China — Day Five

After recuperating on the above-mentioned bed o’ plywood, it was time to rush downstairs and grab a bite to eat with the members of my immediate cohort and others from the Irvine group, whom we had all gotten to know and enjoy the company of. In that way, it wasn’t only a matter of getting-to-know the culture of China and the people we had the pleasure of coming into contact there, but also our cousins from the Irvine cohort. We hadn’t seen the majority of them since we all had orientation together (or most of them, at least) and it was nice to be able to see them again and catch up on exactly what they had been doing for the previous quarter-year or so and compare notes on teachers, experiences and more. Being able to catch up with them was part of the fun and certainly added to an already amazing experience that won’t ever be topped.

On this day, we would all board the bus again and take our usual seats. It was sort of a given at this point that the people who truly wanted to listen would take seats near the front of the bus, the noisy, rowdy group would go to the rear to joke around for most of the ride, and the ones who were too late to make it to the front to avoid the rowdy group would be forced to the middle where they wouldn’t be able to hear our guide, nor would they be able to escape the pack in the back. On this day, that wrath would also fall upon a guide at a temple that we went to who had many of her comments met with light-hearted joking by various members of our group. It got to the point that she even called us the, “Crazy Group,” a moniker we adopted for the remainder of the trip. It was this guide who informed us of several interesting notes about the way the emperor lived and how women in his presence would react, such as painting certain designs on her face to avoid turning the emperor down while still informing him that having relations that night was not going to be ideal.

 After the tour, we made our way to an area where they sold art. Not really interested in purchasing art, I made my way outside where Jill was talking to Rocky Stone, our guide for Xi’an. It was moments like this that I found really interesting. For about 15 minutes, we were able to sit and talk to him, taking in cultural ideals and traits from the land of China while finding out how they viewed us. It was truly a memorable conversation as we found out that Chinese feel that people from the U.S. look the same, are aggressive and live very nice lives. In fact, we even discovered that The Rock (a nickname Jorge came up with) aspired to one day become an action star in Hollywood.

We then made our way to a furniture factory, which did very little to stimulate me, before making our way out to the countryside to see the Terra Cotta Warriors, three bunkers full of soldiers made by an emperor so he would have soldiers to watch after him postmortem. This was truly a spectacular sight and one that I had looked forward to before we even made the trip. Seeing thousands of warriors made of terra cotta was amazing and became yet another sight that I’ll never forget. Although the phrase probably seems overused in this paper, you really have to see it to believe it.

Following this, we made our way out to a Dumpling Dinner where we saw another performance, this one highlighted by a group of young girls whom has two sticks with a string in the middle and a projectile they caught and flung around with the strings. Although they made a few errors, their overall performance was so entertaining that they deserved the rousing ovation that they received. The dumplings were OK.

That night, we came back to the hotel and hit the sack again. While it seemed as though we were having so much fun, I really missed my wife and thought about her all the time. China was great, but it would have been so much greater with her. Even with that huge void in my life, I was having the time of my life and knowing that we were going to Shanghai the next day was something that I was really looking forward to. Maybe the people in that town had heard of ice and soft beds.