China

A diverse and changing country

By Cathy Lee

February 12^th, 2016

When my parents asked me if I wanted to go back to China with them, I jumped at the opportunity. It had been a long 6 plus years since I had been, and I heard that everything had changed with the growing economy and standard of living. We planned on going to many places - some that I had heard of, some that sounded completely unfamiliar. The purpose? To visit my grandfather’s hometown to celebrate the opening of a family temple, to visit friends, and to sightsee (this one might have been because of my influence).

Zhangjiajie

Our first stop was Beijing, and then Shanghai (both very briefly). Shortly after, we flew to Zhangjiajie for its famous mountains. We were disappointed by the immense fog that presented itself upon our arrival (and the rain thereafter) because of visibility concerns, but I figured - hey, #chasingfog is nice - and this could be a good opportunity to see what the summer tourists don’t usually see.

Zhangjiajie itself is a rather small town - the “city” part of it quite small, with many neighboring mountainside countryside villages. I laughed upon seeing the motorcycle umbrellas because of its shape, and almost was inclined to bring one back with me to the US :)

Zhangjiajie is most famous for its national forest park, which is huge and spans almost 19 square miles. In it, you’ll see these freestanding rock formations. In case you think it looks somewhat familiar - this is where Avatar (the James Cameron movie) was filmed. We only had time to explore and hike a few parts of the park.

Other than the rocky mountains, we saw many wild monkeys running around.

The lifestyle of a person living in the countryside of Zhangjiajie was very simple. To keep warm, people often used small fires with a thick blanket piled on top. Local vendors sold a lot of chestnuts and sweet potato on a stick.

I spoke with Xiao Peng, our tour guide, about the region, whose residents are mainly of the Tujia minority. It turned out that my suspicions are true - the mountainside villages are rather poor and don’t have many jobs, so young people tend to move away to find work. Children even go to elementary school in a boarding school elsewhere - there aren’t any schools in the area of Siqu (4th neighborhood). He told me that he himself probably wouldn’t have the chance to visit the U.S. in his entire life, because of time, money, and visa issues - but especially money. You can’t really save up much here, he said. It turns out he went and worked in bigger cities like Shanghai after college, but he prefers Zhangjiajie, since life is simpler and he knows the community. Your life must be very luxurious/happy (Xinfu), he commented. I agreed, feeling bittersweet.

Our final stop was the Yellow Dragon Cave, which was famous for its millions-of-years-old stalagmites. The ten thousand year old 19.2 meter tall Sea-Suppressing Needle is a highlight. It’s currently insured for 100 million yuan.

Changsha

Our next stop was Changsha, the capital of China’s Hunan province.

Through a friend of my mom, we ended up touring 2 local middle schools (~1700 students each) and 1 elementary school (2400 students) in Changsha. They were all brand new with state-of-the-art facilities and teachers. I hadn’t seen such high quality schools in China before, having only seen schools in the countryside, and was quite impressed. We spent the day visiting an elementary school and a middle school. We toured them and got an idea of how they do things, and met the principal of each. We talked about the differences between the Chinese and American ideals of education.

These are shots of Hunan University, a local university: an art class taken outdoors, a wall of post-it “wishes”, and an academic building entrance.