That's right, he's the mayor!

When we were working at the Asian Affairs Center back in Missouri, a group of 20 government officials from Shandong province came to Columbia to live and study for 6 months. The stand out of the group was Mayor Ma. His English abilities were far superior to anyone else's in his group of 18, and he was really funny on top of it. Yes, he's a real, live mayor in a city that is only 4 hours away from us. He has visited us once here in Weihai, and we were super-embarrassed by our shabby dwelling. A couple of weekends ago we decided to go visit him on his home turf.

It was one of those scenarios where we weren't sure if it would be awkward or not, because we didn't really know anything about Changyi (other than that it's got approximately 600,000 people and is known for silk production). We had, however, heard all about Mayor Ma's hospitality when hosting visitors. A Chinese volleyball player at MU told us that she had never experienced a meal as nice as the one Mayor Ma treated her family to. As we boarded the bus to Changyi--we were two of only 6 other people on the bus--the only thing we really knew was that we were being dropped off somewhere other than the bus station, where a friendly man who spoke English well (Mayor Ma's translator) would meet us.

When we actually stepped off the bus, just past a tollway off of the main drag, we saw a black car and three smiling faces waving at us. We met a driver; the translator, Mr. Yang; and Mr. Yang's colleague, Ms. Fan. They told us how excited they were to meet us so that they could practice their English. Mr. Yang was very confident in his speaking skills; and rightly so--he taught English for 5 years and has traveled all over the world. In the USA, he's been to L.A., D.C. and New York.

We bantered a little bit while we drove through the city. There are basically two main roads in the town, perfectly perpendicular, and most of the buildings are along these two main streets. Similar to Qufu, much of (one of) the road(s) was flanked by a dirty little canal, that--though smelly--was lined with trees and was pleasant enough to look at. As we turned into the driveway of Changyi Hotel, Mr. Yang told us that Mayor Ma had arranged the nicest hotel in town for us.

He wasn't kidding.

We walked in through a revolving door, and instantly we saw a massive chandelier and blue and yellow-colored ceiling drapes hanging from a vaulted ceiling a few stories above . Mr. Yang told us to take a rest and to meet back downstairs when we were ready. Two different hotel employees escorted us to our room on the second floor, where another two women were standing by the open door to our room. The room was incredible. I mean, it wasn't overwhelmingly huge like you see in magazines or anything, but it was just so damn nice. And it actually had one big--SOFT--bed. The shower actually worked, there were fruits and tea set out for us, and there was a bidet--which is a big deal in China, folks. In Korea there were bidets everywhere. Not so in China, where the average toilet is a hole or trough of some sort with crap splattered all over it.

We had slept on the bus, so we didn't really need too much time to rest. We were really eager to see Mayor Ma, so we cleaned ourselves up a little bit and went to the lobby to wait. No one from our party was there yet, so we took it upon ourselves to explore a little bit. We walked down one corridor of the hotel's main floor, past the fresh seafood annex(?) of the kitchen, where all kinds of water creatures were swimming around, waiting for some rich dude to eat them. Past that was a little photo opportunity area, which included a goldfish pond with a rock path and a big fake mountainscape on the wall. Good stuff. We walked down the other main hallway to the tea rooms. I have never seen tea rooms like this before. Each room was private, with a sliding door and individual decoration. The lobby looked like some sort of Mexican cantina, except it somehow maintained a distinct Chinese feel, Christmas lights and all. All of the tables were made of out solid pieces of strangely twisted and shaped tree trunks, their branches contorted and shellacked and turned into a series of shelves for holding tea or spoons or pots or whatever else can be shelved in a tea room. I wouldn't know. We only looked at the rooms.

Back in the lobby we met Mayor Ma, who followed us up to our room so he could make sure it was to ours/his liking. We presented him with the bottle of Jim Beam we had purchased for him as a gift. He insisted that we bring it do dinner. We walked back downstairs to our private dinner room, where we met Mr. Yang and Ms. Fan, the driver and some other man. I don't remember his name. But I think I gave him our cards. I know that he got up in the middle of our meal to go next door and buy me some medicine for my throat. I had a nasty cough--still do; going on 2 weeks now--and everyone was convinced that I needed lozenges and whiskey to make my throat feel better.

Dinner was nothing short of incredible. Really. There were more than 25 dishes on the table, and because we were "honored guests", Mayor Ma went all out (I suppose, too, because he's a high-ranking government official). We had a few different delicious soups, sea cucumber (an edible status symbol over here), duck, beef, pork, chicken, every vegetable imaginable. Too many things to even remember. And we cheersed a lot while Mayor Ma told us that we have to come back with Jamie in July, because he "miss[es] her very much." A really endearing sentiment. We drank the bottle of Jim Beam (an "American" gift), and then Mayor Ma insisted that we try some wine made in Changyi. "Wine" here means baijiu, and it didn't taste nearly as good as the whiskey, but as far as baijiu goes, it wasn't bad.

