April 15 - Our visit to Confucious

We know.  You don't think we ever work.  We really do, we just compress our teaching into Monday - Wednesday, then work really hard during free time to prepare for our next lessons.  And then find a way each week to do some exploring.  This week we went to visit Mt. Tai and Qufu, historic areas only a 4 hour high-speed train ride from home.

Tai'an, a city of about 5.5 million people (not very big by Chinese standards), is a beautiful place at the base of some important mountains. The Five Great Mountains of China include Mt. Tai, which is just over 5000 feet high and has been associated with sunrise, birth, and renewal for 3000 years - a place of worship for emperors and now for common people. To get to the top of Mt. Tai there are 3 options: 1) 7,777 steps to the top;  2) take a shuttle bus part way up, skipping the first 4000 steps; and 3) take a cable car up skipping the next 3000 steps.  Our tour group took both options 2 and 3 so we would only have a few hundred steps to see the peak.

A bunch of BYU China teachers in front of Mt. Tai

The cable path

The hiking path

We could have spent the day climbing, but we chose to swing through the sky. Unfortunately, when we got to the top we found a huge line of people. Apparently we chose an especially auspicious time to visit Mt. Tai. And one of the cable car lines down was closed due to an accident. Our guide was worried about the time, so we didn't go any further or even look around much before we joined all those people in that line. We would have been in favor of hiking down rather than standing in line, but the group voted to stand. So we made more Chinese friends, including a man who was having a 40 year reunion with his buddies from the Chinese army.

A portion of the line to get down

Taking home a rock from Mt. Tai is supposed to bring good luck,
as well as support the local economy. We found a very small
shard from Mt. Tai (without writing) at the base of a tree. We feel
pretty lucky as it is. 

Finishing our visit to Mt. Tai at sunset

That night we stayed in Qufu, the hometown of Confucious, who lived about 500 BC. The three most famous cultural sites of the city are the Temple of Confucius, the Kong Family (Confucius' descendants) Mansion, and the Cemetery of Confucius.

The area is full of ancient Cypress trees labeled
with their ages:  over 1000 years old, between
500 and 1000 years old, and less than 500.
One was planted by Confucius. This one is called
the dragon tree.

Notice that the sign says to not touch the tree. But it's good luck!

This is the well from Confucius' home. His home is gone,
but the well is still there.

Ceremonial dress at the temple of Confucius.

We found ourselves next to of a line
of people participating in a ceremony. They're
dedicating themselves, in the best way they know,
to live good lives. It was moving.

We couldn't visit the temple because of the big ceremony, but we
heard the music and saw the banners and smoke from the incense.
The atmosphere was one of solemnity and virtue.

The Kong family used this washboard-like area to
punish people by making them kneel on it for several hours.
Our guide said his father had him do something similar
when he did not do well on his tests in school.

Even the garbage cans blend architecturally.

This man tried to carry on a conversation with Kathy, showing
her his passport which had a stamp for Malaysia.

Lots of kids on field trips visit the area.

And they haven't seen many white people. John was a celebrity.

 After we visited the temple and the mansion, we went on a horse-drawn carriage ride to the cemetery of Confucius' descendants (over 100,000 - the most recent from the 78th generation). It covers approximately 1 square mile, approximately 500 acres. We knew it would be huge, but it was very different than what we expected. There are some very important grave sites guarded by large stone figures, but for the most part our shuttle bus drove through an incredibly peaceful forest of Cypress trees (more than 10,000), seeing mounds covered with clouds of purple flowers. The mounds are burial places; people add dirt to show honor to the people buried there. After 20 years someone else is buried in the same mound. No new gravestones have been allowed since 1949.

It was a wonderful weekend outing to a beautiful part of China, both visually and culturally.

April 8, 2018 - Navigating China

Okay, time for a little story (after a brief discussion of transportation here).

We use the subway a lot.  It's convenient and efficient, as long as you don't mind massive crowds.   Sometimes we'll take a taxi if we are carrying a heavy load (like when our microwave broke and we went to purchase a new one, or like when we're hauling a crock pot full of food to the church for a luncheon). On Wednesdays, we teach English to 40-100 medical professionals and medical students at a hospital, and we usually take a taxi, because that is one place that takes longer on the subway. Taxis are relatively inexpensive.

