Saturday Excursion

Saturday we went to Helin, an hour car ride south of Hohhot, for Dave to teach English to some school-age children. I guess requests of this sort are often made of visiting foreign experts, and this one came from a newly-made acquaintance, Lily. She is headmistress of this school where children learn music (from her—she’s a music student at IMNU) and kung fu (from her father). They also learn English when they can get it, which is where we come in. Lily wanted to pay Dave for an every-Saturday gig and he not only declined the pay, but also spent a long time trying to impress upon her that he doesn’t have every Saturday available. I don’t know if he has won that battle yet—literally 20 minutes of the car ride out there was spent going back and forth between Lily and Dave (with Joe, Lily’s English teacher, interpreting)—but both sides certainly tried their best. For now, we’ll probably go out for the next couple of Saturdays, and then we plan a weekend to Beijing.

Anyway, the drive out was fairly uneventful, although the scenery was quite wonderful. A constant in looking around us is the stark dichotomy between poverty and wealth. On one side of the road there are little brick “houses”, not much more than stable-size rooms, surrounded by dirt and piles of broken brick. Many such areas also have long garden plots, sandwiched between more brick buildings. On the other side of the street, as one extreme example, is the extensive housing dedicated to the managers of the milk plant—Mengnu (literally meaning “the cow from Inner Mongolia”) which provides milk, yogurt, frozen yogurt, etc. throughout China. Mongolians drink milk, which is not common in the rest of China. While we miss our cheese, we are lucky to have this much available.)—boasting a swimming pool, large swathes of grass (apparently imported from Oregon, since grass of the lawn sort is not native to China), basketball courts, clean streets and modern apartment buildings. The factory itself, which we passed on the way to Helin, is large and impressive, very modern, with a grassy area in front and bucolic black and white cows munching under the factory sign. There are tour buses parked in front (like the Darigold factory in Sunnyside, Dave remarked… yes, but on a much larger scale.) and all the signs of modern society. Great contrast to the other side of the street, like I said.

But, the air cleared up, the countryside stretched out, and while being much greener, it is still quite treeless and very reminiscent of home. We arrived in the town, no idea how big it is, although it is safe to say that it is much smaller than Hohhot. We pulled up to Lily’s school and were dumbstruck to find a bunch of kids perched in front of their electric pianos on one side of the door, and rows of little kids in kung fu outfits on the other side. A long red banner stretched over the top of the entryway, saying in Chinese and below it in English: Welcome Dr. David to our school.

The full force of what it meant to them for us to come out really hit then, and we were glad that we went, and took it seriously. The musicians played something very familiar, I almost want to say something from Carmen, and then the kung fu kids performed. It was really very moving and I teared up and tried not to show it because I don’t know how that would be perceived, but I never can keep from crying when kids perform something they have worked hard on—it is such a pure effort, beautiful and earnest.

They escorted us into the school, sat us down and provided us with cold bottled water and slices of watermelon. It is very hot here right now, easily in the 90s everyday and nothing is air conditioned so this was truly a welcome indeed. After the refreshments Lily and Joe showed Dave the props he could use to teach English. Obviously, neither Dave nor myself have done anything of this sort, but he did a marvelous job of winging it, and the kids, ranging from very small, maybe 5 or 6? to 15 sat in perfect graduated order, smallest to biggest, watching, laughing and participating.

The hour of teaching passed, I made a feeble attempt to tell the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Joe translating, and then Lily, Joe, Lily’s father, who was only introduced to us as Grandfather, the t.v. camera lady (yes, the local t.v. station filmed the whole thing), and another teacher at the school whisked us off to a restaurant for an incredible lunch. I can’t even begin to list everything we ate, but we were so grateful to eat something that seemed familiar in flavors and truly satisfied us to the core. I guess that statement won’t entirely make sense yet, as I haven’t written my post on food yet, which is epic and constantly evolving, and really will be forthcoming soon. Suffice it to say that it was a wonderful meal, the company enjoyable, the pee-geo (beer) and green tea flowing, and even little Gregor Samsa (am I spelling that right?) wiggling helpless on his back on the floor beneath my chair couldn’t alter how good it all felt.

