Tony's China Blog

Erica says that perhaps I should write less each time I post, and then maybe I will post more frequently, and make this more interesting. I will try that strategy. Maybe. But I must admit that when my own father admitted that he hasn't gotten around to reading everything I have written, I maybe need to revamp my system.

Yesterday, we took the trek across town to Metro, the giant German-run megastore that carries, among its bulk and surprisingly not-super-value goods, a variety of foodstuffs that are unavailable anywhere else in the province. We stocked up on legitimate cheese (Edam and gouda), sour cream (the first time in a few months we've seen it) canned olives and capers, as well as canned tomatoes and smoked salmon (Chinese made, we'll see if its any good). There is frequently a wide variety of fresh herbs available, but this time there was only stale-looking parsley and oregano. Next time.

What I found most interesting about this last visit was the chicken section. Chinese value their chicken parts differently than ours. A variety of chicken parts were available, and of them, the most expensive cut was the wing--the part of the wing that has the two small bones and that nice bit of meat in between. The next most expensive was the wing drumstick, followed by the real drumstick. One could buy the whole leg for a few cents less a pound (but not the thighs alone), and the cheapest cut of the chicken was--if you hadn't guessed already--the boneless, skinless, breast. Which, you should all be able to admit by now, has the least flavor of the entire chicken. Long live China, which knows the chicken much better than we.

I took a 10-hour train ride to Zhangye, an entirely unnotable city except for the fact that it houses the Largest Reclining Buddah in China. This didn’t put it on anyone’s must-see list, but it was pretty big. Something like 23 meters long, and 10 meters tall. An annoying thing about traveling in China is that it seems that the capitalists have gotten hold of the tourism industry and realized that, since any particularly known attraction has monopoly power (there aren’t any competing Largest Reclining Buddahs in China), the demand curve is fairly inflexible, so they can raise the prices significantly, yet still see only a small drop in attendance. At least half the sights we have visited have seen a serious bump up in admission. The Buddah was listed in the guidebook as costing about $2.50, but it was up to $5 when I came. It seems insignificant, and to us, the rich Western tourists, it isn’t so big a deal (though we are still paid a Chinese-ish salary), but to local Chinese, it can take quite a bite out of the pocketbook.

I then took a bus to Matisi, some Buddhist temples carved into the side of a sheer cliff. The area was beautiful, and the rickety three-hour bus ride there was very interesting. We passed through numerous small villages along the way and it was harvest time for the wheat and straw. We saw the locals out in the street threshing, bailing, and harvesting the wheat. At times the bus had to drive slowly because the wheat stalks were laid across the road so traffic would help break the kernels from the stalks. Aside from that technique, it was clear that many of the villagers were harvesting wheat the same way that they had been doing for thousands of years. The wheat was cut with a scythe, beaten/stepped on/trampled by hand or by livestock, and, after the straw was removed, the remains were tossed into the air, where the heavier wheat would drop straight down and the chaff would blow off. Some had a tractor that would do the trampling, and a few had a fan that would aid in separating the wheat from the chaff, but many had no mechanization at all.

A few hundred meters before we reached the official park, a dozen people clambered off the bus, leaving only a Chinese couple and myself on it with the driver. We drove up to the entrance and were forced to purchase five different tickets, tickets for the various attractions inside (like “Ethnic Dancing Program”). We visited a small complex of cliff temples, and after a few minutes, the rest of our busmates cheerfully clambered back aboard. Quite suspicious.
The main cliff temples were, of all things, closed! I was really upset, but I went on a nice little horseback ride to a waterfall and the surrounding countryside was very nice. The horseback ride was a little disappointing—it loses a bit of its excitement when your horse is led by the reigns by a local teen the duration of your journey. There was no mention of the temples being closed, and they happily sold me a full-price ticket at the entrance to the area. Outside the temples a row of souvenir stalls were still occupied, to catch the stray tourists who wandered over to be disappointed. One woman adamantly attempted to sell me a group of pictures showing the artwork and shrines inside that I was unable to see. I refused out of principle.

Zhangye/Matisi
I took a 10-hour train ride to Zhangye, an entirely unnotable city except for the fact that it houses the Largest Reclining Buddah in China. This didn’t put it on anyone’s must-see list, but it was pretty big. Something like 23 meters long, and 10 meters tall. An annoying thing about traveling in China is that it seems that the capitalists have gotten hold of the tourism industry and realized that, since any particularly known attraction has monopoly power (there aren’t any competing Largest Reclining Buddahs in China), the demand curve is fairly inflexible, so they can raise the prices significantly, yet still see only a small drop in attendance. At least half the sights we have visited have seen a serious bump up in admission. The Buddah was listed in the guidebook as costing about $2.50, but it was up to $5 when I came. It seems insignificant, and to us, the rich Western tourists, it isn’t so big a deal (though we are still paid a Chinese-ish salary), but to local Chinese, it can take quite a bite out of the pocketbook.

