Bike Polo

Saturday was a beautiful afternoon. I went with one of my girlfriends to try something new: Bike Polo! There was a great crowd of ex-pats and some local Chinese. It was so much fun!

We had some difficulty with the security guards. They wouldn't let us play in the spot they played last week so we had to go find a new place. It was so funny watching the police. They had NO idea what to do with this group of wei gou ren! They were so passive aggressive. They would kick down the cones and chase the ball around. It was comical! The group trying to find a new place to play.

Let the games begin!
It's definitely as hard as it looks!


There were quite a few spills!

The 1st ever all girls team! (We were the only girls there.)

GOAL!!!!

High School Field Day

Today was the High School field day event. I wasn't sure what it was before I got there, and I'm still not sure what it was. Most of the announcements were in Chinese. It was quite amusing, and the epitome of Chinese chaos and disorganization. Each class had to do a "dance" for the directors who sat on stage, as part of opening ceremonies. Then there were some track and field events. About 3-5 kids from each homeroom class participated while the rest just hung out in the grass with their friends. It was a beautiful day so it was fun to be outside.

the directors (above) the dancing (below) mostly just chaos all around

Here are some pictures of my 11th grade English class:

A Weekend in Wuzhen

The weather is getting beautiful, which makes us want to get out of Shanghai and explore the countryside. We saw a picture in a magazine of a small water town about 2 hours away by bus. So we headed to the picture! There were no details about this place in the guidebooks and very few online, which made it even more appealing. It wasn't a holiday weekend, but we had a half day on Friday after proctoring midterm exams. Stephanie and I went to the bus station and had no problems buying tickets. The travel productions are becoming more and more seamless, and our travel Chinese is really improving! It was a good China-day. We booked tickets on the public bus to WuZhen. However we didn't book return tickets, because we weren't sure how long we wanted to stay, it wasn't a busy weekend, and usually hotels and hostels can do the booking for you.The sign on the seat in the bus station

Friday afternoon we got to the bus station and found our bus and made it to Wuzhen. When we got to the bus station in Wuzhen, there were about 20 rickshaw divers banging down the door of our bus to take us somewhere. They were so overwhelming and in our faces that we decided to walk. We wandered around looking for our picture and were getting pretty disappointed after about 30 minutes of walking through pretty shabby towns. Then we saw a gated park.

Some really random display that we couldn't decipher in the ferry station.

A typical Chinese pose that I copied off a lady.

The town was clearly a retreat for the wealthy Chinese, because you had to pay 80 RMB ($11) to enter and they took you on a ferry across the water to the town. Then at night they closed off the park to the public and no vehicles or bikes were permitted. We found a really nice hotel in the town and went to dinner.

We quickly found out no one in the town spoke English and we were the only wei guo ren (quiz from the last post...what does it mean?), which made it a great exercise in Chinese. At dinner we ordered by walking up to tables, pointing at people's food and saying, Hao chi ma? (Good food?) We noticed that every table had a bean looking dish. So in an attempt to maximize our cultural experience, we ordered them. What we got was a pile of about 150 field snails! They were good, but we could each only eat about 20 of them.

ymm...snails!

After dinner we walked around at night. It was really beautiful, however a little off. The area had clearly been constructed with the intention of looking old, but in actuality the area couldn't have been built more than 40 years ago. The area had a very artificial feeling.

It's too bad you can't really see the night shots. It was gorgeous at night!

The next morning we got up and found out the buses only left for Shanghai at 6:40 am and 12:40pm, so we decided to stay another day. However, our hotel told us there were no rooms available for Saturday night, and that they could not reserve bus tickets for us. So we walked around looking for hotel vacancy without any luck. We finally found an empty youth hostel with 20 person rooms separated by gender. It was cheaper to spend the night there than it was to get into the park, so we booked it. However, later that night, our hotel had vacant rooms, so we chose the luxury option instead.

We spent Saturday sitting by the water in the sun reading books and people watching. It was so beautiful and very relaxing. Jeremy wanted to plan ahead and buy bus tickets that night, so he left to go on an adventure. When he got to the bus station, he found out both buses to Shanghai were sold out! So we came up with the plan to take a bus to Hong Zhou, a larger town close to Wuzhen, and then take the train from Hong Zhou to Shanghai. So Jeremy booked those tickets.

