We left BLCU at 5:30 on Friday afternoon (the 11th), taking a bus to 北京站, Beijing station (though actually only Beijing's second largest station, Beijing West being far larger - the biggest in Asia).
After eating dinner near the station, we got settled in to our train, in the 硬卧 (hard sleeper) section. Basically, a hard sleeper means beds bunked in sets of 3 (ie, top, middle, bottom) facing another set of the same to make groups of 6. These groups of 6 beds are not sealed off in any way from the rest of the car, so there's absolutely no privacy, even if you know everyone else in your set of 6 (and we didn't, we were all separated, no one else in my set was from HBA). The HBA students in my car chatted for a couple hours until 10:00 PM, lights out in the train, when we went to sleep on the decently acceptable beds.At 7:00 the next morning we were awakened to prepare to arrive in 太原 (Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province) at 7:30. It was then that I learned about the first bit of drama for the trip. At around 3:00 AM the previous night, one of our fellow HBAers was mistakenly told by the train attendants to get off at an intermediate stop. He did, and, obviously was distressed when the train departed and he was left there alone, in a train station in an insignificant town. He managed to make it in later that day, but I'm sure it was quite an interesting experience.
While I'm at it, I might as well introduce the group of people I traveled with. There were 12 of us in total - 2 HBA teachers and 10 students. The teachers were 苏老师 - Professor Su, the head 5th year teacher at HBA - and 严老师 - Professor Yan, a 2nd year teacher. They'll both feature prominently in some future posts. The 10 students were:
1. A 4th year male Korean sophomore from Harvard, who acquired the affectionate nickname of 韩国哥哥 - Korean big brother (though he should actually have been 韩国弟弟 - Korean little brother - from my perspective since I'm a year older).
2. A 4th year male Japanese student from Harvard, who, in the spirit of simplicity, became 日本朋友- Japanese friend (I'm doing this in part because I don't know the characters for most of their Chinese names, but also because we actually referred to each other this way a decent amount of the time).
3. A 2nd year female Vietnamese sophomore from Harvard - I'll use 越南朋友 (Vietnamese friend, if you can't guess) for her.
4. A 3rd year female Thai junior from Harvard - 泰国朋友 (Thai friend)
5. A 2nd year female California sophomore from Harvard, whose hometown (the Valley) and pronunciations characteristic of it earned her the name 山谷女孩 (Valley Girl).
6. A 4th year female Chinese-American sophomore from Yale (华裔朋友-literally ethnic Chinese who isn't a Chinese citizen friend)
7. A 2nd year male New Jersey Jew junior from Yale (his Chinese name is 天奇, 苏老师 gave him the nickname 奇奇怪怪 - which means something like "strange person" - it plays off one of the characters in his actual name)
8. A 2nd year male New Yorker sophomore from Yale, who sadly is both nickname-less and has a name whose Chinese characters are unknown to me.
9. A 3rd year male Oregonian junior from Brandeis. He's the one who got off the train at the wrong time, so he can be 在五台山下车的朋友 (got off the train at Wutaishan station friend)
10. Yours truly (3rd year male Californian junior from Yale, for those keeping track). I'll go by the name "me" for the purposes of this story.
Anyhow, the rest of this post won't really make much use of the above characters, but they might play a role in later weeks. We all got along quite well, both with each other and with the teachers, and I'm kind of sad not to be hanging out with them all the time anymore (particularly the 4th years, who live in a different building from the rest of us at HBA).
A few more important characters:
1.Liang Wentao (sorry, don't know the characters，so I'll just call him 小梁, a student, originally from Shanxi, studying at a Beijing university, who traveled with us for the entirety of the trip.
2. The two people who arranged our itinerary, who also traveled with us (and were at times mildly creepy, at other times incompetent, at other times fairly cool)
3. The driver of our bus in Shanxi.
Anyhow, after arriving in Taiyuan, we boarded said bus, which took us to our hotel, where we were able to change clothes and shower (or at least, I could shower, my roommate was the person who had gotten of the train at the wrong place, so I had more time than everyone else), and eat breakfast. After breakfast, we took our bus to the Number 2 Foreign Language School of Taiyuan, where we each were assigned a group of 4-5 high school students to take us around the city for the rest of the day, and with whom we could talk, and ask questions about Shanxi, their school, etc (remember, this is supposed to be a social study project, not a vacation).
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After showing me around the school, my group of students took me to lunch at a hotpot restaurant, before continuing to the Shanxi provincial historical museum (and given the number of my fellow HBAers I saw there, my students weren't the only ones with that idea). As we walked up to the museum, we ran into a lost older Canadian man, who we helped find the museum, and with whom we walked around once inside. The students were definitely excited, because it let them practice their English, since my language pledge prevented them from speaking anything save Chinese with me.
After leaving the museum in the late afternoon, we went to a park, where, among other interesting things, we came across a large group of people singing 革命歌曲 - Revolutionary songs (think China in the 50s, 60s, 70s). We also encountered 华裔朋友 and her group of Chinese students with whom we headed to dinner. Dinner consisted of a Shanxi noodle specialty, which was fairly good (though far from the best food I've had in China). After dinner we returned to the hotel, along with 日本朋友 who had been eating at the same restaurant.
That's all for now - I'll continue next week.
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