We can use a "Didi" app to order a taxi on a phone.  It's pretty simple, really. Especially for non-Chinese speakers.  You put a pin on the pickup location and a pin on your destination.  A driver accepts and shows up.  They already know where you want to go by the pin, so no language skills are needed.  As they never speak any English, this works well.  We usually use it to order a taxi, as then it's on a meter and we know how much we owe, also without needing Chinese language skills.  You can also just order a Didi driver like ordering an Uber driver. On the day we're discussing, John orders a Didi driver instead of a taxi driver.  Same concept, except no meter - there was an estimated price, and they had a  discount, so it would be about 30 RMB instead of the regular 40 RMB for a taxi.  We got to the street, our pickup location, and the phone rang.

This is never good.  It means the Chinese-speaking driver is going to talk in Chinese.  And we won't understand each other.  So, John hands his phone to the girl working at "The Fry Hut."  They have English on the menu and usually speak some English even though they are Chinese.  She talked to the driver in Chinese - for quite a while - then gave his phone back and came out of the store.  She went down the street a couple of stores to the dry cleaner's to get the woman that works there.  They talked to each other in Chinese (turns out to translate what the driver said to John) and then the woman from the cleaners told him that the driver was stuck in traffic, so he needed to cancel the order and request a new driver.

John does this. And Didi evidently hasn't canceled the order or something, as when he requests a new trip, he gets the same driver.  Then his phone rings.  It's the driver.  He speaks Chinese.  John hands his phone to the girl in the Fry Hut.  She talks to the driver.  Then comes out of her store, goes down the street to get the woman from the cleaners.  She comes out to talk to John.  The order hasn't cancelled.  He needs to cancel the order and start over.  Didi doesn't seem to really cancel the order.  The driver knows he's not coming.  John knows he's not coming.  The app doesn't seem to know this or want to know this.  So, we give up.  We hail a taxi the old fashioned way.  John shows this driver a map of where we want to go.  He doesn't speak English - no surprise.  He takes us to the hospital.

On the way, John gets four phone calls from the Didi driver.  He doesn't answer any of them.  Nobody in this taxi is going to translate anything to English for us.  Answering will be frustrating for all involved.  He keeps ignoring the calls.  After four calls, a new number calls.  John isn't fooled.  It's still going to be regarding the Didi trip.  He doesn't answer - just replies with a message "I can't talk, please text me."  This happens a couple of times.  Then he gets a text.  Didi has cancelled our trip request.  Good.  Exactly, but he is also told to "please leave your phone open next time."  It all works out eventually.  We did get to the hospital and taught our class.

A few more "life in China" examples, in pictures.

Pickups trucks don't seem to exist.  But bicycles with a pickup style bed do.  And they haul everything.  Pipes, furniture, water bottles - anything and everything.

Seen going down the sidewalk by our apartment.

How water gets delivered to our apartment.  Oh, and notice he is on his phone...

A moving "truck"

There is a University Restaurant next door to our apartment. And a camphor tree outside our kitchen window.  And a relationship between the two.  Every once in a while, workers from the restaurant bring a ladder and a bucket to harvest leaves and take them to the restaurant.  We have no idea what happens next.

Brooms used by workers to clean sidewalks or streets are made of bushy branches.  They seem to be rather effective.  They are the only style we ever see being used out of doors. They're used daily, all year long. 

The motorcycles and electric bicycles are often dressed up.  Usually, the purpose is to keep hands warm in the winter, deflect rain or chilly air, etc. but the colors and creativity are interesting.  Some as simple as using bubble packing envelopes to protect the hands.  Some much more colorful and decorative....

The quilted fabric creates a shield for the legs and body of the
driver, whose hands slide into the mitts on the handlebars. It's
a coat shared by driver and cycle.

To finish this week's update - a new picture of campus. Our campus changes every week.  Not always a new building, but always new colors.  We surely enjoy the variety and beauty!

Have a great week wherever YOU are! 

April 1, 2018 - Easter and Tomb-sweeping Day

This was quite the week!  Aprils Fools, LDS General Conference, Easter, and Tomb-sweeping Day!

April Fools Day was pretty mild, at least by our standards.  John loves pranks and almost let this one pass - but couldn't.  So those of you who would be disappointed if we did not give you a report on his pranking, here it is. First thing in the morning he sent a list of 100 U.S. SAT vocabulary words to his students and told them they would be tested on the definitions this week.  Some panicked.  Some were suspicious that it might be an April Fool's joke.  So, yes, they are aware of this strange holiday.  And yes, he then let them know they didn't have to look up all those words, but not until hours later.

