Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But Words Will be Written on My Bones (and then Put in a Museum)

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Hello again everybody, so last time we had a fireside chat (and if your not by a fireside when reading these out loud every night to your loved ones, at least pull up a video of a fireplace on Youtube when you read these. FDR would have wanted it that way. Although he probably would have wanted me to have access to Youtube. Moot point.) I got the black lung (pretend I’m saying it as Ben Stiller does in Zoolander) balling like a boss, temporarily forgot how to be a boss for 24 hours, and then regained my status quo with a visit from Tucker. With out further ado:

July 14th:
So after a visit from Tucker, I quickly packed for my trip to An’Yang and hopped on the bus as we went to the train station. The train stations in Beijing are very packed, and unless you’ve been to Europe/other place I don’t know about with a very usable train system, it can be very intimidating, judging by my friends minor panic attack. Luckily I’m very use to busy train stations (and not knowing what stop to get off of – *cough* Ben *cough*.) so it was a non-issue for me. We boarded the train, (second fastest type in China, I don’t know what it’s called) and set off to An’Yang. Now what I wasn’t prepared for was that apparently you can get on a train if you don’t have a seat. So while I had a seat, the 1st ½ of the trip, I had a guy basically leaning on me the whole time (aka: he was SITTING ON MY SHOLDER). Needless to say (or re-emphasize with capital letters) I was not ok with this. Now I don’t have a problem with the dude leaning one the SIDE (ok, so I do need to re-emphasize with capital letters. Sue me, o wait, you can’t. I’m in China.) of my seat, but his buttocks was on my backrest/shoulder the whole time. Not cool.
And it probably doesn’t help that I have broad shoulders. Or am super tall. I’m actually going to take a moment to talk about this cause it’s a) a problem I face a lot over here and b) will come up again in this blog. So most things is China are not built for someone who is 6’+ or has really broad shoulders. Now ½ of you just said, well duh Robby, your shoulders are about as wide as a linebackers. And this is true (excellent for plowing people out of the way on the metro btw), but in America, I can sit on a bus or at a restaurant and have minor problems with shoulder room (unless I’m eating with Dad, and then it’s just a shoving match between bites) and minor issues with leg room, if any. In China, my legs often don’t fit under desks or tables at restaurants, and the train has been a shoulder room nightmare. Now 95% of you just went “Well China has shorter people Robby, duh.” (and the other 5% need to get with it.) And this is also true, on average people are shorter in China, but they have tall people too. There are probably 2-3 Chinese roommates at CET who are taller than me (by an inch but still). So it’s not like tall Chinese people don’t exist. Oh well, not like it’s about to change.
So the second ½ of the train ride was better and I talked a little bit with some other people on a train, watch an onboard movie until we had to get off, and jammed to some music. Nothing super important happened besides me being a boss, but y’all knew that already. We got to the hotel and me and my roomie went to bed.

