First I want to thank you guys for all your comments and emails.  It really really is cool to hear from you.  News from home seems to make me feel like I am not so far away. 

Keep the emails coming

The day after my bike ride I woke up at 4:00 am and couldn’t get back to sleep.  I was still so jazzed about the previous day I put on my wang puppy slippers and wrote the last blog.  I had to be up early that morning anyways, May was driving me all the way back to Zhongzhou where I had landed to go to the foriegners hospital for yet another physical.  I have no idea why they want another one, the one I got in the states should have been plenty but now they want the chinese medical community to put in their two cents.  I ask about this a few times and don’t really get a clear response, I guess I’ll live. 

So after writting my blog I got showered and dressed and finally was picked up by the driver and in the van.  It was still dark and we picked up an older couple waiting outside the gate of the school compound.  They got in without introduction and off we went.  On the other side of town we picked up May who had a large clear plastic bag of dumplings for everyone in the car but me, I wasn’t to eat anything before the doctor visit.  I was very hungry, I later lied to May but the truth was I had fallen asleep early the night before and missed dinner, and the micro minivan wafted of sweet sweet steamed dumplings.  For a time we went in silence, punctuated by breif conversations held by the other passengers, I can’t guess about what.  After a while May and I got into a long and facinating discussion about the state of our countries.  She asked about our gun problem, and was wide eyed to learn that you could shoot a person for entering your home and get away with it.  They don’t have guns around here so that was a big shock for her to hear.  We discussed politics for a while, very very interesting conversation.  She seemed surprised also to hear me speak ill of our president, I suppose you don’t get much of that around here either.

As the ride continued the other passengers started trying to give me friendly chinese leasons.

I learned the character for male and female, very useful for untranslated toilet signs.

I learned these phenetically so they may be misspelled, but I rekon if you are still here with me at this point you know that I don’t spell in english so great either and can’t work the spellcheck on this crazy computer.

NI CHIL LO MA?

have you eaten?  -This doesn’t literally mean I want to take you for food, but is more of a common greeting.

BUCUTCHE

youre welcome

We dropped the old couple off, not before the old lady said something which caused our driver to fly into a crazy rage.  He was not a happy man, I still don’t know what they could have done or said to set him off but off he went.  One of those times I wish I knew Chinese.

So we went to the foriegners hospital in Zhongzhou.  Very small building as the name may imply.  May lead me around the first floor of this place from office to office like a mother hen.  We walk into a room and she points to the chair.

“you sit now”

So I sit.  someone sticks me with a needle and draws blood.  (I do watch the needle come out of the package so I feel safe.)  In another room they make me take off my shirt and apply leach like plastic sucktion balloons with wires attatched all over my chest.  height, weight, the x ray took under 10 seconds.  They put me against a wall and had me put my hands on my hips then pressed my elbows hard against the natural motion of my shouldiers and barked “still”.  I got dragged all over the place, and the wierd thing was that each room seemed to have a line of people who had already been waiting.  May would holler Chinese at the docter and everyone would stare at me (everyone always does regardless of where I find myself anyhow) and the doctoer would see me first.  The hospital had no heat and the front doors of the place stood open just to insure minimum comfort for the shirtless examinees.  I dropped pee into a cup which dangled over a hole in the floor.  I knew it was the room with the appropirate hole based on the character May had taught me on the way there.  After ten whirlwind minutes it was all over.  I had been poked proded and frowned at by simply everyone who was anyone at the Zhongzhou forigners hospital.  Now I had a long boring drive to look forward to, or so I thought.

May and the driver were so pleased that the exam had been quick they decieded we might as well swing by Kaifeng as it was just about smack dab on the way home.  Ok, I said, whatever, nomaddame.

So here is the deal with Kaifeng.  Built above the ruins of the destroyed northern Song dynasty capital city, Kaifeng was the capital of several of the early dynasties.  Sadly, most locals agree, the city of Kaifeng just hasn’t been the same since the Manchurian Jin Tartars sacked the place in 1127.  It is also said to have lost much of it’s quant charm when it was deliberatly flooded by Ming loyalists (hell bent on stopping the deadly Manchu killers) in 1644*.  I found the place to be lovely.  The whole city is surrounded by a huge ancient fortified wall with four gates under which traffic moves freely.  The city is built right up to and all around the wall, and your driving down the street and all of the sudden your going under this huge two story arch with ornate pretty crap all over it.  Here is the part where I first kick myself a little on the inside.  Who brings a camera to go to the docter?  From now on take it from Will Sanders.  Take your fucking camera to the docter.  You really just never know. 

