Huaibei, Anhui Life.....China

   The first time I went to China I got a window seat on the airplane for what I thought would be a good view of Shanghai from the air, this is what I saw.

                       


After landing at Pudong Airport I stayed one night in Shanghai before taking the 600 km train ride from Shanghai north west to Huaibei, Anhui. What I thought while viewing out of the window of the train was that the landscape seemed like it was one big industrial site; every river seemed like it was used for industry, the amount of large highway projects was astounding. Mixed in with industrial stacks were farms that were tended by an aging population; I saw young grandchildren playing as apparent grandparents focused on manual labour. Upon arrival in Huaibei I witnessed what a "coal city" looked like.

                       

 There is a coal fired power plant right in the city; 70% of China's energy is produced by coal powered plants; many restaurants use coal to heat the cooking surfaces, street vendors use honeycomb coal for cooking. I could feel the effects of the bad air on my lungs fairly quickly and I wondered about the local peoples health, particularly children.

 Here men shovel coal which is used to give a school power

                            

  Once I was settled in Huaibei I had to find food that was appropriate to my palate; one of the first restaurants I went into had chicken feet, pigs feet/ear, and many la (spicy) dishes, this was going to be a challenge. There were many men smoking in the restaurants, although there were large no smoking signs; I would try to find non-smoking establishments. There were also a lot of street vendors selling food so I looked forward to finding more than a morsel that agreed with my stomach.

                         

     I learned that there are actually many restaurants, that are a bit pricey for Chinese standards, that have excellent food, one just needs the budget available to eat every day in a nice restaurant.

  The igniting of fireworks seemed to be rampant at all hours of the day and night. The first time I heard a string of small firecrackers go off I thought there was some sort of celebration; these small bangers were the most common, but there were also large explosions. I can honestly say that I heard fireworks every day in this country. Not only did the Chinese invent fireworks, they are also the largest producer and exporter in the world; so many people get injured.

Speaking of fireworks and explosions, it only took once for me to be startled by a man making popcorn on the street like this guy, next time I would be ready. He heats up hundreds of kernels of corn and then there is a loud boom and the container expands (filled with popcorn).....very loud.

                           

     My first week in this city of China was a bit hard going as I felt that the culture was too different from my home. There was a lot of chaos on the streets with horn honking, cars parked on the sidewalk, motorcycles maneuvering through pedestrians on these same pedestrian easements that should be used for safe walking (so many pedestrians are killed by vehicles each year in China). The buses were very crowded as people pushed to get a seat; at the shops people did not wait their turn, jumping the queue was the norm. So much cigarette smoking existed everywhere I turned, it was hard to accept the second hand smoke. When walking around the markets there were items for sale that we do not sell in Canada, like skinned dog.

                            

I wondered what I had gotten myself into and it did not make sense to leave my family and our nice home for this style of living in this East Asian Country. Once I got more used to my surroundings I started to see things a little different. I noticed that many of the street vendors had swollen hands from working out in the cold all day, I learned that they were too proud to take a tip for their meals that they cooked up on the street (some cost as little as 80 cents), although they made very little.

                             

  Shoes repair men were often seen on the sidewalks

                             

In Shanghai the minimum wage had just been raised to 1,100 RMB per month ($170), and that was most often for 6 days per week; in the smaller cities it is less and in the countryside even worse. Watching people peddle around on very old bicycles or carry very heavy loads by using bags attached to the ends of a bamboo pole helped me realize that these people are very good at long term suffering, I walked so many kms per day taking in the culture as I listened to English songs on my MP3, that really helped me cope since I often went days without talking to anyone in English.

  Sometimes sorting out who is a real friend when you are in a country where the citizens speak their native tongue, while I do not, can be a challenge. I noticed that many people were treating me like I was a super human, just because I was so different. Each day I could hear locals calling out laowai, laowai (foreigner); people from the countryside were often amazed at my appearance. I often went to small villages in the countryside which give me an accurate reflection on the life of 100's of millions of Chinese.

                              

                              

These people led a very simple life

                                           

                                           

  Often men can be seen sitting around playing cards or mahjong

                            

  There were very few birds around Huaibei in comparison to Canada. From 1958-1962 there was a 4 pests campaign by the government to encourage citizens to kill rats, flies, mosquito's, and sparrows, who were eating the grains; many other birds were killed. It turned out that sparrows ate many of the nuisance bugs so they were replaced on the list by bed bugs, which were then replaced by cockroaches. Conservation still seems to be a problem in this country as one can go to a park and see hundreds of dead bee's that were poisoned so people could take a photo by flowers without having to worry about being stung.

  My highlight of Huiabei by far was meeting so many students; mostly university students but also many elementary age kids. The students at the Huaibei University came from all over China as their options for school placements depended on their college entrance exam score, that year 9.5 million students took the college entrance exam. I could rant about the Chinese education system but I want to finish this post with admitting that after traveling extensively around China that I learned just how friendly most of the people in Huaibei are.....to me the foreigner anyway.

