words
chapter four @ 1998 August
Me on the "Road" to Bijia Shan bijia shan and xingcheng
and a bit about Chinese driving.
in this issue
China is a country with almost 5000 years of history. The earliest recorded sovereign of the Chinese people began his reign in 2852 B.C. She is the longest continuous civilization extant. It has sometimes been a troubled history. But she has continued onward. China abounds with scenic places. She is a beautiful country. Through this wonderland wander thousands of rivers which nurture the livelihood of the vast majority of the people here. (As large as the cities are here, 70% of the 1.2+ BILLION people in China live in rural areas.) Lush plains give way to scattered mountains, perhaps carved by glacial drift millions of years ago; perhaps forged by the shifting crust of the earth which still results in the occasional earthquakes which jar China. When beauty and history collide, China can be a mystical country. Welcome to Chapter 4 of Chuck @ China. School was very busy this last term - 16 class hours is a heavy load by U.S. college standards - and I was responsible for 331 students. But I was able to get away for some short trips in the brief time I have been here. I didn't travel far during the school term. But in China, one doesn't have to go far to experience beautiful spots, historic places, and that occasional confluence of both which rises to the level of mystical. I hope you find a little bit of that magic in this issue.
BIJIA SHAN THROUGH THE MORNING MIST
The city of Jinzhou, where I am living, lies in a large plain surrounded by low mountains. Through the plain runs the Xiaoling He (= Little Ling River). The downtown sits on the north bank of the Xiaoling. It is much like the Cuyahoga in Cleveland in that it twists, turns and takes it's time as it courses to its terminus - the Bo Hai Gulf. Thirty four kilometres from downtown Jinzhou, lies the Jinzhou port and the Bo Hai. The Bo Hai is a large gulf off the Huang Hai (= Yellow Sea). The port is much like Cleveland's - same size, same capacity, except for two things: it is a salt water port and it is the site of Bijia Shan. I began hearing about Bijia Shan shortly after I arrived in Jinzhou. The staff, students, and new friends would tell me about this wonderful mountain that sits in the middle of the port. You can sometimes walk to it. Sometimes you must take the boat," they would try to explain. "There is a path which leads to the mountain but it is underwater sometimes and sometimes it is not." It sounded like some Confucian conundrum to me so, of course, my interest was piqued. One of the students in my "grown up" class works for the Jinzhou Economic Development and Technical Zone which is located by the port (and Bijia Shan) and she invited me to visit one afternoon. (I am teaching two classes in the Adult Education Department here. Typically, the Chinglish version of this Department is "The Grown Up Education Department". It says so right on the bronze plaque on the door to the building. As you will recall from Chuck in China - 2, if you take English, translate it into Chinese, and have someone else re-translate it back to English, the result is Chinglish: often different and usually funny. Thus, the Grown-Up Education Department). I was all excited to see Bijia Shan but the day before I was to go, it was suddenly canceled. It was decided that perhaps (a favorite word among the English speaking Chinese) it would not be convenient to visit since "it was early April and it would be cold and windy and it really would be more beautiful and green in the late Spring". How could I explain to them that I loved to go to Edgewater and sit on the empty beach on cool fall and spring days when the wind was up and the waves breaking and running up to the driftwood log I liked to sit on. Or how Jennifer and I would climb down the cliffs west of Edgewater beach where no one dared wander and watch the sunset or sit on the rocks to the east of the beach and watch a storm roll in off the lake and then sprint like mad to beat the rain. The rain always won - but no matter. I liked the shore in good weather and bad. I wanted to go to see this place Bijia Shan which they had described. But it was decided otherwise. So attempt #1 failed - but not of my own accord. One of my freshman classes heard that my trip to Bijia Shan had fallen through. I had told them in class how much I had been looking forward to it. The next week, the class monitor approached me after class. Every class has an appointed monitor who is like the class president - in charge of everything - except they are appointed by the school not elected. (He's an interesting student. As I mentioned in Chuck in China 1, every student has chosen an English name. Most are your standard names: lots of Annes and Marys and Thomases and Lindas. Well, his English name is "Duckula". For those of you over 25 - Duckula is a cartoon duck who thinks he's Dracula, 'nuff said). Duckula told me that the class had decided that since I hadn't gotten to go to Bijia Shan the first time and since they had wanted to have a class outing, they had arranged to take a trip to Bijia Shan. And I was to be their honored guest. "Cold weather or not, I'm in," I told them. So it was set. I had another chance. They had even chartered a bus. Saturday morning. Leaving at 7:00 a.m. "Mei Wenti" (= No problem!). So off I went, in quest of the Shan. It is 7:00 a.m. on a cold and windy Saturday morning in April and we are standing by the bus the students from Class 97-4 have chartered waiting for a late arrival. One of my students is telling me about Bijia Shan. I have never seen (or heard) of anything like this place. It is a mountain/island that lies about a mile offshore (1620 metres to be metrically correct). But twice a day a "land-bridge" appears from out of the water and one can walk to the mountain/island. The land-bridge, she is telling me, was built by two fairies (no, not that kind, silly; "fairies" are to China as "angels" are to westerners). The fairies were sisters but the younger one was lazy and didn't like to work, so the older one carried the load and finished the "bridge". It still sounded confusing. I would have to see for myself. We climbed on the bus - the first time I would be going out through the countryside since I had arrived in China. What a ride! Cedar Point should add a new ride next year - Chinese Bus Rides. (See Road Rules in this issue). We arrived at 8 a.m. It was a very windy day ("Feng Tai Da"=Wind Too Big) and as can be expected, it was about 20 degrees colder by the sea. (But since China, like most of the rest of the world is Celsius, it was only about 11 degrees Celsius colder by the sea). Being from the shores of Lake Erie, I was prepared for the temperature difference by the springtime shore but many of the students weren't. Many were in shirts and blouses. Rule # 1 in Chinese Fashion here is Look Good (see Second Attempt for more on this rule). The shore area around Bijia Shan is a newly developed area with lots of brand new office buildings, factories, apartments, and (this was a first in Jinzhou) a luxury housing complex with single-family houses. As you come over the top of a hill from the main road, you suddenly see this large mountain sitting offshore surrounded by the sea. Fishing boats are spread all around the island and on out to the sea. It was quite foggy this early in the morning so I could just barely make out the "Shan". We descended the hill and the bus stopped outside a large concrete arch which perfectly framed the distant Shan. Dozens of people came running up to the bus, selling god-knows-what: trinkets, water, candy bars, film, etc. This was my first lesson in Chinese tourism. Every scenic spot or landmark here has three things in common: (1) beauty, (2) history or a legend, and (3) admission fees and concession vendors. Even the Great Wall is that way, my friends have told me. The people here never pass up an opportunity to make a Yuan. (The Chinese have a saying: "You are not a great man until you have visited the Great Wall". To which I would add: ("... and bought a T-shirt there that says so!") From pictures I had seen, it had appeared closer to shore than I could now see. The Bo Hai Sea stretched from shore to Shan, easily a mile out. Three foot waves whipped by the wind crashed onshore and rocked the offshore fishing boats. Inside the giant arched gate (admission ticket, of course, required) was a HUGE granite sculpture of the two fairy sisters of the Bijia Shan legend. They were perhaps 50 feet (15 metres) tall. (Does anyone remember that old B-movie "The Attack of the 50-Foot Woman"? Well here were two of them). It was a perfect place for a Kodak moment and the students pulled out their cameras for a group shot. (Had they not brought their cameras with them it would have been Mei Wenti (= No Problem), two women stood at the base of the statue ready to take your picture for a small fee.) The Kodak moment quickly turned into a Kodak quarter-hour - in a 40 MPH (that's 64 KPH) wind!. About half of the students had brought their cameras and each wanted their own group shot. Then, each of the twenty students wanted their own personal picture with Cha Ke Laoshi (= Teacher Chuck). So I posed for about 10 group pictures and then separate pictures with each of my twenty students. I felt like Kenny Lofton at a baseball card show. Pictures over, it was now time to walk down to the Bo Hai and out to the Shan. So we turned into the wind and walked toward the edge of the sea which was being held back by a low battlement against which the waves were crashing. Bijia Shan loomed in a distant mist. Then - Da Wenti!. (Big Problem!): Between us and the Shan lie almost a mile of churning water. The students had failed to check the tide tables. You see, the "land-bridge" of which I