Qing Ming Day 4. Dam Pictures and Going Back to Jinan.

This morning we were up even earlier and had to be done with breakfast, check out, and be waiting for our group to go to on the Three Gorges Dam tour.  It was a mad house trying to get off the boat.  We had to go through another boat to reach the dock and once on the dock, we looked at the long stairway we would have to climb (no elevator this time) and decided to try and get on the trolley car to take us to the top. 

We went over to the trolley car and found out that it was only 2 Yuan to ride it, but the problem was the crush of people trying to ride it.  There were three of us, David, Helen, and I that tried it.  We had to push our way in and stay close together, because if we didn't, others would push in front of us.  No nice little queue to get on.  Fortunately, with our larger size, we were able to for a barricade and get on right after an old gentleman with a cane that was being put helped on by his daughter.

They took us on buses to the security center.  We had to get off the bus, go through scanning machines, walk through the building, and get back on the bus.  I think the best part of the tour is riding the escalators up and up and up and up to the top where you can have a bird's eye view of the area.  David and I got separated from each other and I couldn't find him, so I decided to walk up to the very top of the look out.  While I was up there, a woman just had to have her picture taken with this American!

David finally called me so I made my way down.  As we started our trek back to the bus, another woman stopped me to get a picture with me.  It is rather fun, complete strangers asking for pictures with you. 

The Bird's Eye view of the dam.

Boats and barges waiting to go through the locks.

Some of the people in our group had to get to the train station so they could get the high speed train back to their cities.  We were taken to the airport and had to hurry to get our tickets and get to the gate.  They were almost a half hour late loading our plane.  We made it home okay.  Happy Qing Ming!

Qing Ming Festival - Day 3. White Emperor City, Shennong River

How good of a vacation is it if you don't get to sleep in?  We were up early again today to have breakfast and get ready to meet our group that was going to the White Emperor City.  I looked at the stairs that we would have to climb from the boat up and my heart dropped to my shoes, but after looking at the stairs, I realized that there were escalators that would take you up most of the way!  What a relief! 

The way up!  The white covered parts are the escalators.  Whew!

This was the original gate to the city. They wanted to preserve it and not let it get covered in the water, so they took it apart piece by piece, labeled each piece and then reconstructed it here at the site of the new city.

We were loaded onto buses for a short ride to the site where we could go across a bridge to the island where White Emperor City is located.  Then the guide told us that we would be climbing 350 stairs today!  Yikes!  I didn't know what I had signed up for!  Nothing to do but set my mind to it and take it a step at a time!  It was a beautiful climb, with trees covering the stairs.  We could have hired a porter to take us up to the top, but one look at those little men who chain smoked cigarettes, the fragile looking chairs we would be sitting in, and the long stairs snaking their way up the mountainside, we decided that the exercise was going to be good for us!  

White Emperor City was built high on this spot because is was a strategic place to guard the river from.  They didn't have to move any of the buildings when the dam was built because it was already so high up.

I took this after we had climbed about the first 50 steps.

The heroes monument at the top.  It was a monument to a great general in the army of early China.

 The Dragon represents the male leader (king) and the Phoenix represents the female leader (queen).

 A Phoenix.  Looks like he's ready to pick this guy up.

The dragon.  He's ready to push this guy over.

The White Emperor City is known as the "Land of Poetry in China." Many famous poets have come here to be inspired and write.  One poet claimed that he always wrote better poetry when he was drunk.  I don't know about that, but that was his claim.  

Some of the famous poets of China that had come to this area to write.

This scene is on the back of the 10 yuan bill.

We think these are orchids that were growing along the walk back to the bus.  Too beautiful to pass by and not get a picture.

White Emperor City also has legends and stories about the Three Kingdoms in China.  They held China together and helped unite them.  There were three kings that reigned one after another and this takes place about 1700 years ago.  We were also able to see one of the 'hanging" coffins that they have taken down to study and is now on display.  

Painted glass figures of the White Emperor.

Painted glass figures of the White Emperors advisers and helpers.

