Week 9 Vancouver,
China (Suzhou, Xi’an)
21st
to 28th of September
After 8 weeks,
exploring known territory-previously visited and/or where we could still
understand and be understood-the time has come for us to finally step out of
our comfort zone BIG TIME!!!
Sweet Sally
dropped us off early at the airport and we were well prepared for our 12h
flight across the Pacific Ocean. China, Shanghai…here we come!! The kids were
well excited to the prospect of 12h’s of watching movies!! Hee hee! Always on
the scavenging for an opportunity to bribe them into some Maths and Afrikaans
reading/writing, I insisted on them finishing their schoolwork for the day,
before they could settle down in ‘screen’ mode. A wee encouragement always gets
things done!!
We departed at 11:30am
on Monday and arrived on Tuesday afternoon, 3:15pm. So this implies that we
actually went across the International Date Line. We ‘lost’ a few hours, while
in the air. This also meant that we did not sleep (or could not….) as much as
was needed. This also meant that the kids were now under serious attack from
the jet-lag monster!!!
Arriving in
Shanghai airport opened the door to the Orient. New cultures to be explored,
new sounds, smells, food, sights to be experienced…we were slap bang introduced
to this as we were pushed and shuffed by neatly dressed men and ladies to get
the first spot at the escalator!! Here, nobody has their own personal comfort
zone..you just go for it. Nobody even cares if they drag their suitcase over
your foot or pushes a child out of the way in the process of getting to where
they aim to go. Crazy, but if you in China…you need to think like the Chinese!!! So with that approach, we
were on our bus towards Suzhou by 5:50pm. Pretty impressive for a non-Chinese
speaking family…with heavy bags!!(Luckily we are now down to 2 BIG back packs,
2 smaller one’s and 1 carry bag….plus the hand luggage…still a lot though!!!)
In the fading
smog-filled evening light the bumpy bus ride took us further into the unknown
heart of China. It is so hard to describe the roadside sights. This will
hopefully give you a small mental picture of what I saw through that bus window:
a scene from a science fiction movie, where a big blast has wiped out all
traces of life…the eerie big high concrete towers, unfinished, were left…with a
few savaging left-behinds trying to stay alive.(Yes a bit like, Wall-E..I
guess) Ok, I guess this is not what it is REALLY like, but that was just my
first impression…and my heart was starting to be overwhelmed with compassion
for all these people…
Back to reality:
next phase-finding a taxi-man willing to take us to the SuZhou Water Town Youth
Hostel, just outside the Old city. Nobody seemed to keen to help us, so at the
taxi-rank we were forced again into Chinese mode…be proactive…and go for it!!!
(That attitude actually help us a lot now to manage to cross a road!!) Two
taxi’s later and a mere 25Yuan(or ‘Kwai’…this is slang like in
‘bucks’)(exchange rate is £1=10Yuan) we were only still a little walk away form
our hostel. All good so far. Got there by 9pm.
I booked this hostel through the Hostel International’s website. We paid
10% upfront and had till the day before arrival to cancel if our plans might
have changed. Our 6-bed dorm with bunk beads were clean, the aircon was working
and the showers were amazingly hot. The resident staff keep it all very clean
and tidy and were so helpful in their broken English. We really appreciate
this, since only a handful of these China men and women can actually grabbed a
few words together to converse in English. Bizzarre, yes…nobody can speak
English, but all the road signs and information writing…that’s except the bus
stopps(??)…. are written in Chinese caracters AND in English. I am so thankful
for this, but it is a bit weird, since they do not even learn English in
school!!
A biggy to
introduce the kids to, were the pit/standing/squatting toilets!! AND beside
that…not to drop your used toilet paper into the loo, but to place it in the
waste paper basket! Yes…this place is such a mixture of the ancient and the
modern..there is not even a line to draw between the two. It’s just meshed into
one another.
We were really
tired, so we were not so concerned when we realized that beds in China are made
out of wood, with a thin duvet-tickness of matress…or that’s what it felt
like!!! What did disturbed our rest was the jetlagged children waking up at
3:45am…..
