Report from Shanghai #4

Hello from Shanghai,
Time for our October report from China. October 1 is a big National Holiday here—kind of like our 4th of July. Sharon had long planned to go to the famous HuangShan (Yellow Mountain) with good friends Barbara King and Jeanette Gorman (former Boiseans) during this week, while I was teaching. Barbara and Jeanette were completing a 17-day cycling trip through western China. However, this year the government decided to make it a week-long holiday, and since my classes were cancelled, I accepted their invitation to go along.
Many books on China have described HuangShan as a magical, mystical place. A mountain with 75 peaks and steep valleys, often shrouded in clouds. One book said “if you only climb one mountain in China, it should be this one.” So off we went—3 American ladies and one old guy—no guides, no tour bus, traveling on our own across China, without much Chinese language—and it was quite an adventure. We headed to the huge Bus Station way across Shanghai, found the right gate, along with thousands of other Chinese travelers—this was a big holiday. We took the public bus to Tunxi, a city about 5 ½ hours from Shanghai, with a driver who thought he was driving in a Formula 1 race—passing everyone on the road (often using the “parking” lane on the right side), cutting people off, and honking his horn constantly. He actually was stopped at one toll gate and held there, we think, because another motorist reported him for reckless driving. After talking to the police he started driving again, in the same manner as before. We were glad to reach Tunxi safely.
Checking in at our hotel was interesting. We had a reservation, but the staff at the desk seemed all confused by something, so the 4 or us sat there for about 45 minutes while they talked (in Chinese only), shuffled papers and made phone calls. We didn’t know what was happening. Finally another guest translated that they couldn’t give us the rate we had been quoted—but would we pay the regular rate? We said fine and Presto—we got our rooms, after we paid a 2000 yuan deposit (about $300). Tunxi has preserved Ming dynasty homes downtown for a market area so the ladies enjoyed some shopping. I found a bar and enjoyed a pi jiu, (beer).
The next day before we headed for Tangkou, the town near the mountain, we wanted to buy our bus tickets back to Shanghai, for several days later. In China, there are surprises every step of the way. A college student who was kindly helping us in English, stood in line with us to buy tickets. Just as we got to the front of the line, she insisted that it was Saturday, not Friday, (we have a different calendar, she said, which they do) and therefore was suggesting we buy tickets on a day different than what we had planned. It was very confusing but in the end, we got the correct tickets and it turned out later that her cell phone was registering the wrong day. Who could have predicted that?
In Tangkou, Sharon and I met a very nice Chinese family at our hotel (with a 16 yr. old daughter, Yao Yao, who spoke great English) and went with them on a tour of an ancient restored village a few miles away (HongCun, where they filmed “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) and a beautiful mountain river valley on the other side of town, where the water was as clear as the Payette in Idaho.
The next morning (Saturday), we headed up Huangshan (“Huang” means Yellow and “Shan” means mountain) and unfortunately it was raining pretty hard. We decided to take the cable car up, rather than hike 6 miles up the mountain in the rain. We rode up and when we got off, we couldn’t see much—just clouds and rain. We started walking, following signs in Chinese and English. There were a 3 or 4 hotels in different places up on the mountain, scattered maybe a mile or two apart, and we had reservations at one. There were many trails going in different directions. We thought we would be let off “at the top” but there wasn’t really a “top.” HuangShan is a big mountain with some 75 rocky peaks sticking up here and there, with deep drop offs and valleys in between, so none of the trails are flat—they go up and down constantly. The trails are paved and everywhere they go up or down, steps have been built, no gradual slopes. There are thousands of steps—not the best thing for my bad knees.
We eventually did find our hotel—there are no roads up on the mountain, only walking paths. Everything has to be carried up the mountain by hand—we constantly passed porters on the trails who carried huge loads of food, linens, bedding, and other supplies on two bamboo sticks across their backs. We were glad to find the hotel, they did have rooms ready for us, and we spent the afternoon trying to dry out all our soaked clothes—even the backpacks we were carrying and many of the clothes inside were wet.
