After 4 short weeks of school, the only reasonable thing to do is to take a week off, right? Granted we still had to make up Thursday and Friday classes on the weekend, but a movie quickly solved that problem. Sunday night all of the foreign teachers and one of the Chinese teachers got together to celebrate the start of the holiday and we all stayed up too late in consideration of the fact we had to be up at early to head to the train station. Our train left at noon but considering how late we stayed up,11 was very early!
Another American teacher Andreana met earlier in the summer had decided to come to Jiangxi Province with one of his students to visit the student's hometown. We all (minus Tim) decided to meet up with them. Shangrao is 6 hours east of Pingxiang by train and despite not having seat assignments for the trip, we were able to get seats, sleep a little, and arrive in one piece. Michael and his student Gray met us at the train station along with Gray's cousin and his girlfriend Jane. We decided to grab dinner first and they went to the river that runs through town for some entertainment. There were fireworks going off (as usual) and the bright night lights of the city made the river really beautiful. We all rented some Dragon Boats and paddled along the river enjoying the sights and sounds.
Tuesday we got up at 4am to hike to the top of Yunbi Peak to great the new day at sunrise. The hike up the peak was a bit treacherous, especially in the dark, and getting up so early wasn't fabulous, but the view was amazing. The whole way up, other climbers were scattered about stretching, doing yoga, and yelling out (greeting the day apparently). Many elderly people climb the mountain every morning and this was made obvious as they jogged past us trudging up the stairs. Sunrise was viewed from the Yunbai Pavilion at the very top. On the way back down, we stopped at the Dongyue Hugao Temple. Both of these buildings are within the Langya Yun Bi Feng National Forest. The temple was beautiful inside, but photos are limited there.
Leaving the temple and walking back into town we came across one of the biggest street markets I have seen so far. There was all sorts of crazy stuff going on. Some highlights were the birds - you could see all of the stages from alive to ready for dinner (slightly disturbing...), people carrying their live birds home by the wings, bicycle optometry, and baby turtles to eat. We decided to walk back along the other side of the river after the police stopped us from taking a fun pedicab home. After a huge lunch with Gray's family, we played mahjong, cards, and rested before having dinner with Gray's family.
All of Wednesday was spent with Gray's uncles fishing out in the country area surrounding Shangrao . Andreana and I both caught fish but none of the other foreigners did! HA! I finally caught something other than trees and tires!! The uncles caught many fish and we had some for dinner. This day also marked the start of our ''trying interesting food'' spree. We had sugar cane (straight from the cane), rice paddy eel, cobra soup, and little fish (whole) with our dinner. We missed out on dog as it still isn't readily available - they don't eat dog when it's warm outside.
Thursday Gray took us to the Shangrao Concentration Camp which is where the Kuomingdang built a jail to detain many Chinese military officials along with others. The Chinese have kept the site as a memorial to the martyrs and it is a powerful spot for the Red Army as there was a prisoner uprising and many of them escaped and killed those detaining them in the process before rejoining the Chinese forces. In addition to the memorials, they have preserved one of the prison buildings and side rooms that was used for torturing prisoners. The day was made slightly more light hearted by an early evening basketball game between the foreigners and Gray's uncle (who is a PE teacher at a college) and his colleagues.
There is an old train station in the middle of town and they turn the plaza outside of it into a huge restaurant area at night. Seemed fitting... This is where we got to try some more fun stuff. We all tried frog, river snail, pig's feet, chicken feet, undetermined pig insides... We finished off the last night there with a trip to the KTV with Gray's mom, aunt, and uncle for some late night singing and dancing.
Friday we decided to check out the ''Walking Street''. Every city has a (supposedly) pedestrian street lined with shops that is supposed to be the cool place to go. For our last day in Shangrao, Gray's aunt and uncle wanted to treat us to a traditional Chinese trip to the salon. The first put some strange stuff in your head and give you the longest head massage. Then, the wash your hair and massage your face, neck, arms, etc. It was relaxing but would make any trip to get your hair cut quite the time commitment. All but Ben resisted the urge to get ''fashionable'' Chinese hair styles - I am still not fully comfortable with the female mullet. After dinner with Gray's family one last time, we headed back to the train station, back home, and back to reality.
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