China Week--Yichang

In the second annual Jen goes on China week as part of a 100 student, 10 staff member tour, the Year 11 team wandered to the far regions of Yichang, home of the Yangtze River and Three Gorges Dam, then onto Zhangjiajie, home of the stunning landscapes made famous by Stephen Spielberg's film, Avatar.

On paper, this sounds like a marvelous opportunity. In reality, traveling to well-known Chinese tourism hotspots means there's never a peaceful moment, and that's not even considering the students.

There's pushing. And spitting. And queueing. And waiting. And watching the queueing not happening as people are pushing and spitting their way to the front of everything. In short, Chinese domestic tourism is a lot of hard work. In one short afternoon, it can make you question your faith in humanity.

After juggling 100 passports and checking in as many students, we sprinted through the airport for our miraculously on time flight. This was perhaps the highlight of the trip. We flew to Yichang (3 hours), got on a bus (3 more hours) and drove to this bridge area rest stop which was also kind of nice:

 The kids barbecued their own meat skewers; we prepared for food poisoning.

And then onto the hotel where we, again, had to check in 100 students and 100 passports into 50 rooms and make them be quiet. The hotel room stunk of years-old cigarettes and desperation. But the view the next morning was pretty nice:

After a breakfast of indecipherable pieces in the hotel's 'revolving restaurant', we took to the Yangtze for a three-river cruise.  The highlight:

Because of recent river disasters that shall not be spoken of, our school's administration demanded that students wear lifejackets at all times.  This presented several problems, namely in that 110 lifejackets were difficult to procure. This trauma was compounded with the fact that when the correct number were distributed we had to then, gasp, break them out of the plastic bags that housed them.

The views probably would have been lovely if not for the pollution or the myriad container ships that floated lazily past us on their way to their more western destinations.  Happily, I was able to put a face to the drawings my dad and I used to do growing up.  I suppose having a father who works in international logistics it would make sense why he had intimate knowledge of container ships...

After three hours of 'cruising' and a journey through a gargantuan lock (cue 8 million photos), we made for lunch and then a drive to the Three Gorges Dam, China's answer to the Hoover Dam and a lot less amusing.  There were no dam jokes, no dam guides, no dam anything. I remember touring the Hoover Dam in my teens and thinking it was pretty dam exciting.

I think the Three Gorges Dam should have been great considering it is the world's largest power station. It converts more kilotons of electricity than any other manmade facility. But if you're 15 and touring a Chinese facility by looking idly on at various gears and handles, I don't think you care. If you're in your 30s and following around a group of 15-year-olds who don't care, you too care neither.

I mean it's big: 

 But I found the signage funnier:

Perhaps the best part of our first full day was after all the touring. We took the kids to a mall. There was a Walmart that sold Spam that catered to the Chinese market:

And on the way home...dancing aunties! It's a nationwide trend for random gaggles of women to gather in communal space in towns and cities with their boom boxes in tow.  They gather to exercise and perform various dance moves in unison. In Yichang, they were extra entertaining because, to join this particular group, one had to be wearing the dancing auntie uniform: 

As a testament to how lovely our students were, they joined in at the back, in the middle, right next to these ladies. And they arm pumped and leg swung and got into the spirit of the dance.

In a brief moment of bliss, I was grateful for China Week. Brief, it was indeed brief.