What’s Wright in the World

The Journey Continues

On the weekend of October 28 and 29, we traveled on a four hour bus journey with several of the foreign teachers from XISU (Xi’an International Studies University) northward to the border of Shaanxi Province, to the mountainous Xun Yi County. The trip was a cooperative venture between our school and the government of that county, who wish to promote more tourism and “make the world more aware” of their part of China and the World. The majority of the trip was traveled on roads that could be gently described as “deteriorated washboard.”

At one point about 45 minutes out of the city of our destination, our buses pulled to the side of the road in response to hand signals from one of several men in black suits, standing at the roadside. We were asked to exit the bus. As we did so, we found ourselves shaking the hands of the Governor of the County, and other County officials, with a record of our arrival being made by two well-equipped photographers and one videographer from the County Television station. After the greeting, our hosts led our caravan another 45 minutes through endless apple orchards and past mountains of newly picked apples awaiting packing and shipment, to our hotel.

The County, it turns out, deserves a measure of fame. It annually produces in excess of 2.4 Billion apples, which are shipped all over the world. And China is now the leading producer of apples in the world. One premium variety of apples is grown and packed especially for the highest levels of Government in China. As each of these apples ripen, it is exposed to the sun through cut out appliqués, resulting in an image on the skin of the ripened apple with a Chinese character that might be the personal stamp of the official receiving the apple, or might be a more generic character for “Longevity,” “Peace,” or “Happiness,” etc. As guests of the government for the weekend, we were sent away with a box of eight of these “monogrammed” apples as a gift. We felt important.

The principal city is also called Xun Yi. Its population is about 250,000, and it has very much of a small town feel about it. There is a single tourist-class hotel, which provided very adequate accommodations, including daily plates of bananas, Clementine oranges and, of course, apples. The apples have very much the consistency and taste of Washington Delicious, with a Yellow to Red skin.

We were treated to four meals while there, which included Rabbit, Beef, Fish, Mutton, and, yes, dog. Several of the vegetables were unique to the region, and included a very tasty green leaf vegetable, each leaf slightly larger than a bay leaf. It is said to grow only in that region during the fall of the year, and is considered a delicacy. To answer the obvious question, dog does NOT taste like chicken. But it wasn’t bad, either. Lest you have further wonder, we found it was dog after I had eaten a piece. Janet was wiser than I; she eats nothing until she knows what it is.

After our first luncheon, we boarded our busses and were driven two blocks.

We exited our bus, and walked to a combination park/student playground area which included the city museum. The museum displayed (I am dead serious) the full skeleton of a prehistoric mastodon, another very large creature that strongly resembled a horse with a saw like spine, and a giant crawfish. Oh, and a slab of rock that bore footprints of a prehistoric animal.

Nothing else.

From the museum, we walked through the park to visit a school. Although it was styled a “middle school,” it appeared to serve students from elementary to high school age. We met and enjoyed talking to several of the students. When we arrived, there was an assembly in the school square of all the students attending a concert of choirs contest. We were asked as a group to sing a song in English. We selected and did our best at “You are my Sunshine,” to loud applause from all assembled. They are very polite.

As we left, I think each of us must have shaken hundreds of outstretched hands. For a moment, I thought they had mistaken me for Brad Pitt. As you will see from the pictures at www.pbase.com/caljimw they enjoyed being included in photos with foreigners. We spent a very fun afternoon with the kids, and a few formal minutes with the school administrators, who served us a snack of . . . apples.

Then it was back on the bus to visit a modern farm village. There are villages like this now all over China. The housing is more than adequate, it is attractive, sturdy, and built around a village square, with a meeting and athletic facility, a small store and medical facilities. From the village, the farmers go daily the short distance to their acreage, where they use a combination of ancient and modern equipment to work their farms. It is a fascinating anthropological phenomenon. We were greeted with smiles and warmth by virtually everyone we met, and especially by the village children.

