The Ying and Yang of Yueyang

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After a good night’s sleep, I’m still getting up before dawn. I’m beginning to think that our decision to take an April trip to China was a pretty good one. There has been a bit of humidity, but so far temperatures have been nice and we can’t complain about the air quality. Arnold tells us that the monsoon season begins in May, and we wouldn’t want to deal with that.

Both Sharon and I made our way up to the Sun Deck (deck 6) for the morning Tai Chi half hour workout with our Tai Chi Master Tom (not his real name). Due to the very moist outside conditions from the heavy fog, this mornings had been moved inside to the Lounge on Deck 5. When we arrived Master Tom was warming up with a demonstration of his Tai Chi prowess, and what we saw was quite impressive and graceful. Our class began at 7am and the River Guide Ben (not his real name) served as translator for those not conversant in Chinese. A sizeable group was in attendance, and we spread out in the lounge as best we could so as not to contact anyone around us. Tom demonstrated so simple movements starting with the arms, then involving the waist, then rotating the neck, and adding in some bending of the knees. We’d been warned by Arnold that we would work up a sweat in the half hour session. It didn’t take long for me to be feeling the impact of this workout, despite the fact that I’ve been working out and exercising every day for quite some time. I could tell Sharon was feeling it a bit more than I was. At the conclusion of the first lesson Tom informed us that what we’d done was merely some simple warm-up exercises; and, the real work would begin tomorrow morning.

We cleaned up after Tai Chi, showered and changed, and made our way to Deck 2 for breakfast. I got a bowl of stone-cut oatmeal and found a table with two couples towards the rear of the vessel on the starboard side by the window. The two men were named Jim and John and I thought Sharon would get a kick out of that when she sat down. To top it off, both couples were from Cincinnati. Sharon did get a kick out of that. Her first husband, and her father and her brother and her nephew are all named James or Jim, and as for John need I say more.

After breakfast we headed up to Deck 5 again to the Lounge for the Embarkation Briefing and Safety Instructions by Bob (not his real name). Bob said that he got his English name from teachers at a school he attended. They found it too difficult to pronounce his name and eventually informed him that from then on he would be Bob. He also informed us that he was happy with this choice, asking us if we knew what “Bob” stood for. Someone shouted out “Bring own Booze” which got a laugh. No that wasn’t it, it stands for “Best of Best” according to Bob!

We were a little late docking in Yueyang, tying onto a floating pier. We disembarked for our tour, remembering to take the “Gone Ashore” badge for our cabin: badges are available for your cabin number and “A” or “B”… I was “A” and Sharon was “B”. Bob had informed us during the briefing that this is how they track passengers and assure that everyone is onboard when it’s time to move one. He assured us that they hadn’t lost anyone yet; still, they hoped to avoid leaving any passenger behind in a town where nobody could speak English. The tour guides and busses were waiting for us when we got ashore. Today we would be visiting the Yueyang Viking School. This school is for elementary school students, first through sixth grades, from poor families. When we arrived we entered the school courtyard and were lined on both sides by young boys and girls changing in unison “Way come to ah skew” over and over, in a sing-song fashion that can only be done by six and seven year-olds. Sharon finally realized they were saying “Welcome to our school” which I guess shows the benefit of her studying Chinese for almost one year. A couple groups of children then performed some music, songs and dances for us, before the various tour groups went each into one of the several classrooms in the school. The classroom we visited was for 74 students managed by one teacher who taught the Chinese reading and writing. The students did a performance of “Edelweiss” for us, which we found to be an interesting selection. Several poems were also read for us. Notable here was that they recite their poems very loudly, on the verge of shouting them, and for me anyway it seemed to lose any semblance of poetry being devoid of any lyrical flow, and took on instead the characteristics of propaganda. After being treated to the efforts of these very charming kids, Arnold had warned us that it would be our turn to return the gift by performing for them. Four volunteers from our group had been selected to serve as cheerleaders for the class performing three songs: Old MacDonald (doing dog, chicken and cow), Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Hokey Pokey. Arnold asked the kids afterwards to identify the animals and they got dog from the “woof, woof” (okay Sharon and I thought this should be “bow wow”), and they got duck from “quack, quack”, but they were stumped by “moo, moo”. Arnold explained for the Chinese this would be better approximated by “mehr, mehr”. We then spent a few minutes of one-on-one time with some of the kids. Upon leaving the school a donation box was available for people to contribute to the operation of the school. Viking has three such schools that it supports. In China, all children are required to get 9 years of schooling. When Arnold went to college, he said that only about 20%!o(MISSING)f his peers were going on for higher education. Today that number is about 65%!;(MISSING) but, the admission standards have been lowered. Arnold said that when he attended, getting accepted was hard; and, from then graduating was fairly easy. Today it is the opposite, and now the graduation part is difficult.

Sharon was looking forward to lunch, because the Viking Daily that we received for today showed that tonight was the Chinese Dinner Night, with a typical family style dinner served on the Lazy-Susan. Sharon’s thinking: “Been there, done that.” But the lunch offering was limited with no ‘Everyday Choices’ as they have for dinner. I had the curry lamb ragout, which was very good; and, while Sharon likes lamb she didn’t want to get near the yellow curry sauce. I thought maybe the potato cream soup with bacon might work for her; but, she doesn’t do creamed soups. So she made do with several pieces of bread and the Crème Brule dessert.

