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I had no idea how all those bikes –one for each kid- had fit into the back of that little truck. But none-the-less, the parking lot back at the hotel was filled with a bunch of relatively new, Trek mountain bikes. Using my colleague Vivian to translate, I asked the first of the two men if it was his business. No, he just worked for the other guy, who owned the company. It appeared to be a good little bike rental business they had going. It’s good to see that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in rural China.
Adilah, our guide from Dragonfly, walked her backpack to the end of the driveway and set it down. She had just set up the world’s simplest obstacle course. “Boys and girls, I am going to test each one of you to make sure you can ride,” she announced. Are you serious, these kids are eleven and twelve years old, Adilah. Of course they can ride a bike.
Well not so fast. The area of the New Territories where we live is fairly bike friendly, but that’s not true of all of Hong Kong. Some of our students simply have not had a lot of opportunities to master the bicycle.
Just in case, the men from the bike rental company had also brought along two tandem bicycles. But happily, we wouldn’t need them today. All of our students passed Adilah’s simple test. A few of them, just barely.
We were off.
We had a great ninety-minute ride through rural China. We rode on paths that cut through farm fields, villages, and even rode through the middle of a rural brick-making facility. We rode single file, and I purposely fell back to the last position so that I could stop, take a picture, and then quickly catch up with the group.
After a month-long dry spell in the Yangshuo area, it finally rained last night. The brickyard we were cutting through had been built where there was a steady supply of thick, heavy . . . mud. And that is exactly what our students found themselves in the middle of. On the outer edges of the brickyard our students got bogged down in a big patch of mud. The more they struggled, the more they churned up the mud. Their bikes got so caked with mud that their wheels wouldn’t turn. The students couldn’t push their bikes forward let alone ride them.
I hung back and let them struggle for ten minutes. I figured it was both a good group problem-solving opportunity and a character-building exercise. Besides, there were pictures of the Chinese brickyard to take because really, when is the next time I am ever going to find myself in a rural Chinese brick-making facility?
Eventually, I had mercy on my students, trudged into the mud, hoisted one bike after another onto my shoulder, and carried them to the other side of the mud bowl.
Finally, I went back and got my bike. I backed up fifty yards, built up some speed, and blew through the mud pit. My bike spewed mud everywhere, but I made it through. I’m sure my students would have been impressed if they hadn’t been too busy cleaning the mud out of their break assemblies with the sticks they had found on the ground.
-Jack
Maybe it was the fact that I was hungry after the climb to the top of Moon Rock, or maybe it was the fresh country air, but the restaurant food that we were eating at the foot of the mountain was among the best Chinese food I’ve ever had. Deep-fried eggplant, lemon chicken, spring rolls, a couple of things that I couldn’t identify but couldn’t stop eating. It was family-style and I had to keep asking the students and teachers at my table to pass the sticky buns.
Mmmm. So good. How are Chinese people not all rotund when the food is this good? Man, my students were lucky. Of all the trips they could have signed up for, I bet none has food this good.
I pushed myself away from the table long enough to see how the kids at the other table were doing. Just as I was about to ask them how they were enjoying this mid-day feast, I saw Vanessa go into her back pack, open a box of granola bars, and distribute them to her friends.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
“Mr. VanNoord, American people always want to eat Chinese food, and Chinese people always want to eat American food.”
Too true, Vanessa. Too true.-JackPicture: Two minutes after we sat down, these five ladies started bringing us dish after dish of food. The didn't stop for the next half hour. I love the coordinating, happy "Hello, Bunny" aprons.
As we pulled up, we saw them sitting around the fire they had built in an oversized tin can at the entrance of the parking lot. By the time the bus parked and we started to unload, they were swarming around the entrance of the bus. The minute our feet hit the blacktop, these five elderly Chinese women were waving their postcards, pop, and bottled water at us. Despite our repeated “no ‘thank you-s’” –in both English and Mandarin- they persisted. None of us bought anything.
We started hiking our way up Moon Rock Mountain. I was a little surprise to see that three of the ladies were following us. This mountain is awefully big, these petite ladies look awfully old, and those styrofoam coolers filled with ice and cold soft drinks look awfully heavy.
I couldn’t believe that they were going to make the entire forty-five minute hike in hopes that we would buy a pop or two at the top. But sure enough, they integrated themselves into our group and started the climb with us. In fact, a few of us were struggling to keep pace with them.
When we got to the top, despite the cool temperatures, we were pooped and thirsty. The ladies had guessed correctly. The kids bought up all their Sprites and bottled water.
We hung out at the top, took a lot of pictures, and then made our way back down with bellies full and coolers empty.Tough work, but I guess it’s a living.
Even though I had just taken twenty pictures of Moon Rock, I bought a set of six postcards of Moon Rock from the oldest of the ladies before we climbed back on the bus.-Jack
At 5:45 a.m. I woke to the sound of the boys horsing around in the cabin next to mine. Guess I’m getting up. It hadn’t exactly been a sleep-filled night anyway. I’m not used to sleeping on a bed that moves. So much for Julie’s claim that I can sleep anywhere, anytime.
