Study-Service Term

Our final day as a group in China was crisp and relatively clear.  We headed out by bus to the Jinshanling section of the fabled Great Wall.  This section is located in Hebei Province, about 130 km outside of Beijing.  Although a wall existed here at least as early as the 14^th century, most of the stretch we visited dates to around 1570.  Contrary to the original intent of the wall (to keep the barbarians out), we found an immediate welcome by local residents—hoping to sell us souvenirs, but willing to help us find the easiest walking routes even if we weren’t good customers.  The ascent we chose was a recently designed gradual, paved slope.  This enabled us to reach the wall easily and with plenty of stamina to clamber up and down the many steps that awaited us as we progressed along the ridge.  The local people who accompanied us, were the only people besides us we saw during our several-hour walk.  Each of us took our own pace.    Readers of this blog will soon, perhaps have already had, opportunity to begin asking us directly what thoughts we had from this impressive vantage point, looking towards and away from our months in China.

After sharing a delicious, but (sadly) not Sichuanese, final meal together, our group settled down for a final night’s rest.  Early Tuesday morning, Nov. 29, about half our group left for the airport to return home.  The other half remained behind for a few more days of individual travel in China and/or northeast Asia.  We hope you will find us all returned home safely before long.  Which ones of us will return to China?  How soon?

Postscript: We have heard that the group of students who traveled directly back to Goshen has arrived safely.  This represents the final entry in our 2011 China SST blog series.  Joe & Jo-Ann want to thank student photographers who willingly shared many photos for use on the blog during this semester.  Emily & Chelsea were particularly generous (and had better cameras than did we).  If you remember a particularly nice shot, chances are one of them was responsible for it.  Other students shared shared photographs here and there and we thank them as well.

To start off Sunday, we all went to the Chongwenmen Christian Church.  Originally a Methodist mission congregation, the congregation today has about 10,000 worshipers each Sunday, spread across 5 services.  We attended the third service.  Green-jacketed volunteers gave us an introduction to congregational life, and had reserved several pews for our group.  They gave us headsets to listen to simultaneous English-language translation of the service.  During this service, the congregation used a hymnal that consisted primarily of translated North American/British Gospel songs.  In the pre-service singing, the song leader used the “lining out” method (singing one line in advance of the congregation) to teach them to sing the “Sweet By and By.”  A group of more than 20 adults was received into membership by baptism during the service we attended.  (We weren’t sure if it was doctrine or frosty temperatures that determined sprinkling as the mode of baptism.)

The rest of the day we spent mostly at the symbolic centers of current and former Chinese power.  We began with the familiar sights of Tiananmen Square.  Our morning worship visit meant we arrived too late to consider filing past the preserved remains of Mao, entombed in a giant mausoleum adjacent to the Qianmen (Front Gate). We walked past the National Museum and Great Hall of the People, where China’s National People’s Congress meets and other important events of state are held.  Then through the Tiananmen gate itself and into the so-called “Forbidden City”—the massive complex that was long the seat of Chinese imperial power.  We spent several hours exploring the many buildings, gardens and displays housed within the complex.  To end the day, we went to the Wangjufing market, nestled in one of the corridors of current Chinese consumer power.  Where else would you go to find a pair of $1350 gold-tipped chopsticks?

After locating the bus that would shuttle us about Beijing for the next few days, we stopped for a nice Chinese breakfast (porridge for some, dumplings for others) along our route.  Despite cold temperatures, our first destination in Beijing was the Summer Palace.  The visit here was the first of a series of encounters today with Chinese aesthetics.  The site as we see it today was mostly conceived in the 18^th-century, with the 60-meter high “Longevity Hill” and the “perfect” artificial Kunming Lake.  Following several rounds of destruction by European invaders, remaining structures were mostly rebuilt in the early 20^th-century by Empress Dowager Cixi.  The grounds represent an ideal of Chinese landscape design.

The Temple of Heaven was our next destination.  First built in the 15^th century, this temple complex was extended or renovated in the 16^th and 18^th centuries.  It was the site of imperial rites related to national harvests.  Various components of its architecture incorporate circular design (reflecting the Chinese cosmogony of heaven) .  The layout also emphasizes the symbolic importance of the number nine.  In 1914, several years after the fall of the last imperial dynasty, the temple factored into one of the efforts to declare a new emperor.  We had supper just outside the temple complex at the Hong Qiao Pearl Market. (Mothers, check your Christmas stockings to see if your children remembered just what kinds of pearls you have been wanting.)  Finally, to cap off our long day, we split into two groups: one heading to a performance of scenes from traditional Beijing opera, the other to an acrobat show.  Although we only have pictures here from the opera, everyone was enthused with their choice of event and pleased with the quality of what they saw.