had been told, is created by the tides. As the tide goes out twice each day, the most incredible thing happens - this path of stones and shells slowly begins to emerge from the shore and eventually at low tide, reaches all the way to the island. When the tide comes back in, the path disappears back underwater. We had arrived at high-tide. It would be four hours until the tide would begin to recede and the path begin to emerge. And in this wind, we were told, it would be a slow emergence. Option B was (for a small fee, of course) to hitch a ride on a fishing boat out to the island. The fishing business at Bijia Shan involved dual Catches of the Day: seafood when the tide was out and tourists when the tide was in! But the boats were all spread out in the sea in front of us. It being a cold, windy day, they were out fishing - not expecting much tourist business. Most of my students had (literally!) never set foot in a boat. In a sea of 3-foot waves, they were not to anxious to try out their sea legs on an old 5 metre fishing boat, no matter how beautiful misty Bijia Shan looked from here. So we would wait awhile. We decided to explore the shore. There were billions of seashells, some small crabs, mussels, etc. The Bo Hai provides most of the fresh seafood for the cities of Northeast China. Peasant women with huge baskets were hunched over on the shore digging for clams. To the left rose some very tall cliffs with a road leading up the back side. So we decided to climb the road to the top of the cliffs. As we reached the plateau on top of the cliffs we discovered ...... an amusement park! Of course! No one was around and we explored it for a while. There was a brick maze (like an English garden but made of bricks) and we decided to try to get to the center and eat our morning snack (everyone had bought food and snacks). While the students wandered through the maze trying to find their way to the center, I quickly made it there first. The walls of the maze were just short of 6 feet high. Most of the students are about 5'2". At 6'2" and on my tiptoes I could view the whole layout and all the dead ends. (I am always asked how tall I am: "Yi Mi Ba Ba", I have learned to answer the wide-eyed questioner - 1.88 metres.) We ate some snacks and were off again. But as we exited the maze, two men came running up and apparently they were in charge of collecting a separate admission for the amusement park. (Of course! As in life and lunches, nothing in China is free. There is usually a charge for admission to the public toilets. But instead of a receipt, you get a piece of toilet paper the size and consistency of a sheet of sandpaper. Few people, I'm sure, keep the receipt for expense purposes.) Back at the maze, my students were very embarrassed because the men were yelling at them. Five of my students grabbed me by the elbow and walked me away while the rest of the students stayed to negotiate. Later I found out that the pair had heard there was a Waiguoren (=foreigner) and they were determined to charge triple the price for everyone. My students convinced them that I was not a tourist, but rather their teacher and a resident of Jinzhou and so we ended up paying the Chinese admission price 5 Yuan (= about $0.60) apiece. That settled, we continued walking along the seaside plateau which runs for dozens of miles atop craggy cliffs dropping sharply to the Bo Hai. We soon passed a huge outdoor water park (closed for the season) and some tiny houses. About the size of a child's backyard playhouse - about 7 feet tall - I was told that people rent these tiny houses in the summer and stay overnight. Often they are used by couples, I was told. In China, it is very difficult for couples to find much privacy. Most people live with their parents - even after marriage. So lovers have few options for complete privacy. The tiny houses were one option. Hotels are not an option for.. Hotels require a man and woman to show a marriage certificate if they want to share a room. Another option is the movie theatres - for a little more Yuan, you can sit in a small booth with a couch and 5 foot high walls to watch movies such as Titanic. Couples often go there to be alone. It's like a drive-in without the cars. I'm told that there is even a triple feature which starts at midnight every night and lasts until 5 a.m. and it is packed with couples. In many ways, the Chinese have the morals of 1950's Catholics. Except you don't have to go to church on Sunday. As we continued to walk along the cliffside, we came to a small chasm where a river met the sea. The entrepreneurial residents had turned it into a tourist trap - but an interesting one. Stretched from this side to that over the chasm were a dozen different types of rope bridges. It was like the River Kwai turned commercial. You could cross back and forth as much as you wanted - for a small fee, of course. (I've said it before but it bears repeating, despite western concepts of what "Communist" China is like, the real China is a market economy purer than anything in the U.S. Everything is for sale. The price for everything is absolutely negotiable. My lawyering skills come in handy in that regard. And nothing is given away for free. No stone goes unturned by anyone here in seizing an opportunity to charge a fee - or to sell the stone!) So after having negotiated the fee, we decided to play on the Rope Bridges for awhile. The first crossing we came to was one of those cable things you see in jungle movies where you ride across the valley on a small rope chair attached by rope and pulley to a single overhead rusted steel cable. I, of course, was the first one of our group to jump on it, much to the horror of the students. They tried to stop me pointing out how old and rusty the whole contraption looked (it did!). But I pushed off and sailed across the valley while my students had visions of tomorrow's China Daily headline: "Cable Snaps and American Teacher Falls 500 Feet to Death". (Actually it would have read: "Cable Snaps and American Teacher Falls 150 Metres to Death"). It was lots of fun, and soon everyone had crossed except one, Duckula. He finally did it when one of the men collecting the money questioned his manhood pointing out that all 15 women had crossed! To save face, he tentatively made his way across. The views from the cliffs were phenomenal. The cliffs sweep away running north for dozens of miles. Every 500 metres or so there were little pagoda patios perched on the edge of the cliffs where lovers could go to be alone. We crossed and recrossed the chasm a half a dozen times on various kinds of rope bridges. One was especially difficult - just a single rope to walk on and a single rope above your head to hold onto as you shuffle across. Only three of us tried it (including me). Successfully. The whole place was a lot of fun - but it was an insurance defense lawyer's worst nightmare. A little tired and hungry, we headed back to the port at about 11 to have lunch ("Chi Fan"). The wind was up again (Feng Tai Da) and the temperature dropping. It was going to be tough to find a warm, sheltered place to rest. Everyone had brought a lot of food and the only indoor places were the many small restaurants which had been erected at the top of the beach. Surely we couldn't walk into one with our own food. Suddenly, a man came over. I was shocked! He was about 6'4"! He was the first person I had seen in China who even approached my height and he had me beat by 2 inches. He worked for one of the (many) restaurants that were at the edge of the beach. He was laughing because I was apparently the first person he had ever met who approached his height. He wanted us to eat at his restaurant but the students were telling him they had brought their own food. To me they were telling me that his restaurant was the most expensive one on the beach - it would cost us at least 500 Yuan to eat there (@ 20 Yuan/person so my students guesstimated). That is Tai Gui Le! (= too expensive) in China, especially for students (though at about $65 U.S.D. it would be about 1/2 the cost of all of us going to McDonalds if we were in Cleveland). But he wanted a picture of him and I. I felt like Michael Jordan visiting a Cleveland restaurant as all the people on the beach quickly surrounded us and gaped at the two "giants". And they were laughing because the Chinese man was taller than the Meiguoren . So I obliged. Luckily they didn't ask for an autograph as I have yet to learn how to write Chinese characters. (But that will happen in Chuck in China 6 so stay tuned folks). Then, he told the students that since I was so kind-hearted as to have my picture taken with him, and because it was so cold and windy, he would ask his Laoban (= boss or owner) if we could sit inside the restaurant and eat the lunches the students had packed. The Laoban agreed - after we offered her 20 Yuan for the trouble. So for one photograph and 20 Yuan, we had a warm place to eat. (As I said, nothing is free and everything is negotiable). While we sat there eating, at least 4 groups of people came into the restaurant. It's specialty was, of course, fresh seafood. The sea was right outside the door and the fishermen, clamdiggers and other peasants had baskets and baskets of 2 minute old seafood to sell to the restaurants. Here, there were 9 or 10 large basins in the lobby with live seafood - 2 kinds of crabs, 3 kinds of clams, mussels, eel, conch, fish, and prawns [which are a cross between very small lobsters and very large shrimp]. There was a noisy debate with each group as they negotiated how much lunch would be. Two of the groups ended up staying. Two of the groups walked out muttering, "Tai Gui Le". Sitting in the restaurant, about 12:00, I noticed more and more people walking by on their way toward the shore. I had a hunch that low tide was coming. Unsure about