Hue, the imperial capital of Vietnam under the Nyguan emperors

The weather is a bit nicer here in Hue. It's warm/a bit cool and humid and cloudy. We took a day tour, for 130,000 VND about $6.50. In the morning we took a boat ride down the Perfume River to see the Vietnamese lifestyle along the river in a traditional home, then saw one an important old pagoda, Thien Mu Pagoda, and a small temple on the riverside. They gave us a basic lunch on the boat and in the afternoon we took a bus around to the Emperor's tombs and visited a home where they make the incense for the temples by hand.

Our tour guide was pretty interesting and told us a lot about traditional Vietnamese lifestyle.

Our first stop along the river was a traditional Vietnamese home. They're are always built facing south, because the Vietnamese are agriculturalist and they believe south is superior since it's warmer and it's easier to grow rice there. Also, the homes always have a screen in front to keep out the bad spirits. Behind the screen if the family has enough money they have a pool that also keeps out the bad spirits because they believe that the spirits will look in the pool and won't be able to see their reflection, because they aren't human so they don't have a reflection, and won't enter the house because they know they don't belong there. Many houses have a small mirror, instead of a reflecting pool, next to their front door for the same purpose.



The guide told us that Viet Nam means, Viet - the people and Nam - south, the people of the south. South is also the color red because of the heat, and yellow is the king's color because each direction has it's own color and the center color is yellow. So the 2 important colors of Vietnam are red and yellow. They are also the colors of the flag, but he said they gave a different meaning for red-yellow on the flag; red is the blood the people lost in fighting for their country and yellow is the color of the Vietnamese skin.

Our next stop was a Buddhist pagoda. I think it was really interesting because it was the same style as in China and everything was written in Chinese. Vietnam has a long history of influence from the Chinese. Our guide told us a few basic things about Buddhist philosophy. They believe that there are 3 relms, the human being the lowest reincarnates into an animal that then reincarnates into a Buddha. And it's a circle so the Buddha reincarnates back into a human. And the reason monks study and meditate is because they want to skip the animal stage and go straight to being a Buddha.

Along the river we passed some people digging up gravel from the bottom of the perfume river.






After lunch on the boat we went to 3 emperors' tombs. Micah and I only paid to go into the first one because we thought we didn't need to see 3 tombs. The one we went into was Tu Duc's tomb and I don't even remember anything the guide said about this emperor except that he holds the record for the most children, 105, and that he had 365 wives and concubines, one for each day of the year.



The second tomb that they stopped at that we didn't go into looked really nice from the outside. It was built on the side of the mountain, so you can see layers of the buildings going up the mountain. So we went around the side and walked up the hill next to it and peaked in. Good thing no one saw us up there, lol.

Hue is also known for is gastronomy so we splurged a little at this Vietnamese restaurant. (although it was still only $20 for dinner for 2). Spring rolls and beef soup to start. Then a fish and pineapple dish, mixed sweet and sour vegetables with mushrooms, and morning glory with garlic. Then for desert we had mixed fruit with flan. And everything was really good!



Some other yummy things we found is this steamed sticky rice pancakes and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves with seafood...yes, I ate the seafood.

Getting to Vietnam...by land

It took a lot longer than I thought to figure out how to get to Vietnam, or well to where we wanted to go. First, we had to go to Guangzhou because there weren't any trains to Nanning 南宁, the border town in China where we could take a train to Vietnam. So we hung around in Guangzhou for a day with Nathan, a friend who worked in Fuyang for a bit. Guangzhou (广州) is the capital of Guangdong province (广东), canton region, in the southeastern corner of China next to Hong Kong. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to do in the city, even Nathan who's lived there for a few years couldn't come up with anything better than eating dim sum for the day.


Anyways, Guangzhou is a pretty city just to walk around. They really value their trees there and so you can see places where they just built walls and sidewalks around the old trees. Canton Tower is the tallest building in Guangzhou and I think it looks like it's wrapped with the fruit protectors.
From Guangzhou we got an overnight train to Nanning and then another over night train to Hanoi. So we had a day in Nanning and just wandered around a little and found a half finished park to hang around in for the day.




