My Time in China

Da jia hao! Hello everyone! I'm sorry that it has been so long since my last post, but things have gotten very busy since then, in addition to my computer crashing, which did not help things at all. So right now I am travelling on what we call "the trek." It is basically a two week tour through Shanghai, Beijing, and Xi'an. We were also originally scheduled to travel to Qinghai province in the west, but had it cancelled because of the Tibetan riots. THe riots by the way are not affecting me at all. THey are very much contained within those few provinces that have large Tibetan populations.

So I am now in Xi'an and have already been to Shanghai and Beijing. Shanghai was okay, in my opinion, but very commercialized and not my favorite. I liked Beijing a lot better, and I think Xi'an might be my favorite. Xi'an reminds me of Xiamen a little bit, with kind of a more Chinese, less Western feel that I sometimes felt in Shanghai or Beijing, but it is also much bigger than Xiamen and very much a full-blown city.

I went to the Great Wall and the Terracotta soldiers in Beijing, both of which were amazing. THe Great Wall was so much fun to climb. I really enjoyed it, and it was the most beautiful day. It was amazing to be up in the Chinese mountains looking out over the landscape. We also made some friends with some of the vendors at the end of the section of the wall that you are allowed to climb. We shared some of our lunch with them and took pictures and it was just so much fun.

Also in Beijing we went to Lou Guan Tai, which is the place where Laozi is supposed to have written the Dao De Jing, which is the foundational book of Daoism. It was raining that day and we were the only people at the temple besides a few people tending the fire there. It is in a secluded place in the mountains and is very beautiful. It was so peaceful to have the rain falling all around us while we looked out over the misty mountains. We also walked about a mile and a half from there to a pagoda that is the oldest surviving Christian pagoda in China, from around 675 AD. We walked through so much mud to get there, as its in a very secluded place with only dirt roads and lots of farmers. It was actually really fun to get all muddy and see traditional CHinese rural culture without a lot of tourism and stuff. We walked up winding hills and there were cherry blossoms everywhere! The grass was so green and it was really something that looked like it would be in a National Geographic picture or TV show special. It was spectacular.

So now I'm in XI'an and we're just taking things as they come, as we were supposed to be in QInghai right now. Instead of going there for our service project, we will stay here and maybe teach English. We're not certain yet, but I really like the city so anything is okay with me. THere is a large city wall around teh city that is all still intact (it was built a while ago too!) So you can go up on it and people walk around and ride bikes because it is extremely wide and has barriers on the sides so it's safe. We rented bikes yesterday and rode for 90 minutes around the entire thing. It was so fun, and good exercise too!

Today for Easter I went to the local church here. Although I didn't understand much it was nice to be with other believers on such an important day. As of this Friday, I will be coming back to the States in four weeks. So soon! THe time has flown here. I am excited to come back but also very sad. I really love it here and can't imagine leaving.

More to come later...