Calm Spirit/Ying Yu Jade China Trip 2006
Tianjin
We
took a morning train to Tianjin to visit my friend Sam, who became a US citizen
but prefers to live in China. His son is attending college in the US and he is
returning to the US soon, so he as glad to have a chance to practice his every
day English with us! He teaches English classes occasionally, but says his lips
get out of practice not speaking English daily.
Train
travel in China is very reliable and enjoyable. The trains are almost always on
time. There are signs in English in the train station and it's easy to purchase
a ticket, and foreigners usually travel "soft seat" in a comfortable
compartment. I really, truly enjoy traveling on the trains and for a trip between
cities, train travel is my choice over car or bus. Most Chinese travelers view
train travel as an event and take snacks, and there are plenty of opportunities
to purchase snacks and beverages on the train from the carts that pass through.
And there's recorded music, cheerful "departing the station" music,
and slightly mournful "arriving the station" music. For
long trips, there are sleeper cars, "soft" sleep, and "hard"
sleep.
The two men
across from us were Vietnamese business men going to Tianjin to deal with their
shipping business. We spent the 90 minute trip discussing a variety of subjects
and exchanging business cards.
Every time I visit Sam, he always has something
interesting going on. This time he wanted me to meet two friends who are businessmen
in Tianjin. His mother and father went with us to a restaurant owned by one of
his friends, where we were joined by a clothing manufacturer and a high school
teacher who also acted as an interpreter. The restaurant owner wanted our opinion
of his food, so he served a huge banquet of "gourmet" Tianjin style
Chinese food. The teacher explained that he is also an accomplished calligrapher
who has spent more than 30 years practicing daily calligraphy, writing the book
of Buddha on a scroll that takes about 80 hours of work, which he works on 2-3
hours every day. He presented me with one of his scrolls and gave me a calligraphy
lesson and a brush to keep, hoping I would continue to learn calligraphy. Then
we went to one of the clothing manufacturers stores, which is a Chinese-Italian
joint venture and toured the workshop and warehouse. We met his designers and
I tried on several clothings that were well made, but not really my style, so
I can't say I was impressed with the "fashions". However, I was impressed
with the original design fashions his employees wore. Chinese people demand modern
and stylish clothes, as we saw later on our trip in Guangzhou when we went to
a wholesale garment market. In general, Chinese people dress quite fashionably,
and look much better than the foreign tourists who visit China. More about this
subject later.
The gourmet dinner wasn't really an appropriate situation to take photos, it seemed like a rude thing to do at the time, but I would have loved to have some photos of the people, the food, and the presentation of the Buddha calligraphy scroll. There were other occasions on this trip that I didn't take photos, although I really wanted to, because it would have been rude. The people above are the Laoshi (teacher) garment business owner, Tom, me, Sam's mother, designer, Sam, another designer, and Sam's father. One of the designers gave me a gift of of a Buddha gift from her home city, a Buddha desk paper weight, two "chops" of a male and female child Buddha and a pen with calligraphy and a pearl on the top, really nice gift. The garment manufacturer gave me a catalog of professional photographs of his designs.
We intended to take the last express train back to Beijing in the late afternoon so we could go to the Chinese Opera, but they wanted us to stay longer and offered to have their driver take us back to Beijing. It started raining late in the afternoon and we weren't able to accomplish all they wanted us to, so we headed back to Beijing. The weather was so bad that they were closing the highway because of rain and fog and we were lucky to get on the highway. It took three hours to get back to Beijing by car, while the train takes about 90 minutes. We got gas at a rest stop that had one of the worst squat toilets in a dirt building "out back". These kind of toilets are awful little buildings with holes in the floor, no partitions, and you take it or leave it. Gas was being rationed because there was short supply, but we finally got to the hotel, exhausted, but early enough to get some sleep for the next day, our last full day in Beijing
Next: Tai Chi in Beijing, Teahouse