The overnight train across the border into Vietnam was really tiny. There were only about 40 passengers on the train, and probably half as many crew. All the cars were first class sleeping cars (so nice!). It was also a bit funny cause we were in a cabin with another American and a Mongolian guy who couldn't speak Chinese, but when we had to get off the train to get our passports stamped the crew came in and tried to speak to the Mongolian guy so I had to translate for him.
We got into Hanoi at around 5am and didn't know where to go and had no money. And since we didn't want to get ripped off by the taxi drivers we walked the 4km into Hanoi, asking people along the way how to get there. We crossed a nice long bridge just before the sky got light and got into the old town of Hanoi just in time to eat our first morning Pho. It was better than I even imagined.
Then off to Halong Bay. We planned to go out to Cat Ba island, where there's supposed to be good rock climbing, but we didn't check the weather before we packed our climbing gear. It was so cold and cloudy in Halong Bay, and they said it was going to rain for the next week. So we only stayed for one night.

Leaving for Vietnam!

Spring Festival is almost here. I get a month off starting today. And We're going to Vietnam...by train.

I know that train tickets are hard to buy this time of year but we still didn't buy our tickets early. We wanted to go to Guilin and Yangshou, where Buckland group is, to go rock climbling, but there aren't any train tickets until Jan. 12. So we ended up buying a ticket on the spur of the moment to Guangzhou广州.... I was just trying to think of some place in the south that we could still get to Vietnam. Now we're going to the capital of the Canton region. We have a friend there so if we get stuck there for a few days hopefully he can tell us some places to go.

In Vietnam, we'll first go to Hanoi and to Halong Bay to do some climbing. Then maybe visit some villages in the north. Then we want to make our way to the south, where it's warm. Somewhere in the middle we'll hopefully meet up with our friend Brian, who's going to surf. Then hang out on the beaches a little. And at the end of our trip we'll go in to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat :) I really wanted to see it a few years ago when I was traveling in Thailand and didn't so I'm really excited now.

Leaving tonight! Can't wait!

Holidays!!

Fuyang, being on the east coast, is a lot more westernized than Tongzi was. Beginning in Dec. all the shops put up Christmas decorations and started playing Christmas music, I almost felt like I was back in the states. And on Christmas all the employees in the shops wore little Santa hats, but when I asked them if they knew what the hats meant they all said no, and when I tried to explain Santa by saying the fat man, with a white beard who says hohoho they didn't understand. But they do have a name for Santa in Chinese that they all know, 圣诞老人, translates into Christmas old man.

They schools took all of the foreign teachers in town out to dinner at the 5-star International hotel. Someone had said it was going to be western food, which would have been awesome since they have an amazing western buffet there, but it was Chinese food. And I guess I don't yet know what 5-star quality Chinese food taste like because if just tasted like good Chinese food to me. One of the interesting dishes was beef served on a cow skull!!

Micah and I didn't celebrate Christmas at all, we both don't care. But we did go out to karaoke the night before with Mark, our full of energy Chinese friend. That was our second time going to karaoke with him, and we couldn't believe he wanted to rehash the first time after hearing our horrible American karaoke. Anyways, it's always a lot of fun hanging out with him, so long as we can keep up with his energy.

