This weekend, Qingli, my roommate, invited me to the town she grew up in. It is a small mountain town outside the city of Jinyun south of Hangzhou. So on Friday morning, I left Hangzhou with my roommate, Chynna, and her roommate. First we took the bus to the bus station, then we took a long-distance bus to Jinyun. Then we took a cab up some windy roads into the mountains. Qingli's town is basically a narrow road that leads up into the mountains with houses on either side. Qingli's grandmother lives in a small house that is considered very nice because it has real floors (as opposed to dirt or concrete floors), two televisions, and a seperate building across the street for cooking. Apparently, it is common for some people to have their living quarters in one house and their kitchen in a seperate building.
When we arrived, we just walked up the street to get a feel for the town. People sat outside their front doors peeling oranges, crunching on sunflower seeds, and staring at us. Chynna received the most stares because of her blond hair. A few people called out to us, but we could not understand their local dialect. Qingli told us that when she was little, she only spoke the local dialect; she learned Mandarin in school. She stopped to talk to a few people as we walked. Although she had not visited the town in many years, everybody knew her grandmother, so they knew who Qingli was.
On Saturday morning, we made pancakes with Qingli's grandmother. Chinese pancakes are thicker, more like flat rolls, and they have meat inside them. Then, Qingli's aunt led us on a hike up a mountain path. Chinese hiking trails are not actually for hiking. Most of them are farmer's trails that literally go straight up the mountain. The four of us breathed heavily as we climbed the steep path, but Qingli's Aunt kept up a quick pace and was not eve out of breath when we reached the top. At the top there was a Buddhist temple, where an old man burned incense. Qingli's Aunt chatted with him for a while in their local dialect while we ate our lunch and looked at the view. The we walked back down.
My visit to the country showed me just how serious the pollution problem is in China. Even in the mountains, the smog was so bad that we could not see very far. Also, the littering is a serious problem. Nobody sees it as a problem - they just throw their trash out the window onto the street or into the river. When we were walking down the mountain, I was carrying the plastic bag that had held our lunch. Qingli's aunt told me to just throw it in the woods. I told her I didn't want to litter, and she looked very confused, but she just kept walking. It made me sad to see such a beautiful town littered with plastic bags, wrappers, metal parts, boxes, old car parts.
I am currently writing this from an internet cafe in Jinyun. It is Sunday, and we left Qingli's Grandmother's house early this morning to get a bus back to Hangzhou. However, the earliest bus does not leave until 5 p.m. There are no real restaurants here - only stores and street stands. There is not even a McDonalds! I think this is the first place I have ever been to that does not have any fast food chains. So, the four of us are just hanging out until 5. All in all, it has been an amazing weekend. Everything I have seen in the past 48 hours is completely different from anything else I have ever experienced.
