Trip To YangZhou + Embarassing Mistake
We went to Yangzhou today. One of the many principals of the Middle School we're attached to, who studied at Yangzhou, brought us there. It was a four hours' drive from Haimen to Yangzhou.
Yangzhou used to be one of the biggest and most prosperous cities in China due to the production of salt there. It used to be even more developed than Shangha. Many important people lived there and we visited a house down an old street where Jiang Zemin lived for some time. The door was kept shut, an old passer-by told us, because he might come back some day...
Yangzhou is like the "York" of China. Its streets are old and well maintained. We visited two olden buildings. One was the house of a salt merchant with antique desks and zithers and beds. The other was the house of a guan, a high-ranking official. It was huge and had quite a few gardens and many rooms. There were many signs detailing the family history of the He Family, who used to live there, and I spent ages looking at each sign and trying to decipher the Chinese and get the gist of what they were saying.
After that we went for lunch. The principal was too fast for us and he paid and ordered before we could protest. We had salty fried beancurdish thing, a Yangzhou specialty, salty fried Chinese cabbage with salty fried pork fat (very tasty but probably carcinogenic), soup, some kind of melon and other dishes. I don't know how it is with Chinese people, but they are so polite. They pay for everything before you can jump in with your wallet and your ren ming bi. And even if you do manage to get to the till before they do, by the time you find the words to say that you want to pay they're at your side protesting until they somehow manage to pay it all. So I'm quite puzzled how people here ever manage to win the fight to pay, especially if you're a polite, soft-spoken Singaporean!
We also went to a temple, a tall temple of four to five hundred years dedicated to Guan Yin. The principal prostated himself before the gods and asked us to do the same... we just smiled and declined...
Being a Christian of many years, I have alot of head knowledge but sometimes not enough of the experiencial knowledge and definitely need more of the heart knowledge. Many things I knew in theory, but only managed to put into practice in various situations that arose when I was overseas. Temptations and trials cropped up overseas in the UK that would probably not have arisen should I have stayed in Singapore. And before I came here I would not have thought that someone would have asked me to worship an idol. But he didn't seem to have taken offense, and we carried on happily as before, with mutual respect of each other. And I also prayed that one day we would all know a living God.
So there was something funny about the toilets there; the doors only come up to your waist and the toilets are connected by a drain running straight through them. In fact, the toilet consists of the drain. Me and my attachment mate had an interesting discussion about what would happen if you did something solid and it dammed up the flow of the liquid, and how it was cleaned up everyday as she didn't see any hoses around.
We drove back to Haimen (4 hours), and got stuck in a hour's jam because there was construction going on. The driver started watching "Air Force One" on his car's DVD player, and when the jam cleared and he was driving again he continued watching it and asking us questions about the plot and doing a million other things at once! I quite feared for the safety of our car as we narrowly missed quite a few vehicles! But I'm still very impressed by the car!
In the evening the principal brought us for dinner and among the dishes was a horseshoe-crab like fish with a sting (something like a cross between a stingray and a horseshoe-crab - very nice!), pig's trotters, and almost raw prawns in a kind of soya sauce. Actually, I'm quite surprised I've not had diarrhoea yet, but I continued eating happily, assuming that it's not a matter of if I get diarrhoea but of when, and as such I might as well continue to eat, as I'm bound to get diarrhoea sooner or later! Makes a weird sort of logic? :o) I'm just waiting for the floodgates to open. Anytime now...
When we got home I was very embarrassed and worried to have lost my keys, but with speedy efficiency everything was solved and I was given a new key. I'm so thankful and I pray that the keys are still in the car and not in Yangzhou. It's quite awful, when people are so nice to you, even putting up banners for your arrival, treating you so well, bringing you around, giving you such nice accomodation, and you lose their keys! Looks like I still have to work hard in the becoming alert, well-informed and capable department. It's a mistake anyone could make, but it's not going to happen in future!
We're going to go around Haimen in future, and then the proper learning will come on Monday.