We listened to the rain during the night and wondered about our next two days, but when we awoke it was quite cloudy, but not raining so Sharon and I headed out. We climbed the first 232 steps from the hotel up to the main trail. We were right in the clouds, and as they moved, all of a sudden it cleared, and we could see way down in a deep valley with mountain peaks appearing on all sides! Wow! We followed the trail along the edge of the cliff passing many other people as we went. The clouds kept moving, and every few minutes a great view would open up, but then the clouds would come back soon. You could hear people shouting with excitement in the distance when a great view opened up. You had to have your camera ready when things opened up and we did!
Anyway, we hiked with Barbara and Jeanette that whole day, back and forth, exploring HuangShan and its many peaks, valleys, unusual pine trees growing out of rocks on the edge of a precipice. I bought a walking stick for 10 Yuan (about $1.50) and it saved me—I used it to push down every time I planted my right leg on a step up or down—and there were thousands. We took in the views from gorgeous spots like “Beginning to Believe” peak, “Monkey Watching the North Sea” (of clouds) and many more, for the next day and a half, without any rain.
On Monday we walked to the cable car along a trail with spectacular views, took the gondola down, caught a taxi to Tangkou, had banana pancakes at “Mr. Cheng’s” little restaurant we had visited earlier and bought several of his uncle’s paintings, and headed back to Shanghai. On one leg of the journey, the bus stopped and a man put a huge bucket of water on our bus right next to Sharon’s backpack. What? After a few miles, they stopped the bus and dropped off the water to a car which had apparently broken down. What a trip! During the whole five days, we saw no (zero) Americans, and only a very few French and German travelers—the rest of the thousands of people we saw were Chinese (and some Koreans). Sharon has been studying Chinese and she used it—and it helped.
During the next week, I taught my classes on Cross Cultural Ethics in Business and International Business law, and Sharon went to Chinese class and did some touring and shopping trips around town with Barbara and Jeanette. We both go to Tai Chi class once a week, too. I came down with a bad cold and You Sha (USAC program director) took me to a hospital where the doctor said my blood count was a bit high and prescribed some antibiotics and other medicine—and I started to feel better. I prepared and gave my mid-term exam in the Ethics class, and then had to grade all those essays! The students did pretty well—it is a good class and we have had some very good discussions of ethical and cultural issues.
We have a good broadband connection for our computer in the apartment, which has enabled us to keep up with friends and family and check out the news regularly—it seems like the U.S. is having quite a severe financial crisis, which is spreading worldwide—and you are also having an election there I hear. We care who wins and have sent in our ballots, but we don’t mind missing all the negative ads and commercials. We also have a Yahoo messenger account, so can make telephone calls from our computer, which had enabled us to talk directly to our sons, sisters and Sharon’s mom on occasion.
Last weekend we went on another interesting program trip with the students organized by You Sha—an overnight to the city of Hangzhou. This city is about 2 ½ hours from Shanghai and sits on the large and lovely West Lake. We rode on several boats around the lake, stopped at and walked around on several islands in the lake and visited one of the largest Buddhist temples in China, featuring 5 levels and a 70 ft. tall sitting Buddha. Opposite the temple, some 345 sculptures of various Buddhist figures were carved into the limestone hillside about 1,000 years ago. We also visited a beautiful restored pagoda more than 185 feet tall, and had several great meals, with You Sha choosing all the items for us to share. The family we met at HuangShan lives in Hangzhou, and in our only free time, after dinner on Saturday, they picked us up at our hotel and took us to West Lake for a lovely walk across the causeway under the moon. It was great to see them again. We returned to Shanghai on Sunday evening.
There is more to tell, but this report is too long already, so I will stop here. We are having a most interesting time, and are learning much about China every day.
Best wishes, Michael

Shanghai Report #3—September 28, 2008

Hello Friends and Family,
We have now been in Shanghai for 5 weeks, so time for another report—ready or not! Life has continued to be very busy for my wife and me since we last reported. Nearly every day brings new adventures and excitement, and new challenges, in language or culture or food.
About two weeks ago our whole group (program director You Sha, 35 students and Sharon and I) went on a tour of Wuzhen, a very old town built along a series of canals. The people are still living in old wooden houses along the canals as they have for centuries. We visited a museum, saw some beautiful blue and white cloth being made, and rode along the canal in old wooden boats propelled by a man manually using a paddle/rudder. Later that night, there was a program for international students at Shanghai University celebrating the Moon Festival (the day of the year when the full moon is the largest all year—a very important day in Asia). Several of our students performed musical and dance acts—a good time.
