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M R . R O W E N ' S T R A V E L S
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Hello everyone, I hope you all had a happy holidays and a good new year. I can tell you, that American holidays in Asia aren't celebrated like we do in America. I was in Hong Kong for Thanksgiving and while I did have a dinner with my friend Ray and some of his friends, where we gave thanks and ate good food, there was no turkey. I know, not very thanksgiving-like. Hong Kong is a huge city right on the water. About six million people live in Hong Kong and in order to fit all the people, there are thousands of sky scraper apartment buildings. The city is always crowded with people going to and from work, going shopping, or going everywhere. Chinese cities just have so many more people in a smaller space than American cities. Hong Kong is very much like an American city though in that it had shopping malls, expensive stores, super markets, and lots of McDonalds and 7-11's. One thing that was funny about Hong Kong is that the Chinese people there speak another language. Instead of Mandarin, what most Chinese people speak, the people in Hong Kong speak Cantonese. It has some words the same, but most all the words are different in the two languages. So I spent a month learning all these words and phrases in Chinese, but when I got to Hong Kong, the people all looked at me funny. In China there are hundreds of different forms of spoken Chinese. But now I can count, say hello, and thank you in Cantonese too. I went north from Hong Kong to a place called Yangshuo. This place is one of the most famous places in China because of how beautiful the landscape is. In fact, a picture of Yangshup is on the twenty yuen note. All around and in the town are these tall hills. They are very steep on each side and it looks like the land is covered by hundreds of tall green bumps. There are rivers and farmland in between all these hills and it's really beautiful. One day I rented a bicycle and rode through the land around the town. Because it was kind of foggy on that day, it almost seemed magical. I had never seen anything like it. From there I went farther west to a city called Kunming in the south west part of China. In order to get to this city I had to take a bus for 44 hours. Yeah, 44 hours! The bus had beds in it instead of seats, so we could travel through the night and I could sleep. In China, very few people have their own cars. And the country is very big, like America. So the bus and train system has to be really good. You can take a bus or train from almost anywhere in China to almost anywhere else. I traveled around Yunnan province to smaller towns out in the mountains. In and around these towns were many people who still dressed in their traditional clothes. Some of these clothes were beautiful, bright, decorative outfits. In stead of wearing jeans and a t-shirt, the women still wore the same kind of blouses, skirts and hats that their mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers, and on and on, wore. These people still lived very much the was they have always lived and were very interesting to see how different they were to the modern looking people in China's cities. While in a town Dali, I went down to the lake and met a fisherman. He asked me, "Do you like tea?" I said sure I do and he invited me in to have tea with him, meet his daughters, have a little snack, and then go out and see the lake in his fishing boat. This kind of thing, where total strangers would invite me in to share with me food or drink and smiles, happened all the time. The people out in the countryside were really nice, always saying hello and smiling. I then took a hike in a place called Tiger Leaping Gorge. This is a big canyon, or gorge, with high steep mountains on either side. At the very bottom of the gorge runs a river. A legend tells how a tiger once saw a goat on the other side and leaped across the river to eat the goat. I spent four days walking through the gorge, along the river sometimes, and other times up in the mountains. The last night in the gorge, I stayed with a family who had just started to have a hotel in their farmhouse. I ate with the family, helped the kids with their chores, and was treated like one of the kids by the warm, kind mother. When she asked me how old I was, and I told her in Chinese, "today 26, tomorrow 27", it was my birthday the next day, she was so happy. The next morning while I was eating breakfast with her family, she smiled at me and said, "today 27." It was a very special birthday. After two months in China, I then took a train south down to the Vietnam border. On the 13th of December I left China and entered Vietnam. Before I went to China I didn't know very much about it. Now, after being there for two months I know a lot about it. There are always so many people coming and going, walking and biking, and buying and selling. There are wonderful outdoor markets where you can buy anything you would want to eat, wear, or use in your house. There are very modern cities with all the latest technologies. And there are people living out in the countryside doing things the same way people have done them for hundreds of years. There are mountains, rivers, forests, deserts, and farms. There are buildings and things that are thousands of years old. China has a long and interesting history, which is still alive today, even as cars and cell phones are everywhere. And most importantly, the Chinese people can be so curious and excited and warm. I had a very interesting time in China. I ate new foods. I saw new things. I spoke new languages. I learned new things every day. It was great.
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