Journal Entry #22: Friday, June 4, 2010

We were to be ready to go with breakfast eaten by 7:00 a.m.!  Those were the strict instructions from Sunny.  The University of South China had planned a special tourism weekend for all of the foreign language teachers from America (and Aurelie from France). A bus was chartered to transport the group that consisted of our eleven; plus four Chinese staff members: Sunny, Alma, Hoasn (a young male student worker), and another Chinese woman that spoke no English and couldn’t even tell us her name; and Asher, the ten-year-old son of Sunny.

The announced time of travel was seven hours, but everybody that I had told about this trip said to plan on more like ten hours to get there.  One person even said it would take 12 hours.  The bus was comfortable enough but the road conditions and the terrain on which we traveled made the bus seem very uncomfortable. I’m not sure what was the worst part of the trip: the bad roads that were under construction, the steep, dangerously small and narrow roads on which we traveled or the horrible driving ability of the paid driver.  He was fearless and crazy!  It was not at all uncommon for this driver to pass a large bus on the inside of the left lane, around a curve in the road, without knowing what was on the other side, with his horn blowing to let the oncoming traffic know he was coming! The bus ride was wild and dangerous!  I complained to the trip sponsors about the driving while we were at a rest stop.  They laughed and said, “That’s the way we drive in China. Don’t worry, the driver said to ‘trust him!’”

Lunch was pretty good.  The restaurant had a very typical Chinese offering of various dishes.  It probably wasn’t actually any better than what I had been eating, but it was different, and was away from the downtown Hengyang restaurants to which we had become accustomed.  Because the restaurant stop was away from the area of our residence we were quite an anomaly for the people in that area. As were many of the people of inner China, the people there seemed to be particularly curious to see us.  Many of the kitchen staff came out of the back with their cameras and cell phone cameras to take a quick picture of our group.  We, however, were more amused by the serving of the food, which included a duck-head as a part of one of the dishes.  We immediately gave that dish to Sunny.  After all, we decided if she was paying for lunch, she deserved “the bill.”

We made a tourism stop very near our lunch location at a city that was clean and bright.  (Name of City) was a river city that had a very elaborate Chinese covered bridge that crossed the river.  This bridge was a very large expansive wooden bridge that had several store-like locations of commerce within the bridge.  The bridge had a wonderful Chinese architectural design with multiple layers of rooflines that were stunning and beautiful.  It was a great photograph waiting to happen. We were told that there was not a single nail that was used to make this old bridge but rather wooden spikes and wedges were holding the entire structure together.  At one point of our walk through, I started winking and smiling with a baby that was staring at me.  The mom seemed receptive to my attention towards her baby girl and she held her out in a gesture that said, “Would you like to hold her?”  Oh yeah! I was about to get my “grandpa fix” in for a few moments!

After boarding the bus we then traveled another couple of hours before we arrived at our next tourism stop. The War Memorial Museum in Zhi Jiang Township in western Hunan, Province, was the site of the Japanese Army’s official Second World War surrender to Chinese and American forces in China.  The museum was the former site of the flight training school for the Chinese Air Force.  The original training school was established in 1938. The Zhi Jiang’s airfield played a key role in combating the Japanese Army’s massive 1944 Ichi Go offensive, when the China American Composite Wing’s 5th Fighter Wing was moved there to support Chinese forces in South China.  There were lots of displays that seemed to extol the power of the Chinese Army during the Second World War.  Even though most, if not all, the displays had text and copy boards that were exclusively Chinese, the photos still showed a very clear picture of the atrocities of the war.  There were many displays of the human testing and destruction by the use of biological warfare techniques.  A whole village of people were captured and used for these experiments.  The images and photos were particularly disturbing.  

Many of the displays also showed what the museum wanted us to know about their Chinese hero called Chiang Kai-shek.  His legacy has been a target of heated debate because of the different views held about him.  I read with great interest the Chinese views of this man compared to my limited knowledge of him from my history and reading.  The two views did not align with each other. My view was that Chiang Kai-shek was a brutally cruel man that was more interested in winning for his personal self-wealth than wanting to be a servant for the greater good of his people.  Except for the brutal and cruel wartime activities, I guess that description is not a lot different from most American politicians that we know. 

According to sources from the Internet, I later discovered that for some, “Chiang was a national hero who led the victorious Northern Expedition against the Beiyang Warlords in 1927 and contributed to unify China and subsequently led China to ultimate victory against Japan in 1945. Some blamed him for not doing enough against the Japanese forces in the lead-up to and during the Second Sino-Japanese War, preferring to keep his armies to fight the communists, or merely waiting and hoping that the United States would get involved. Some also see him as a champion of anti-communism, being a key figure during the formative years of the World Anti-Communist League.”  Enough of this depressing stuff.

