complete with traditional instruments of torture. For the Chinese lesson of the day, it should be noted that the character used to label the prison, 狱 (see picture, the character I typed is different because it's simplified), is composed of the radical (symbol that makes up part of a character) meaning speech between two varieties of the radical meaning dog. Kind of interesting.
Anyhow, the prison was certainly exciting, though the instruments of torture were mildly terrifying. I've also decided that the photo of me with 苏老师 behind the bars in the cell window is a fitting depiction of HBA. A lot of teachers, it should be noted, have negative feelings towards it, or, to be more accurate, towards 冯老师 (Professor Feng, the head of the program), which, from what I can tell, are entirely fair feelings to have. Professor Feng has a bit of an 一意孤行 (a 4 character phrase meaning "to blindly insist on one's own way of doing things") problem, despite the fact that he no longer teaches Chinese classes himself, either at Harvard or in Beijing. As to how this all relates to torture, well, let's just say that 苏老师 thought some of the devices we saw would be great to use on 冯老师.
At the Yamen, we also had the opportunity to see a performance of a Qing-era trial for filial impiety. Though "see" is a loose term given the huge number of other tourists (without exception Chinese) between the actors and me. Given my already somewhat limited Chinese, this left me not understanding too much.
Returning from the Yamen, we had an hour long meeting in our hotel with an expert on Pingyao's economy as well as a couple of traditional craftsmen. Needless to say, given the way our Social Study project works, the expert got most of the questions. Among other things he complained about restrictions on the price of coal hampering Shanxi's development, and denied that global warming fears would have any effect on the coal industry there..
After lunch, we visited a modern court, outside the walls of the old city, where we had the chance to ask judges questions about modern Chinese law. I found this to be the most interesting interviewing opportunity during our time in Shanxi, as the judge who answered our questions not only told us lots of interesting things about law in China and the Chinese point of view on it, but because he had a pretty good understanding of American law he was able to compare the principles on which they are based.
Anyhow, after visiting the court, we returned to our hotel and had free time for the rest of the afternoon. I wandered around the city for a couple hours mostly with 越南朋友 and 山谷女孩, eventually buying my mother a present (probably the most important thing I had to do in China, she is my mother after all). After dinner we went to see a dance performance, through which I barely managed to stay awake. After that it was there was a ghost-storyless gathering in my room (singing of Chinese songs mostly) before everyone headed off to bed, as we had to get up early the next morning to...
Go to the Buddhist holy mountain of 五台山 (Wutai shan, "Five Plateau Mountain"), 6+ hours away. I spent the bus ride sleeping/watching the movies playing on the bus's TV (which I could, for the most part, barely hear, helping with the sleep). Arriving in Wutaishan, however, was exciting for me, as it put me in the mountains, where I'd spent nearly all the summers of my life before this one (though that's in Colorado, not China). So I was certainly happy to be in a place with clean air, beautiful scenery, and all the other natural things lacking in China's cities, whether Beijing, Taiyuan, Xi'an, or elsewhere. The Great Wall also is mountainous, of course, but the pollution renders the effect less powerful.
Our hotel in Wutaishan was easily the grandest place we stayed on the trip, definitely more on the luxury side of things. After settling in and eating lunch, we headed up to one of Wutaishan's many monasteries, which we were shown around before getting a bit of time to talk to the monks. The monastery building and the stuff inside weren't terribly different from others I've seen in China, but the monks definitely seemed more serious, unlike the temples where they looked more like ordinary government employees, not committed religious people.
Leaving the temples, we went to dinner at a Mongolian inspired restaurant, where we were treated to some sort of traditional Mongolian ceremony that involved, for the most part, drinking large quantities of very powerful alcohol, which, as might be expected from my description of the previous drinking episode in the trip, left some people fairly far gone.
The sort of rest that might have helped with the drinking was, however, not to be found, as we had to write outlines for our social study project reports that night. It ended up being fairly late by the time I managed to get to sleep.
I'll finish up my Shanxi saga next week - now it's time to do real homework.
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