Yang Yang

Friday was our field trip to the rural village of Cuandixia, famous for the fact that its name is impossible to write: the character "Cuan" has 30 strokes, which is so many even the Chinese can't be bothered. In order to promote tourism, the government changed the name to something a bit easier to write, but everywhere you go in that town (roughly the size of our block) you see the character written in beautiful script.

I fell asleep on the bus and when I woke up we were surrounded by stark, red-brown mountains dotted with what at first appeared to be sheep but which turned out to be plum trees in full bloom. I'm fond of plum trees because they're my namesake (my father points out that both P.G. Wodehouse and I are known as Plum, which is silly but pleases me anyway). I can never get over the incredible beauty and variety of the Chinese countryside. We were only three hours outside of Beijing but it was an entirely different world.

When we got to the village we split up into groups, each group occupying a different house. Because the farming's pretty lousy and the young folks have all split for the big city, the people of Cuandixia apparently make their living letting tourists stay in their houses. If you've seen the movie To Live (as I keep telling you to), the houses were kind of like that - the two sleeping quarters divided by an open air courtyard with a cooking area off to the side. We slept on traditional peasant beds called kang which are made of brick, with a flue running underneath for warmth. There were five of us on one kang - you really get to know your classmates in a country where you're really lucky when the public bathrooms have doors on the stalls and you have to sleep five or six to a bed.

Once we'd gotten settled we went for a walk. We wandered around the village, taking in the faded 1960s-era slogans on the walls ("Read Chairman Mao's book. Listen to what Chairman Mao says"), talked to an amateur painter and his wife, then climbed to the highest point of one of the mountains for a spectacular view. When we climbed down again it was time for dinner, which we ate in the courtyard. There were about thirty dishes, hot and cold, including hard little cornbread loaves, tiny, salty fish, red beans and rice, and soft, mild tofu.

After dinner we wandered about some more until the party. There was a big stage set up for karaoke ("Chinese Harmonica Song" again, of course) and two huge bonfires onto which the men sloshed a generous amount of gasoline. ACC provided a wealth of snacks, including chocolate, cookies, and marshmallows, so we rounded up some sticks and set about making s'mores, Chinese-style (i.e., somewhat off, but good all the same). Alcohol turned up as it always does and since I wasn't drinking I eventually started to have the eerie feeling that everyone was going mad. People I don't normally interact with were touching me. Boys were leaping over the flames because boys are morons. Presently I decided I wanted to be back on the kang reading Anna Karenina so I excused myself and went to bed. Beds made of bricks ... you can sort of see why that's a good idea, but it was COLD (I was on the edge, far away from both the stove and the flue under the bed) and my limbs fell asleep much more willingly than the rest of me.

I woke to our professors telling us it was time for breakfast. After corn porrige, steamed buns, cabbage, and hard boiled eggs we went out for a walk. We greeted peasants on the road and stopped to chat with a very friendly goat herd (a person who yangs yang, if you will). When we got back it was time for lunch and then we got back on the bus to go home.

Tomorrow we leave for Xi'an. With a name like that, it's got to be exciting, right? I'll try to find an internet cafe, but if I'm not in touch, that will be why. Xi'an is known for its terra cotta warriors, which is not as exciting as wild monkeys but I suppose we can't have wild monkeys all the time or we'd get sick of them.