This is the hanging coffin that they brought down so they could study it.  There is a female skeleton inside the slit.  People put money in the glass display.  

We were late getting back to the boat for lunch, but it wasn't our fault.  The guide was a little long-winded, so we had to  really book-it to get back to the bus for the drive back to the boat dock and then down the stairs.  One section was a down escalator, but the rest were stairs.

A waterfall along the gorge.

We traveled through two gorges that afternoon, Outang Gorge and the Wu Gorge.  One of our group had paid an extra 600 RMB to get a "Presidentail Suite." It gave  him a private deck on the front of the boat.  He invited all of us to come enjoy the gorges that afternoon.  It was great riding out front and enjoying the scenery and the company.

A bridge spanning the Yangtze River.

Later that afternoon, when we arrived at the mouth of the Shennong River, we were boarded on a scenic tour boat for the trip up the Shennong River.  They drive you down this beautiful river and stop at a dock where you get out and board some large sampan boats.  They have benches on them and they paddle you down the the river and tell you about the history of the area and people. 

These guys decided to go fishing.

These are the sampans that we traveled on to hear the history.  The benches were not that comfortable.

Going home after a days work.

After the trip on the Shennong River, we were taken back to the ship.  They had to hold dinner back about an hour because we were really late getting back.

Qing Ming Festival. Day 2 - Yangtze River, Fengdu and Shi Bao Zhai Temple

We were up bright and early to meet our group to go to Fengdu, also known as "The Ghost City."  It was a very rainy morning.  We were prepared for the rain with our raincoats and umbrellas, but in the end they seemed almost ineffective against the heavy rain that we experienced that morning.  Eventually, we took off our raincoats because they we were just too hot, and just used the umbrellas.

Wet, rainy, dippy start to the day.

There are a LOT of steps at Fengdu.  It is mountainous country, so it is all lot of up and down.  I think the guide told us that there were around 195 steps up to see the sights we were going to see.  It is nicknamed, "Ghost City" because they believe that this is where you have to pass by the guards to heaven and hell when you die. 

This guy and his companion below greet you at the gate of the stairway going up.

If you look close, you can see that he is missing some of his fingers.  I wondered who had bitten them off.  Styrofoam doesn't taste good.

This guy greets you at the gates of heaven.  It would scared the bad out of me...

This one greets you at the gate of heaven.  He doesn't want you going in with any of your bad traits.

When you cross over this bridge that everyone is lined up to cross, with the one you love, it is supposed to seal your union forever.  With the rain, we decided that if nothing had broken us up in 42 years, crossing a bridge wasn't going to change anything.  Just didn't think it was worth going back out in the rain to do it. 

At least we were dry inside this temple as long as you stayed out of the center part.

An interesting tree that was growing around another tree.  David pointed it out, so I took it's picture so he could always remember it.  (he, he)

When the Three Gorges Dam was built, a lot of these places had to be moved to higher ground to be preserved.  The statues and buildings were  brought up and placed in new buildings that looked like the old buildings.  This particular place is based on the Taoism religion.  It has a lot of thoughts about how you have to pass by certain gods in order to go to a better place.  They really look very frightful and scary. 

David and I were tired and didn't want to climb anymore, so we told the group leader that we were going to go down and wait for the rest of our group at the visitor center.  The whole time the rain hardly let up.  It was really kind of miserable.

I could probably make up a story about why this guy is in the temple because I don't remember, but he was kind of cool looking.

When we arrived at the visitor center, we found some seats where we thought we would be seen when they came.  While we were waiting, I wanted to take a picture of this magnificent wood carved monument to Fengdu.  There were five Chinese tourists who were trying to take a group photo, and they looked like they wanted to have someone take a photo.  I offered to take it for them.  Then I continued to take photos of the wood monument.  When I came around to the other side again, the women of that group decided they wanted a picture with me at the monument.  We had a group photo,then each woman wanted a photo separately with me. 