No joke - it was LDS world-wide General Conference on Sunday, April 1.  But 10 a.m. in Utah is midnight Sunday night here - so we didn't watch it on the 1st.  As a result, we had regular church services that day. Sunday, April 8 was our General Conference Sunday.  But April 1 was Easter!  A wonderful, glorious day!  We invited several people to come have Easter dinner with us.  We bought 5 hams (each about the size of a fist), "funeral potatoes" (a cheesy casserole made with hashed brown potatoes, if you aren't familiar with this term), a smoked salmon cheese ball, asparagus (plentiful, right now), homemade rolls, deviled eggs, and strawberry shortcake (strawberries plentiful, delicious, and cheap!).  Delicious dinner and wonderful discussion.  One girl brought a guitar and some singing broke out!  It was a wonderful Easter!

If it looks like they are all on their phones, it's because it was a group,
interactive online game we had them playing while dinner finished.

Our dinner group, plus John, who is taking the picture. 15 in our little living room.

It's interesting how holidays work here.  If a holiday is near a weekend, the day between the holiday and the weekend will be designated as a "non-working day" to extend the holiday.  But then this extra day has to be made up - on a Saturday or Sunday.  This week, Thursday, April 5 was Chingming Festival or "Tomb-sweeping Day" where the ancestors are honored and the tombs are swept.  Usually (pretend) paper money is burned, and flowers and/or food are placed at the tomb.  People who got Friday off had to make it up by working on Sunday, April 8. It meant that banks were open on April 8 since they were closed on April 6.   This happens on many holidays and will happen again the end of April when May 1 is the holiday.  April 30 is the bridge day, and people have to work April 28 to make up for the Monday off work.  Ah, China!

What the holiday meant for us is that we went on another trip.  We left after teaching class on Wednesday, April 4, and flew to Chongqing in the center of China.  We boarded a ship for a cruise down the Yantze River.  Over the next 3 days we cruised the reservoir created by the Three Gorges Dam and passed through all three gorges.  Which were gorgeous!  Is that where that word comes from?

Ours is the ship on the right.  We often would dock next to
 another ship and walk through that ship to go on a shore excursion.

Each day had a couple of side excursions, to an ancient monument, pagoda, or such.  All of the cities along this water are "new." 1.3 million people were relocated to higher ground from areas that were to become flooded by the dam project.  So, Fengdu was moved and now it is "New Fengdu," which is made up of high-rise apartments, all less than 20 years old. But important religious and historical sites were preserved. Some are now on islands rather than peninsulas, though.

First stop was to visit the Ghost City, 2000 years old, where a temple represents how deeds of good and evil are judged. Many interesting statues are here, along with a depiction of what various levels of hell are like.  And then there is the Naihe Bridge, where couples are to pass hand-in-hand - in 9 steps or less - for your marriage to last forever. Under it lies the Blood River Pool, into which the evil are cast.

The fence around the Blood River Pool

Whew! We made it across in 9 steps - even in the rain!

We also had a stop at the Shibaozhai Pagoda.  The base of this pagoda would be under water, with the dam being built, but was preserved by the government building a retaining wall around it so that we have access to the base.  And we climbed all 9 stories to the top - over 100 steps - getting narrower with each level.  It's not wooden on all 4 sides, as it's built against the side of the cliff, so one wall is stone.

Shibaozhai Pagoda

The suspended swinging bridge to the pagoda

Our ship, from a window of the pagoda

The next day was a stop at the Baidi or "White Emperor City."  It is said that the warlord Gongsun Shu saw a white dragon of mist here, so he thought this was a good sign and declared himself the White Emperor of Chengja.  The White Emperor City is also the "Land of poetry in China" because of numerous poets coming here to write poetry inspired by the beautiful scenery.  And it's at the entrance to the magnificent kui-gate or Qutang Gorge, which is the image on the back of the 10 RMB note.

The peninsula that is now an island

The gorge matches the picture on the bill

After we passed through the other two gorges, we boarded a smaller ship for a scenic trip up the Shennong Stream, where we transferred to sampan boats, about 15 of us on a boat with 5 boatmen and a tour guide from the minority group Tujia.  Before the dam was built, small boats were pulled up the shallow rapids by naked men called "trackers" who tied a bamboo rope to the boat and pulled the boat up-steam from the river bank. They reenact this for the tourists, only they now wear clothes, and the river is no longer shallow.

The rowers are perfectly in sync. Notice how the oars are
in two parts - a blade lashed to a pole.

Along the way, we were able to observe one of the "cliff coffins" of the Ba people 2000 years ago. A son was dutiful if he buried his elder in a high cave. How they got these heavy coffins (hardwood logs) in place remains a mystery.

