"V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N! We're gonna have a ball!" Part I: Qufu

We have only been in China for two months, and already we got to go on vacation. There was a labor day holiday, so all the people in China who have "real" jobs got to take a break. The other teachers at the school got (maybe) 4 days of vacation, but we received 10. Just being in Weihai seems like a vacation to us already, so we were (and still are) feeling a little spoiled. But, as people who have spent the last few years of our lives working in jobs with no health insurance or benefits--and especially not paid vacation time--we were really excited about the prospect of traveling here in China, and we were determined to make the most of the time off. We thought about going to Beijing and surrounding areas to see the Great Wall, but then we were told that everyone is in Beijing during the holidays, and that the Great Wall might lose its luster in a sea of tourists. So then we decided to just travel around our province a little bit.

Our first stop was Qufu, Confucius' hometown. Initially we were going to go to Jinan and then to Qufu the next day, but there was a little bit of a misunderstanding at the bus station (nothing we couldn't fix, though). We ended up getting tickets directly to Qufu (en route to Jining), with the bus departing bright and early Sunday morning. When we showed up at the bus station, one of the first people that we saw standing outside was a police officer/security guard. He was eager to talk to us and help us out in any way possible. Even though we told him we didn't need any help and that we knew where our gate was/had already purchased our tickets, he insisted. It paid off, too. He walked us to our gate, spoke with the ticket lady, and then motioned for us to follow him out the doors and to a really busy bus "waiting" area. We walked right through a mass of people with whom we would later share the bus. I'm sure they loved that. Our bus was not yet in the loading zone, but there were already a few other people on it. A really old couple was sitting in seats near the front of the bus, the woman coughing up snot and whatever else into a little trash can between her feet. She would do this for the duration of the trip. We put our two big bags under the bus, and then we were shown to our seats. They were the first two on the bus, directly across from the bus "helper" seats.

In China, because there are so many freaking people, it is impossible to find a store or a shop or anything with only one person working. When you walk into a restaurant, a grocery store, a mall--anywhere--there are immediately more than enough people there to help you. It's the same on the bus. There were two drivers (it was an 8+ hour trip) and maybe two bus "helpers". These people collect money, maintain order on the bus and generally just sort of hang out. We showed the police officer and our bus driver our text message in Chinese that said (I think): "we need to stop at the bus station in Qufu." Sophie, a girl I work with, really helped us out in getting our tickets and making sure we knew (and the bus driver knew) where the hell we were going. We took pictures with the police officer, told him thank you over and over, and got ready to depart.

The bus filled up quickly. We had already heard the lore of crazy mass transportation during the holidays, so we were just very thankful that we were able to be on the bus before everyone else, fair or no. We stopped at a bus station very close to our school to pick up more people who wanted to go to Jining. Turns out there weren't enough seats for everyone, so the bus helpers started breaking out little folded up stools that had been hiding underneath seats. There was a trio of girls who sat on stools or (on newspaper) on the floor of the bus. For 8 hours. I felt bad for them, but then I was just glad that I wasn't the one awkwardly crumpled up in a little heap on a tiny stool.

The first bus driver was awesome. He was a real "take no shit" kind of guy who made it immediately clear that he was the king of the road. He was constantly laying on the horn; making all the cars, industrial trucks and even the other buses get the hell out of his way. He also chain-smoked and hocked loogies out the window. I sort of got the impression that he and the other bus driver/helpers were saying inappropriate and funny things to the Chinese girl trio, but because I couldn't understand it, I wasn't offended. We took a picture with him, too. We also took a picture of the really cute baby who sat behind us; actually, he pretty much stood on his mom's lap the entire ride, so every time I would turn around, I would be face to face with this little baby, singing a bunch of the same words over and over at the top of his lungs. He was really well-behaved for such a long bus ride.

Right before we pulled into Qufu, we stopped at a gas station to refuel. We got off the bus to stretch a little bit. It turns out that one of the bus helpers spoke some English, but he'd been holding out on us the whole trip. We think he got the courage to talk to us because he knew that we were getting off the bus in 10 minutes. So he and another man came over and started to draw a few characters in the sand. We couldn't understand them, but then they started talking: something along the lines of: "Bush is enemy". They made motions with their hands of gunfire. It was the first time we experienced any sort of political "discourse" here in China. So we just said (in our best Chinese, which is laughable): "Bush shi bu hao"--Bush is not good--and we gave the thumbs-down sign. The Chinese folks liked that a lot, so they said "good" over and over, patted us on our backs, and we got back on the bus.

