The apartment building where I live.

My room.

Ping pong tables in the park across the street.

The street that leads to the apartment building. The chuar vendors set up every night on the right-side in the parking lot.

Where the men gather in the park everyday to play Chinese chess.

Bike repair/Chinese chess hang-out.

This is a huge ring in the center of the park where people come at night to roller blade. The tree-covered rocks at the far side that are a bit hard to see in the picture are a nice area to go and read.

First I would like to explain why there aren't any pictures in this post (yet that is). Blogspot is currently blocked right now and although I've been able to get around that and post text I still haven't figured out how to use a proxy effectively to post pictures. I apologize for the absence of pictures but I'll get it figured out soon and add some later on to this post.
Since I got back from Yanping and Moon Canyon, I’ve taken my final tests for the semester and moved into a new home stay. My final day of class is tomorrow, after which I’ll be taking a break from studying Chinese, although I may continue studying this summer with a tutor.
My new home stay is in another apartment complex not too unlike the one I stayed in at the beginning of the semester. This one, however, is located outside and to the west of campus. The apartment complex is off of a small side street with a row of small restaurants on the north side of the street, a park on the south side, and a middle school further down the road on the north side directly across from the park.
The street gets busy during the mornings and afternoons when students are dropped off at and picked up from school and during lunch time when students leave school for a little while to grab some lunch from one of the several food vendors that set up every day around that time. In the late afternoon and at night, however, everything slows down. A number of men congregate at the park and at a small bike repair stand on the street to play Chinese chess.As the men play a small group of women stand around in the vicinity, presumably waiting for their husbands. Although it seems that only a few people play ping pong around this time during the weekdays, the weekends see the public tables fill up with men and women.
At around 7 or 8 each night, a group of vendors set up what are called chuar (pronounced ch-w-are) stands along the street across from the small cluster of restaurants. Chuar is the word for the food that they make, which is basically a kebab that can have beef, lamb, chicken, tofu, or vegetables on it. The preferred cooking apparatus seems to be a couple of cinder blocks or some other sort of makeshift stand with a long, slender metal trough placed on top at waist-height. After you’ve picked out what kind and how many kebabs you want, they place a shovel-full or two of burning coals into the trough (if they aren’t already cooking someone else’s chuar), cook it for a few minutes, and it’s ready to be eaten. Each vendor also has a small outdoor dining area of tiny plastic chairs where groups of people will sit around eating chuar and drinking beer. At around the same time and a little further down the street you can walk to the center of the park and watch people rollerblading in the dark. Its proof that there are still parts of Beijing that you can actually relax in and escape the chaos that abounds elsewhere in the city.
I’m going to keep living here from now until mid-June, when I’ll move back over to campus and stay with a German classmate of mine. I’ve been teaching private tennis lessons to a couple Chinese girls, ages 7 and 9, three or sometimes four times a week and will continue doing so throughout the summer. I’ll also be continuing to teach English to a Chinese man in his thirties who may be traveling to the US for his work and so feels he needs to improve his English-speaking skills. Teaching him has been quite easy; so far all we have done is watch “Will and Grace”, a favorite of his, and pause every now and then so that I can explain the dialogue and any new vocabulary to him. Teaching the girls has been a bit more difficult, mostly because neither they nor their father speak English. But I’ve been able to get through that without too much trouble by learning a few essential tennis-related words. Aside from work, I’m planning on taking a few trips this summer and, like I said, possibly continuing to study Chinese. I also took a class this spring on the Erhu, a Chinese with two strings played with a bow, and may continue to take lessons this summer. Otherwise, I’ll be trying to stay out of the Beijing summer heat.

Last week was our spring break, giving us Thursday and Friday off. This time, Red and I chose another village to go to called Yanping (严坪) in the eastern tip of Gansu (甘肃) Province. It may seem strange that every trip I've taken has been to a village. The reason for this is mainly that most major cities and cultural relics in the eastern part of China are flooded with people. There are still many places worth going to such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. But after seeing some of the sights and especially after being in a city as hectic as Beijing for an extended period of time, a trip out to a remote village where relatively few travelers go sounds great in comparison to visiting a city that has some sights.

After taking three trains and about 24 hours of travel we arrived in Jialing (嘉陵), a stopping point on the way to Yanping. After we got off the train, we grabbed some dinner at a family-run restaurant and were shown a place to stay for the night. At that point we were so exhausted we simply took the room and went to sleep. What we hadn't realized was that the train tracks and our room were about 30 feet apart from each other. Several trains passed throughout the night, each one blaring its horn and screeching to a halt at the platform. Needless to say, we woke in the morning almost more tired than we had been when we arrived. A bird's nest located just outside our door also didn't help matters. Nonetheless, we woke in the morning and set out to find our way to Yanping.

A group of Chinese backpackers gave us a ride on a bus they were taking up to Yanping, which was still another hour or so away from Jialing. We finally arrived at the outskirts of the village and were made to hike the rest of the way after the bus was unable to make it up an especially steep and muddy hill. On our way into town, the smell of the fields and the soil made me realize how living in Beijing one almost never comes across something so fresh-smelling.


As the backpackers continued on to where they would be camping out Red and I went into town to find a place to stay. We found a family who had a couple rooms ready for visitors and were told the beds were 20 yuan a night, which seemed fair to us. The price of the beds would turn out to be less straight-forward than we initially thought although I won't go into that right now.

After resting for a bit we walked around following various paths used by farmers that go from the village to their plots. Passing through fields of wheat and other crops, we climbed up to a road overlooking the village.

As we walked along the road we came across a small group of cow-like animals freely grazing on the hillside.