this whole "land-bridge" business, I grabbed my camera and headed down to the shore. The tide had started to go out. When we arrived at 8:00 a.m., the sea was - well the sea. It was all there. Now, as the tide had began to recede I was witnessing a most amazing thing. There was, indeed, a natural path of smooth stones and shells beginning to be uncovered, starting from the shore. At the moment it ran only about 30 metres out into the sea toward Bijia Shan. It was about 5 metres wide. Waves on both sides continued on to the shore. Many of the people I had seen walking toward the shore, I now realized, were on their way to work. Peasants and mostly women, they carried large baskets as they slowly began combing the path for live clams and crabs which the tide had left behind on the path. These they would gather and would later sell to the restaurants on shore and, also to seafood wholesalers, whose trucks were now beginning to park outside the gates of the shore. So we began to stroll out onto the path. Millions of small stones and seashells littered the path. Slowly, over the course of the next three hours, more and more of the path would emerge from the water leading toward Bijia Shan. About 20 more metres become walkable every couple of minutes. We began the walk to Bijia Shan. The old women digging clams lead the way. They were wearing rubber boots so they were in the water just ahead of the now drying path. The tourists lag behind scavenging for shells and stones waiting for more of the path to clear. It is one of the most incredible things I have ever witnessed. It was now extremely windy - we were literally standing in the middle of the sea. This slender emerging isthmus offering barely a foothold with no buildings or cliffs to shelter us from the steady wind. The fishing boats began to pull up and offer to take impatient tourists directly to the mountain-island. But the students wanted none of that, so we patiently scavenged and waited as more and more of the path became walkable. And we took lots of pictures. Many of the students found enough live clams and a few crabs to make dinner for themselves that night. By 2:15 the path, (now about 30 meters wide back by the shore but only about 2 or 3 metres here where we stood) was only clear to about 2/3 of the way to Bijia Shan. From there, the wind-swept sea was keeping the path submerged. The bus from the school was due to pick us up at 3:00. Three or 4 of the students were about to suffer the onset of hypothermia. So 2/3rds of a mile out in the sea, we decided to turn back. Had we waited, we would have probably been able to reach the island but would have had to immediately turn back or risk missing the bus. I took one last look at Bijia Shan before I started back. As close as we had gotten, she was still covered in mist. I walked a little ways out into the sea using some of the larger stones as a footpath through the slowly receding water I went forward about 30 metres from where my students stood. They are wonderful students, but as with most of the people here, they sometimes play too hard at being "the perfect hosts". Most of the day had been: "Are you having fun, Teacher Chuck?" "Do you find this place interesting, Teacher Chuck?" (Who wouldn't!?!) "Are you too cold, Teacher Chuck?" "We will carry your bag for you, Teacher Chuck." "Here is [yet another] seashell for you Teacher Chuck?" And "Ohhh Nooo! Take Care Yourself Chucker!" (the Chinese pronunciation of my name when screamed in horror) as I jumped on the cable chair or when I would walk ahead a little too far on the "sea path" where only a few rocks had surfaced and the waves were still breaking. I wanted a moment of solitude, away from the workers, tourists and students back on the drying path, to pay homage to this spectacular site . I wanted to look through the mist to Bijia Shan with my back turned to the commercialized seashore. I wanted a moment, literally in the middle of the sea alone, to reflect on things past, present and future. I have always found the sea (or, as in Cleveland, the lake) good in that way. So I stood there and faced Bijia Shan and reflected on things ancient (thoughts of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea were unavoidable at this place as were thoughts of the Chinese ancients in a 5000 year old civilization); things past (memories of family and friends back in America); and things future (what further adventures in China will I experience). I have rarely felt as fully at peace as I did at that moment facing that mist shrouded island.
Actual picture of me at that moment snapped by one of my students. And then I was suddenly yanked back to the present: "Ohhhh Nooo! Teacher Chuck! You are walking too far out onto the rocks, Teacher Chuck! You are so brave, Teacher Chuck! You are our Brave Leader!" Ah yes, back to reality. Hypothermic students and a bus to catch. So I took one last look before I turned and returned to shore with my students. Bijia Shan, for a moment, had been a mystical experience despite not reaching her. I knew I would return. I didn't realize how soon it would be though. When I returned to school from my sojourn with my class, the foreign affairs program officer was, I think, a little dismayed that my first trip to Bijia Shan had been with the students and not arranged by the Foreign Affairs Department. As I have mentioned, everyone goes out of their way to be the perfect hosts. So the next day I was advised that all the foreign teachers, the foreign students and foreign affairs staff were invited to Bijia Shan on the following Thursday. Suddenly the "It is not a convenient time of year" standard disappeared. After all, a western teacher had gone there, survived the cold and wind, and pronounced the place mystical. So five days after having been there (but having failed to reach the mountain), I would have a chance to return. And this was so important to my hosts that they canceled our classes on that Thursday for us so we could go. Since I had bought a tide-table home with me after my first trip, we would have better timing this time. And if the tide was still out, they told me, the school would charter a fishing boat to take us to the mountain/island. So the following Thursday, a Canadian teacher, a Japanese teacher, an Australian teacher, and a balding American teacher joined by 5 Japanese students, a German student, an American student and 10 Chinese members of the Foreign Affairs Department piled back on a bus and headed to Bijia Shan. We arrived about 9:00 a.m. on a clear, sunny April morning. And as we topped that last hill leading to the shore, Bijia Shan came into sharp relief out in the middle of the port. No mist, no fog this day. As we entered the gate and walked to the battlement which holds back the sea, the path from shore to mountain stretched in an unbroken curving line. The tide had been out for 3 hours. A little man who had been there the first day came running over when he saw me. "Yes, I remember you," I told him in bad Chinese as he smiled and jumped up and down. He insisted on another picture - me and him. Then the owner who had let us eat our lunch in her restaurant the first time saw me and waved. I had remembered to bring the picture of me and her "giant" employee so I ran over and gave it to her. (He wasn't working that day.) Then we set off on foot down the path, now about 30 meters wide at low tide. We walked quickly, only occasionally scavenging shells. This trip was organized by the Foreign Affairs Office and there was no time to dally over mundane things like scavenging for shells and clams and rocks. Whenever I would stop to gather a few interesting rocks, or stop, for instance to greet the restaurant owner, things that weren't on the "agenda", cries of "Kuaidianr, Cha Ke!" (Quickly!) would prod me on. I have now been on enough Chinese-led tours to make the following generalization: On a Chinese tour, you visit a spot, you are ushered quickly through it. You stop walking only if necessary to take a picture or pose for a picture. NO LINGERING IS PERMITTED. When you have completed walking the circuit, you go directly back to the bus which leaves promptly one minute after you have finished the tour. In this way, the Chinese are able to compress what would be, for us, a half-day excursion, into one hour (travel time included)!
In any event, we began our trek on the path through the sea toward Bijia Shan. Since it was still pre-season here and it was a weekday, not many people were going to the island. So when our group of 20 or so started walking the sea-path to the Shan, the locals mobilized and jumped in boats to beat us to the island and set up their concessions! The path today was dry and wide as we went - until we reached a point at almost exactly the same place where I had been forced to turn back on the previous Saturday. At that point, which is apparently the last place to open, there was a stretch of shallow water with a few larger rocks, which had yet to emerge completely. About 30 yards across, though, the path was again wide and dry and continued, thusly, the remainder of the way to Bijia Shan. The water at this point was only a couple of inches deep, and with the larger rocks, one could ford this part quite easily. Except...... ...... Except for Chinese Tourism Generalization Number 2 (which, not coincidentally is ): Wherever You Go, Whatever You Do - Make sure you do it "Lookin' Good !" Going on a hike through the sea? Going to climb a mountain? Don't forget to look fashionable in your suit and tie and leather loafers! Women, add three inches to your height with these wonderfully comfortable 3 inch platform leather-soled pumps which perfectly accessorize that ankle length pullover dress or that thigh-high mini-dress you painted on this morning. Either way, you're LOOKIN' GOOD! And ready to climb those rocks!