With Lily

With Lily's father

Earlier, at the school, Dave looked up from the street and saw a hillside dotted with the tops of pagodas. Upon asking Lily he found out that it was a park filled with Buddhist pagodas. Both Lily and her father are Buddhist and agreed to take us up there after lunch. Now, we thought this was just a little hike up the hill to see a couple of pagodas, but it was much more than that. Lily and Joe insisted on our all retiring to a hotel (!) after lunch to rest before going to the South Mountain, for that it turns out is the name of that hillside park. We tried to talk them out of it, their having already paid for lunch but they would not allow us to pay for anything. The Chinese sense of hospitality runs very deep and in this case could not be swayed an iota, even when the enormity of our request to visit the park finally dawned on us. At one point at lunch, when Dave and Joe were debating the after-lunch nap, Joe finally ended the discussion by saying “Chinese custom”, both in regards to the nap, and I think probably also to underscore the fact that they were paying and that was that. We couldn’t say anything more, and submitted ourselves to being stretched out of our (read: my) comfort zone. Once the trip to the park was decided, even without our realizing what we were asking, everything else fell into place and we no longer had a say in the matter.

And so, off to the hotel we went. The room was quite clean, with four little beds, a fan (hooray!), and a t.v. Best of all, though, for the kids were the two little kittens that they got to keep in the room while they “rested”. I think Joe slept well next door, Dave tried to, and I lay on the bed and listened to the traffic and the kids.

An hour and a half later, we were off to the park. After a first attempt to get into the park was aborted by an angry guard on a motorcycle (understand, at this point we just thought we were going up a hill to visit some pagodas, we didn’t know it was a park you must pay to get into), we walked a long way around, crossed a bridge over a partially dry river bed, saw a man and his little girl walk their pig around a building, and came to the gated entrance to the park. Oh my, now we understood what we had asked of Lily and her father and we really felt very stupid and uncomfortable because it is a park you must pay entrance to and we knew we wouldn’t be allowed to pay. They even bought water for us. There was nothing for it but to go through with the plan, for to change it or insist that we pay would be very rude. It turns out the park is some kind of Buddhist Disneyland—no more monks or working temple it appears (although I may be wrong)—where all the pagodas and a beautiful temple, large museum building, Mongolian pony rides, motorized carts (just like at Disney, to take you from the parking lot to the entrance, but here to take you over miles of park), and other sites awaited us. Of course we couldn’t ask to take a cart, because they would have to pay, despite Grace’s ankle and Samuel running out of steam and the heat the heat, oh the heat, so we walked.

After climbing a bazillion stairs, what a view!

The temple structure

Guan Yin: Bodhisattva of Compassion

All the trees have only recently been planted, and there are many of them, as well as dirt paths, paved paths, beautiful vistas, statues, a monument to money (!! Really—Chinese coins and in the middle a 100 yuan statue near a statue of a shell, the first Chinese currency), and lots and lots of pagodas, all intricately painted in bright colors. We only walked through a little, though I guess enough to get Lily’s money’s-worth, and then we got lost trying to get out. After lots of walking we finally found the original “sneaky” entrance we had first attempted, scaled down the hill, whooped with victory,

said hello to the sheep, and walked back to the school, pausing only to take a picture of the first-ever double humped camel I have ever seen.

Foot-weary, sweaty, tired (it was by now about 6:30 p.m.), we ate a little more watermelon, drank some water, and started for home. Two buses and a comfy car ride later, and we were back home, grateful to have a home to come to after such a long day. Samuel started the day out not wanting to go, not wanting to take kung fu (as part of an exchange for English lessons), homesick and grouchy, and surprisingly, after 12 hours of adventure he was happy, perky, and ready to take kung fu. Grace isn’t sure about music lessons. I know she’d like kung fu but her pesky ankle is just not ready for it. As always, though, Grace was a great trooper, much more so than her mother, and although we had to carry her for large portions of the hike, she really enjoyed herself. It has taken me two days to digest the whole affair. I’m not sure I’m ready yet to go back, because it is so mentally exhausting dealing with people, language, all the sights and sounds and smells, but I know that come next Saturday we’ll all be on our way again.

P.S. I don't know if these posts are coming out all right. I still can't seem to access comments--Does everything look okay?