China page4

On the Road to China
with George... page 4

Yenan...
Saturday, July 15, 2006 8:06 AM

Well, I am so glad I only signed up for only two weeks here, this place appears to be the middle of nowhere, apparently, after you see the cave that Mao hid out in, there is nothing else to it. The food they serve us dorm food, well I'll tell you, I didn't eat dorm food in America, you know I'm not eating unidentified, Chinese food. I got enough peanut butter to last two weeks and there is a lot of fruit stands near by, so I'll be ok.
I met a young couple one from England and one from Britain, They met teaching in the Check republic, they are heading out in two weeks, I say book me too. They want to micro manage our time, you know how that is going to go over with me. Also, internet access is going to be a real problem the next two weeks, so don't expect to hear from me on a regular basis. They take us down to an internet cafe off campus, and I can see it is going to be a problem. The room I have is nice, 6th floor, no elevator. With all the latest advancements in China lately, they don't seem to have been able to reinvent the elevator. The train they booked for us last night was a hard sleeper, no a/c and the temperature was 102.
We were crowed like toothpicks in a dinner dispenser. To top it all off, it was the local, train and we stopped every 10 minutes. I got a seat by the window and stuck my head out, otherwise, the trip went fine. Another woman with our group, left a half hour after we did and arrived 1.5 hours before we did. We had left at 10:10 and arrived at 9 am I can tell you right now, I'm a soft sleeper kind a guy. I mean, a non stop soft sleeper would have cost about $12 more, but then I didn't book it the school did.
Yesterday was a great day. I took a chess set which I had bought at the Moslem Quarter a couple of days ago to revolutionary park, and just set it up and waited. In about 15 minutes, I had three Chinese colleges students playing the game with me. They are medical students, in the army. In an hour we had about 20 people watching us play. They had never played chess before, let me tell you it is quite interesting trying to teach chess, without a common language. But what was interesting was that, as time went on, they picked up the language, because they had been taught to read English, but they had never been exposed to the written word, I had them playing against each other. In the end, we lined up for pictures, they promised to a-mail to me.
Then I hoofed it over to Kentucky Fried Chicken, the only place around where you can get a drink with ice in it. What is with these people, they can't stick some water in the freezer? Hell, they sell ice-cream, you would think the next logical step would be to freeze some water. Oh well, how many millions of years did it take man to invent fire, I guess we should be patient with these people. Then, I re-met some people from Ireland, Catharine and Dave, who invited me to have some beer with them before I left. They had two friends with the a brother and sister from New Zealand, Jane and Scott. Things were just getting out of hand when it was time for me, fortunately, to head off to the train station. They generously toasted me off, with handshakes and hugs and kisses. I suspect they did a lot of toasting the remainder of the night. The morning I spent resting in anticipation of my evening trip, I had to check out at noon, I left my bags in the back room. They seemed quite safe. Well goodbye to who knows when, with love, please forward to everyone.

I went for a walk the other day...
Sunday, July 16, 2006 7:47 PM

I saw a woman walking two paces behind her husband, as is the old custom. Now I know a lot of women in the west think this is barbaric and the woman shouldn't be showing such deference to her man. But, i think we have it wrong. As I was walking he passed me, and like a very many of the Chinese, he couldn't help staring at me, I am constantly being looked at. Anyway, as he passes me he continued to look back at me, oblivious to the fact that he was about to step into a three foot hole, suddenly his woman closes the two pace gap like a linebacker filling a hole in the line, where she lifted him off his feet to safety. So I want to let you know, I'm not so sure, that the two pace behind thing is about deference or some kind of subsequent, I suspect it more like she is protecting her investment. I have to run, the children arrive in a half hour, this is going to be a grueling two weeks, my email will probably be short and sweet. Cynthia is posting my writings on www.Iamhealing.net. The next book will be there too.
With love, George