Not! For some unexplained reason, the Chinese dress for touring as if they are going to Sunday church or the Flats in Cleveland on Friday night (Or, O.K. -The Church on Sunday in the Flats in Cleveland). As Teacher Kerryn from Australia told me once, the most amazing thing she has seen here in China was a woman in a skin-tight mini cut up to there, climbing rocks up Qianshan Mountain just barely exposing nothing more than lots of thigh. Well, here we were at a shallow eddy with most of the Chinese Foreign Affairs Department wearing leather shoes and tailored pants/dresses. The foreigners, in hiking boots or Reeboks quickly made it across the stepping stones. But the Chinese couldn't cross. Not in leather shoes. (The Chinese take exquisite care of their clothing [insert Chinese laundry joke here]. I once handed out that ubiquitous American invention - name tags - to one of my classes. I asked them to wear them so I could learn their names more quickly. Most refused to wear them for fear the name tags would damage their shirts/blouses.) So here we were. Stuck. What to do? The two cultural rules of touring were clashing here: Kuaidianr! Don't Stop Walking versus Lookin' Good. Rule #1 vs. Rule #2. What to do? Which would win? A Gordian knot? A Chinese puzzle? A short-circuit? An old woman was hunched over digging clams. On her feet, knee-high rubber boots! This is China. Everything is available - for a price. The director walked over and talked with her for a minute. He pulled a 10 Yuan bill out and handed it to her. I handed her a bag of peanuts and a pack of chewing gum. She sat down, pulled off her boots and for the next 15 minutes we ran a shuttle across the 30 yard stretch of water. Someone would put on the boots and cross, then one of us non-leather clad people would cross back with the boots for the next leather-clad person. In a land where no opportunity to make a Yuan is passed up, where everything is negotiable, where (as it were) no stone goes unturned, we had found a purely Chinese solution. Rubber boot rentals! So all across, leather shoes intact, off we went, onward toward the mountain/island and we finally reached it. This double-peaked island a mile offshore across a crooked stony path, purportedly built by fairy sisters, which path twice a day emerges from the sea, only to recede again with the rising Bo Hai tide. If you ignore the concession stands every 100 metres on the winding road up the main hill from where the sea-path meets Bijia Shan, it is a beautiful place. But as you walk the road up, it seemed as if every other bend in the road, there were a couple of girls selling jade and shells and souvenirs or an old man sitting on a stool ready to tell your fortune - for a small "donation". Even the Cesuo (=Toilets) had men sitting next to them charging a fee which entitled the remitter to use of the toilet and a few sheets of toilet paper in exchange. But having become accustomed by now to Chinese tourist spots, this was no longer surprising. The views from the peaks were breathtaking (if you ignore the port's large mile long dock-pier with Hulett-style off-loaders and oil storage tanks just to the west of the island. For some stupid reason, they built a man-made pier/docks stretching a mile from the shore and coming within a quarter-mile of this beautiful island. Everyone, except the large oil companies which drill for oil in the Bo Hai and use the Jinzhou port for storage and exporting the oil, agrees). But, despite the commercialization, Bijia Shan was spectacular. There were, I could now see, three peaks on the island (one was hidden from shore). On two of the peaks stood old temples which had apparently survived the Cultural Revolution. (Maybe the Red Guards hadn't had access to the tide tables and so, were unable to reach the island). The largest temple was spectacular. It rises straight up from the peak another 80 or so feet and looks like a cross between a temple and a lighthouse (which I have a feeling it may have once served as). It is 5 stories high with Buddha rooms on each floor. There were scores of Buddhas of all shapes and sizes scattered throughout. The largest was about 15 feet tall. Some of the people were there praying, burning incense, leaving food offerings and, of course, like any Chinese attraction, or any religious site for that matter, collection boxes for monetary offerings. The top of the temple was a lookout tower reached by a steep, narrow stairway of chiseled granite wrapped around the outside of the tower. Slip and you would plunge over the 2 and 1/2 foot railing, down four stories and perhaps over the cliff and another 500 feet to the rocky seashore. Inside sat a giant stone carving of Pan Ku - the main character in the Chinese version of the creation myth. From the temple, precariously rising still higher from the peak of the Shan, the views were spectacular. At the other end of the island were three small temples, one of which sat on top of the northern-most peak. Another of the three is called the Five Wives temple. It is an ancient stone building - not very elaborate - with five seated female Buddhas. Between the two peaks was the back, seaward part of the island, invisible upon our approach to Bijia Shan. It featured a long shallow plateau straddling 400 foot high sheer cliffs. It continued out past the highest peak and headed out to sea like the prow of a ship and from there it just kind of descends away in layers of thick shale to a narrow tip which ends just dipping into the sea. It is this feature, I learned, which gives the island it's name - Bijia means "pen holder" and as the path up to the highest temple swings out over a cliff you can see beyond at that land's end as it dips down to the sea, looking like the end of a Chinese calligraphy pen, just dipping into it's ink bowl - which is the Bo Hai Sea. From the Pan Ku Temple Tower looking back towards the shore, I could see the rest of the island, the "path" leading back to shore and, beyond, dozens of miles of the cliffs that line the Bohai Sea shoreline. Spectacular! 
ON BIJIA SHAN
The Sea - Bridge stretches back toward the distant shore at low tide.
This is the view from the road as one starts up the mountain.
The double-pagoda thing is really a gift shop.
Note the fishing boats docked to the left of the path.
