Day 12: Zhang Jia Jie and The Avatar Mountains

We woke up at the crack of dawn this morning to find that China had decided to rain on our parade. We were planning to leave the hostel around 6:45 for a long day of about 25 miles of hiking. However, the thunderstorm in Zhang Jia Jie slowed our plans down slightly. We decided to wake up an hour later, and we conquered our fear of the rain and went to hike in the mountains anyway!

We took an amazing cable car ride up the first part of the mountain. We were riding through the clouds, where you could see the mountains through the fog. The clouds blended in with the mountains – it was absolutely surreal. The view was breathtaking – I think it was even better because of the rain! There was one spot at the top where we worked as a group to blow away the clouds so we could see the Avatar-inspired mountains. It really worked!

We walked around a few different areas in the mountain and took a few bus rides before reaching our final hiking destination. We walked down countless stairs spiraling down the mountain, through lots of greenery, and alongside the rivers. We walked in a pretty desolate area in the mountain – the only people we saw were some Russians from our hostel (small world!). After a few hours we reached the touristy part of the hiking area with lots of little shops and food.

We took a group picture in one of the gardens at the end and then took turns taking pictures in the “lock of love” – half of Team Half & Half (EGL) has significant others – they plan on photoshopping their boyfriends or girlfriends into the pictures. Jenette and I bargained for ice cream and then we all took the bus back to our hostel.

After a short siesta, we walked along the riverside in the city (with all the lights and dancing) looking for somewhere to eat. We found a really awesome restaurant along the river where we ate some well-deserved food. I really enjoyed the Chinese version of doughnuts – they were delicious. After we finished, we returned to the hostel, discussed our plans for tomorrow, and went to bed after an exhausting day.

-Nikki

Day 11: Phoenix City, China

A 6 AM breeze introduced this awakening ancient city to me in a gentle touch. We walked along the street, moving towards the river. While passing by an old stone made structure, I saw some movements. The glint of Chinese swords dancing on the stone structure implied a morning practice of martial arts. We climbed onto the structure, finding different groups of people engaged in a variety of activities. Except for Tai Ji sword, we have seen traditional drum practice and Tai Ji Kong Fu lessons. People’s concentration remained unaffected upon invasions by tourists.

Beneath the stone structure, we found winding allies, when we escape from tourism. The empty allies are filled with tranquility. The doors on both sides of the stone-paved path adopt the original style from probably hundreds or thousands of years ago. On the doors, two red posters with pictures of gods can be found. They are the guardians of the family. Legend says that one of the guardians can see things that are thousands of miles away. Together, they are powerful enough to keep danger away from houses.

Crossing the bridge, we saw a different appearance of the riverbank. Shops had already set up, ready to welcome a new day of tourists. A local “wax dye” shop caught my eyes with its contained beauty. Wax dye is one of the fabric dyeing techniques of the Miao minority. The shop keeper is an old lady. She showed us several pieces of her works as well as her studio. It may be the duty of a shopkeeper to introduce the products. I had felt the passion she has for the “wax dye” and the eagerness she bears to share her favorite art to foreigners. As the principal of the school in Jishou had said, the Miao minority group is friendly and enthusiastic.

Determined to use our time wisely, we quickly regroup with all the EGL members and lead them to a restaurant we found for breakfast. In front of the old east gate, we had local buns and noodles. Swiftly, we finished breakfast and started searching for the old phoenix town. Surprisingly, we went into the town before we realized it. We then toured the home of Mr. Shen, a famous Chinese writer, and the phoenix structures, which marked the ending of our Phoenix City visit.

On the bus ride, we watched a German movie called “Gloomy Sunday.” It is a movie that depicts an intricate love story and the influence of Nazis from Hungarians’ view. The whole movie is decorated by the song “Gloomy Sunday” and the meaning behind it. The movie carved layers of thoughts in my mind over the bus trip.

Fighting goats bounce into my mind that is filled with “Gloomy Sunday.” A herd of goats passed by the street, leaving two goats horn to horn in the middle of the street. They seem to be too obsessed with each other and completely ignored the gigantic bus and its strident sound. Another animal incident is a rooster wandering around the middle of the road. It seems to know when to stop and move, but still jammed the traffic for a few seconds.