The next day Sharon and I went to see a large Buddhist temple in Shanghai, where people were praying and burning incense to celebrate their deceased ancestors, so I burned some sticks myself and thought about my dad, who would have loved to be here experiencing China—hopefully he’s watching. The next night we had a delightful dinner with Cao Guoli, a very sharp and nice Chinese man who works here representing the State of Idaho Department of Commerce. He helps Idaho companies do business in China. We had taken Guoli to dinner when he was in Boise in the spring and he returned the favor most generously, and we got to meet his friendly wife and four year old daughter as well—it was an enjoyable evening.
Then the very next night we went to the famous Puccini opera “Tosca” in the beautiful new Grand Theater in downtown Shanghai. One of the Chinese professors had some extra tickets so we attended, along with a few of our USAC students. Sharon knows opera and said the singers and orchestra were top notch—it was a great performance. The singing was in Italian (as is customary) and they flashed sub-titles up on the wall, as they do at operas in the USA, but of course the subtitles here were Chinese characters! Oh well, we were able to figure out most of the plot. The rest of the week I spent preparing for and teaching my two classes. It still takes me more than one whole day to get ready for each three-hour class, but that’s my job, and things seem to be going well. We have had some particularly good and lively discussions of case studies in the Cross Cultural Ethics class.
On the next weekend we visited another large famous Buddhist temple in Shanghai, where we viewed many large gold statues of Buddha and other idols. This temple is highlighted by a beautiful 6 ft. sitting jade Buddha carved from a single piece of solid white jade and brought here from Burma by a monk more than 100 years ago. At one point in our visit, about 60-70 monks came into the main hall and chanted together with a drum and bells for more than 40 minutes—a pretty neat sight. We also had a delicious lunch in the vegetarian restaurant inside the temple. The next day we took the subway (which we do nearly every day—there is a 9-line system which moves millions of people around Shanghai very quickly) across town to the Shanghai Aquarium. In addition to the many window displays of fish typical of good aquariums elsewhere, there are two long tunnels (200-300 feet long at least) where the glass goes all around you and over your head—sharks, manta rays and other huge fish swimming right over your head—amazing!
This past week we continued with our regular schedule—my classes, Sharon’s Chinese I and calligraphy classes, and exploring various little restaurants in our neighborhood where the menus often have no English—only Chinese characters and pictures. Interesting! We are learning enough Chinese to be able to say words like pork (zhu rou), or rice (fan) or noodles (mian) or mushrooms, and quite a few more, so we are getting along reasonably well, but we are often a bit surprised by some items that arrive on our plates or in our bowls, which we aren’t sure what they are. Sharon is trying to speak a little Chinese and learn basic characters. Also, we both go to a Tai Chi class on Thursday mornings. That is real good exercise—it is surprising to me that moving slowly but holding and changing positions can be so tough on the muscles!
This past week we also hosted a party—an “open house” for the students in my two classes and You Sha. We expected about 20 students and 22 showed up (a few extra students attended—they don’t want to miss out on a party). Sharon put out an assortment of snacks bought from street vendors (sesame cake) and fruit and we offered beer and soft drinks and juice. Our small apartment was filled, but many of the students brought some food (ba mi hua, we think, which is popcorn, also made by a street vendor) and we all had a nice time.
Our apartment looks out over a lovely park—Zhabei Park, and we often sit on our balcony and have a cup of coffee or tea in the morning. Yesterday we went down and walked in the park and came upon a group of women doing a movement/sport with a racket and a ball which Sharon had seen and was interested in learning to do. The idea is for each person to keep the ball on their racket while moving your arms and body around in big sweeping motions and turning the racquet, even upside down—something like Tai Chi—without dropping the ball (apparently it is called Tai Ji Bo). After we watched for a few minutes a couple of women came over and gestured for Sharon to join in—and she did! The women gave her a racket and ball and started teaching her (all in Chinese of course) how to hold the racket and move the arms back and forth without dropping the ball. Later they got me to join in, and while a crowd formed, we had a lot of fun trying out this new sport. One man nearby did some translating, and the women invited us to come back any morning and join them, and Sharon definitely plans to do so—she really enjoyed it.
Well, there’s always more to tell, but enough for now.
Best wishes, Michael