After we had lunch at the ship, there was a silk embroidery demonstration at the shop on the boat that I wanted to go to.  Two of the women that went were from our BYU group and we introduced ourselves to some of the women we sat near.  The woman next to me was from Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England.  Penny was so fun to sit next to!  We kept joking with each other and had a fun time.  We kept talking after the demonstration was over and got to know each other.  We seemed to have a lot in common in our life experiences.

The afternoon excursion was to an ancient pagoda called "Shi Bao Zhai."  It was build high in a mountain top so that it wasn't necessary to move, however, the waters of the rising Yangtze River did threaten to flood it.  The have built a high wall around the base to prevent it from being flooded in the future.  The path to get to the temple is now underwater, so they build a swinging bridge for people to cross on to visit the pagoda. They also dub it the "drunken bridge."  That is how you feel as you cross this bridge to get to the temple. It sways and moves, and it is so easy to lose your balance.

You see what I see?  I always knew it!! Ha!!

Since David and I have visited this site before, we crossed the bridge and then went back across because we knew that this was probably one of the best places to buy items that we wanted.  Those merchants were sure happy to see us!  We walked along and looked at things we were interested in, bargained and bargained.  It was rather fun.  When we noticed that the others from our group were coming through the street, so we had to say good-bye to all the fun we were having.

Yangtze River - Day One. Getting to Chongching

We couldn't leave until David had taught his two classes this morning. He let his class out about ten minutes early, hurried home, grabbed our packed bags, and climbed into the taxi Eva had ordered for us to take to the airport.  We didn't have a lot of time as it takes 45 minutes to an hour to get to the airport, depending on traffic, and our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:50 p.m.  The driver got us there at 1 p.m., we got our tickets, and had time to sit for about 10 minutes before they started loading the plane.

When we arrived at the Chongching airport, we didn't see a sign for BYU, so we tried to contact Marvin, the tour guide, to see what to do.  After a minute or two of standing there, one of the concierges came up with "BYU" on her phone screen.  She walked us through the airport to the parking garage and put us in a Didi taxi.  They are taxis that you hire when you want a little more upscale ride. Unfortunately, we had arrived at the start of drive time, so it took almost an hour to get to the restaurant where we were meeting the other in our group before boarding the cruise boat.

As we got close to the river and the driver was trying to maneuver through the slow traffic, a man in a yellow striped shirt was trying to talk to our driver through the window of the taxi.  The taxi driver ignored him, thinking he was one of the hawkers who were trying to get people to ride on their boats. It turned out, he was looking for us.  I guess the driver didn't understand he would be looking for us, because he just drove us to the hotel where we were to eat dinner and told us to go inside.

We walked inside and were basically ignored by the  man behind the desk.  When a woman who was sitting on the lobby called to the man, he finally indicated that we should take the elevator.  Inside the elevator, there are three buttons to push; 3, -2, -3.  We step back out and try to ask which button to push.  She asks the man and he said, "san," which is three in Chinese.  We tried to get clarification on up or down and the woman said down.  So, down we went.

Down let to a parking garage.  We were to be met by another driver down there? Where were we supposed to go?  I'm not leaving the safety of the elevator area without know where we are supposed to go.  After a few minutes of watching other people enter and leave the area, we decided we were NOT in the right place and we were going back up.  The elevator looked like it was going to come down to us, but would stop and go back up.  It did this about three times.  We didn't know where the stairs might be to go up, so we just kept waiting, hoping that someone would come down like we had, and then we could get back on the elevator and go up.

We called Marvin while we were in the elevator and he said to go UP to the third floor.  There we met the guide who was in the yellow and black striped shirt and had our dinner.  He looked rather relieved that we had gotten there.

Living on the Yangtze River.

We quickly at our meal and then they loaded us up in a bus and drove a short distance to the harbor.  It was about a fifteen minutes walk from the dock to the boat, so the guide suggested that we hire a porter to take our suitcases to the boat.  There were a lot of stairs to go down, so this was easier.

This building in the center is rather unusual looking in the day, but add the lights of the night and it really looks amazing!

A better close-up of that building.  The colors are constantly changing with different patters.  I don't think we saw any pattern the same during the time we were watching it.