Greatly disturbed by the five hour bus ride, which is supposed to be three hours, we flocked off the bus where it finally stopped. As expected, the bus station is in the middle of nowhere, so we didn’t suspect much until we found some people still in the station. To further confirm, I ran to the bus and stopped the bus at the last second. Fortunately, we managed to get back on the bus and continued the last one hour trip to our final bus stop. After a friendly chat with the bus driver, he agreed to take us straight to the hostel at a reasonably low price. Great deal! It saved us the trouble of finding a few taxis and bargaining for a better price.

Hospitality welcomed us into the neat hostel, ending our long day with a joyful delight.

-Eric

Day 10: Phoenix City, China

Today is the first day of our tour around the city of Fenghuang, which means Phoenix in Chinese. It is the
hometown to a lot of historical figures and many famous fictions. Everyone got up pretty late due to the
travel and hostel logistic issues the previous day. Then after some brief discussions, we headed over to
the “Miao Canyou” and “Miao Museum” (Fenghuang is the hometown to the Miao Minority group in
China). We joined a tourist group for easier transportation.

It took about an hour and a half to get to the “Miao Canyon.” It was not a boring bus ride at all. The
guide was talking about different and interesting stories/history about the Miao minority group. He
taught us how to say “good,” “is that good,” “bathroom,” and “goodbye” in Miao’s own language. Miao
minority group only has its own speaking language but no written language. He also taught us to sing
a song called “Blossom” in Miao’s language. We got stuck in a traffic jam right before we got to our
destination so we all got off the bus and walked the rest of the way. We walked through some farm
lands and met some interesting old ladies who were somehow trying to force us to buy their stuff, but
unfortunately failed.

Then we took a boat to a cave. The boat was made out of bamboo. It had about ten bamboo shoots
tied together on the bottom and had branches to sit on. We arrived at the first cave which had a
wooden bull head hanging at the gate. The guide told us that it was for casting the ghosts away in the
Miao minority group’s belief. There was a river running through the cave and we walked on the bridge
alongside it. There was a beautiful waterfall outside the cave. It was pretty cool.

We then took another boat trip to the second cave. Unfortunately, on this boat trip there were other
people from other passing boats splashing us using buckets. To make it worse, we were splashed from
both sides of the boat. Many of us got soaked, but some lucky ones who sat in the front missed the fun.
Then we got to the cave. It started with stairs leading upwards into the cave. After we finished the first
fifty steps, we were led into a left turn where we found endless amounts of stairs in front of us, leading
upwards (very high) and into the dark. It was an exciting stair climbing experience, especially because it
was in a huge but dark cave.

Then we had lunch at the Miao’s Village, and they served us local homemade rice wine which usually
expresses the host’s hospitality. The food was simple and traditional. After lunch we went to the Miao’s
Museum, which is a showcase for Miao’s culture and traditions. Then we watched a performance from
Miao’s young adults. There was also an auction for some original Chinese paintings.
Then we had an interesting ride back. The odometer, RPM, and gas indicator were somehow all broken,
so we travelled for two hours at 0 km/hr, 0 RPM, and no gas at all, yet we were able to make it all the
way back to our hotel without a problem. The turns on the way were extremely sharp too. We had many
160 degree turns on the edge of the mountains.

It was a fun day. Then we walked to the riverside for dinner and did some more walking following
dinner. The view by the river was absolutely amazing both before dark and when the night arrived. We
walked on the stones in the river connecting the two banks. Some kids were also swimming in the river.
The water was very clear and you could see the seaweed clearly deep at the bottom of the river.
After we got back to our hotel, something interesting happened. Nikki told me my phone was beeping,
and as soon as I stood up from my bed, it crashed on the floor. Then when I tried to call the front desk
to come fix it, we discovered that our phone was broken. I eventually got my bed fixed, but it was
definitely an interesting and entertaining experience to end a fun day.

-Yijia

Day 9: Volunteering and Travel to Fenghuang

Today was our last day in Jishou, which meant at some point we were all going to have to say goodbye to our kids… something absolutely none of us wanted to do!