Some pics from Wuzhen:

We found a fake soy sauce distillery. A long time ago two brothers settled here and made soy sauce, so they recreated this museum and distillery. This is where we learned about the field snails we ate the night before.
There was also silk harvesting in this town. This women was pulling out the silk from the worm's cocoon by hand.
She would rap about 10 cocoons around her hand and stretch them out inside the water and hang them up to dry in the sun. She was really nice, and gave me a thread of silk from the worm.
Down the alley from where she was, there was women using machines to harvest the silk from the cocoons.
You can see the little cocoons in the barrel in the water, and the threads are being wrapped around the wheel. She is peddling the wheel with her foot like a sewing machine.
Some random parade that went through town about 3 times while we were there. There final act was in front of the pagoda where we were sitting.

More interesting food we got by pointing. This was chopped up duck on noodles.

the rickshaw back to the bus station

The next morning we woke up optimistic and unsure about our elaborate scheme to get home. We found some rickshaws to take us to the bus station. Stephanie and I got in an electric bike rickshaw, so we made much better time than Jeremy's guy that was pumping hard up hills. When Stephanie and I got to the bus station, we saw a lot of dilapidated buses that looked like over sized vans from the cultural revolution. Ticket salesmen were shouting their destinations, and I asked if there was one going to Shanghai, and he pointed me to his friend. I assumed it was an underground system that may be cheaper and a little more dangerous, but would take us directly to Shanghai. However, Jeremy still had our tickets and his rickshaw had yet to arrive. When he arrived, I introduced him my new friend and our new idea. After a lot of yelling, broken Chinese, and pantomiming we got on a bus. When I got on, I asked the driver where this bus was going and he said something that was not Shanghai, we didn't want to get back on the bus. Then someone who had been really helpful, was like just trust me you will get to Shanghai, we just have to stop there first. (Sounds safe right? It actually sounds much less safe telling it now then when we were there). So we get on this bus, they charged us 4RMB and keep stopping to pick people up. Based on this, we figured out that we were on a local city bus. Then we arrived at a larger bus station, where the helpful man pointed us to the long distance buses. We had bought a ticket from another town to Shanghai. So we ended up taking the local bus to the out of town bus station, where they still had tickets available to Shanghai. Our Chinese is good enough to understand the gist of what is going on, but the specific details are difficult to grasp. However, as the trip unfolded, it made complete sense. Everything worked out smoothly and we made it home without having to go out of our way! It was quite a language adventure!

Zhejiang: West Grand Canyon Bike Trip

April 4-6 was the Chinese Qing Ming Holiday or Tomb Sweeping Weekend. This is a national holiday where families go to the tombs of their deceased relatives and clean them off. Then they light firecrackers to wake up the dead, and then they burn paper money, paper houses, and other things to send to their relatives. They also leave pictures, fruit, and a traditional Qing Ming food on the tombs. It also meant a 3 day weekend for the wai guo ren (foreigners).

Jeremy, Ben and I traveled with a group called Bohdi Bikes (the organization with which we went to Moganshan). We left Friday night and drove 4 hours to our location at the top of a mountain. It was just starting to rain when we arrived to our guest house at 1am. We were greeted with hot green tea by a women, her husband, and their mother. They were so happy to have us.

unloading bikes

A misty morning on day 1. The view from the top of our hill.

We woke up Saturday morning at about 7:30. The second we stepped outside we could feel and smell a huge difference in the air quality. It was so nice to be out of the smoggy polluted city, even if it was overcast. Our hosts served us a homemade Chinese breakfast. Everything was family style. Our group was 9 people in total: an American guide, a German couple (who were more experienced mountain bikers), an older French guy, a Dutch girl, an Australian guy, and us, the 3 Americans. We were threatened by rain, so bundled up and head out down a steep hill to begin our journey. This was the first time our guide had ever been to this area, so we were doing a lot of exploring and winging it, which was fun. We started on the roads which were pretty crowded, so we moved off of them to smaller areas. We were climbing up STEEP mountains and racing down them in drizzling rain. It was scary!