After getting settled in our rooms, we went for a walk on the deck and watched the lights of the city come on.  There were boats that had dinner cruises going up and down the river and they were all lit up. It was fun to see.   When we left Jinan the temperature was in the 30's.  When we arrived in Chongching it was in the 80's.  We didn't stay up too long because we were tired, so we went to our room, got showers and went to bed.

Two of the river boats dinner cruise ships all lit up.

Dinner with Bob and Anna, David and the hospital.

Bob and Anna have been so happy with the fact that they are now eligible to go to Duke University that they wanted to take us to dinner in a special restaurant to thank us. Monday evening, we met them at the West Gate of campus and got on a bus to take us close to the area that the restaurant is located at. We still had to walk quite a way to get there, be we are used to that, this is China...

The style of restaurant was themed to be like old mountain restaurants from China long ago.  There were groups of men that were poor and they would get together and practice Kungfu martial arts and they got really good at it.  They became like Robin Hood and his Merry Men: rob from the rich and give to the poor.  They became a legend and had stories about what they did.

Dinner was really delicious! First was a soup with pork and kelp.  It had great flavor and the kelp was some of the best I have tasted.  It's not my favorite food, but this I liked.  They kept bringing out different foods that were really flavorful.  It was a fun dinner.

Most of the dishes they brought out.  

This was a picture of a meatball that is covered in glutinous rice and has an egg that was cooked in the middle.  David didn't care for it that much, but I rather liked it.  He just doesn't like eggs that much.

Sweet and sour egg plant with bread sticks.  We all like this dish and it didn't last long at the table.  Super yummy!

This was like crispy Chinese pancakes that were toasted in cinnamon.  This one didn't last long either.

Pork soup with the kelp.  That broth it was cooked in was so good!

They came home with us afterward because they needed help with their acceptance letters to Duke.  There are so many parts of English to learn that even when they pass these tests to be able to go to an English speaking country, there is still a lot more to try and understand.  They are doing great and Bob and Anna enjoy learning.

Jinan turned really cold this week.  We were sweltering in our classes on Monday, but on Tuesday, we were back to wearing coats.  Not just jackets, we needed winter type coats!

I posted about this tree last week and this week.  This week, the tops all added some pretty green leaves.   I couldn't resist another picture of how beautiful these bushes (tree-lets?) are.

David and I went on a trip to the Yangtze River this week, so this post is short.  I plan to post about the trip tomorrow, but I haven't had time to catch up with everything.  David ended up in the hospital today, so all the time that I had planned to use to write about the trip tonight, has to be put off.  David is okay.  He has a bacterial bronchitis that they wanted to be cautious about until they had checked to make sure that he didn't have pneumonia.  He received two sets of two IV treatments today, one with antibiotics and the other was antiviral.  They also had him do some breathing treatments with a steroid to help clear the phlegm out.  He already feels a LOT better.

David getting his breathing treatment. 

Frustration, Shopping, Hospital Visit, Easter Dinner, and More Flowers

A beautiful bush with the prettiest purple flowers.  We find it strange that the flowers even bloom all along the branches.

Still haven't found a name for this plant.

Wisteria is in bloom.

The flowers keep on blooming on campus.  The path that we walk to the West Gate of the campus has an area with lilacs and another flower that I don’t know.  One day we walk by and the blooms are not quite out yet, but the next day BOOM!  They are all out and the heavenly scent just makes your heart happy!

David had a very frustrating day on Wednesday.  His first class is a class that seems to not care to be there.  They don’t really pay attention and they don’t do well on quizzes and put very little effort into their performances.  The second class is a joy to be around.  They do some of the best performances and they put effort into the class.  They laugh and are really engaged in learning.  After we had lunch with Eva and I left for my class, David was trying to get help from Eva and another Chinese English teacher to get things set up so that he can use the bike rental system they have here.  It would speed up little errands that have to be done. 