On Christmas day we ended up going into Hangzhou to buy some things to make some western food for out Hanukkah party the next day. We invited a couple of our Chinese friends who seemed interested in Hanukkah to my place for a small party. Our party was kind of a disaster. First, we thought there were going to be 10 people, and only 5 came, so we made way too much food. And then on top of that our Chinese guests weren't used to western food and didn't understand why we were eating sweet mashed apples (applesauce) with deep fried shredded potatoes (lattkahs), well maybe if we hadn't burnt the edges they would've looked more appetizing. Then we tried to light the candles but they didn't want to join, so they just watched and looked uncomfortable because they didn't understand. Only my 7 yr-old student helped us set up the hanukkiya. And for dinner we served kugel, which they thought was cake and didn't like because it's sweet. They also didn't really eat the stuffed cabbages, or couscous. And the chicken that they did like was still in the oven to finish baking until we were almost finished and full. Also our friend, who owns a restaurant brought some flaming, deer soup and fried, tiny fish with him, maybe he was anticipating our western food, so he and his wife ate a lot of that.
After dinner we cleared the table and taught them how to play dreidle. I didn't make them out of clay, I just wrote the letters on some tops. My student had a blast playing. But we played with these little gold wrapped chocolate peanuts we'd found, and been so proud of, but the chocolate was horrible and even the little girl didn't want to take any home with here. Micah also made sugar cookies that we put blue icing on, that made everyone's mouths blue, haha. Oye vay what a night. But at least Micah and I had good leftovers for the next week ;)

I'd promised a couple of my classes a party and so I made a bunch of dreidles and cut up little pieces of paper to play with. I played music for them, taught them a little about Hanukkah and also about how we party in the US for New Year's eve. I even brought in a little candy for them, yeah I know I'm a push over... At least Hanukkah in my classes and with my students was a lot of fun. I'm friends with the head teacher, Sunny, of class 17 and so I invited him to the party in his class and the boys in the class had a great time joking around with him.








The school also allowed the students a day break before the New Year. And they celebrated with student performances. They turned out ok, I just think that even if these students are really talented, they are so busy studying that they don't have enough time to practice these kinds of things. My students from Tongzi had much wittier and interesting performances.
This was one of the better performances. These three students playing this Chinese zither instrument perfectly in time together. I tried to search for the instrument and I think maybe it's the Guzheng...? These students definitely had talent.
There was also a group of students who dressed up like the ethnic people of this region and and did some traditional dancing that was nice.

This is one difference between China and the States that they care more about their ancient culture to learn how to play all these instruments and learn ethnic dances. I feel like we Americans have lost our roots and don't care to preserve our ancestral traditions or culture.

And they actually celebrate New Year's eve here! I couldn't believe it after being in Tongzi where everyone sleeps like it's any other night. So we went out to Music House, this western style bar with Filipino singers and American music. Some of our friends were there so we got to party with them and had an actual countdown! It was definitely a lot of fun!

Happy New Year!! 2012

Old Town of WuZhen

Last weekend Micah and I went to the old town of Wu Zhen (you can google it), in the north of Zhejiang, where I live. The only bus in the morning left at 6:55 so we had to get up really early, but it was good cause by the time we changed buses once and found our way to the old town it was already afternoon. The town is something like 1300 years old and they say people have been living in that area for more than 6500 years. So we spent the whole afternoon and evening inside this old town that had all these canals running through it.
We could have taken a boat, but we decided we're not that touristy.









Inside they had all kinds of artisan workshops to show some of the old stuff from the town. A lot of things were built out of wood, and hand carved. Things like door posts, window shutters, and beds.






They also had their own brewery (do you call a liquor making place a brewery??) of local rice wine. They were using the ancient method from that town to ferment some horrible smelling bai jiu, 白酒. But of course they were really just making the wine for the tourists, it was still interesting to see the distillation and fermentation process in the big clay jars.


And what would a tourist town with canals and boats be without a Kungfu boat? Certainly these old men performing Kungfu aren't just enjoying their favorite pastime.






We rushed at the end of the day to make it to the famous 'Bridge inside a Bridge', 桥里桥. When we read about it on the tourist map it sounded a lot more interesting, saying that these two bridges which connect at one end and cross two intersecting canals can each be seen inside the closer bridge, like 2 rainbows, from both sides of the bridges. But when we got there we were a little disappointed because yes, you can see the bridges but only a little part or it. Anyways, they were pretty bridges, just like all the bridges in the old town. Oh, and I should mention that the west part of the town has been completely rebuilt about 20 years ago to look like the ancient town. So the buildings and bridges aren't even original.






We decided to stay in a hostel inside the town, which was kinda expensive, but worth it because we got to see all the canals at night and the sunset and sunrise the next day. We got up super early, hence why we saw the sunrise, to go to Shanghai.




