Chengdu

From Dandong, I caught an overnight hard seat to Beijing. It was an awkward time on a train route which mostly served travelers going shorter distances, so for most of the night the train car was half empty, meaning I could put my feet up and sleep well. Once in Beijing, I changed money and found a youth hostel where I rested, booked my flight to Chengdu, and arranged my things. While out getting lunch, I stumbled across an old Catholic Church from the 1600's, apparently Beijing's oldest. That evening, I caught a taxi to the Beijing airport and then a plane to Chengdu. This was my first domestic flight in China. Although the chaotic airport was a headache (possibly the worst organized airport I've ever seen), the flight was pleasant. I chatted with the family sitting next to me and let their children play with the stuffed animals I'd brought from home. Once in Chengdu, I headed straight to the home of Li Cheng.

Over two years ago as a freshman at Yale, I started volunteering teaching English as a second language in New Haven through the Bridges program. One of my students was Li Cheng, a law student from Shanghai who was studying for a semester at Yale through an exchange program. Originally from Chengdu, he has been working on his PhD for several years now. Last time I was in China, I visited him and his parents in Chengdu and had a wonderful time. I was excited to see them again. I was also excited to see their pet dog "Tiantian". Last time I was in China, she was just a three month old puppy. This time she was all grown up and barking happily to greet me as I came up the stairs.

It was great to see Li Cheng. When I visited, he was home for the Chinese New Year season. He is currently finishing up his Phd dissertation in law at a university in Shanghai. He studies discrimination law and constitutional law. He told me that "in my department we joke that such fields are breeding grounds for future Nobel Prize winners," referring to Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner currently sitting in a Chinese prison. I had some great chats with him over the two and a half days I spent in Chengdu. We discussed everything from law to differences between life in America and in China to how good the pizza is back in New Haven at Peppe's. We also chatted about law school applications in China. Apparently, in China, universities can reject applicants for being too short. I talked about how this reflects the differences between American and Chinese cultures. In China, physical appearance is valued much more highly. Airlines openly and legally discriminate against flight attendants who are too old or deemed unattractive. The disabled are unable to attend universities and are often doomed to a life of begging. Finally, he was both impressed and amused by my story about New York's former governor, who not only was blind but also tarnished by corruption charges.

I spent a lot of time in Chengdu playing with Tiantian, eating, and chatting. My second day there, I went with Li Cheng's father to visit an archeological site/ museum. The site was interesting and it was fun to chat with his dad, though difficult to decipher his Sichuanese, which differs greatly from standard Mandarin both in tonality and pronunciation. We talked about history, his life as a lawyer in China, retirement (both he and my father recently retired), and food. He claimed that I would not be able to find such delicious food up in Harbin. "Northerners don't care about taste that much, they're much more about eating large portions."

When I visited Sichuan in 2009, I did a three-day hiking trip to Emei Mountain, famed for its natural beauty and connections to Buddhism's history in China. While on the mountain, I met several students, including one English major who I really bonded with. At the time, he told me to call him Hanz, because the name sounded like the Han people. This time, on my last night in Chengdu, I met up again with Hanz and one of the other students. We visited a shrine to a former Sichuanese king, got street snacks, and chatted. Hanz, who had seemed so extroverted, happy, and full of knowledge those days on the mountain was now reticent, depressed, and tired looking. As he explained, he'd already graduated and had been searching for work for over a year. In China, he explained, the unemployment rate is relatively high and a large number of college students compete for relatively few jobs. The stress piled up over the months and his health began to deteriorate. After he left to go home, I had a nice chat with the other young man who I had met on the mountain. Explaining Hanz's situation, he talked about the employment challenges facing college graduates in China, growing resentment of China's leaders and elites, and the implications of not finding a job in China. In modern China, if someone does not have a good job, a car, and a nice apartment, then they are sure to have bad marriage prospects. The booming housing bubble means that affordable housing is disappearing from China's cities. After our chat, I boarded a bus a back to Li Cheng's house.

On my last morning in Chengdu, Li Cheng's grandparents came over to visit. Over 90 years old, they were friendly and talkative. I took pictures with them and said farewell to Li Cheng and his wonderful family. With a week left before orientation, I decided to work my way slowly back to Beijing by crossing central China on the iron horse.

My former Chinese professor Kang Zhengguo is from Xi'an, as was an advisor of mine in high school. My parents also enjoyed their stay in the city, so I decided it would be a worthwhile place to stop.

The train ride to Xi'an passed scenic countryside, lovely small cities and towns, and major industrial cities I’d never heard of. The next morning, I arrived in Xi'an.

Chinese New Year on a farm in Dandong

Xu Liang was one of my Chinese teachers in 2009 when I studied in Beijing. We bonded and I ended up visiting his family's farm in Dandong, near North Korea. It was a wonderful experience for me. It fostered my interests in both Manchuria and rural China, and was one of the reasons I would choose rural issues in modern Heilongjiang as the topic for my one-on-one research project at CET Harbin.