Sharon went to the Chinese lesson at 2:30pm, while I decided to work on blog for today. When she returned, I asked if she was the best student in the class. I mean, it just figured since she’d been exposing herself to Chinese speaking for about one year in preparation for this trip. She said she needs to speak slower, and take more time with the tonal nature of the language. She said that people who try to talk too fast, speak what their teacher called “Chinglish”. The class had been given a paper with some words in English, the Chinese written equivalent, and the pronunciation. It also offered an example of how tone is important for verbalizing the word you intend; and, how it can get you in trouble if you don’t get it right. Arnold had given a great example of this on the bus earlier in the day, before we arrived at the Viking School. The basic pronunciation of the word is “ma(-)”. Spoken plain, the way one might speak this referring to their mother, it in fact means mother in Chinese. If you speak it as a question, with a rising inflection “ma(’)” the word can mean linen, or numb. If you say it with a combined falling and rising inflection “ma(ˇ)” it means horse; but, if you use falling inflection “ma(‘) the meaning changes to the verb to curse. Arnold then offered a childhood favorite tongue twister whose sing-song lyrical tones sounded a lot like a baby crying for it’s mother “ma ma ma ma, ma ma ma ma” with a couple other syllables thrown in for good measure that basically means “My mother was riding on a horse that was so slow her butt became so numb she cursed.”

At 4pm we went back up to the Lounge for a presentation on the Yangtze River by Bob (the Program Director). The Yangtze is the third longest river in the world (after the Nile and Amazon… guess which is number one); yet, most Chinese have never heard of the Yangtze River… they refer to it as “The Long River”. In Chinese, only that portion in the Shanghai estuary area is referred to as Yangtze. Westerners in Shanghai mistakenly assumed this would be the name of the entire 6,300 miles of river, all the way to its origination in the glacial melt-waters from Gela Dandong glaciers in the Qinghai province near the Tibetan border. The river flows through eleven provinces. Forty percent of China’s grain comes from land irrigated by the Yangtze. Water levels fluctuate a lot. During the winter water levels are at their lowest, while in summer the levels are swollen by melting snows and monsoons. The seasonal variation in Wuhan where we began our river trip is about 50 feet; while, in Chongqing were the river trip ends it can rise by about 100 feet in the summer.

We were both dead-tired after the lecture, and retired to our cabin for a nap before the 6:30pm Chinese family style feast Sharon is so looking forward too. Did I mention that she is quite hungry, and missing the filet yesterday because of Good Friday, and the meager offerings encountered at lunch, she might be understandably, just a wee bit grumpy too. Okay, so I’m the one that normally get grumpy when I’m tired, I guess she has the right being both tired and hungry. I got ready for dinner but Sharon wasn’t budging from bed, and she finally told me she didn’t feel like sitting around watching people eat and explaining how or why she wasn’t eating anything. She’d just be content with her Ritz’s Peanut Crackers which did survive the trip to China. I checked the menu in front of the dining room to see if the “Everyday Choices” were available; but, it was the menu for the day before. I found a table and joined Dave and Jeanine from Alberta. They inquired how I came to be in China, and I told them the story about my 60<sup style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">th birthday and after my wife asked me where I wanted to go, and how after I picked Disney World she handed me a Viking catalog saying “Pick something else”. I told them Sharon wasn’t up to another Chinese meal and they said that she could also order from menu. I went back to the cabin to tell Sharon and she couldn’t get ready fast enough (she almost knocked me down once and pushed me out of the way a second time getting to the blouse she wanted to wear, and her shoes. And she got to order her filet and baked potato; although, I bet she remembers to tell them no sour cream when she orders it next time. Tonight I think she was just happy to have a baked potato.

I thoroughly enjoyed the meal, especially the crispy fish with snow peas and the Kung pao chicken (the only dish that was truly spicy). We had a nice time chatting with Dave and Jeanine, telling them our story of how we’ve been married for about 3 ½ years, yet how we met originally about 35 years ago when we shared an office back in California. Sharon and her first husband had moved from California to KY/OH about 20 years ago, just after the Northridge quake that had damaged their home three days after they had listed it for their move. A couple years after Jim, her first husband, had died, she had come back to California on a business trip and decided to look up people she knew back there to see if anyone would like to have dinner. Dave and Jeanine liked the part where I said that I was her third choice for dinner that Father’s Day almost five years ago now; but, Sharon added that that’s only because her brother Kevin and her sister-in-law Judy weren’t available. That’s when Dave and Jeanine told us that they’d both lost their first spouse as well. We chatted until the wait-staff suggested that we go see the show, and we noticed that we were there were very few people still seated in the Dining Room. The urgency of course is that many of the wait staff are performing in the show in fifteen minutes.

The show was emceed by Bob, and featured native Chinese dress in a fashion show from the various parts and periods of China. The show was very interesting, with many impressive outfits on both the men and women. The models were from the wait staff, bar tenders, housekeeping, salon and other crew members.

And if you’re still wondering, the answer to more than one HAL trivia question, the Nile River is the longest river in the world.

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