Travel

A day at the zoo

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After yesterday’s heavy rain, this morning dawned bright and clear; a perfect day to spend at the zoo. We went with Kevin and Derek, 16-year-old twin students of Richard’s who leave for boarding school in Maryland in early August. We met them at the school early this morning expecting to spend half an hour or more on the bus getting to the zoo. Instead, their father drove us there in his BMW. As we headed for the line up at the ticket booth, four zoo passes mysteriously appeared in Derek’s hand. Though he wouldn’t tell us where they came from, I suspect that they were also a gift from his father!

Covering 180 hectares, Dalian Forest Zoo is the largest city zoo in China and home to more than 150 species of animals. We’d heard that it was worth a visit but it far exceeded our expectations. We were amazed by the number of animals in the zoo; not just one or two of each kind, but in many cases, large groups. I feared that we might find them housed in cramped and dirty quarters like the polar bear exhibit that we saw at the Sun Asia Ocean World aquarium awhile ago but instead, most of them had plenty of room to roam in natural looking surroundings. Of course, the price we paid for that was having to walk long distances to see them all but it was well worth it. In spite of the fact that the animal habitats were large, they were set up in such a way that we were able to see most of the animals easily. I was especially impressed with the viewing platform at the giraffe exhibit. Though I’ve seen giraffes in many zoos over the years, I’ve never been able to look at one eye to eye before!

I was able to cross an important item off my unwritten China bucket list early in the day when I came face to face and hand to paw with a giant panda! Of course, there was plexiglass between us but it was an amazing moment! Those of you who know me well know that I love teddy bears and this was a real live one! If that was all I’d seen at the zoo today, I would have gone away happy! Thankfully, we visited the panda exhibit in the morning before the crowds got too thick. The first two pandas that we spotted were relaxing some distance away but the third one was closer. As I stopped to watch him, he walked right up to the glass in front of me, sat up on his haunches and put his paws on the glass! It was love at first sight and I told Richard and the boys that if they wanted to see the rest of the zoo, they might have to drag me away! They waited patiently while I watched my new friend unwrap and eat his Dragon Boat Festival zongzi. Unlike the ones we had for supper on Sunday night, his weren’t filled with glutinous rice though but something more palatable to pandas. We also watched him munch on some bamboo, a panda’s favourite food.

Eventually, I had to leave, of course. There were hundreds of other animals to see including many other kinds of bears. They were housed in the Fierce Beast Area of the zoo but the grizzly pictured below looked anything but fierce!

Springtime has obviously brought many new babies to the zoo. Some of them were on exhibit in the Little Animal Village and Nursery Center but most were with their mothers in the regular exhibits. We saw bear cubs, tiger cubs, and baby monkeys of many varieties just to name a few.

The zoo is divided into two sections. We spent most of the day touring the larger Safari Park on the west side of Bai Yun Mountain. After waiting in line for almost an hour in the middle of the afternoon, we took a cable car 1 200 metres over the mountain to the older Stable Breeding Park area. There was less to see there but the cable car ride was well worth it for the spectacular views of the coastline on the west side and the city on the east.

According to the brochure that guided our steps today, the operation philosophy of Dalian Forest Zoo is to produce happiness. It certainly did that for me today!

Shingles… but not the roofing kind!

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The itch came first followed by intense pain that had me pacing the floor at night. A quick online search confirmed what I was beginning to suspect; I had shingles! I was almost relieved last Sunday afternoon when the telltale rash finally appeared. Without it, there was nothing to show a doctor; no way to get a definite diagnosis and the medication I needed.

Within minutes of Wendy, one of our helpful office gals, typing the word shingles into her trusty translator on Monday morning, she and I were in a taxi and on our way to the Second Hospital of the Dalian Medical University. One glance at my rash was all the doctor needed to confirm my self diagnosis. He prescribed an anti viral medication as well as a vile smelling lotion to help with the itch and an antibiotic cream to use at night to prevent infection from setting in.

