Sunday Walk

Back on Bainbridge Jackie and I had a tradition of taking Sunday walks. The Murden Cove to Rolling Bay trip was a favorite because we could always drop in at the Rolling Bay Cafe and get something to eat and drink while we sat and enjoyed a brief rest in the Bay Hay gardens.

Here in China it's not the same, but we do try to get out for walks when we can. There's no coffee shop or gardens, but the Shenbei New District has some charms to offer. Yesterday I decided to chronicle our walk in photos so I could share it on my blog. My guess is that in two years the same journey will mean something completely different as I learn more about China each passing week (and as local development changes the face of this community). For now though my commentary will be based on my huge ignorance and the assumptions I make.

Picture 1: It's officially autumn here. Our friend Jessica, the Canadian, told us that the trees by Qipanshan Reservoir were changing so that became the general direction (NE) of our walk. As we left campus we saw this little maple in its subdued shift from green to red. On campus we have gingkos which went yellow and shed their leaves a couple weeks ago. We also have a lot of locust-like trees, many that have suffered from some kind of rot and are in bad shape. They still have their little green leaves. The trees that were brought in to replace some of the ones that died came with no leaves. I'll find out what they are in the spring.

Picture 2: The first area we pass as we go east from school is our little downtown. There are two blocks of shops a hundred yards from the school's entrance. There we find mini-WalMarts, mini-Best, mini-McDonalds, cash machines, a post office, KTV, and assorted restaurants (the Red Pillar, the Muslim place, the Mongolian BBQ,...). The Keyigou store pictured here is one of the mini-WalMarts because it has an upstairs and sells groceries as well as housewares.

Picture 3: As we walked east we passed by the gold-foil wrapped tree trunks of one of the most luxurious new developments. At least it looks luxurious. We haven't been in to see the buildings. When we tried the guard started talking to us and pointing somewhere. We mimed that we just wanted to walk (“Let your fingers to the walking”), but he shook his head no. Others told us later that we'd have to go to the sales office if we wanted to visit. The gold foil is definitely classier than the typical whitewash that normally goes on tree trunks. Charlie told us both are designed to prevent infestation from caterpillars.

 Picture 4; It is now peak cabbage season. As you'll see in several of the following photos, cabbage is a staple here. I first noticed it when I saw random rows of cabbages laid out in the sun. Charlie told me it is being dried for longer keeping. Also the cabbage will be preserved (Cooked with water and salt.) so that it will last all winter. Here you see the cabbage being unloaded off some farmer or merchant's truck. You don't want to be accused of falling off the cabbage cart around here.

Picture 5: The next step in the life of a cabbage is to be stacked on the sidewalk to wait for a buyer.

Picture 6: Near this street market is the apartment block where the Canadians live. Could you have guessed? Funny thing, I was looking for the old maple leaf the first time I went over to Colin and Jessica's apartment. I was there the whole time with no hint of Oh Canada to be seen. It really put my preconceived notions about Canadians abroad to the test. Just before I left, Jessica took me on a tour of their whole place. They actually have two apartments. The second is across the landing. There they have space for laundry, study, extra kitchen space, and, ta da, a flag in the window.

Picture 7: Continuing east from the Canadians' place and the market street, Jackie and I passed a construction site. New apartments are being built all over the area.

Picture 8: It's common for the workers to live on-site. Here you see the garage bays haphazardly enclosed by scrap lumber. Judging from the laundry hanging out, some of the workers have families living with them. Given that our temperatures have been below freezing at night for the last week or so, the comfort level of these accommodations must be nonexistent. There are crudely strung power lines so electricity is available. There must be some water available even though no plumbing fixtures are in yet. The bathroom is around the corner, outside, on the ground.

Picture 9: The adjoining apartment block is finished. It's occupied by the regular tenants. They use the common space fully. This patch of ground has been put to use as a garden plot by someone. I think this may be more of the ubiquitous cabbage that hasn't yet fallen to the reaper's blade.

Picture 10: Another use of common space at apartment buildings is for storage of tenant goods. This courtyard is sprinkled with mounds of, yep, cabbage. Since it was a cold, damp day, the cabbage earned a covering to protect it from the rain.

Picture 11: My mom asked if the local Catholic church is the official Catholic church or if it's the government approved Catholic church. I don't know. One of my colleagues has gone and said that they had a sort of Bible study service rather than a Mass. I am basing my assessment of its Catholic-ness n the presence of this statue of Mary. This is one of two full-blown churches close to school. There's a third house of worship that is a storefront meeting place in the retail part of the neighborhood.

