We spent the morning touring Dr. Sun Yatsen's Mausoleum. This is a beautiful example of what China does for the leaders who heavily influence the country (he's considered the founder of the Republic of China.) The walk up to the mausoleum was lovely, sided by trees and plant life. You come to the first gate, which stands rather imposing. Then to get to the top, where the mausoleum is located, you have to walk up 392 stairs. Now, this trek isn't for the faint of heart and there isn't an elevator or escalator to help you on your way up. I actually asked Dr. Kung about how people with disabilities climb it, and he told me, to my surprise, that they had to hire someone to carry them up the hill. Needless to say, the two older women with us didn't make it all the way up, but once you got up to the top....oh my. The view was absolutely spectacular. you could see all of Nanjing from there. The mausoleum was huge and had the Chinese constitution written on the wall. Then you could enter the burial area. There wasn't much there except for a hole, but it was still ornately decorated. We got to see all that and then on the way down we made some friends who wanted to take pictures with us. It was a lot of fun.
Group photo at the beginning of the stairs
View from the top
View of me at the top!
We couldn't pick it. Too heavy.
New friends!
Then we took the train to Wuhan. That in itself was an experience. We sent our baggage through a scanner (which no one even checked...) then left it with some gentlemen to put on the train for us. The trip to Wuhan seemed short, even though it was around 2 hours, because I spent the whole trip talking to Shannon about the Chinese language and comparing it to Japanese and German. It was interesting to talk to someone who is so into the language and culture of another country. It makes me feel good to know I'm not the only one who immerses herself in what she's doing. Some people many think it's weird, but I really enjoy experiencing and respecting the culture of the country I'm in. It's actually been kind of hard on me that some of people on the trip are constantly making fun of and mocking the things our tour guides and other people say.
Brittly and Shannon
Christian and Vendula
Tremaine
Me and Laura
Conrad
After that the group went out to see what kinds of night life we could find--which there was plenty of, but not anything we wanted to get too involved in (we had to be up early in the next morning). So we decided to go to this small bar on the main strip. We sat down and ordered drinks, listened to some good Lady Gaga remixes and then....a guy stepped on stage...with a violin...and played sad, depressing music...for an hour. I don't know how you book a sad, violin-playing Asian on New Year's Eve....but this bar did it. Anyway! We figured out that all the people around us were playing some sort of dice game that was kind of like a mix between Yahtzee and BS. We wanted to know the rules to play, but didn't have the courage to ask anyone around us. About that time, Vendula and I had to use the restroom and at the original misgivings of peeing in a hole in the ground, we went in search for a bathroom upstairs. They were still holes in the ground, but at least they were clean ones....is that possible? I don't know...ask the Chinese...
We came back down and I finally rustled up the courage...after another drink and endless, mind numbing violin solos...to ask the table next to us if they could teach us how to play. Between their broken English and our 2 words of Chinese, we figured out how to play the game and ended up sitting at the table with these wonderful guys for almost 2 hours. Long enough that the party poopers who didn't want to stay and learn the game left us to our fun. So we ended up learning how to play the game--ask me for details if you want to know how to play and found out, while hanging out with them, that only one of the had an English name. Now, let me clarify, it seems like everyone we ran into in China had an English name that they picked when they were in grade school. Well, only one of these guys had one. So we decided that it would be a really fun idea to make one up for them. So we had Cloud (the one that had already picked his name), Lawrence, Alan and Richard and they all loved it and we became great friends, watched the ball drop (in China!) Who would have thought we got to do that and then saw them set off fireworks on the bar. Cool huh?
From left: Lawrence, Richard, Cloud, Vendula, Tremaine, Me, Alan
Fireworks at the bar
After all that we left to head back to the hotel, because, as I mentioned earlier, we had to be up pretty early the next morning. But on our way back, we ran into this lady who was selling lanterns. And this is the first lesson of going to another country: learn how to say at least the numbers 1-10 and some general all purpose phrases. We didn't understand a word she was saying to us and she didn't have any clue what we were getting at either. Luckily, this little guy, who couldn't have been more than 10-12 years old came over and explained the whole situation to us and helped us buy these lanterns. Our next bout of conversation went something like this:
-Him: So, do you have fire?
-Us: No...?
-Him: So do you have a pen??
-Us: No....??
-Him: Ugh. All right. Hold on a minute...
He then went to gather some of his friends and after a lot of hard work and some odd frozen hands later, we all had our dreams light up the night sky and float away to do their job (mine of getting me to graduation with honors....which worked!) Who knew....kind of creepy, huh?
My lantern going up. :D
So! To wrap it all up! Be sure to do something exciting on New Year's; it's what you'll be doing for the rest of the year... I think my year is going to be amazing....
From me to you, 新年好!
Whitney
No comments:
Post a Comment