Chairman Mao's House

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Last week we were lucky enough to go spend a couple days with our friend Sherry in her hometown. It is a place called Yan’an, which is about three hours away by train. It is in the northern part of Shaanxi province, near the border of Shanxi province. In the last blog I spoke of all of the “barely made it” situations that we encountered, but this time, we didn’t barely make it. We had an 8:30 train and we left our school at 7:30, which should be plenty of time to make it to the train station and to the platform, but because this city has so many people, we got off the bus with six minutes to spare. We ran as fast as we could to the ticket booth only to realize that the gate, which is normally open, was closed – we have learned that Chinese people love to make gates and never open them, something that shouldn’t have come as a surprise for this country. One thing led to another and we missed our train. Luckily, there was a 9:06 train so we would only arrive 30 minutes later. The only unfortunate part was that we didn’t have seats so it was kind of like a three-hour bus ride. I got to squeeze next to one girl for most of the ride, but Jarek had to stand. While that seems pretty awful, people get standing tickets for 32+ hour train rides, so we consider ourselves lucky.

We arrived and quickly realized Yan’an is absolutely gorgeous. It is so green! It is a very small city compared to Xi’an, so the air quality is much better. There are beautiful mountains and hills and not very many people. Win!

First, we stopped to get something to eat. We ate 凉粉 (liang fen) which was basically like eating Jell-O with chopsticks. Not easy. It comes in a bowl with spice and oil and no spoon. Seriously, it’s just clear, tasteless Jell-O. If I would have known that we would be eating this dish two more times in the next 24 hours I might not have eaten so much of it…

We then began to see the few famous sites in the city. Yan’an is actually the starting place of the Long March. It is where Chairman Mao lived for about 13 years because he was hiding from the nationalists and eventually turned it into Communist headquarters. Pretty interesting stuff. So we went to see Mao Zedong’s home! Unfortuanely due to extreme flooding last summer, the furnishings of his home got ruined and taken out, but it was still cool.

Mao’s House didn’t take very long to explore, so then we went to a big pagoda on the hill. It was a short hike up to the pagoda and eight flights of stairs up to the top of the pagoda. Apparently you are supposed to pay to enter the pagoda even though you pay a lot to enter the park, but there wasn’t anyone in sight so we went up anyways. Later we saw all the guards sitting around a table smoking and talking. They didn’t know what to do when they saw us come out, so we pulled the ignorant foreigner card and kept walking. Another win.

We also went to the city’s museum. It was interesting for the first little while – talking about Mao and the Long March and Communism – but after a couple hours of the same stuff over and over, it got a little old. They kept saying "The Party beat Japan" over and over, but somehow forgot to mention that big part when the Americans came in and helped. We were very impressed by the exhibits, however. There was a group of soldiers going through the same time we were going through and when their guard saw me wearing my Communist red star hat, he saluted me… I felt pretty awesome.

After exploring the city, we went to Sherry’s home. She lives about 40 minutes outside of the “big” city in a “small” town. (The American perception of a big city and a small town are very different from the Chinese perception, as I’m sure you can imagine.) We had dinner, liang fen, which was much better than the restaurant version because her mom made it all by hand. She also made 粽子 (zong zi) which is extremely sticky rice wrapped in leaves. People put different things in the rice like red beans, dates, or other spices. She put big dates in all of hers and gave us sugar to dip it in. Mmm. I love the traditional food here. Zong zi is a food they only eat around Dragon Boat Festival and it was Dragon Boat Festival weekend so we were lucky!

Jarek really wanted to play majiang with the family so we all headed down to the majiang tables. Guess who won every single round? Jarek. After five rounds, nobody wanted to play anymore so we went to the park! Haha! He has never been that lucky; I don’t know what got into him! We should have been playing for cash! At the park we played with all the Chinese exercise equipment, which is hilarious by the way. Some of it makes absolutely no sense at all. We put on a pretty good show for all the Chines people, that’s for sure. After playing around they convinced us to go over and do a special dance with them. We did not know what we were getting into, but I love the Chinese dancing so I couldn’t resist. An old guy came over with a bunch of big, pink, frilly fans and offered one to me and to Jarek. Jarek politely declined the big pink fan, but was told it is not, in fact, girly at all and guys use them, too. He still preferred to watch and take pictures while I went in the line to figure out the dance. The way this special dance goes is there are four people at the head of the line. Two of them are holding a sith and two are holding big umbrellas. They lead the line and everyone behind them follow their lead while dancing with big pink fans. The people in front create turns and circles that get passed down the line and you go until the person in the front decides to stop, not until the music is over. If we went until the music was over we would still be dancing now because they put the already long song on repeat and go until that one leader can’t go anymore. We were going for probably 45 minutes. It becomes quite the workout! But now I can add that to the list of things I have learned how to do here and feel more cultural. Oh, and they finally convinced Jarek to join the line after a little while so he was the leader holding a sith. My favorite was the really old guy holding an umbrella – he was so energetic and bounced up and down the entire time! My mouth hurt from smiling by the end of the dance!