We woke up at the usual time and went to have the usual breakfast of buns filled with pork or red bean paste for the final time. Then we headed to class to teach the kids about the topic of travel. You could definitely tell it was the last day of class because you could periodically hear 90’s pop or Chinese music over the speakers in the rooms featuring the karaoke talents of the EGL and LAC crew. Of the performances that I saw, my favorites had to be the “I want it That Way” duets between Keith and Chen and Keith and Eric! After class we took a few class photos and thanked the kids for giving us the opportunity to teach them. Then we headed to lunch/basketball.

As we walked up to lunch we were amazed to see how elaborate of a setup they had for the game! They brought in a scoreboard, a referee, extra seating for the already impressively sixed crowd, and matching uniforms for the faculty. The stage was set; LAC bros vs. Faculty was about to get under way. Keith won the tip and we took a commanding lead out of the gate. The faculty then rallied and overtook the LAC bros by halftime. Thanks to stellar play from Keith, Luke and Christine and solid contributions from Jesse, Eric, Gina, Chen, Nikki, Alex, and Kiwi, the LAC team came out on top by about four points. After many pictures to capture the moment, the team hit the cafeteria for some well desired lunch.

After lunch we all went back to our rooms for the last time to grab our luggage and bring it to the auditorium for the final presentations of the mini projects we had been working on all week. Luke and Jenette lead it off with their presentation on Industrial Packaging. Their kids had some really great ideas and actually implemented those ideas into prototypes that they proudly showed the audience. Then Keith and I went up with our class and sang perhaps the saddest Chinese song through sign language, but it was an absolute blast.

After the song, Keith and Chen went up on stage to thank everyone who had a part in allowing us to help out in Jishou, and we all went up to say a final goodbye. Once we got down from the stage, the kids came and gave us big bear hugs with tears in their eyes. It was incredibly hard to leave them because they were so amazing. They were appreciative of everything, extremely polite, eager to help us with anything and show us their city, and excited to learn. We could not have asked for any better kids to teach. Many of them bought us gifts to show their appreciation. Keith seemed to steal his students’ hearts because he received armfuls of gifts from his students. It was really hard to say goodbye to all of the LAC people too. They, like the kids, were also crazy helpful and fun to hang around with and get to know.

After the tear-jerking goodbye, we boarded the bus to take us to Jishou where we boarded another bus to Fenghuang. After the 21 hour bus ride we started to call and look for our hostel. When we contacted them they told us that they lost power, but we’re pretty sure they actually double-booked our room. We went into another hotel that ended up being completely booked, but we found a travel agent there who helped us find a very nice hotel to stay at. It actually had toilets (not squatter style) along with AC and other very nice amenities. It was amazing to lie down after a long day of goodbyes and travel!

-Joe

Day 8: Volunteering in China

Today’s lesson on holidays was a great example of a few different things:

1.  How much the world really shares, but

2. How completely different our experiences can be (within a country)

3. And how much education really is a two way street

Since talking about the vocabulary and lesson plan last night, Nikki and I were… a little bit anxious about some of the content. I come from a secular background with a heavy Jewish influence, and Nikki is Jewish; our experiences and holidays, therefore, don’t exactly typify those of most American people. We were also a little anxious about introducing the concept of religion in class, but we figured that it would be too difficult to discuss Easter and Christmas without at least mentioning Christianity. Essentially, we decided to go all-in and hope for the best, which is always my favorite kind of plan.

To open class, we had kids come to the board and write names of holidays they knew. We’ve been finding that to be a very effective way of garnering participation from the class, and everyone excitedly jumped at the opportunity to show off (again). Nikki and I were both surprised that the entire board was covered top to bottom with different holidays, and there were no repeats. Fortunately, many of them were Chinese holidays, giving Nikki and I the chance to be the students rather than the teachers. I know that I learned quite a few different holidays (Teachers’ Day on September 10^th, for example), and I definitely got a strong dose of Chinese culture from the kids. Listening to them talk highlighted a lot of differences between the US and China (and our perceptions of both), but it also showed the kinds of things we all value: family, love, and cultural pride (and food).

