The Richest Snake
By Rachel
Hi! I am
realizing that because I switched with my sister, I haven’t written for a while
now.
Now that we
are in China, my life has fallen into a more ordinary sort of pattern. In the
morning I read, do math, and play games with my siblings, then we do something
relatively local in the afternoon. I’m amazed at how quickly some things can
begin to seem ordinary. Such as: I am in China. Everyone speaks Mandarin. I
can’t read anything or really speak to most people. Google and anything
affiliated with it (Gmail, this blog, etc.) is blocked. Facebook and Shutterfly
are also blocked. I can’t drink tap water. We don’t have a dryer and instead
lay our clothes in the windowsills to dry. Random strangers take pictures with
me. I eat most of my meals in the institute’s cafeteria. Everything is Chinese
food. I am getting better with chopsticks. Things in the distance are hard to
see because of pollution. Public bathrooms are gross and often cost money and
don’t have toilet paper – and sometimes no toilets actually either. They are
“squatters” – holes in the ground.
Sometimes,
China feels almost normal to me. I can almost forget that I am on the other
side of the world. Then there are times when I remember how far away from home
I really am.
Today,
Thursday, July 9, we went to Lushun. We hired a tour guide since we it’s pretty
hard to get around when you don’t speak the language – at all. Also, Teddy came
with us. It was super fascinating to learn about all the history of the city. I
think I’m learning as much about history on this trip as I learn in school. The
only difference is I’m learning about some different parts of history from
different regions than what we study in school.
Lushun is a
port that is the only accessible entrance to northern China. Therefore, it is a
very key position for countries to occupy. As a result, it has been occupied by
the Japanese and the Russians for long amounts of time, and the Russians didn’t
leave until 1955. The Japanese occupied it first (from 1905-1945), before the
Russians fought for it back.
The port of
Lushun is behind us
In the
morning, we visited an outlook of the port, then two different museums. One of
the museums had mummies that were unwrapped, so I could see the skull and
bones. It was kind of terrifying. The other museum was a snake museum with a
bunch of live snakes from Snake Island, an island not far off the coast that
has tons of different types of snake living on it. People in China like snakes
for the most part, even the poisonous ones. In fact, some of the snakes’ cages
had stacks of money in them that people had thrown in there to show respect to
the snakes. At one cage, I saw a snake crawling through a bunch of money in his
cage. It was a rather strange sight. Although multiple snakes had money, the
white snake was the richest snake by far. A Chinese legend says that the white
snake lives for a thousand years and then comes back as a doctor to help
people. As a result, people paid this snake a lot of respect. A huge area was
covered in money for the snake, so thick that I couldn’t see the ground in that
area. Some of the bills were the roughly equivalent to twenty dollars. I think
that is the richest snake in the world!
The white snake with all the money people threw in to it
For lunch, we
decided to be American and eat at McDonald’s. Afterwards, we visited the
prisons where Chinese were kept during the Japanese occupation. The conditions
were awful. We even saw the gallows where they would hang some of the
prisoners. Tons of people died at the prison (I don’t know the number), and it
was sad to see.
The boys,
Teddy and our guide at the guard lookout inside the prison
I learned a lot of history today and while the days have a
kind of pattern to them now, each is still a new adventure!
I wonder if they put you guys in a class enclosure, would people throw money to you? They seem to think you are pretty special as well, and you are certainly much much cuter than a snake. Just a thought. Love Grandma
ReplyDeleteWe love to hear about your adventures. We love and miss all of you.
ReplyDeleteNow we are ALL learning a lot of history that we would never have access to otherwise. Thanks for sharing
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