After the dance we all went and ate 烤肉 (kao rou) which is essentially Chinese BBQ. Except take away the BBQ Sauce and replace it with spice and oil. They put really thin pieces of meat on metal sticks and cook them over a fire and give it to you burning hot and dripping in oil. It was actually really good meat! They have this in Xi’an, but it is always extremely sketchy because 1. You don’t know what kind of meat it really is and 2. You don’t know how long they have been reusing the oil. It’s just asking for a month stuck near a bathroom at all times… We figured since the family was taking us to this place it should be pretty good. I still got a little sick the next morning, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been…

We stayed the night at Sherry’s house with her kind family. Just for a little background, she has one older sister and one younger brother. Her mom really wanted more kids than just one so she kept her second and third pregnancies a secret until the kids were old enough to go to school. Because they know someone higher up, they were able to get ID cards for the kids. After they have those cards it doesn’t matter anymore so they didn’t have to be a secret after that point. Pretty intense, huh?

The next day we went to the famous waterfall on the Yellow River called 壶口瀑布, Hukou Pubu. Whenever the Chinese government makes films or advertisements about China they always include shots of this waterfall because it is so massive. We weren’t there on the rainiest part of the season so it wasn’t as big as it will be later in the year, but it was still awesome. I remember in first grade first hearing about the Yellow River and I really wanted to go there, so it was really cool to finally get to fulfill that dream! Jarek as also always wanted to go to this waterfall so he was super excited as well. The waterfall is about two hours away from town. It is the border between this province and Shanxi province, so it was a little far. They got a family friend to drive us all and about an hour or so into the drive we started hearing this really loud buzzing sound and soon the car began bumping up and down and soon there was a lot of smoke coming from the back of the car. We all hopped out only to find that the tire had melted! I have never seen anything like that! So we were stranded in the middle of nowhere in China. The American mindset is to change the tire and get somewhere that can help you. The Chinese mindset is to call someone to come pick up your car... We were waiting for a very long time. Jarek started changing the tire and the guy driving just kept calling people and calling people for about 30 minutes. Then he told us someone is on their way to come pick us up to take us the rest of the way to the river. He then proceeded to make phone calls for the next hour only getting the run around from all the people who are supposed to help you. (We were relieved to find out it isn't just us who get the run around; it's everyone.) At one point some police officers came to "help" us. The first thing they said was, "Get behind the white line and be careful" though there weren't any cars to be seen or heard. The next thing they said was, "Why didn't you pull the car all the way over?" When your tire is on fire that isn't usually the first thing you think about. So let's just say Chinese police aren't very helpful. They did, however, put up some cones so that cars would move over. Chinese people don't care how close you are to their car when they are going 90 miles per hour. Really, it's quite scary. So that was helpful. They told him to call 311 which is supposed to help you and he had already called them plenty of times and they weren't helping him. So the police left us to wait. It wouldn't have been such a big deal except that I drank loads of water since I was feeling sick that morning so I REALLY had to pee. I was totally willing to squat on the side of the road, (what's the difference between that and a public bathroom? Nothing.) but it was just a drop-off with a fence! Of course. I was hurting. Finally someone came and we made a stop at the nearest public bathroom and then made it to the river. Yay!

There isn't much to say about the river; it's better to look at the pictures. Of course, pictures never do it justice because it was so awesome. What is really cool is that the parts where we were standing and walking around are part of the waterfall during the rainier parts of the year. Our friend really wanted us to take pictures on the donkey that they had there so we got dressed up and did that, too 😊 After exploring and eating we began the journey home. We rushed home and rushed to the train station to make our train.

We loved being there! The small town life in China is so much fun. I much prefer it over the big city life. The sky was blue, the trees were green, and we could actually see the mountains instead of the air! Plus, the people are so warm and welcoming. We will definitely return someday.

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Photos

Spitting image...

Tiny Door
Chinese people were even smaller back then.

Tiny Staircase
This was going up the pagoda.

Welcoming Lunch
Those worm looking things are actually good. They are filled with meat.