Morning Tea, Tai Chi & Gossip

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Geo: 31.745, 110.676

Hello! Today we are in Shennongxi China -- the area known as the White Emperor City. I have no idea how to pronounce Shennongxi. Just spit and talk in a high-pitched voice and you'll get it. Today started early for me because I went to bed early last night after my dear husband and most of the rest of the boat got drunk last night. Kamie was a mess last night. I had maybe two glasses of wine and decided I was not in the mood for excessive wine. I half-slept and kept telling him to be quiet or settle down. After dinner, by the way, we went through the locks of the dam. It was very noisy with lots of screeching and grinding and it was well after midnight until we were finished. Everyone was kept up very late because of all the noise. Apparently there was a problem with the boat in front of us and we were stuck in the last lock for a long time. I don't know the particulars but that was the gossip at morning tea and Tai Chi practice. I was awake, showered, dressed and in the main lounge with a cup of hot tea, waiting for Tai Chi by 5:45am. The rest of our group quickly showed-up and my quiet morning of tea became hilarious. First Modelish girl (who is really very nice) showed-up and said Danny (a 21-year-old who is traveling with his mum) drank so much he threw-up on the dance floor last night and then kept dancing. Danny is about 6'2" and 275 pounds. They said he was literally "hopping" on the dance floor. Modelish and I had a good laugh and then here comes Danny before 6am - dragging but ready for the Tai Chi lesson. Have you seen a large awkward kid with a beard doing Tai Chi? This kid is a blast. We ribbed him a bit about his drinking last night and then he shared that the two Brown girls (two Brown students traveling with us - cousins - both incredibly nice - one quiet, one very joyful and loud) had leaned over their balcony yelling down into Danny's balcony and woke him up they were so drunk last night. Next comes Mark and Bonnie (Mark is hilarious - I will try to write about him later) and Mark says the two Brown girls got in trouble last night - someone called about them and they were told to settle down and be quiet. Everyone told on everyone and laughter ensued and by the time Tai Chi practice started at 6:15am there was almost 20 of us having hot tea and laughing about the night. This group of travelers is a good, fun group - wish I had time to write about them all and their quirkiness.

Tai Chi uses almost every muscle in your body, makes you look like an idiot but you feel like a swan. I'm doing it again tomorrow. I think Kamie will join me tomorrow. Today, however, he was just in time for breakfast - probably because his wife put his entire outfit for the day on her made-up bed and called him at 6:45am and told him to wake-up and get upstairs. He did. He has a cold and last night just made it worse.

As soon as breakfast was over we all gathered our cameras and went for an excursion up the Shennong Stream. We boarded a small ferry boat which carried us through a picturesque tributary of the Yangzte river that our larger river cruise boat cannot access. It was pretty amazing. The gorges are beautiful. We then went to an area the government has built which shows some history of the river. We saw a real hanging coffin - the old Chinese used to put the bodies of the dead in wooden coffins and hang them from the cliffs because they believe the higher you are "buried" the closer you are to heaven. Btw, just a tad bit of info here we have been told not once but twice – the Chinese believe they are all going to hell when they die, there are 18 levels of hell, and how good you are on Earth will be the deciding factor on how bad hell is on you, what level you get. That is so ridiculous to me. Can you imagine living your whole life believing you are going to hell, regardless? That's oppression at its best in my opinion. Back to our ferry ride – it was interesting because you could see the completely abandoned homes and apartment buildings. The water will eventually cover these places where people lived, some for generations. It was eerie to see. You could also see several people may not live on their land anymore but they are still coming back to farm it for as long as possible. Most farmers only "owned" (leased from the government) less than 2 acres each so they aren't big farms like you and I picture, they are small family owned farms. The farther away from the damn we got the more we could see people taking "chances" and still farming their plot of land, trying to raise their orange trees, etc... probably checking on them daily and always hoping the damn doesn't break or the water doesn't rise quickly as this is a risk they are taking. The river used to be three to four feet deep and is now approximately 240 feet deep and rising. There were even three or four people still living in their homes or you would see a giant apartment building completely abandoned – no windows, nothing, and then one apartment where some stubborn or brave family has decided to stay as long as possible. This is an option for anyone but probably a very hard life as there are complete cities abandoned along the river so getting to "town" for essentials would be a long drive. Another thing we saw today is men are still fishing this river. We actually noticed they were selling small fish and crawdad caught from the river – fresh and smelly – at the place we stopped today. They were even selling silver fish – which sounded like "sewer fish" when our guide was talking to us as the Chinese cannot seem to pronounce "R" or "L" – and so he announces this is a sewer fish – and then bites the head off – and everyone grossed-out. O China You So Crazy.