So for breakfast
in Suzhou, you walk out the front gate of the hostel cross over the street(2m
wide in Old city center) to a wee shop, complete with hot oil in a BIG pot, on
wheels. There the shop owner fry, to order, your little long bread. No more
pizza and cornflakes for us!! We also had to get used to the water- machines
(yes..like the one’s you will find in the UK with the upside down replaceable
water bottle at the top) provide you with an option for boiling hot water or
luke-warm(their ‘cold’) water. This is for all the pot noodles that everybody
eats (as we would have tucked into a lunchtime sandwich) all through the day.
On street everybody is also walking about with their tea-bottles (our
equivalent of water bottles) with tea leaves of some kind floating in it. So as
mentioned already, bread is not featuring and so is finding milk….absolute
mission. Arno found a 300ml box equivalent of long-life milk…on my attempt, I
brought a bottle of drinking vanilla yogurt home!!! By the looks of it, all
Chinese eat off the street vendors themselves. They will have bowls of soup and
these fried ‘breads’. I’ve also spotted buckets of boiled eggs, laying in a
brownish colored water…but have not been brave enough to buy one…yet!!!! All
the food actually looks very appetizing. Something else which we found to be a
sweet delicatessen here, is a skewer with all sorts of fruit (including
mini-tomatoes!!) that’s dipped into a caramel clear syrup. When left to the
side, it solidifies to produce fruit candy on a stick!
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| Homeschooling in the SuZhou Hostel courtyard |
We were enjoying
the sweet courtyard of our hostel, totally unaware of the street chaos that we
were about to expose ourselves to. So when we arrived it was dark and I guess,
after a few China folk’s bedtimes already, but next morning they were ALL
awake!! It was after rush hour, so the
traffic officer has already left his position (no one knows how those officers
manage to stay alive…and if all that whistle blowing has any effect anyway… but
these traffic officers are my new hero’s…they understand the principle of
excising authority by position and not by demand!!) So we were left to
negotiate the after-rush-hour traffic…thank goodness for that!!! Now do not get
me wrong here, it was still a nail-biting afare to cross the road of 2x2 lanes
with no many restrictions for electric scooters, peddle-3-wheeler-carrier
bikes, normal bikes, busses, cars (old and new) BIG dumper trucks…and the
rest!!! I think you get the picture. So we decide to just follow the
locals…walk when then walk and stop where they stop!!
Not only this….
We totally attracted the curiosity of the nation!! Everybody stopped in their
tracks, turn their heads (even those on scooters!!); then after the initial
shock of seeing westerners AND with 4 CHILDREN (!!!!!!!!) they would stick four
fingers in the air and wave them into the faces of Arno and I. They would start
babbling in Chinese…first to us…who will shake our heads to indicate our lack
of ability to communicate, then to their friends and to all around them asking
(presuming…) “ Did you see THAT??They’ve got 4 children!!!”!!!!
So while we were
walking towards the old city, we were smiling a lot with people and assuring
them that: “Yes, they were all ours”, and “No, Arno has only one wife…” and
“Yes, I am the mother of them ALL”!!! We found this so funny, but also just
soak up the joy of this 4 little blessing bestow upon us!!!
We stopped for
some juices and then looked for a bench in the pedestrian street to sit down.
As soon as we placed our behinds on that bench, we attracted a mini crowd off
the street. People were a bit more confident now and started taking pictures of
us(Nina and Alana defo the favorites)..some from a distance, like true paparazzi,
others came forward and wanted to pose with the children!! So that is what we
give China…we give them a little bit of color and fun, a little bit of the West
in their streets, shops and lives.
Our kids are
getting stronger every day…we walked quite a bit to get to the Humble Administrator’s Garden. A
National Tourist Attraction of Grade AAAAA, this garden is also one of China’s
four most famous gardens.
We tried a few
interesting looking dumpling/treats at a vendor, but it was a bit Chinese… We
walked into a traditional buffet restaurant. The staff were absolutely falling
over their feet to help us to decide what to have, while (behind the counter)
everybody was rummaging through their bags to find their phones to take
pictures. (We were wondering if we might make it onto the local evening news…)
Back at the
hostel (we walked the whole way again..pfeew!!) I settled the children, while
Arno was starting his adventure trying to buy tickets for the sleeper train to
Xi’an. I’ll let him tell you about his. It turned out to be a night time
drama….