After returning to the hotel and dinner, several of us went for a walk along the main street of the town. We were greeted along the way with friendly smiles, stares of curiosity, and many “Hello’s” (which is the extent of English language known to many of the people). We walked into a small department store, where Janet found a rack of attractive warm jackets of her size. As she tried them on, she was receiving help and suggestions from not less than ten citizens, while an equal number crowded around the remainder of our group and tried their best to communicate with us.

After leaving the store (wearing her purchase), we walked on for only a few more minutes before we were met by a teacher from the school we had visited earlier, and who invited us to view “the loveliest view of our city.”

How could we refuse? We walked a few blocks, accompanied by a cadre of young boys, high school students, girls and young women, plus the teacher and her husband. We were taken to the city lake, which was nicely lighted at night, with two nearby pagodas outlined in neon tubing. It was a lovely scent, and one which I only captured with my camera moving while the lens was open. Thus you will see one “artistic abstraction” among the photos.

You will also see photos of our little army, among who were those who either spoke enough English or were sufficiently patient with us to enable us to understand the gist of our conversational efforts. We spent about an hour walking and talking with them on that clear, autumn-chilled night.

There is a Chinese pagoda-style gazebo near the front of our hotel. As we approached it, one of the young men, a senior from the school we visited earlier, asked us to “please wait a minute, I’ll be right back.” And he ran off into the darkness. We were seated in the gazebo and chatted with the remainder of the group for a few minutes, and then the young man came running back. He had two wooden flutes in his hand. After regaining his breath, he spent the next fifteen minutes proving his very substantial skill on his instruments, to our great delight.

After breakfast Sunday morning, we boarded the bus again, and traveled to the very ancient Tang Family Village in the mountains above Xin Yi. The Tang Mansion, as it stands today, is composed of approximately 600 rooms. It is now only a fraction of its original size of over 3000 rooms. Surrounding the mansion is a village for the peasants, farmers and families of the servants of the Tang Family. A short walk from the mansion is the family burial ground, and features a gateway presented to the Tang Family perhaps 1000 years ago by the Emperor of China. It is something of a miniature of the Qianling Mausoleum of the Tang Dynasty. Much of the rich ornateness of the mansion remains, but one wing of the mansion was redesigned during the revolution, and displays in diorama fashion, scenes from the revolution, representing hardship, struggle, starvation and hope for the future. It stands in stark contrast to the opulence that surrounds it.

Our final destination before lunch and our homeward trek was to a paper-cut museum. Dedicated to the work of an artist of the village who died in 2005, the museum displays much of her finest work, which consists of layers of multi-colored papers joined together in some truly lovely works of art. One of her works a “tree of life with butterflies” is depicted in the photos.

We would have been content with the experiences of the past 24 hours, but on the road home, one more great surprise was awaiting us. We pulled to the side of the road and stopped by what looked like a very ordinary orchard and garden area. We left the bus and walked perhaps fifty feet off the road toward what at first glance appeared to be a mine pit. On approaching it, however, we were surprised to look twenty feet to the bottom of the pit and see a living compound composed of eight caves carved into the walls of the pit, and a tunnel entry from a nearby road sufficiently large to permit a vehicle to enter the pit. We were invited to go into the pit, and to walk through the rooms. Each room was in the shape of a half-dome, with the ceiling about 8 feet at the center. Rooms were used for storage, cooking, housing of domestic fowl and beast, and living (They had electricity for a sewing machine, clothes washer and a TV). A rain drainage system was so designed that the water would flow into a cistern, with the water being stored and used for watering the animals, washing of clothes and body. Drinking water was acquired from outside sources. We learned that generations of the same family had occupied this cave for over 100 years.

We could observe other caves along the roadway leading to the one we visited, and learned that many families occupied similar dwellings along that road.

Because Halloween is upon us, the last picture happened to be the first one I took on the trip. As we paused for a restroom break, I stepped from the bus and discovered we were stopped by an ancient cemetery. The morning mist added the right touch for the season.

Happy Halloween.

Enjoy!