Picture 12: More cabbage. The stuff just pops up everywhere.

 Picture 13: A colleague coined the term “trice-i-car” for these little jalopies. They cruise around very slowly because they can't go any faster. They drive at night with no lights maybe because the drivers are economizing or maybe because they can't power both the lights and the engine at the same time. Jackie and I aren't sure whether this place is just a repair shop or if it's the home base for a fleet of trice-i-car taxis. Whichever it is, there are always a bunch being worked on here.

Picture 14: The last development on our trek is called Tahiti. This is usually said with a tone of reverence. When we first came to Shenyang the expectation was that we'd be housed off campus. That didn't happen because, we were told, there wasn't any suitable housing in the community. Some of the teachers went to see for themselves and came back with reports of vacancies right and left. Tahiti took the cake though. It has landscaped grounds, a small lake with paths and benches, a mix of housing size and style though all adhering to a sort of Mediterranean theme, a rolling terrain with hills and views, and it has statues of elephants. I've put some pictures of the elephants in my Facebook photo albums. On this walk we went past some others so I've included those pachyderms in Picture 17.

Picture 15: This picture shows the worker housing. Unlike other construction sites, Tahiti is big enough to provide these prefab dorm units for its workers. There are also small canteens and shops for the workers. Isn't doesn't seem as if there is sanitation though. We see workers using the bushes as their bathroom even outside Tahiti.

Picture 16: The outflow of Tahiti's water feature. The “stones” are actually man-made.

Picture 17: The previously-mentioned elephants.

Picture 18: Even in the early winter cold young couples flock to distinctive locations so I wasn't so surprised to see this young woman and her attendants. The overcoat drapery, though essential, was surprising.

Picture 19: I pretended to be taking a picture of Jackie when my real target was this streetsweeper. There are armies of these men and women out cleaning up the leaves and debris on the thoroughfares. Some also mow and trim the roadside ornamental plantings. I assume they are employed through some enormous make-work program, but it's nice to ride a bicycle along a stretch of road that they've been over. And it's easy to tell the places where they've been absent.

Picture 20 (a series of photos with notes): The rest of our walk was out along a major road to a small turn-off that I wanted to investigate. Along the way we noticed many things that prompted us to talk about different aspects of China as we see it:

engineering (Why put the concrete lattice if it's just going to crumble off?)

construction (Why make this nicely paved road if you're going to let huge machines tear it up when a new development goes in?)

justice and legality (To what extent can people own private property and how is land use and public access handled? And why are rams—first on the left—prohibited here?)

agriculture: (It seems as though very little of the farming we see is mechanized or are those people parked on the side of the road and heading into the cornfields just going to help themselves?)

control: (Does banning something, like the porn here, just make it a forbidden fruit that encourages to want it more. This one tied in with our ideas and opinions on the legalization referendum in California. I was mildly surprised that Jackie was leaning in favor of legalization. She indicated that her support hinges on whether the activity or substance produces victims or not.)

religion: (Why are there Tibetan prayer flags lining the drive to this strange hillside compound? What is this strange hillside compound? Do Chinese Buddhists chant in Tibetan?) Jackie picked up one of these flags in order to do more research.

waste: (That's a perfectly good dildo.)

more waste: (Why do these shabby chairs, there were two of them, get better treatment than the dildo?)

Picture 21: And then we were at our destination. It turns out the road we were on forked and both forks petered out. One went to the site of a former building now demolished. The other went up to a small reservoir. Here's the entrance to the demolished building.

Picture 22: Here's the other fork.

Picture 23: Here's the reservoir (with Jackie gazing contemplatively).

Picture 24: While we were up at the reservoir a man on a bicycle went to the demolished building. I don't know if he was a security man or just a curious local. Here's his bike.

Picture 25: After exhausting all the interesting aspects of this destination, we turned around and headed back home. We caught some light snow flurries which hastened our pace. The round trip had taken about 3 hours.

Travels with Charley

I know what you're asking yourself; is this the start of some sort of Steinbeckian exercise? The answer is no. I haven't been out in a camper with a French poodle of any name much less Charley. But, coincidentally, I have been traveling and I have been with a Charlie.

Normally my Charlie traveling companion of choice is my brother Charlie. He and I have had some good journeys together, from backpacking on the Appalachian Trail to bicycling across the U.S.A. (Yes, it's official, he made it.) to wandering around Costa Rica and Nicaragua to celebrating his 50^th with a road trip to Phoenix, AZ.