After discussing some of the other US holidays to many “oohs” and “aahs,” Nikki introduced the class to Hangman while I helped the class write a story, one student at a time. Writing got a little but lost in the shuffle for our past classes, as Nikki and I had put a heavy emphasis on speaking, listening, and reading over writing. I was very happy to see, though, that the kids had fantastic writing skills. I suppose that shouldn’t really be that surprising to me, as I had always found writing in other languages easier than speaking, but I was very pleased nonetheless. Some of the kids who were less confident about speaking in class showed they had great command of the language, and everyone impressed me with the vocabulary that they knew and wanted to use. In the end, the story the class wrote made no sense because each student wrote one line of it, but it was a lot of fun for all of us.

The afternoon was like any other: projects were driven by the students and activities were held inside (to beat the heat). My group for the sociology survey project had to make a PowerPoint for our work, which had me running around a bit to get electronics to work. When the kids finally got to start, it was evident that they had never made a PowerPoint before… and I was certainly not going to be able to explain how to do so in Chinese. I got some pictures from Charlene, though, which at least got them started. While I’m still not sure exactly what we needed to have, we put together about four slides of material for Saturday’s presentation.

The VA volunteers (from here on out known as the LAC bros) spent various parts of the day trying to plan the last day’s lesson plan (travel). At breakfast, the LAC bros assembled a vocabulary list; at lunch, we made some Jeopardy questions; after projects, we tried to finish the lesson plan but got cut short by a surprise sendoff dinner.

It should be pointed out that the headmaster of the school adores us (as do some of the teachers), so she made a point of taking us to a ridiculously beautiful (and expensive) final meal with the LAC volunteers. We rode over in a bus, which the LAC bros filled with the sounds of the Backstreet Boys, R-Kelly, and other pop anthems. This kind of distracted us from the fact that the road on which we were driving was comically small until we noticed two or three cars almost coming head-on at our bus. Thanks to some classic Chinese driving techniques, we were able to arrive safely at our hilltop destination.

The restaurant had its own fishing pond and was made out of the most beautiful soft, amber-toned wood. The entire building almost looked carved out of a single block of wood, and it was in a classic Chinese style that took my breath away. The back balcony, where diners sat, was also suspended over the downward slope of the hill and looked out onto the river, which took my breath away in multiple ways. Red lanterns hung gracefully at the corners of the roof, blowing in the wind. I would’ve been happy just seeing that.

Before diving into dinner, the volunteers from EGL and LAC took at least 100 pictures with the school personnel and each other. For the first time, it really felt like things were coming to a close. And the food… THE FOOD. That was easily the best meal we’ve had all trip. Every meat was cooked, every vegetable was prepped, and every drink (Pepsi, orange juice, rice wine) made an appearance. The headmaster of the school also brought her daughter to the dinner to help translate between English and Chinese. As everyone finished eating (except Gina, who was her usual slow self), we all drifted about the balcony conversing. The LAC volunteers ran down to the riverside for another walk, and they came back drenched after it started raining. We even got a little wet on the balcony, but the storm also brought a great breeze with it. We all cheered when the drops started to fall.

All in all, the dinner was great and it really put our impact in perspective for me. While the first dinner was a welcome for unproven volunteers, this one felt like a celebration of accomplishment (even if our work wasn’t quite done yet). One the way home, the LAC volunteers serenaded us with Chinese songs, which felt like the perfect way to cap the week. While we’re not done yet, I feel like we could leave now and be very pleased with what we’ve given this community.

Also, they REALLY want to play us in basketball.

-Jesse

Day 7: Volunteering in China

By today (our third day of working with LAC), it started to feel pretty normal waking up and then teaching. We had been able to get to know our students a little more over the last couple of days so we were able to teach them and they were able to understand more of what we tried to help them understand. Today’s lesson covered sports which ranged from ones common in China (table tennis) to American sports like football and hockey. We were able to find a couple of videos for football, hockey, and snowboarding which the students really enjoyed, especially the fast paced goals and hits in hockey. We also taught them about baseball but since we didn’t have a video, we had a harder time explaining how it is played. But we made a “baseball” out of paper and used an empty water bottle as a bat and successfully played a 1-inning game. When we finished the English lesson, the students all said their favorite new sport was baseball.

