Preamble: no pictures today - not much to see in the rain, and the internet cafe I'm in is having a tough time uploading anything besides text.
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I feel as if I'm in grad school trying to finish the PhD. One day I figure out some part of what I need to prove and I'm estatic. Then the next day I find an error in my proof and I'm in the dumps. Up and down, up and down, like a roller coaster. I finally had to stop caring how my research went (i.e., stop taking it personally).
Today, I tell the kind old lady who runs the kitchen "Wo chi su" and while I still get the little ham sandwhich that I eschew, I HAVE gotten two red-bean dumplings : ) (roller coaster up) Then, as I'm stuffing myself with rice porridge, the hostess comes in excitedly telling me (this is the gist) I'm going to miss my bus. Crap, how did it get to be 7:25 am? I have an 8:40 bus (roller coaster down). Two factors: I got a little blase from how uncrowded the Shanghai train station was and I was busy blowing on everything I was eating or drinking. I swear the Chinese have found a way to make water hotter than boiling.
I'm in the taxi, and the die is cast, so I relax. I get to the bus station at 7:50 and I'm sitting in front of my gate at 7:55 (roller coast up). We're rolling and I'm seeing more of the countryside. I am a complete wuss: there was, I swear, a 70 year-old woman walking down a steep terrace with a bundle of sticks and bamboo the three times my size on her back. The fields by the roadside are being farmed by severely middle-aged people. And this isn't "driving your John Deere"-farming, it's "I got a medieval hoe and I'm hacking at the rows"-farming. These are people subsistence farming into old age.
The farming villages consist of the ubiquitous three story building that is the equivalent of a ranch home in a small Midwest town. The first floor serves either as garage/storage or a (I'm guessing) family room that seems to need to remain open to the elements (wide open, large front doors despite weather that is 45 degrees and rainy) and contains the round dinner table. This was the same in the villages between Shanghai and Hangzhou and the tea villages outside Hangzhou. There are these homes and precious little else - just the fields. No movie theater, no restaurants, no bars. I suddenly realize why the family is such a fundamental part of Chinese life. Besides the lack of old-folks homes (all in all probably a good thing), and at least in the country, your family is your life. I see a little girl standing outside her home beside the fields. How different her view of the world must be.
In Shanghai and Hangzhou, the street level of every building would be divided into 10 ft-wide store fronts that are about as deep. As the stores would close at five (sometimes temporarily), I would see families eating in the back of the store, gathered round, talking and laughing.
The bus stops at a rest station. I get off with everyone else. Returning from the bathroom, there are now three identical buses. Okay, now we play a fun game of guess-the-bus. I wait to see someone I recognize from my bus get on one, go to the back and check the number, and get on the bus a little wiser.
The bus, of course, goes to Tunxi, 30 km from Tangkou, where I want to be (there is a bus station in Tangkou, but I said Huangshan and so the hotel receptionist, the person I've had the most trouble communicating with so far in China - different energies or someting - got me a ticket to Huangshan Shi (also known as Tunxi)). From now on, I'm pointing at a map. I get off, and long story short, I misundestand a taxi driver (thinking the bus from Tunxi to Tangkou is 70 yuan), forget to haggle (optimum number of time to make a mistake is twice), and, after talking to his English-speaking friend, let him take me to a hotel that charges 200 yuan (I say Tangkou Bingguan, recommended in the guide book at 100 yuan but now 300 or 400 yuan (the number changes a bit), he asks me how much I want to spend, I say 200 doh! now I can't haggle and I know I'm going to a hotel this guy gets a commision on and it's going to cost 200).
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I feel as if I'm in grad school trying to finish the PhD. One day I figure out some part of what I need to prove and I'm estatic. Then the next day I find an error in my proof and I'm in the dumps. Up and down, up and down, like a roller coaster. I finally had to stop caring how my research went (i.e., stop taking it personally).
Today, I tell the kind old lady who runs the kitchen "Wo chi su" and while I still get the little ham sandwhich that I eschew, I HAVE gotten two red-bean dumplings : ) (roller coaster up) Then, as I'm stuffing myself with rice porridge, the hostess comes in excitedly telling me (this is the gist) I'm going to miss my bus. Crap, how did it get to be 7:25 am? I have an 8:40 bus (roller coaster down). Two factors: I got a little blase from how uncrowded the Shanghai train station was and I was busy blowing on everything I was eating or drinking. I swear the Chinese have found a way to make water hotter than boiling.
I'm in the taxi, and the die is cast, so I relax. I get to the bus station at 7:50 and I'm sitting in front of my gate at 7:55 (roller coast up). We're rolling and I'm seeing more of the countryside. I am a complete wuss: there was, I swear, a 70 year-old woman walking down a steep terrace with a bundle of sticks and bamboo the three times my size on her back. The fields by the roadside are being farmed by severely middle-aged people. And this isn't "driving your John Deere"-farming, it's "I got a medieval hoe and I'm hacking at the rows"-farming. These are people subsistence farming into old age.
The farming villages consist of the ubiquitous three story building that is the equivalent of a ranch home in a small Midwest town. The first floor serves either as garage/storage or a (I'm guessing) family room that seems to need to remain open to the elements (wide open, large front doors despite weather that is 45 degrees and rainy) and contains the round dinner table. This was the same in the villages between Shanghai and Hangzhou and the tea villages outside Hangzhou. There are these homes and precious little else - just the fields. No movie theater, no restaurants, no bars. I suddenly realize why the family is such a fundamental part of Chinese life. Besides the lack of old-folks homes (all in all probably a good thing), and at least in the country, your family is your life. I see a little girl standing outside her home beside the fields. How different her view of the world must be.
In Shanghai and Hangzhou, the street level of every building would be divided into 10 ft-wide store fronts that are about as deep. As the stores would close at five (sometimes temporarily), I would see families eating in the back of the store, gathered round, talking and laughing.
The bus stops at a rest station. I get off with everyone else. Returning from the bathroom, there are now three identical buses. Okay, now we play a fun game of guess-the-bus. I wait to see someone I recognize from my bus get on one, go to the back and check the number, and get on the bus a little wiser.
The bus, of course, goes to Tunxi, 30 km from Tangkou, where I want to be (there is a bus station in Tangkou, but I said Huangshan and so the hotel receptionist, the person I've had the most trouble communicating with so far in China - different energies or someting - got me a ticket to Huangshan Shi (also known as Tunxi)). From now on, I'm pointing at a map. I get off, and long story short, I misundestand a taxi driver (thinking the bus from Tunxi to Tangkou is 70 yuan), forget to haggle (optimum number of time to make a mistake is twice), and, after talking to his English-speaking friend, let him take me to a hotel that charges 200 yuan (I say Tangkou Bingguan, recommended in the guide book at 100 yuan but now 300 or 400 yuan (the number changes a bit), he asks me how much I want to spend, I say 200 doh! now I can't haggle and I know I'm going to a hotel this guy gets a commision on and it's going to cost 200).
I think the US is the only country that sends their seniors to live away from the very family they raised and sacrificed for during their very best years of life!!
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