The ride up was fun and our group got some good and funny pics. The ride back was cold. It is cold today on the river, unfortunately. What happened to that 70 degree weather we saw advertised before we left for the trip??

We returned to have lunch....Diet Coke with ice...FRENCH FRIES – real french fries that were hot and a little crispy and good (no salt tho)... and... CHEESEBURGERS!! Lunch was quick and awesome! They had sesame buns, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, and some sort of white cheese – probably a white cheese product but it was good. The meat had almost no fat and was very peppery so probably buffalo or something like that but seriously... Diet Coke on ice, cheeseburger, french fries – Kamie & I were in heaven! Funny thing was.. we were the only two eating them at our table!! Our tablemates were still eating the white sticky rice and the pork/green pepper/sauce mushy mix. Forget that. Note: we later learned the meat was goat as was most of the "beef" we ate in China but goat was good today!

So, a few things I thought I would share that I forget to share at times that I find amusing:

* The boat has terrible customer service. You want a pot of hot tea or some ice in your ice bucket? Call housekeeping and/or the front desk 10 times and they both tell you the other one will do it and after a few hours, no one ever brings you a pot of hot tea or a bucket of ice. You have to go beg for it elsewhere.

* Our bathroom on the boat is disgusting. The shower curtain has specks of black mold and frankly, I was scared to shower in there the first day. I kinda want to vomit every time I'm in there. It has a big sewage drain thing in the floor and smells terrible all the time. I spray hairspray every time before I go in there but it doesn't help. It's flat-out gross. At least it is a western-style toilet.

* You know these shore excursions we take? Our big boat usually parks next to a rusty old boat or a pier tied-up to the shore and we have to walk through a maze of rust, wooden/broken planks, and other questionable areas to get on and off the ship. We always walk over these wooden boards to get on and off the actual cruise but then the areas we walk on to get to shore are always rusty and full of holes. Hundreds of us walk across these areas and I can just see one of them snapping and a few cruisers going in that green water that is the Yangtze River. Eh.

Something else I haven't mentioned much... toilets. Let me tell you something... I have become a once-per-day pee person. Thank Goodness. Everywhere we go they call toilets "happy places" and they are stinky, smelly holes in the floor and I won't use them. Even in the ultra-modern, amazingly clean Beijing International Airport... there were 3 stalls with holes in the floor (for those who PREFER to squat) and three stalls marked handicap – with western-style toilets. It's amazing how I became handicapped in the Beijing airport. Sometimes, the squatters are open as in - no doors between you and the squatter next to you. I have not been forced to use a squatter yet and I've been very lucky that if/when I needed a bathroom I was at our hotel room bathroom or near our cabin for all but one time. However, we were at lunch the first day in Beijing and our tour guide told us the bathrooms were good to use there so I went... and the first two stalls were squatters... and out walks a Chinese girl... so I look to the left and those two stalls were western-style – but no toilet paper (we carry some on us all the time here as instructed before ever flying over) – and then... get this... the trash can next to the western-style toilet was FULL of dirty toilet paper – they didn't flush it??! Eh! It was sooo stinky in that bathroom. Also, most of the bathrooms in China do not have doors – they have curtains – men and women. It still doesn't let the horrible smell out. You can smell the bathrooms before you go in them. Which leads me to another subject... SMELLS. Everything in China seems to smell.. the hallways of our cruise smell like sewer, the cabins of the Chinese cruisers smell like fish, the streets in Beijing stunk – all of them, everything, everywhere, smells a little like shrimp or fish or something along that line. I have to ignore it or I think I will vomit but I swear I'm not eating Captain D's and we are not having salmon or any fish for a long time after we return home. To give the Chinese people some benefit, when they visit us they think we smell like beef and cheese. They are grossed-out by the smell of Americans, too.

Last night was guest/staff talent or no-talent night plus a game show mixed in there somewhere. It was hilarious. Free wine and beer made it funnier. This has become the booze cruise...

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