October 1 is China’s National Holiday, rather like the Fourth of July. We got a week-long vacation, which I spent traveling to nearby places in Hunan. Officially, the National Holiday is only five days long, but universities typically move weekday classes to the following weekend to extend the holiday. The downside of this reshuffling is needing to teach for seven days straight after a seven-day holiday.

That post-vacation marathon coincided with the beginning of classes for the freshmen, so I had 32 classes from the 8th until yesterday the 14th. Needless to say, I was a little drained by the time I finished teaching at noon yesterday. Next week, I’ll have a more manageable 22 classes in a week, a schedule I only need to keep until the new foreign teacher arrives in a few weeks.

My only plan for the holiday was to visit a friend in Yueyang 岳阳, several hours away by bus or train, and just north of the provincial capital, Changsha 长沙. A couple of days before the holiday started, I dropped by another friend’s shop in Jishou to say hello. We soon discovered we were heading in the same direction. Tina and her husband were driving to his hometown, Huarong 华容, for his sister’s wedding. If I didn’t mind hanging out for a couple of days at the wedding, I could come along, then they’d drive me to Yueyang, 30 minutes away.

So, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were spent in Huarong and Tianyi (the groom’s hometown, right by the Yangtze River (the Xiangjiang 长江) as part of a ginormous wedding party. Though it was the bride’s second marriage, it was still a big affair, with lots of food, baijiu, beer and fireworks.

Tina and Jeremy have been married almost two years. As part of his marriage promises, he had built a small house for the two of them in Huarong. That’s where we stayed Friday night. The next morning we had a big lunch with his side of the family, then drove to Tianyi for dinner with the groom’s side of the family. We stayed there overnight, and after a big brunch with what seemed to be half the town, we headed back to Huarong to fetch our stuff and drove to Yueyang.

The happy couple

Only one wedding I have attended (Tina and Jeremy’s) included an actual ceremony, during which the couple exchange vows. Most have involved traditional customs, such as bringing the bride ceremoniously to the groom’s home, often with an umbrella over her to ward off bad luck, or watching outside the bride’s bedroom as the groom petitions to see his fiancee, sometimes bargaining with cash “bribes” to her attendants to open the door. A Tujia custom, which I haven’t seen yet, is the wailing of the bride as she leaves her home. Traditionally, the longer and louder she cries to her parents, the more luck will come to the marriage.

The actual marriage occurs in a government office weeks or months before the actual celebration. The couple apply for a marriage license and pose together for an official photo to be affixed to their marriage document. There is no officiant, like a justice of the peace or judge. A clerk just signs off on a document attesting to the fact that Mr X and Miss Y are now husband and wife.

Some marriages are (ahem) quickened by a pregnancy, either planned or unplanned. The wedding party may even be delayed until after the baby is born, if circumstances require it. There is little of the approbrium that would accompany such scheduling in the USA, it seems. More important are the symbolic joining of two families and the birth of a child. The order of events is not so important.

After the wedding festivities, I spent another couple of days in Yueyang to hang out with a teacher friend there. We visited Junshan Island 君山岛, a scenic park in the middle of Dongting Lake, when the chilly rain that started the holiday week finally ended.

Junshan has a number of legends surrounding it. The name literally means Princesses’ Mountain island. The bamboo that grows on the island is unique — its stems are blotched with dark spots. Legends say that the Xiang River Goddesses, who had been daughters of the Emperor Yao (ca. 2356-2255 BC), cried when their husband, the Emperor Shun, died. Their tears fell on the bamboo, discoloring it forever.

Bamboo stained by the River Goddesses' tears

Silver-needle tea, which is exceptionally pricey, is a variety of green tea. When dried, the leaves roll up into little tubes. When hot water is poured over them, the leaves remain tightly rolled, and then sink stem-end down to the bottom of the cup. They look like a stand of pine trees.

After Yueyang, I came back to Jishou midweek to avoid the holiday crush on the trains and buses. On the way, I got an invitation to visit Sangzhi 桑植, a county near the tourist city of Zhangjiajie 张家界, two hours from Jishou. Sangzhi has two principal tourist sites: the home of the revolutionary He Long and JiuTian Cave. We visited both.