So I returned to Dandong after more than a year, ready to celebrate the New Year with old friends. The city is one of China's main border towns, and a lot of trade happens with North Korea. The city is home to hundreds of thousands of people and the nearby countryside's rich soil feeds millions. I rolled into town on a bus and found an inn where I could stay the night and be able to greet my friend in the morning. I set out to see the most eastern portion of the Great Wall of China: Tiger Mountain Great Wall. Had I checked the guidebook more closely I would have realized the wall straddled the North Korean border, a narrow portion of the Yalu River which is frozen in February. Also, as it was New Year's Eve, the area was devoid of tourists, which meant I was alone on the Great Wall, overlooking North Korea. My mother had warned me not to go near the border while in Dandong, but I did not know the wall was that close and it did not occur to me that the scenery on one side was Korea until I noticed how desolate the landscape was. One side looked like the Chinese countryside that I knew and the other side looked unbelievably poor and desolate. One side had tractors, the other didn't. Then I noticed a North Korean flag in the distance. I took out my guidebook and to my surprise I was on the North Korean border! Just then I heard voices and looked down to see two Korean soldiers walking across the ice. I got ready to run along the top of the wall and back towards the trail-head when I noticed they were unarmed. I also noticed how hungry they looked. Neither one could have been heavier than 80 pounds. I'd never seen such starved-looking people before. "Chinese money... cigarettes" they said in broken Chinese. The two half-starved figures frightened me and jerked my heart, so I threw them 20 RMB (the equivalent of 3 US dollars) and headed back up the trail and back to Dandong.

I had a great time at Mr. Xu's family's house. It was such a wonderful experience to spend Chinese New Year with a Chinese family. After meeting Xu Liang in downtown Dandong, we caught a cab to his parents’ farm. When we got there, his dad, his mom, his brother, his sister-in-law, and the dog came out to greet us (the dog had been a bad puppy, having eaten one of the hen's chicks the other day). The landscape looked so different from when I'd last visited. Brimming corn fields were now lying fallow, and here and there snow lay on the fields and on the house. We went inside and settled down to breakfast on the kang - a large stone oven used as a heater, a bed, and a table by families throughout rural parts of Northern China. I know from the years I spent learning Yiddish as a young boy that the same stove-bed structure existed in Eastern Europe at some point and in the Yiddish language it is called a “pripitchick”. His mother is a jolly, stout Mongolian woman with a wonderful smile and a heavy laugh. His dad, who also has a great smile, is a thin, friendly, Chinese man who smokes like a chimney. The brother and his wife were also very friendly. He met her out in Xinjiang and they have been married over a year now. After breakfast, Xu Liang's brother let me use his phone to call home. The brother, his wife, and the parents settled down to a long game of Majiang, while Xu Liang and I watched TV. Xu Liang taught me a traditional card game the Chinese play on New Year's Eve to predict the coming year's fortunes. After they finished playing Majiang (Xu Liang's brother ended up winning over a 100 RMB), we all hiked down the road to a nearby store to buy fireworks. You would not believe how many fireworks and firecrackers we bought. On the walk back, Xu Liang pointed out a field where he used to play. "There's a hot spring at the back over there, but now it’s probably too polluted to swim in." From sundown until midnight, we periodically lit fireworks and firecrackers. "It's to scare off bad spirits for the new year", Xu Liang explained. The father, Xu Liang, his sister in law, and his brother also burned paper money for the ancestors. You would not believe the sight of the Dandong countryside at night on New Year's Eve. Try imagining a million fireworks exploding over the cottages and hillsides, the sounds of exploding rockets and firecrackers making the land feel almost like a battlefield - so many fireworks it puts the Fourth of July to shame. Then came New Year's Eve dinner - eight delicious dishes (eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture). The rice was served with red beans mixed in, like my Jamaican grandmother used to cook for me as a child. I'd gotten used to red beans being used in Chinese cuisine as desert, so it was shocking to see beans used in a more familiar manner. They also had corn tortillas, which reminded me of the ones I've eaten in Mexican restaurants. Other dishes included vegetables, fish, meat, and tofu. We drank the liquor true Northeastern style in big soup bowls. I had picked up a bottle of liquor from a bodega downtown. Little did I know that the bottle was from Xu Liang's family's old hometown, in the hills on the other side of Dandong. They were pleasantly surprised. After eating our share of delicious food, including dumplings, we settled down to more Majiang and card playing. After midnight, all 6 of us curled up on the kang and went to sleep. You'd think a hard surface like that would be uncomfortable, but it actually felt great, especially with the warmth coming up from it.