Journey to Xi’an – Year Two

Sichuan Province roads, except in the largest cities, are two-laned. They travel through mountainous regions of the province. There are wondrous sights to be seen in Sichuan (Szechwan), but one must navigate their roads to see the wonders. Also, because of nature’s spectaculars, one must be content to share those roads with tens of thousands of others wishing to explore the beauty of this stretch of the earth. And, one must be sufficiently stoic to recognize the need for roadway maintenance and improvement. This stoicism has been tested in significant ways in the past seven days, as we traveled the two lanes of highway, and sat for hours in traffic, as opposing lines of vehicles were shuttled by highway work crews through the only available lane on roads that dropped off precipitously into deep chasms or into the rushing water s of the Min Jiang River, with the roadway edge sometimes mere centimeters from the tread of the bus tires. There was one other negative to the journey; little more than an irritant, really. The Tour Guides in China are not selected by the customer, they are assigned by the local government Tourism office. The one assigned on our tour was more interested in the economic advantages potentially to be derived from a bunch of elderly foreigners (all of whom, he assumed, had “sucker” written on their foreheads), than in providing the guide service for which he was engaged. He became angry and petulant to the point of non-communication when he realized he was host to ”veteran China travelers,” little inclined to line his pockets as a reward for his wiles. He found himself without support even from our Chinese Tour Organizer who has provided many years of tour service to the BYU Teachers in China.

Please note that nowhere in these curmudgeonly evocative remarks will you find any negatives about our traveling companions. A more enjoyable and companionable group of travelers you will not find. All of us had spent considerable time in China. Perhaps some of the inscrutability of the more mature populace of this nation has rubbed off on us. Also note the absence of negatives about Mr. Hu, the driver of our bus. I considered his skill and professionalism to be superior to any driver before seen in China. We marveled at his ability to smoothly cope with hundreds of “close calls” that seem to be a natural part of mountain road travel in China.

So, now that the downside of “Incidents of Travel in China” have been explored, it is time to revel in the memory of the true wonders which aroused and excited our sensibilities.

Our October 1 Flight from the busy Xianyang Airport was delayed by fog. By the time we left the terminal to board our plane it was standing room only in the terminal. But this was not a serious setback, since the “official” tour was scheduled to begin on Monday, after our fellow group members arrived from six different cities around China.

Our first day of travel took us on a one-hour flight to Chengdu, the seven million population capital of Sichuan, and to comfortable accommodations in a pleasant hotel in a quiet part of town not far from the city center. After a restful night and very adequate western style breakfast, eighteen BYU teachers, our guide and tour organizer boarded a bus for an eight hour drive to the remote mountains of the Min Shan chain, and to the largest panda reserve in China. The preserve was uncrowded, probably because the roadway was very poor, and in the midst of a major construction effort to widen the road to be completed within the next one to two years (before the 2008 Olympics). The preserve has many separate fenced areas for pandas of varying ages. We were fortunate to see most of them at a time of day when they were actively moving about. I did not count, but there were at least fifty pandas, from day old infants to very mature “seniors” in various groupings.

Highlights of the afternoon included entering into a cage and petting a panda,

observing what we are told is a rare view of the “courtship” of two adults, who became so careless in their amorous dance that they fell off the edge of the rolling hill and into a ditch surrounding their compound (followed by a playful chase of one by the other), and the real highlight: seeing five baby pandas, one only hours old and about six inches long, with no body hair, and others only days or weeks old. All were in a nursery, equipped in the same way a modern neonatology nursery might be, complete with incubators and an on duty nurse to monitor the young cubs.

The next day, after another eight hours on the bus (and an overnight stop), we traveled over a 13000 foot above sea level summit (from which we looked up to over 16000 peaks around us) to the Yellow Dragon Nature area, where calcium rich waters have created a series of beautiful waterfalls and crystal clear miniature lakes. Then followed another long ride to our next overnight destination at the gates of Jiuzhaiguo.

We spent an entire day enjoying the scenery of this natural wonderland. I believe the valley containing these wonders is twenty or more miles long. There were tens of thousands of visitors to the park on a misty, overcast day. The park as established an internal transportation system of wonderful efficiency. It is very easy to get from one viewpoint to another within minutes, and rarely having to wait more than one or two minutes for the next bus to arrive. Crowd control is achieved by using men clad in China Army Dress Greens as attendants at the bus stops. Each bus has a hostess to explain (unfortunately in Chinese) the sights on the way and available from each stop.

