Around the time I busted my laptop in November, my site mate and I were told we would have a few days free as students would be busy testing. With the pleasant prospect of a long weekend ahead of us, we decided to travel to the Western part of Hunan and see Fenghuang. The train ride was surprisingly pleasant, none of the smoking and crowded feeling I've come to associate with riding hard seat on the train. An assertive man walked up and down the hall hawking blueberries. With my limited Chinese all I could really make out were the words "Ao Bama" (Obama), "zhen de" (real/really), "meiguo" (America), "lan mei" (blueberries). We politely refused his samples, and about hours later we arrived in Fenghuang (without verifying if the fruits were really Obama's true blue American blueberries). Since it was around election time in the US, we alternated between focusing on our vacation and the way presidents seemed to keep coming up throughout our time in West Hunan.
This year I've been meaning to make a minimum of one blog post a month but have been away from here due to a lot of unforeseen circumstances. One of those circumstances was biding my time until payday to get my laptop monitor fixed after it was accidentally knocked off the teacher's desk in class. Thankfully for both me and my classes, my tablet is able to run apps for powerpoint and word so though I couldn't easily update my blog I was still able to carry on my classes as usual (I just needed a little extra time since it was hard to work with a tiny screen). But now I've got my laptop back and finished grades for the semester. With all the trouble I've been through for the past year, my laptop has become a work of art. Since my first one was stolen around spring last year, I had to buy my current one in China and spent some time with the man who sold it to me getting things mostly set up in English. Microsoft office is still all in Chinese but some of my error messages come up bilingual. Since I had to replace the monitor, they had to dismantle things a little and now the little plastic bit that covers the hinge where the laptop opens up is loose and falls off or gets stuck if I'm not careful while opening my computer. Apparently they found water inside too when they went to repair the screen and had to drain it all out. But everything is in working order again. Around the time I busted my laptop in November, my site mate and I were told we would have a few days free as students would be busy testing. With the pleasant prospect of a long weekend ahead of us, we decided to travel to the Western part of Hunan and see Fenghuang. The train ride was surprisingly pleasant, none of the smoking and crowded feeling I've come to associate with riding hard seat on the train. An assertive man walked up and down the hall hawking blueberries. With my limited Chinese all I could really make out were the words "Ao Bama" (Obama), "zhen de" (real/really), "meiguo" (America), "lan mei" (blueberries). We politely refused his samples, and about hours later we arrived in Fenghuang (without verifying if the fruits were really Obama's true blue American blueberries). Since it was around election time in the US, we alternated between focusing on our vacation and the way presidents seemed to keep coming up throughout our time in West Hunan. Fenghuang, as you can see from the photo above, is a beautiful ancient town on the Tuo Jiang River known for its beauty, the Miao and Tujia minorities who live in the area, and as the hometown of writer Shen Congwen who nearly won the Nobel Prize in literature but died before he could receive it. With all the lights, the bars, the shops, and the people lined up along the river offering the chance to dress up in traditional Miao clothing or get your hair braided with ribbons, it was undeniably touristy but still quite beautiful. It was something to see that the green water wasn't just photoshop. Despite our focus on the trip, I could still at times hear snatches of the election here and there. Once we were waiting to get on a boat down the river and I heard a group of men discussing "Chuan Pu" (Trump) and "Xi La Li" (Hilary). As if we hadn't had enough of presidents, when we left for a fast trip to Hongjiang we found Clinton waiting outside an old brothel. A lot has happened in the months since my last post and a lot of nothing at all has happened too, and I'm sorry to make such a short post. I've been trying to work out what's next from here so I'll try to post more often but I sense my time in Zhuzhou is coming to an end.
1 Comment
8/2/2022 03:42:13 am
Sosyal medya uygulamaları içerisinde en çok kitleye ulaşan Tiktok’ta artık popüler olmak çok kolay! Sadece bütçenize uygun olan tiktok izlenme paketlerinden birini seçerek siz de fenomen olabilirsiniz.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm a 3rd year WorldTeach volunteer. Archives
October 2016
Categories
All
|