He had to go to the bank, get his WeChat account set up with the bank, and then try to get the app ready for using the bikes.  You have to put down a deposit of 99 RMB and then it is 1 Yuan to use the bike for up to an hour.  In order to set up the WeChat account with his bank account, he needed his passport – not the picture of his passport that he carries around all the time- but the actual passport.  Eva explained to the guy what David wanted and she left while he went back to the apartment to get his passport.

After getting back to the bank with the passport, it seemed like it took forever to get it all set up.  He finally thought that it was all ready go, so he goes out to a bike, tries to scan the QR code, and his phone isn’t working right.  We bought the cheapest phones we could when we came to China, thinking it wouldn’t matter, well it does.  There is such a thing as too cheap. 

At some point, he got the QR code to work, but he didn’t know how exactly it would unlock the bike.  He started pushing some buttons on the phone and suddenly it pops up with, “Do you want to end this ride?”  Then the app wouldn’t let him push any other buttons except, “Yes.”  He finally had to give up for the afternoon because he had other things to do.

This was one of the things on the menu at the canteen on Friday.  French fries with squid tentacles and spicy spices.  The tentacles were kind of crispy, but I couldn't handle how spicy they were.

Friday afternoon, one of the teachers that we have lunch with was able to help him finish getting things set up to rent a bike.  It still wasn't not working all that well, so he asked some students to help him with his phone and the bike rental showed David some other things about WeChat, so all is good now.  It’s so much to do things when they aren’t in your native language and you have very few clues about the language of the country you are living in.

We finished out the Reader’s Theaters in class.  Some were better than others.  My Friday classes are so fun because they just put so much into their performances.  Whenever they get overly dramatic, the students really love it and applaud and cheer.  Some groups though…  we just had to endure. 

The scene below David's classroom window.

On Wednesday morning, I went to see Dr. Tricia.  I had forgotten to get potassium pills to bring with me, and only had a few here.  If I don’t have potassium to go along with the magnesium, I start to have problems with muscle cramps.  I was starting to have some problems.  We had gone to a local pharmacy to see if we could get them as a supplement, but the largest size they can sell you without a prescription, is 10.5 mg.  I usually take 99 mg.  I told Dr. Tricia about my problem and she said she would get me a prescription for them in a larger size, but suggested that I also have a blood test to see if I was low on the electrolytes and test my thyroid to see if it was low also. 

I arrived at the hospital and went to the area that she said she would be in, but I didn’t know what room to go to.  I looked around me for a minute and then decided to bring up Dr. Tricia’s name in Chinese that she had sent me and show it to the guard.  He looked at it, called someone over that was working at the check-in machines, and said something to him.  I think the guard thought that he might be able to speak some English to me, but he couldn’t.  The guard took one more look at me, and then motioned me to follow him.  He led me down a hall and then around the corner and there was Dr. Tricia’s clinic office! 

Dr. Tricia couldn’t leave her office at the time, so she was able to find a woman to come to the office and take me around to the places I needed to go.  After paying for the procedures I would have done that day, the next stop was to the phlebotomy area.  There were set up about 6 windows of people that do nothing all day but take blood samples.  We didn’t have to wait long for my number to come up.  The woman that was to take my blood asked it I spoke Chinese.  Since I couldn’t, she was able to tell me that the results would be ready at 3 p.m. that afternoon.  That’s all I needed to know.  I also have to say how great she was!  It has been years since I have had someone be able to find my veins on the first poke, not blow through the vein, and then hardly even leave a mark so that I don’t turn black and blue afterward.

Next stop was the imaging department.  Dr. Tricia wanted a sonogram of my thyroid to make sure it was okay.  We had to make an appointment and it looked like it was going to be about 11 or so before my number would come up.  They were on number 160 and my number was 190.  The woman took me back to Dr. Tricia’s office, where she had a breakfast waiting for me.  She had brought me a container of milk and some “cookies,” because she had heard that American’s liked a “sweet” breakfast.  The cookies really weren’t that sweet and that was okay with me.  I would rather have bread and eggs anyway, but I dutifully ate two of the cookies (rather dry and crumbly, they were).  When I had finished my breakfast, it was time for me to go back to the waiting room for the sonogram, so the woman accompanied me there.