We got lost for a while, this is a town that looks similar in many ways to Shangqiu.  Same guys on bikes and scooters, same people selling food on the sidewalk with mobil ovens so they can bake or fry or steam your food while you wait.  One difference is that the city planners forbid the construction of sky scrappers or tall buildings of any kind. 

After several missteps and wrong turns and traffic jams we came upon a through street with shops and city everywhere and all the sudden bammm!  As if out of a puff of smoke apeared the Xiangguo Temple.  It stood tall, though out of place amoung loud flashy urban sprall here was an ediface which absolutly demanded totall awe and respect from the peddlers, passersby, and shops which huddled in its shadow. Standing at the foot of the Temple seemed to drown out all the hustle and bustle of the city around, at least momentarily.

This is a very old thing, too.  As it happens, it could be argued that it is a replica built to replace the one that was flooded in 1644, although this replica has been there since the Qing dynasty*.

Meanwhile, stupid me without my camera.  I can see it still shining in my minds eye though.

We wait for the driver to park (which takes forever) and in the meantime I take in the outside of the Temple which is amazing.  See if you can’t find pictures of it on google, I bet you could if so inclined.  It is the Xiangguo Temple in Kaifeng. 

May said we had to buy incence to pray, which we did. 

Finally the driver showed up, found out it cost 35 RMB (a little over $4 here) and became irrate with the price and left.  So May and I went in. 

The Temple was a series of pogodas, The entrace was gaurded by a fifteen foot tall Buddha on either side, hin and ho.  Hin looks totally pissed off and is trying to blow air through tightly shut lips, Hince the sound hin.  Ho looks totally pissed off but has his mouth open.

The whole place was a series of breathtaking courtyard gardens and bridges over ponds between pagoda temples housing various statues of the Buddha.  At each Buddha May would have me light incence and kneel at the alter.  This for me was sort of like the few occasions when I have found myself at Catholic masses for funerals and Weddings of friends from Catholic families.  I always feel like the only one without the playbook so I mimic what the other Catholics are doing, usually the old ones who seem to have everything right.  My eyes closed tight, knees on the pillow bowing to the Buddha per Mays example, peeking out of the corner of my eye to see just how many bows was good. 

One of the Halls is an Octogan with a gigantic Buddha in the middle with 1000 hands and eyes spread behind either side of it like wings and four bodies in four directions.  The statue is surrounded by a hallway with maybe a hundred webster sized Buddhas in varing degrees of seriousness.  My favorite was grimacing while picking his ear with a stick.

There were so many halls with so many Buddhas, I will never be able to do any sort of justice to the enormity or the beauty of the place.  It really would make you want to cry it is so quiet and peaceful.

Next stop was to the magnificent dragon pavillion.  This was the seat of the emporer in the song dynasty but was, alas, flooded in 1644.  The building we saw was recreated in the Qing dynasty and was sort of a mini version of the forbidden city*.  A long bridge over two lakes which raises and lowers lead us right up the formidable palace.  The walk ways on all the inclines have stairs on the sides and a walkway in the middle intended just for the emporer.  The building itself was 72 steps straight up in the sky, I was so out of breath when I got to the top.  The middle walkway here is roped off and has dragons and cranes and stuff carved into the rock the whole way up for the emporer to walk on.  The entire building was one open room with gold ornate crutains and wood skulpters around an alter and thrown to the king.  So much art in that room that I stood there for a good ten minutes with my jaw hanging.  Oh, and man, the view from the top was emense.  This was the tallest bouiding in Keifeng, (aside from an ancient tower that we did not do that day) and you could see an ocean of Chinese rooftops that would be perfect for ninjas.

