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