So, in this super touristy old town the only calm time of day is before sunrise. Its so calm that you can see the fog sitting on top of the still water of the canals. No boats are moving, all the boatmen are still asleep on their boats. The streets are deserted and all the souvenir shops are boarded up from the night. The streets are clean and all the scenic spots are open. It's so nice at 6:30 you almost feel as if you really are in an ancient town.






And I hope the picture of the sunrise speaks for itself.


We missed the bus at 7:15 cause we thought it was at 7:50, so we took a bus to another city to catch the train to Shanghai. We spent the afternoon shopping for fakes, it's the thing to do in Shanghai, they have really good fake watches, jackets, bags, or anything else, but you have to know how to bargain hard because the first price they give you is at least 5x too expensive. It was kind of fun bargaining and trying to get the price it should cost, but also supper stressful.

At night we walked around the French concession and the Bund, the old colonial facade of the west side of the river.

Fuyang富阳, my new home in China

Now I'm living in Fuyang 富阳, Zhejiang province 浙江. It's not the Fuyang the city in Anhui that everyone first thinks when they hear Fuyang. It's a small city, for a Chinese city, that is actually under Hangzhou's 杭州 jurisdiction. Fuyang is divided by the Fuchun river that runs though the city into Hangzhou, and makes a really nice riverfront on the northern bank. And It's actually a pretty good deal that Fuyang is part of Hangzhou because they have buses that go to Hangzhou all day non-stop and they only cost 7 yuan, about $1.15, and take about an hour to get there. So I live close enough to the big city to go shopping for western stuff if I need but I don't have to live in the busy big city, and I don't get too spoiled by having western stuff all the time. It also means that Fuyang is a very wealthy city, the complete opposite of Tongzi. Zhejiang is the 2nd wealthiest province in China, and Hangzhou is a very wealthy city of Zhejiang. You can see people driving Ferarris and Porches as their everyday car. And we've seen some Lamborghinis, Maserattis, and Hummers. This is definitely the other face of China.

Hangzhou is known for West Lake. It's supposed to be 'heaven on Earth' according to the Chinese proverb, 上有天堂下有苏杭. It's the end of the Grand canal 大運河 from Beijing, that was built between 604 and 609 C.E. and has many beautiful smaller canals throughout the city. It's also famous for many other things like Longjin Tea, and Hickory nuts, and West Lake sour fish, and it's also one of the 4 Chinese silk cities. All this means is that Hangzhou is a huge tourist destination and the shop owners are really good at ripping off foreigners.

Hangzhou Silk market. Hangzhou West Lake.







Anyways, I feel pretty lucky about finding a job here. It's exactly what I was looking for when I was searching for schools but when I first found this school it didn't sound like what I wanted. I'm working in a regular high school, but they call it a 'key' high school because there are so many good students in this area that it's a difficult high school to get into. In China the students have to test into high school (or have the 'good relations' 有好的关系) since high school isn't mandatory and is therefore only preparing the students for college entrance exams高考. Half the students graduating from this high school go to 'key' Chinese universities, basically Ivy League schools, which is very good when looking at how many students there are in China and that there are only a handful of key universities. There are 2 campuses for my school, I'm in the South River High School 江南中学 where they have a middle school and grades 1 and 2 of high school. Then there is the FuZhong 富中 main campus for grade 3 students and the AP center, which prepares about 130 students for the SATS and TOEFL so that they can study in the States.

They've done a lot of work to make the South River campus look really nice, and it is. It's also fully equiped with projectors and internet, the labs are very well stocked, and they even have heat in the classrooms (it's a big deal for a Chinese high school in the south).

My apartment is basic, Chinese style, but enough for me. And it's a real apartment this time, which means I have a front door not just a gate, and my kitchen is inside my house not in the hallway, lol (I miss Tongzi). I also have a small laundry room with a lot of windows, I put a table and some chairs out there and it's just like a back balcony.

My first weekend here I went with the teachers in the AP center to this small island in the Fuchun river for dinner. And I even made a few friends in the AP center.