Tourists are often the Catch of the Day
On the day I had first visited Bijia Shan, I had told the assistant Foreign Affairs Officer, Chen Jiaqi, how much I had liked Bijia Shan. He then told me that the College had just purchased a large of tract of land near Bijia Shan and was going to build another campus there. "It will be ready in two years," he told me. Then he added jokingly, "If you like Bijia Shan that much, you could teach at the new campus when it is finished!" As I stood atop the tower, I could see some small "ancient houses" built on the side of the hill, above the cliffs, overlooking the back of the island out toward the sea. Apparently some of the souvenir vendors live on the island. The houses are surrounded by short trees and flowering bushes and away from the main path so they are sheltered from the tourists. You can only see them from the tower. As I stood there catching my breath (more from the view than from climbing the outside stone stairs that wrap around the tower), Chen came up next to me. He smiled, and said, "Nice view, huh? Perhaps in two years you will be teaching here!" Weakened by the view, I replied, "If you promise to give me living quarters on this island, I would teach here forever!" "Really!?!", he said. I thought that the next thing he was going to do was pull a new teaching contract out of his pocket. Intoxicated by the view, I just might have signed it there and then if he had. When we descended the path back to the bottom of the Shan, we discovered that the tide had started in and the road had narrowed to about 5 metres wide and was uncrossable at various points (no clam diggers in sight to rent boots from this time!). There were a couple of fishing junks tied up on shore and they offered to take us back (for a price, of course). Wooden seats magically appeared in the boats now. They were apparently done catching seafood for the day and were now circling for schools of stranded tourists. So the Catch of the Day at Bijia Shan that afternoon was the Foreign Affairs Department of Jinzhou College. We all climbed aboard. I truly think that this was the first time many of the staff had ever set foot in a boat. The sea was flat - no wind today - and as seats were at a premium, I stood against the side of the junk, leaning on the 3 foot high rail. The staff were terrified that I would fall off and drown. "Come inside the boat! - you will be swept away! - You must take care!." I mean, really! This was like cruising down the Cuyahoga on a Friday night - not like sailing on the North Sea in a raging gale. But we made it to shore - much to the relief of the staff. (Except for the one Chinese teacher who didn't notice my precarious perch - her eyes were shut tight the entire trip back). When we got back to shore, we climbed into the bus and off we went for a late lunch. The school was picking up the tab, but the staff didn't know where we should go. I had suggested the place with the kind woman owner and the tall employee. They had let us eat our lunch there my first time to Bijia Shan, but, like the students the first time, the staff, without even looking at a menu, pronounced it "Tai Gui Le" (= Too Expensive). So we boarded our bus and off we went. For the next 45 minutes this bus full of people drove around the Bijia Shan area stopping at different restaurants. Three of the staff members would jump out and run inside. They were negotiating prices. "I have a bus load of people outside, what's your best price for lunch for 20 people" I imagine they were saying. Yes, even restaurants negotiate (see First Attempt). Menu prices, apparently, mean "That's the most you will have to pay for that dish. But let's negotiate." After the fifth or sixth stop, we were getting a little tired of this - not to mention getting hungrier by the minute. So I introduced them to the purely American custom of protest: I quickly had the whole busload of foreigners chanting: "Chi Fan! ... Chi Fan! .... Chi Fan! ... Chi Fan!" (= "We Want Lunch! ... We Want Lunch! ... We Want Lunch!"). It must have worked because without further negotiation, we drove directly to a restaurant near the college where the staff knew the owners (and presumably got a deal) and we were treated to a nine-course lunch which included grilled crab taken fresh from the sea that morning and prawns (similar to jumbo shrimp - only bigger {more jumbo??}) and served whole (legs, head, eyes still attached)). All in all the day at Bijia Shan had been a great experience. Not quite the mystical one I was seeking but lots of fun nevertheless. (And who knows, perhaps it was my first glimpse at my new neighborhood!) I had made the mountain at last .... albeit a rushed tour. And then: Two weeks later I was back. The "grown up" student who had first invited me (see False Start) renewed her invitation. Cindy Zu (Zu Jin Jie) works for the Jinzhou Economic Development and Technical Zone which is charged with promoting foreign investment in Jinzhou and her offices are at Bijia Shan. Cindy's English is excellent (among the best I have encountered here). Her position with the JEDTZ is as translator. But as it was the slow season for foreign business visitors here, she hadn't much chance to do much translation work. She was taking my night class to brush-up her English-speaking skills. Cindy is different from most of the people I have met here thus far in that she understands that Westerners do not need or want to be constantly attended to and taken care of like little children visiting their great aunt - constant concern whether we are having a good time. We don't like to be rushed through a pre-programmed agenda. Cindy understands that well. Perhaps that comes from her experience and contact with foreigners. To get back to Bijia Shan with Cindy, I got my first taste of the public bus system here - another western "Communist China" myth exploded. The bus system here is privatized to a large degree. The busses are privately owned. Actually, two or three people will get together and buy a bus, perhaps hire a driver (if none of them can drive - not an uncommon situation here). One of the owners rides along and collects the fares as they go. The owners pay a fee to the transportation department to run on a particular bus line and a particular schedule (in this case the Jinzhou-Bijia Shan line), and keep the rest (after paying the driver, gas, oil, maintenance, and whatever "extra fees" the local government charges). The owners then split the profits. Since the owner rides along on the bus, the more they can fit, the more money they make. So we stocked up on water, fruit, and peanuts at the East Side Market and boarded a Bijia Shan bound mini-bus on a Saturday morning in late April. The mini-busses seat about 20 so we had about 35 people jammed in, hanging out windows, two people riding on the engine hump between the driver and the two girls sitting in the one passenger seat, etc. I think the owner was a little mad because with my height, I took up extra space so she couldn't fit one more person on the bus. Like everything else here, each passenger negotiated their fare separately. Cindy's pretty nasty in the negotiating department so we paid the regular Chinese rate: No "Foreigner Premium" and no "Long Legs Surcharge" for me (though the owner tried!). Cindy just threw her 10 Yuan (5 apiece) and told her to leave us alone. Of course, I had a bus load of people staring gape-jawed at me for the whole 30 minute ride to the shore. And the 3 or 4 parents who had their kids with them had the reluctant kids show-off how well they said "Halloo" and "Bye Bye". It must have made them feel good that the extra English tutoring many parents here pay extravagant sums for was finally paying off. Here was an actual foreigner the kid could practice on. Never mind that his knees were up around his chin as he squatted on the edge of a six inch wide plank 18 inches off the floor added to bump the seating capacity up another 6 people. At last (or rather at least) we arrived safely at Bijia Shan. As we disembarked (or rather decompressed) we were once again swarmed by the vendors and hawkers. Cindy pushed us through and into the park. The last two visits I had made, there had been that little sun-browned guy who had been there and insisted on having his picture taken with me. I had bought one of the pictures with me and, sure enough, when he saw me he came running over. I handed him the picture and he was floating on air - that I had remembered him and had remembered to bring the picture. We headed to the shore but the tide was coming in now and it looked as though we would not be able to make the walk dry-footed. True to Fashion Rule #1: Lookin' Good, Cindy had dressed in a navy blue business suit with leather shoes. Did I mention that this was a Saturday morning? So we piled on one of the fishing boats and headed out to the Shan. It was actually a nice relaxing day because Cindy speaks English so well. And it was nice to take in Bijia Shan in a very relaxed way. I appreciated it. She actually took the time to explain to me each of the Buddhas in the large temple. (My trip with the foreign affairs staff had been been the typical Chinese tour in accordance to Touring Rule #1: "Here's the Temple - Those are Buddhas - See? - - O.K.? Kuaidianr! let's go see the next site - Kuaidianr! - Back on the Bus!") We were able to climb along the cliffs and go off the main road which runs up the mountain. (I had tried to do the same thing last time but was "scolded" by Chen. "We are responsible for your safety. Come down off that hill Chuck"). So it was nice to take a relaxing stroll around the mountain and actually have many of the places' history and significance explained to me. I saw more spectacular sights - places that were missed on my previous trips because they were off the beaten path (too dangerous Teacher Chuck!) or weren't on the schedule. And we had fun climbing the Rope Bridges, which is an unknown part of the Bijia Shan Experience. It's a secret place I found at Bijia Shan with Class 97-4 and which I introduced to Cindy (who WORKS at Bijia Shan and never knew of it!) 