He Long was a contemporary of Mao Zedong, also a Hunan native. After the founding of Communist China in 1949, He Long became a high ranking member of the government, but his progressive ideas ran him afoul of the party members responsible for the Cultural Revolution. He was imprisoned in 1966 as a counter-revolutionary, and died at age 74 three years later, still in prison. It wasn’t until 2009, forty years after his death, that He Long was given an official state funeral and burial. His home in Sangzhi is now a national shrine, and a small museum has been built alongside it.

JiuTian Cave is advertised as China’s “Number 1″ cave, but in fact it’s not the largest or longest. It’s the fourth karst cave I’ve visited in this part of China, and I have to say the previous three, especially HuangLong Cave in Zhangjiajie, are better. They all feature garish multi-colored lighting and formations that resemble animals, vegetables or famous figures in history and legend. On the day we visited, the cave was as usual cool and damp, but the air above was warm and dry. So, when I emerged from climbing up a long set of stairs, the sunlight caught the cloud of steam rising from my head. I ran that photo a few days ago.

I was back in Jishou the next day, giving me a day to recuperate, wash my clothes and prepare for the eight classes I had to teach on Saturday. I’ll write about my marathon week of teaching in the next post.

The party's over: Duan Linxi may be the last Hunan Super Girl

“We received notification from the administration that we cannot make selective TV trials with mass involvement of individuals in the year 2012″, Li Hao, deputy editor-in-chief and spokesman of the channel, diplomatically told the China Daily.

In other words, viewers can no longer call in and vote for their favorite performers. That might be too democratic.

“Hunan Satellite Television will obey the State regulator’s decision and will not hold similar talent shows next year. Instead, the channel will air programs that promote moral ethics and public safety and provide practical information for housework,” Li said.

In other words, we were told to produce the same old, mind-numbingly boring crap that China Central TV (CCTV) broadcasts already, in between patriotic movies about the Revolution and the Japanese Occupation.

Hunan TV has a reputation in China of being more “edgy” and contemporary than CCTV. It has successfully adapted game shows from Japan and programs from America (like Ugly Betty and American Idol) for Chinese audiences. The Super Girl/Super Boy competitions have been aired on HSTV in one form or another 2004. As with Idol winners and runners-up, their Chinese counterparts have gone on to clinch record deals, movie and TV gigs, and an active fan base.

HSTV milks the Super-person shows for every last bit of pathos and suspense. This year’s Super Girl contest started with 500 performers (all singers of some sort), who competed in provincial and regional contests for four months before a whittled-down core group landed on the first national broadcast in July.

The first program was supposed to run for a mandated 92-minute limit. Instead, it ran 90 minutes over the cap imposed by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). Later episodes also ran over, but not to such a great extent. Despite their length (and the tedium of listening to scores of not-very-talented performers), it attracted millions of viewers away from more “wholesome” programming, which is probably why the SARFT clamped down.

From the China Daily article:

In 2007, SARFT took several moves to regulate talent shows, including banning TV talent shows in prime time (7:30 pm to 10:30 pm) and limiting the duration of each episode to no more than 90 minutes.

[An] anonymous staff member also said that the ratings for the contest this year “kept being higher than other TV programs of its kind”.

“For me, exceeding the time limit is just an excuse to shut down the TV program, and there would have been other excuses even if the TV station did not make the shows that long,” said Jin Yong, a researcher at the Communication University of China.

“I believe the reason that forced the administration to ‘regulate’ this program is that some television hosts in the program made inappropriate comments and some did not dress properly,” Jin said.

“The style might have offended some older viewers, so that the authority warned the TV station with the suspension order to make their program classier.”

Short version: Simon Cowell would have been deported within a day if he had been one of the judges.

Super Boy performers were also advised to sing only “healthy and ethically inspiring” songs (as in, boooorrrring) and producers were to avoid showing screaming fans and teary-eyed losers.

Li Yu Chun, a "Super Girl" winner from 2005

[True confession: I like Lǐ's style a lot. Her English name is Chris Lee. Naturally she has both Facebook and MySpace pages. Check 'em out.]

