厦门 (Xiamen) Part II

The last two weeks have flown by so quickly that I really haven't had anytime to catch all of you up on everything that happened on my travels to Xiamen and Nanjing. It seems that there are endless things that I could share with all of you, but I will have to give you the condensed versions of them all.

鼓浪屿, 福建 (Gulangyu, Fujian)

On our second day in Xiamen we decided to head over to Gulangyu. Gulangyu is a little island that sits off the coast of Fujian next to Xiamen. The island is famous for two things mainly: (1) pianos and, (2) Zheng Chenggong (a famous military leader). While we didn't really see too much of either - mainly because all of them cost money none of us were willing to part with - we did walk all over the island admiring not only its natural beauty but wonderful architecture that seemingly blankets the entire island. Of course, there was the added bonus of not having to compete with automobiles as the island does not allow any vehicles on it - making it incredibly quiet and peaceful.

After being in Nanchang for so long - where there are not many foreigners and nothing really for tourist to come and see - it is really strange to be caught in the cross-fire of vendors trying to sell you their wares as if you were fresh for the taking. Being a foreigner in China really brings on a set of interesting assumptions about who you are based upon your skin tone. Being white, most Chinese assume that I am: (1) rich, (2) can't speak the language, and (3) don't know how to use chopsticks. The last one really provides comical relief, but it is true. Come to China and eat with chopsticks, you will continually astound the locals. Having been here before I didn't feel any need to buy any of the trinkets, but just took in the beauty and amazing weather that Fujian seems to enjoy in the winter.

Our walk around the island only took us a few hours, but rendered us some pretty amazing views. It is the constant juxtaposes of China's wealth and poverty highlighted by its race to become modern that one can catch shots like this.


The rest of my trip was spent relaxing and sitting in a coffee shop, albeit not the one I had hoped for. On my last day, I managed to make it over to Dr. Jay's apartment for a visit and talk to him about teaching English and living in China. It was so different to be back in that place after 2 years. It, however, was good to talk with him and get some ideas for dealing with cultural stresses, teaching, and language learning.

Moving on.....

Airline Ticket Problems

Amusingly enough, our trip to Nanjing was not without some interesting complications. The night before leaving Xiamen I managed to communicate with lady at the desk in enough broken Chinese to say that I would like a wake up call at 5 am and that we would need a taxi to pick us up at 5:30 am (I just have to say that is a lot harder than it sounds). The next morning we took the taxi to the airport and that is when things got interesting.

Upon arriving at the airport we thanked the taxi driver and walked inside to get our bags checked in and wait to board. We made it through the line and were being helped when during checking our bags in the lady asked us if we had our teacher identification cards on us or anything that showed that we were teachers at Blue Sky University. We responded that we did not, but that Xiamen Airlines had made copies of our identification cards back in Nanchang. She told us to wait a minute while she went to talk to her boss. Eventually her boss came over and told us that if we could not present any form of identification that we were going to have to buy new tickets for our flight to Nanjing.

We were floored and couldn't hardly form a response to such a statement. I figured if we couldn't present any form of identification that showed we were teachers that we would just have to pay the part we had discounted off. Alas, this was not the case and no matter how we reasoned with the airline they were insistent on having us pay for 3 new tickets at full price. Thankfully, Shannon decided to call our foreign affairs assistant Amy to help us and talk to the airline so that they might be brought to reason and let us get on our flight. Amy managed to persuade the airline to let us on the plane provided that she would fax them a copy of all of our identification cards. Without Amy we would never have made it out of Xiamen....

厦门 (Xiamen)

It has been over a year since I have been in this beautiful city and I can't express the emotions that I feel just walking through its streets again. At the same time everything just seems so different. Furthermore, it is a stark contrast compared to the city (Nanchang) where I have been living for the last 4 months. I wish I had a better way of explaining it, but the best I could do would be to say that it would be like living in Boise and then visiting Seattle.

Upon arriving things went every way we didn't expect them to go; however, as I have been taught "One must always be expected for the unexpected in China - and flexible". So after wandering around for about 15 minutes and asking a group of Chinese people we finally found our "hostel". We walked in, handed them our reservations, and that is when things started not to work out too well. We noticed - somewhat strangely - that this place had no computers and that it was staffed in what - to us - appeared to be a peculiar manner. After about 5-10 minutes of the lady looking at our reservations and asking about rooms she told us that they didn't have any record of our reservations.

I thought this is kind of strange and not too good. We spent the next half an hour or so debating back and forth about whether or not we had reservations and the issue of having made a deposit with their company. At the mention of money being exchanged they called someone who begin a conversation between me and the person at the front desk by handing a cell phone back and forth. The debate came to the conclusion - that is our conclusion - that the company lost the reservation and/or our booking agent that we used failed to send along the information or pocketed the money. At any rate, the people were very nice and arranged for us to stay at another hotel called the Easy Inn, which was actually cheaper and somewhat nice. So it pays to smile, nod, and be patient when dealing with the unknown; that, of course, and send some thoughts up to the Father every once in awhile.

After booking our room, getting settled, and refreshing ourselves we hit the town to get out and do something else besides stay indoors since we had been in a train for some 18 hours. We walked around and marveled at our rather modern surroundings that appeared surreal to us having come from Nanchang. As Shannon commented, it looked like we were hanging out in some large theme park. We walked for about 1 mile or and found a ferris wheel and large ship in the middle of a huge shopping center that was oddly enough deserted.

I must say, though that the large ship was much more interesting and overall more intriguing. I mean who walks into a large shopping area expecting to see a huge ship parked right in the middle of it? I, of course, had no choice but to be as tourist-like as I could and take a picture of it so that I could show it to you. Below is a picture of the ship.

After checking out the mall area we headed over to an international bookstore that happened to have some amazing coffee! Shannon and I couldn't believe that there was actually place that had real coffee with real espresso. The place we went to made hazelnut lattes for 12元 a piece, which is about equivalent to $1.80 for a 12 ounce latte. It was so ridiculous since we usually pay about $3.00 a "coffee" at Dio, which is usually not even really coffee but some kind of substitute. I have to say that was really cool!

I should note that I was able to have dinner with a good friend of mine named Wang Yue this evening and catch up on everything that has been going on with her. Tomorrow we will be going to see Xia Da and Gulongyu, so I will probably have some more pictures for you tomorrow!

(Andy, Shannon, Jonathan, and Laura making fish faces)