The Rope Bridges at Bijia Shan are a little known feature. They aren't on the Island but actually, on the coastline. You have to hike a ways along the coast past a lot of tacky touristy stuff until you come to a deep gorge that is criss-crossed by a dozen different kinds of Rope Bridges. I discovered it on my first trip to Bijia Shan when we had to kill 4 hours until the tide went out. Cindy snapped this picture of me crossing one of the bridges. Interestingly, no one else I have ever talked to knows about the place. And the three times I have been there, I and my friend(s) were the only ones there. It's a unique phenomenon in China-a tourist spot with no tourists! Which is GREAT!!! because every tourist spot in China (like most of China proper, itself) is jammed to the gills with people. SO let's keep the Rope Bridges a secret, O.K.? If you are going to Bijia Shan, drop me an e-mail and I'll tell you how to get there. We spent all morning on the Rope Bridges and much of the afternoon on the island. When we came back down, it looked as though the tide had been going out and we would be able to walk back in a while. So we sat on the sea shore at the bottom of the mountain for awhile. As you can probably tell sometimes in these Chuck @ China's, it can occasionally get frustrating or obnoxious with the constant staring, comments, or treatment we westerners sometimes get. And then something like that little sun-browned man who always seems to be running up to greet me every time I arrive back at Bijia Shan happens and I fall in love with the Chinese all over again. While Cindy and I sat there, another incident happened along the same lines. The last time I had visited, as I had started up the road at the base of the mountain with the foreign affairs staff, an older man came running over. I was smoking a cigarette and he was motioning that I couldn't smoke on the road. "This is outside," I'm thinking. This is China. Everyone (male) smokes - anywhere, everywhere, anytime and all the time. "What is this? Jacob's Field?" I asked. "Uh?" he said. (= Huh?) Apparently with the vegetation on the island and the carelessness of smokers, he was playing Smokey the Bear. So he motioned for me to sit down with him and I could finish my cigarette. ("Qing Zuo" (= Sit down, please!) is a favorite greeting to everyone in China. If I walk into our office to ask them a quick question, I am greeted with "Qing Zuo".) So I "Zuo'ed" and smoked my cigarette. I offered him one (another Chinese-protocol must) and he accepted. So he and I had sat and smoked that day saying nothing to each other as neither of us spoke the other's language. Now, sitting on the shore with Cindy, the man saw me and came over. "Qing Zuo", I asked him while I offered him a cigarette. So he sat with us for awhile and, with Cindy translating, told me that he was sorry about last time, but his boss was around and he felt bad that he had scolded me. But he was glad that I had sat with him and given him a cigarette. He said it was too bad that neither of us could talk to each other, but that he hoped I would return to Bijia Shan often and to consider him my friend. That is truly how the Chinese people are. [Ed. note: I have returned twice more to Bijia Shan since the beginning of fall and on the second occasion my old friend saw me, broke into a big smile and waved me over. We "Qing Zuo"'ed, smoked a couple of cigarettes together, ate peanuts and talked some more.] By now, the path looked to be fairly open all the way back to shore so we set off. Wouldn't you know it, though, when we reached that same old spot, the water was still a couple of inches (centimeters) deep so the line of people (this was a beautiful Saturday morning with lots of tourists) were slowly picking their way across the few emerged rocks. And wouldn't you know it, the line came to a stop. A woman in her fifties in a dress and high heels was trying to make her way through. But it wasn't working, so she just stopped on a strategic rock in the middle. I didn't care as I could get my feet wet (Reeboks dry fast) but Cindy had on, of course, leather shoes. Well a couple of boys in suits rolled up their pants and began picking up the bigger rocks and diverting the path around the woman so their girl friends wouldn't get their platform heels wet. So the whole line shifted that way and we began to move again. And then another magical moment happened as we neared the shore. I saw an old lady waving her arms wildly. And as I got closer, I saw that it was the clam lady from my previous trip - the one who had rented her rubber boots to us. Her ancient face had the biggest smile on it and she was waving to me. By now, Cindy and I were pretty hungry. I suggested that restaurant with the tall man. "Tai Gui Le" Cindy said. "Everybody says that, and no one has bothered to look at the menu," I said. "Anyway, I'm buying, so that's where we are eating." She had paid for the bus and had arranged for free admission for us to Bijia Shan through her office. So in we went. The owner and the staff fell all over themselves greeting us. This was the third time that they had seen me here, but the first time I would eat there. In fact they insisted I go back in the kitchen to see everything that they had available. So we went back in the kitchen where there were lots of fresh seafood and vegetables. I let Cindy order and we went back outside to wait. I had yet to see a menu - or prices. Soon, they were bringing out dishes and dishes of fresh food - different plates of stir-fried vegetables, a huge bowl of soup, rice, prawns (those ultra-jumbo shrimp) and, finally, a huge plate full of fresh crabs. Now I started worrying. The place also was a small hotel and that is what had given everybody the impression that the prices were exorbitant. I asked Cindy to tell the owner that I lived and taught in Jinzhou and to inquire about how much they would charge me if I wanted to come to Bijia Shan for a long weekend and stay there. Forty Yuan if I wanted my own room or 10 Yuan if I shared a room with three other people, she said. (In China, most hotels away from the big cities operate this way. You share a room with 3 other complete strangers. If you want your own room, you have to pay for 4 people.) Well, dinner was delicious and I asked for the check ("Xiaojie! Mai Dan!" (= Miss! Check Please! Literally, "Little Sister, I want to pay the tab" ). I figured between my negotiating skills and Cindy's bargaining skills we might get it down to 100 Yuan. Perhaps. So imagine my surprise when they said 36 Yuan. I had to blink twice. "Do they mean 360?" I asked Cindy. "No," she said, "they mean 36." "American dollars?" I asked Cindy. "No, Chinese dollars," she said. Then she added, "Boy, they must really like you. They wouldn't even charge Chinese that little." As I've said before, China is full of surprises. And the people, once they know you, are the kindest people on earth. And, perhaps Bijia Shan really was built by magical fairies.
XING CHENG SEASIDE - LOOKING SOUTH
Low cliffs and small rocky outposts can be seen jutting out from the shore.
Two small pagodas linked by an ancient bridge are visible in this picture.
The souvenir stands and amusement park are not.
The School Calendar in China is quite different from the one I am accustomed to in the States. While the school year starts in late August, it runs straight through into January here when the semester ("the term") ends. There is then a long break ("holiday") for the Chinese New Year and Spring Festival. (I am told that at my College, they will give the western teachers Christmas Day off. seeing as it is our biggest holiday; so big, in fact, that some restaurants here which aspire to "westerness" have Christmas themes year-round - Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman statues, Merry Christmas written in large letters across the wall, and Christmas music playing on the sound system. Nothing like hearing Jingle Bells playing in the middle of June or someone singing Silent Night on the Karaoke system on a hot summer night to conjure up images of home!) Spring term begins in late February and runs through the middle of July. Summer Holiday lasts about 7 weeks before they do it all again. As a teacher, you have to like the more balanced school year - except those 85 degree classes in late June and early July. But though the semester (term) breaks are shorter, there are some longer holiday breaks during the term. The big ones are October 1 (National Day celebrating "New China" - Mao declared China's independence on October 1, 1949) and May 1 (China's Labor Day or, as we call it in the West, May Day). Those breaks last about 10 days. And so it was that last May I found myself with a 10 day holiday. School had been very busy and I was carrying a large (by American standards) teaching load 16 hours and 330 students. I had just given exams in 4 of my 8 classes so I would have a 6 inch stack of papers to grade. With that work load, I had found it difficult to do any real learning of my own - I had spent virtually no time on any real Chinese language study. The little vocabulary I had was picked up by osmosis from walking around Jinzhou and going to the stores to buy necessities I wanted to spend at least part of my break working on my Chinese. (I'll write more about the Chinese language in a future Chuck in China). Around school, where there were a couple of other foreign teachers and many students and staff who spoke English (to varying degrees), it was too easy to rely on English. I wanted to get some immersion training - go off on my own, away from the school and from Jinzhou - and see if I could survive on my own. I asked Chen, our foreign affairs officer, if there were any interesting nearby towns. He told me about a small city that was an hour south of us on the Bo Hai Sea. It is called Xing Cheng and it has three prominent features, he said: It has a nice seashore, it is home to a number of hot-spring spas, and it's ancient original walled portion is still completely intact. It sounded perfect. And, as it happened, the College had just purchased a complex there that had at one time been used to be a retirement place for old teachers. The school was planning to clean the place up and open a branch campus there for the upcoming school term. So Chen arranged it so I could stay at the newly purchased complex. So I hopped on a bus to Xingcheng - my first solo bus trip. The public bus I took to get there had, I think, seen action in Korea in the fifties. Luckily, it was relatively empty - only about 50 people in a bus that seats 50. The other good thing was you could smoke on the bus so the two hours it took to go 60 kms.. was bearable. (Traffic slows down when the donkeys clog up the berm so the vehicles can't pass four across on the two- lane country roads. Though I keep mentioning the traffic, it is impossible to describe how bad the driving is here. It would absolutely horrify the most hardened American drivers. Despite any descriptions I may give, you just can't imagine it until you have seen it first-hand. I do not exaggerate when I say that any 4 block drive entails no less than 15 or 20 cut-offs, close calls, wrong lane passes, left turns from the right lane, left and right turns from the center lane and right turns from the left lane all through a steady line of bicycle traffic. China's roads are so crowded with bicycle, scooter, and car traffic (mostly busses, taxis and black, government cars) that the drivers use a totally different system then ours for turning onto a street or making a left turn. They just go. They don't wait for traffic to clear ('cuz it never clears). So they just go. It doesn't matter if a truck is coming in the opposite