Before I Forget...

I know I just blogged yesterday, but I'm making up for lost time. Today I had an extremely unexpected and fantastic day, and I wanted to share it/record it before I head off to Beijing tomorrow afternoon and I've come to the realization that I'm terrible at writing a journal, so I'm going to rely on my typing skills and the draw of an audience to entice me.

Last night, while in the toils of my previous post, I got a phone call from Peter, the head of the foreign experts department here at Xintan, asking if I wished to accompany him for a day trip to the hometown of his friend. Now, technically he is my boss, but for the most part he is simply a very good friend. We don't see a lot of him in general, simply because he is so overwhelmingly busy (he is an administrator, but also carries a full class load), but Peter has always been very kind to all of us and is extremely willing to help us in any way he can. Often our interaction with him is going out to dinner, or to KTV (karaoke), or some combination of the two.

I had no plans for the day other than to plan for future travels, so I happily accepted his invitation, and we met up this morning for breakfast with his friend - who also turned out to be one of my friends, a guy I play basketball with named Hawk - and another man whose name I forget and his three year old son. The five of us were headed for a small village/city about two hours east of Qufu (of course I can't remember the name), where Hawk is from.

The drive itself was fantastic - I finally got to get a good glimpse of the Chinese countryside as we wound our way up into a range of foothills and terraced hillsides. Peter commented at one point, and I completely agree, that this part of the Chinese countryside looked like the American West. We could have been in Arizona - red rock, arid climate, that brown which only comes from long dead vegetation in the middle of the dry season, and a fantastic 800 foot tall rock face ripe for the picking, just beckoning at me through the car window...

We arrived in the town at around noon, just in time for lunch. We ate at a locally famous restaurant known for its mutton. As Peter explained, "mutton, anyway you like it." What he meant by this, is that you can order any part of the animal you want, because they kill and clean their own animals. This sounded great - nothing like fresh lamb chops...

Well, not exactly. While I did see freshly cleaned animals hanging from racks when we ordered, The food we received wasn't exactly what I was expecting (I had this delicate, fleeting hope for ribs) - our dishes included: tofu, stomach, kidney, liver, feet, and a soup, which had some more traditionally western cut stew-type meat in it. The soup was my salvation, because, unfortunately I'm just not a huge fan of tofu, and well, as much as I scream in my head "CULTURAL RELATIVISM," It's hard to really enjoy your first attempt at eating goat foot if your palate just isn't ready for it. Add baiju to the equation (something which I can no longer stomach), and the meal was in some ways a bit much for me to handle, but we got through it.

After lunch, we headed to a local attraction which was the highlight of this past week for me. One of the most important battles of the Chinese Revolution (1947) was fought in this town, and there was a battlefield museum and monument to the fallen located here. Museum commemorates the victory of the Communist Party over the Kuomintang and details the battle.

When we first arrived I was caught off guard by an illustration of an injured soldier, laying on his back, being fed by a woman's breast. Peter explained that one of the very famous events of this battle, as we later saw in the museum, was that at one point during the fighting, several Chinese women began helping those soldiers who were weakest and closest to death by feeding them from their breast. The museum also had an 8 story glass pinnacle observation tower (216 stairs) which pointed toward the top of the biggest mountain in the area, where a very large, visible monument stood.

After the observation tower, we actually headed up to the top of the mountain, which was the site of the actual battle. Along the way were several large cannons, a Russian made T -38 tank, a mig, and a collection of random other military memorabilia to be seen. We climbed the deserted mountain about an hour before sunset, and the view was absolutely breathtaking.

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me because I wasn't expecting ANY of this, but it was quite the sight to see. After the mountain we dropped off Hawk with his parents and headed back to Qufu for a delightful dinner of won tons, cucumber salad, and eggplant. All in all a fantastic day and one of the better "traveling" moments I've had since coming to China; I really felt like I was experiencing a bit of Chinese history.

That's all for now - I'm off to Beijing tomorrow afternoon, and then to Guilin on the 20th. After that it's Hong Kong, Thailand from the 5th to the 16th, and then back to China. Wish me luck!