In the center of the park is a cafeteria that serves all of the hungry visitors. The cafeteria style service did not diminish the rather high quality and tastiness of the dozens of vegetables, rolls, meat and fungus (mushroom) dishes available. Like the bus system, it was very efficient. Characteristically, in order to gain access to, or to leave from the cafeteria, it was necessary to pass through a gauntlet of hundreds of booths of sellers of scarves, necklaces, hats, carved wares, brocades, and “souvenirs.” Not all or our group made it through their maze with the contents of their wallets intact.

Jouzhaiguo is translated as “Nine villages in a valley,” so named because there are nine ancient Tibetan villages located along the valley floor. One or two have been reinvented as tourist sites, with rich shopping opportunities. We are the proud owners of a quite lovely hand made tablecloth from one of the villages.

The natural wonders included wide vistas of calcium riverbeds with the incredibly clear waters swirling around growths of trees and bushes, seemingly endless small to huge waterfalls, small and large lakes, some as deep as 300 meters (almost 1000 feet). What we did not see were much in the way of fish or water creatures. This is because of the very high levels of calcium in the water that builds within fish and essentially ossifies them. It is the same calcium that has over thousands of years created the fairyland like vistas that are found in so many places throughout the park. It is a place to which I would like to return and spend two or three days, more casually exploring its wonders.

That evening, another couple joined Janet and me in viewing a performance displaying the music, dance and costuming of the Tibetan, Han and Qing ethnic groups common to the area. As an aside, that may be of interest to you, the Qing ethnic minority has a custom of placing a single white stone on the top floor of their homes. The stone is blessed by a holy man, who also supervises the periodic cleaning of the stone. It remains untouched except by the holy man, and is said to provide protection and wisdom in the home. In the Quian villages through which we passed, we noticed two objects of worship on the tops of their houses: one the white stone of which I just spoke, the other a pure white parabolic television dish. Cable does not reach these villages.

Thursday morning began our “longest day” aboard the bus. A scheduled eight hour trip to our next overnight stop became a twelve hour test of patience, caused by roadwork, holiday traffic volume (we were in the midst of a combination the end of China’s three-day Independence Day holiday on October 1 and the annual Harvest/Moon festival which began on Friday. “Sightseeing” was limited to a ten-minute stop at the ancient walled city of SongPan. It’s claim to fame was an ornate gate in the still standing part of its ancient city wall, and a flock of white pigeons delighting in alighting on the arms and heads of travelers. We also bought small, warm loaves of a delicious home baked bread from a street vendor, and truly delicious fresh oranges, apples and bananas to tide us for the remainder of our vigil.

Friday took us to visit the 2000 year old water conservancy project at Du Jiang Yan.

This project was created through the genius of a father and son, who devised a way of collecting silt along the waterways to prevent the clogging of the maze of canals feeding the fields and cities of the Chengdu plain. A series of levees and moveable gates divert the water of the Min River into one of two main channels; when silt accumulates to a predetermined level in one channel, the other is opened, and the silt is removed from the first. This process ensures a reliable and continual flow of water through controllable canals throughout the plain area. It is amazing the the original design continues in its efficiency for two millennia, aided now by the advantage of modern technology at the critical points in the flow pattern.

Our final evening in Chengdu before the flight home was a performance of the Sichuan Opera, elaborately costumed and masked, with top quality performers. The highlight of the evening was, without doubt, the “Changing Faces” performance. In this performance, masked dancers (six plus a three-foot high hand puppet) each wearing up to ten masks , carry out a performance where the masks are changed before the eyes of the audience, but in such a manner that the change appears to be instantaneous. Even the puppet’s face masks are changed in the same manner. We were told that the “trick” is an official secret of the Chinese government, and that the only ones who know how to do it are those actors sanctioned and trained in government sponsored art and dance academies.

We are back to teaching, and dreaming of our next adventure, probably in Beijing.

A selected few pictures of the trip may be found at www.pbase.com/caljimw

Enjoy!

Jim and Janet Wright