Anyway, in this post I will be bringing you photos from the May Day holiday at Qufu Normal University, as well as from my trip to Qingdao, a seaside city a little north of here.
The Qufu Campus Sports Meet
The May Day holiday on campus is marked by the campus sports meet. Basically, it's a track meet Olympics held between all the different departments on campus. Each department selects students (mostly freshmen and sophomores) to compete in various track and field events, and a group of students from each department also puts on a performance to open the meet.
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| The start of the opening ceremony parade |
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| The students marching by department |
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| The foreign students didn't quite get the marching down, but still had a good time |
I think being a part of the crowd was the best part of the event. The stands were also divided by department, and all the attending students wore matching jackets in support of their team. We were pretty bummed that we didn't have our own jackets to wear, but we did come prepared with signs to cheer on the foreign language students. The opening performances were a lot of fun. Most of the departments did some sort of synchronized dance on the field, complete with matching outfits, pom-poms, and in one case someone wielding a sword. Our own department performed to Lady Gaga's "Telephone" and I noticed many of their fellow students dancing and singing along with great enthusiasm. When encouraged to join in, however, most of us foreign teachers opted for simply waving our signs around.
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| Some of our CFL students |
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| This performance told the story of a warrior, but I didn't manage to grasp any details |
After the performances were over, the stands suddenly emptied and only a few small groups of students remained to watch the actual track events. At first, I was surprised by this, but after another 40 minutes or so began to understand why they hadn't stuck around. Unless you're an avid fan of track and field, you can only watch people jump over hurdles so many times. Still, we happily cheered on the athletes from our own department for a little while before wandering back home.
A Trip to Qingdao
Taking advantage of our long weekend, I and a few fellow teachers decided to head to Qingdao for a few days. Qingdao is a coastal city that is known mostly for its beer. I decided to actually do some research for this trip, and discovered that the Germans took over Qingdao in 1898 when they noticed that the Chinese were building up a naval defense base, and they occupied the city until 1914. While there, however, the Germans had a great influence on the city, most notably starting the Qingdao brewery. Today, the brewery is still running and is one of, if not the, largest producers of beer in China. We stopped by the brewery to get a tour on the history and development of the brewery, which came with free beer and some seriously delicious spiced peanuts. The museum also included a "drunk house," a small wooden house that was tilted up onto one corner and that you had to attempt to navigate through without falling over.
In addition to its brewery, Qingdao is also famous for its aquarium. I have to say, I didn't have the heart to take photos of most of the sections of the aquarium. I was extremely sad to see that China does not take into consideration the comfort and health of the animals it chooses to put on public displays. Most of the animals we saw in the aquarium were in tiny enclosures where they only had room to move up and down, rather than around in any way. The polar bears were in a minuscule glass-fronted enclosure with barely a puddle to swim in, and both were cowering against the back wall in an attempt to escape the throngs of tourists and flashing cameras. The arctic wolves were in a glorified cage without anything similar to natural territory, and they had thrown several breeds of penguins into one enclosure that was only 2-3 times the size of an average bedroom. They were all huddled in tiny groups trying to avoid the unfamiliar groups around them. It broke my heart to see them. I hate to depress my readers, but if any of you ever have the opportunity to speak up on animal rights either in American zoos or those abroad, I hope you'll remember this post and take the chance make a difference.
On a brighter note, the sea lions seemed to get a pretty good deal. They had a rather large tank in which they could swim to their hearts' content, under which was a tunnel for tourists to walk through. It was fun to see them all zooming around, and many of them came right up to the glass to check out the humans below them. I tried to take good photos, but the lighting was not in my favor.
Our trip to Qingdao also included a view transportation adventures. We asked a senior student, Avery, to help us buy train tickets. Avery, who was also going to accompany us, opted to buy the cheapest tickets she could find, and we all agreed to this plan without pausing to consider what exactly this might mean. Later, we found out, and I have to say that while I am proud to have survived, I would not wish to repeat the experience.
