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Published: September 30th 2010
Jining's Famous Tower
It's located very close to the mosque, and I think it's a lovely shaped skyscraper myself.Finally...FINALLY...after living in Jining for upwards of six months, and never once bothering to explore the city...I finally explored the city. Seeing my impending status as a quitter of Jining, and having a fellow couchsurfer come down to the city, I knew the opportunity to explore was ripe.
I might have learned the city earlier, Dubai-style, by taking buses to the back of beyond and then returning...but when the city's main attraction points are the ferris wheel and the coal-fired power plant...when just walking around outside is an excruciating rendez-vous with public embarrassment...and when you can't really defend yourself with language...well, I didn't really have any incentives to do it earlier.
But I did yesterday! I showed my guest around town, and in the process learned a few things about my city. For instance, we discovered that apparently Jining has a mosque that also doubles as a museum--and what a nice thing to be able to walk in and talk to people, so much different than my time in the UAE where it's literally illegal for a non-Muslim to touch a Qur'an let alone set foot in a mosque. There's a guy there who does Qur'anic calligraphy, speaks Arabic,
Through the Gate
Apparently, this guy is the guardian of Jining's mosque. French, and English in addition to his native Chinese; in the end I got a calligraphic scroll from him after showing him I knew some rudimentary Arabic.
I also learned about migrating ice cream stores and walked away with a few insights about the people I work with. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and I was overcome with a rare sense of inner peace and belonging.
You can probably get more from the photos than from my long-winded narration, so here they are.
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