the end

Finally!

After the market, we saw the temple we wanted to visit in the distance. We walked to the main road to hail a taxi. The driver drove a whole 100m to the entrance of the temple...we hadn't realised we were so close!!! We had to pay 5 yuan for the taxi - the minimum charge but still a rip-off. Above is a pic of the entranceway to the temple.
Guillaume, Katia and Loic (making a face) in front of the temple. It's a reproduction of a famous Llama Temple in Tibet.
The view from the temple's terrace (atop the white part in the previous pic). What was funny was that some buildings were just walls - they had no roofs (why not rooves?) so we could see that there was nothing inside. The two buildings with the strange-looking cones were examples of such empty shells. The windows were also plastered up, so there were no holes in the building. I guess it gets really cold...
The inside of the temple. There were rooms with exhibitions of ancient clothing and habitats and utensils and armour and the like on every floor. We didn't see everything.
We walked up many of these wooden stairs to get to the highest roof on top of the temple. I had to wait a few minutes before taking the picture - a lot of people were coming down!
The Frenchies waiting for me as I take a picture from a pagoda. They're beside the entrance to the stairwell (previous pic). Part of the Great Wall isn't far from Chengde, but I don't think that's it in the distance (the white snake-like thing).
Just one of many beautiful pagodas found on the roof of the temple. They're impressive, but it seems like everywhere you go in China you find these type of things, so after a while it gets repetitive. It's strange that no matter at what time the building was built, the architectural style seems to stay the same.
Cabs normally take four people. We were five. Hence the need to squeeze.
A picture from Chengde's train station. This is right when it started getting cloudy. China's booming. There's construction everywhere. The parking lot in front of the station is full of buses ready to take you anywhere and everywhere.
Many people still use bags instead of suitcases. You see many of them in the subway stations in Beijing.
This is where we ate our lunch on Sunday. It's a small restaurant across the street from the train station. The boy is the son of the people who work there and he watched us eat while eating peanuts.
The wall of the restaurant: some Chinese art alongside an advertisement for a chocolate snack that I've tasted! Every table has chopsticks, soy sauce, and spicey sauce.
The back of the restaurant. Behind the curtain is the kitchen. The drinks are kept to the right; vegetables to the left (out of the picture).
Gaetan wearing a captain's cap. It was hanging above him on a hook.
Loic and Katia sleeping. Loic was disgusted to see he had holes in his hair. He doesn't really...

We drank hot chocolate and ate a ton of junk food...

I realise there aren't many pictures of me, so here's a candid shot (I'm not at my best!) taken by Katia on our way home in the train. It's night out. We arrived in Beijing at 6:40 PM.

Korean movies

Korean movies are great.

Saw another one this evening in Katia's room (remember, I saw one a few weeks ago called "Innocent Steps" about a Chinese woman who goes to Korea illegally and learns to tango) called...well, there was no English translation. Only English subtitles.

It was a tearjerker about a little boy whose older brother has a brain tumor and the ups and downs of school and hospital life. I liked it. The little boy is so cute! In the same playing field as the boy actor who played Valentine.

Anyway, to bed I should go.

Random thought of the day: the French are apparently ranked sixth in the world for average number of times to have sex in a year.

the middle

Today was a long day. My afternoon class (which I didn't have last week because they were taking an exam remember?) was noisy and full of energy and hard to control. I let them off 15 minutes early...pretty bad, but oh well. I'm sure they don't complain. It's unfortunate though, because their level is the lowest and they just don't bother even trying.

Okay, back to scenes from Chengde. Sunday morning:
Here's our hotel bathroom. Straight ahead is the girls' bathroom, to the left is the boys'. Gaetan & Loic are in front of the mirrors.
The two stalls in the women's bathroom. You can easily see inside the stalls if you're standing... I've been to malls where the public bathrooms have slats in their stalls so you can see every woman squatting...it's as if the stalls didn't have doors. Katia said she once lined up to go to the bathroom and every woman in the line up could see the woman who was peeing because nobody bothered to close the door. The Chinese don't care about these things, and frankly, if I weren't so prudish, I agree that nobody should care. It's as natural as eating and sleeping after all. But personally, I just can't go to the bathroom in front of other people!!! I can hardly speak to someone while peeing!
This is what every bathroom stall has. It's a bit shocking at first, but you quickly get used to it...well, sort of. I do occasionally go home inbetween classes because I can't bear to go to the public bathrooms at the school... One thing that is easy to forget: you can't throw the toilet paper into the hole, you have to throw it in the basket, which stinks the place up tremendously!!

We took a bus to go to one of the temples in the outskirts of Chengde, but the bus driver took us to the wrong temple (well, not the one we wanted). So we decided to walk to the temple we wanted to visit. I took a ton of pictures of street scenes. This one looks like it's of a 24hour street cafe.
The sidewalks in China are badly paved, if paved at all. It would be impossible for a wheelchair to go through. I don't know how people with disabilities survive. The must be totally dependent on their caretakers. Lots of bikes in Chengde... And still those bicycle-cart thingies.
A colourful Chengde store. Sells just about anything and everything.
Coals burning at right. People walking... It was cold!
Somebody's yard. Clothes hanging to dry, a pile of rubbish in the foreground, and a man piercing a hole in his stairs...don't know why! He had a drilling machine, though, and it made a lot of noise!
An old man selling coal on the side of the road. He's behind his scale and weights on the left.
Katia's yellow bag, which she bought in Beijing for next to nothing. Everytime you see those red ball-things (lantern look-alikes) you know there's a restaurant.

