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Week 11 in China

Challis Hackley
Feb 12, 2018
4 min read

What I Learned

The driving is crazy but the people are courteous.

So watching people drive here is nuts. They straddle lanes, honk randomly, and mount the sidewalks. It when I got the chance to actually drive here I realized that although it’s hectic and crazy, the drivers are actually pretty nice. Those random honks are just there way of saying, hey I’m here, be careful. They let people go first and just go around others without too much issues. The Chinese are very much fly-by-the-seed-of-your-pants and that translates into their driving. But they are also kindhearted people, and you can see that there too. Basically, driving here is a lot less scary now that I’ve actually done it.

My action camera picks up sound even in its waterproof case.

It was one of the first times that I had used my new-ish action camera. I hadn't ever worked one before and I was surprised how much sound it picked up even in it's waterproof case. There was a lot of screaming during our river-drifiting trip.

Peter is the best tour guide ever.

The tour guide we hired is sort-of famous in ILP. He's in their blobs and almost everyone in the program in China knows him. We were able to book him for all four days of our trip and it was some of the best money I have ever spent. He took care of everything, admissions, transportation, communicating with the locals. It was great. And he's the sweetest, always looking out for us. He gave us these huge bag of citrus fruit from his farm to takes with us. We all loved Peter.

Flying in China is not all that different from flying in the States.

Tickets, security, boarding. It's all pretty much the same, although the Chinese are more efficient with crowds. The parameters are all the same with liquids and you can fly with fruit within the country. Pretty easy.

The English language is a thief.

I've always known that my language could be a bit of a mess sometimes, weird in places and practices, but I never realized how much of it wasn't really ours. We steal words from everybody, indiscriminately. Guess where we got the word tea. It’s not ours. It’s from the Chinese word: te.

Acupuncture and cupping is still practiced in modern Chinese medicine.

There is a medical campus across the street from the school where I live and we had a chance to visit and try some of their techniques. Among there chiropractic, dermatology, massage, and rehabilitation service they also practice acupuncture and cupping.

What I Did

For Sunday and Monday's good news you can check out my other blog post about the four days I spent in Yangshou and Guilin.

Tuesday

Went to go see a movie... in China... no big deal. I'm a big Marvel fan and Thor: Ragnarök had come out the previous weekend and it was somebody's birthday so we went out to celebrate.

Wednesday

Attended a little Chinese medicine presentation at the local medical campus. We did some I did some yoga/tai chi deal that I can't remember the proper name of and acupuncture in my hands. There was also cupping and massages and for 3 yuan we can go back and do that so that is something we're planning in the near future. I hadn't realized that the traditions Chinese medicine was still a large part of the modern Chinese medicine, which was really cool. We'll see how my hands feel tomorrow though.

Thursday

Just some lesson planning. Same-old, same-old. Another day in China

Friday

General meeting with Casey, head hancho in ILP. Got soem cotto candy just out side the front gate of our school, every friday these food trucks kline up oustside our school before the parents come to pick up their kids for the weekend. It's always nice to have a little snack handy. After the meeting we went clubbing again and it was fun...until our stuff got locked up.

Anyway, we had brought our coats and found a dark corner to pile our stuff. Eventually someone found us and said that we needed to move it. They said that we could put it into one of the lockers that you could open with WeChat.

"It's free right?"

"Yes."

"And how do I open it?" I asked before I shut the door.

They showed me the button on my phone. So we stowed our stuff and club-hopped.

Came back at the end of the night and... guess what it did cost money, just five yuan, less than an American dollar. But the thing about WeChat, is in order to use WePay you need a Chinese Bank Account, and guess what I did not have because I did not have a Chinese phone number. Yup. And my phone, my account was apparently the only thing that could open that locker. So we got our friends who could translate and played a game of musical phones sending money between accounts signing up for things, receiving texts. I was so frustrated with it all but we, eventually got it all figured out and got our stuff back. never making that mistake again.

Saturday

I had a personal interview with Casey, just told him how things were going, he asked me a few questions and then after her was done with all his interviews he had me call a cab for him. I peeled a pomelo by myself. My tour guide Peter made it look much easier. But nothing super special that day.

Except, the date was 11/11, which apparently is lucky in China. I’m not sure why but they like odd numbers here so that probably has something to do with it.