Saturday June 19, 2010
Today our field trip was to Xi Shan or West Mountain. It was in Kunming, but quite a distance away. On the mountain is Long Men or Dragon Gate. The Dragon Gate was supposedly carved by a Daoist Monk with a spoon. I took a video of what he “carved.” The gate itself has a good story: If a fish from the lake below can make its way up the mountain and through the gate, it will turn into a dragon. But as we found out later, it doesn’t count if you carry the fish through- the fish must do it on its own. I think if you are a young girl, you will change into a beautiful women. I am not positive on that though. Also, the west mountain apparently began as a woman whose man went away. She cried all the time, waiting there for him. The tears turned into the lake, and she waited so long that she turned into the mountain. I love the Chinese stories, and I hope that I get to learn more.
At first we climbed up the wrong part of the mountain. (Note- this is not like hiking, but climbing lots of stares and seeing random Chinese buildings/temples on the way.) We had to go back down and up again. The climbing itself wasn’t too bad (the stairs to class everyday have helped our legs a lot), but the air is very thin here. I just wanted an oxygen tank. We took a ski lift back down. It went really slow and was very beautiful. I rode with Kayla, and we had a good time talking about silly things and life.
We went to lunch, and all the students sat together. We decided we didn’t like it, because it messed up the flow of things. The tables in restaurants here are generally round with very large turntables. People kept turning the turntable without any consideration of others, even if they were in the middle of serving themselves food. The restaurant was interesting though, because they gave us a packet of powder, that could only be described to us as medicine. We had a chicken soup that you were to put the medicine in. The best translation we got was that it was probably vitamins. I put mine in my soup, but suggested to Jeremy to put it in his Coke, as he was not having soup. Rachel did the same. It was very odd- best described as dirty coke.
We then went to Guan Du Ancient Town, which we thought would be a good market area. It was actually more of an outdoor Chinese architecture mall. There were hardly any traditional items, and we weren’t very pleased. We peaked around at a temple, and ended up having a mini photo shoot with Chinese people. We also went to an umbrella store, and the workers took pictures of us on a webcam. Kayla and I both bought really pretty umbrellas. Since the women here don’t want sun, they are really into decorative umbrellas. This area was not used to seeing foreigners, so we got many stares. It was kind of boring, but the sun was out. While we waited I stood in the sun while others sat in the shade. I had a little pink on my cheeks by the end of the day though, so I was very happy!
This night we celebrated Diedra’s (one of the girls) birthday. I was very tired, but went out because it was her birthday. We went from place to place in search for good music to dance to. We didn’t have the most luck. Eventually we found a place and I woke up a little bit. I ended up getting really tired though, so Rachel and I came home.
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