We went through a huge market. I guess it was the Sunday morning market. It was marvelous. This was the first sight that greeted us: the roaming barber shop.
Spices and goods to eat, next to shoes and clothes. It was quite the market.
Katia bought two pairs of socks from the woman on the left. Her feet were freezing (she wasn't wearing the right shoes!). There are so many people in China that when one of them is sick, they wear something to cover their mouth and nose so as not to spread the disease to others. I see it all over campus and I guess that's what this woman is doing in the middle of the picture.
There were lots of people. I think Chengde has 200,000 inhabitants (about), but you can be sure that there were many people from the surrounding areas at this market.
The woman is holding her baby. This was the fruits and vegetables section - on the ground is just as good as on a table, I suppose... For farmers who bring in their goods with a bicycle-cart there isn't much room for tables I guess.
Pigs ready for slaughter. There were trucks and trucks full of them...
A view of the market from high up. This was the other side of the market - completely opposite the barber stops which we saw at first. It really was quite a cool market.
A woman selling puppies.
It took me forever to take this picture. I felt so bad because I kept the women waiting for so long... Cute puppies. I'm sure they haven't been vaccinated for ANYTHING though...

Going for dinner at 7:30 PM tonight, as usual, with the French crew and a few Chinese people, no doubt. Tomorrow the plan is to go to Carrefour to stock up. Carrefour is a French supermarket that's not too, too far away from our university. It's a good place to buy foreign products.

Thursday, two of my students, Yang Yang and Kobe (they made me dinner the Thursday before last), have invited to be my guide and to take me around an old district in Beijing.

I received a letter from my father and I'm so happy! He tells me to be careful with so many exciting things happening at once. I need to write postcards myself!

Alright (my students make fun of my "alright!" which I apparently say all the time in class), time to work (prepare for tomorrow's class). Hope you're all in good health. Take care.

the beginning...

It's lunch hour for me. I have time to post a few pictures of my week-end up, I guess. I took 197 pictures & movies over two days. Don't worry, I've whittled down the selection to around fifty, but that still seems like a lot. We'll see how many I get through...

I had four hours of classes this morning. We talked about fear - what we're afraid of - and worries - what we worry about. No brilliant ideas came from my students.

The view from the train on the way to Chengde. We see many of these little villages (even smaller) all along the way. Some look quite poor, others look well-kept.
Lunch on Saturday - our first day in Chengde.
This is what the outside of the restaurant looks like. In those earthen pots lie bits of meat or tofu. We didn't eat that... We ate cold noodles and baoze and meat on the bone.
A modern-looking Chengde street. To think that all the new buildings have been built in the last fifteen to twenty years... Crazy. And that motorbike-pulling-cart thing you see in the foreground is extremely common in Beijing as well. People carry all sorts of things on those carts - from cardboard and styrofoam to their families.
China is full of contradictions. You see these poor farmers sit on the side of the road in a modern city selling their goods - often spices, things that sell for next to nothing. This woman is even using a pole on her shoulders to carry her wares - so old school! And just as you walk by, thinking "These poor people have absolutely nothing...," out comes the pink cell phone hanging around her neck, and this old lady you thought was from the third world is sending a text message, something I don't think even my mother could do.
A side street. Street vendors sell absolutely everything - from cooked eggs (and only cooked eggs) to bicycles (it's illegal so they keep most of their bikes at home and only have a few around them, which they say they're fixing when the cops arrive) to shoe soles and heels. Here, the lady in the forefront looks like she's selling hot pancake-like stuff. There was a guy in the street who was carrying a pink sofa on his back - it was pretty funny-looking.
We visited Chengde's Summer Palace. It cost us $10 Cdn to get in - a small fortune in China. Many tourist places in China are really expensive, I don't know why. Only the elite must be able to afford classic vacations where you pay entry to visit tourist attractions. I loved the Summer Palace because many of the buildings were made of wood and it looked so cool - as you can see here. I'm used to the Chinese painting their buildings in the traditional red, white and green colours and it often looks so tacky...
More pictures of the Summer Palace. It was nice and cool. Because we were there in November and the high season is of course summer, there weren't a lot of people. It was really quite relaxing.
Gotta love the Chinese for their walls - which means many many doors...
A guy was skating on a lake in the park at the Summer Palace. That's how cold it was! It was especially cold in the late afternoon, when there was no more sun. Brrr!!!
Gaetan did a bit of his own skating. But he didn't go far...
We walked around the park for the whole afternoon. It's quite big and we were walking at a leisurely pace.
We stopped to rest on top of a hill and I looked down...
It really was quite an enchanting place. An old couple were walking and singing traditional Chinese opera. When they saw us they asked us where we were from. The guy started playing "La Marseillaise" - the French national anthem - on his harmonica, and then he sang it in Chinese!!! There's a Chinese translation of the French national anthem!!! We were so impressed. I got it all on my camera's video format too! I was so happy.
Cigarette break. Katia was in the bathroom.

Saturday night dinner. We bread and young joe chow fan and the local specialty - deep fried venison - and some other stuff... It was really quite delicious. We had our own private room. I love private rooms...

And now I'm going to eat dinner. More pictures later.