This year’s surprise winner, Duàn Línxī 段林希, from Yunnan, also does not fit the mold of the “ideal Chinese female singer.” If Lǐ was too punky, Duan is too reserved and un-star-like. With enormous black-framed glasses, an acoustic guitar and low-key songs, she was more like a cross between Scooby-doo’s Vera and Judy Collins than a Sheryl Crow rocker, but her fanbase helped her net first prize.

The Chinese government closely regulates the media here, and Hunan TV has had run-ins with SARFT before. Clearly, the message from the “feds” is to present a more uniform, “harmonious” form of entertainment, with little spontaneity and counter-cultural role models — the very reasons that viewers (like me) tune into to such otherwise mindless entertainment.

A time-honored half-inch filler in many newspapers has traditionally been the proverbial “bus plunge” story, which goes something like,

GENERICA, HOONOHSISTAN — Nearly 100 people died last week when their overloaded bus skidded off a snowy mountain road and into a ravine 100 feet below. Rescuers were unable to reach the scene until weather conditions improved yesterday.

Despite the morbid subject matter, among newspaper people, bus plunge stories are somewhat of a running joke, since they are basically boilerplate copy. You just change the date, the number of casualties and the location and leave everything else basically the same. For years, I half wondered if the Associated Press was pulling our legs and just making these stories up. Some intern was sitting at a desk somewhere manufacturing half-inch bus plunge stories for release at random times.

Of course, such accidents really do happen, and they’re no joke. All this was running through my mind as my bus ambled from Longshan to Jishou.

As the crow flies, Longshan 龙山 is barely 80 miles NNW of Jishou 吉首. But we’re in the mountains here, and there is no such thing (yet) as a halfway straight road between two places. By bus, it takes seven hours (yes, friends, seven hours) to travel between these two places. The route is basically a series of switchbacks up one range of mountains and down into the valley where Longshan (“Dragon Mountain,” literally) lies. And of course, there are stops along the way at other towns like Guzhang 古丈 — home of really wonderful tea — and Yongshun 永顺, even before you start the climb.

Not only that, but the Hunan Highway Department is rebuilding the road up thar in the hills, so some sections are not even paved. This required our iron-willed bus driver to pick his way carefully between ruts and potholes while weaving around slower motorcyclists, men on tractors and dump trucks carrying huge loads of rock blasted from the mountainsides. It wasn’t so bad on the way to Longshan, but on the way back, there was a light rain. The dirt roads turned into muddy roads and he had to drive even more carefully to keep us from being the subjects of a bus plunge filler.

So, yeah, seven hours was just fine by me.

So, why was I subjecting myself to this slow-motion roller coaster ride? One of my sophomores, Jackie Li, had invited me to her home while I was still in the USA. I knew it would be a grueling journey, but it was a serious invitation and I was determined to honor it.

It was worth the trip. First, I stuck another solo trip in my hat, successfully finding my way from Jishou to Longshan all by my little lonesome. Secondly, Jackie’s folks are really good cooks, and I got to meet most of her uncles and aunts, who were very delighted to meet their first foreigners. We visited some scenic places — up on mountains, of course. (Oh, my aching legs! Three weeks of idleness in Louisville did not prepare me for all the mountain climbing I did after I came back to China.) And, it was a relaxing way to spend my last week of Winter Holiday.

I came back to Jishou on Feb. 9, after sleeping off my 13-hour non-stop in a comfy hotel in Changsha 长沙. After a couple of days lazing in my apartment, I took off for a weekend trip to Fenghuang 凤凰, where a teacher friend had invited me to visit her home. Then, I went with another friend to Taohuayuan 桃花源 Nature Park, where if they are season you can see peach blossoms in bloom. There we met two charming middle school girls, who I swear hung around the park until we came down from our walk up the mountain just to speak with me. They helped us find a monkey habitat down the road, while they practiced their basic English.

After Taohuayuan (“peach blossom garden” but it also means “Shangri-La”), I visited Tongren 瞳仁, a small city about four hours away by train. There we climbed yet another mountain to visit Nine Dragon Cave 九龙洞 (jiu long dong). I swear I did as much vertical travel this winter vacation as I did horizontal!