After a good night's sleep, we woke up to more feasting and Majiang (I found the game still too hard to follow), then set out to visit an auntie of Xu Liang's. February 2nd was both my mom's birthday and New Year's Eve, February 3rd was both New Year's Day and this auntie's birthday. We stopped at their apartment and chatted for a while, then headed to a nearby restaurant. You wouldn’t believe the amazing dishes they had, including a "soup" made from hot coca cola and traditional Chinese medicinal herbs. I played a little with the three year old granddaughter of the auntie. Going for a walk after lunch, I saw Xu Liang and his brother walking arm in arm and it made me miss my brother so much. The auntie asked me if Chinese New Year is as festive as Christmas back home and I nodded. Back at Xu Liang's house, we watched TV, ate, and chatted. There were movies on TV, as well as dramas, comedies, and a show where migrant workers compete in singing original songs. One duo was really really good and became famous nation-wide after that night. We were more tired that night and went to bed on the kang around 8.

On the afternoon of the next day, I caught a cab to town, said farewell and caught a hard seat train to Beijing.

Shenyang

I arrived in Harbin after my trip to Qiqihar and promptly bought a train ticket to Shenyang. With a little time to kill in Harbin before my train, I visited the Heilongjiang Provincial Museum, which was all done up with New Year's decoration. I mostly enjoyed the museum's collection of old cannons. I also found a cafe downtown in a building which was once a synagogue. Finally, I went to catch my train. Even at 12am, the station was packed with people heading home for Chinese New Year. One man's sole luggage appeared to be a bundle of fire kindling and large bicycle tire. Another looked refined, sitting cross-legged with his reading glasses on and calmly reading what looked like a book on religious subject matter. His sole luggage was a small cardboard box. I saw other people, including families and couples and groups of friends. The sleeper train was an experience as well. My bunk was on top and required a 10-foot ladder climb. However, this left me relatively undisturbed. I slept through the night and woke to the sound of a radio playing "Green Island Serenade".

Once in Shenyang, I caught a bus to the old quarter of the city by the Imperial Palace. The youth hostel mentioned in the guidebook appears to have closed, another place had no rooms available, and another hotel on that street was closed to foreigners. Fortunately, I finally found a small inn at the end of the street. The room was clean, nice, and cheap with a comfy bed and a computer. The owners said I should pretend to be from Xinjiang for the places that didn't accept foreigners. That day, I checked out the Imperial City. Before the Manchus conquered the Ming Empire and established the Qing Dynasty, they had already built a small empire in Manchuria with Shenyang as their capital. The Imperial City was where the emperor lived and is kind of like a miniature version of the Forbidden City in Beijing. I started to come down sick and ended up buying some medicine at a pharmacy.

The next day I slept till the afternoon (almost 15 hours). I took a bus to the 9.18 museum about the Mukden incident, but found it closed for the Chinese New Year season. I took some pictures and headed back to town. I got a little lost and had to take a cab to where I ate dinner, a vegetarian restaurant. I got "Peking duck" and small cakes baked with fillings such as rose petals. The waitresses all wore bunny ears (this is the year of the bunny). That night, I explored downtown Shenyang, which has enough shopping, lights, and advertisements to rival Times Square. I bought street snacks and got some candy for Mr. Xu's family. The next day I caught a bus to Dandong.

Qiqihar

Qiqihar, one of the four main cities in Heilongjiang province, is located west of Harbin, near Inner Mongolia. I decided to visit the city because I wanted to see what Heilongjiang province was like outside of Harbin, and I wanted to see what life was like in a smaller city. The train ride out to Qiqihar passed lovely countryside and I napped for a while as we moved west. I did manage to notice the snow covered fields looked very cold. Some of the views were less lovely, including abandoned factories, power plants, and an oil field. I don’t think I’d ever seen an oil field before. The oil pumps looked like a sea of chickens pecking away at their grain. Waking up about a half hour before arrival, I played Chinese poker with some of the men on the train. Right before we reached Qiqihar, all the mothers brought over their children to take pictures with me. It was very cute.

After checking into a nice hotel not far from the train station, I ate dinner and rested. The next day, I set out to explore the city by bus and beng beng car. I visited the Bukui Mosque which is the oldest in the province and dates back to the early 1600’s. I chatted with the old men milling about in the mosque’s courtyard.

My next stop was the Longsha Park, where I walked along its snowy trails and saw old men exercising in the bone chilling negative 25 degree cold. The frozen pond was quite a sight. It was frozen so thick that plows could be driven across it, clearing the snow on top to make neat paths. Couples were out strolling on the pond. Old men and women and their grandchildren slowly weaved across the beautiful white snow. I walked past pagodas that normally would have been islands had the water not been frozen. I stopped by a small “zoo” where I saw yaks, camels, horses, deer, and moose. I hiked up a tower on a hill in the center of the park and from the top I could see the whole park and much of the city beyond.

My final stop was the Dacheng Buddhist temple, which dates to the Japanese occupation in the 1930’s. Recently renovated, the temple grounds featured exquisite white marble statues.

For the train ride back to Harbin, I caught an express. From there, I got an overnight train to Shenyang, the largest city in the Northeast.