Journal Entry #32: Monday, June 14, 2010

As had now become our routine, albeit short, we had breakfast with the Myers.  They brought the brewed coffee and we brought the Friendship Bread that we had purchased the previous day.  It was to be our next to last meal together, at least in China for this summer.  I have so enjoyed the fellowship of this amazing couple. 

 
We had planned to go to the electronics store that morning so that I could perhaps buy a few digital items that I wanted that thought I could get cheap while I was here.  I was looking for a flash drive or two that were bigger than the ones I currently owned.  I wanted a bigger digital card for my cameras, but mainly wanted a card reader for my most recently purchased SDHD card.  I brought a card reader with me for the old digital cards and I thought that it would work for the new disk.  It didn’t, and I wanted to download my photos from my camera to my laptop more as a security and back up to my files than the concern of not having enough digital space left for the rest of my trip.

We had to trek through the outdoor street market to get to the electronics store, but when we arrived it was closed.  We waited a few minutes and were able to view a couple of things I was looking for but decided not to continue our search knowing I would have more opportunities when I arrived in Beijing.

We had one last China experience to attend because we had been invited to lunch with Erin and Blanche at Erin’s parents’ apartment.  Erin is another delightful young English post-graduate student majoring in English.  She wanted to host Donna and I, along with the Myers.  Her parents and grandparents were going to cook and serve us dinner.  Why us?  Teachers in this country are revered!  They idea that Erin could get two professors and their wives to come to her house for lunch was something for which her family jumped at the opportunity to help her accomplish.  

We taxied to the lunch location in two taxis because taxis are not allowed by law to take more than four people and there were six of us needing a ride.  When we arrived we still needed to walk a couple of blocks, then go around to the back of a commercial building, down an alley, and up several flights of stairs.  I think they lived on the fourth or fifth floor.  When I again inquired of the location of the building elevator I was informed that apartment buildings in China were only required to have elevators if it had more than eight floors.  Even then the eighth floor would be the first stop.  They figured anything eight floors or less then you could walk!  Because of the expense of elevators in a building most builders did not construct apartment buildings with more than eight floors. 

We arrived at her family’s apartment and again were greeted warmly, even though they did not speak any English.  We relied heavily on Blanche and Erin to express our thanks to Erin’s family.  The food was great!  It was very traditionally Chinese with some new and unusual dishes along with some traditional family offerings.  One of the seasonal food items was the Sticky Rice and Bean cakes that is made around the Dragon Boat Festival, now only two days away.  The most unusual was what turned out to be some fish eggs in the fish soup.  Caviar was a part of the mixture of the soup! The standard fare, at least for them, was again the sweet potatoes they served.  As our dish the previous day, the sweet potatoes were very unusual, at least for us.  It was a gray, translucent, gel like substance, about the size of a single square of ravioli without the stuffing.  I didn’t really care for it but ate it anyway.  It seemed to not have much flavor on its own but took on the flavor of the spices and blended in with the broth in which it was cooked.  I simply did not care for the texture.  It was like a piece of unflavored gelatin.  But don’t let their sweet potatoes taint your idea of this meal.  The food was wonderful and the hosts were gracious.  Erin was just the perfect hostess to us.  

My departure date and time from Hengyang was now upon us.  We were leaving about 12:45 p.m.  I returned to the apartment, packed my last few items and walked through the place with Edwin and Mary.  I was to give Edwin the apartment keys and he was also going to come and get any leftover food that I had accumulated the last thirty some days or so.  Before I left I had written out in English some of the messages I would need to show the various transportation workers to get Donna and me to Beijing.  Lines such as, “Take me to the Hengyang High Speed Train Station,” and, “I need two tickets to Changsha,” and, “Where do I check in for the flight to Changsha?” and things like that.   I then had Mia write in Chinese the same words in her language.  All I had to do now was flash my notes and I would soon end up in Beijing where English was a little more proliferated.

Mary and Edwin walked us to the taxi stand/street and we hugged and waved goodbye!  The taxi to the train station was routine, but that was about to change.  When we arrived at the train station and I flashed my notes for some directions, the uniformed train workers indicated for us to come with them – QUICKLY!  What I found out later was happening was that there was a train to where we were going pulling into the station and leaving quickly and they were going to help us get on that train.  “But I didn’t have tickets for that journey,” I kept trying to tell them!  They even picked up our bags to help us run faster to catch this train.  When we got on board I called Mia on my Chinese cell phone and handed the phone to an attendant that could explain to her, and then Mia to me, what was going on.  The explanation was that they wanted to help get me on that train and that I could buy the tickets on the other end.  It was ¥2 more for doing so.  ¥2 was equal to about .30 cents in American dollars and by doing this, it gave us another hour at the other end to get to where we were going.  Well worth the extra expense, I thought. Even though it was hectic, and at the time very uncomfortable, the Chinese train attendants were trying to help us, and they helped us a lot.  One thing that we marveled at all over in China was the customer service.  I don’t know if they did that for everybody or they were taking pity on us non-Chinese speaking Americans, but they tried to help us with everything we needed to do!

We got a taxi from the Changsha Train Station to the Changsha airport and had little difficulty, if any at all, checking in and getting ourselves to the proper gate, and we were on our way.  It was only then that I felt like the Mission trip was over and the vacation had started.   Once at the gate I texted my other Harding student, Tina, who was to meet up with us in Beijing, and then called her to say that she did not need to pick us up at the airport just to shuttle us back to the hotel.  I figured we could get a taxi to any hotel in town once we arrived at the airport.  And that is exactly what we did. 

You know that once a plane closes its doors, pulls away from the gate, and then announces a delay, and that they were going to go ahead and serve dinner during the delay, that the wait would probably not be a quick one.  We finally left after about a two-hour delay. I am so glad I called Tina for her sake, because after the plane was delayed, Tina would have had to wait over two hours for us.

When we arrived at the airport, retrieved our luggage and made our way to the taxi stand we were greeted with an offer by what looked like a taxi service to take us to the hotel.  The price was for ¥450! Before we got in I quickly called Tina to confirm that this was a normal price and she encouraged us to walk away, that the price should be around ¥100.  We walked to the next taxi and we paid ¥85 for a clean and comfortable ride to the hotel.