I perceived to be a milk product was bought off the shelf, in a non-refrigerated section of a convenience snack stand, just couldn’t make me finish it.

The time to board train was upon us.  The woman got up waved to us and we followed.  The platform had different locations to stand according to our assigned seat number.  She looked at our tickets and pointed to the signs on the floor where we were to stand.  Fortunately, numbers look alike in English and Chinese.  I’ve always heard that math is called the universal language, and now I know why.  We boarded the train in the second-class car. It was laid out much like a very nice airplane, with individual recliner seats, pull down trays and foot rests.  It was new and nice.  But the most amazing thing was the speed at which that bullet travelled!  There was an LED sign at the doorway to the car that constantly updated the time and speed.  It also had scrolling words in English and Chinese to inform passengers of the next stop, and more.  348 KM/hour was our top speed during the one-hour-forty-five minute trip.  That’s a little over 216 miles per hour!  WOW – I don’t think I’ve ever traveled that fast!  

One of the consistently fun parts of our adventure trip has to be the looks and stares we get from the Chinese people that pass us by.  The guys in our group are big.  Two of us have beards, one of the girls has blonde hair, and the other girl has red/auburn colored hair.  All are real anomalies in this land.  Some Chinese people pull out their cameras to take a quick picture thinking we don’t see them doing so.  Others stop and actually ask if they can take a picture of us, or to just say hello!  We usually surprise them with a warm and hearty Chinese greeting of, “Ni Hao” (Hello), and “Ni Hao Ma” (How are you today?).  About one hour into this trip a sweet, pretty looking eight-year-old Chinese girl came up to us and said in very clear English, “Hello, how are you doing today?”  Her mother had sent her back from the front of the car to us so that she could practice her English.  When we responded with handshakes and smiles she waved for the others to come up and see us as well.  About four other students ranging in age from 5 to 10 all came running back from the front of the car to greet us.  We laughed, talked and had our pictures made with them. A Mom finally came back to thank us and took the children back to their seats.  For me, it was really a special exchange of culture.  They were so adorable.  I wish we all had the universal, communicative, social skills of a precocious child. 

We arrived at our destination.  I called Ye Qing, also known as Mia, one of my Chinese Harding students who had agreed to meet us in her hometown.  After not finding her and much searching and discussion, she informed us that we had gotten off at the wrong station.  She was across town at another station waiting for us.  We tried to find a way to get to her location.  The real adventure was just beginning.  By now I had learned to call a Chinese friend on the phone, hand the phone to an unsuspecting and friendly looking sort and let them discuss the situation and then have the phone handed back to me. My Chinese phone service has become a translation service! Mia said the best thing to do was for us to take a taxi to where she was located.  When we found a car service that would take all of us, I called Mia to tell her what we had found and that the price was ¥200. She said, “Let me talk to the driver.”  After some discussion the phone was handed back to me where Mia announced that she had negotiated a better rate of only ¥180.   Off we went, only to find that the driver got lost and couldn’t find the other train station. After way too much time he finally pulled up to a city bus station and indicated to us that we should get out and that we should all take the bus to the train station that he couldn’t find.  I called Mia from the bus stop, told her what happened and then I handed the phone to a woman at the bus station that appeared to be nice enough to maybe help us.  When the phone was handed back to me I discovered what bus number was for a route to the train station where Mia was waiting.  We boarded the Number 185 bus and thought we would be there soon.  About an hour later we were worried because we were not there yet.  We were worried that we might be on the wrong bus.  I called Mia then handed the phone to a nearby passenger. When I received the phone back I discovered that we were on the right bus, but going away from the station not towards the station.  And, that if we waited for it to eventually circle-back to the station it could be as much as a 2-3 hour ride!  So we got off at the next stop, hailed two more taxis, (because we could not all fit into one) called Mia, handed the phone to the driver(s) and off we went again looking for the meeting point.  Fortunately the lead taxi driver knew exactly where to take us. He spoke to the other driver and one followed the other to our point of destination where I got out of the car.  I finally got a glimpse of my student, Mia. We ran at each other and hugged, laughed and hugged some more!  I was in Guangzhou, China with one of my Chinese Harding students for which I had been teaching English back in Searcy!  The whole episode up until this point felt like an episode of the Amazing Race and we had just crossed the finish line to find out that we could survive a few more days in China!  Mia had started to worry about us so she had called her mother who had joined her to meet us.  After all the exhaling and introductions, we went to lunch.  I was ready to eat in the Guangdong province where I had heard the food was a little milder than the cuisine of the Hunan province.

We went to a close and relatively fast food restaurant but still had a choice of a dish with cooked beef, pork, or chicken along with rice and vegetables.  We discussed the plan for me to separate from my student team members, as I was to stay for two days in that area and they were going to go on to Hong Kong!  We found an ATM, drew out some money, bought their train tickets, pointed the way to the gate and platform, and they were off.  I just prayed I would see them back at our appointed rendezvous in 48 hours or so.