Fortunately, none of the vertical travel included riding a bus on a one-way trip into a ravine. It would have been a crummy way to start the Year of the Rabbit in China.

The student dorms here do not have water heaters providing hot water from the taps, so students usually use hot water pots or immersion heaters to get some hot water for drinking, washing, etc. Otherwise, they have to go downstairs to hot water dispensers outside the dorms, drop in some coins and fill their oversized Thermos jugs. Considering some dorms have eight floors, you can see why having an electric teapot might be desirable.

Unfortunately, the wiring in some dorms is perhaps a little dodgy and at least 30 years old (I bet), so early Sunday morning there was an electrical fire in one of the women’s dorms. No big deal — no one was hurt and there was little damage — but the university responded with a typically quick bureaucratic response.

Ban all electric heaters. No teapots. No immersion coils. No hotplates. Nada.

This announcement came later that evening, and the students did not take to it kindly. In fact, they took to the campus, yelling, blowing whistles, banging metal lids together, around 11 pm, demanding the uni reverse its unilateral ban on hot water appliances. They kept it up well past 1 am Monday.

Someone even posted a video on one of China’s video-sharing sites, showing the announcements, a queue of girls getting hot water from the dispensers, and a gaggle of vacuum bottles waiting to be filled, while the audio played the students’ Sunday night protests.

As protest causes go, it may seem pretty minor, particularly if your own university in the States also had similar bans. (I know Princeton did. Who knows how old some of the wiring in the dorms from the 1920s are?) But we are in Hunan, where few buildings have central heating, and none of our student dorms have heat pumps to keep things warm in the winter or cool in the summer. So, you can imagine why students living in unheated dormitories when the overnight temperatures outside are just barely above freezing would like to heat up some water once in a while.

I am not sure if the problem has been resolved. Either the students have accepted the decision with typical Asian resignation, or the university has relented. If I hear loud mobs down campus tonight again, I’ll have my answer.

Elektra (her English name) recently graduated from the Jishou Teachers College. Last summer, she worked in Guangzhou with a young man just three years older than she. He was getting married this month, and so invited Elektra to the wedding in Hubei. She knew I was planning on visiting Hubei this summer, and mentioned her trip there. I asked if I could go along. The couple was cool with the idea, so Elektra and I left last Thursday for Hubei.

Quick geography lesson: Hubei 湖北 is the province immediately north of Hunan 湖南. They get their names from proximity to Dongting Lake 洞庭湖, near the city of Yueyang 岳阳. “Hu” 湖 means “lake. “Bei” 北 is “north,” and “nan” 南 is “south.” Jishou is in the western part of Hunan, but we were going to the eastern part of Hubei, near Wuhan, the provincial capital.

In China, as in Wyoming, where I used to live, going anywhere is usually measured in hours. Since we were traveling by bus, the trip would likely be an all-day excursion under the best of circumstances.

First leg: Leave Jishou’s north bus station in an air-conditioned coach (with DVD movies and a toilet) for Yueyang, a city of 5 million in northeastern Hunan. Cost: ¥130. This part went flawlessly; the trip by expressway and two-laner via Changde took about 7 hours. We stopped at a rest area for a quick lunch around 12.

Second leg: Since neither of us had been to Yueyang before, Elektra asked for directions to get to Honghu 洪湖, in Hubei, the largest city near her friend’s home village. We needed to take a city bus to another intercity bus station to catch another air-conditioned bus to Honghu. Cost: ¥30. We were lucky to arrive just before the bus left as scheduled at 4:30 pm. So far, so good.

The most direct, quickest way from Yueyang to Honghu is to take a ferry across the Yangtze (Changjiang 长江) River, since there is no bridge across the river as yet. But after bouncing along a two-laner for about 90 minutes, we found the road to the ferry dock hopelessly in gridlock, for reasons unknown. Our resourceful driver and bus conductor (yes, they have bus conductors in China) together worked out an alternate route — another ferry crossing a few kilometers away.

On a road that was still being paved.

