A New Adventure Series: CHINESE ROAD TRIP
We have finished the trip reports from Torgeir Higrath’s World Tour 2023, and we now leave him settled back into his mundane domestic drudgery mode in Norway. (Yeah, right. With Torgeir, time at home is merely an interim period while he incubates his next adventure. Stay tuned.) If you are just joining us at TEL, you can read the entire set of his World Tour observations in the archives. Now, for you adrenlin-seeking, alliteration-addicted, armchair adventurers, it is time for a new tale in a new time zone. Indeed, this story is from a different time period.
Inquiring minds want to know… How did my expat life start? What was it like during those critically important first months as I formed my new lifestyle? As a foreign teacher, I was too busy to venture far from my campus. However, like my students, the summer holiday between semesters offered opportunities to see something new, try something new, and become something new… if I didn’t die in the process. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t die.) Here is the first installment of one such adventure from that life-changing year.
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PREFACE
I am an American but this story is set in China in 2004. Hard to believe that this adventure took place nearly 20 years ago. A little background: I had been invited to come to China and be an English teacher at Zhengzhou (pronounced “Jung Joe”) University in Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan province in north-central China. It would be an understatement to say that going from a small town in Missouri to a city of millions in the very heart of China was more than a mere geographical transition; population density, language, history, food, and music were all completely different. You could say it was culture shock on steroids.
However, I was very, very fortunate. I will leave out any attributions to karma, destiny, or Fate/fate and just say that everything went wonderfully well during the critical period when I was adapting to an entirely new lifestyle in my new time zone. Like the incident in this short story of nearly-but-not-quite falling off the side of a mountain, most events had a happy ending. Undoubtedly, positive expectations helped but good friends, good food, and good luck combined to provide a happy ending in this short, true story of a two-day road trip during my summer holiday from teaching.
But… beware of the trip jinxes!
Chinese Road Trip, Part 1
Imagine you are at the airport in St. Louis, Missouri early one cold, snowy morning in the first week of February. You are traveling alone, accompanied only by three overstuffed suitcases, with a laptop computer as your carry-on luggage. You fly to Chicago, then board a second plane for Beijing. Arriving in Beijing, you immediately transfer to a much smaller plane for a flight to Zhengzhou in Henan province in the very heart of China. You have accepted an invitation to be a teacher at a Chinese university. You should, naturally, expect a few changes in your lifestyle. There will be.
Now imagine that it is August, six months later. In the first week of that sweltering month, you find yourself near Zhengzhou climbing a mountain, Song Shan, one of China’s “Big Five”. That hot August afternoon, halfway up the mountain, you are breathing heavily. Leg-weary, and sweating profusely from the summer heat and humidity with still a long, long climb remaining, you can well imagine asking, “How did I get myself into this?”
You might mean more than just why were you struggling up a mountain on a hot summer afternoon; you might mean the whole new life you had found.
This is a true story, my story. I really did leave St. Louis, Missouri on a cold, snowy February morning and fly to China. Six months later, I really did climb Song Shan on that hot August afternoon…
Some events are jinxed. From its very beginning, the trip to climb Song Shan was certainly one of them. That doesn’t mean that all my adventures were jinxed; most were not. But there is no other explanation for all the calamities, disasters, and continual minor mishaps which occurred on our trip to climb Song Shan.
The trip to climb Song Shan began innocently enough. One evening on the campus, I had dinner at the student cafeteria with my freshman friend Jimmy and his girlfriend Jennifer. Jimmy presented me with an intriguing invitation. By now, I knew of the nearby city of Dengfeng. Dengfeng was near enough to Zhengzhou to be considered part of Zhengzhou’s metropolitan area which numbered about seven million. (Zhengzhou itself had a population of only about three million at the time, not a major city by modern Chinese standards.) Tourists went to Dengfeng to see the Shaolin Temple, the ancestral home of kung fu (also called gong fu). Dengfeng was at the base of a famous mountain, Song Shan (Song Mountain), on whose slopes the temple was located.