Shingles, or herpes zoster as it’s more formally known, is a reactivation of the virus that originally causes chicken pox. It had been lying dormant in my body for more than five decades waiting to spring into action again! Fortunately, unlike chicken pox, shingles usually affects only one area of the body, in my case a band extending around the left side of my torso at shoulder blade level.

I don’t actually remember having chicken pox. I was very young at the time but I do recall my mother talking about having three children sick with it at once; my older brother, my sister and I. My younger brother missed the first round of all the childhood diseases to hit our home and instead, made a habit of coming down with them when we were on holiday! I remember him having whooping cough in Dawson City, Yukon and mumps at our grandmother’s house. I believe that it was chicken pox that he had while we were camping on Galiano, one of BC’s beautiful gulf islands. I guess I must be following his example by coming down with shingles in China of all places!

Fortunately, I seem to have had a fairly mild case and I think I’m the mend. The blisters have burst and the rash is beginning to heal. The pain, now worst in the morning, eases off after awhile and is easily managed with Ibuprofen.

Though uncomfortable at times, I’ve been able to continue doing everything I needed to do. The blog’s silence this week has had more to do with the fact that I’ve been busy giving and marking final exams than with the fact that I’ve been suffering from shingles. My university classes came to an end this week and for the remainder of the month I’ll have only my students who are preparing to study abroad; just seven hours of teaching a week! No more classes at 8 o’clock on Saturday mornings and no more climbing the stairs to the sixth storey classroom! Even with shingles, life is good!

Charming Chinglish

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Unless the weather changes dramatically in the next little while, this may be the first day in over three months that we don’t leave our little 390 square foot apartment! It’s been pouring rain and the wind has been howling all day long. Since we don’t work on Mondays and had nothing more than a trip to the supermarket to pick up a few groceries planned, it’s been a good day to stay indoors catching up on emails, reading, and playing a few games of Carcassonne. I won three in a row! It’s also a good day to reminisce about all the places we’ve explored since coming to China and to share with you some of the great examples of Engrish that we’ve found along the way!

Engrish, or Chinglish as it’s usually called in China, is what often happens when an Asian language is translated into English. You’ve probably seen some of it when you’ve tried to make heads or tails of the instructions that came with something produced in Asia. As a lover of words, I find Engrish highly amusing. I love to visit www.engrish.com, a website that posts one example of Engrish every day but I’m even more delighted when I find my own examples like the ones pictured below.

"Rain and snow carefully slip" appears beside an escalator in downtown Dalian. Richard waited patiently while I rode up and down several times trying to get the best picture possible!

The "Subsea UFO" sign is found in the aquarium that we visited with some of our students. We had no idea what it was referring to and it made absolutely no sense to any of us! Note that it includes the word harmonious which seems to be a very popular one in China. Even the students in my beginner level university class use this word frequently. The concept of harmony is clearly at the core of Chinese thought and culture. Confucius said, " Let the states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfection, and a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and earth, and all things will be nourished and flourish."

I don’t know how well you can read the sign that we found at the entrance to Fu Jia Zhuang Park but I especially love #3 and #10. #3 reads "Pre-school age child or psychopath should be accompanied by a guardian." I’m having a hard time typing that one without laughing! #10 is longer. It reads "The tourist who suffers from heart disease, epi lepsy, cold, neuroticism, asthma, diabetes, high (low) blood pressure, rhinopharyngitis, earache or getting drunk are not allowed to dive and swim. If the tourist conceals the above-mention situation, he or she is responsible for the consequence if the accident happens."

One of many signs at the North Korean border warned, "Forbidden to cross border in border area." Um… where else might we try to cross it?

The How to Escape From Fire sign on the back of our hotel room door in Jinan also tickled my funny bone. Fortunately, we didn’t have to proceed to the nesrest exit but we did put on the safeguord before going to bed to prevent burglery from happening.