Yangzhou used to be one of the biggest and most prosperous cities in China due to the production of salt there. It used to be even more developed than Shangha. Many important people lived there and we visited a house down an old street where Jiang Zemin lived for some time. The door was kept shut, an old passer-by told us, because he might come back some day...
Yangzhou is like the "York" of China. Its streets are old and well maintained. We visited two olden buildings. One was the house of a salt merchant with antique desks and zithers and beds. The other was the house of a guan, a high-ranking official. It was huge and had quite a few gardens and many rooms. There were many signs detailing the family history of the He Family, who used to live there, and I spent ages looking at each sign and trying to decipher the Chinese and get the gist of what they were saying.
After that we went for lunch. The principal was too fast for us and he paid and ordered before we could protest. We had salty fried beancurdish thing, a Yangzhou specialty, salty fried Chinese cabbage with salty fried pork fat (very tasty but probably carcinogenic), soup, some kind of melon and other dishes. I don't know how it is with Chinese people, but they are so polite. They pay for everything before you can jump in with your wallet and your ren ming bi. And even if you do manage to get to the till before they do, by the time you find the words to say that you want to pay they're at your side protesting until they somehow manage to pay it all. So I'm quite puzzled how people here ever manage to win the fight to pay, especially if you're a polite, soft-spoken Singaporean!
We also went to a temple, a tall temple of four to five hundred years dedicated to Guan Yin. The principal prostated himself before the gods and asked us to do the same... we just smiled and declined...
Being a Christian of many years, I have alot of head knowledge but sometimes not enough of the experiencial knowledge and definitely need more of the heart knowledge. Many things I knew in theory, but only managed to put into practice in various situations that arose when I was overseas. Temptations and trials cropped up overseas in the UK that would probably not have arisen should I have stayed in Singapore. And before I came here I would not have thought that someone would have asked me to worship an idol. But he didn't seem to have taken offense, and we carried on happily as before, with mutual respect of each other. And I also prayed that one day we would all know a living God.
So there was something funny about the toilets there; the doors only come up to your waist and the toilets are connected by a drain running straight through them. In fact, the toilet consists of the drain. Me and my attachment mate had an interesting discussion about what would happen if you did something solid and it dammed up the flow of the liquid, and how it was cleaned up everyday as she didn't see any hoses around.
We drove back to Haimen (4 hours), and got stuck in a hour's jam because there was construction going on. The driver started watching "Air Force One" on his car's DVD player, and when the jam cleared and he was driving again he continued watching it and asking us questions about the plot and doing a million other things at once! I quite feared for the safety of our car as we narrowly missed quite a few vehicles! But I'm still very impressed by the car!
In the evening the principal brought us for dinner and among the dishes was a horseshoe-crab like fish with a sting (something like a cross between a stingray and a horseshoe-crab - very nice!), pig's trotters, and almost raw prawns in a kind of soya sauce. Actually, I'm quite surprised I've not had diarrhoea yet, but I continued eating happily, assuming that it's not a matter of if I get diarrhoea but of when, and as such I might as well continue to eat, as I'm bound to get diarrhoea sooner or later! Makes a weird sort of logic? :o) I'm just waiting for the floodgates to open. Anytime now...
When we got home I was very embarrassed and worried to have lost my keys, but with speedy efficiency everything was solved and I was given a new key. I'm so thankful and I pray that the keys are still in the car and not in Yangzhou. It's quite awful, when people are so nice to you, even putting up banners for your arrival, treating you so well, bringing you around, giving you such nice accomodation, and you lose their keys! Looks like I still have to work hard in the becoming alert, well-informed and capable department. It's a mistake anyone could make, but it's not going to happen in future!
We're going to go around Haimen in future, and then the proper learning will come on Monday.
1 Comments:
hey ruthie, glad to know you haven't lost your skill in describing tasty food ;-) and that all's going well, miss you x
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Anonymous, at 9:46 pm
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