太拉风哦！贵阳-欢迎光临

Guiyang:
My days here in Guiyang consist of roughly 10+ hours of teaching. I teach 20+ aspiring English Tour Guides the English language (in the context of Tourism, etc...) from 9:00am-5:30pm, with a 2 hour break for lunch and time to prep for the following day’s class. Though I am tired to the point of losing all abilities of comprehension, I love every minute of this lively and non-stop existence, here in this organic, thriving city of Guiyang. In total honesty, being here in the south of China makes me want to never return to Beijing, with its grey clouds, hot and oven-like feel, and lonely distance. It’s also a blast being the only 老外in town, with the exception of Shannon, my classmate and fellow teacher here at Guiyang Normal University, situated in comfortable walking distance from the city center. That is another great plus; though this mass of rolling hills and Swiss-cheese layered metropolis gives the image of a vast and expansive city, it truly has the feel of a town. Everything is walkable, from the 小吃街to even the famous Jiaxiulou. Whereas Beijing is laid out and clearly segregated into varying areas of economic well-being, Guiyang (for the most-part) seems to have not much choice but to simply build in a way that mixes rich with poor, street vendors with posh hotels. (As an aside, this city seems to have its fair share of hotels, night clubs, tea houses, and restaurants…aside from these business ventures, not much else seems to go on!) Now that isn’t to say that Guiyang doesn’t have clear demarcations here and there; it most certainly does. There is a park with two light-encrusted pyramids that sign the presence of a Wal-Mart, and there are hidden, snaking, writhing alleyways of surreptitiously-sold fruits and other goodies. People here are also not yet jaded to foreigners, which makes interaction much easier, if not a little bit awkward, what with the staring and all. Blending in at night is a little easier; but even still, conversations with strangers arise simply from appearances alone. Not so much in Beijing…
Prices here are FLAT, with city-wide bus fares of a whopping 1元per ticket (to anywhere), and cab rides starting from 10元and ending at, you guessed it…10元 (city-wide, unless you’re from outta town, in which case your cabby might run the cab to the point of meter usage…apparently when customers speak 普通话-Standard Mandarin Chinese-upon entering the cab, let alone English, they will drive you around in circles until the 计时器-the time meter-activates, thus upping your costs). This aside brings me to the fascinating topic of 贵阳话, or the local language of Guiyang. I’ve fallen in love with this spicy and fluid dialect of Chinese. It rolls much more smoothly than 标准普通话, with flatter tones and more emphatic vowel sounds. They way 贵阳话is constructed seems to allow for a lot of playful exaggeration. My students engage me a lot in such exercises, testing my slow but ever-rising knowledge of 贵阳话 (which, by the way, is most likely wreaking untold damage on my 普通话!).
My students here are all so diligent, trying their hardest to keep up with the fairly strict regimen of homework and recitation work I assign them. They are wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, and though it takes some teasing, they are question-filled and often ready to ask away. They really inspire me every day, and keep motivated to continue sacrificing my Chinese for this month, teaching in my native tongue-English. That being said, I try my hardest to get out during the evenings and speak Chinese. Chinese now serves as my break from English, and perhaps even vice-versa, from time to time. I would like to return to this beautiful, mysterious, ripening and green province sometime soon (following my stay in Beijing), get to know it on a more permanent basis. Guizhou as yet stands as China’s most impoverished province. Yet it is also considered the “summer resort” of China, with the nation’s only claim to UNESCO Cultural Heritage sight fame-the Karst Forest of Libo, located in region’s southwest hook. It is home to roughly 40+ ethnic minorities, 17 of which are indigenous to the region (I ripped that straight from my students’ recitations of Guizhou facts and tourism information…they are burning Guizhou’s interesting points into my brain, day by day!). My previous blogs concerned the 苗(Miao, or internationally-Hmong) and the 侗 (Dong). These are merely two of the aforementioned quantity. Guizhou is the land of 1000 Waterfalls, home of the largest waterfall in Asia, also standing as the third largest in the world, the mighty 黄果树 (Huang Guo Shu). The supposed fossil of a Dragon also lies in wait here in mysterious Guizhou. It might be hard to imagine, but 97% of this province is considered mountainous, the vast majority of which is made up of the unique Karst landscape. The land looks something like what a green-dyed and moldy tongue might look like from a nanoscopic worm’s eye view-bumps and channels rising and dipping sharply and at short intervals as far as the eye can see.
Another plus is the food. Good God, the food here is, in the words of my younger bro-“flambasing!” Translation: “Amasing!” There has yet to be a dish I’ve encountered that I have not loved with fervor and intensity. All the dishes here are delicious. I will simply imply the quality of the food here compared to Beijing…rather than continue to bash the nation’s capital, and thus risk internet-based censure…and Beijing’s not that bad… it’s just not as good! I’ve eaten hotpot on perhaps 3 or 4 occasions being here in Guiyang, once with my student and contemporary Jackey (he’s a real cool cat) and my program fellow and Master student Steven, the second time in a classic random alleyway, where I conversed with the boss of the hole-in-the-wall 四川hot pot restaurant (even though the family running the little crag (with delicious food, I might add...despite its humble appearances), and was offered to eat for free (I think because I could talk with the guy through his broken Mandarin and pervasive 贵阳话…and carry on a mildly intelligent conversation), and third occasion, which was yesterday, following our classes’ first of four outdoor excursions (to Tunpu, a 600 year-old ancient Ming Dynasty military village, in which the original 汉族(Han, the ethnic majority of China) culture has been since preserved). The third occasion happened to be the hottest hotpot I’ve ever had in China, let alone the hottest thing I’ve ever had in my life…and following that we (a few students and myself) had Spicy Crispy Duck (which is coated in 麻辣, or “numbing spice”).
All in all, this city is marvelous, and this province is magical. One could definitely do life here.

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