July 17th
Well, it's been a crazy 48 hours. Between 5AM on July 16th, 2011 and 9AM on July 17th, 2011, I spent 15 hours on a train, 5 and a half hours on a bus, and at least three hours waiting on the transportation to arrive, depart or figuring out where in the hell the transportation was. (The finding was mostly buses. Poor communication seems to be the norm here in China.). But that's not where my adventures for this e-mail start. No, in order to fully tell the story, we have to go back further, back to just after I sent my last e-mail. You see, when I sent that I was under the impression that we would be taking a bus to Handan to buy snacks and such.
We did not go to Handan, something that became apparent to me when the bus headed south instead of north as soon as we left the compound. At this point, I said to myself “Oh, that's no big deal, we're just going to the closer town, we can just buy things there.” However, as we continued though the town, narrowly avoiding several traffic accidents, this seemed to no longer be the case, and when we took a turn down an alleyway that was nearly too small for the bus, and took a left turn into a cornfield, we all knew that something had changed, and an eerie chatter descended on the bus. We soon discovered that we were going to be visiting some sort of tomb, although whose tomb was not mentioned. We also discovered that the path through the corn that the bus had taken was not sufficient for bus travel, so we turned around, headed for parts unknown.
After about ten minutes of bus travel we stopped in the same corn field, about five hundred feet from where we had turned around, and departed the bus, walking down an even narrower path through the corn. Our destination was not given, and soon we began to joke that they were simply doing this so they could kill us all. Jokes have gotten dark around here. After a hike of about half a mile, we stopped by a bunch of mounds of dirt, and it was explained to us that one of these was the burial mound of the Chinese Juliet. Apparently this is popular folklore of the Hebei region, but none of us really cared, we were all kind of annoyed that our plans had changed to go see a pile of dirt. All of the employees from the school were very excited, so we faked enthusiasm. At least we got to see something that I highly doubt many westerners had seen: a pile of dirt with bones in it.
Following this, we loaded ourselves onto the bus and went back to the surprisingly active town of Quzhou. Everyone got far more snacks than they really needed, because it just felt so good to be able to buy things again. Actually, this is one of my major observations from the camp at Quzhou: It wasn't the crappy living conditions, or the students that were significantly below the level we thought they would be at that brought down the morale of the group, it was the lack of freedom to go places other than the compound that brought down morale. I think that we as Americans enjoy our freedom without thinking about it, and when that freedom is stripped from us, it annoys us more than we can really tell. That hypothesis will be tested here in Inner Mongolia. I'll report back with the results. On the bus back to the compound, a snack attack of unprecedented proportions occurred through the group. “Oh, check this out, it's prawn flavored!” “Hey, these cookies are great!” “Can I try some of that?” Everyone was positive for the first time in a long time, and as such, everyone had fun. We all got back, packed up, and went to bed, after all, we had to wake up at 4 AM the next day.
If you have never woken up at 4 AM to catch a 7 AM train, let me tell you that it feels like the worst bullshit in the world. Most of us couldn't keep our eyes open for the bus ride, and I was most definitely one of them. Fortunately, I'm pretty adept at sleeping on transportation, and so I was lights out to Handan. Remember the last train ride I had, where it was too crowded to even move? This was kind of the opposite of that. I got to the front of the line, and moved as quickly as I could to get to the train, which turned out to not be a problem, the train was barely oversold, and I was able to store my luggage in the overhead rack. Score! The only disturbance in my travels was the fact that I had gotten the only ticket that wasn't with anyone from CSETC, which turned out to not be a problem at all. I popped in my headphones, and very quickly discovered the secret to a successful train ride: alcohol. We all bought little bottles of Jing wine from the supermarket in Quzhou, and as soon as the train started moving, I started into mine, drinking about a third of it over the course of the five hour ride. I'm pretty sure it's mostly ginseng. Either way, the time flew by, and I stared off into the Chinese countryside.
Speaking of which, it's time for my second soapbox of this e-mail: If anyone says that China will be the only global superpower any time in the next twenty to thirty years, they have never taken a train through the Chinese countryside. Certainly the cities are modern, with big shiny buildings, and well developed infrastructure that seems to indicate that China has this whole development thing figured out, but that really ends with the cities. Most of the countryside seems to still be stuck in the 1950's, if not even earlier than that. Mechanization of farming seems to be nearly non-existent, farmers with scythes reap the crops, and fertilizer is delivered by hand. Crumbling brick walls are everywhere, and the roads are poorly maintained at best. Don't get me wrong, things are improving. You can't scan the horizon without seeing at least a handful of construction cranes, but it's going to take a pretty long time to get the country to catch up with the cities. I kind of doubt I'll see it in my lifetime. But enough of my IPE nonsense, the adventure doesn't stop!
