The Countryside

Recently the weather has improved and we’ve been out on a couple of excursions in the Pingxiang countryside.  When Pingxiang isn’t trying to be a city it’s pretty nice.

One Sunday morning Bob called us up and informed us we were going to visit a temple.  So, along with Eric, the Dean, and various colleagues/family members we drove off into the mountains.  Here’s Bob with the mighty ancient temple behind him.

We were accompanied by Cowboy, our old friend from the fishing trip back in October, who latched onto Terry the moment he saw him and didn’t let him out of his sight.

At the back of the temple, up the hill, was allegedly something really good, so we started climbing up a very slippery slope.  Chrissy decided it was a little too dangerous to go up so started going back down.   

Mistake.

Half way up the slope we realised there were steps running alongside it.

At the top of slope was absolutely nothing.

We had a bamboo climbing competition to make up for this.  Here I am advertising the great outdoors.

The ancient temple, pride of Pingxiang, was also home to the supposedly rare and important ‘square bamboo’.  Here it is.  Eric was very excited about it.  Us not so much.

All in all, a nice day out though.

A few days later one of Chrissy’s classes invited us to go and pick strawberries near the affectionately named ‘Happy Village’.  The Happy Village boasted vineyards…

...'yellow flower' fields (difficult to explain the actual name to the students)…

...and greenhouses for strawberries, watermelons, and some sort of white subterranean vegetable.

It turned out that the students didn’t actually want to pick strawberries, so we picked every available strawberry ourselves.  We were relatively proud of this feat, though possibly more proud of the fact that we’d all managed to wear the same shirt.

We then went for a little wander through the countryside.  There were ducks.  It was very pastoral.  Terry and the students played a game in the river in which they threw bricks at each other and tried not to get tetanus.

Meanwhile, some of the students went fishing.

Apart from the fact that they moaned non-stop that it was too hot, I think they all had a good time.

And on a final note, the college has decided to become more ecologically friendly as it continues to take sizeable measures for self-improvement.  Observe the recently implemented ‘Plant more trees’ initiative.

Forward thinking, as ever.

Wuhan

The 5^th April was the Tomb Sweeping Festival.  We didn’t have any tombs to sweep so we took a little trip up to Wuhan to visit Cyrielle and Mathilde, who work for Alliance Française in the city.  Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province, just north of Jiangxi.  It’s an amalgamation of 3 city centres and is a major transportation hub as it’s very central and sits on the Yangtze river.  So it’s really big.

I got a train in on Friday night, struggled for about 15 minutes trying to get out of the train station, then we took a taxi to the airport to pick up Bram.  This trip took a very long time, probably because the taxi driver got a little lost in the countryside trying to avoid paying for a toll road.  But we made it, the weather was warm and we headed out to a bar for a great night that ended in 5am massages at a 24hr massage place.

The next day it was raining and freezing.  China really seems to enjoy its daily fluctuations between summer and winter.  A couple of Mathilde’s students were performing in a French singing competition so we went along in the afternoon.  It was a pretty standard Chinese competition – lots of noise and shiny clothes.  But the students all seemed to speak better French than any of my students’ English.  It was really interesting, but a little upsetting.  I got to see one of the classrooms at their school which was even more upsetting – there was heating, real chairs and desks, and no piles of rubbish/spit/vomit on the floor.  Who knew teaching in China could be so luxurious?

The rest of the Pingxiang laowai crew came up on the Saturday.  On Sunday we went in search of cherry blossom, which Wuhan is famous for around this time of year.  People flock from miles around to see the trees.  The campus of Wuhan University is a good spot for it so we walked around in the rain and took generic photos.   

The Uni was really nice – it had not one but two running tracks.  Like some sort of magical dream.

On Sunday it was sunny and warm.  Of course.  We went to a park on the banks of the Yangtze.

 

Everyone was flying kites so we thought we should.   Behold The Spongebob.

The Spongebob did not fly well.  Or, if it did, we didn’t know how to fly it.

We spent maybe 20 minutes trying to get it in the air and the best part of an hour unwravelling the massive tangled knot that the string had become.

Terry and I went down to the river to have a look but it was not terribly inviting.  Here I am by the crystal clear blue water.

Here’s Terry by the luscious green river banks.

There were probably some other interesting sights in Wuhan but we got too distracted by the overwhelming presence of Western food to notice.  It was great to see the girls though, and to get out of Pingxiang and meet some new people.  Unfortunately the only direct train back from Wuhan is at 1am so we had a typically sleepless night on a Chinese sleeper and nearly all of us were ill for the next week.

Worth it though.