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Published: April 24th 2012
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Chongdugou, Finally the Victor….
This past weekend my school took all 11 foreign teachers on a two-day outing for this semester. Chongdugou is national/state park outside of Luoyang about four hours away. In America it would be a slightly above average state park at best. Chinese people seem to be enthralled by anything involving nature. I think its due to the majority spend all their time living in large cities. Me being from the great state of West Virginia, it takes something extraordinary in nature to impress me. The park was filled with small Chinese hostels of only 20 or so rooms. They try to sell it has “come see what country living is like” but no one is doing any type of farming or any other type of “country” activities. However the food we ate all weekend was local and delicious. I discovered I love rabbit meat.
Saturday, after a hearty lunch we set off to hike the mountain. It took about 2.5 hours up and 1 hour of walking plus 10 minutes of sliding in a marble trough on an apron to come down. We made it back just after dusk to have
dinner. Before I divulge the entire story let me explain two things 1.) I am nowhere near an alcoholic; on average I will drink one night out of the weekend to socialize with friends. 2.) Bai jiu is more than a drink in China, it is a cultural norm. For those of you who don’t know bai jiu, or “white wine”, is a liquor made from rice containing around 55% alcohol by volume. Most liquors hover around the 40% range. To describe the taste I suggest you mix 1 part ether with 3 parts paint thinner. Unbeknownst to many anthropologists and myself every Chinese male above age 30 loves it. If you attend any formal event or business dinner or even a regular lunch with middle-aged Chinese men, it will be present. They do not bother with shot glasses, you will get orange juice glasses filled and refilled. You can claim “I don’t drink” or “no thanks” for about 15-30 minutes. They will hound you beyond belief but even worse make you feel emasculated. If you’re lucky you can drink only a little to appease them until they are too drunk to remember to harass you. Multiple school banquets have ended with me puking at the table while the middle aged men look onward almost with approval of my misfortune, and this irks me beyond reason every time. That night I had decided I would not be outdone by Chinese men twice my age and half my physical specimen, no matter the cost. The bottles come out, toasts begin, no turning back.
One glass, two glass, three glass, and enough cigarette smoke to cause second hand lung cancer made for the ideal conditions. The field was whittled down to four; myself, Mr Cui (pronounced tswei) aka “Grumpy”, Stewart (assistant to president of the university), and Director Hu. Director Hu was “entrusted” by the president to lead this journey so I think he sandbagged that night because usually he is the clear favorite. Dinner drags on, Hu bows out due to responsibility, Stewart soon slows down and its down to me and Grumpy. We have coined some of our school bus drivers with nicknames, like “wheezy” for his respiratory condition brought on by 3 packs a day and “grumpy” because he never opens up the bottom door if we have large things to put on the bus. My strategy of slow and steady is working, I drink the same amount of glasses only I pace myself. If no one pukes at the table by the end of dinner a clear winner cannot be seen until the following morning. After dinner I voluntarily purge myself of the ingested liquid, drink plenty of water, and hit the hay by 10 pm.
The following morning at 7 am I notice I am the only one from the competition at breakfast. Then in walks Hu looking like death warmed over, check! Later Stewart limps in, literally limps (never figured out how he got hurt), two down. Grumpy was not at breakfast, but he could simply be preparing the bus so no celebration yet. At 8 a.m. we venture onto the bus to find Grumpy slumped over the wheel sleeping. The sweet fragrance of victory was short lived after I realized I might have inadvertently put our lives in danger with Grumpy behind the wheel on narrow mountain roads. My bad. While slowly moving through traffic Grumpy actually hit two people walking on the road! Thankfully no one was hurt and it wasn’t serious but some other passerby’s were yelling at our bus. The days destination was Jiguan caverns, a four star tourist destination, whatever that means. As Grumpy backed the bus into the parking lot he slammed into a small tree, large enough to cause a scene in the parking lot and enough to make us irrupt in laughter. The rest of the day we joked, “Better sub in Wheezy!”
Outside the entrance our group takes photos, which quickly escalate into a small mob of Chinese on-lookers requesting to take pictures with us. Soon someone from our group is told we should move out of the entranceway. One of the employees in our foreign affairs office told me the security told him “we cannot here because it is a military place.” This makes no sense to me, I figure lost in translation, so we move on into the caves for a one-hour walking tour underground. After the tour ended has we were walking back past the main entrance our tour guide is met by military police that explain that we all must leave in a rather swift fashion. Make a long story short the fumbled translation was foreigners are not allowed into the area because of close proximity with Chinese military bases they wish to keep secret. As our tour guide received a tongue lashing from the police, theories among the group snowballed; Would they search the bus? Would they check our cameras? Were the caverns being used as a front for nuclear weapons? Did they think we were well trained Russians? Then we thought logically, why were the signs in Chinese and English? Why were there no signs at the entrance saying NO FOREIGNERS? Why would they even sell us tickets? But the long and short of it was we were the first and last foreigners to go inside the caverns, so I can put that on my resume'.
Again we enter the bus to find Grumpy sleeping off the previous evenings festivities. We stopped at a local restaurant before we hit the interstate for lunch and again draw a fair amount of spectators. At the lunch my victory was sealed as Grumpy threw up at the table, the part of me that wasn’t grossed out was filled with pride. I was finally the victor, and their eyes, finally a man.
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