This time however the Charlie in question was a retired Chinese jack of all trades named Charlie. He has worked in industry here in China. He has connections and experience with the local political powers. He knows a much-in-demand massage therapist and has arranged for her to give massages to many of the teachers here at school. He applied for a job at SPA (our school). He lived and worked, mostly as a restauranteur, in various places in the U.S. That latter experience left him with good English skills and those were the skills I relied on when we went traveling.

The trip arose somewhat suddenly. A bit less than a week before our one-day mid-autumn holiday the school director let us know that the one day was going to be five days. Apparently he had just learned that students would miss three days of school. Those three days plus the following weekend added up to a five-day weekend. Given this opportunity we started looking around for out-of-town travel options. Jackie and I linked up with fellow teachers Amos and Kristine and got out the Lonely Planet guidebook to plan. Amos and Kristine have become good friends with Charlie so they consulted him as well. Previously he had offered to help find drivers who could take us on extended forays in the region.

Initially our interest was in a town called Anshan. There, we read, we could find a national park called Qianshan (Thousand Mountains), the world's largest Buddha carved from a single block of jade, and hot springs. Amos and Kristine had enjoyed many pleasurable moments in Taiwanese hot springs and raved about how much fun this could be. Amos in particular really had his heart set on the Anshan hot springs. The fact that one of the Qing emperors used to soak in these exact springs with his favorite concubine added a touch of elegance that appealed to me. (Cue Mick Jagger cooing about Chinese girls and their “silky sleeves”.)

But Charlie had other ideas. I would find that Charlie often has other ideas and it is usually futile to resist them. Like the CATS, all our base were belong to him.

So plan B became a multi-day trip to Benxi where we would find, yes, mountains and yes, hot springs. There was no known giant jade Buddha in Benxi, but there were water caves—grottoes hollowed out by a river and accessible by boat. Charlie knew a man with a 12-passenger van who would drive us and our gear there and back. If we wanted we could even invite some more people. Best of all, Charlie himself was curious about Benxi and he decided to join us. He would serve as guide and interpreter. WooHoo.

We did ask around, but found no others who were interested in joining us. Good thing. As it turned out we pretty much packed the 12-passenger van with the six of us plus our bags, plus our folding bicycles, plus some fresh fruit, a case of water, and a case of beer. The first bit of wisdom Charlie imparted on us was that prices in Benxi would be much higher so we should shop for some essentials (i.e. beer) locally. This attention to detail when it came to price and finding the best deal would become somewhat of a theme.

The trip began on Wednesday morning, September 22. This was the actual mid-autumn festival day. We had moon cakes and fruit as gifts from our boss. The whole country was on holiday and we loaded into the van and headed south toward Benxi. The first thing we noticed was that the road to Benxi goes right by the airport. It was a super modern tollroad and the traffic was light. We made mental notes to make sure that the next time we came or went to the airport we'd request our taxi drivers to use the tollroad. We gladly pay the toll to get such a smooth ride.

Next we noticed that our driver was not the normal Oh-my-God-I've-got-to-drive-as-crazily-as-possible kind of driver so we were not the normal Oh-my-God-I'm-going-to-die kinds of Western passengers. Our driver was even so laid back that he went so far as to kill the van's engine on long descents, thus saving gas and making us possibly the slowest vehicle on the road as we coasted gently down hill and dale.

All this attention to driving details must have been fatiguing because after a couple of hours we pulled over. Charlie informed us that the driver was tired and was going to take a break. We got out and wandered a bit near where it turned out was the entrance to the water caves. We didn't go in just then. That experience we saved for the trip back home.

Reinvigorated our driver continued on. The countryside had gotten hillier, but it was mostly uphill so we didn't get much more coasting. We did stop in one more small town. While there I noticed that most of the local transportation was in pedal cabs. Here's a photo of one of the drivers.

At one point we noticed some rocks piled up on a distant hillside. They spelled out something in Chinese characters. Kristine made a joke about Chairman Mao and Charlie told us that yes, they said “Long Live Chairman Mao.” They must have been holdovers from the Cultural Revolution. Amos noticed that they were pretty well maintained for 50-year-old holdovers.

As we approached out first stop—Guan Men Shan (Yellow Stone Mountain)--Charlie points out what he calls farm hotels. They looked nice so we told Charlie that we'd love to stay in one of them. He heard us but we continued on to the park entrance where Charlie told the gate guard we should be let in because we were foreigners. It must have worked because we got waved in.

