Jigong Shan 鸡公山 and Ling Shan 灵山

From 2 NOV 08

Last week was a bit drizzly; so, when it cam to making firm plans for the weekend I was a bit reluctant. Last weekends trip was an adventure in misery. It seemed that the tourism majors wanted some western victims to torture. There is no group of people singularly more unqualified to lead western tourists as Chinese tourism majors.

From 2 NOV 08

From 2 NOV 08

They have two basic instructions, never loose a tourist and get to, what they consider to be, the attraction quickly. The result is that they want everyone to remain in a tight group. To not risk mixing with other groups, and to keep moving. Because there are groups behind them, there is great pressure to keep moving even faster.

From 2 NOV 08

From 2 NOV 08

From 2 NOV 08

They think they know what tourists find interesting and any attempt to stop and take a picture anywhere else is met with great displeasure. Eventually I put my camera back into my back-pack and left it there until I had managed to ditch the “tour guides.” Attempts to take pictures were met with, “there is nothing interesting here, we must keep going.”

The path was about 4.5km made up mostly of broken concrete slabs, used as steps. While they refer to it as, “climbing the mountain,” it is climbing endless stairs to the top of the mountain.

There is a resort at the top of the mountain that I have written about before. It was the headquarters of Chiang Kai-Shek (蒋中正) during the war against Japan. At the resort, having ditched the tour guides. Dez, Brianne and myself went to the more interesting places, such as: Soong May-Ling's (宋美齡) ballroom (the wife of the famous General), the air raid shelter, and other visited other historic buildings (to the Chinese “historic” has no special meaning, it just means “old”）at this large site.

From 2 NOV 08

I even tried some “snake wine” it was vile, like all the other bai jo (saki) here. However, there was an attraction to drinking something with an assortment of serpents fermenting in the bottle. The vendor/snake handler having only one arm just added to the weirdness of the occasion.

From 2 NOV 08

We later met up with the tour guides and began the 7km, hurried, walk back to the buses. The walk took us past many of the other buildings built by westerners before they were ordered to leave this western island in the center of China, there was no compensation, the Chinese army just arrived and said, “you must leave now.” The buildings and fixtures were then taken for the Chinese officers who later sold or abandoned them and are slowly decaying into ruin.

From 2 NOV 08

From 2 NOV 08

This brings me to something else that I was discussing with some students last week. I was asking about the Chinese lack of maintenance. There really is none, if something breaks then it will get the bare minimum of repair that is necessary to get it working again and nothing more and most of the buildings, if they are not new, are a short step from being crumbling ruins.

From 2 NOV 08

From 2 NOV 08

The answer was a cultural gap. They said, “if it is old you should get a new one,” in reference to cars, bicycles and machines. As far as buildings, they felt that the buildings should be allowed to fall into disrepair. That way they provide places to build new buildings. If you see America as a throw away society, you ain't seen nothing...

From 10 Nov 08

This weekend I planned to go on a ride with bicycle club, who tend to go places that I enjoy and have a very tolerant attitude, even if some of the stuff we do is just plain nutty. I didn't set an alarm on Saturday, as Friday was raining and the weather report said, “more rain.” So, of course, it was a fine, if cloudy, day. As such I didn't do much on Saturday, I went and got a haircut, did some cleaning in my flat, and walked up to my classroom to watch a movie on the big screen that I have in there.

I had to go to the classroom to do some class related stuff anyways. Last week was a test, I had them giving short presentations and I had left my grade notes in the room so I needed to go up and get them. I also wanted to d/l some stuff into my laptop. Due to the network security in the residences I am unable to connect my eeePC. However, the security is entirely turned off in my classroom. So, I use that connection when I need one.

Then, on Sunday I awoke in a timely manner and got ready to go. I was a bit slow getting out the door and as I approached the bike club meeting place someone shouted for me and I saw the club going the opposite direction on the street I was on. I made a U turn (yes, in traffic; hey, this is China, everyone drives like that) and pulled into the line. This put me near the head of the procession and I put effort into maintaining my position I the line.

The nice thing about being in the front of the pack is that you get longer rest breaks. However, unlike the tour guides, this group understands that a rest break means that you wait until your heart rate has returned to near resting.

From 10 Nov 08

As usual we made frequent rest breaks, about every 10km on the way out. And had a good time. The group does get real spread out. I am always in the front half and what I have noticed is that the front half, while it is spread, is way ahead of the last quarter. Those of us near the front raced through some little village with a main street that amounted to little more than and alley. Then we left there the road turned to reed covered concrete. To insure that it was slick enough, there was a person out throwing water on the reeds. Shortly after that it turned to dirt as it took us past another walled village.

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

We then entered a small town for yet another rest and regroup. From there the front runners raced to the destination about 15 km away. The whole way, as we were maintaining speeds between the high twenties to the low thirties, I kept two thoughts in my mind, one was as I approached turns and poor surfaces, was, “ in order to win you have to stay in the game.” The second thought was, “someone has to be last; but, it sure as hell isn't going to be me.” I was third to the destination. And, I still felt good.

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

We then did the usual picture taking and then headed off for lunch. When we got to the first restaurant we found that they did not have the facilities for all of us as this was an unusually large crowd (I had counted 59 and I think there were more). A group then headed off and I thought that they were going to some other, nearby restaurant. That turned out to not be the case, they were going to the next large town, to a place that we often eat on these rides. It was about 14km away. I have to say, at that point, I was getting a bit tired and testy.

