Shanxi Trip

Yes, this post is basically a year late. I am very sorry. This is about our November trip to Shanxi. I wrote it when we returned and never quite got around to posting it.

On Friday night, I fell asleep at 8pm. My normal bedtime is usually around 9:30pm; on Friday, I usually stay out until curfew at 11pm. Yet on this particular Friday, I was absolutely unable to keep my eyes open and went promptly to bed as soon as it was a reasonable hour. The reason for my extreme exhaustion was a 5am wakeup time for our returning train trip from Shanxi. We stayed in four cities, spent around twenty hours on a bus, a total of ten hours on a train, and climbed at least two thousand stairs.

Our trip began on November 9 at 10am, when we all lugged our various sizes of luggage to the school, and boarded the bus for the first of numerous bus rides. We got to experience a high-speed train on the trip to Taiyuan, Shanxi’s capital. The seats were comfy and the scenery was vastly different from that of Beijing. I read for most of the train ride, which was a generally enjoyable experience. Watching the steely high-rise buildings lower themselves into dirt covered barren plains through a thick, unwashed glass windowpane, I realized just how much of China I had yet to see. The only minor hitch on the train ride was when Li Laoshi, one of our accompanying teachers, informed us that we would need our train tickets to disembark the train. When you give a group of teenagers small slips of paper, the likelihood of them retaining these papers for four hours is relatively low. Luckily, we all somehow all made it off the train and onto stationary ground in the Taiyuan train hub (points for you if you caught the pun). Taiyuan was cloudy and depressing. Nevertheless, our hotel was pretty nice (the nicest on the trip, in my opinion). We ate some forgettable meals and departed the next morning.

The next day, we visited the old house where Zhang Yimo’s Raise the Red Lantern was filmed. It was an impossible maze of courtyards that all looked alike to my American eyes. Nonetheless, the architecture I was able to appreciate was gorgeous.

After visiting the complex, we went to a town called Pingyao. Pingyao was an absolutely adorable town that the bus was not allowed to enter; we had to take a set of what seemed to be expanded golf carts (Li Laoshi called them battery carts) into the city. The city had a bank that we visited that was apparently the first bank in China (I think, please don’t fact check me on that). Additionally, we explored the city wall.

Later that night, we were allowed to explore the Ming-Qing dynasty street filled with really cute shops.

At the end of the night, I got tea with Jtu, Jpark, Nina, and Erik. It was Jtu’s birthday that day. That night, I slept early. The hotel in Pingyao was the worst one of the trip, but luckily we only stayed one night.

The third day of the trip, we promptly departed for Wutaishan, after consuming another unremarkable meal. There is a sort of fried dough thing similar to a donut that is relatively palatable; besides the mock-donut, breakfast choices are minimal. The hotel also had the option of toast and nothing to put on the toast. We arrived at Wutaishan, moved into our hotel, and then walked up 1,080 steps. Some people were injured or sick and planned to take the gondola up for 30 kuai. Unfortunately, the gondola stopped at 5pm and these people thus walked back to the hotel for about 2 miles; it wasn’t exactly ideal. Yet it was probably substantially more fun than walking up the unnecessarily large amount of steps. However, the view from the top was absolutely worth the hike – you could see the entire valley from the outlook point in front of the temple. Unfortunately, my pictures of the view seem to have been accidentally deleted. I apologize.

After we wearily descended the monumental stairs we had just summited, we reached the ground with our legs shaking, and settled onto our bus once again.

Later, we reached the Hanging Monastery, which was really super cool. More climbing!

Back at the hotel, dinner was disgusting.

The following day, we resumed what seemed to be the major occupation of our time: riding the bus. As we rolled away from Wutaishan, the silhouettes of the craggily peaked mountains faded into an obscure cloud of ash-grey coal dust and dense, smothering fog. Today was the day we would reach Datong, the most major city on our trip and former capital of China. For lunch, we sopped at an excellent restaurant and after went to go see the Mu-tah. The Mu-tah is the world’s tallest wooden pagoda, built by the emperor Daizong in the Liao dynasty. Again, no picture (sorry).

Eventually, after another hour and a half on the bus, we arrived in Datong in the evening. As our bus rumbled into the city, tall bridges grew up on either side of our vehicle and buildings sprouted from where half an hour previously there had only been sandy hills and unassuming foliage. Yet the buildings seemed to be suspended in time; no glowing window lights penetrated the approaching dusk, and no human beings seemed to occupy or note these half-skyscrapers. As we got further into the city, lights began dotting the horizon of our bus’s fogged-up windows, and the feeling of being one person in an endlessly large city returned. I expected a city of this size to have wifi at the hotel; unfortunately, I was disappointed on that front. Regardless, I went to sleep that night thrilled by our return to a sizeable city.

The next day, we went to see the Yungang Grottoes, an ancient Buddhist site with over 50,000 figurines in the entire complex.

 

The battery carts returned (not the same ones) and we were taken to the grottoes to explore. After the grottoes, we returned to Datong and went to the city wall to begin a scavenger hunt. The scavenger hunt was almost ridiculously easy.

 

My group was Jtu, Jpark, Nina, and me. All of us impulsively bought some very unclean raisins that became increasingly less enjoyable to eat. After we finished the scavenger hunt, we took a cab for 6 kuai ( a dollar!) to the business district. We went into a mall, tried to see The Hunger Games (it wasn’t out yet), got wifi for the first time in four days, and ate some delicious potstickers. Overall, it was an excellent day.

Datong Day 2: We went to a local school in an attempt to integrate ourselves into the community. We all lined up on the stage in the morning assembly in front of rows of similarly-clad Datong students.

The first two classes were the most dreadfully boring things I’ve ever sat through. They were math and “Chinese class”; I understood a minimal amount of both. The most exciting part of the morning was when Yankee Doodle started playing and a student came into the classroom to supervise the class’s self administered face massages. I was in a class with Conrad and Nikolai. The students seemed essentially indifferent to our presence. At around 11am, we all went to watch SYA play the local school in a soccer game. SYA, unsurprisingly, lost (we only have 37 people, the odds of us having a good soccer team are quite low). Waka Waka played on repeat from loudspeakers the entire game. I took countless pictures with students, gave about five of them English names, and chatted amicably with them about America and China and our respective languages. Nearly all of these conversations were held in Chinese, so it was a great opportunity to practice my language skills.

After that opportunity to socialize, I made local friends who I hung out with the rest of the day and ate lunch with. After two more classes (one was an hour-long tofu documentary during which I may have fallen asleep), we all went to see the talent show. SYA had two acts perform; the Datong students mustered a significantly larger number. It was a really fun event. At the end of the day, Conrad, Nikolai, and I had dinner with our friends and then hung out in the classroom with them. From 6-9pm, the students are required to do homework at school. I can’t even imagine that. My school doesn’t even go until 6pm! I took lots of pictures with my friends, and then it was time to go around 7pm. We said goodbye and drove eaway. I really enjoyed the experience of Chinese school, although I’m glad I don’t have to attend one myself. I originally applied to a program called AFS where they drop you in a local school, but on second glance I’m extremely glad I ended up attending SYA. My Chinese is nowhere near good enough to survive in a local school for an entire year.

The last day in Shanxi: 5am wakeup. We departed the province on a slow speed train. I slept for the majority of the train ride, then sleepily disembarked and took the subway home. I lugged my bag the fifteen minute walk home from the subway stop, mentally grumbling the entire way. I then sat around at home for a couple hours, catching up on what I had missed in my week without wifi. My family and I had dinner together and I promptly slept at 8pm. And thus ended my trip to Shanxi.