The train we ended up taking was a seven hour overnight train and did not involve assigned seats, or even the concept "sold out." Instead, it was a massive free-for-all in which everyone traveling on the line bought up tickets and then fought for breathing room on the train. We were the fourth stop on the train's route north, and when we boarded it was already packed to the brim. Every seat was full and people were crammed like sardines in the aisle and crouching in the connecting gaps between cars. We managed to get ourselves a little space in the aisle, leaning awkwardly against seat backs and unsuspecting passengers' shoulders and heads. Personally, I have never been good at standing for longer than about 20 minutes, so I was not looking forward to attempting it for several hours through the night. Luckily for me, there were a few people willing to take pity on me, as well as my friends. One man stood up and let me doze in his seat for a couple hours, and when I traded with him again Avery had managed to persuade a group on a long bench to slide over and make a little space. We took turns perching, half on the seat and half off, while whoever was seatless stood or sat on the floor. By the end of the trip we were in a sort of dog pile, me and Eliza on a bench, and Emily and Avery on the floor with their heads resting on our knees. Irene had managed to score a seat one row behind us and had a little more breathing room, but by the end of the ride all of us were very worn out and cranky.
What struck me most about this experience, I think, was how easily everyone else on the train seemed to handle standing for so many hours without a break. It was not just that they seemed to take it in stride, but that by the end of the journey everyone looked as if the ride had only lasted an hour or so. By the end of the journey, I and my fellow foreign teachers looked like we had spent 7 hours on a cramped and overheated train, but everyone around us looked like they'd just finished showering and getting dressed. We were sweaty and rumpled, and they were crisp and fresh. I have noticed this a few times before, and still can't figure out the trick, but if I ever do it may be the best thing I bring home from China.
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| Festival dancers by the beach |
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| Monument to the May 4th Movement |
My journey home from Qingdao was much more comfortable, but still held some adventures of its own. There were no direct trains from Qingdao to Qufu, so I had to change trains in Jinan, which is only about 40 minutes by fast train to Qufu. However, I did not realize upon buying my ticket that there were two train stations in Jinan. My train arrived at Jinan West, but my departing train left from Jinan East on the other side of the city.
Luckily for me, I had about three hours before my connecting train, so I had plenty of time to catch a cab. However, before I could turn to leave the station and find one, I was encircled by a group of young Chinese boys wearing matching blue jackets and bright red sashes. It took me a minute to recognize them as members of Youth Volunteer. I'm not quite sure who they are or who runs the program, but there are always packs of youth volunteers at every train station ready to help travelers with luggage, directions, or anything else they may need assistance with. The pack eventually thinned to two boys, who took my ticket and began explaining to me in Chinese that I was at the wrong station (at least that's what I'm assuming they were explaining). I, in turn, tried to explain that I was aware of this and was fine on my own, but before my broken Chinese and miming could get very far, each boy had grabbed me by one of my elbows and I was swiftly propelled outside of the station and to the front of a line of taxis. I nodded and said "thank you," trying to convey that I was fine and knew what to do, but it seemed that I had been classified as the helpless foreigner, and these two were determined to make sure that I made it to my train without any difficulty.
After the two boys held a heated conversation with the man running the cab line, in which they tried to get me to the front but were told rather rudely to shove off, a brief discussion was held. Then, one of the boys returned to the station while the other grabbed my elbow again and steered me to the bus station. At first I thought he would simply show me which bus to get on, but instead he came on with me and insisted on paying my fare. Eventually we made it to the train station across town, where he accompanied me inside and took me to the platform, waving goodbye through the window of the train as it pulled away. Apparently, chivalry is not dead--if you're looking for it, try a teenage boy in China.
What was really fun, though also quite challenging, about this experience was our attempt to communicate. I knew extremely basic Chinese, and he knew extremely basic English, so most of our conversation was limited to fairly boring questions. I was able to ask his name, which turned out to be Zhang Zeng Wen, and ask where he went to school and what he was studying (though he had to try to translate his major into English). According to Zeng Wen I did pretty well in Chinese, but he opted to try out his English via his cell phone, and would type a series of questions in Chinese characters into it and then hit "translate." This not only meant that it took us about five minutes to get through one question and answer apiece, but it also meant that I got some fairly flummoxing questions held up for me to read. "You to Jinan do?" was clearly "What are you doing in Jinan?" but "You own to person of China?" I had no clue how to interpret. When I gave him a look of complete bewilderment, he just smiled and typed a new question.
This was one of those moments that made me really love China. I think you would be hard put to find someone in the states (especially a teenage boy) willing to take a complete stranger all the way across a city and put them onto a train, or to sit with them for two hours trying to hold a conversation with only a few words, a cell phone translator, and body language. The next time I head through a train station I will give a very friendly greeting to the youth volunteers, and possibly hand out bags of cookies.
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