Cooler still was out in the back. The emperors garden was a vast and endless winding forest of twisting trees and crazy looking birds.  One portion was shrubs grown to look like animals, another enclosed garden was supposed to feature may flowers, which my companion had taken her English name after. She often explains that this flower grows in the winter, a medaphore for her love of freezing cold shangqiu.  It was very off season though, I bet if you came in just around spring it would be hard to take in all the sights and smells in the air at once.  It was deserted though, which was nice.

I met a sales man of top rank.  He draged May and I into a room with a 12 foot long scroll painting, which he described inch by inch as May translated.  It represented the rural China, a fishing villiage, and a big city, the larger meaning of which was the evolution of China.  After all that I gave the guy 1 RMB for a replica of the painting, mainly out of sheer admiration of his sales skill, plus it will no doubt be the Christmas gift of someone reading this blog.

There are aparantly several other things to do in Kaifeng which we didn’t get to, at some point I hope to spend the weekend there, its close enough to make a perfect trip.  The last time I cursed myself for not having a camera that day came when I saw a guy on a motercycle with half a pig on the rear helmet rack trucking around town like it wasn’t no thing.  I think it was the left half split clear down the middle drapped over the rack above the back tire of the bike with the guts up and the back leg and the snout inches from making street pork rindes on either side.  The whole thing was held on with bungee cords.  Everyone in the van was looking at me and May asked why I was laughing. 

So then We had a very long ride home.  We picked up the old couple we had dropped off that morning, they had been visiting her sister.  We seemed to go home a way off the highway which took twice as long and took us through some of the worst poverty I have ever seen. Nobody talked much, everyone was beat I think.  From the mini van window I watched the sunset in a Chinese sky. Through Chinese trees came a brilliant orange glow which gave way to somber purple and slipped into Chinese night under Chinese stars. I was getting tired and I thought about everything I had done that day and about how far I was from home.

*footnote: come with me on my China adventure and I promise to fill you in on all the related local history my Lonely Planet guide book has to offer.  That is a Will Sanders curtesy.

This blog will end with bike riding.

The last blog I posted should have come with an explanation.  I traved from atlanta to LA across three time zones and then up to Alaska across to russia and down Mongolia to get to Beijing.  The flight to beijing was 20 something hours and not condusive to sleep so I was very much out of my mind already on top of the absolute culture shock.  I would think that these things were clear in the email I sent that day and I therefor published that email instead of trying to recapture a feeling I was having at that moment.

The other thing I did in the Beijing airport after I sent that crazy email was I went to KFC.  At a quick glance of the english portion of the menu I only recognized fried chicken, which they sold as individual drum sticks.  I had the “New Orleans burger” which is a sandwich with chicken in a spicy orange duck suace with mayonaise.  I asked to take a picture of the menu and the girl behind the counter frowned and said no.

I think I mentioned in my email blog that the plane coming in was hours late and as I landed I missed my connecting flight to Zhounzhou (pronounced jyong jo, sort of, I think) but was luckily able to get another flight without too much trouble.  That flight was a trip, they loaded everyone on, and the safty lecture was done with two stewardasses who had turnded it into a sycronized dance with grand sweeping gestures to show where the exits and oxygen masks were stowed.  after their dance they sat down and without any warning the plane lurched into movement.

I arrived at the airport, met May and the non english speaking driver By around 2:30 pm sunday. They had made the two and a half hour journey from Shangqiu to pick me up according to the first flight which arrived at 9:30.  I got in their small mini van parked outside and the driver started the car up and drove down a wheel chair ramp to get out of the parking lot.  there was a person walking on the ramp and we pull right up to maybe a foot at most behind the guys back and lay on the horn. The driver honks over and over again, and the guy casts a slow glance over his shoulder but at no point speeds his gate.  This was my first introduction to Chinses driving, and holy God, there is no regard for rhyme and reason.  Cars, busses, taxis, motorcycles pulling trailers, and bicycles swirl around in a choatic whirling dervish amid a cocophny of blarring car horns.  They drive at each other with no sign of alarm and just start honking until one vehicle, usually but not always the smaller, get the hell out of the way.

We rode for the next two hours and had very pleasant conversation.  May is the contact I have been emailing so far, and the only person I have found at this point that will speak english to me but I am hopeful and it is only day four.  She is 33 and married with 2 children.  She is constantly appologizing for her trouble with speaking english, which I find to be very near perfect, heavy accent aside.  We discussed my living arangments and she boasted proudly that my apartment came equiped with a…whats the word…..my english not so good…thermous.