On our recent walk along the Daxishan Reservoir boardwalk there were many little wooden signs to guide our behaviour. We could figure out the intent of most of them but one was particularly entertaining. We did hold hands but it would have been pretty difficult to walk while holding our feet! The final sign was near the end of our walk. We had to look closely at the little icon to figure out what kind of nuisance people might commit. Believe it or not, though we haven’t actually seen anyone committing that kind of nuisance, we’ve definitely seen evidence of it on some of our walks!

I’m thinking about submitting a couple of these to www.engrish.com. Which ones made you chuckle?

Second wind

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A few days ago, I was ready to write a post called Growing Weary but it didn’t happen because I was too tired to write it! It’s probably just as well as I would likely have grumbled and complained unnecessarily.

We don’t, even for a moment, regret coming here. It’s been a fabulous experience and very good for both of us but living in a completely foreign environment where you don’t understand the language or the culture can be exhausting. China is a rapidly developing country where we see change happening all around us but the standard of living is still far below what we’re accustomed to and it’s easy to start finding fault, especially when you’re tired.

I had three goals for this month:

  • Complete and submit the annual reports that are required of me as Missions President for my church back home, a position that I’ve been filling from a distance since coming here in February.
  • Make up the final exams for my university courses.
  • Plan the trip that we want to make through China after our contract expires at the end of June and make arrangements for our return trip to Canada.

The past couple of weeks flew by as I fought with our frustratingly slow and undependable internet to send and receive emails, spent extra hours at the school photocopying, cutting and pasting (the old fashioned way with scissors and glue) and gradually crossed things off my many lists. As a result, the Missions reports have been submitted and the final exams are ready to be handed over to the office staff who will photocopy them for me.

I’m most excited about our travel plans. I usually do all our trip planning myself but this time we’ve decided on a tour. It won’t be the sort of thing where we pile off a bus and follow a flag waving tour guide through all the designated sites however. Instead, someone else is making all the travel arrangements and reservations for us and we’ll have our own driver and/or guide at each location along the way. I’ve been working closely with the travel agent to assure that the tour includes the things we most want to see and do. To date, 32 emails have passed back and forth between us! This a more expensive way to travel, of course, but in a country where there’s so little English and where we’ve discovered that doing things on your own always takes much longer than you expect, this will be a much more relaxing way to end our time here and we’ll actually be able to see and do a lot more than if we were doing it on our own. I won’t go into details at the moment but the tour begins in Beijing, includes a luxury cruise on the Yangtze River and ends in Shanghai where we’ll spend a weekend with Japanese friends who live there before we fly back to Canada. That’s definitely the icing on the cake!

I’ve discovered that even this kind of travel planning isn’t completely stress free. Most of these tours are booked by overseas travellers who pay in American dollars but we wanted to pay in Chinese currency. That meant that our money had to go into a different account than theirs but when the travel agent sent me the information that I’d need to take to our local Bank of China branch to pay our deposit, she inadvertently gave me the wrong account number. With extremely limited English, the bank clerk managed to communicate that there was a problem and that I couldn’t make the deposit. A couple of emails between the travel agent and I sorted that out and it took a second visit to the bank but the deposit has now been made and we’re waiting for final confirmation of all the travel arrangements.

Other than booking the tour, all I had to arrange were our flights from Dalian to Beijing and from Shanghai back to Canada. Even that was stressful though, especially when I discovered how much the prices have gone up since we crossed the ocean in February. Yikes! The completion bonus that we’ll receive at the end of our contract was supposed to cover the cost of our flight home but it definitely won’t. Oh well, going home isn’t optional so the tickets have been purchased anyway.

The beautiful month of May almost slipped away while I was busy with all of these concerns but now that my goals have been met, my weariness has also passed and I seem to have my second wind! Our university classes end in just over two weeks and then our not very heavy teaching schedule will be even lighter. I think the time has come to sit back, relax and coast a little as we enjoy our final weeks here!