This part of the leg was not exactly smooth sailing. One lane was still mostly a dirt road; the other freshly poured concrete. So, we gingerly picked our away around dips and potholes until we finally reached the next ferry dock directly across from Luoshan 落山 in Hubei around 7:00. Here we snacked on lotus seeds while we waited for the ferry to depart.

Third leg: Our bus had broken down, so the bus company had arranged for another bus to meet us passengers on the Hubei side of the river. The actual crossing took about 15 minutes. The groom’s friends instead met us in their car in Luoshan, and drove us to Huangjiakou, the town nearest to the groom’s village, another two hours away. (Luoshan is on the southern end of Honghu Lake, about a half hour south of Honghu city. Huangjiakou is several kilometers north of the lake.)

We arrived at the groom’s home around 9:30 pm, and had a very late (but very tasty) dinner at 10:00. Shortly afterward, we were driven back to our hotel in Huangjiakou.

The next day, we were picked up in the morning. We switched cars, so the groom’s (borrowed) car — a Buick — could be decorated for the wedding. Buicks, incidentally, are considered almost as prestigious an automobile as a BMW or a Cadillac in China. The decorations were to include many red roses (plastic ones with attached magnets) and big double-xi 喜 window stickers, also red. Xi means good fortune and happiness.

Once back at the house, we basically did nothing until about 11, when the actual wedding was supposed to take place. The groom, Xiao Yi, is an up-and-coming businessman and has built a nice two-story home next to his parents’ house. The ground floor has a small bedroom, dining room/living room and small kitchen; the upstairs has an air-conditioned bedroom with satellite TV, an office with a computer and a bathroom large enough to park a small car in. Typical of Chinese construction methods, the house has concrete block walls, that are tiled on the outside and drywalled on the inside.

In the front yard, which faces a small lake, the musicians had set up a small stage, where they performed modern and traditional love songs. Various relatives would from time to time set off fireworks, a traditional Chinese custom, to celebrate all kinds of events, including funerals, by warding off evil.

The shady side yard was full of relatives and friends chatting with each other, talking on their cell phones, playing majong or cards, and drinking a lot of water. It was about 93°F out by noon, so everyone was trying to stay cool.

The guests had brunch at 11, then Xiao Yi went to his uncle’s house to change clothes. (It is considered bad luck to change into your wedding duds in your own home, or your parents’.) Lu Lu, the bride, had already left for the bridal shop in Huangjiakou to get dressed.

We were told that tradition required Xiao Yi to go commando (no underwear) for the festivities. We were offered no explanation for this curious requirement, nor for the new package of red briefs Xiao Yi carried with him. Because of the heat, he wore no jacket, but his outfit included long dress pants, a crisp white shirt, necktie and a red rose buttoniere.

We followed the musicians to the uncle’s house to await Xiao Yi’s exit. As soon as he emerged, the musicians (two horn players and a drummer) started playing a traditional tune while we all walked back to Xiao Yi’s home for his last meal as a bachelor. He and his buddies joked around with each other, gave tips to the musicians walking around the table, ate a lot of food and drank a moderate amount of Hubei beer.

After their lunch, we piled into five cars, musicians included, to drive to town to meet the bride. The more cars in the procession, the better, we were told. More cars means more prestige. Bride and groom met at the bridal shop, and we all took a short march, with horns, drum, firecrackers and confetti cannons, down Huangjiakou’s short main street. Then we got back in the cars, and returned to the village.

[As best as I can tell, it was this short march that was the actual marriage ceremony. No one officiated the marriage, unless Xiao Yi and Lu Lu had taken care of that civil requirement earlier.]

Back at the house, the best men and bridesmaids joined the couple in the dining room, where earlier someone had posted a list of 10 things for the newly married couple to do. Here are three of the more interesting, and embarrassing, to-do’s.

Xiao Yi’s best man dropped a coin down the front of Lu Lu’s dress, telling the groom that if Xiao Yi did not reach in and retrieve the coin, the best man would take care of it himself. Xiao Yi, after some hesitation, managed to get the coin out of Lu Lu’s bodice without violating too much of her modesty.