July 15th :
So we woke up at 6:30 (aka: when the devil is still awake) and ate breakfast (and they had BACON!) and headed off to the Peach Valley Gorge. The place was freaking beautiful. Imagine your in this huge canyon with over a billion years of history, and a small river running through and that's what you were walking through. Absolutely stunning. I can’t wait to get outta China (not really) so I can post pictures. That I took with Jian Qiang’s camera, cause the batteries in mine died (and I left the back ups in the hotel, since I discovered my camera won’t tell me when it’s almost out of battery the hard way. Beautiful.) So the walk was about 4 hours long, and some of the walk is on platforms drilled into the rock. While the platforms were stable, the rock jutting out was right at shoulder level, and thus with my broad shoulders (sound familiar?) I spent a good portion of the walk trying to walk straight while playing dodge rock, and there’s a reason you don’t play dodge rock in gym. (Cause you’ll get sued.) But it was still a spectacular hike that I highly recommend. On the walk down the road from the hike, some of the Chinese teachers (and reminder that most of the Chinese teachers are 22/23 years old) started singing children songs, for an impressive hour. I didn’t know there was an hour of children’s songs in all of Europe. It was also great, cause part of that was a walk through a dark tunnel, and so Jian Qiang went ahead and then scared the living hell out of them (cause we could, not cause of the singing). So that was fantastic – cause I’m a bad person.
Afterword we had lunch with the “local peasants” as our pamphlet said, which is interesting because apparently local peasants live in a huge, fairly nice restaurant, and have forsaken any type of normal living arrangements (aka: we went to a restaurant). At the restaurant, we started to get a little silly. You can buy these little trinkets that are basically head massagers, but look like a steel death trap. And it’s really fun to sneak up on people and start massaging their head with it, cause they start to freak out. Heck, even some people who knew it was coming freaked out (and having used it once, I have no idea why). Long story short, it was really fun, and apparently Koreans really don’t like it.
Then we went over to Wang Xiangyan Mountain, which is known for being a really nice view after a very steep and not friendly climb up. It starts off with a drawbridge (not cool), and then a bunch of steep stairs, and then stairs drilled into the side of the mountain. At this point I couldn’t continue due to my super fear of heights. Now I’ve climbed more height-freaky places before, but the reason I couldn’t do this is that the rocks kept jutting out, and with my broad shoulders (see? A theme) I’d have to more or less bend over the guardrail to get past, which ment I was forced to look down. And that wasn’t going to fly. So I turned around, and the others told me that was probably good, cause then there’s a huge, tight, spiral staircase you have to go up, and even my roommate said he was a little freaked. So instead, I went back down and chilled with some of the Chinese roommates, where we played cards at the table. It was a lot of fun, and we played a card game (I think it was called zhiheijian – which translates into something about the ace of spades). If anyone has played capitalism, it’s basically a more advanced version of that. I’m not going to explain it, cause y’all can google the game and then figure it out on your own, but it was really cool to chill and talk with them. Not so much getting whipped in cards – although in my defense I was still thinking a little too much capitalism rules in my strategy. It was fun and some random Chinese tourists came to watch the random white kid play cards. Then we loaded back up on the bus and headed to the hotel.
Afterwords me and Jian Qiang went out, toured around the city a little bit (nothing super fancy, but a nice little bit of city life) and had some baozi (steamed buns). And then the jerk took the bill again, even after I specifically asked the fuyuan (waiter) to bring me the check. Rude. Then we went back, googled mapped our high schools, houses, etc. And then went to bed.

July 16th :
Woke up at 8:30 (better, not great), ate breakfast (more BACON!) and got on the bus and drove out to the historic Yin ruins. The Yin ruins are famous for 2 reasons. 1, it is the sight of one of the 8 ancient capitals of china, and 2, is home to a lot of oracle bones. The sight was a lot more open than I thought it would be, and they didn’t have as much stuff as I thought, but a lot of the artifacts from the Yin ruins have been taken all across China, so it’s not that surprising. That being said, what was there was very cool, including the skeletons that were left in their graves. But the best part for me – the linguist – was the oracle bones. The oracle bones are ancient bones (some believe over 5000 years old) and is the first evidence of China’s writing system, also one of the earliest in history that wasn’t just basic sketches. It’s really cool to see how the language developed, and the starting point for the oldest used language in the world. I got a lot of pictures of the bones and close ups on the inscriptions that were used more or less for fortune telling (TeeHee! My witchcraft is nearly complete!).
After seeing all the ruins and skeletons (which was kinda awesome – great location for a ghost story) we then went and had lunch at some hotel/business center where they gave us way too much food. They seriously served us 15 dishes minimum. Then we went to a local temple and had the ladies who worked there show us some Chinese cultural things. First the ladies preformed a drum/crash cymbal routine, and then invited us to try. Of course I jumped in, but was given the cymbals so I didn’t really get to do a lot. However, one of the guys who jumped in, Ai’Da, is a drummer back home, so he got to show off a bit, which was really cool. Then they showed us two quick games – one was where you push a metal ring with a stick (harder than it looks) and then one where it was kinda like sumo wrestling only the circle was smaller, you had to stand/hop around on one leg, and use the other leg as a make shift lance. It was rather fun, and as usual, I was boss status from the get go. Student director (who has some weight to him)? Won. Army guy? Won. Jesus? Tie. It’s actually a really good game for balance and learning to lower your level, especially if you have access to a place with a bunch of circles on the ground, or even a mat with a bunch of circles (*cough* Coach *cough*).

Once again, I’m running outta words, so a third blog will be posted. You guessed it, 3 things to think about:
When was it ever ok to sit on a random dude’s shoulder, especially when he/she is obviously not from your country?
Why can’t ladders be built 3 inches further away from where the rock juts out? Dodge rock is no fun.
When you die, would you prefer to have your bones written on, or sat up in a grave on display?
--Robby

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