The Old City

The internet has been squirrely recently, so here's an account of the last couple of days.

Yesterday we went into the Muslim Quarter, which is in the old city. There are streets and winding alleys lined with shops/stands of merchants selling every conceivable item. For some reason, they're big on selling underwear and belts. We were solicited several times as to whether we wanted underwear. Go figure. From Mao watches and his Little Red Book, to Swords, to Olympic t-shirts, to every other knick knack...you could find it all there. I had my first experience with haggling. It is a theatrical production. The merchant names a price, which is obviously absurdly too high. You name a counter offer, which is offensively low, and proceed to work the seller down from there. If you pretend to walk away enough times, you can get said trinket for the offensively low price that you originally offered. It's a blast. Knowing some Chinese was helpful in this venture...and has been invaluable in getting around thus far. I honestly don't know how I would have managed without knowing the small bit of Chinese that I do.

We had finished in the shop-filed alleys and were on one of the streets looking at some small birds in a cage on a sidewalk when this man approached us and started talking to us. His English was quite good and after a few minutes of talking with him he asked us if we wanted to see an art exhibition. We agreed and he led us into a nearby store and upstairs to this room filled with artwork. Calligraphy, landscapes, several "beautiful concubines", dragons, horses and the Chinese Robin Hood were only some of the pieces that he showed us. We spent nearly an hour in there talking to him and looking at the artwork. We promised to return the next day (today) and get a few pieces.

Today:

Day three of teaching. I'm finally beginning to learn more of the kids' names--not just the troublemakers. Their attention span is quite, quite short, but the ones who really seem to care do really well. There is one boy who seems content to chew on the top of his water bottle, so we've decided to just let him do his own thing.

After lunch and a desperately needed power nap a few of us returned to the Muslim quarter to rendezvous with the man from the art exhibition (David) and bike along the old city wall. We'd just gotten out of the cab when we decided to take a ride on a motorized rickshaw around the quarter just because. Four of us squeezed into this tiny compartment and had a thoroughly entertaining time as we thundered down streets and back alleys avoiding pedestrians, cyclists, and head on collisions with taxis. The way people drive here...and the narrowness of the streets...I'm not quite sure how we made it past a taxi this afternoon without dying. We finally decided we'd had enough richshawing and were conveniently right outside of David's place. We got out and were walking towards the door when he popped up and took us inside. Again, he talked to us about each piece, explaining the significance, the meaning of words, and talking to us about the U.S. Once we left David's we made our way to the South Gate of the old city wall. The walls are somewhere between 40 and 60 feet high and create a large square enclosure around the oldest part of the city. You can go up on top of the walls and rent bikes and ride around, so that's what we did. It was 4 in the afternoon and the wall, in total is 8 miles long, so needless to say we worked up a sweat. Barely 20 minutes into the adventure we lost our shirts, turned them into Lawrence of Arabia-style headwear, and continued onward. This fashion would get us countless looks from passing visitors and quite a few photographs. The path along the wall was easily 50 feet wide and many of the stones creating the ground had eroded over time, so the ride was a bit jarring at times. It was incredible how big it was and you, at times, could not even see the next corner (partially due to air pollution that limited visibility). The lazier visitors could get rides in little Smart-like gocarts, and we raced quite a few of them. We even ventured to tell the drivers--in Chinese--that we thought they were too slow. After a little over an hour and after races, water breaks, and many photographs we completed the loop. We snagged a cab ride back--with beautiful, beautiful air conditioning--just in time for dinner.

After a quick and amazing shower we had a lecture/lesson in Chinese calligraphy. I'd done calligraphy once before in class, so I notionally knew what to do, but it is an art--meaning that my characters still looked pretty mediocre. We entertained ourselves with how bad some of our peers were at writing the characters with brushes.

This weekend a few of us are planning on heading east to the Hua Shan mountains to hike. We'll leave Friday evening and make the two-hour trip out there, eat dinner, then start hiking...for the next 6-8 hours If you hike through the night you can make it up to the summit by sunrise, which is supposed to be incredible. Hopefully that will work out. That's all for now.