The coffin is just above the green laser pointer

A close-up of the coffin perched on the logs in the crevice

And we made it to the Three Gorges Dam where our trip ended, except for an 8 hour train ride back to Shanghai.  The dam construction began in 1994 and the dam body was completed in 2009, with some generators  being added later and the ship lift being completed in 2015.  It is the world's largest electrical generating station.  The dam is 1.3 miles across.  It backs up water for nearly 400 miles. It was built a) to control flooding; b) the generate power; and c) to improve river navigation. 

At the Three Gorges Dam

Model of the dam and ship locks

Ships in the ship lock

A wonderful thing about the train ride home - we were able to observe a lot of countryside, including many burial spots along the way.  It was hard to get pictures from the window of a speeding train, but we observed so many of these small family plots and pagodas decorated for Tomb-sweeping day. A great way to end our holiday trip!

Some were in groupings like this; some were single mounds at the
edge of a field or even in the middle of it. At any other time of
year we would not have recognized some of these as graves.

And a single pagoda out in the field

March 25, 2018 - Serendipity

"I'll bet no one in this country has ever eaten this before!" said Kathy one night. And she was probably right. We had picked up a chunk of roasted pork leg the last time we were visiting Zhujiajiao, the ancient water town with lots of vendors selling everything from pork trotters to wooden combs (See our post of Nov 19 to see pictures of pork trotters). The day we pulled it out of the freezer to try it, we decided it was a bit dry. And the spice on it wasn't our favorite. So the next night we shredded it, put it in corn tortillas (that we brought back from the States), added green enchilada sauce (that we brought back from the States) and cheese.  Pork leg green enchiladas! Very tasty!

This week we share with you more details showing how serendipitous life in Shanghai can be! You never know what you're going to find (or create). Besides teaching:

we explored Century Park one afternoon when we had a couple of hours,

We've known this park existed for a long time. But we finally went to see it,
and it was in full bloom.

Serendipity means renting a four-pedal conveyance with which to explore the park. Sadly, as we were learning to maneuver it, we did bump into one poor soul. 

We often find wonderful children to
interact with. They gave John one
of their blossoms.

we met up with Jared Barnard and his family at the world’s largest Starbucks - Jared worked with John 20 years ago at American Express and now lives in Singapore,

we happened upon an alley that serves as an art gallery,

we found a puppet museum at a theater where puppet shows are presented (we didn't go to a puppet show; Tammie was looking for a "Monkey King" puppet that we had serendipitously seen being carried by a child on the street),

Puppetry has a long tradition in China, from paper-thin, lacy looking puppets
shown as shadows behind a sheet to these very  large and ornate puppets. 

and John found Easter lilies for Kathy.

In other news: this week we found that the camphor tree outside our apartment that stayed green all winter is now losing its leaves - but has new growth, too. We enjoy watching the chefs from the nearby restaurant periodically come set up a ladder to pick camphor leaves, although we're not sure what they do with them...

Every morning a worker sweeps the leaves off
the driveway next to this lawn, using a broom
made of branches of leaves.

We also were invited to a concert on campus. Music is, indeed, the universal language.

"The Eurasia Silk Road Influenced by German Music" - Huan Qi playing
Albeniz, Debussy, Chen Pei-Xun, Zhang Zhao, and Rachmaninoff.

On Tuesday night we supervised a lively English Corner discussion led by English Club staff members. They had recruited a lot of students from across campus to come to our regular English Corner to practice their speaking and listening.

It was an enjoyable evening.

We had a hotpot dining experience with some Chinese friends who had gotten married the day before.

It's nice to go with people who can read the menu and who know
the cuisine. Plus, they're a cute couple.

And we stayed up until midnight on March 31 (10 am Utah time) to participate in the worldwide conference of the LDS Church, the "solemn assembly," a sacred meeting where we sustained a new prophet to lead the church.  What a blessing to be part of this wonderful meeting and see the energy, vision, leadership, and inspiration of a 93-year old prophet!  He and his wife are going on a global ministry tour April 10-23 and will visit 8 cities in 11 days:

• London, England
• Jerusalem, Israel
• Nairobi, Kenya
• Harare, Zimbabwe
• Bengalaru, India
• Bangkok, Thailand
• Hong Kong, China
• Honolulu, Hawaii

We are amazed!  That is a challenging schedule for a person at any age!!!

Russell M. Nelson, 17th president and prophet of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

We are grateful that there is a prophet on the earth today, just as there was in times of old.  The Lord loves the people of the earth as much as He ever has!