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

As there were only about 15 of us who had ridden off, we spread out and pretty quickly were riding by ourselves. There was no real way to get lost as about 1-2 km away was a major highway. It was visible during a lot of the ride. If I had really needed to I could have cross countried it to the highway and gone back that way. At one point the road I was on even went under the highway, and I recognized that spot from previous trips.

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

In a couple more kilometers I met up with the others for lunch, with a few stragglers falling in behind. Lunch was actually pretty good and we rested for a little while; but, nothing like the three hours common to the rides. About that time we started to get ready to go. I wandered to a, nearby, store for water and was a bit of excitement for the people in the shop. While the owner of the restaurant had seen and recognized me from before, the others had not realized that I was there. The shopkeeper even called out her daughter, who was in the process of washing her hair, in order to see the foreigner.

From 10 Nov 08

From 10 Nov 08

From there we pushed back. It was about forty kilometers and there were no real planned groups. The return trip generally ends up that way, for whatever it seems that the return leg is much more “on your own.” I was in a bit of a hurry, as I was expecting to meet some students at 16:30 so I was pushing. This kept me near the front and even at my rest breaks I was checking my pulse and the time. This is actually the first time I have entered the city first ( really I was second, I was passing the first person as he was entering the city).

I would have been fourth but one of the front group blew a tyre and his friends stopped to help him. There was no reason for me to stop as there was nothing I could do. Besides, you know you are in touch with your evil side when you see a person in front of you have a mechanical failure and your thought is, “ah, there is justice!”

From 10 Nov 08

Purdin Forest

I was in class and we had pretty much wound down for the day. Some of the students had even left. I released them a bit early as we had finished the lesson plan for the day.

I was then approached by a couple of students that told me that they were going to the forest park on Saturday and asked if I wanted to come with them. I said, “yes.”

Their reaction was one of shock. I found it a bit funny. It looked to me like one of those moments when someone is invited with the hope and plan that they would say, “no.”

I was told that was not the case. They just had not expected me to be willing to come along.

I asked them the standard questions: when do we meet, where do we meet, how much should I expect to spend, and similar stuff. They had no answers. That was fine, I am used to how the Chinese plan. They told me that someone would call me with the details.

The details were, that we would meet at the main gate of the school on Saturday morning at 07:30 and take a bus from there. Further, I should bring at least two bottles of water (the standard bottle is 600ml) and a lunch.

So, the night before I insured that my daysack contained water, a camera, and extra batteries. I got up about 06:45 and was at the gate on time. Of course, the students were nowhere to be found.

I sent them a message (SMS is real big here) and someone came to meet me and guide me to where they were. They were eating breakfast in an alley that I often get my dinner, from various cart vendors, at. It seems that the bus they had charted had broken down on the way to the school. The good part was that my, muttered, comment, “this bodes ill,” was entirely un-understood by all around me. I had no wish to further jinx the outing. Even though they were behind the schedule that they had set, they seemed to be having fun.

The bus finally arrived and it was large enough for all that were coming, which was about twenty. It was at this point that I noticed that there were many more young men on this outing than I had ever seen in class. I asked if all the people with us were in my class V and I was assured that they were. I then pointed out that several of the people had a lot of explaining to do, as I had never seen them in class. It was at that point that some of the girls, grudgingly, admitted that they had brought their boyfriends along.

I saw no problem with it and, as far as I know, there is no rule forbidding it; however, there were comments to the effect of, “you wont tell our head teacher, will you?” So, from that I assume that it was, indeed, some minor infraction.

We got to the park and took the requisite pictures at the entrance. At that point they went to get the tickets for entrance.

I fully intended to pay the full price for admission (about 15RMB, or $2USD); however, my students had a different idea. They wanted me to get in at the student rate of 10RMB. So, they pointed out, truthfully, that I was their teacher. They then added that I was there to keep them put of trouble, the ticket seller was asked, “after all, you wouldn't want us to get into trouble would you.”

With that came the, aw shit, if for no other reason than merely by virtue of rank..., “I am in charge,” feeling. The good news was that this was, by Chinese standards, a well behaved group.

From there we wandered along the main path and I took quite a number of pictures, for which they were later grateful as my SLR took much better pictures than they had brought. I tried to get at least one good picture of each established couple. I ended up shooting a couple hundred pictures. Of course, most of them were trash, but there were a few gems in the pile.

They like to pose for pictures so it was sometimes hard to get pictures of them just having fun. This comes from the habits formed with film cameras where each picture was an expensive proposition. I later showed them the entire series, at the beginning of class, which got a lot of enjoyment and laughs.

We had lunch at a small pond that was partially drained for maintenance. I found the supports for the trees, in the pond, to be interesting. The students were bothered by the small amount of food that I had brought for my lunch (it was enough) and kept pushing more food on me.

From the lunch stop (at least they did not find it necessary to spend three hours for lunch, as is common) we continued to a playground. An American safety nut would, if they visited this playground, suffer from, “immediate exploding cranium syndrome.” For all the outlandish lack of safety, the students had a lot of fun and I got a pile of pictures. I also bumped into some of my students who were in other classes and just happened to be there at the same time.

We then walked some more. About the time we got to the end of the park the sky started to drip a bit so we began to walk back. They were sure that my bringing an umbrella is what caused it to begin raining (It seems that their logic says that if only one person brings an umbrella, then that one umbrella caused the rain). As I was wearing a hat I never did see a need to remove the umbrella from my pack. It really never did rain that hard.

We hot back and found that the bus, which was supposed to wait for us, had left. So, they called for its return and we waited bout an hour, or a little more, in the visitors center. The bus finally returned and we went back to the campus.