When we rolled into Qufu, it seemed like all of the little things that could potentially be a real pain in the ass didn't come to fruition, and everything magically fell into place. One of the bus helpers led us to a man who had a sheet (in English) with price listings for all the nearby hotels. We pointed to the cheapest one--while they tried to insist that we spend 5X as much money--and away we went. We walked out of the bus station, past Confucius' temple, to our hotel. We were so close to everything we wanted to see. When we walked in to the hotel, they tried to charge us more money than we had first pointed out, so we did our new favorite thing: turn around and pretend like we're leaving. It worked. They gave us the room we had asked for, and I paid the man 10 extra rmb for guiding us to the place. The room wasn't that great, but it wasn't bad, either. We have low expectations for shelter here in China--we already have to live in a tiny dorm room with a squatter--so a room with a western toilet that is pretty dirty is no big deal. We didn't plan on hanging out in hotel rooms for our entire vacation anyway.

We set our stuff down and decided to go explore (and eat) a little bit before calling it an early evening. We had a busy day of touristy stuff to do the next day, and we wanted to be in fine form. We walked past some small boutiques to the first clean-ish restaurant we could find. We sat down, ordered some beers and food and started people-watching. There were plenty of people walking by, and once they saw (through the windows) that there were two foreigners in town, they all did double and triple takes. It never gets old. We had our eyes on one little boy who was playing outside, though. He was fiddling with something, but for the longest time we didn't know what it was. And then I saw a wing. I asked Rory if it was a dead bird, realizing how ridiculous that seemed as soon as I asked. It was a bird. But only partly dead. With its feet tied to a string, the other end held by this really excited little boy who was shaking it violently up, down and around. His mother saw that he had the bird, and rather than slapping it out of his hand or scolding him or making him wash his hands, she instead tossed the bird into a little basket on her motorcycle and she and her son rode off. It was a little disturbing. I don't want to pass judgment, but that's freaking gross.

We finished dinner and walked around the temple area, the streets lined with vendors selling "chops". Chops are stamps, little pieces of stone with Chinese images and symbols on them; and for a small fee, you can have your name carved into the bottom of one, so when you stamp something, your name shows up. Chops vendors were everywhere, and their signs bragged (in Chinese and in English) that "the job is done in 2 minutes." It seemed funny to me that they would focus on the fast part of carving names, characters and letters into these tiny pieces of stone. Just spell everything correctly and make it look nice--take five minutes if you need to do it right. The other vendors sold a lot of scrolls, things made out of coconut shells, jewelry, toys, fake swords, you name it; and you try to name your price. Haggling is the name of the game. And it was all within walking distance of our hotel. In fact, the entire 3 days we were in Qufu, we never took a taxi. That was nice. We walked back to our room and called it quits for the evening.

The next morning we woke up bright and early--which isn't too difficult these days, since we have to be awake early everyday anyway--to go tour Confucius' temple. It was raining a little bit, but that sort of just went with the mood of a temple tour. We walked in, and we were immediately struck by just how old everything was. I mean, in America, when you visit a museum or an old place, you see things that are hundreds of years old; but in China, "old" takes on a whole new meaning. This temple is one of the three largest architectual complexes in China, and it originated in 478 BC. Each year, as Confucianism became more of the governing ideology of China, the temple was expanded (accordingly). I never really thought I would see something that old, but then I was surrounded by the temple walls, the trees--we saw trees there that were 500 years old! 500 years old! It was incredible!--some of the original paintings and curtains, and it was just an amazing time. And through it all, we were in the midst of all of these other tourists (99% Asian; I think we saw some big, hairy white guy, too...).

When we first walked in, we noticed a lot of giggling high school and college-aged Asian girls, but we didn't really think anything of it, until we realized that they were trying to "secretly" take our pictures. Obviously, we don't care if folks take our pictures--we're friendly, we won't bite--snap away! So as it was becoming more clear that these chicks cared less about Confucius and more about the foreigners, some of them built up the courage to come take pictures with us. The first person who built up the nerve was a middle-aged woman in a white track suit with matching white gloves. She was really funny, and you could tell that there was some sort of pride on her part because she was the first to pose with us. After that, though, everyone wanted pictures. For the rest of our time in the temple, in fact. There was even a Korean family that wanted us to pose with their two children. It really is like being a celebrity. We love it. We got to take some funny pictures of our own, though. Inside one of the temple buildings, there was an area where you could--for a small fee--dress up in traditional garb and have your picture taken in a throne. We only had enough money on us for one of us to do it (go figure--no atm in the temple), so we decided Rory should do it. It was hilarious. Rory with his royal mustache...

We went and ate lunch, and then went back to the room to rest. Later we went back to a different area of town--still within the temple walls--and had some crawfish that we hand-picked out of a cart. We sat at a table outside and watched all the people try to cycle or walk or even drive through the crowds of people buying goat head meat (which I tasted-not bad!), bubble tea, squid skewers and every other random thing you imagine you will never want to eat. It was nice. We also ate at this McDonald's knockoff place that sold chicken burgers--McChickens, really. They still had their Christmas tree up from the Chinese New Year celebration, and the entire time we were in the place, there was a little guy hiding behind the tree, spying on us. It was funny. I took a picture of the tree, and I think he thought I was taking a picture of him being nosy. But like I said, we don't really care if people stare at us or take pictures of us. We know we look different over here.

