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.