Lu Lu’s turn came next. She had to work an egg up inside one of Xiao Yi’s pants legs, across his crotch, and down the other leg. Now we had the explanation for the no-underwear rule, although Xiao Yi fudged by wearing briefs!

[I kind of like this custom. It would be a suitable counterpart for the American custom of the groom reaching up under the bride's skirts to pull off her garter to throw to his attendants. Why should he have all the fun?]

The couple also had to kiss for 30 seconds. For Westerners, such a requirement is no big deal, but Chinese do not kiss in public, even if they are married. So Xiao Yi and Lu Lu had trouble successfully smooching for the stipulated time, because one or the other would start laughing from embarrassment.

With the 10 to-dos out of the way, Lu Lu repaired upstairs to change into a more comfortable red lace dress, to complete one of her traditional roles as the new member of the groom’s family — to serve tea to all of the groom’s older relatives, who were in turn expected to throw money for the couple into a basket on the table. It was a lot; I lost count after about 30 100-yuan notes hit the pile.

Then we all ate dinner. All the meals were prepared by a small army of friends and relations working in the kitchen shed in the backyard. We ate fresh fish, crayfish and lotus stems from the lake, pork, duck, chicken, cabbage and other greens, fried peanuts and of course rice. Mercifully, baijiu (Chinese firewater) was not part of the menu.

Elektra and I chilled with Xiao Yi, Lu Lu and Lu Lu’s younger brother until about 7:30, then Xiao Yi took Elektra and me back to the hotel on his motorbike. His car-driving friends had already gone home to Wuhan or to take other guests to the bus and train stations.

The next day, we four visited the ecological park on Honghu Lake. Elektra and I left for Yueyang on Sunday, and returned to Jishou on Monday. I’ll report on those details later. Meanwhile, here’s the happy couple.

This weekend was the May Day holiday, which I and a friend spent in Zhangjiajie at the home of our mutual friend. The three of us had a good time touring some beautiful country, but the scenery was not the only thing impressive about the trip. It was the people we met.

Weeks ago, Nora had invited Ailsa and me to spent the weekend at Nora’s home. With no classes on Friday, we decided to leave campus on the 9 pm train on Thursday. The train was predictably crowded with northbound holiday travelers, and we had no seats. [The Chinese rail system will sell you tickets even after all seats have been booked. China Railways figures you'll either make do standing or whangle a way to sit down.]

We walked toward the rear of the train until we could go no further. There were no seats, but by chance we ended up next to a group traveling together to Zhengzhou. They were feeling pretty mellow after downing some baijiu (aka “white wine”), so when two of them left to smoke on the end of the carriage, they gave their seats up and everyone scrunched together to make room. [It also helps that one of us was a white-haired Westerner; I get preferential treatment because of both age and exotic-ness.]

The Zhengzhou group included a woman who was just four years younger than I, two younger men and two men who were maybe in their mid-40′s. None of them were fall-down drunk, but they were garrulous — albeit in Chinese. Nora and Ailsa served as translators as the ZZ travelers asked me to drink some wine (I did, but not too much) and the woman asked me to pose with her for not one, but easily 20 photos. [She never seemed satisfied with the way she looked in the previous 19. I also wondered if she wasn't subtly hitting on me]

These pastimes kept us happily occupied as our train, a local, crawled its way toward Zhangjiajie. Local trains stop at every station and have to yield right-of-way to the faster trains. So, ours pulled onto sidings at least four times (I lost count), taking nearly three and a half hours to cover 125 km. Did I mention this train was not air-conditioned?

Friday was pretty much a bust in terms of sight-seeing, since the rain poured down all day. So, on Saturday morning, when it was clear the rain had stopped, the three of us were more than ready to get out and about.

We grabbed a quick breakfast, and hopped the #8 bus to visit a reservoir lake Nora had visited in the past. We sat in the back of the bus, and soon Nora and were chatting with a woman sitting directly in front of us. As it turns out, she (Kerry Wang) was a Changsha native who had come to Zhangjiajie to be a tour guide to Chinese clients several years ago. She is keen to improve her English so she can also guide foreigners, and said she was excited to see me, a westerner, on the same bus as she.

