More adventures with Zu Yong

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I hung out with Zu Yong again (you may remember him from such adventures as “My Special Adventure” where I was drawn by a classroom full of Chinese students), I met him at the campus gates and he waved his arm (as if to say, ‘hey, follow me’) so I did. After walking a few blocks it occurred to me that I should know where we were heading, he told me we were going to meet one of his friends at the Music Conservatory. There is another University nearby which is strictly for the arts: Music, painting, singing, digital arts, etc. I have been driven by the campus and it looks rather nice. Along the way Zu Yong attempts to speak with me, which takes enough of our concentration that we slow considerably on the sidewalk. After shuffling a few blocks at a turtle’s speed I piece together that Zu Yong has invited me to another region in Sichuan in May (we get a week off classes—national holiday, like spring break but grown ups get it too). There are mountains, a sea of bamboo, and a cemetery. I guess it is a national holiday and many people use it to honor the deceased. He said we could travel through the province as well—oh and some of his students are going too. Although I find this to be a lovely opportunity to travel with the locals, I’m not sure it is how I want to spent my week off school. I had pictured more of a solo adventure…but we shall see, it was nice to be invited nonetheless.

We arrive and meet up with Liu, who was involved in our previous adventures. He is about my height but skinny as a rail. I am told he is good at painting using old Chinese techniques (not sure exactly what that means, but I can imagine). He has a wonderful smile-which he often displays and can speak little English. We wait for their friend to show up, when she does I’m taken aback at how ‘hip’ she looks (Zu Yong and Liu are not what I describe as hip). Denny is about 21 and has on a cropped, leather, biker jacket, grey t-shirt, mini skirt and hot pink converse which make the hot pink writing on her shirt pop out. She immediately smiled and introduced herself in an accent which I have come quite accustomed. Denny grew up in Shanghai, where there are more tourists and it’s considered ‘cool’ to speak English-additionally students have more opportunity to speak with foreigners, therefore they enjoy it more. Denny is studying Visual Arts and Communications (not entirely sure what that means, but I think it’s a bit like Advertising). With the help of Denny’s translating I got a tour of several art departments. I even got to meet one of Denny’s “professors” who spoke fantastic English and taught an art class on Graffiti, which Denny tells me, is her favorite. We then left the campus walls and walked down the road to a nearby neighborhood where several of her classmates were ‘tagging’ the wall. It was quite amusing to see girls dressed in nicely and in peacoats spray painting a cement wall. An activity you would normally seen done by baggy clothed hoodlums. After meeting her classmates; Rossi, Kitty, and Marium (who are all excited to meet the white girl), Zu Yong, Denny, and I strolled through the market-I tried a tofu dish that I think is made from fermented tofu, it smelled atrocious!! But the taste wasn’t half bad. They insisted I try ‘traditional Chinese hamburger’ but I insisted harder that I didn’t.

Once back in the campus walls, we meandered to the track where they were having a ceremony for the freshmen class who had just finished their ‘military training.’ From what I gathered, all incoming freshmen have to go through some sort of ‘military’ training, I don’t know what it consists of (I assume some sort of Communist loyalty check) and then dance around on the field for a bit and you’re done.. I hear students here at SWPU had to do it as well, perhaps it is China wide. There was lots of marching and then a few kung-fu demonstrations by men and women (the women’s was more impressive), there was some stick shaking, and baton waving. But I finally had to call it a night-I still had lesson planning to get done. So, Zu Yong and Denny walked me to the front gates and we hopped on a bus (thank goodness because the wind had kicked up and it was getting chilly out), and rode down the street a mile at best to the gates of my University. We agreed to meet Sunday night for dinner but I made sure to tell them that I don’t eat meat—to avoid the mishap of last time…and here are some pictures of said adventures.

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Photos

Rossi
Rossi working on another piece

Rossi's work
Chinese spray painting

Kitty
Doesn't she look like she belongs there? Its b/w but the colors she used were apple green and hot pink.

Important flowers
Yellow flower is used to make cooking oil and green plant is edible, I've had my fair share of it. There are patches all over the place, the shops (not pictured) across the street will harvest these when they need to.

Freshmen grads
Entire freshman class done with 'military' training.

shoes
I thought it was funny that they have the hat, jacket, and pants, but they wore their own shoes! Looked pretty funny

ASMN
hehehe, this is Liu's "fanny pack" or "bum bag" I just thought it was an unusal grouping of letters to be on a bag that would be worn on the ass of a man...

Presenting the flag
Notice the Hilter type gait they use...

Girl Kung-Fu
Like I said, more impressive then the boys' moves.

More girl Fung-Fu
More graceful and kickass-ish