Chengdu Week 44 - Countryside and QingChengQianShan

June 12-13, 2015

    It’s been while since I’ve written anything. The reason is I have been working and doing the most mundane of things. However, was asked to do a bit about what I get up to in my daily life so that’ll be coming out in a week or so. Right now however, I would like to report on going to a Tibetan and Qiang minority village for a day, followed up by visiting Sichuan’s famous irrigation system, Dujiangyan 都江堰; followed up by an excursion up a mountain. This was probably my last trip in China before I return home, I am happy to say it was quite a fun one.
    First stop was made to the Tibetan Village, which if I am honest wasn’t extremely interesting. This is the fourth village I have seen, and pretty much they’ve all been built up to look the same post-2008 Sichuan Earthquake. But I did get to go on a little adventure with some of the new USAC students. They had found some local kids to take them to the entrance to the shrine at the top of the hill. So together we went and up the mountain we went. The view was really spectacular, as this is an autonomous region. There is very little industrialization as the recreation is meant to simulate the countryside, which means very little pollution. It was well worth the small hike up. After some time we headed back down to meet up with the rest of the group. After getting our picture taken a bunch of times, we all loaded back up on the bus and headed to the Qiang minority village.

    This minority village was slightly different. Unlike some of the other villages that were fairly decimated by the Earthquake, this one remain fairly well off. Yes they needed to rebuild, but many houses were left somewhat standing. As apart of this tour we were allowed to go into the houses and climb to the top. It was interesting to see a different minority’s way of life. Then it was off to the head of villages house. We went into the underground maze and were given such an epic tour by a spritely gentlemen, who was easily in his 70s. He was very sneaky, always appearing behind us after distracting us with some interesting piece of knowledge. The two cedar trees in hour stood as the pillars of the household and they were about ~2000 years old, they remain standing during the earthquake. I did not get too many pictures unfortunately, the tour was quick and often had us cramped into small dark rooms. Just know that is someone offers to take you to a Qiang minority village, do so, it is a great deal of fun. We eventually had to leave and were loaded back onto a bus, a driven off to the hotel. The hotel was a little bit strange, there was no wall dividing the shower and beds, only glass and a pull down curtain. I personally found it hilarious. Eventually we all settled down for some sleep.

WuJian and I had to share an Umbrella

Jerky anyone?

    The next day I was up bright and early. After a quick breakfast at the hotel it was off to the Dujiangyan 都江堰 irrigation system. We started out in the temples and slowly made our way down. This system has been around since before the First Emperor in China, and prevented flooding in the Chengdu area. This allowed the province to have easy agricultural lifestyle, even when the rest of the country was experiencing famine. I thought the whole thing was incredibly impressive, considering that the original had been built before most cultures had a writing system. I enjoyed wandering around the temples, unlike many places in China most of these temples were Daoist, not Buddhist. The differences are pretty easy to spot, but I’ve always like Daoist temples more then Buddhist temples. They are often less gaudy and have really interesting symbols placed around them. We spent a good couple of hours in the area, then we finally headed out to our final destination of the day, QingCheng Qian Shan 青城前山.

As a guest please don't wander off the path

    You may recall in February Jesse and I went on an adventure to QingChengHouShan, which is the back side of this mountain. The front is much smaller and far less physically challenging. Once I arrived at the base of the mountain (which involved a small tourist bus ride) it only took about an 1.5 hours to get to the very top of the mountain. The season made all the difference, I actually got sunburned on the mountain. Everything was green, sunny and quite beautiful. The views were spectacular, as were the temples. Unfortunately I was with a grip that wasn’t particularly interested in stopping a taking their time inside the temples. Some of this was lack of interest while some of it was simple time restriction I will probably go back again in off season of next year and explore more thoroughly. Between the front and the back though, the back of the mountain was far more interesting, just because I got kind of a mystical feeling while I was there. This was so crowded with vendors and tourists it was hard to zone out. Eventually we made it off the mountain and back to Chengdu.

The very top

Chengdu - Week 38

May 4, 2015

So this just a quick update. The night before Jesse left we made a funny video at the behest of Wentao. Living in China there are some things you need to know before moving into an apartment. This is normally written out in an information packet, but more often than not this packet is ignored. So now Wentao has a funny video to show the new students. This is actually a pretty good tour of our apartment as well. Know that is meant to be funny, and that Chinese people approve.

Week 37 - End of the Semester and Special report

Apr. 29, 2015

    Well the end of the semester has arrived, and it was a doozy. Tests, projects and goodbye dinner to be had by everyone. I will be heading into a two month break, I will mostly be working and self studying for Chinese. I am going to continue to travel to the areas around Chengdu, but otherwise it will be a pretty relaxed summer. Today I though I would talk about something that was neglected the last month — preparation for Sports Day. This entry is the lead up to the wonderful event.
    The whole idea of USAC students attending a Sports Day began on our way to Emei Shan. On the bus ride Wentao made several announcements. One of them was a call for dancers to preform during the Sports day parade. The initial reaction was not particularly excited, no one volunteered. So in true Jenn fashion I volunteered to help organize the dance and get people together for meetings. (I also volunteered Jesse without his permission, but no worries.) Slowly people fell in line for it a we had 12 dancers. Our first meeting was a brief one, we created a Wechat group called Traditional America Folk Dance and we were off. The first real practice was very small, one of the many one day holidays that occurred over the semester. Evalie came with a dance already made for a particularly up beat song and we were off. The first practice ended well, and I was genuinely excited for the first time since volunteering to organize the whole production.
    After that we had several practices, switching of dancers, and last minute ideas. The dance was ready. Our dance crew was Jesse, Nigel, Josh, Evelie, Tanya, Raphi(former USAC student), Sean, Jack, Connor, and myself. The last independent practice was done out on the field and it was blast. Lots of laughing and enjoying ourselves, and teaching the last minute joiners how to do the dance. We did preform the day before when we had a group practice, and it went really well. Our dance was to be combined with a singing number, these two things would make up our entire performance. At times it was a little bit frustrating organizing everything, but it really worked out in the end. I have uploaded the video, please enjoy the performance. We were not the best dancers there, but we had a great time and that was truly all that mattered.

This is Lynn, one of the USAC interns. He was our cheerleader