So if you didn’t already know the picture page is up.  I should have a new picture of me wearing the red ball cap up in a minute from now.  To find out about the red ball cap, read on blog believers. 

I can report that everyone is all a twitter here at Shanqiu Shyan school.  The kids seem to be a mix of stone cold terror regarding upcoming exams and giddy excitment about the month off.  I have asked a Chinese teacher if students are penalized for not doing well on the exam and she said that no, they would not be penalized they just won’t go to a good college and will not have a good future.   So yes, we got us some shit scared little Chinese kids.

Feburary also means the start of Spring festival, the celebration of the Chinese new year.  This is a really really really huge deal in China.  Everything else stops while people make pilgramidges to the homes of their families for a month.  It is kind of like Thanksgiving (only bigger and without as much food) or Christmas (without all the commerse and egg nog) and for a whole month.  I have been asked by a few younger kids if I will go back to America to be with my family for spring fest.  No, I explain slowly and with a smile, I have plans of my own for spring festival, which I will get into ’splaining a little later blob believers.

Wang Guang Peng came by my place last night just after diner.  I can usually expect visiters at this time, I guess it is a rare time in the day when the kids have nothing planed for them so some of them have found that they can amuze themselves by playing 20 questions with foriegn man.  Last night Wang Guang Peng showed me a test paper with the questions filled out.  He asked me if i would go over it with him.  Cool, I figure I would help the kid study.  I read the questions slowly and out loud.  All the answers had been filled in but still I took the time to tell him why the answer was right as most were.  A few were wrong, and as I explained why, he would grown and argue.  A few of the multiple choice answers had multiple right answers.  Hand to the heavens, several right answers.  Also Many of the questions were worded totally wrong.

the best was a section of the test which involved fill in the blanks of a two paragraph story.  The story itself goes like this, and I am paraphrasing but not exagerating I promise. 

A woman and a class of young children went to the park.  They were playing and singing.  They all walked across a long bridge which went over a pretty stream.  A mad dog jumped out at them.  the teacher told the children to be still and quiet.  The dog bit one of the children and the child died.  then the dog bit another child and that child died.  then a man came with a gun but could not shoot the dog because it moved to much. So the woman jumped on the dog and it ate her to death and the hunter shot the dog over. 

I told Wang Guang Peng that the last word should be choice C, which was ‘dead’ instead of choice A which was ‘over’.  The story goes on and the woman becomes a great mayrter for the cause of spreading understanding in the area of what to do when a rabid dog is killing your school children.  A moment of silence please.

“What kind of a test question is that?” I demamded of Wang Guang Peng, “That is the worst thing I have ever heard!”  He agreed.

It was a particularly tricky question in which I was explaining to him that the correct answer should be ’whom’ instead of ‘whose’ when he broke down and was suddenly on the verge of crying.  I asked if he was taking this test tomarrow, and he said no, today.  This was the test he had taken that day and here I was pointing out where he had messed up.  I didn’t know.  I thought he wanted to study.  So I had been maticulously ripping this kids dreams of getting everything perfect apart without pity.  I am an asshole.

The little guy was inconsolable.  He had only missed a few of these questions mind you.  At the very very least a B but more like low A.  He kept telling me that there were a few in his class that had done even better, he wanted to be the very best.  I told him that there were many worse, and he stubornly argued that a few were better.  He said he wanted to jump on a bridge, but quickly assured me this was just an expression which expressed sadness.  I didn’t feel like telling him that I thought the expression was to jump off a bridge.   I filled a glass of water half way and explained about optimists and pesimists.  I assured him that he had done fine.  I tryed to convince him to focus on what his goals were and to not become concerned with what other people were doing.  I told him he was being too hard on himself, and to make him understand I pretended to punch myself in the face, which made him laugh.  I drew a little face on my finger which made him laugh harder.  I told him that he was the type of person who would never be satisfied, and I assured him that he would go far in this world.  I really think he will.  Then I gave him a bag full of cookies and that seemed to do the trick.  They were an assortment of tiny bags of Chinese cookies someone had given me, he wanted to know why I was giving them to him and I told him he looked like he needed some cookies.