After our visit to Xi’an, on Friday evening, Nov. 25, we again boarded an overnight train, this time headed for China’s capital Beijing.  Although the distance we had to cover was greater, the train was faster so we were looking at just a 12-hour ride.  A delay enroute, got us into Beijing about 7:30 rather than 6:30 a.m. on Saturday.  On both overnight trips we took the “hard sleeper” option: open compartments of six sleeping ledges stacked three-high.  We have yet to see an empty train in China, and these trains were no exception—every bunk seemed to be taken.  Some of us slept better than others, but overall the night trains seems to have been the best option for our purposes.  We missed some landscapes along the way , but were delivered reliably from city center to city center.

Most of us found our suitcases to be bigger and heavier than ideal for moving up the ever-present steps.  (Ramps and escalators were welcome surprises when available.)  The Chinese rail stations we have used all have strictly controlled access to boarding.  Passengers cannot enter waiting areas until an hour or two before their scheduled departure, and usually cannot proceed to the tracks more than 20-30 minutes prior to departure.  We wonder if rail officials would have opened boarding just a little earlier if they had known we were planning to board.  A group of North Americans packing a semester’s worth of clothing and gifts moves more glacially than does a comparable size group of Chinese passengers.  Certainly, the masses of new military recruits who rode some of the same trains we did managed to move on and off trains with a great deal more order and speed than did we!  Once aboard, we also struggled to remember to move luggage out of the single passageway first/stow later.  We did get better by our final boarding.

Here are a few tips for the next group who may take the train:  The lighter your luggage, the better.  If you can’t carry your loaded luggage up and down a flight of stairs in your own home, you have to reduce what you are bringing.  If you struggle to carry your loaded luggage up and down a flight of stairs in your own home, you will still want to reduce what you are bringing.  Four-wheel suitcases seem to have a mobility advantage over two-wheel options in Chinese railway stations.  Strapping a smaller piece onto a larger piece will probably make you happier  than trying to carry multiple items on your shoulders.  When boarding, organize yourselves so the person going furthest into the car enters first.  And again, the lighter your luggage, the better.

On Nov. 23, we met at the Nanchong train station, bid farewell to our generous host families, and boarded a fast train to Chengdu. There we met a friend who kindly offered to babysit our luggage while we headed out to find our evening meal. Our May Term language teacher, Betty Z. joined us to board an overnight train, heading 15 hours northeast to our next destination: Xi’an.  Betty accompanied us through the rest of our time in China.  As we woke the next morning, we enjoyed the remainder of the mountainous landscape we had traversed in the dark. We had found our unheated classrooms in Nanchong prefecture increasingly chilly throughout November.  Now we could see signs of even colder weather: frost, heavier jackets, the breath of workers along the tracks.

Arriving in Xi’an shortly after noon on the 24th, we lugged our suitcases to a nearby hotel, and then sat down for a noon meal—just after midnight on what back in Goshen would be Thanksgiving Day. No turkey for us, but reminiscent of the legendary first Pilgrim celebration, we are thankful that when we arrived in China, others were here to greet us. Those whom we met, showed us how to survive and thrive in this different landscape. We hope we have recognized and expressed our gratitude to them in ways more appropriate than those early European settlers often chose as they interacted with the people whom they encountered upon arrival on new shores.

Xi’an, with a history that extends back more than 3000 years, intermittently served as China’s capital for long periods. Today, it serves as capital of Shaanxi Province. Xi’an’s center is surrounded by a 40-ft. high wall, dating back to 1370. A century ago, one would have found such walls surrounding many Chinese cities, but Xi’an is one of a relatively few larger Chinese cities that still has an intact wall today. Many of us rode along the top of the wall’s 11.9 km circuit—a few more leisurely riders turned back before the halfway point and saw part of the wall twice.  Numerous Chinese cities retain their drum and bell towers.  Xi’an also has both, but the bell tower was closed for renovation.  We spent the remainder of the afternoon at the drum tower—once a communication hub for public signals related to time or to mark auspicious days for accomplishing various tasks. As dusk fell, we entered the Great Mosque of Xi’an. Founded in 742, it is China’s oldest mosque. Following the visit there, we found supper in the surrounding market area. Many of us sampled a local Muslim specialty, mutton and bread stew.

The next morning we caught a bus out to the burial site of Qin Shi Huang,  the first emperor of unified China. Before his death (210 B.C.E.), he arranged for the production of a huge army of life-sized terracotta figures with (smaller) horses to accompany him in the afterlife. Rediscovered in 1974, this buried army provides clear evidence of the technical and artistic skill achieved by Qin-era artisans. Archaeological excavations continue, but visitors, including us, are able to visit three major “pits,” estimated to contain a total of about 8,000 human figures. Smaller scale excavations are also progressing in the nearby region. We visited one of those and walked around the large, as yet unexcavated, hill that is presumed to be the place the emperor himself may be buried.