direction; they just turn left into the path of the truck and through the line of bicycle traffic. The real rule here (and the reason there aren't more accidents) is that the oncoming traffic just gives way, or cuts over into another lane where THAT oncoming traffic gives way. In other words, it is expected that everyone will cut you off. Because you are cutting everyone else off. If China had Miami's road rage (and people were allowed to carry guns), it's population would be halved in the course of a week. If you think I exaggerate, ask anyone who's been here. Better yet, come see for yourself. You learn to just not watch where your driver is going. He's not - so why should you? (For more fun facts on driving in China see Road Rules later in this issue.) So I arrived in Xing Cheng safely on a Tuesday. The sale of the complex had closed on Monday so some of the school's administrators and faculty were staying there. I didn't know they would be there. I had wanted to get away and practice my Chinese. As it turned out, it was great practice since no one in the group spoke any English beyond "hello", "goodbye", and "bottoms up". They invited me to all their meals where they engaged in repeated toasts with shots of that same nasty liquor I wrote about in Chuck in China 2 (St. Patrick's Day). The custom at meals in China is that if you are drinking beer or liquor, someone must propose a toast every two minutes or so. And the toast requires a "ganbei" where the toastor drinks his entire glass and turns it over to show he has finished it. The toastees all follow suit. In this way, the toastor and the toastees all become toasted in a relatively short period of time. This would occur at dinnertime. I only ate lunch once with them but I toasted only once - out of politeness. (Unlike many lawyers, I never learned to drink my lunches.) But I drew the line at breakfast. Custom or not, politeness or not, I was not going to engage in this behavior at 8 a.m. In other words (bad pun 500 feet ahead:) I skipped the *ahem* morning toast. Despite the fact that no one else spoke English and I spoke very little Chinese, I enjoyed these meals and these men. They truly went out of there way to make me feel welcome. And I found that as I listened to them, I began to pick up bits of the conversation - words I could recognize here and there. I felt I had begun to make some progress. Another nice thing, aside from the meals, they left me to my work as they had meetings about the deal. They arranged to have their driver take me to the seashore one day and to the ancient town the other two days. They persuaded me (in Chinese) to stay an extra day so I could ride back to Jinzhou on the College bus. That bus is new but the ride is the same - thrills and chills for two hours. The place reminded me, of all things, of an old convent. Much like Ursuline College - buildings and gardens out in the country. It even had a large sculpture of a woman wearing, suspiciously, what looked to be a nun's habit. But I learned that it was a sculpture of a famous nursing teacher. Nurses here wear head-dresses. The whole complex comprised about 6 main buildings with two apartment buildings for the on-premises workers. It had a hot-spring spa but it wasn't available to us since the place had been closed for awhile pending it's sale. My room had a "western-style" toilet. True, it hadn't been cleaned in about 2 years, but it still enabled me to postpone the inevitable "Hole". (Five months gone and I've yet to use The Hole for No. 2. So the countdown continues.) While my room had a shower, the shower and sink water lines were not operational. (Luckily, the toilet's was though it initially required 10 minutes of scrubbing to make it usable.) They had provided me with two thermoses (thermi?) of hot water, a metal wash basin, and a hand-towel. So morning showers for the next three days consisted of filling the wash basin with boiling water at bedtime so that it would cool to lukewarm by morning. When I woke up, I splashed myself with water (the floor was linoleum) and lathered up. Then I shampooed my hair and used a teacup to rinse it out into the basin. Finally I would shave, then pick up the whole basin, carry it into the bathroom and dump the whole thing over my head on the tile floor for the final rinse. Then I would dry-off (a real misnomer) with the hand-towel. I have since learned that most Chinese travel with only a hand-towel and that is about the largest towel you'll get in "non-western" Chinese hotels. Regular size bath towels are difficult to find even in the largest department stores. Anyway, after this whole procedure, I dragged the mop around the room and bathroom to dry off the floor. So much for western amenities. My time was spent sitting in the gardens and grading a slew of papers in the afternoons and early evenings and I did some work on my Chinese at night. (My Waiban [= Foreign Affairs Director] told me when I got back that they had received a call from one of the administrators who had said "Boy, that foreigner worked hard on his vacation.") But I also set aside half a day each day for Xing Cheng. It was an interesting place. On the shores of the Bohai Sea, about 4 kms. away from where I was staying was the Xing Cheng Haibin (= "Seaside"). It is famous in this area for it's hot-spring spa resorts. These were, to a large extent private areas (or at least available only for guests of the resort. But their was a large public beach perhaps a mile long. The southern end of the beach had beautiful cliffs and coves and small pagodas but the middle part was very commercial - like a Chinese "Euclid Beach" - lots of restaurants and souvenir shops along the street behind the beach. And there was even an amusement park just off the beach. It had some cheesy rides (Tilt-A-Whirls and Dodge-Ems and such). It featured a fun house (closed for the season). In America, there's usually a fat, laughing lady at the fun house. Here it was a fat, laughing Buddha (but then all Buddhas are fat, I guess). You literally walked through his mouth to enter the fun house. Recalling the amusement park at Bijia Shan, I wondered why the Chinese felt it necessary to spoil these naturally beautiful places with amusement parks and all manner of tacky souvenir hawking. So I kept walking up the beach, farther and farther, until I was past the commercial stuff. It didn't look promising. The line of restaurants and shops stretched as far as I could see to where the shore looked as if it turned out to the sea. Still I walked. After about a mile I was about ready to head back. But I came upon a gate. It looked like a guarded gate, but no one said anything so I walked through expecting at any moment to be challenged. On the other side were a few small authentic seafood places. This must be where the locals eat. Suddenly I found and found myself on an old pier. It reminded me of the old Ninth Street Pier in Cleveland. To my right was the sea - the pier was a wall holding back the sea. To my left was a large sheltered cove protected by the sea wall I was standing on. And I saw a most incredible sight: fishing boats as old as Mao were lying at anchor all about the cove. About a half-dozen were tied-up at the wall. They were badly weather-beaten but I could see that they were fully geared so they are still being used. And sitting against the pilings on the pier were about 15 or 20 college-aged people painting the boats and the scene. I had stumbled onto the Xing Cheng "Left Bank". It was quite a view - creaky old wooden boats lying at port, here and there fishermen sitting on their boats repairing their nets, and young people painting (quite good) paintings of the whole scene. (Whether they were painting these for sale to tourists or as class assignments I did not know. But I suspect the latter given their demeanor and the fact that not a single person tried to get me to buy one or even registered any awareness of my presence.) I wandered back down the pier after awhile and took a little road that seemed to run up the hill from the seaside between large brick warehouses which served the fishing fleet (storage, repair, supplies, etc. from what it looked like). It reminded me a lot of one of the obscure roads that runs out of the flats near Tremont and I began walking up it. About a quarter of a mile up, the road became paved and their were high fences on both sides with manicured tree-gardens beyond the fences. I had wandered into a resort area for the privileged because soon I passed a heavily guarded gate. I kept walking and came to the main road which was likewise guarded - but I was walking out, not in. They looked at me kind of funny, but I just smiled and kept walking. No one questioned me or challenged me. I was back on the main road. There were a lot of high-end hotels along this road. I guess this must be the summer resort for many of the officials in the area. Not wanting to re-visit the amusement park, I hailed a passing cab and returned to my room - just in time to be summoned for lunch with the "boys". It had been an interesting morning. The ancient city was the highlight of my trip to Xing Cheng. Xing Cheng is growing with lots of new construction and some high-end hotels and resorts near the seaside. But inland, about 8 kms. from the sea, they have retained intact the original ancient city which dates back some 500 years (that's pre-Colombian, folks). The whole old part is surrounded by a 30 foot wall with 4 story pagoda gates at the 4 compass points of the wall. The walled city is about 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile square. The city wall was built during the Ming Dynasty (which lasted from 1368 to 1644). When the Ming weren't making vases, they were building walls. Much of The Great Wall was rebuilt during this period. The Xingcheng wall was built to protect the city from attacks by the Qing Army (a/k/a the Manchus). The Qing finally conquered the Ming and established the Qing Dynasty (a/k/a the Manchu Dynasty; a/k/a the last Chinese dynasty; which is the derivation of Manchuria of which Jinzhou and area was a part and which will be the subject of an upcoming Chuck in China). The Qing dynasty would last from 1644 until 1912. So the wall was probably built in the early 1600's - around the time the English were establishing the first permanent colony in North America at Jamestown if you need a western history reference point. There is a tall pagoda tower in the exact middle of the 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile walled city. The streets are very narrow and the only access in or out is through the each of the four gates. For some stupid reason, they let cars and small trucks in through the gates. The tunnel passages through the gates are only about 15 feet wide so to get in or out through the gates is a real pain when cars, taxis, mini-vans, bikes and scooters are all attempting ingress and egress at the same time. But, hey, that's traffic in China. On the street level, all the shops have "90's" facades and sell clothes, CD's and junk. But if you look up to the second floor you can see that the buildings are ancient - only the first floor has been remodeled into shops. (In China there are no zoning laws much less any "historical district preservation" groups). It was really cool to be in this ancient place. You could look down the main road, through the tunnel of the central pagoda, and see the ancient gate on the opposite wall. Life was pretty much like this back then, you can imagine. Only the vehicles and the products for sale had changed. And off the main streets, the white-washed walls of the ancient brick buildings down narrow, crooked alleys looked much the same, I imagined, as they did 350 years ago. 