I was slowly
falling in love with SuZhou and could not wait for our next adventure down to
the old city. After a bit of faffing about, we got onto a bus and then just
trusted that we understood Chinese and sign language correctly. We were aiming
for the free SuZhou Museum.
We
totally enjoyed our hour there. We were exploring the history of the area and
realized that this town has been the center for cultural development and economy
of southern China during the Han Dynasty (207BC to AD220). It was also during
this time that the Silk Road was built. It’s original purpose was to move
armies overland and for diplomatic missions. Later the Silk Road became a trade
route, connecting the Imperial Court of China with the Roman Empire….with main
export product: silk!!
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| Carved peach stone from BC |
Can you believe
it….the Chinese were already refining their calligraphy (Chinese symbol writing
with ink on paper),while the Vikings were still chasing each other around with
clubs!!
The little
girlies were particularly interested in the BIG fishpond in the court yard and
were starting to dream about their own Koi-pond in Riebeek Kasteel!!
Some fun on a
peddled-taxi followed. We had to hire two, which resulted in a very exciting
race to get to the Lingering Garden. Our wee fellow stopped to wait for Arno’s
taxi, and then we lost each other. Now we were taken down a small little
inner-city (reminded me of the little streets in the Fes medina, Morocco)
cobbled street to get to our point or rendezvous. Lots of banter followed with
happy shrieks!!
The Lingering Garden also counts under 4
Most Famous Gardens in China and also carries the AAAAA grading of National
Tourist Attractions. It was also constructed during the Ming Dynasty. We
listened to some traditional Chinese harp (?) music performed by a beautifully
dressed lady. (Was sad to see that not even she had a smile on her face…) This
garden had so many secret passageways and hiding places. The kids were on cloud
number 9..loadsa space to hide form the paparazzi!!!
I took the family
back through the wee alley and we encountered some interesting ‘shop’ sights:
buy your own (live) chicken for dinner, and do not forget the fish flapping
about in a few buckets…fresh produce!!!! We got to the most beautiful little
hide away, complete with lit-up red Chinese lanterns along the water canals.
I’ve never been to Venice, always wanted to go, so I was totally in awe and
wonder. It was just picture perfect!! We were welcomed into a wee off street
café. They were so happy to have us, jumping around us (we were the only
patrons) serving in all our needs(spoons and even a few old bended forks were
dug out of drawers….), but we were determined to use chopsticks…Nina is the
most skillful of us all!!
Now, just on a
wee side note: a while ago I was having some chatting time with God, discussing
our plans to settle in Riebeek Kasteel in South Africa. I asked for a few more
confirmations. I just love to tell you this story.
Now back to where
we sat ourselves down in a small insignificant café in old town SuZhou, Arno
started having a wee look around (this was after we went through the palava of
order something that everybody might want to eat). His eye caught a line of
bottles of red wine perched on a small shelf against the wall. 6th
bottle along the line was produced at the Riebeek Valley Wine Celler in South
Africa!!! We do not believe in coincidence, we believe in Divine guidance… Love
it!!!
After Arno’s
ordeal, trying to buy train tickets gone wrong…we changed plan to purchase
flights between Shanghai and Xi’an. So this meant that we had to get a bus from
the hostel to the SuZhou train station, then a train to Shanghai, then
underground (a few step-overs) to get to the Maglev(Magnetic Levatation
train…fastest train in the world) to eventually get us to the airport in time
for our flight at 13:30. Leaving our hostel just before 8am left us with PLENTY
of time…or so we thought…… Not going into too much details, but two significant
things went wrong, which resulted us arriving at the airport at 13:15.. We were
praying that there might be a godly intervention getting us onto that
plane…because the tickets were not cheap… Well, God answered our prayers…which
resulted in the plane departing almost an hour behind schedule (yes, they were
actually waiting for us!!! And then we had to wait for a new departing slot.)