The pattern of snack

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Have you ever noticed how often we use the word usually? I hadn’t until I came to China to teach English and immediately noticed that the Chinese always say urally! I have no idea how the r sound crept in but apparently that’s the way all Chinese English teachers teach it. Wrong habits are hard to break and our students still need to be reminded once in a while but after lots of practice they do know how to pronounce it correctly now.

Though urally was one of the most common mistakes made by our students, who have never been taught by native English speakers before, we have encountered many other mispronunciations. Vowel sounds are particularly difficult. It isn’t any wonder considering the fact that one little letter like an a or an o can represent so many different sounds. Sometimes these mispronunciations lead to a complete lack of understanding but we also have a lot of fun with them.

Early in the term, one of my students told me that he liked eating snakes! I clearly remember being somewhat startled but this is China, after all! We’ve eaten bullfrog and catfish, restaurants serve silkworms and there’s one not far from here that specializes in donkey meat, so why not snakes? When I attempted to clarify, however, I discovered that he actually meant that he liked eating snacks! As it turns out, the snake/snack confusion is a common one and has led to lots of laughter in our classes!

Is it any wonder then that the headline "Snacks Dominate the Fashion World of This Early Spring" caught my eye when I picked up the April issue of Sichuan Airline’s in-flight magazine on our recent trip to Jinan. The magazine is published in Mandarin but some of the articles are translated into English. Clearly, they could use a more qualified translator but this particular article was hilarious! Here’s just one tidbit:

"It is the year of the snack, patterns of reptile animals have crawled back to the fashion world of women’s wear in spring and summer, among which the pattern of snack turns out to be the most popular. It seems like designers have already foreseen that the pattern of snack would be a fashion trend, this eye-catching animal pattern is now seen in all fashion fields."

The article was accompanied by photos of clothing with a snakeskin motif as well as snakeskin purses and shoes!

I haven’t been following most of my favourite fashion blogs lately because both WordPress and Blogspot are blocked in China. It’s also been several months since I’ve seen a fashion magazine so I don’t know whether or not snakeskin has caught on as a new fashion trend in North America. I haven’t actually seen it being worn here yet but for those who want to know, apparently the pattern of snack is the newest trend!

Entertaining angels

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Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Hebrews 13:2

We’re back in Dalian and though we’ve only been living here since late February, it really did feel like we came home today. As we settle in and get back into routine, I find myself reminiscing about the many "angels" we encountered as we travelled. They may not actually have been heavenly beings but I can’t help thinking that God brought them across our path to make our way easier and more enjoyable. I’ve mentioned some of them in previous posts.

First there was Michael who helped us find our hotel when we arrived in Jinan and later led us to a restaurant and helped us order a delicious dinner. Though he wanted to spend more time being our guide, circumstances didn’t allow it but Michael kept in touch by texting for the remainder of our trip making sure that we were fine and offering to translate or advise if we needed him to.

Then there was the gentleman who volunteered to drive us from the village of Zhujianyu to the bus station in nearby Mingshui so that we could get back to Jinan after exploring the historical site. We didn’t get his name and though we offered, he wouldn’t accept any payment for his trouble. Definitely an "angel"!

Many of the long distance buses here have someone who rides along, collecting tickets or cash from passengers as they board at various pick up stops. She often disembarks somewhere near the outskirts of the city once everyone is on board but when we rode from Jinan to Qufu, the "stewardess" stayed on board all the way. When we pulled into the Qufu bus station, 6 km outside town, she left the bus with us, found us a taxi and made sure he knew where to take us before she boarded the bus again and it continued on to its next destination. We could have managed on our own but it was much easier having an "angel" who knew the language taking care of us.

That evening, when we went out to find some supper, we encountered another one of our "angels". We were thinking about eating at the local night market where food is cooked and sold on the street. We had just started walking through the market area checking out the various things that were being prepared when Daphne, a local college student, walked up to us and asked in excellent English if she could be of any help. She advised us not to eat at the market because it might not be very healthy (exactly the same advice that our own students give us). After asking us what we enjoy eating, she suggested a restaurant, took us there, helped us order and visited with us while we ate.