However, Jimmy’s immediate proposal didn’t involve kung fu. Jimmy told me that Song Shan was an attraction in its own right and he was inviting me to go with him to climb Song Shan. No, we wouldn’t actually visit the temple site, Jimmy said. We could come back some day in the future for that. This time, we might only see it in passing as we climbed to the top of Song Shan. Song Shan, he said, was considered one of China’s “Big Five” mountains that knowledgeable travelers visited and climbed. Best of all, since Dengfeng was so close to Zhengzhou, travel there would be quick and inexpensive, two highly important factors in student adventures. I agreed to go with Jimmy and he said that he would make travel plans so we could go soon, perhaps in the upcoming week.
Jimmy had indeed moved quickly. Consequently, only a few days later, we rendezvoused at the south gate of the campus at 6:30 in the morning to begin our journey to climb Song Shan. The previous day had been rainy but this morning was clear and still. Our group consisted of me and Jimmy, his girlfriend Jennifer, and a high school classmate of Jimmy’s, Suzy Wang. Suzy, also a college freshman, attended another local university and, like many students, was using her summer holiday to travel and visit old friends.
Wearing my fully loaded backpack, I joined the three students. We would catch Bus 68 to go downtown where we would catch the intercity bus to Dengfeng. Our tentative trip plan called for us to take a bus to Dengfeng and climb to the top of 1440 meter (about 4,700 feet) Song Shan, then return to Zhengzhou that evening. We were getting an early start but it was still unsettled if we would return that evening or stay overnight and return the next morning. It was my summer holiday; I was between semesters. With no classes or planned appointments, I could relax and, with the students, say, “It doesn’t matter.”
It was at this point, even before we left our campus, that our trip jinx made its first appearance. A brief delay was caused by the discovery of something vital left behind in a dorm room which must be retrieved. Then, another delay to purchase some drinks and snacks from nearby vendors. Then yet another minor delay. And yet another. This was only the beginning of what our trip jinx had in store for us. As our day became a successive comedy of errors, the agenda was altered repeatedly. Indeed, our initial rendezvous at the bus stop to catch Bus 68 was the only thing on the whole trip which went strictly according to Jimmy’s plan.
After a series of minor delays, the first major problem arose when we arrived at the downtown bus station to purchase intercity bus tickets to Dengfeng. Only after we stood in a long line and finally reached the ticket counter did we learn that the bus to Dengfeng used another terminal. There was nothing to do but leave this terminal and wait for another city bus to take us to the second terminal. Then, upon arriving at the correct terminal, we found we were too late for the early bus; it had already left. We purchased tickets and waited to board the next bus to Dengfeng. Thus, despite our early start, by the time the next bus finally pulled out with us on board, it was already past 11:00 and we still had an estimated one hour of travel time to cover the short distance to Dengfeng.
Once underway however, the next problem arose. The one-hour estimate was quickly made questionable by repeated stops after we left the terminal. In addition to scheduled stops, it seemed that not all passengers got on at the stations. Apparently, the route of the bus to Dengfeng was well known so many people simply waited at the side of the highway and flagged down the bus as it passed, paying the driver for their ticket as they boarded. Even before we left Zhengzhou, we had already stopped several times.
Our day’s schedule were already in tatters and any possibility of climbing to the top of Song Shan and coming back down, then returning by bus to Zhengzhou that night, was growing more remote with each new incident. However, in the August heat, still stopping occasionally to pick up additional passengers, we were at least on our way. As the bus chugged along the rough highway we encountered after leaving the city, we four relaxed and enjoyed the snacks and bottles of water we had all brought along. I had learned to carry food and water for just such eventualities.
When the bus neared the city of Dengfeng, I could see that it offered quite a contrast to Zhengzhou’s floodplain flatness. Actually, the rolling hills and distant tree-covered mountains we saw through the windows reminded me of the Smoky Mountains in America. So what if we were late? We were on holiday. Six months in China had taught me more patience. Like my student friends, I was learning to say, “It doesn’t matter.”
Because of all the delays, by the time we arrived at the bus terminal in Dengfeng, made our way to the base of Song Shan, and began our ascent, it was early afternoon. The August weather was hot and humid, we were getting a very late start, and the challenge ahead was daunting - at least for me - but this was what we had come for.
STAY TUNED, TEL SUBSCRIBERS. NEXT WEEK, THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES.