First session is over!

I can hardly believe that I've already been in China for 5 weeks and am done with my first set of courses. I have the next week off and will be travelling. Tomorrow I am taking a 13 hour train from Chengdu to Xian, where the terracotta soldiers are. Tuesday morning I fly from Xian to Shanghai to stay with a friend for the rest of the week. I don't know if I'll be able to post while I'm gone, so holding your breath might not be such a good idea. To tide you over, here are some stories from this past week.

On Monday, my teaching assistant Meng Meng and her friend Mu Chun treated me to an afternoon of fun. They picked me up after class and went to lunch where we feasted on boiled eal and roasted rabbit heads. Ever the anatomist, I dissected my rabbit head as I ate it. The cheeks and tongue were really tasty, but I didn't eat the brain. I don't do brains -- one word, "prions."
After lunch we went to a Chinese theme park called Floraland. It was very reminiscent of Old Indiana, for those of you who have been there. Instead of paying for admission, you pay per ride, so we rode two rides, walked around a while, then left. After Floraland we drove to some random little town where you can ride a horse for half and hour for 50yuan.

That's when I validated an entire town's romantic conception of Americans.

Imagine a town that has had little or no westerners ever visit it, just western movies. Now imagine some random blond woman galloping a horse down you town's main thoroughfare, her hair down. Yep, that was me. I'll admit, it was probably the most dangerous thing I've done in this country (I know my dad is cringing as he reads this) but if I had at anytime felt unsafe, I would have gotten off the horse.

After horse riding, we drove back to Chengdu and Mu Chun cooked us an amazing dinner, and all was right with the world.


Next day -- pain. Yes, I have been supremely sore since Monday thanks to that half an hour horse ride. The saddle was nothing like I've ever used. The stirrups were attached with chains instead of leather straps, so my calves are tender and my thighs are not too happy. All that made my Tai Chi final more difficult than it had to be. My Tai Chi teacher's enthusiasm more than made up for that. He's really excited that four of us are going to continue studying with him next session (Tai Chi Sword, it's going to be so cool!)



New story. Tonight after teaching the little children how to speak English I went to Carrefour (a French Walmart-type store) to buy a small suitcase. All my suitcases are huge and not handy for taking on a week-long trip. As I was leaving Carrefour, suitcase in hand, and old man and an old lady rushed up to me smiling and talking in Sichuanhua really fast. At first I had no idea what they were doing, but they started pointing at their rickshaws and grabbing my suitcase trying to pull me toward them. Here's the problem, they had different rickshaws. My suitcase (with me attached) had turned into an old person's tug-0-war. This went on for about two minutes before I finally pried their hands off my bag and left. Some other Chinese people who had been watching the whole exchange started laughing, and I with them. It was hilarious. Another, younger rickshaw driver waited until I was away from the old ones, then asked if I wanted to use his. I agreed, with both of us laughing as we left the two old drivers to their fighting.


I learned something very comforting this week. The reason some people don't understand my Chinese isn't because I'm speaking intelligibly, it's because they don't speak the standard dialect! The Chinese standard dialect is Putonghua (hua means speech). School children are taught to speak Putonghua, so I can communicate with most young people. The older people here all speak Sichuanhua (i.e. Sichuan speech). It sounds enough like Putonghua that if I don't know they're speaking Sichuanhua, I just assume that my Chinese is too poor to understand them.

Okay, that's enough, time to pack!

Emeishan Day 2

Day 2

This is the second day of our excursion. The first part was an hour climb to Wannian Si, the oldest surviving temple on Emeishan, dating back to 1611 and has been in continuous use since. The views continued to become more and more breath-taking throughout the day.

There were a pair of these statues guarding the front gate of Wanian Si.

ELEPHANTS!

Inside the gold-painted building is a solid gold and ivory statue of a multi-faced Buddha atop an elephant. I didn't get a very good photo of the statue.

The Washroom

This pond is full of turtles. I love turtles. It seems that these turtles don't just happen to live there, but are being kept. Not to eat, just to have. I can dig that.

I also love frogs. This pond was devoted to frogs. I could hear at least 40 frogs screaming, but I couldn't see any of them.