The next day Aku appeared out of nowhere to act as our guide to the Confucius Temple and Mansions but I mustn’t forget to also give credit to one more Qufu "angel", our host at the tiny Bao Tai Hotel. Our room was basic; the mattress was thin, the towels tiny and at $13 a night, we couldn’t complain about the room not being made up each day. What made our stay heavenly was our host. He didn’t speak a word of English but when we arrived, he asked us through gestures if we were hungry and when we said yes, he walked us around the corner to a little restaurant. While we ordered, he headed off on his bicycle to find a map of Qufu and brought it back to the restaurant for us. Later, he was able to communicate through the translator on his computer, that we were the first Canadian guests to ever stay in his establishment and he treated us like royalty. When we came downstairs to check out yesterday morning, he insisted on driving us to the bus station himself instead of allowing us to take a taxi! Though he isn’t smiling in the photo, I think that’s the only time I saw him without one. Yes, that’s definitely the face of an "angel"!

Second day in Qufu

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If you had an entire day to do anything you wanted, what would you do? That’s the situation we found ourselves in this morning. We’d allowed ourselves two full days in Qufu thinking that one might not be enough to see all three Confucius sites that we visited yesterday.

Knowing that we had an entire day to fill, we were in no hurry to get up this morning. I haven’t been sleeping well lately largely due to the fact that I’m fighting a nasty cold so a bit of extra rest was very welcome.

Once we were up and had had a late breakfast, we went to visit another ancient temple, this one dedicated to the memory of Yan Hui, a favourite disciple of Confucius. If it were located anywhere other than almost next door to the much larger and more impressive Confucius Temple complex, it would likely draw many visitors but we were almost alone and it was very peaceful. We could actually hear the birds chirping!

The Yan Temple has been undergoing renovations over the past few years. Apparently the cost of this massive facelift prompted a hefty increase to the admission fee which, I’m assuming, resulted in even fewer visitors. We learned, however, that if we could produce our combination tickets from yesterday, we would be admitted free of charge.

In addition to enjoying the tranquility of the temple grounds, we found the renovation project quite fascinating. One of the outer buildings houses a display of photos chronicling the meticulous work that has been done. The buildings that have been completed have received much more than a new paint job. Much dismantling and rebuilding was required to replace wooden parts and roofing that had deteriorated. Many of the intricate panels were taken down, painted and put up again.

After leaving the temple, we headed over to the International Youth Hostel and rented bicycles. Leaving town, we rode out into the countryside to look at the farms where we saw corn, wheat and other crops that we couldn’t identify. Though they appear to have been seeded by machine, we saw many people, mostly women, out in the fields pulling weeds. Imagine doing that by hand on a Canadian farm! I have no idea how far we rode. I’m pretty sure my butt will be telling me about it tomorrow but it was well worth any discomfort I may have to put up with.

After an early supper, we were strolling back toward our hotel when we decided to rest for awhile on a stone bench near the main gate to the city wall, a great spot for people watching. Little did we know that we were in for an unexpected surprise. We were about to leave when someone began banging on the enormous drum atop the wall. It heralded the beginning of a gate closing ceremony complete with elaborately costumed guards, flag and lantern bearers, a herald and others we couldn’t identify. It was a perfect ending to our stay in historic Qufu!

A day with Confucius

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Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.
Confucius

We left Jinan yesterday morning and travelled south by bus to Qufu (pronounce Chu Fu). Small by Chinese standards, with a population of only about 86 000 people, Qufu is famous as the hometown of the great sage, Kong Fuzi, better known to us by the westernized version of his name, Confucius.

The old walled centre of Qufu is small and easy to get around on foot but the three principle sites; the Confucius Temple, the Kong family mansions and the Confucius Forest where the great teacher and his many descendants are buried, are absolutely enormous. We spent all day today exploring them.

When we stopped at the ticket office to purchase the combination tickets that would allow us to visit all three sites, we were also thinking about hiring an English guide but before we could, we were approached by a young college student who called himself Aku, an abbreviated version of his difficult to pronounce Chinese name, who offered to act as our guide for free if we would simply use his camera to take a few pictures of him throughout the day. We agreed and found him to be a delightful and knowledgeable companion.

We started our day at the Confucius Temple, China’s second largest imperial building complex after the Forbidden City in Beijing which we hope to visit in July. The temple started out as a simple memorial hall some 2500 years ago but over the ages, it mushroomed to today’s compound which covers 327.5 acres and is 1.3 km in length from north to south.

Though there is some debate about whether Confucianism should be considered a religion or simply a system of philosophy, the temple was once a site where sacrifices were offered to Confucius. He was a great thinker, a teacher, editor, politician and a philosopher whose teachings emphasized personal and governmental morality, correct social relationships, justice, loyalty and sincerity. He was a strong proponent of ancestor worship which is something we have a hard time getting our heads around but I can’t help wondering if he ever intended that nations of people should worship him. Whether it was his intent or not, many Asian cultures including Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese have been strongly influenced by Confucianism.

After spending all morning touring the temple complex we stopped for lunch then moved on to the Confucius mansions, a maze of 450 halls, rooms, buildings and passages where his wealthy and powerful descendants lived like kings. Emperors were known to drop in for visits and a special ceremonial gate near the main entrance was opened only when this happened. The complex included administrative offices and meeting rooms, family residences, kitchens, guest rooms, studies, libraries and a treasury. A peaceful garden of flowers and greenery are found at the rear. Aku told us that his dream would be to build a home like this one in the Chinese countryside but I only coveted the garden and a few unique features like the round doorways! I could also imagine children having endless hours of fun playing hide-and-go-seek in the many passageways!

After relaxing over coffee, it was time for Aku to leave us as he had a bus to catch later in the day. We took a pedicab 2 km north to the Confucius Forest, the oldest and largest family cemetery in the world. There, Confucius and his descendants have been buried for more than 2000 years, a practice that continues up to the present time. The peaceful pine and cypress forest covers an area of more than 200 hectares. Burial mounds and memorial plaques are scattered haphazardly throughout the area. Confucius, himself, lies beneath a grassy mound enclosed by a low wall. Though most of the tourists crowded around the tomb were simply curious, there were those who knelt and others who made offerings of flowers.

After walking back to our tiny, family-run hotel where every room number begins and ends with 8, considered a lucky number by the Chinese, we’re spending a quiet evening resting our very weary feet. Our hosts don’t speak a word of English but they are clearly delighted to have us, their very first Canadian guests, staying with them.

To see what is right and not do it, is want of courage or of principle.
Confucius

Thank you, Dr. Bethune

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Over the past few years we’ve stretched our comfort zones to such an extent that we don’t really know where the edges are anymore! I’m pretty sure we stepped outside them this morning, though, when we boarded a bus and headed out into the Chinese countryside with no definite idea how we’d get back to Jinan!

The bus dropped us off beside the highway and we walked two kilometres into the historic village of Zhujiayu. After the noise and pollution of city life in China, a walk in the country was literally a breath of fresh air! The crops on either side of the road were heading out already but it was a bit too soon to tell for sure if they were barley or bearded wheat.

Walking the narrow stone streets of Zhujiayu is a journey back in time. Protected by hills on three sides and dating back to at least the Ming and Qing dynasties, it’s easy to see why it’s been used as a set for a number of movies and television dramas. Though the central street was crowded with vendors selling snacks and tacky tourist souvenirs, we were delighted to see that effort has been made to restore parts of the crumbling village including the wall that enclosed its northern flank and to bring history to life for those who visit. We watched a donkey grinding grain into course flour that was then sifted by hand and used to make the chive stuffed tortillas that we ate for lunch. They were cooked outdoors on a small clay oven.