I then took a bus to Matisi, some Buddhist temples carved into the side of a sheer cliff. The area was beautiful, and the rickety three-hour bus ride there was very interesting. We passed through numerous small villages along the way and it was harvest time for the wheat and straw. We saw the locals out in the street threshing, bailing, and harvesting the wheat. At times the bus had to drive slowly because the wheat stalks were laid across the road so traffic would help break the kernels from the stalks. Aside from that technique, it was clear that many of the villagers were harvesting wheat the same way that they had been doing for thousands of years. The wheat was cut with a scythe, beaten/stepped on/trampled by hand or by livestock, and, after the straw was removed, the remains were tossed into the air, where the heavier wheat would drop straight down and the chaff would blow off. Some had a tractor that would do the trampling, and a few had a fan that would aid in separating the wheat from the chaff, but many had no mechanization at all.

A few hundred meters before we reached the official park, a dozen people clambered off the bus, leaving only a Chinese couple and myself on it with the driver. We drove up to the entrance and were forced to purchase five different tickets, tickets for the various attractions inside (like “Ethnic Dancing Program”). We visited a small complex of cliff temples, and after a few minutes, the rest of our busmates cheerfully clambered back aboard. Quite suspicious.
The main cliff temples were, of all things, closed! I was really upset, but I went on a nice little horseback ride to a waterfall and the surrounding countryside was very nice. The horseback ride was a little disappointing—it loses a bit of its excitement when your horse is led by the reigns by a local teen the duration of your journey. There was no mention of the temples being closed, and they happily sold me a full-price ticket at the entrance to the area. Outside the temples a row of souvenir stalls were still occupied, to catch the stray tourists who wandered over to be disappointed. One woman adamantly attempted to sell me a group of pictures showing the artwork and shrines inside that I was unable to see. I refused out of principle.

Chinese Tourism
In August, after I bid farewell to Erica and she headed back to the States, I had 10 whole days to myself! I decided that I would visit a few of the sites which, while not must-sees, seemed quite interesting.

My first stop was Heavenly Lake, Tian Chi, an alpine lake a few hours north or Urumqi, in pretty-far west China. This was an interesting place. It is really popular with Chinese tourists, though there are not too many Westerners in this area so they are rarer. Tian Chi was a place where the differences between Western backpacker tourism and Chinese tour group tourism were most visible to me.

Tian Chi was described in our Lonely Planet as a place where one could take long hikes into the hills, meet some local semi-nomadic people, stay overnight in a yurt, and get some solitude sitting lakeside in the evening.

I have no idea how it is sold to Chinese tours, but I envision something along the lines of “Come to Heavenly Lake! Beautiful Scenery! Motorboat rides! Take pictures dressed up like the locals or just take pictures of the locals themselves and goats dressed up with sunglasses! A beautiful view of the lake, just two minutes from the shuttle drop off point! If you are feeling sprightly, a slightly different view just a ten-minute walk away! Take a picture sitting on a horse* (*actual riding of the horse will cost extra) or sitting on a stuffed camel!”

And it is quite popular with the Chinese tourists. I found one of the few non-tour buses to the lake and bought a ticket, which only involved a bit of difficulty because I was the only one who did not want a return ticket that evening. But I got a ticket and was dropped off with the hundreds of other tourists after a 2 hour bus ride that climbed up a valley for the last hour or so. From here it was only another 15 minutes in a shuttle van that brought us up another 100 or so vertical meters. It was neat to be climbing, climbing, climbing and then suddenly walk over a low ridge and find yourself at lake level, surrounded by mountains with a view across the lake to a single snowcapped peak off in the distance. It was less neat to be surrounded by a few hundred other people enjoying the same view, along with some of the abovementioned activities.

I admired the view for a few moments, and then started walking to the right, not in the direction of viewpoint #2. After five minutes I had left all but a tiny handful of adventurous other tourists behind. After 25 minutes I was all alone. after an hour, I had come across the small village and the local who rents out yurts. It was very peaceful, aside from the motorboats which stopped running around 4:00 p.m., when everyone else went home. A group of four other backpackers arrived a few minutes after me, and the five of us felt alone on the lake, aside from the local shepherds tending their sheep and cows on horseback. I took a few hikes up into the hills, enjoying the views and the peacefulness (often quite hard to find in China), before rejoining the masses the next afternoon.