The road from Zhongzhou to Shangqiu was pretty much flat farm land, the occasional house, the rare small town.  Serious poverty showed its face in the landscape seceral times, in the form of settlements of shacks along the side of the road.  We went past a long line of people marching along the side of the road with white cloth crown like hats in traditional dress.  May got excited asked me to guess what it was, before I could get an answer she blurted out that it was a funeral, at the end of which was a cloth enclosed square box which was tall and had posts going out on the bottoms for people to carry.  I don’t know the name for it but it is something like Cleopatra would ride in.

We got to Shangqiu and it is a city of some size.  Only one million people instead of 8 million, Wikopedias mistake not mine.  The vast majority of the city is shorter than four stories tall with a few formidable skyscrappers, the streets are lined with shop fronts, New York looking hordes of people walking the streets. 

We got to my school which was a gate inside a wall.  you go through the gate into a massive compound with buildings on all sides and a soccar field in the middle.  We then met the vice principal of the school who wanted to take me to diner.  Mind you, I had not really slept in two, maybe three days, I had no way of calculating which. 

They had asked me what I wanted to eat, and not knowing what they would have I said that I wanted something that people eat alot in Shangqiu.  They took me to a place that has a dish called hot pot.  This consists of a large bowl on a hot plate filled with tomato suace and a whole fish, head hanging out one side and tail hanging out the other.  It was a very wierd tasting thing, but this was a meal in honer of my arrival and it seemed the ugly american gosche thing to do would be turn up my snobby western nose, so I made myself dig in.  It was gross!  It was tomato soup with fish stock and part fish with tomato flavor.  I think the wierd thing was the fish, I have noticed that meat itself has a strange different flavor here, and this was some wierdo tasting fish.  They kept smiling and giving me more, then they started scolding me for not helping myself.  The whole time they spoke chinese to each other as though I wasn’t there.  I really wish I spoke chinese at this point.  Finally they asked if I was full and I smiled and nodded my head, the vice principal said “then we go”. 

Over the coarse of the meal I learned that I will be making almost four times as much money as the vice principal.  I also learned that I will not be teaching grammer as I thought but just conversation.  They want me to teach the kids my culture, and don’t use the text book, just make it up as you go.  this I am fine with, although nervous about running out of ideas.  I have a few ideas already, if anyone reading this can think of cool things to do within that perameter let me know and please don’t be shy.

I then went to my place, located convieniently on a hall surrounded on both sides by classrooms.  Yes the hall goes Classroom, classroom, classroom, white guys place, classroom. Its like something out of hogwarts.   In the mornings I wake up at six to thousands of kids marching in block formation chanting chinese as the flag is raised, followed by the hustle and bustle of high school.

My digs are actually not that bad, two rooms, fridge that don’t work, microwave, tv with chinese cable that I haven’t even hooked up yet, its in chinese, computer that is slower than the slowest imaginable dailup, very-I-think-I-can- sort of a deal.  I have a double bed, dresser, table, chairs.  The bathroom is very interesting.  The shower is a water heater on the wall with a hose, but no enclosed area just a drain on the floor. I have a toilet and am adjusting to the no flushing paper rule.  Clothes washer and string.  I have a hot plate that may not work.  I have a water cooler that leaked water on the floor and deffinatly does not work.  There is a guy who comes around with a pole over both shoulders and gigantic metal flower watering cans on either side.  He brings hot boiled water and cool water.  The hot water goes in, wait for it, yes the thermous, which I also have.

Hey, I am one of the only ones in the school with hot water and a comparative mansion.  Joking aside I have it much better than the people around me and I am not complaining.  I am trying to get them to fix my fridge though.

The next day I ventured out into the world with may.  we went to the super market and got stuff I needed, I had an egg and ham sandwich which may be what made me sick for the next 24 hours, could have been the hot pot.  Whatever it was it sucked.  I was taken around the offices by may to meet countless co workers, the principal, and oh, get this.  I Meet the party secretary, he was dressed and looked just like Mau Tse Jung, smoking a cigerette with his hand backwards like a german in a WWII movie.  May was translating and clearly nervous and introduced him to me by explaining that he is very serious.  I smiled and asked her to ask him what role the party played in the school.  Seemed like an innocent question to me.  Ask the guy about his job, no?  May refused to ask him the question and whisked me the hell out of there as fast as she could.  aparently he has as much importance as the principal, I would wager a little more.  It is my hope from the bottom of my heart that we have had our last conversation.