As always with me, the most entertaining portion of this stop was interacting with the local Chinese tourists.  After initially engaging them in, “Ni Hao,” many of them wanted to get their photo made with me and the others from our group.   The museum venue was small enough to not need all afternoon to see what it had to offer and soon we were loading back on the bus.  

After another couple of hours on the wild bus ride, or as we were calling it, a prayer session, we finally arrived at our destination, the ancient town of Fenghuang.  Fenghuang is about 53 kilometers south of Jishou in the far western portion of the Hunan province.  We had travelled about 12 hours, with a couple of stops, but still never left the province.  Dinner was in a nasty place.  It probably wasn’t that different from the others, it’s just that most Chinese restaurants do not clean the tables very thoroughly after each patron departs.  That, along with the custom of spitting out the remains of whatever you did not want to finish after putting in your mouth, just made for unsanitary tables even if your food was prepared properly.  I later got very fatigued and almost sick, and I think it was the dinner location that brought that on.  

After dinner we checked into what was announced as a 3-Star Hotel, but I would have given it a “negative 1” Star!  The beds were typically hard and uncomfortable, but at least the bathroom was small; and Chinese style! Chinese style bathrooms were toilets that were level with the floor.  They were flushable but you did not sit, you squatted when you needed to use them.  It was also where you took a shower because the showerhead was mounted on the wall over the toilet.  Up until now I had been able to avoid the use of the “Shoilets,” as we called them, but now it was use them or hold it for three days!  Perhaps even worse was that at 1:30 in the morning, in order to save money in electricity, the hotel cut off the power to all the rooms assuming that you were either already asleep or that you should be and that you no longer needed the meager air conditioning unit in the room.  

Hoasn was my roommate.  He was a delightful young Chinese man.  Hoasn was a student at the university and also worked for the Foreign Exchange office that was hosting this trip for us.    He was also a young Army officer for the Chinese military and was a training director for the other military students who were enrolled in both the army and the university.  Hoasn really wanted to help me do anything I needed.  He was intent on making sure I was comfortable and having a good time while in his country.  He represented the university and his country as well as anybody I had met to date.  Hoasn asked me a lot of questions about my home life, my wife, my children and other seemingly domestic elements of the American lifestyle.  What I discovered later was that he was seriously contemplating asking his girlfriend to marry him and he was just inquisitive of what was in his future as a husband and father.

After we were through checking into our rooms, our group all met in the lobby to go out and walk around the Ancient Town of Fenghuang – especially along the Rivermarket area. The Fenghuang Ancient City is situated in the western border area of Hunan. It has been praised as one of the most beautiful cities in China.  Being endowed with beautiful scenery, Fenghuang Ancient City is also a famous historic and cultural city.  I was told that it has Ming and Qing style architecture and beauty.   It was very picturesque!

The open street market along the Riverwalk was particularly colorful and fascinating to us.  The offering of the local native souvenirs and other original artwork, trinkets, food and stuff was a wonderful array of color and their culture.  Edwin, who fancies himself as a professional haggler, was in his element.  He loved to shop and buy things as cheaply as he could.  Unfortunately for him, he did not need most, if not all the things, that were for sale, so he offered his services to the rest of us as our “negotiator”!  Will was inspired and challenged by Edwin’s self-proclaimed skills, so he wanted to get in on the fun.  He and Edwin challenged each other to a bargaining contest.  They were going to bargain or negotiate on similar items from different vendors and see who got the best deal.  It was so fun to watch them work and compete, but because of trying to compare apples-to-oranges, a definitive winner could not be declared!  

By now it was dark and the city was lit up in lights that were festive and fun. The Tuojiang River runs through the middle of town and is lined mostly by houses with flying eaves. More than 100 ancient buildings including the Wenchang Pavilion, the Tianwang Temple, the Qifeng Temple, the Dacheng Hall and the Chaoyang Palace can be found in this quaint little Chinese town.  While most of the group was busy shopping and strolling through the market I was busy taking photographs.  It was a photographer’s dream city. 

I was curious about the origin of the Chinese “flying eaves” on the older buildings.  In fact, in China it wasn’t just the older buildings that had these roofline features; many modern buildings were being built with this same cultural design.  I never quite figured out if there was an engineering significance for such, so I inquired.    I was told that it was largely mythical and superstition for buildings to have roof lines such as these.  As the story goes, the people feared the evil spirits they believed would come down upon their households at night.  By having “flying eaves” a spirit would come sweeping-down from the sky, hit the roofline, and be directed back up into the atmosphere to land on another house.  My first thought was that’s a little too superstitious for me, but then I remembered there were all kinds of superstitions we do as Americans that were not much different.  I doubt if most Chinese people today really feared the evil spirits as their ancestors may have, but the unique and wonderful architectural design remained none-the-less.