Muran, a girl
In the spring, as the semester was winding down, we were invited to see a movie with the 11th graders at Xiaoshi. None of the other teachers were going, but they gave us tickets and we made our way over to the theater. We asked what it was about. “I think it is about a girl who is dying,” was the response of one of the teachers. Not much of an inspiring tale, in my opinion, but we had heard that watching movies in the theater in China can be a fun experience, so we went. This movie was called Muran, a Girl.

We took a bus to the theater, right downtown, which bizarrely shares a building not only with a coffeehouse but with the ‘Breastfeeding Educational Center.” We found our seats in the large, half-full theater for this matinee showing just before the film started rolling.

We were fortunate because there were subtitles, but even without it would have been fairly easy to follow. I will attempt to summarize the plot as quickly as I can. The first shot was of a tombstone set among rolling green hills, with Muran’s name on it and the years of her life, roughly 1982-2000 (I forgot). Cut to a scene, 8 years earlier, where a cute little girl is packing up to move to the big city (Beijing) with her positive, stoic-yet-supportive father. He is going to look for work, but Mom must stay in the countryside because she couldn’t get permission to move to the city. The painful separation between Muran and her mother is dwelt upon. Muran saves a baby bird. She loves baby birds.

Cut to Beijing, where we meet capitalist Uncle, who is doing okay fixing cars, but not well enough to afford his own. A moment of comedy occurs when he jokes about his Santana (the ubiquitous Volkswagen that is inevitably black and commanded the lion’s share of the market here until recently) only to reveal his tricycle with a cart on the back.

Once in Beijing, Muran is made fun of for her country accent, she climbs up to the roof of some building on a dare and then gets in trouble but bonds with some little girls who accept her as one of them. Mom visits. Her departure is a cause for many tears to be shed.

Flash to 1999 or so. Muran has a tough year. First, she is voted out of her class monitor position because she refused to participate in the morally wrong act of watching the soccer match with her classmates during class time when the teacher was out. Then she stays alone after class to study with a very nice boy (Muran is weak in math), but people baselessly suspect they are up to no good and she is criticized in front of her peers. There was a dance contest, where Muran led one group in the elegant countryside-inspired routine, but her friend/nemesis with some money led the rival group in a hip, urbanish routine. The city routine won, but Muran kept a positive attitude!

Her uncle employed her father in his garage, but mistreated him some and Muran found out and got very angry.

She starts feeling pains in her loins, and though pregnancy is suspected by all (though she was pure with the boy), she goes to the doctor and he finds out she has ovarian cancer. She spends the last 45 minutes of the movie dying, but keeping up her spunky, optimistic outlook up until she dies. The end.

Uncle loses his business, but has an epiphany where he realizes that though he is rich in money he was poor in family. Or something.

This movie was, completely unsurprisingly, made with the full cooperation of the State. Erica was choking back tears and upset about the emotional manipulation, but I found it funny. I don’t know if it was based on a true story or not, but it was a great movie to think about.

I have looked for copies of this stunning film in the bootleg DVD shops, but to no surprise, I haven’t come across it yet. I also looked it up on the imdb, but no dice there, either. A shame.

Canals

Ningbo, though I don’t believe it is technically on the Yangtze River delta, is still on very flat land. There are mountains a 30-minute drive outside of town, but there are really no hills or even bumps in the city proper. Ningbo is located at a point where two rivers meet. The larger river has a different name, and for some reason, people here claim that Ningbo is where three rivers meet. I got in an argument with another foreign teacher a few months ago about whether two rivers merging to make a third consist of three rivers meeting or just two meeting. Of course, I was on the correct side.

So in addition to these two rivers, there are many canals throughout the city and the countryside. Shaoxing, a few hours over, is famous for its canals, and there are several cities in the general Ningbo-Shanghai area that consider, or considered, themselves “Venice of the East.” Ningbo has no such aspirations, but we cross a few canals almost every day on our way to school or the market. The canals here, unfortunately, are not utilized for much. Only rarely will we see a boat in a canal, and even then the odds are that the long-hulled wooden boat holds two uniformed, hard-hatted workers who are dutifully scooping leaves and detritus out of the canals, leaving behind a film of gasoline from its two-stroke engine.

There are still some in town who wash their clothes in the canals, and there are always a few fisherman using either cane poles or an elaborate netting system, where two long poles are crossed and a square net is tied to the ends, and the net is then lowered into the water by a rope tied to the apex of the poles. Otherwise, these canals are not used, or even noticed by most. Once we saw a few men in a boat with a pile of snails in the center. Ningbo is regionally, perhaps nationally famous, for its river snails. We’ve had them a few times, they are usually stir-fried in a sweet brown sauce, and not bad, though if the tips of the shells are not broken off (no doubt by the lowest-ranking member of the kitchen staff), the corkscrews or meat can be embarrassingly difficult to extract.