An Airport Is Still Around Me

A Day in Hefei

 

July 23, 2015

By Rachel

 

Sorry this post is late! We will hopefully catch up in the next few days.

 

First, I am going to fill in a bit from Christian’s day. We started the day by going to the Purple Mountain. When we got there, we met up with the people who were hosting us for that part of the trip. At first, we could only see the younger girl, and not her parents. My dad has been trying to learn some words in Chinese, so he tried to ask her in Mandarin where her father was. The girl looked very confused at first until my dad repeated the question in English (she went to school in the U.S. for a year and speaks very good English). As soon she understood what my dad actually meant, she started laughing. Because Mandarin is a tonal language, the way you say the words totally changes the meaning of them. My dad had meant to ask her where her dad was, but by using the wrong tone, he had instead asked her where her poop was.

 

Once on the mountain, we went to Sun Yetsen’s memorial. I thought this was especially neat because I had just studied him in school as part of our China unit. So here is a brief history lesson combining things I learned in school and things I learned on the mountain:

 

China used to have dynasties where they were ruled by an empire. The people however, did not feel like it was fair. There used to be a saying that everything under heaven was the emperor’s. Sun Yetsen disagreed said that everything under heaven was the people’s. He led the Kuomintang (or the Nationalist party) when the last emperor was overthrown. People in China see him as a hero for the role he played in bringing down the emperor. After he died, there was a civil was between the nationalists and the communists in which the communists won. So China today is still Communist.

 

We also saw the tomb of the first emperor in the Ming Dynasty. I couldn’t believe how big it was. It covered acres and acres with huge statues and buildings.

 

Okay now for my day.

 

The morning started with breakfast at the hotel. It’s interesting to see what people in China eat for breakfast. There isn’t the same idea of certain foods being breakfast food like we have in the U.S. People eat rice, dumplings and noodles with breakfast just like they do for lunch and dinner. Before China, I don’t think I’d ever eaten fried rice for breakfast.

 

Afterwards, two guides picked us up and took us to a park. Another American who was teaching English at summer camp also came with us. At the park we walked around and saw a memorial thing about a judge – Lord Bao – who was known for being a very fair judge in the 1200s.

 

Lord Bao – Fair and Just

 

Next we decided to go on a boat on the lake in the park. Just as we were about to get on, we heard some thunder, but no one seemed very concerned about it. Instead, they worried about making sure we all had life vests. Sarah Ann and I went on a peddle boat with the other American and one guide while everyone else went on a motor boat. We had fun peddling even if we were much slower than the other boat. While on the lake, it started raining pretty hard. The boats were covered though so weren’t getting too wet. After a while though, we saw lightning. My mom thought we should go in from the lake to be safe. The guide however, did not seem concerned by this at all. He told us that the trees would protect us if lightning was to strike.

 

On the Boat in the Rain

 

We went to an American restaurant for lunch, where I asked our guide (who is a teacher) about school in China. He told me that in high school, the kids go to school from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. I think that sounds insane. He says they also have a lot of homework on top of that. During their last year in high school, students take a test that determines what school they can get into. The test score from that is the only thing that colleges look at and they aren’t allowed to retake the test. And I thought finals were stressful!