Chinese Culture, and American Appetites

(Timmy)

Today was a long day for the group, but it was also one of the more memorable days. We started by visiting Pangliu village on the outskirts of Xi’an. The drive to Pangliu village was short, but exciting because we finally met Richard Wang, a friend of Mrs. Viz and the tour guide who we owe a great deal of gratitude to for this exchange.


Pangliu village was a cozy place that reminded me a lot of Shaxi. We could see fields of frozen farmland littered around the town as we drove to the local elementary school. Buildings full of classrooms surrounded the frost-covered courtyard. The group was led to a meeting room where we chatted with the heads of the school before meeting a group of students. As we walked into the classroom, I saw the kids sitting in their wooden desks with looks of curiosity, nervousness, and confusion. Obviously they had no idea what to expect, and neither did we. The children were very shy, so we tried making the situation less tense with various activates such as teaching them English songs and games like 7-up. Although some of them spoke very good English, the language barrier still made it a little awkward. Through a lot of translating, we had just started to break the ice, but it was time for Richard and some other adults to show us some other buildings in the town.

The school library was a comfortable room lined with bookshelves. I saw some memorable books from my childhood in the English section such as the Secrets of Droon, and the literary masterpiece, Green Eggs and Ham. Our time was short, but after seeing some more buildings in the village, we said our goodbyes to the teachers, the school directors, and the poofy children. After lunch in the city, we then said farewell to Richard as well. It was sad; I now know why Mrs. Viz spoke so highly of him. We took a short break back at the hotel before being picked up by our tour guide, Alicia, and our driver, Mr. Wu.

They took us to see a museum with the stone tablets. Hundreds of years ago, large stone tablets were built and written on in different forms of writing almost like the Rosetta stone. There are so many that the museum is called a forest of stone tablets. We navigated through the labyrinth of stone before heading to another museum. This time, the museum featured Chinese art throughout the ages. The museum guide showed us all sorts of art, some dating back to dynastic times and others being made in the past few years. It was cool to see how styles of painting changed throughout time, like how different dynasties painted different themes and used different techniques. Towards the end, we got to try some calligraphy. It might seem random, but Chinese calligraphy and Chinese paintings have a lot in common. A lot of strokes used in calligraphy are used to paint different things so the Chinese consider the two to be grouped in the same category. Anyway, I think the rest of the group did pretty well with their characters, but mine were bad. Sure I got one or two good ones at the end, but the rest had too much ink so they would bleed all over the paper. It was a relaxing experience, but even more relaxing was after the museum.

The group was taken for a walk to a sketchy staircase leading to the basement of some building, but it led to a big massage parlor. That was my first time getting a real massage and it felt like I was lying in magic lotion. It was a relaxing atmosphere, aside from the occasional laugh from the masseuse tickling Max’s feet and Dareus’s awkward pictures.

We ended the night with a large bowl of soup for dinner. We had a choice of beef or lamb mixed with some pancake like noodles. The bowl was massive and according to Alicia, many locals have a hard time finishing it. However our American need for excess helped us push through to the end, conquering the massive amount of soup. Walking back to the hotel helped make us feel better about ourselves for eating all that food, but the day ended once we got to our rooms. We would get a much-needed rest for the next day of adventure.