The rest of the day I layed in bed, too sick to move, too scared to leave my cozy little flat.  I would stare out the window like a scarred rabit.  I was very sad, I had only met one person to talk to, I was sick as hell, the food had thus far sucked beyond belief, and I wondered what the hell I was thinking about coming all the way over here in the first place.

the next morning May woke me up with a phone call and took me out into the world.  This was the second time I had been outside the compound.  Anyone thinking me a sissy at this point has no idea how totally wierd it is here.  She got me dumplings and poridge for my stomach.  Oh god, Dumpings are the coolest thing ever.  I sat there greedily feasting on dumplings while the whole resturant laughed out loud and marved at how bad I am at chop sticks.  It then hit me, let those fuckers laugh!  What the hell do I care?  I traveled around the world to laughed and starred at.  fine.

I think the dumplings fixed my shitty outlook and the poredge curred my stomach.  its seems overly simplistic but its true.

So later that day I left the compound on my own.  I got to the street and looked right then left and decided on right.  off I went.  Some chinese starres pretend not to be starres, and look away when discovered but still maintain corner of the eye contact.  Some chinese starres do not look away and come with disapproving frowns.  My favorite are the ones that come with smiles and whoops of laughter, I find myself laughing too, and we nod at each other and walk on.

I walked through the city for hours, I saw so much crazy stuff.  One corner all the shops have chickens in tiny cages piled on the side of the road next to entire deep fried chicken carcasses.  there were plastic wash tubs full of different kinds of fish swimming around.  filthy little puppies survied the area for scraps.  people walking mingled with motercycles and bikes, vying for space.  I went into a dvd store and bought a copy of Wan Car Ways 2046, only to find out later from may that I a) rented it and need to return it and b) the machine I believed to be a dvd player is the cable box.

Later I came back to tell may about my adventure she said I should buy a bike.  We walked with her bike to where she thought a bike shop used to be but now only sold vespas.  The only bike shop was way across town and she said we would have to get a driver so I recomended we take a taxi there and bike home.  She agreed and hailed a cab that was a motercycle surrounded by a small carriage with two back wheels.  It had walls and a roof, we sat with the doors open and mays bike hanging across our laps and the wheels hanging out on the sides.  We went off whizzing around the city on streets and sidewalks with horn screaming the whole time.

I got the coolest bike.  It is all black and chinese writting on the seat.  It has a basket, which is a sign of mocho tough manlyness in china.  It cost 250 RMB, ($32.03 american) and it is awesome.  When the bike was ready May said lets go and hoped on her bike and into oncoming traffic like a shot.  I took a deep breath and followed.  Quickly I learned that there are a few rudemantary, rules would be a bad word here, lets say suggestions.  I think the reason why they use the horns is they want you to know they are right behind you and get out of the way.  this is good if you are riding your bike unaware that a taxi is riding your butt.  most of the cars on the side walk and on the street seem to go roughly ten miles an hour, so plenty of time to get out of the way if you are watching, and you just have to hope they are too.  

We went to a shoe market because I wanted slippers to combat my freezing lynolium floor.  The shoe market is in an alley way and the alley way is an ancient crumbling pogoda style of hanging roofs and bridges and balcanies.  May got into an argument with a lady there who said my feet were too big, we finally found a pair of slippers marked xxxxx that fit.  On the top they have a puppy face and say wang wang wang.

we spent the afternoon zooming through the traffic.  Once I got over my jitters I found it thrilling beyond description flying by shops and market places.  I could feel a stupid grin that I couldn’t lose.  May remarked that it was like flying, and coming from someone who constantly appologizes for her english I think she said it just right.

Soon I will be up to my neck in a real life China Adventure! When this happens, dear friends, you can sure as thunder count on Will Sanders to write a blog about his China adventure. Just sit tight and stay tuned.