Scenes from Day 1:

When we got to the top of the hills we'd leave the bikes and go hiking for a short distance. Everyone was so excited to see us! We were able to converse with all the locals, all of whom informed us that it was raining (obviously) and invited us in for lucha (green tea) and lunch. Jeremy, Ben, and our guide went even farther up the slippery slopes and were greeted by a women cooking lunch. She insisted that they stay and eat and when they politely refused multiple times, she gave them bao zi a common bread dumpling type thing with pork/bamboo in the middle. However, this bao zi was not so common, because they could not stop raving about how delicious it was!
The rain held off until our last down hill just before lunch. It started pouring! We could barely see while zooming down winding mountains! When we got to safety we found a place for lunch and stripped off the wet layers and sat in a heated room. Jeremy and I brought a change of clothes, which we were thankful for, since we were soaked to the bone. However, they only went so far, since our shoes and helmets were drenched. Lunch was incredible the food was so fresh and so much less oily than it is in Shanghai.

After lunch, the rain let up, and we continued to explore the area. Our first day was primarily spent on small country roads, most of which were paved. The wetness and the cars added to the overall fear and intensity of the day. At the end of the day when we were all exhausted we still had to begin our climb up the mountain that our guest house was located. This was the most exhausting part of the day. It was so steep and halfway up it started down pouring again! For the majority of the uphill we were biking slower than we could walk! Some Chinese people came out when they saw us and informed us that it was raining and we should come in their home for lucha. We couldn't say no! We were beat! So we sat under their hut and rejuvenated enough to finish the trek. Little did we know, we were just about home.

Look how high we are!

They were harvesting the bamboo forests.

We made it! There waiting for us at the guest house was the friendly family that owned it. They made us a fire to warm ourselves and try our clothes. It felt so good to sit down in the warmth. After we were warm and dry, we enjoyed another fabulous home cooked meal. After dinner, we sat around the fire and drank beer together. It was really fun to exchange stories with all the travelers. The only thing missing was s'mores, which we learned are completely an American thing and no one else could even visualize them! We told them they were missing out!

dinner family style

Day 2:

The next morning we woke up with sore butts and legs, enjoyed another Chinese breakfast and were off. This morning the van took us and our bikes to a new location, and by the time we got there the sun was out! It was a beautiful day! We spent this day biking through more remote areas with very small towns. The scenery was gorgeous and the people were so friendly. I'm pretty sure we were the only Westerners they'd ever seen in person and definitely in their hometown. Once again, as we biked passed homes, we were invited in for tea and lunch. Everything was really muddy. So this day was more difficult because of the terrain. We got off the roads and into the mountains. We road along paths that were about a foot and a half wide that lined a river and then circled up across the mountain. I was in the back with the German and the Australian and took a small spill about 3 feet down the side, which was scary enough, but hot doggin' up in front were the American boys. They crossed a bridge over a gravel drainage path down the mountain. The leader and Ben made it across, and as Jeremy crossed it it gave out and Jeremy fell about 15 feet down the mountain as his bike tumbled after him. He cut up his forearms pretty badly, but he was mostly just shaken up. The German women took care of him, and we continued on, a little slower this time. There were some serious downhills and rocky terrain, but we made it out alive.







The scariest parts were over and from then on we just cruised through towns. We saw a tomb along the road. Jeremy and I stopped to walk though it to see up close what this holiday was about. As we were walking through there was an old man lighting firecrackers on his families tomb. Half looking at us, he asked (in Chinese) "Is your family here too?" "Not here," we replied. Then he turned around, looked at us, and exclaimed, "You're not Chinese!" We smiled and said, "No, we're American." He smiled to reveal his 6 teeth, 4 long yellow teeth on the bottom and 2 long yellow teeth on the top. Again he exclaimed, "You're not Chinese!" He spoke with such strong dialect that we could barely understand him, and he could hardly understand our formal-western accented Chinese. So he wrote the Chinese characters on the ground for Chinese and American, and he understood. Then we told him, we had to leave and it was nice to meet him. He followed after us telling all his friends that we were American. It was really funny.






We found another delicious restaurant for lunch and had another amazing meal. After lunch our guide got a couple hotel rooms for us to shower and change, and we got back on the bus to come back to Shanghai. It was a great trip!