Golden Week Travel

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Because the Chinese National Day holiday is three days long, many people make up work-time on the weekend before to enable them to have a full week off work, hence 'Golden Week'. We were lucky enough to be invited to travel to Tiandong and Baise (about 4 hours northwest of Nanning) by a wonderful Chinese Ph.D student. He invited us to attend his senior middle school's 70th anniversary celebration. We also got to experience many wonderful things. The pictures tell all.

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Photos

Decorated tree
The trees in the yard at the school were all filled with these orange lanterns in celebration of the 70th anniversary.

Dorm
There are 3000 students living at the senior middle school, boys and girls. The clothes you see are hanging because that is both their closet and drying rack. The students have to wash their own clothes by hand in cold water.

Typical middle school classroom.
There were 70 desks and 70 students in this classroom! Look at the books piled on their desks. Busy students - busier teachers.

Outdoor blackboard
This is a blackboard that was in the courtyard of the school. We think the teacher had an outdoor class because of the heat, the classes aren't air-conditioned.

Our hotel
Our host, Charles, booked us into this wonderful hotel which is on a lake just outside of Baise.

On the boat.
Charles took us (all except me - the poor motion-sick person) on a boat cruise at the resort. The woman behind him is dressed in the Zhuang ethnic costume.

Zhuang dancers
The boat cruise included a stop on an island where they were treated to a preformance by ethnic dancers.

A Zhuang delicacy
Alan and Charles tasting the delicacy - fried fat.

Foreigners and Dancers
There were other people at the performance, but the 'foreigners' were the most popular.

Soup pots simmering.
Just outside the restaurant where we had breakfast we came across these soup pots that were simmering until lunchtime.

Drifting
This was the start of our 'drifting' experience. Luckily there were no cameras at the end of our 5 km trip, we were soaking wet! We were not prepared because North Americans would have called "drifting" white water rafting.

Pick your duck.
One of the many food vendors in the courtyard of the resort.

Noodle Shop
This is Charles' favourite noodle shop - its been in existence for 100 years.

Climb to the Origins of the Zhuang People
We walked a kilometre to get here, and then climbed to the very top. The white area on the hill is the first stop. According to mythology it is the cave of the first Zhuang family.

Comments

[Karen W.]

Hi
Love the pictures...Bonnie -how is the teaching going? Are you finding it difficult or are you in a routine now? Would love to see some pictures of your class -are you allowed to take some? Would love to hear what a typical teaching day is like for you...have fun -keep the pictures and info coming.