Lunch was delicious as always and afterwards, Yijia, Luke and I went to the convenience store below the cafeteria and bought popsicles. A couple of the other EGLers also got popsicles and Keith’s lemon popsicle sounded really interesting since it contained raisins and vaguely tasted like bananas.

During Industrial Packaging class, each team finished their prototypes. It was great to see how much progress they had made and it felt particularly rewarding because by today Luke and I had made good progress overcoming the language barrier so students were able to ask us questions and we were able to give them answers.

After that class was over, the students wanted to play an American game so we taught them musical chairs. The computers in the classroom already had an eclectic collection of music, so we played the game with music from the Black Eyed Peas, Cascada, Cody Simpson, and even the Carpenters. The kids thought the game was great and we played at least four times.

At dinner we had a potato and beef dish which everyone really liked and afterwards headed to the office to plan tomorrow’s lesson. While we were planning, we started hearing a jack hammer noise. It got louder and louder until suddenly some small chunks of plaster came crashing down from the ceiling and a drill was poking through the hole. The workers told us they were going to continue drilling for a couple hours so Chen found a different room in the library for us to work in.

Gina and I volunteered to find pictures for the lesson plan so we went to the other office to do so. We were really excited after entering the room and felt a cool blast of air from the air conditioning. While we would have loved to stay longer in this room, once we found the necessary pictures, our day ended and we headed back to the dorm for some much needed sleep.

-Jenette

Day 6: Volunteering in China

Today was our second day working at No. 1 Middle/High school in Luxi. It was another busy day working with the children and LAC. When all the guys were up, we went to the cafeteria to have breakfast as usual. For two days I saw Eric running to the supermarket to buy something, which just triggered my curiosity. Eric went to buy milk tea every day, which he loved when he lived back in Asia before he went to UMich, and now he could enjoy this Asian heritage. Breakfast was the same as usual, so we have different kinds of buns (meat, sugar, pickeledvegetables, and red beans) to choose from. However, today the soy machine at the breakfast place went down, so we ate/drank some porridge with the buns. After breakfast, we took a picture with an M-flag as we all work Michigan t-shirts.

We started our English lessons at 8:30 AM. Today’s topics were Occupations and Education. As I was coordinating all of the courses before the trip, I felt that this section was the most unprepared of all the sections. However, after yesterday night’s discussion and everyone’s hard work, it turned out to be a great class. We introduced different occupations by describing what each one does, and the students proved their intelligence – they understood most everything. Then we asked them to describe each occupation in their own words so they could practice speaking. Next, we played charades – we had 5 groups of students and we asked one student from the class to act out an occupation and one person from each group to guess what occupation what the occupation was. The kids loved this fame and it became really competitive.

After a short break, we started to talk about education. After teaching them necessary vocabulary, we started to tell them about the differences between the education systems in the United States and in China. Students were very active in this part and to my surprise, they knew a lot about the education system. We specifically talked about the college application process in the US and some of the students were even going to apply to US schools, which really impressed us. So we decided to give them a brief intro to UMich. We showed them many pictures of our beautiful UMich including the Law Library, Law Quad, Ross, the Diag, Fletcher Library, Angell Hall and our excellent School of Engineering. Students were amazed byUMich and hopefully some of them could become future wolverines!

Lunch was the same as usual. After lunch we all went to our different mini project teams. Today I took a leave from my drama team and went with Nikki’s sociology survey group to see how things were going. I was really glad to see Nikki played a great leadership role in the group and successfully broke the cultural/language gap with the students. We went to all five different bookstores in the town. Before every time a students started to ask a question, they would show the question to Nikki to make sure the questions were OK and Nikki gave them good advice on how to make a good survey and interviews. On the way they chatted about different topics including “Gossip Girls” and other general stuff. I was glad to see Nikki really became part of the group and experienced a lot about locals in China. Also, she used her talent to help the students.

This was pretty much the fifth day for the VA China team, we worked hard again in the evening on our next day’s lesson plan and we look forward to working with the children again tomorrow.

Go EGL and go blue!

-Chen