At 6:30 a.m. we arrived in the city of Gui Lin. Just outside the train station our charter bus and driver were waiting for us. We loaded our bulging backpacks and wheeled suitcases into the underbelly of the bus. It was a short, thirty-minute bus ride to the village of Yangshuo.
For the next week, we would be staying in the Snow Lion Inn, a relatively new thirty-room inn built in the Chinese style but with modern conveniences: western-style toilets, air conditioning, and heat. All of China was hit by a cold snap the week we were in YangShou. The night time temperatures unseasonably dropped to just above freezing. The individual guest rooms may have had heat, but the lobby, the hallways and the dining room did not. The keepers of the inn kept the big double front doors open all day and the hotel staff stayed bundled up in their winter coats.
Our students slept two to a room. Teachers each had their own rooms. Upon our arrival, we gave the kids just enough time to run their suitcases up to their rooms and then it was time for a quick breakfast in the hotel dining room. The buffet breakfast consisted of toast, scrambled eggs, watermelon juice, bacon, Chinese sticky buns, and Chinese-style noodles.
We had to keep things moving along because we were scheduled to hike up Moon Hill later that morning.
-JackPicture: Phil our fearless guide from Dragonfly
The wide open space of Chinese immigration reminded me of an airport complete with security guards and x-ray machines to scan our luggage. As we walked, my colleague, Mrs. Auty prompted me to turn around. When I did I saw a bank of monitors that had infra-red images of people walking through the corridor. Atop each figured hovered a number. 39.5. 39.9. 37.1. The Chinese authorities were taking our body temperatures en masse. They were trolling for anybody with fevers who might be carrying the H1N1 virus.
As we continued to walk, immigration had morphed into a duty-free mall and now the mall morphed into a train station. Because there were twenty-three of us in our group, we filled up six four-person sleeper compartments -minus one bed. Previously, Mrs. Auty and I had decided that Annika, Christina a seventh-grader from Australian, and I would occupy one cabin along with whatever stranger fate sent our way.
Annika and Christina were bummed that we would have to share our cabin with a stranger. No late-night euchre until 1:00 a.m. I promised Christina that the stranger would be a cute, nineteen year old Australian boy. But alas it was not to be. We were to spend the next twelve hours with a middle-aged Chinese woman.
Normally, I am the dopey American saying “Hallo” and waving to everyone assuming they all want to be friends. But in this situation, something told me this would be breaching major sleeper-train protocol. I quickly caught on to the idea that despite the fact that the four of us were going to be sharing and sleeping in the same six-foot-by-six foot space, she was going to pretend that we didn’t exist and we were going to do the same.
We didn’t acknowledge her presence with a “Ni hao” or a head nod and we definitely did not make eye contact. She returned the favor by doing the same.
I checked on the boys’ cabins and was shocked to find how thoroughly they had trashed their cabins in the half hour we had been on the train. Comforters had been torn off beds. Luggage was stacked every which way. Junk food wrappers littered the floor. Pringle crumbs were everywhere.
Later that evening, I saw three boys sitting on the edge of their bed playing cards. Yammy – a seventh-grade girl- rounded out their foursome. But she was playing from the doorway. “Yammy, why don’t you sit down and play.”
“But Mr. VanNoord, Mrs. Auty’s rule ‘No Fairies among the Hairies, and no Hairies among the Fairies.’”
Ah, true enough.
“Well, how about if you sit on the edge of the bed right here by the door and keep one foot in the hallway.”
Much to the relief of the other passengers on our two train cars, it was lights out at 9:30 for our students. We all settled down into our bunks and tried to let the rhythmic clickity-clack of the wheels and the gentle swaying of the train rock us to sleep.-Jack
Our group of students and teachers was met at the local train station by a young woman named Adilah from the travel agency Dragonfly. She would be spending the week with us including the border crossing and our twelve-hour train trip to Yangshuo.
We rode the local Hong Kong train all the way to its northern-most stop which brought us to within walking distance of the Chinese border. But first, we had to get out of Hong Kong. I swiped my high-tech Hong Kong i.d. card and put my finger on the scanner to confirm that I was actually me. Annika was right behind me. Beep. Beep. We were out of Hong Kong.
But we had yet to get into China.
We walked through an enclosed walkway that spanned a midsized river. On the Chinese side of the river was a wall topped with barbed wire.
Annika and I were walking side-by-side. As we neared the mid-section of the covered walkway, we both slowed our pace. At the midpoint we each took one big, dramatic step. We looked at each other. “Welcome to China,” she said to me.
We still had to get through Chinese immigration.
We cued up at Chinese immigration careful to follow the posted instructions not to step across the yellow line until summoned to do so. After presenting our passports, one-by-one, we were all waved in.
We had made it into China.
We did a head count. We had all nineteen students.
-Jack
I had no idea how all those bikes –one for each kid- had fit into the back of that little truck. But none-the-less, the parking lot back at the hotel was filled with a bunch of relatively new, Trek mountain bikes. Using my colleague Vivian to translate, I asked the first of the two men if it was his business. No, he just worked for the other guy, who owned the company. It appeared to be a good little bike rental business they had going. It’s good to see that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in rural China.