We returned to Beijing to find that we had way less time than we thought we did, we couldn't find the bus, and that there was a pizza party for us to attend. The time thing was a bummer, I was going to buy some speakers, the bus was found after about a half an hour of frantic phone calls, and that Chinese pizza is odd, but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Also, while we were in Beijing, we got great news: we would be spending all of the Inner Mongolia trip in a hotel, which is where I am now. We all changed out our old clothes for some new ones, and hopped on the bus to the train yard for our second train ride of the day.
We avoided the crowding problem thanks to a kind old station hand that let us on the train early for reasons that were not clear to us (We were white people). Let me be the first person to say that sleeper cars rule. I got a bed that was way nicer than the one I had spent a week on, we all got to sit together, share music, drink the rest of our Jing wine and generally horse around while watching the mountains out of the window. All of this was The Best. Once 9PM rolled around, we all turned in for bed, as we had to be up and off the train by three thirty AM, an even more insane hour than we had to the day prior. But the insanity was just beginning.
Rolling out of bed was way easier than any of us thought it would be, despite the fatigued silence that ensued following it. We quickly transferred from train to bus, and following a speech by one of the employees of the school at Inner Mongolia, I fell back to sleep, waking up every now and then to flashes of strange landscapes that I didn't really want to decode. I slept for two more hours and when I woke up, I was informed by Logan that we had passes the town that we were supposed to be going to an hour ago, and nobody but the driver had any idea where we were going. This should have shocked me, but after just two weeks in this place, nothing's shocking to me when it comes to plans changing, or anything else really. (Side note: One of our TAs in Hebei woke up the night before we left with the head of a bird stuck to his shorts, along with its blood. Apparently the bird had flown into the ceiling fan during the night, as its body laid limply on the floor. Nobody was shocked by this. This is what China does to you). After about fifteen minutes, everything started to look kinda like what I think Scotland looks like: green rocky mountains, sheep grazing, mist everywhere. Then, we pulled over a hill, and saw a bunch of yurts. Yes, yurts. Well, yurts, drummers, dancers, people in costume and a giant gate.
As you would expect, everyone's reaction to this was a whole lot of what the fuck. One of our handlers from the school told us that we needed to go up and receive scarves from them, so, as group leader I was forced to the front. Once I was in place, the drums started, the trumpets blared, and the gates opened to reveal someone who I suppose was supposed to be the Great Khan. He gave some sort of speech in what I think was Mongolian, and walked up to me. One of his assistants poured something into a cup, and gestured for me to drink it. It was more wine, which I happily drank. That's right, I've drank before noon two days in a row. I'm not proud, but I have to do what the Great Khan tells me to do. After the wine, they adorned me with a ceremonial cloth, and proceeded to repeat the action for the rest of the group. Once that ceremony was over, the feast began. We were seated at the biggest lazy susan I have ever seen in my life, and were served all sorts of different food. My favorite was the sheep. Keep in mind it's not 8 AM yet, and none of us have slept well in two days, so the whole thing is super surreal. I got some great photos, and PaNhia got a video of the whole ceremony. Both will be up on Facebook ASAP. Following the dinner, we got on the bus, and were driven an hour across what looked like a combination of desert, the Australian outback, and the Italian countryside all at once. We got to whatever city we're in right now, and discovered that the road the hotel was on is no longer there, so all of us had to lug all of our bags down a dirt road-ish thing (I'm assuming itt'l be a new road soon) to the hotel, which completely stopped everything that was going on along side this non-road, because, hey, white people!
The hotel's pretty nice, and I got the first hot shower I've had in about a week. Right now we're just killing time before dinner, and we don't have Internet yet, so I'm just writing this as a Word document. By the time I have Internet, I'll probably have about a page more to add, but for now, I've been writing for over an hour and three cups of green tea. Wish me luck on leading the group, and pray that Ish's butt stops leaking blood, because that's a very real problem right now.
Leaving on a gross note,
-Cooper
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