We had to leave pretty early this morning, at least for a Saturday,
and we got a taxi to take us to the newspaper office. We met Eva and Pam Carter there so we could
ride the bus down with a lot of parents and children to the Minority Cultural Village
south of Jinan about an hour. They had
made a special day trip for “Women’s Day” (in case you didn’t know, some in
the world celebrate what is called that on March 8) and they were going to the
Minority Village to plant trees there.
After we got on the bus, the leader announced that the
children on this bus (they had three buses going) were the extra lucky ones
because on this bus were three university teachers from America riding with
them. They told all the children to tell
us, “Hello” and most of them did. On the
bus, they gave us each a card that we could put a “wish” on and then we were to
tie it to our trees after they were planted.
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| The "wishes" that David and I put on our cards that we attached to our trees. |
Once we got to the village, we had to have a big group
picture on the steps leading into the entrance.
Then we made the long walk up the mountain to where they were going to
plant the trees. It was a long climb up
lots and lots and lots of stairs! Then,
when the stairs ended, we had to walk up the hill, almost to the top of the
longest tubing run on the mountain.
However, we had to first pick up a shovel and a pick (hi, ho, hi, ho, it’s
off to work we go…), get a bucket and put water in it, and then walk the rest
of the way to the top.
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| The group that came on our buses. Can you spot us? |
When we arrived at the top, they directed us to where they
were planting the trees. David started
to dig the first hole and the handle on the shovel broke! It wasn’t a good handle to start with. He then used the pick until someone who had
finished with their shovel offered theirs to him. Someone had dug a hole and wanted me to come
plant my tree there, so I did. David
planted his and then dug the hole for Eva’s tree. Pam was determined to dig the hole for hers
and she almost did, but the Chinese people just hate to see their precious
visitors doing any work, so someone came over and helped her finish it. Then we tied our “wishes” to the trees. We had a reporter from the paper come over to
interview the three of us. Eva
translated. They will get us a copy of
it when it comes out. He mostly wanted
to know why we wanted to be a part of this activity today. WHAT’S NOT COOL ABOUT GETTING TO PLANT A TREE
IN CHINA AND LEAVE A LEGACY THERE???
Anyway, we also talked about how trees were so important and that we all
loved trees.
With the tree planting and the interview done, we had to get
back down the hill, and I mentioned that the easiest way to get down would be
to roll down the hill. David decided to
try. I was going to get a picture of it,
but he started down the hill before I got the camera on and so I have NO
picture of the event. You just have to
take my word for it that he rolled part way down the hill!
We went to the restaurant for lunch, but they were really
busy and the food came really slow. There were three young men (about 13-14 years old) next to
us. One of the boys was watching for us
to turn his way and when he did, he asked us where we were from. We told him and then he pointed to one of the
other boys (an anglo) and said he was from Canada. The Canadian boy is here for a month on a
student exchange. The other two Chinese
boys have been on student exchanges to England and Australia. They wanted to practice their English, so I
talked with the one boy for a few more minutes until our food came. It was nice that they wanted to talk to
us.
We
were supposed to be done by one so that we could go watch a show. We almost didn’t make it. The show was about the wedding traditions in
one of the minority peoples (Wa minority, I think), and part of it was about a
singing contest that the men have to go through in order for the women to pick
their husbands.
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| Part of the singing competition to win the husband. |
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| A traditional boat for the Wa minority. |
Then we passed by a place where they were doing a zip
line. Pam decided she was going to do it
(we would have, but we didn’t bring enough money and it was cash only) so we
watched Pam get harnessed up and have fun doing that.
We went to another minority show where they were doing some
traditional dances, so we watched the rest of that show. Then we went on over to the Mongolian
minority area where we saw them do a battle reenactment. This was even better than the one we had seen
in Shenzhen last January. It was
thoroughly enjoyable!
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| The Mongolian battle performance. |
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| The Japanese invasion "underground" play. |
Next, we made our way to the place where they did a play about
an “underground” battle that took place during the war with Japan. A village used trickery and stealth to fight and they were able to help defeat the Japanese. They made the Japanese in the play look like incompetent
buffoons and it was all in Chinese, so we didn’t enjoy it as much, but also it
was starting to get really cold as a wind had come up and the temperature was
dropping. We made our way back to the
bus and took a short nap on the way back.
We had made plans earlier in the week to go to an acrobatic
show put on by the Ji’nan acrobatic company, so we bought a bit of supper on
the way to catch the bus to meet the rest of them at the theater. It was a good show, but we didn’t feel like it
was as good as the one we had seen in Beijing last November. David and I had to catch a taxi home because
we were too tired and cold from our activities of the day to want to walk in
the cold wind anymore tonight. It has
been a good day!
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| One of the acrobatic acts. Those girls are all bent over in half! |
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| The stacking chairs act. Pretty scary! |
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