  The students, who are now between 23- 27 years of age were an honour to meet. They are respectful, they care about the environment, acknowledge their parents hard work, and for the most part are diligent with their study. There was little heat in the classrooms or dormitories which made the school life very difficult, what made study frustrating for them was the realization that their education system was very poor. Somehow through all these challenges they remained true to themselves and I can say that I am beyond proud to have made their acquaintance.

Tai Mountain, Shandong.........China

  It was the May 1st, China's Labor Day holiday, and most of the news stations were warning the Chinese not to travel because of the crowds and congestion. It was a bit strange, and it made no sense to me that the government would encourage citizens to stay home on a holiday rather than contributing to the domestic tourist economy. I was going to venture to Mount Tai in Shandong, one of the five great mountains and a holy land for Buddhism and Taoism. In ancient times many emperors climbed to the top to pray for the Chinese; also many famous poets described the mountain in their poems.

  In the morning I headed with Hope my travel companion to the little train station in Huaibei, Anhui for the 325 km trip north to the small city of Taishan, Shandong. I saw some familiar faces on the train, English major students who spoke English well, so this made the ride on the overcrowded train much more enjoyable. Once we made it to Tai Shan City we found a hotel room for 300 RMB and had time to look around a bit, I could see that it was a Chinese tourist city. The weather was hot so I figured that the more than 6,566 step climb up the 1500 metre ascent would be a sweaty affair.

  My sleep was not good for several reasons; the box spring was so hard, many hotel beds do not have a top mattress; there was so much horn honking on the street; sirens were blaring and Chinese tourists were making so much noise in the hallway. At 5am I thought we may as well get motivated on reaching the base of the mountain, this would help with tolerating the heat.

After we entered the Red Gate

                         

we met a Russian girl named Anna who was studying Chinese at a university near Beijing, we befriended her and she accompanied Hope and I up the mountain. As I stated in other posts, most all of the popular Chinese mountains have concrete stairs from the bottom to the top. On this day the 4 hours of ascending Mt. Tai would start with very few fellow stair climbers; the people we saw were very friendly, as were the people in the shops and restaurants around the hotel. So many people wanted to get their picture taken with me, at first it was flattering but then it became too time consuming as many people would be waiting with camera in hand. There were so many temples that we passed on the way up the mountain, some were more significant than the others.

                              

                              

                              

The relaxing/sociable climb lasted for a couple of hours until we reached the Zhongtian Gate which is where the bus stop is that most of the Chinese that were intending to go the rest of the way up the mountain were getting off buses. There were thousands of people approaching the same set of stairs for the main route going up the mountain, the crowd was astonishing. Some bad behaviour seemed evident as people started to push as they shuffled their way toward to 2 metre wide space. Many Chinese climb these famous mountains to see the sunrise so when one climbs up in the morning, there are also crowds coming back down from spending the night up there. From the bus stop onward was a human traffic jam like nothing I had experienced before, as far as the eye could see the path was loaded with people.

From this photo one can see an empty staircase leading to a small temple, the main route for the top is a solid snake of people.

                       

                       




I entered in my journal that there must have been 20-30 thousand people on the mountain that day; in total I saw 3 foreigners, including me. The next 2 hours of climbing was a real eye opener for travel in this most populous nation on a holiday. The people were throwing all of their snack garbage on the ground, so many men were smoking and it was near impossible to escape the smoke since we were jammed so tightly. There were some screams and people yelling at each other as the sun beamed down upon us. Compounding the problem of people trying to go up as others were trying to go down were the vendors who were half blocking landings with their carts and small huts.

                                         

                                         


 Some people hopped over the small wall that ran up the sides of the stairs so that is what we did, it was just too hot to stand there. Probably the trickiest part of scrambling up the dusty trail was avoiding all of the human excrement that dotted the side of the mountain. On the top of the mountain, Yuhuang Peak, was like a small town with many shops and temples; even a Heaven Street. The temples were just okay for me, I have seen so many of them in Asian countries. Many tablets were to be found on the mountain, at Yuhuang Peak there was one that dated back to 1545, so people have been climbing this mountain for some time.

     I heard the zipper of my backpack and turned around to catch a guy who was holding a shirt over my pack as he tried to open it to steal something. I grabbed his arm and started yelling at him, he said something in Chinese.There are a lot of pick pockets around China and they must have a big pay day on these crowded mountains as city folks come out to be tourists. When we got up to one of the temples we looked down to a landing where this pick pocket stood with 3 other guys; searching out possible victims,

                         

                          

                          

On the top there was enough space for the crowds to disburse and we could relax and casually take advantage of the views.

                          


I took about about an hour to reflect on the climb before going back down the 6,566 steps. I thought about the difficulty for men to carry supplies on the litter (human powered vehicle), some men often get paid to take the tourist up these mountains on these wooden carriages on poles. So many people wanted photo's, especially when they saw me writing in my journal with my left hand; I accepted many requests before we left. My knees could really feel the exertion once I got to the bottom, it was a slow km walk back to the hotel. I had now experienced a tourist site with no crowd control and was witness to some bad behaviour; given some time and space, the Chinese tourists seemed very pleasant.