XING CHENG ANCIENT CITY WALL
The entire Xing Cheng City Wall still stands intact today
one of the few ancient city walls in China extant.
Built during the late Ming Dynasty (circa 1600's) to protect Xing Cheng
from constant Manchu raids, eventually the Ming's lost.
The Manchus' established the "Last Chinese Dynasty" - the Qing Dynasty.
This is the East Gate - one of only four gates which provide entry into Old Xing Cheng.
I stopped in a bookstore in search of a good English/Chinese/Pinyin dictionary. They didn't have one, but they had a wall poster with basic Chinese characters. I asked, in Chinese, if they had one for sale. It was time to see if my lessons amounted to much. Somehow, the words came out of my mouth. And somehow, they understood me. I easily understood their response. "Mei You". "No". (See Chuck in China 2.) But then something strange happened. I began to understand their follow-up questions. My immersion program was paying off. I had a 10 minute conversation with the two women who owned the store. They asked where I was from and why was I in Xingcheng and, when they found out I lived in Jinzhou and that I was a teacher, how much money I earned and where was my wife (these are two of the Six Standard Questions which I will cover in a future Chuck in China). Since there is no college in Xing Cheng, a primary reason why my College wants to open a campus there, they were greatly impressed that a college professor had visited their bookstore. They pulled out a book they had on Sino-American relations and began asking me to identify all the people in the pictures. Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Mao Zedong were no-brainers. But when I correctly identified Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng, they were duly impressed. The next thing I knew, Boss Number 1 was taking the Chinese poster down off the wall. (In China everyone likes to number themselves - students who share a dorm room will number themselves, family members, co-workers, and co-owners alike. So, for example, my sister Kathy would refer to herself as "Sister Number 2", my old college roommate Rock would be "Number 1". It's generally based on age) Now Boss Number 2 was stamping the name of the bookstore on the poster, rolling it up, and handing it to me. Had I won a Xing Cheng Jeopardy game or something? Boss Number 1 said (in Chinese), "We are happy that you have visited our store. You are the first western teacher to have come here. We are giving you this poster so you will remember us and visit again." ("Women hen gaoxing wode shudian ni lai le. Ni shi diyi de waiguorende laoshi. Women gei ni zhe ge . Ni hui lai ma?".) (I think it translates thusly: "We are happy you have visisted our bookstore as you are the first foreign teacher to have done so. Here, we give you this thing. Will you come back to see us again?) Or something like that. I was able to pick up the key words though. What better place then in a 500 year old shop to discover that, finally, my Chinese lessons were starting to pay off. (UPDATE: A year and a half later, I did return to Xingcheng. And I made a point to find that bookstore again in the crowded streets of Xingcheng. I found it and WAHHH!!!! weren't they surprised when I came back. The poster BTW has followed me all around China and is always taped on the wall above my desk.)
I'll close this Travel Issue of Chuck in China with some interesting facts, figures and numbers I have assembled (or made up) regarding traffic and driving in China. - 1,300,000,000 - Number of people in China.
- 1,299,999,999 - Number of bicycles in China - no way I'm gonna ride one here.
- 2 - Average number of people riding on one bicycle after 6:00 p.m.
- 5 - Largest family size I have seen riding one bicycle in China - Husband pedaling, baby on cross-bar, wife side saddle on rear holding small child on lap and last child straddling rear wheel between husband and wife.
- 0 - Number of helmets and/or safety equipment bicycling families wear.
- 150 - Average percent buses exceed their seating capacity on any given route.
- 2 - Number of actual accidents I have witnessed on the roads in 5 months in China.
- 1,000 - Number of near-accidents I have witnessed in 5 months in China.
- 0 - Number of actual accidents I have been in 5 months in China.
- 25 - Number of near-accidents I have been in in 5 months in China.
- 0 - Number of near-accidents that taxis and buses I was riding in have had since I learned not to watch the road when riding in a taxi or bus.
- 0 - Number of stop signs in Jinzhou. A city that is the same size as Cleveland.
- 0 - Number of stop signs I have seen in all of China
- 6 - Number of traffic lights in Jinzhou. A city that is the same size as Cleveland.
- 60 - Number of seconds between lights in Beijing. They have this ingenious system in Beijing where a digital display next to the traffic light shows how many seconds before the light changes.
- 3 - Colors on a typical Chinese traffic light: Green, Yellow, Red.
- 1 - Colors that matter on a typical Chinese traffic light: Green .
- 4 - Number of color shades of motor vehicles in China.
- Red - Standard color of all taxi's in China
- White - Standard color of Police vehicles in China.
- Blue - Standard color of buses and trucks in China.
- Black - Standard color of government officials cars in China.
- 16 - Average number of black (government) cars that park on a public sidewalk in front of a restaurant that has 40 feet of frontage.
- 300% -The mark-up that taxi drivers try to charge foreigners in China.
- 40 -The price touristing foreigners willingly pay for a 10 Yuan cab ride in China (see previous entry).
- 0 - Standard tip for taxi drivers in China.
- 0 - Expected tip for taxi drivers in China.
- 0 - Road Rage kills in China in one year.
- 600,000,000 - Projected Road Rage Kills if Miami were in China.
- 4 - Number of 4-wheeled vehicles traveling in the same direction on a two-lane road which can (and will) pass abreast of each other at the same time (includes the berm).
- 7 - Number of 2,3,4,6 and 18-wheeled vehicles traveling in the same direction on a two-lane road which can (and occasionally will) pass abreast of each other at the same time (counting motor scooters shooting the gaps).
- 10 - Number of years the most experienced drivers in China have been driving cars.
- 1 - Number of years the AVERAGE driver, regardless of chronological age, has been driving in China.
- 2 - Number of brake lights on average Chinese car.
- 0 - Number of working brake lights on average Chinese car.
- 4 - Number of turn signals on average Chinese car (front and back).
- None - Rate of turn signal usage in China.
- None - Effective Speed Limit on any given street or highway in China
- "It saves gas" - Number 1 reason given by drivers why they turn off their engines at (the rare) traffic lights (which is probably the reason they have those timers in Beijing).
- "It saves gas" - Number 1 reason why drivers turn off their engines when going down a long hill or mountain.
- "It saves gas" - Number 1 reason given by drivers why they don't use their headlights at night (I swear this is true! They don't often don't use them and they say this is why!).
- And the number one Rule of the Road in China (as my fellow teacher George Rosecrans posited):
M x V2=ROW
(vehicle)Mass x (vehicle)Velocity 2 = (vehicle)Right Of Way
If you don't believe me, come to China and see for yourself. Or take a look at this picture. Hope you enjoyed this issue of Chuck in China.
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