What followed was our first real experience with Charlie's knack for negotiation. This would become a repeated motif during the next three days and at times it seemed that negotiation became a goal in its own right. Today though the negotiations were mild. We went to three different hotels, got three different prices, alternately laid low in the van so that prices wouldn't be inflated because we were foreigners or made ourselves visible inspecting rooms to make sure that the quality was suitable for us. At one place we promised to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant in exchange for a good room rate. The owner of the third hotel somehow was politically connected. He managed to bring down the price of the first hotel, so we went back there and accepted the new, lower rate.

After unpacking it was back in the van and off to hotel number three, again. This time we had lunch in the hotel's restaurant. I never found out if that played a part in our negotiations for accommodations. The lunch was good though. Best of all, our waitress was a sassy 17-year-old who took no guff from Charlie or our driver. I think even Charlie took a shine to her although he pointed out that she was a high school dropout with few prospects for the future other than early marriage and motherhood.

So Day One ended with us managing to squeeze in a few hours of hiking on the Guan Men Shan trails. It was a beautiful day and the place was not crowded at all. The deciduous forest promised to provide beautiful foliage displays in a couple of weeks. We were here a bit too early for that. Instead we satisfied ourselves with some knee-punishing climbs and descents.

The next day we moved on to a small town where there was something Charlie called the “Forest Park.” Here we planned to stay two nights and maybe because of that Charlie put his all into hotel negotiations. We checked out so many places that we began to refer to them as place 1 or place 4. We looked at rooms and bathrooms and, since this is the place with hot springs, the bathing facilities. We looked at places only to be told that they couldn't accept foreign guests. We got escorted by the proprietors of one place to a family member's or in-law's place just a short bushwhack away. We considered the benefits of western beds compared to some of the smaller places' heated brick beds. We selected one place only to be told that the rooms were now no longer available. Finally we ended up in a small, family-run place on the river, but not on a very scenic stretch of said river. As a matter of fact the view from the front of the hotel was of a decaying bigger hotel and its weed-choked back lot.

We were in though and now Forest Park beckoned. We spent the rest of the afternoon on our bikes going steadily up a dirt road into the park's hills. We felt somewhat like rock stars because every group of Chinese people we passed, and we passed a lot, gaped at us in wonderment. Here were four, count 'em, four, foreigners on bicycles no less. “Hallos” echoed out. At some point the dirt road gave way to rocky foot path. We walked out bikes up the trail to the first river crossing. There we locked the bikes to a tree and continued hiking. The trail eventually disappeared but we kept going. Why? Because Charlie had told us that we'd come to Yellow Stone Valley or some such. We don't know we never made it. After 30 minutes of ducking under branches and scrambling over rocks we stopped and turned back.

The ride down the mountain was fast and exhilarating. We had to dodge rocks and debris as well as other people who were hiking. The only thing to besmirch the trip was the fresh oil that was laid on the last 2 kilometers. We all ended up with sticky, oily spots on our bikes and up our backs. The hotel proprietor washed the clothes in a solvent (Jackie thought it was acetone because it smelled like nail polish remover), but wouldn't accept payment because she didn't get it all out.

Amos got some cleaning supplies and we tried washing our bikes in the river. That didn't work either. While he was gone getting the cleansers, Kristine and Jackie got roped into a big drink-fest some local firefighters had going on next to the hotel. I was with them originally, but after one gambay with that nasty Commie booze and a look at the garlic clove floating in Kristine's glass of wine, I decided to make myself scarce and trust that the women could hold their own. Later I found out that the firefighters were so interested because they had never met a foreigner before. I also learned that one of them got sloppily close enough to Kristine that Charlie had to threaten to report him to the mayor.

That evening we got to soak in scalding hot spring water piped into a huge private tub. Jackie and I used one and Amos and Kristine used another.

On Day Three we decide to just head out on our bikes into the countryside. We packed a picnic lunch and rode for a couple of hours. Then we found a streamside spot where we could eat and relax before turning back and pedaling the return trip. It was a fine day. The traffic was light and the scenery was pleasant.

We decided to try the municipal, hot-spring-fed pool that afternoon which sparked the most extreme of Charlie's negotiations. He wanted us to take the van the one block to the pool because we'd need it, not to get to the pool, but to drive around to find the best price on beer. Since we thought we'd have a beer at the pool, Charlie was sure the prices there would be exorbitant. We finally said no to the negotiation mania and walked to the pool where we paid the full five rmb (80 cent) price for beer.

Our last day found us packing up and driving toward home with a planned stop at the water caves. All went as smoothly as the outward trip. Since we had the stop at the water cave, the driver didn't get too exhausted. We added an extra stop in the city of Benxi where we ate a nice meal in a local place. Charlie couldn't help but point out the the food we were eating in Benxi would've cost much more if we'd stopped to eat at one of the roadside places near the water caves.