We still had to wait for about 20 minutes or so before my number came up.  I went down the hall to the room number that the sign said to go to.  I think the technicians were warned about an American being the next one.  They indicated to have me lay down on the bed, and then to scoot down some because I needed to be where they could get to my thyroid.  The technician did the scan and then indicated I was finished, so I opened my eyes and the first thing I see, is the technician’s assistance taking my picture.  It’s not everyday you have an American come for tests in your department…

I needed to get back to campus to meet David and Eva for lunch and get my stuff to go to my painting class, so the woman guided me back to the entrance of the building.  I had David bring my art supplies to the canteen, because I just barely got back in time to meet David and Eva for lunch.

We came home from class on Thursday to a very wet floor in the bathroom.  Our toilet has been having problems with not shutting off after we use it, so we must stand there to make sure it will shut off. We had waited long enough before we left for class that it seemed like it was going to turn off.  Well, it stopped running in the toilet, but then the float never told it to stop putting water in.  It had overflowed from the top of the tank.  We got it stopped and cleaned up.  Soon after the maid came to clean, she came running in to get me because the toilet had done the same thing again.  David went in and got it stopped, but we knew we needed to have it repaired right away, so he texted Mr. Liu about it.  Mr. Liu told him to go to the west desk in the Foreign Students Administration building and tell the duty guard.  That’s all fine and good if you can speak Chinese, but not if you don’t speak Chinese, because the duty guard ONLY speaks Chinese!  David went over anyway and tried to get someone to help.  The duty guard sent a worker up and we tried to tell him the problem, but once again, the worker only speaks Chinese, and we don’t. 

Our neighbor below us is a Chinese man that now has Canadian citizenship and speaks English quite well, so we asked him to come up to help us communicate with the worker.  Raymond and the maid explained it to him, but the worker just said something to the effect, “Well, if it happens again, call me.”  Sometimes China is frustrating.

Closer view of this bush.

Saturday, I had planned to go with Sue, one of the BYU teachers at the other university, to show her one of the markets we had gone to.  David and I had to do some shopping for groceries first and then he planned to ride with us and help make sure we found the market.  The bus route changed the last time I went there with Kayce and Deneice and we had the fiasco of trying to get to the market after the bus dumped us off at the bus station at the end of his shift. 

We were successful in arriving at the market.  David got off the bus, walked to the other side of the road and got on a bus that would take him back to our campus.  Sue and I walked through a lot of the market, stopped and shopped and bought a few things, then found our way back to the bus stop.  Sue had also never been to the “baking store,” so we got off the bus at the right stop for that and walked to the store.  It was like seeing a kid in a candy shop, because Sue was seeing all the things that she needed.  She was very excited.  Then we walked to a bus stop and I caught the bus I needed, and she caught the bus she needed.

Sunday lunch was very fun.  We had a special lunch for Easter Sunday.  We had four different religious views; LDS, Jewish, Muslim and Chinese (I’m not sure she had a religion, but I know she is good and kind.)  We also had several nationalities; American, Australian, Vietnamese, India Indian, and Chinese. 

Our truly international Easter dinner.

After lunch, David, Kayce and I went over to the hospital to visit Deneice.  Yes, she is still in the hospital.  Her pneumonia was very bad, and the doctors don’t want her leaving the hospital until her lungs are mostly clear.  She will have another CAT scan on Monday, to see if she can go home yet.  We are all fervently praying for her.

 

The view from Deneice's hospital window.  That Buddah is huge!

This evening, I had one of my students that I taught four years ago come over for supper with one of the girls on her basketball team.  She had tried to get some of the other students to come, but they all had other things to do.  I made BBQ pork, sweet carrots, apples and some chocolate cookies.  It was so fun to visit with her and find out how she is doing and get to know her friend. 

When they left, Bob and Anna came over to get some help with a letter they needed to write to Duke University to accept the invitation to come to their school.  So many little things to learn about English to do well.