For the next half hour he lectured me on the Chinese alphabet, after that I kicked him out.  I don’t mind these kids coming by but 8:30 at night is me time, plain and simple.

And today all the exams were over at 11, and when I finally rolled out of bed and in search of lunch thousands of children were parading out the front all with small bags of effects and bedrolls.  They seemed very happy, and the air was filled with a sense of relief that even an english speaking foriegner could feel.  It was really cool.  Once they left the place became an earie ghost town void of the sounds of thousands of giggling mandurin speaking kids.

Everyday since my last class this past Friday have been empty.  I have past the time by riding my bike on explorations of the city, but today it is pissing down rain and cold and dark gray so I am stuck inside.  Really nasty rain, too.  Cold winter rain where you can see your breath and the cold and the wetness make it through your clothes at the same time.  So I blog.

Anyway, where was I?

Ah yes, spring festival.

About a month ago I asked my globe trotting friends Andy and Georganna (who emailed me today to say she still hasn’t had the baby, but they think Friday) and asked for their advice what to do with myself for a month.  They recomended Cambodia or Thailand, and I settled on Thailand.  They said the people in Thailand are famously very kind and they have elephants.  I agreed. They sent me a lonely planet guide to Southeast Asia all the way from England, which was a totally cool thing for them to do.  Lonely planet rules, by the way, if you are ever going anywhere in the world pick one up.  Thankyou Georganna and Andy for lending me the book, I promise to return it over drinks somewhere in this world.  Somewhere really cool. 

Getting to Thailand from Shangqiu presents a brand new problem.  I don’t really want to just show up at the Zhengzhou airport and try and figure it out.  I would have to get a connecting flight in Hong Kong and I don’t know how the hell to do that.  Besides the worst time to travel in China all year is spring festival, all the planes are gonna be booked and the airports crazy.  So May said she would take me to a travel agent which would simplify things. 

I brought with me the lonely planet Thailand and the lonely planet China, just in case.  Here is the thing, the travel agent explained to May who explained to me that we would have nowhere near enough time to obtain a travel visa. 

Oh shit.  This is true.  Everything takes a long time in China, especially anything involving the government in connection to paperwork.  We are talking about a Franz Kafka communist beurocracy.  There always seem to be five forms to fill out which will be filed whenever and need to be reprinted, stamped, noterized, shreded, burnt, retyped and restamped.  I am still waiting on the police department to finish typing some of my paper work from 3 weeks ago, although May still seems optimistic that it will get done this week.  The z visa (foriegner work visa) was the reason I was late a month leaving the ATL.  This was last week, I am leaving next week.  No, damn it, the guy is right.  There just wasn’t enough time.

So much for Thailand.  But hear me now, I will make it to Thailand.  I will let you know when, you will be able to log onto willsandersthailandadventure.com.  

So I went with plan b

Plan b is south China 

I then pulled out my lonely planet guide to China.   Once again I find myself becoming Harpo Marx without the horn, I point frantically to the page with the map, to an area which I had read about in the Guangxi province called Yangshou.

This is what the lonely planet says about Yangshou

“Ah, Yangshou, that legendary backpacker hang-out…a great laid back base from which to explore other small villages in the nearby countryside…..unrivalled opurtunity to soak in local flavours on the cheap.  Pedling through the rice fields amid the splendid green-topped limestone peaks for a day, or three, is for many their top China expirience.”

I first heard about Yangshou back in the ATL from my friend James Bridges.  He had been there several years ago and discribed the place as a mecka for backpackers from the west.  White people from all over the globe met up at Yangshou and hang out and backpack.  How cool is that?  I am not racist, and I so far really love Chinese people.  I can not, however, express how desperatly I want to have a good conversation with someone who is as fluent in english as I am.  Maybe a good many beers as well.

