Women are Tigers

Spent the weekend in Datong, a tourist town in Shanxi Province, to the west of Beijing. We took the train Thursday night after our midterm - sadly, my last Chinese train experience was spent sleeping. (I've been doing that lately - thinking about Last Things: Last Train Ride is the first that I'm aware of but there will be more as the days go by). We pulled into the station rather early - around six thirty - and proceeded to the hotel for breakfast.

ACC's field trips are always rather intense and mountain-climbing-centric, which is all well and good but can be tiring. On Friday we visited the Hanging Monastary, which was a little disappointing because it was so packed with tourists. I love Buddhist sites, especially monastaries, but this one had no monks and no pilgrims, only tourists. Then we went to Heng Mountain, which is one of the most sacred and famous mountains in China. This I did enjoy, because I got to talk to the nice Taiwanese teacher mentioned in an earlier post, C. and Xi Shiyuan, and some Taoists, who C. enjoyed teasing.

"Are you American?" one of them asked him.
"Yes," said C.
"But you don't look like her," the Taoist pointed out, motioning to a blond-haired girl.
"I used to," said C. earnestly. "When I was younger. Do you like blond hair?"
"No," said the Taoist.
"Me neither," said C., "So I dyed my hair black."
The Taoist did not ask about C.'s eyes or anything else that distinguishes him from a white person, and we moved on.
"Do you eat meat?" we asked.
"No, we don't kill anything."
"Can you get married?"
"No, women are tigers."

Women are tigers! That is my new favorite thing!
"What about Taoist women?" I asked him.
"Women cannot be Taoist," he informed me.
"Because they are tigers?"
"That's right."
"What if a woman really wants to be Taoist?" C. asked.
"She can't."

Shi laoshi explained that these people come to Taoism at a very young age, maybe eight or nine, and their master tells them women are tigers and they are scared and grow up believing it. I for one was vaguely flattered to be called a tiger, but my temporary roommate Chen laoshi, a Chinese girl studying in the U.S. and working as a T.A. over the summer, was somewhat affronted.

That evening I went with C., Xi Shiyuan and his roommate, and Chen laoshi for noodles. We wandered around gormlessly for awhile and, to tide ourselves over, purchased some Stinky Tofu. I'd had Stinky Tofu once before, in Chengdu, at Zheng Xiaoxue's insistance, and I can assure you that it lives up to its name. When there is a Stinky Tofu vendor nearby the entire block is unbearable. They say the worse the smell, the better the taste, but the Stinky Tofu we had that night was quite tasty and mildly scented. I suppose it must not have been the real stuff, which is quite all right with me.

We ended up having snails and noodles outside, which was pleasant. I like hanging around with the other fourth years, because we use our vocabulary words and sentence patterns constantly, and say things like "My mind is full of capitalist decadence!"

Datong, being a tourist town, is very full of decadance. Prostitutes propositioned C. and poor Shi laoshi (C., who had just shaved his head, told them he was a monk, and they apologized profusely) and as we walked along the street we passed adult shops and street vendors selling obscene Japanese videos.

Last night I had the good fortune to eat dinner with Chen laoshi, Zheng laoshi, and Wang laoshi, all Chinese people. We had a very nice meal of various Datong specialties (the food was very good on this trip) and then walked through the busy downtown, packed with vendors, fortune telling machines, games, and shops. Chen laoshi purchased more Stinky Tofu, very pungent this time, and it was terrible. I was surprised that it was so crowded - Datong's kind of a nothing little town ("Its specialty is that it has nothing special about it," C. informed me, and I was pleased at the paradox) but the only time I've ever seen more people in one place was at the temple fair my Chinese brother took me to over New Year's.

Returned to Beijing very early this morning, tired, but quite satisfied.