Kerry and Ailsa are both from Changsha, so the Chinese hometown hail-fellow-well-met mode kicked in. Like Americans, Chinese people travel far and wide within their country to find work. Unlike Americans (or at least unlike me), the ties they have to their hometowns are deep and long lasting. So anyone from the same city, town, village or wide spot on the road is immediately considered family. So it was that Kerry offered to be our tour guide for the day, gratis, since she was off work on a year’s maternity leave. [Yes, American women, I said a year's leave. Jealous?]

Our first stop, the reservoir, offered boat rides from the Xiang Ren Xi dam to the other end of the lake where sightseers can hike along the river. One boat already had four passengers, university students who were patiently (?) waiting for the captain to decide when he had enough passengers to make it worth his while to leave. Three of the students were, coincidentally, from Changsha, so the hometown ties-that-bind sprang into action as we shared our snacks and brief introductions.

As the boat set off finally, a young couple hollered for passage and the captain came about to pick them up. The young man was an art student in Zhangjiajie and his artist girlfriend was visiting from Shandong for the week.

We all became pretty good friends that morning, agreeing to eat lunch together at a noodle place after our boat ride and morning hike and to visit another scenic spot, Lao Dao Wan, that Kerry knew about. It would offer the same kind of spectacular sights as other more touristy places near the city.

Rather than take a bus then hike to our destination, Kerry and the local art student found two neighborhood men willing to transport us in their vehicles, a minivan and an open air tuk-tuk. [A tuk-tuk is a three-wheeler with a motorcycle's front end and a drive axle in the rear. Ours had two facing bench seats a little longer then the fender "seats" in the back of an old Jeep CJ.] Adventurers as we are, the art students, Nora, Ailsa and I all wanted to ride in the tuk-tuk.

The air was fresh and clean-smelling after the heavy rain, and the temperature was cool and refreshing, so we had a great time as our noble steed jounced along the road to Lao Dao Wan. We had just gotten off to start our hike to the entrance to Lao Dao Wan when another minivan pulled up, and its surprising cargo hopped out.

The American hometown mode now kicked in, as one of the new arrivals was Gary, an American English teacher in Zhangjiajie, and his girlfriend, Karen. Gary, a Trenton, New Jersey, native, recently coached basketball at Mercer County Community College. Karen used to work at the Princeton University U-Store. And I (if you didn’t know) went to Princeton, which like MCCC is in Mercer County. Instant bonding.

We hiked together to the entrance, crossing the river several times on conveniently placed rocks, only to wait while Kerry and Nora negotiated ticket prices with the operators. The original prices were 13 yuan for the Chinese students and 23 yuan for the three foreigners. Persistence paid off, as we all only had to pay only 13, but the haggling took up time the four uni students did not have. They left with Kerry, who had invited Nora, Ailsa, the two art students and me to her house for dinner and now needed time to prepare.

Gary is as garrulous while sober as the ZZ crowd on the inbound train was while tipsy, so we had a great traveling “English corner” as we climbed up and down and around the cuts the river had made through the foothills of Tianmenshan, the mountain beside Zhangjiajie city.

Someone needs to rate Chinese scenic hiking trails like US rivers are rated for whitewater rafting. On a difficulty scale of 5, this particular hike was about a 4. If you are afraid of heights, rivers crossings on slick rocks and steep muddy slopes, skip Lao Dao Wan. Some segments of the trail would scare the willies out of Americans used to liability-proofed tourist magnets. The paths along the canyon walls and hillsides consisted of steel rebar steps driven into the rock with chains as handrails or bamboo ramps and railings. Under these circumstances, hikers have to to be as surefooted as mountain goats and similarly unperturbed by precipitous drops along near-vertical slopes.

Our guide followed us, but we were not entirely sure what he would have done in an emergency. None of our cell phones had signals in this deep divide.

On reflection, I still would have done the hike. The best scenery is the kind you have to work to find, and this area has not yet fallen prey to the crowds and the rampant commercialism of the Zhangjiajie Forest Park and Fenghuang.