After dinner, Mayor Ma changed into sporting clothes and invited us to play table tennis and pool. Table tennis is taken very seriously over here, and it was a really funny experience playing with Mayor Ma. I mean, we're just a couple of 20-somethings, really easy-going, with tattoos, converse and lots of food service experience. But Mayor Ma doesn't care. He's just thankful that we helped improve his English.

Rory is much better at table tennis than I am. Initially, the two of us were playing, and I suggested that just Rory and Mayor Ma play. Mayor Ma said "I think that I am better at table tennis than you." It was funny because it was so obvious. But Rory, too, had been holding back while playing me, so as to not make me look like a complete idiot. Once he and Mayor Ma started playing, though, he stepped up his game. Mayor Ma just kept saying "Oh. Good job. Oh. Good job." It was pretty funny. The best part, though, was that there was some hotel staff member who had been assigned ball pick-up duty, so she ran around in a formal uniform and high heels, picking up ping pong balls that were flying all over the room.

We decided to try to play pool for a little bit, but we are really bad at that, and Mayor Ma had never played before. There was some instruction, but we gave up on that really quickly. The two dudes went back into the table tennis room, and I tried to play pool with the lady ping pong "ballhunter". We both laughed at how bad we were, and then we gave up and rejoined the dudes. We called it an early evening and went to sleep.

We met Mayor Ma and the gang for breakfast. It was in the same room we had the night before, and it was probably the largest breakfast I've ever had. I thought that getting the #11 from Ernie's was massive, but this spread was incredible. It was also a good excuse to eat meat in the morning--it's just a regular meal, but the breakfast part of it is the milk and coffee and eggs.

Unfortunately Mayor Ma was going to be busy all day--doing mayor things, I guess--so he said his goodbyes and told us he'd see us at dinner. We walked up to our room to get out things for our day of exploring with Mr. Yang and Ms. Fan, and Mr. Yang met us there with presents from Mayor Ma. We each received a nicely wrapped box of towels. Evidently there is a pretty sizeable towel factory in Changyi, so it seemed fitting. We were very thankful for the towels, and we were very thankful that we had English-speaking tour guides for the day, especially because we had no idea what we were going to be doing and we wouldn't know where to start on our own in a city like Changyi.

We all met up and took off on a drive out into the country. We drove out of the city, down little side roads, weaving in and out of farmers who were using the pavement to rake, sift and dry their wheat crops. I have never seen anything quite like it. Evidently it is illegal to use the road for grain/wheat drying, but as long as farmers don't do it on the main streets in town, no one cares. But there were at least 50 different farmers out on the roads, each with their own little plots of wheat--maybe 15 feet long and 6 feet across--walking back and forth, raking and beating out the moisture. So cool.

We drove a little further, and the groves and farms on the sides of the roads started turning into lakes, ponds, hatcheries. We pulled into a hatchery, and we weren't quite sure what was happening. We all opened our doors to get out of the car, and two really mean dogs started lunging towards us, barking. So we stayed in the car a little longer and pulled up closer to the entrance of a building. There was big truck parked in front of the doorway, with two men in galoshes standing in the bed of it. It was full of fish. Turbot fish. We were at a turbot fish hatchery. Another man (shirtless and sweaty) kept going back and forth between the truck and the hatchery, carrying big buckets of these crazy-looking, slimy fish to load up in the truck. The men smiled at us, but I could tell that they weren't necessarily thrilled that some "rich foreigners" came out to watch them slave away over some fish.

Inside the hatchery we could see rows and rows of round cement tubs, all full of water and fish. When we looked in the tubs, though, it was hard to see the turbot--they were the same color as their surroundings, and they all lumped together at the bottom of the pool. We didn't stay there very long, but long enough for me to take some pictures with my new camera. It was dark in the place, and I haven't quite figured out how to use the camera, so we'll see how the pictures turn out.

After the hatchery, we drove further down a road that really was out in the middle of nowhere. Eventually pavement turned into gravel, and we found ourselves surrounded by shrimp farms. Mr. Yang explained that we were very close to the sea, and that the particular locale was responsible for the most shrimp output in Shandong province. Evidently the farms used to be full of Japanese shrimp--which taste better--but after all the shrimp succumbed to some sort of shrimp disease, the farm started using orange shrimp imported from South America. Disease-free, yes; but not as tasty.

We got the impression that our hosts might not have been sure whether we were enjoying ourselves. They were responsible for planning our entire day, and maybe the 20-somethings would want to do something besides look at shrimp farms. We made sure to let them know how grateful we were to be out in the middle of "real China". We got to go to the places where the buses can't go, and the only way we would ever get to see anything like this is if we watched Discovery Channel. Or if we know Mayor Ma. We felt very privileged.

