Last week I only had to work one day, Wednesday, in the middle of the week. It was odd and a bit annoying, but I was glad for all the time off I did have.

On Monday I was supposed to go to the Yellow River Stone Forest, but due to rain, I went to a nearby little village outside of Baiyin called Four Dragons instead.

The first thing we did here was to enter a nice hotel resort area where government officials from other countries have stayed. The Yellow River runs through it. My student's mother, Mrs. Li, paid for a little speed boat ride. Mr. Li, she told me, didn't like boats. After the ride she added that it had been her first boat ride because her husband thought boats were dangerous and didn't want her or her son to ride on them.

“But,” she said, “now I don't think they are dangerous.”

I think she really enjoyed the thrill of the ride. With the cold water splashing up from the sides of the boat and the wind rushing fiercely against our faces, it was quite enough to wake us up! As we approached the bridge over the river, I expected us to keep going straight, but the driver surprised me by making a sharp turn and heading back to the dock. It made the little kids in the boat giggle.

After the ride we toured the Economical Gardens, a giant greenhouse with artificial mountains but real plants. Walking around inside, I really enjoyed the abundant greenery, which brown Baiyin lacks. With the humidity I felt that I had entered a rain forest. There were a few brightly colored birds in cages hanging from above in one section and an artificial lake in the middle, with a board walk you could sit on above at little tables to have tea and eat. There was a stage across from the tables but no performances going on.

As we walked through I received many stares and one college student requested a photo with me, and I obliged. We stopped to eat at some tables on the edges of the garden. Mrs. Li brought cherry tomatoes, pears, oranges, and boiled eggs. Mr. Li, who has a great sense of humor according to his family, used my camera to take a bunch of photos of me while I ate. After leaving the garden we walked to a farmer's restaurant in the village but it was busy and service was slow so the Lis wanted to eat elsewhere. I thought we might as well have stayed there because we ended up walking quite a ways along the muddy highway. There weren't any other nearby restaurants. Luckily, a young woman eating a banana on the side of the road we passed must have taken pity on us because of me. She came over,excitedly shook my hand and greeted me in English. Then after speaking rapidly in Chinese with the Lis for a few minutes, she threw her banana peel in the air and kicked it into a trash heap in an oddly graceful way before quickly disappearing through a gap in a wall. She returned with a man in a car, and they drove us to the nearest restaurant.

This tiny place surprisingly had no rice, nor did they have noodles. All of their vegetables were pretty spicy, which isn't to my liking. However, their steamed bread was good and I had donkey meat for the first time here. I'd heard that it is a specialty in the area. It tasted similar to beef and was quite tasty with the sauce and herbs it was served with.

After lunch we walked along what I guess was the main drag of the village for a few minutes. There was some raucous noise that was very disagreeable to me. It got louder and louder as we walked and I realized it came from a speaker. I asked Mrs. Li someone was listening to the radio. She said yes, that it was a type of folk music. I couldn't believe this noise could be called music! First there was a high jabbering female voice and a male voice answering it, sounding like a car commercial announcer. It sounded like they were just talking, not singing.Then there would be a sound like someone was beating on a metal bowl. A bit later an erhu joined in with the banging. I love the sound of the erhu, but I think it seemed out of place here.

There were several men in vans picking up people and taking them back to the city. Mr. Li paid one and a group of college students joined us. They all wanted to talk with me, but were too shy. Only one had the courage to reply when I asked some questions and then he posed a few of his own.

Tuesday morning I got up early again to meet Bob and Erika and go to the bus station. We paid 22.5 RMB for the hour long ride to Lanzhou. Strangely, it was 24 RMB for the ride back. I noticed with interest one other foreigner on the bus. I wanted to talk with him and ask a few questions. I haven't met any other foreigners in Baiyin. However, he sat in front of us and seemed intent on ignoring everyone else on the bus. I was surprised when his phone rang during the ride and he answered with “Wei” instead of “Hello”. Then he spoke with fluent Mandarin to the person on the other end.

After we got off the bus we found some bathrooms. I'm used to squat toilets now, but this bathroom was just one trough with running water. There were low walls about two feet high that separated each stall but no doors in front. It was awkward when two Chinese women came and one stood while she waited for her friend. There was absolutely no privacy.

Following this episode, we walked out to the street corner to catch a taxi to take us to the park we wanted to visit. This was truly mission impossible. Erika and Bob, who have been to Lanzhou several times, told me that hailing one in ten minutes would be lucky. There were very few taxis on the road, and to our bafflement, the few that were empty didn't stop for us! We joked that maybe Lanzhou had passed a new law: No foreigners in taxis.

Thankfully, after twenty minutes a voice from behind us asked, “Do you need help?” A man holding the hand of a young son was there. He explained that because it was May Day, it was especially hard to get a taxi, as many taxi drivers decided to take the day off. He kindly walked us to a bus stop and told us which bus to get on to go to the park.