After the hike, Gary and his party went their way, and we five tuk-tuked back into town, then hopped the #8 bus to Kerry’s side of town for dinner. The plan was for Kerry to cook Changsha style, Nora to cook Zhangjiajie style and XiaoDan (the girl from Shandong) to cook her style. I invited Mike, an English major I know from the Zhangjiajie campus, to join us and we shared a scrumptious meal and an evening of English and Chinese conversation. We all were acting like old friends who hadn’t seen each other for years, but in fact the majority of us had met for the first time that very day.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what impressed me most about the weekend. Few Americans would invite six complete strangers to their house for dinner, and few strangers would have accepted the offer. But we did, and were that much richer for it.

A little trust and friendship go a long way. More of us should try both.

This afternoon, we had the sunniest, warmest day in what seems like weeks of cold, wet weather. I had planned to conduct class as usual in our somewhat chilly, spartan classroom, when Clara asked if we could have class outside.

Two seconds’ pause … sure, why not? It’s a writing class, and I had a moment of inspiration right then.

First, let me fill you in on some background. This class, the freshman G2 writing class, had told me last week of their plans to go in a hike and picnic Sunday, and they asked if I wanted to go. I agreed, and Clara was the student who was supposed to call me with the meeting time and place.

Only she didn’t. Somehow, signals got crossed and they thought I had gone to Dehang with another class. (It was actually David, the new foreign teacher, who went.) So, Clara never called.

Oh, but she was so apologetic on Sunday evening that it was impossible to be angry with her.

Today, when I entered the classroom (two minutes late, and slightly out of breath), the entire class of 34 stood up and loudly said, “John, we’re sorry!”

Thus, agreeing to go outside for class was partly a way to show I accepted their apology and that we could let bygones be bygones. Of course, as a nefarious teacher, I had something up my sleeve — a writing exercise I had cooked up in my head on the spot.

We went through the first hour the way I had planned to do it in the classroom, since I have two freshman writing classes and I like to keep them on the same schedule. Then we took our regularly scheduled break. I whipped out my digital camera to take some candid photos on this fine sunny day.

There is something about cameras and Chinese students that never ceases to amaze. As soon as they saw my camera, we all had to pose in various combinations for everyone to snap photos. So much for candid shots!

After we filled way more than the allotted 10 minutes snapping goofy pictures of each other, I reined them in to finish the first hour’s lesson, then gave them their writing assignment: pick an object (tree, building, person, whatever) and describe it in detail. They had 30 minutes, which was ample time to generate at least half a notebook page.

OK, OK, it wasn’t a really original idea. I stole it from a colleague, a certain creative-writing teacher of some repute at St. Francis High School. But I wanted to give them a writing task, and until Clara made her suggestion to hold class on the green, I was completely flummoxed about the topic.

Class ended, and a few of the students asked me if I wanted to climb the mountain (it’s really a big hill, but whatever) behind us and pick oranges. The only thing I had planned for the afternoon was to go to the Jun Hua to buy food for dinner. Picking oranges sounded like a lot more fun.

There are farmers who live on the campus and tend the orange groves. The university has actually poured concrete walkways and steps up the hillside, and from the looks of freshly poured concrete bases and newly laid conduit, also plans to light the pathways fairly soon.

Even so, it’s a freakin’ steep climb, requiring some “off road” shortcuts. After what seemed like forever, we reached the groves near the top of the hill. Most of the oranges had already been picked — we had passed a shelter where scores of orange crates were stacked — but there were enough left for us to grab and devour.

Hunan oranges are da bomb. Even the slightly sour ones.

The view was spectacular, despite the misty/foggy/smoggy air. We could look down on the quarry and buildings south of the university, and in the distance see the new superhighway connecting Jishou to Changsha. Predictably, my frakkin’ camera battery died on the way up, so the only pictures I could take were with my crappy cellphone cam. They’re not even worth posting.

We headed back down, and the students asked me what I was going to do for dinner. I scotched the supermarket trip, so they invited me to eat with them in the dining hall.

My students seem constantly amazed by two of my special abilities: I can use chopsticks (well) and I can eat (and like) spicy Chinese food. Thanks to living three months in a fourth-floor walkup on top of a steep hill, I can also climb mountains pretty well, too.