Time to go to lunch.

A 45 minute climb down to a temple near Qingyin Ge. I don't remember the name of the temple, I just remember that it's near Qingyin Ge (Pure Music Pavilion).

A warning sign to the merchants that peddle souvenirs along the trail. Most of the souvenir stalls were empty. Tourism has been down a lot from normal due to the earthquake. People are afraid of rock slides and won't climb the mountain.

Lunch Time!

This is the temple where we ate lunch. Off to the right is a little restaurant that only serves vegetarian dishes. To please tourists, most of the dishes included an interesting variety of fake-tofu-meat. It's hard to see, but the man walking down the staircase is waving.

WATERFALL!

I climbed all over this waterfall. If I had been in my bathing suit, I'd have climbed in it too. I was able to get a lot of shots that no one else got because I wasn't afraid of cold water. In case the next photos don't clue you in, I like taking pictures of waterfalls.

The several sacred Buddhist mountains in China are devoted to different disciplines. Emeishan is devoted to education.

If you don't feel like climbing the mountain yourself, you can always pay sedan-men to carry you.

First monkey sighting. I wasn't quite to the monkey area where the monkeys tend to congregate. While I was taking a second picture of this monkey (which was eating a plastic bag at the time) another monkey ran past me at top speed, grabbed the first monkey, disappeared into the forest, and scared the crap out of me in the process.

The way to monkeys.

MONKEYS!

I really liked the old monkey on the right. He had a presence and respect that the other monkeys lacked. If you look closely at his nose, you'll notices that his left nostril has been ripped open. He has experienced a lot in his many monkey years.

I've seen and held a lot of monkeys compared to most Americans. Generally I find monkeys adorable and will hold and play with baby monkeys any chance I get (tamed monkeys that is). They may look cute in the picture, but these are the ugliest, mangiest monkeys I've ever seen, and nothing could compel me to try and touch one. Not even the trained and uniformed people offering to help me hold one and take a picture with it for 4 yuan. Nope. Not happening.

This is the Qingyin Ge. To get from the monkeys back to our tour bus, we passed the pavilion again, but got a much better view than on our way to lunch. The water is really low this time of year, normally the water under the bridge is a lot more violent.

Because in every Olson is a budding horticulturist, entimologist, herpetologist, and all around naturalist, I took the following pictures.

This little statue was sitting at the end of a little wall surrounding the pavillion outside Wannian Si. Look at the top of his eye.

This is a close-up of one of the turtles in the turtle pond. Isn't he adorable? Don't you want one? I do!

That's the last of the photos from the Leshan Emeishan excursion. Now for some updates about this week.

I am employed. I teach English to toddlers twice a week for an hour and a half. I've taught twice already . . . and they love me! Our first lesson was over articles of clothing, so I brought in my own clothing and had them tell me what it is and then put it on. This school gets native English speakers to teach the kids. I guess most of the teachers they get don't try very hard. My boss is very impressed that I actually want the lesson plan at least a day in advance to prepare and not just ten minutes before class. The kids are adorable.

This afternoon, Zhong laoshi took my Intermediate 2 class to a tea park to try and speak Chinese with some random grad students she knows from another university in Chengdu. She partnered us up with different people. Everyone else was talking about movies and where they've visited in China. My conversation partner found out that I've studied some of the Confucian Analects and was asking me questions like, "How would you describe the difference between Confucian philosophy and Christian philosophy? Do you think that Confucianism has had more influence on Chinese history than the Bible has had on European history? Why?" That's more than enough for a comparative religious studies doctorate. Can we please dumb down the dialogue a little? My brother lives in New York. I study Chinese. My favorite color is green. I like eating ice cream.

Before we walked into the park, some reporter-like lady asked to interview me for a moment (in English). There was a camera-man too. I don't know if they were actually reporters or telecom students. She asked me about my reaction to the earthquake and how I think the city is coping now that a month has passed. I basically said that Chengdu is fine and it seems that most people are going on with their lives. Then she asked me if I thought the prices had gone up. I replied that to me, everything in China more than reasonable. She laughed.

That's all for now. This weekend a few students and I are going to explore the sights within Chengdu.