A little further past rows of shrimp farms, the gravel road curved and we could see water. Lots of it. We had come to the sea. There was something pretty remarkable about this spot, too. There weren't any tourists or vendors or restaurants, and when you looked out across the water, all you could see were fishing boats and little belts of sand and gravel that peeked through shallow water. We actually had some privacy in a beautiful place--rare in China. I imagine this place would have been amazing at sunrise.

Our next stop on the tour de Chinese countryside was a salt farm. Yes, salt. I believe Mr. Yang said that this area of Changyi also produced the most salt. We drove up to a giant mound of it, still in big, rocky chunks. There were two men standing on top, raking through it, doing whatever you do in this phase of salt production. These were some hard-working fellas, and as we walked across a water ditch--via a little wooden plank--we came across more workers, knee-deep in mud and water and salt. One man was driving this four-wheeler-looking thing, and I tried to imagine the start of the day; a bunch of dudes drawing straws to see who gets to ride around in the mud all day. That actually looked really fun.

We left the salt farm and started driving back into town, back past the shrimp and turbot and wheat. Once we were in town, we pulled into the driveway of something that looked like the botanical gardens in St. Louis. There were all kinds of crazy flowers and plants and greenhouses. It was so cool! We walked on a zigzagging footbridge across a pond full of lotus flowers. Mr. Yang told us that this place had been designed by a poor farmer a long time ago, and the man wanted to show off his love and knowledge of horticulture; he also wanted to make sure his son wouldn't be poor, as long as he kept up the place.

We walked into a building on the premises, and it was like walking into some tropical paradise. Maybe that's a little extreme, but after walking around salt/shrimp/fish farms, this place was such a stark contrast. Inside the building (which was a hotel and restaurant), everything was climate-controlled, so the trees were tropical and it felt like being in a rainforest. We walked into a little room that had wicker furniture, a lazy susan table and a bathroom (with bidet). One of the walls was made entirely of glass, though, and it looked out into the "rainforest", pagodas and trees and paths. We thought that we were just taking a little rest before we went somewhere else. I mean, yes, we were with the mayor's entourage--actually, this weekened we were part of the entourage--but we didn't think we'd be eating out of gold bowls, with gold chopsticks and little gold dragon cups. But I guess you should expect anything when hanging out with members of "the party", and it turned out we were eating there.

This was probably the nicest meal of the entire trip. It's a shame that Mayor Ma wasn't actually there, because the food was awesome. Again, there were more than 20 dishes, all to welcome us, the honored guests. It was nice. After this meal we went back to the hotel to nap for an hour or so before heading to Weifang. Changyi county is part of Weifang city/municipality (the way that works is exactly backwards from the United States). Weifang has 8.5 million people, and it is the kite capital of the world.

It didn't take much time to get to Weifang, and it was (obviously) significantly larger than Changyi. For starters, it had more than two main roads Before going to the city museum, we went to a multi-level department store in the heart of downtown. We have multi-level department stores here in Weihai, too, but we hadn't been into one this nice before. We bought some batteries for the camera and headed to the museum.

It was so cool to look at all of these ancient archealogical artifacts and realize that damn near all of them are older than America. I mean, China knows the meaning of "ancient." One floor of the museum had a bunch of kites on display on the wall, and that's when I remembered that Weifang has the international kite festival every year. I decided that we needed some kites. Rather than buying them from the museum, though, Mr. Yang said he knew a good area of town to go to. So we were off again, and when we stopped, we were on "kite row". Both sides of a street were lined with kite shops. Kites unlike any I've ever seen. And they were so cheap. Walking into a room full of brightly-colored kites made me feel like a little kid. I wanted to buy a hundred of them. We settled on three. We will definitely be going back to Weifang for the festival in September.

We headed back to Changyi to meet Mayor Ma for our last dinner of the trip. We had another incredible meal--minus the Jim Beam this time, which was okay, since we had to catch a 7:00 bus the next morning--and it was nice to just recount the events of the day. We called it an early evening.

We met the next morning for an intense breakfast. They served us hot milk (not room temperature like all of the other milk); and I actually like hot milk, but it would have been bad with all of my snot. After the meal we said goodbye to Mayor Ma--he gave us another gift of Chinese paper cutting--and we vowed to come back in July so we can visit a silk production plant where workers actually remove the silk from the silkworm. And we'll go to a clothing factory. Mr. Yang and Ms. Fan accompanied us to the bus station--they even bought our tickets for us--and they made sure to let the driver know that we were the mayor's guests, and we needed to be dropped off in a special locale in Weihai. That was an awesome gesture, too, because it saved us about 35rmb that we would have spent taking a cab back from the bus station, way out in the middle of nowhere.

We came back to our school and our room and our squatter, and the whole "being treated like royalty" thing still hadn't sunk in. We walked into our room with our arms full of presents and a day off from work. The Party is truly powerful over here. And we know people who are a part of it all. It's crazy.