I say cow-like because although they strongly resembled cows they did not appear to be the same species of cow that I'm familiar with in the US. They would be the first of many that we would encounter throughout the weekend, though I still do not know how the farmers can possibly keep track of who's is who's, nor do I know how they prevent the animals from simply walking away. The same goes for the chickens, which were also allowed to roam freely, although they didn't seem to stray too far from the village. Pigs, however, were kept in pens. I don't know the reason why they, in particular, were not allowed to go where they pleased.

After returning to town the mother of the family we were renting our beds from served us dinner, which consisted of vegetables raised in the area along with some noodles and little meat. As we were eating dinner we could hear a commotion coming from the town center. After dinner we walked over to investigate and came upon a party being held under a temporary canopy erected next to a new-looking two story building with a convenience store on the first floor. We were promptly invited to join in the festivities and were offered seats at a table of men eating, drinking, and smoking. With the help of some of the children in the town who could translate the Gansu dialect into standard Mandarin, we found out that the party was being held in celebration of one of the residents for having just moved into a new home located in the floor above the convenience store. We chatted with them for a while and spoke some English with their children. Not long after we went back to our room hoping to finally get a good night's rest.

Our hopes (or at least mine) would be in vain when at around 4 the following morning the roosters began to crow. Up until now I've been under the assumption that roosters wait at least until sunrise before they begin to crow. No such luck, however, in Yanping. The early crowing was, I think, due to one rooster in particular. Since the time we arrived in Yanping, this one had been confined to the inside of a basket turned upside down with a stone on top, presumably to prevent the bird from escaping. I believe the rooster began crying out, just as some pets do when put in carriers on their way to the vet, which in turn set off a chain reaction of other roosters crowing in reply.

That morning we prepared to hike out to an area outside of the village called Moon Canyon (月亮峡). The residents of Yanping were also off to an early start, as the men from the previous night's party were preparing to continue on with their celebrations. They started off day two of the party at around 8 a.m. by setting off firecrackers, which lasted for ten or fifteen minutes. We finished breakfast as the last of the firecrackers were lit, walked out of the village and down a path that went through more wheat fields, and then walked along an irrigation canal that paralleled the river below. Once we had reached the starting point of the canal we picked up a trail that led into the canyon.

We hiked along the trail for a ways and then stopped at a spot on the river that looked like a good place to take a break.

We found a place to relax for a while, ate some rolls and peanuts that we had brought along, and then prepared to continue hiking. Before we got back on the trail, we walked up to a small man-made rock wall surrounding a cave, which we had noticed earlier when walking down to the river. As we walked up to investigate, though, we noticed a man was poking up his head from behind the wall and staring at us with a grave look. We waved our hands and said hello but to no reply. He merely stared at us, which gave us the idea that we should turn back and continue on the trail. It was an eerie experience, however, we simply left and did not see him on our return trip later in the afternoon.

After hiking for a while longer we decided to turn back so as to reach Yanping before dark. We stopped by a house we had passed not long before to ask the residents where exactly we were.

We were not lost but were curious to find out if there was anything in the area particularly worth seeing before returning to town. They invited us in and immediately served us each a bowl of noodles and homemade tofu along with two plates of vegetables. They truly seemed to do this only out of the interest of hosting a couple foreign travelers in their home and not in expectation of any payment. Nonetheless, after eating we handed them some money after they refused to accept it several times and then went on our way. Afterwords we returned to Yanping and went to bed early. The roosters began to crow again at 4 but I managed to sleep through it.

The following morning before setting out we had to settle the room bill before catching a bus back to Jialing. Contrary to what the man said at the beginning of our stay (that each bed was 20 yuan per person per night), he was now telling us that each bed was 40 because the other two beds in the room had not been rented by anyone. He was clearly only trying to get more money out of us and we explained to him that we were not going to pay 40. He then attempted to tell us that there had been other travelers coming through whom he had been forced to turn away because we had been using the comforters on the other two beds at night. Although we had been using the other comforters at night to stay warm, there had been no other travelers, nor should the price of one comforter be equivalent to the price of a bed plus one comforter. Eventually, we got things somewhat settled and left. Up until then I had somehow forgotten the importance of establishing the price of anything here before one buys or uses it, something which we should have paid more attention to at the beginning of our stay.

Although I would have preferred to avoid the dispute over our bill, Yanping was nonetheless a great place to visit. In a way it was a combination of the things I liked most about the previous two villages we visited; like Guoliangcun it was beautiful and had great places for hiking, and like Yujiacun it seemed to be a real village that had yet to be changed too much by tourism.

I'll end with one more strange experience I had on the trip. On the day of our return to Beijing, we had to change buses in a town that, to begin with, was already quite odd. It seemed to be some sort of big amusement park where colorful floats had been constructed on the river that ran through the middle of the town. The floats appeared to serve no purpose; there were no rides on the them nor were they accessible from the riverbanks. The town, however, seemed to be profiting greatly from the tourism industry that had developed around whatever it was that was fun to do there. When we got to the town, the bus that we needed to transfer to was preparing to depart within the next 5 or 10 minutes. After attempting to buy a ticket on the bus, as we had done for every bus prior to this one, we were directed to a ticket office where there were two lines of about 50 people each. Things were not looking good for us getting a ticket in time. As we stood in line one of the officials working at the office noticed us, then took us past the lines and into the ticket office itself, and then gave us our tickets right then and there. While we waited for our tickets, we were essentially put on display behind the glass windows of the ticket office as the people in line began to file around to get a better look at us. The whole thing was strange, and completely unfair to all the people who had been waiting in line, but it was nonetheless out of our control and nice to have gotten our tickets on time rather than being stuck looking at the floats for a few more hours before the next bus.