David & Zina Cox: Sept 6-10, 2017. Back to China. Week 1

Getting to China itself is an ordeal. I have been asking myself these last few days, "Why did I want to do this again?" I don't remember being this tired four years ago when we arrived.

We arrived in Jinan at 12:15 a.m. on September 8. We had left our home in Lehi, UT at 7:30 a.m. on September 6. It took three plane rides and and two three hour layovers. We were pretty tired by the time we arrived in Shanghai and then had to wait for our flight to Jinan.

After arriving in Jinan, we were picked up by John, a Chinese teacher in the English Department, and they drove us to our apartment. We got all the luggage hauled up our third floor apartment, opened the door and turned on the lights... except no lights. John had to run to the Foreign Students building and get someone there to give him some cards so that we could get electricity. The gave us two temporary cards. We will have to wait a few days to get our own cards for the electricity sometime this coming week. After we made the bed, we finally were able to crawl into it about 2:30 a.m.

We had been told to meet at the West gate of campus to get some things done for our stay at campus, so we were up at the bright and early time of 7 so that we could get some breakfast. I had hardly slept because the bed was hard and the sheets were scratchy and I was too keyed up to sleep. We hurried out to the West Gate and waited, and waited, got a second key made for the apartment, and waited. Finally, we started to walk back toward the building where we knew Eva (our co-teacher, friend, and helper from before would be at. She was coming toward us because she had been alerted that we were not at the appointed meeting place. Turns out we were supposed to be at the South Gate! Our US phones won't work here and they had no way to contact us to find us. We had asked several times about the instructions for where to meet in the car on the way from the airport and each time is was the West Gate. Somebody boo-booed. Oh well, after all that, we finally could get started with the procedures to become employed here.

We were moved from room to room to building to building. Sitting and waiting, walking to more buildings, standing around, waiting, standing around, waiting, more walking... well, you get the picture. My legs were starting to cramp because of the flights and lack of sleep and all the walking. I had to do some stretches while were were waiting. It helped some, but when I tried to go to sleep that night, I was woken up by very painful leg and foot cramps. It had me very discouraged and wondering what I was doing here if I couldn't get everything done and was in pain all the time. My feet are better some, but still not used to ALL the walking we have to do here.

One of the first papers we were handed was a paper about an orientation that would happen on Sunday. We had been so looking forward to meeting with our other BYU teachers on Sunday for Church and visiting with them.

We had the orientation today and got to meet with the other new foreign teachers that will be at Shandong University this year. There was Chris from France who will be teaching French and working on his Doctorate (he has been in China for 6 years now, Alvaro from the south part of Spain and teaching... Spanish (this is his second year in China, Mostafa from Iran who hopes to become an assistance professor in Archaeological Studies and Machelle from South Africa who is here in China with her husband who is going to Medical School and they have been in China for one year. It was interesting getting to know them in the training. After lunch, we invited Mostafa, Alvaro and Machelle to our apartment to wait for the two hours we had to wait before we went to the Archaeological Museum that is on our campus. Mostafa and Alvaro didn't stay, but Machelle did and we had a nice get to know you time.

The museum is very interesting. In about 1945, they discovered an ancient city near Jinan that dates back 7300 years ago. They also discovered two other cities that dated back 4000 years ago and 3000 years.

I took this photo because of the grinding stones on the lower left side. It looked very similar to a Navajo matate, the tool they used for grinding corn and wheat. This one would have been used for grinding rice.

I thought the decorations on this pot looked similar to some Hopi pottery that I had seen.

The legs on the pot on the lower right side were used so they can put the pot over the fire. I also felt like the design on that pot looked like a Navajo or Hopi design.

Some early Chinese pictographs. Also similar to early Native American pictographs.

This was a drainage system that was uncovered under the civilization that was dated back 4000 years. It was close to the river and the sea coast. I just thought it was interesting that they were able to solve drainage problems that well for the city at that time.

The legs on their cooking pots evolved over time from just simple legs to more elaborate legs and they used the bird beak as the leg. They weren't sure why the bird beak but it was interesting to see the evolution.

This is a steamer pot. You put water in the bulb part on the bottom, the food to be steamed in the top"V" part and set it on the fire. I thought it was ingenious.

These are "wessels" (I couldn't help but think of Chekov from Star Trek when she kept saying that) for water. Handy handle and then a spout for pouring. You could also put it on the fire for hot water for your tea!

The ancient Chinese culture believed in "Oracle Bones." They would slaughter an animal (this one was a deer) and then put the bones in the fire. Depending on how the bone cracked in the fire, they would determine if the course of action they wanted to take was what their ancestor would tell them to do. We foreign teachers decided that the interpretation was probably more of what the ruler at the time wanted to do and then if it went bad, they could just blame it on the ancestors.

For this particular oracle bone, the ruler wanted to move to a certain place. This bone said they were to move and then sacrifice four pigs to their ancestors (this was decided by the way the bone cracked into four pieces.

From a grave that was excavated, they found this turquoise bracelet on her wrist.

A guillotine from the culture that was a part of the bronze age. Don't know how many heads it cut off. We all just gave a little shudder at the thought.

Bits for a horse and another brass object from a horse carriage.

Bells from the bronze age village. Along with the stone bells in the picture below, they would make their music. Because of the age of these things, they won't play them, but it would have been interesting to hear the tones together.

A brass pot that was the prize piece in their museum. The rings at the side are a part that they can't figure out how they did it. This appears to have been made all from one piece. We know that jade and wood and stone can be carved to have the rings like that, but brass? A big puzzle and very fascinating.