White Pagoda Park was basically a series of steps up a mountain. There were a few pavilions and a little temple with a Buddha in it which I couldn't photograph. The park was very busy and several people requested photos with us. We joked that we could start a good business (3 RMB for a photo with one foreigner, 5 RMB for a photo with all three, 8 RMB for an autograph). We also were amused by the T-shirt slogans in English that we saw. English on anything is popular in China, but it's usually fraught with all kinds of mistakes and rarely makes sense. A guy in a pink shirt followed us for quite a while, lagging a few yards behind, and stopping whenever we stopped. It was a bit annoying because he never talked to us. If he had, it wouldn't have bothered us. We almost called Jane, our FAO (Foreign Affairs Officer), but then he finally disappeared.

View of the Yellow River running through Lanzhou from White  Pagoda Park 

When we got tired we spotted some tables above us where people were sitting. We looked around and couldn't figure out how to get up there. There were some steps but they were blocked by a vendor selling drinks. We finally figured out that the steps were the only way to reach the area. We saw some people walk around the cart so we did too. We took the last table and a woman came to take an order. Apparently we had to buy something to sit there. Erika, whose Chinese is good enough to order foods, asked for two beers for her and Bob and a juice for me. The lady went back down the steps to the vendor and returned. She then said “twenty” plus something else in Chinese that we couldn't make out. Bob gave her 100 RMB and she only gave him 40 RMB back. So, we were all charged the outrageous rate of 20 RMB for our drinks. I couldn't have bought that juice for 3 RMB anywhere else. There wasn't anything we could do about it, unfortunately.

Before leaving the park, we paid 3 RMB each to a woman out of curiosity. We saw others paying her and then going down some steps. What we found was quite sad. It was a little zoo. There were some monkeys in an area with just dirt and concrete. There were also some rabbits, chickens, and a turkey locked up in tiny cages.

We left the park around 2:30 pm and crossed the bridge over the Yellow River to find the Pizza Hut. It was quite busy and the guy outside wearing an orange apron and short tie under a white collared shirt gave us a slip of paper and said in English, “Forty minutes”. We walked around a bit and got some ice creams at the KFC while we waited. We hadn't had lunch and were getting hungry. Dessert first is the Chinese way, anyways.

When we finally went got our table we still had to wait quite a while. Inside the restaurant looked very upscale for a Pizza Hut. There were many young Chinese couples, so it seemed like this was a popular place to take a date. The menu included some Chinese food as well as the pizza and pasta. We all ordered one large pizza each so that we could take some home with us. The waitresses probably wondered why these crazy foreigners ordered so much. My pizza had corn on it and my salad had corn in it. I didn't mind it but it was interesting. Another interesting kind of pizza they had was topped with Tilapia.

After teaching on Wednesday Ms. Hu invited me to lunch. We walked inside her apartment complex and she pointed out a large gated house, not quite a mansion, in the middle. It was the first house I've seen in Baiyin. She told me the owner of the apartments lived there. It almost seemed like a castle in the midst of its kingdom. We turned out onto a street lined with little shops and restaurants. We enjoyed a traditional soup dish with potato noodles, greens, little bird eggs, beef meatballs, pork sausage, little drumsticks (maybe from the same type of fowl that laid the eggs), and some type of green sea vegetable.

On Friday morning I went with Bob and Jane to observe Erika do a demonstration lesson at a primary school. We asked to use the restroom first and they pointed us to some primitive ones outside the school. These were sort of like camping toilets. They were just pits in the ground separated with low walls. Brick walls enclosed them and above there was a cloth covering held by wooden poles. Due to the primitive bathrooms, I was surprised when we walked into the classroom.

Inside there was a computer and a pull down screen. The desks were large and made of fine wood. The chairs matched and had velvety pink seat cushions. It looked like a lecture hall, not a classroom for eight-year-olds. Erika did a great job teaching body parts to the kids but the classroom was not designed for this kind of teaching. It was a bit difficult for the kids to turn around in the big chairs to do group work. We saw some of the other classrooms as we walked by which had regular desks and stools. After teaching the level 3 kids, she taught the level 4 class, but in this one some kids came in with stools to attend and there were a lot of repeat students who must have really enjoyed the first class.

We had lunch with some of the English teachers at the school afterwards. They asked us about our teaching style and commented on the differences between ours and theirs. They wanted to know how to make their classes more fun because they noticed that the kids loved Erika's class but were bored in their classes. We couldn't give them a lot of great advice because in their classes they have a set reading and writing curriculum, so the teachers say, they don't have time to play games. The teachers also asked us grammar questions, such as, “Which is correct? The bird is in the tree or on the tree?”. These are the types of questions they put on English exams! Sometimes more than one answer is correct or none of them are right.

On Saturday morning I taught my private students at my home as usual and I finally remembered to get a photo of them. Aren't they cute? I teach them lots of songs with actions because they love to move!

L to R: Sally (6), Sally's mother, Amy (8)

Saturday night I made a fun dinner with my favorite color! I found some little purple sweet potatoes at the supermarket that I just had to try. I'd never seen them before. Then when I realized I also had purple cabbage and  purple onion I decided to throw them together. I added baby bok choy and tofu and steamed it all in my rice cooker. It was pretty satisfying.

Vitalizing, Violet and Vegan!