In addition to which both the lonely planet and James Bridges say it is amoung the most beutiful places in China, hands down.  So needless to say, Yangshou was high on my what-to-do when I get to China list and had been for a long long time.

So I am at the travell agent and I am pointing to a map like Harpo Marx, (that’ll get you ten years in Levenworth, or eleven years in twelveworth) and I am pointing to Yangshou and May looks and says “Why do you want to go there?  Chinese people never go there.  I think this is not a good place to go.”  My bubble is burst.

She wants to know whats so great about Yangshou and I show her pictures of the mountains in my lonely planet guide book.  She tells the travel agent what I have said and they both look at me like a stupid animal and laugh their heads off.  At times when gasping for air, one of them will say something else and the other will explode into deep deep deep belly laughs. 

He recomended that I take go with a tour group of southwestern China.  I was reluctant as it made me feel a bit like a retired old lady from Miami, but the reasons made sense.  They would take me to the cool spots, organize my travel, feed me, make sure I don’t get ripped off, put me on the right bus, train, plane ect.  They would arrange for conductors to know my situation and destination and to help me along.  There is no way I would be able to cover this much ground on my own and ever be heard from again.

The trip would go to the Heinan province, up to Yangshou, and over to the Yennan province, all of which I am stoked about. 

We left, and after a few days of dickering back and forth we agreed on a price, which is a lot, but not so much I can’t afford and still be able to live like a sultan come March.  And easily worth it I think.

I went the other day to finalize everything and pay them.  This time they took me to an upstairs office, which was surrounded by windows, all of which revealed the backs of great neon signs with Chinese writting.  I was given piping hot water to drink out of a plastic crinkly cup, which seems to me at this point as a very Chinese thing.

They laid out the map.  I inspected the trip.  20 days all told.  I asked May how long I was to stay in Yangshou and she asked them and told me one hour.  I said “oh no that will have to change.”  She told them and they all started laughing again, this time the guys co-workers were there.  May tried to talk me out of Yangshou and I told her my mind was made up.  What she then said to them was a bunch of stuff I couldn’t understand followed by “Yangshou, yanghou, yangshou” mimicing my insistance like you would a stuborn child.

It is my vacation!  And although I am very interested in seeing all the other places the guy wants to show me, I set out for Yangshou and hell or high water.  Fine, after about five minutes of screaming laughter at my expense they all said that they would extend the trip for  me so I could go to Yangshou for 3 days.  They made me agree that it would be without a tour guide which I prefered anyway.  I then asked if they thought I would see monkies in the Heinan province, again with the laughter.  They thought my wanting to see monkies was so funny.  I begen to wonder if these are the only travel agents in Shangqiu.

Not only will I see monkies in the Hainan province but I will also get to go scuba diving.  Awesome!

As I sipped my pipping hot water May told me that I needn’t bring my cat.  They would give me a cat to wear at all times. 

smea? 

They will give me a cat, oh I’m sorry a cap.  Out they pull the lamest bright red ballcap with extra large bill you ever seen.  It is so so dorky.  No way.

“This is so the tour guide will be able to find you.”  Argued May.  “If the tour guide can’t find me in a crowd in China then I would submit to you that maybe their skills of sight may in fact be called into question.”  I countered.  “You must wear the cap at all times.”  said May.  “But if I wear that hat nobody will want to be my friend.”  I whinned.  May shook her head and told me I was like a naughty child. 

So I will maybe wear the stupid hat, maybe not.  And I really think the places they take me will be unbelivably wonderful for the most part.  I will get my little trip to Yangshou.  I hope it is all cool anyway.  Keep reading the blog and I’ll let you know.

So I leave Sunday, and I am very excited.  The next day I hope to be in the Heinan province looking at monkies or scuba diving on my 30th birthday. 

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