The next day we woke up and decided to do the mansion tour. It was significantly cheaper to go to the mansion, yet it was just as big, and we both liked it better. It was just like you see in all the kung fu movies: a knot of narrow corridors that somehow linked all of the large gardens and courtyards; balconies that seemed ideal for some ninja to scale (or toss someone off of); amazing foliage and attention to (ancient) detail. In all of the paintings we saw, I was so struck by how well you could still see the colors. I mean, these were ancient paintings, and yet the blue was so vibrant. Even the painted ceilings and columns all had this incredible blue throughout them. It was cool. We were hoping there would be a similar opportunity for me to dress up like an empress--we brought money this time, and my hair looked cute!--but there was no such luck. We did ask two girls to take our picture on a little bridge, though, so that turned out nice.

After the mansion tour, we ate lunch at a really nice restaurant immediatly across the street from the mansion gate. The menu was in Chinese and in English, and it involved a lot of pictures. Plus, they served cold beer. Cold! We ordered some really good food, marvelled at the fact that no one tried to screw us over (being foreigners), and vowed to come back for dinner. After lunch we went shopping. We bought (and bargained for) scrolls, fans, piggy toys, chops with our Chinese and English names carved in them, everything we had decided we wanted the day before. It was great. We had yet to buy anything really tangible in China, so it felt good to purchase these "real" reminders that a) we're in China and b) Confucius would have wanted us to buy a jumbo, husky pencil with his likeness on it. In fact, he would have wanted us to buy four of them.

We went back to the market/outside food area to have a snack before gorging ourselves at the nice restaurant for dinner. We eyeballed some vegetables and repeatedly asked (in Chinese) how much it would cost. The vendors pretended they didn't hear or understand us. We figured it would be cheap because we didn't have any meat or anything, we just had a couple of stir-fried veggie dishes; and we know how much things are SUPPOSED to cost. When we were finished, though, the old couple who ran the cart tried to charge us waaaaay too much for the food. We ain't fools, so we started a shouting match in the street, standing our ground (in Chinese). Other vendors from neighboring carts came over to see what the commotion was, and although they laughed at the price the couple had written down, they certainly didn't try to help us; realistically, they probably would have tried to do the same thing. We ended up getting our way, and off we went to do more exploring.

We walked past some cages of sleeping puppies, and of course I wanted to take pictures of them. The man selling the puppies thought that maybe I wanted to buy one, so he came over and started to shake the shit out of these cages, shouting at the puppies in Chinese: "wake up! wake up!" and probably "make me some money!" It seemed cruel, but somehow I couldn't stop watching him shake these cages. Rory brought me out of my trance, and we continued walking, trying to follow the sound of loud, live music blaring out of a speaker. We came across an electronics store that was doing an mp3, mp4, pager promotion. They had erected a large stage in front of the store, where a small crowd was gathered, all trying to get the attention of this spiky-haired singer and his female, sexy(?) counterpart. They were writhing around on stage, singing songs and hamming it up, all trying to get folks to check out this electronics store. I grabbed the camcorder and headed toward the stage. As soon as the dude saw me in front of the stage, with a camcorder, he turned into an American Idol hopeful, hand gestures and everything. Maybe he thought I was going to put him on American tv. Nope, just our blog. My curiosity, coupled with his desire to be an American pop star, was fruitful. He gave me a bag. We stuck around a little longer, watching people practically fight over these pagers that were being thrown out into the audience, and then we headed back to our restaurant.

We ordered some of the same food we had eaten earlier in the day, and we also ordered an entire fish. It was steamed and brought out on a platter. Oh my god it was good! There were two waitresses in the restaurant who were students at Qufu Normal University, and they were working at the restaurant for one week only, just during the holiday time. They spoke English pretty well, so we encouraged them to talk to us. Finally we asked their boss if it was okay for them to sit down and drink some beer with us. He was amused by all of it, and gave them permission. We talked and drank beer until the restaurant closed. Then the entire wait staff and the boss joined us at our table, giving us some more (free) food and adult beverages. It was a really nice time. We left the restaurant and walked past one shop that was still open. It was a scroll shop; Rory spent some time inside bargaining with the owner, while I went outside to get some fresh air and remind myself why it's bad to overindulge. We went to sleep and woke up the next day--one of us pretty hungover. damn baiju--ready to depart for Taian and Mt. Taishan, only one hour away. Even though I was hungover, I was still in good spirits. We were on vacation, after all, and something about Qufu and Confucius and scrolls made it clear to me that we are in a place with so much history and culture. I felt very privileged to be a part of it all; I maintained this attitude for the rest of our trip, and I maintain it still, even as I sit in our tiny room. Our tiny room in freaking China.