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Time has flown since we finished travelling, and somehow six weeks have gone by since we got back to Jiujiang. Nicole and I now have a pet turtle, a tiny little thing called Tao Tao that Nicole confiscated from some students. He lives in a cardboard box in my room and stresses me out beyond belief by refusing to eat anything. We've offered him everything from chopped fruit and veg to raw beef and it's all been rejected, so now he only gets turtle pellets we bought from some woman by the lake. He doesn't seem to eat these either, but as he's still alive I guess he must. ANYWAY.
Mid-March, Dad came to visit me in Jiujiang. This had been a possibility for quite a while, but in the end I didn't find out he was coming until earlier the same week. Winston happily gave me the day of his arrival off work, so I was able to spend the afternoon catching up/rummaging through all the presents he'd bought me, the bulk of which was a selection of pretty much every magazine available from duty free. You wouldn't think a person would miss reading about the Kardashians so much, but it happens! My plans for the week were just to show Dad around Jiujiang's various parks and scenic spots, but as the weather decided it would be fun just to bucket it down all day, every day, we spent a lot of time hiding in Dad's hotel and at various coffee shops instead. (They're not proper coffee shops at all, but they do sell coffee so I guess I can call them that.) Dad's hotel was brilliant, much, much fancier than either of us realised before he booked it. I could go into business selling all of the complementary toiletries he and I harvested from his room over the course of the week: toothbrushes, shampoo, conditioner, hand lotion, combs, shower caps... all bound to come in handy when we start travelling again. Other highlights of the hotel included the breakfast buffet in the mornings (Cheerios! Mini croissants! Omelettes! Butter! Bacon! Amazing.) and the wi-fi. The wi-fi wasn't so exciting at the time, but I may have snuck into the hotel more recently to make use of it to download new books to my Kindle...
The weather did let up for one day, which we used to hike up Lushan. Julie texted us the address we needed to show the taxi driver, and we joined a big group of other walkers at a village at the base of the mountain. We bumped into a couple of groups of Nicole and my students on the way as well; all very friendly, but Dad was convinced some of the boys were making fun of him so speed-walked off to escape them. It took us about two hours, maybe a little more, to reach the entrance point to the town of Guling, near the top of Lushan. Dad had to pay 180RMB at the gates here but, as bona-fide Jiujiang residents, Nicole and I got through for free. We had lunch in Guling, with the worst egg-fried rice I've ever tasted, and bought maps to help us find all of the scenic spots. The most famous of these was a huge disappointment - and we're talking Shanghai-New-Year-fireworks levels of disappointment here. We were expecting a beautiful great mountain lake, with a miniature island and pagoda that could be reached by a lovely traditional zig-zaggy bridge... well, the island was there, and the bridge. It was just the lake that was missing. YES, THE LAKE WAS MISSING. For some reason, the whole thing had been drained, leaving only a great dusty brown crater and some now-ironic "Beware - No Swimming!" signs. It was hardly the charming scenic spot we'd been led to expect; it looked like Mordor. We were less than impressed, but luckily things got better after that. We wandered about in the sun through some parks, a car-park and down several smaller mountain footpaths, where we found a group of wild monkeys playing (aww) with litter (oh...). We kept walking and wandering further and further, past Dragon Head Precipice, down a narrow flight of steep stairs and across a vertiginous suspension bridge, until we were miles from Guling with only 10 minutes to reach the cable car before we were pretty much stranded. There were a couple of mini-bus taxis at the other side of the cable car, but they would only take us to Guling, and that for 80Y per person, which we were having none of. Luckily, a nice guy we'd bumped into earlier turned up and offered to show us the walking route back up to Guling. He led us on the hour-long walk back, past Black Dragon Pool, Yellow Dragon Temple, the Three Precious Trees, Luling Lake and through the forest and helped us find a taxi. The taxi driver was good fun to chat and practice my Chinese with, but I'd exhausted my supply of Chinese vocabulary and run out of things to say before we were half-way down the mountain. I would have been happy to lapse into a comfortable silence, but instead the driver had me reeling off lists of all the words I knew (which meant me chanting the names of different vegetables for a very long few minutes) and quizzed me about whether I was married/wanted to be married/wanted a Chinese husband. It got old pretty quickly!
I'll not write about the rest of the week because nothing much happened - it rained some more, Julie took Dad sight-seeing whilst I taught, and he bought me Frosties, Snickers and peanut butter from Walmart and that's it, basically.
xxx
PS. Having trouble uploading a picture for this blog, so I'm stuck with a stock-photo for the time being. Will try to fix it later!
- comments
DAD Well, glad you liked the hotel! The weather was pretty strange and made me feel like Harrison Ford in Blade Runner. The visit to Lushan was great though, even with your funny teenage fan club, and I'm shocked, yes shocked, to discover that what I thought was a fluent conversation in Chinese was just you reciting the names of vegetables. And I was so PROUD. Still, kept you in hair care products.
Ella It was a proper conversation at first!