总重红绿灯 | Stoplight in the Sky

First, this will be a lot more interesting if you look at the pictures on flickr first at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gusanocomemuerto/sets/72157600957309608/.

This last weekend was our midterm exam weekend at CET, which is a really weird mixture of stress and relaxation. I was quite happy to hear that we were going back to Nanji Island and Huayan park again, since they are rather singular locations in the polluted, crowded Chinese context: Nanji island is a small, uncrowded, unpolluted tropical island without a large building in sight; Huayan Park is a lush, waterfall-fed series of crystal-clear swimming holes. Even better, they are both (relatively) close to each other. But integrating the beach, swimming holes, and waterfalls with our midterms was, to put it mildly, a physical and psychological stretch. 

The schedule was as follows: Thursday night the entire program took a night train to Wenzhou on which much baijiu was consumed. Baijiu can be merely tough to drink or can serve as proof of the existence of pure distilled evil, some nasty absolute, beyond all conception of horrible badness . . . as Opus said; “Well, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but lord, it wasn’t good.” That said, the only thing that dislikes baijiu more than I do were the little stomach bacteria I acquired in Hangzhou that were rendering me unfit for travel, and so baijiu it was. The Chinese drink waxberry baijiu for diarrhea, and I gotta say, it works, if you are willing to pay the price.

Anyway, the night on the train was fun, and when the baijiu hit the stomach I went straight to bed, popped Momma’s little helper into my mouth, and sacked the hell out. I’ve discovered that my preference for 7-8 hours of sleep a night is not casual. CET’s schedule, which has reduced me to an average of 5 or 6 hours, has rendered me a miserable human being, and I was worried- as were most people who looked at me- that the combination of study-stress, stomach cramps, and train travel would reduce me to some sort of bonobo-like existence consisting of mostly of grunting and scratching. 

Waking up on a Chinese train is rarely fun, and waking up at 6am on a Chinese train after drinking baijiu even less so. Nevertheless, I’d slept solidly, so no problem, and we trucked off to the island on a bus, and then on a boat, and finally arrived at Nanji port, a small cove with some fishing boats, the modern shuttle craft  we’d arrived in, which look more like submarines than boats, and a dock for same. We debarked, mounted buses that tore through the town of Nanji to the beach side, where we all spread out over the sand, played soccer, frisbee, and swam . . . and burned. Oh man, did I burn. Then it was time for lunch, and I ate raw oysters, anemone, small blood clams, salt and pepper shrimp-beetles, lord knows what else. You can see from the pictures, eating sea food on the Chinese coast is great because you pick the thing you want to eat out of a bucket while it’s still alive and frisky. Five minutes later, it’s on your table. I’ve heard of Chinese guys in ties selecting fresh fish from the tank and beating them to death personally. Anemone tastes like . . . chicken. Not very good chicken, but it could have been the sauce. The oysters were incredible.

When we got back to the beach, people were clamming in straw hats. The staff at the rented shelter stand were surly, and would not extend our rental; for some reason, this part of Zhejiang sees little foreigners, and there were a few unpleasant episodes, albeit largely involving the students with the worst Chinese.

That night we went back to the hotel, and put on our “plays,” which are graded as oral midterms, and are annoying and fun at the same time. Anyway, ours came off fine; I did an interpretive dance while eating a dumpling at the same time.

The next day we went to Huayan park (flower color) and went splashing around in the 10 pools they have there, some of which are really deep, all of which are clean and cold and have little fish in ‘em. I needn’t go into much detail on this part as the pictures describe it better than words do. As you can see, most of the Chinese teachers and students cannot swim, and are thus required to wear lifejackets. Last year a guy tried to do without, and nearly drowned, and nearly took an American girl with him who was trying to help.