We found the construction of the now crumbling structures fascinating. Most were built of stone from the surrounding hillsides but others were made of brick covered with a layer of some kind of plaster, a building method still in use in this country today. Beneath the tiled roofs was a thick layer of thatch that would have acted as insulation.

After spending a few hours exploring almost every nook and cranny in the village, it was time to figure out how we’d get back to Jinan. According to our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook, there might be a bus that would take us to nearby Mingshui where we could catch another bus back to Jinan. If not, we could walk back to the highway and try flagging down any bus heading back toward Jinan.

As we exited the site, we stopped at the tourist services building to see if anyone there spoke enough English to advise us. Neither of the women on duty did but one of them hustled out to find someone who could. She soon returned with three smiling men. One of them spoke a few words of English but he phoned his wife who was somewhat more fluent and by passing the phone back and forth, we learned that her advice was that we walk back to the highway and flag down a bus. After the gentlemen produced their cameras and had their pictures taken with us, we headed off to do just that.

As we exited the gate, however, we were surrounded by taxi drivers offering to drive us into Mingshui or even the entire 80 km back to Jinan. Of course, they wanted an exorbitant amount in return for their services so we quickly said no and went on our way. I soon noticed that one of the men who’d crowded around us as we talked to the taxi drivers was following us on the opposite side of the road. When we got out of earshot of the others, he crossed the road and told us in broken English that if we would wait for ten minutes while he walked home and got his car, he would drive us to the bus station in Mingshui at no cost! We’ve found over and over again that the Chinese are more than willing to do things like this for us; in fact, they seem to consider it a privilege! As he drove, he explained that one of the reasons that the Chinese love Canadians is because more than fifty years ago, a Canadian doctor helped the Chinese people very much. He was, of course, speaking of Dr. Norman Bethune who died in China in 1939 while serving as a battlefield physician during the Japanese invasion of this country. He is considered a beloved hero to this day.

Though the bus from Mingshui delivered us to an unfamiliar bus station (Jinan has at least three of them) the taxi ride back to our hotel wasn’t much longer than it would have been from the main station where we caught our outgoing bus this morning. Another adventure was complete and our comfort zones, just a little bit bigger! Thank you, Dr. Bethune!

City of Springs

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Our day began a few blocks from our hotel at Baotu Spring Park, Jinan’s most popular tourist site. "Spring" refers to the fact that the park is home to many of the 72 famous springs that are located in Jinan’s downtown district but today it could also have referred to the season and the new leaves on the the willows that overhang the many pools and the moat.

After wandering the crowded park for most of the morning, we rested our feet for almost two hours as we enjoyed a boat trip around the moat and across Daming Lake at the north end of the downtown district.

After a late lunch, we spent the remainder of the afternoon strolling along the moat and watching the crowds of holidayers enjoying their day in the sun. People here obviously don’t see very many foreigners. Everywhere we went, heads swivelled to take a second look and people pointed us out to their companions. Though few of them speak any English the word "foreigner" seems to be part of their vocabulary as we heard it often! Children seemed to be particularly startled by our strange appearance but in general, everyone seemed happy that we were out doing what they were doing, enjoying a beautiful day in a beautiful place.

One of the challenges to being in a foreign country where you don’t understand the language can be finding food. Though there are a proliferation of tiny restaurants within a few blocks of our apartment in Dalian, when it came to finding supper tonight, we couldn’t figure out where all these people ate! Though there are McDonalds and KFCs all over the place, we wanted something a little more nourishing and authentic. After a somewhat frustrating search, we found a delicious meal at a crowded and noisy food court just off the sprawling central square which I’ve also seen referred to as the livingroom of Jinan.

As "senior citizens", over the age of 60, we were able to enter Baoto Spring Park free of charge this morning, saving approximately $6.50 each! Although I laughed about being referred to as a senior citizen at the time, after being on my feet in the hot sunshine for most of the day, I feel a bit more like one this evening!