It was also the lowest point of my RWT, where we had to rush through security
with ALL our luggage (because we were so late) and then were forced to leave
Arno’s Swiss army knife and his Leatherman(I gave it to him as a wedding gift
15years ago…) at the x-ray machine. At this point I was seriously considering
the cost of this trip…Is it worth it all?
We arrived (I
pre-booked a taxi-pick-up provided by the Youth Hostel, from the airport) in
Xi’an round 7pm. What a day travelling….hopefully never to be repeated in such
a fashion!!
Hang Tan Inn (with sister hostel Hang Tan House a few yards
down the street) is VERY recommendable!! The staff were sooooo helpful and
could speak very good English. They helped us to buy our train tickets (and
Arno was singing hallelujah praises!!!) We made a few new friends and enjoyed
the lovely coffee’s and cooked meals the little restaurant at the Inn was
producing. Now this was a totally world-travellers hub. So many like-minded
people and stories to share.
Saturday brought
us the opportunity to visit the site where the First Emperor Shi Huangdi were
buried (237BC). It was discovered in 1974 when a farmer was digging for water
on his land. He unearthed a clay-made body part of a Chinese warrior. With
further investigation, up to date, 3 different ‘pits’ has been discovered with
nearly 8000 of these Terracotta Warriors. Emperor Shi wanted to take a big army
with him into the after life. All the workers were executed by the end of the
project, so they made sure that their image were kept forever by creating a
warrior with their face. Result each warrior has a different face! There were
infantry, cavalry, archers and officers.
Emperor Shi
Huangdi was advised that by taking some mercury tablets everyday he will secure
long levity…well, needless to say he fell down lifeless at the age of 55 and
was buried in a man-made hillock tomb. Nobody know what were buried with him,
because it’ll take another 20 years or so before the mercury levels (presently
1000 time above normal!!!) inside the tomb, has dropped low enough for the archeologists
to start investigation!!
I dreamed of
seeing this 8th Wonder of the Ancient World since I was a little
girl (my granny, Ouma Helie, told me about it when I was still in primary
school), it was just the bestest day ever!!!
Last day in Xi’an
arrives with excitement of meeting up with Arno’s school Maths teacher!! Yes,
she is working at an international school in Xi’an now!! First we got dressed
in waterproofs for our first proper wet travel day. Xi’an’s city wall is the
best preserved, all in tacked city wall in all of China! Felt so privileged to
be exploring this. Arno rented a tandem and the kids had so much fun taking
turns on the back seat. I even got a wee lift too!! He did 16km carting us about
between different gates on the southern section of the wall.(If you would cycle
around the old city you’ll do 13km!!)
Another bus ride (yes a trip on a public bus,
anywhere cost you between 1 and 2 Kwai…that means 10 to 20pence!!) to the Big
Wild Goose Pagoda, where we were supposed to be meeting Anneke. Our family
expedition of the Old city wall on bike, took a bit longer than expected, but
Anneke was waiting patiently…we were nearly 2 hours late!!!!! All tired and
frantically hungry, we found a little noodle bar…the normal chaos to order
behind us, we could settle down chatting. It was so good for me to get to know
her and for Arno to walk down memory lane.
A last note of
interest: (remember I prayed for confirmation…) Anneke has also started
day-dreaming about settling down in Riebeek Kasteel..(huh??) She’s even been
there recently……SO since we left Scotland, we’ve had 3 encounters with ‘Riebeek
Kasteel’ from people and places we’ve NEVER in a million years expected it
from!!! I think God is confirming his calling!!! What do you think?
Xi’an exceeded my
expectations!!! I was very sad to leave our lovely hostel and the sweet street
vendors outside the front door. Lady Jhe-Jhe, our tour guide to the Warriors,
and our new Spanish friend, Cesar, our British friend, Katie and our friend
form the Netherlands: Christal!! Do not forget Matt from Australia!! Hope to
see you all soon!!!!!
‘If You believe
in a dream and have the courage to try, anything is possible.’ Rick Hansen
(Canadian Man in Motion)