For some reason Mia and I had a little trouble hailing a taxi.  She thought maybe because I was with her that the Taxi drivers would assume that neither of us spoke Chinese and they did not want to deal with us.  We finally found a ride and she told the driver in her native Cantonese, not Mandarin, where we needed to go and we were off.  The hotel was only a block or so from the apartment building where she lived with her parents.  After she helped me with the language barrier and checking in, she went home and I took the opportunity to take a shower and a nap before I had to meet her back again in two hours or so with her parents.  I was in for an evening of dining like I had never before experienced! 

About 6:30 that evening I heard a knock at my door. It was Mia and her mother.  Her mother wanted to come to my room to make sure it was good enough for me and that the services for which she had arranged were up to her guest’s standards.  The room was excellent, very comfortable and lots of amenities.  Chief among my comforts was a TV that had English channels where I could finally watch some world and local news.   When she had satisfied her standards we left to meet Mia’s father who was waiting for us in their family car. 

Her parents spoke no English at all, but somehow we acknowledged how incredible it was to meet each other, and that was without Mia translating for us.  I was told that the restaurant we were headed to was a seafood restaurant where they like to take their out of town guests.   Because it was raining so hard, Mia’s dad let us out at the door and the three of us went inside.  The place was amazing.  The building was several stories tall, but it was all restaurant.  It had numerous small dining rooms where each dinner party had their own private rooms.  Mia, her Mom, and I headed towards a very large room that had lots of live fish and other seafood creatures.  The process was to walk through and pick out your meal.  A staff member followed with a clipboard writing down what we thought looked good. Another would take the delicacies as we selected them and send them back to the kitchen to be cooked and delivered to our private dining room at the appropriate time.  The order room was huge with everything that was on the menu cooked and displayed.  It was about the size of a medium sized grocery store.  They had every kind of seafood and fish, crabs, lobster, and a lot of exotic food such as snakes and frogs.  They even had a crocodile. I saw them cut off its head while it was still alive, and then slice it up into steaks for another customer more adventuresome than me!  They kept asking me what I wanted and I just kept trying to communicate that I wanted their traditional food that their family would order and that I like everything.  Fortunately, they did not order anything too exotic.  However, they did order way too much food for the four of us (at least for that evening alone). I know I looked like an American tourist, but it was so different and unbelievably unique, that I was busy taking pictures as much as I could

When it was time to be seated we went up several escalators where, upon arriving at the appropriate floor, we were greeted and escorted to our private room by a beautiful uniformed hostess who was to stand at our door the rest of the evening to make sure to supply us with whatever we needed.  The food was good, plentiful and needless to say, fresh!  The discussion was loud and continuous, even though I only understood when Mia spoke in English and even then I had to strain to comprehend much of what she was trying to tell me.  I think she may have regressed a bit in her English skills since she’s been back home.  She explained that she had spoken almost no English in three weeks since leaving the states.  The wait staff was particularly attentive and noticed that I had my camera, so they took my camera and took lots of photos of us as a group for me.  Toward the end of the meal Mia’s mother pulled out a gift and through her daughter’s translation told me that she had heard of Donna’s kindness and mine towards her daughter a few months earlier, (Mia stayed with us for a few nights at our house in Searcy at Thanksgiving), and that she and her husband were forever grateful for me taking care of Mia when she was so far away from them in America.  The gift was a beautiful miniature Chinese Screen, made of wood and hand painted glass.  It is stunning, to say the least!  The Chinese teachers have such a different relationship with their students.  They engage them only in a very strict manner and have no relationship with them outside the classroom.  So much so, that when any one of us simply extends a simple kindness towards their child they are absolutely in awe that we would do such a thing.  The fact that I traveled to China to visit my Chinese students was just beyond comprehension to them, sometimes even bringing them to the point of tears and emotion to express their gratitude.   It was very humbling.  I knew that it was not me, but the Father using me to reach them in a unique way.

After dinner, I was exhausted.  It was about 9:00 p.m. and they wanted to give me the driving tour of the city to show me the beautiful city lights, the Riverwalk and the most famous stretch of shopping in Guangzhou, “Beijing Street.”  Beijing Street was an outdoor mall several blocks long that was closed to motor traffic.  It also ran the same course where the old walls of the cities were found during other dynasties.  There were several displays of the old wall and lots of historic plaques in Chinese and English.  There were also a lot of colorful, red, paper lanterns hanging from the trees.  It was packed with people, as is all of China, and the atmosphere was festive, spirited and loud!  Mia’s father dropped the three of us off and he went on home.  I did not know at the time that at the end of this stretch of street was only one block from my hotel and a couple of blocks from their home apartment.  So, after another hour or so, they walked me back to the hotel, we said our goodbyes, and we went our separate ways.  I came upstairs and had a very comfortable bed and room to retire in for the evening.  What a day it was!