Cowless non-dairy faux-Mongolian dairy farm

Shantian Dairy Farm

The leader goat

The Shantian farm is a farm to show others, probably mostly tourists, the Mongolian way of life. This "farm" was located in a big field with yurt tents modernised with air-conditioning, many animals including horses, goats, chickens, dogs and ostriches, but unfortunately no real moo cows.

Plastic cows at the dairy farm

It was a nice afternoon but not really what I expected, it was obvious that this was just set up for us tourists and really wasn't the normal way of life for these people. Right next to this field were big villa style houses and also a fancy horsemanship horse riding club. However it was well organised with live singing, dance and music, a big BBQ. Also the crossing of the river on pieces of rope was fun.

Camp fire and BBQ in the evening

International Museum of Ceramic Art

Many many pots

Happy Easter!

Easter weekend in Suzhou and Shanghai

Chinese lutes at an antique market in "old town" Shanghai

My piece of Easterness easter bread in a German bakery in Shanghai

Our tour guide George in Suzhou. He was so enthusiastic and kept on talking and talking 

Suzhou The Venice of the East

Chinese cake in Suzhou 

Nanjing da xue

Trying to decipher a completely Chinese menu

Menu completely in Chinese

Nanjing da xue

Liulian time

Our Chinese class eating Liulian (smelly durian)!

It tasted like a combination of onion and sweet cheese. It wasn't that bad, although the smell was!

Off to the police station now! Not being arrested or anything, however it's possible after our trespassing at Mao's mausoleum incident! 

Nanjing University other modern campus

The other Nanjing university campus is located in the middle of mountains and it took us a bit over an hour to get there by bus from the city centre. We were welcomed by local students and they gave us a small tour of the campus. I paired up with Brandy, a sophomore student studying business and finance or something like that. She was so ecstatic when I told her: wo lai zi he lan (I come from Holland). For some reason she adores Holland and everything about it. She said she even collects newspaper articles about Holland and of course like all people say, that she loves the Keukenhof flowers. She applied to go for a study exchange to Groningen University but that she hadn't got it because out of 400 people, only 20 got accepted.  

We had lunch together in the canteen and she bought so much, all for only 10 yuan, and then we had to head off to the talent show singing performance.

The modern shiny library

The library 

The accommodation buildings

Brandy lives with 3 other girls in the same room on two bunk beds which is quite tight. But better compared to the Gulou campus where there are 7 people sharing the same sized room. That is really a squeeze.

                                                       Me and Brandy at the talent show

Very futuristic student activity building

Traditional crafts

Today we had an art and craft afternoon where we first made egg holders by using strings and putting knots in them. This necklace is used to carry a boiled egg, "a lucky egg" so that you can eat it whenever you feel like it. We thought this was quite funny. Then we made perfume "fragrant" bags by using small cloths and sewing them together to form a cute little bag where a bag of some type of potpori was put in the middle. This is supposed to have some medicinal properties, such as keeping mosquitoes away. It does smell a lot like curry though. Some local ladies came to the class to help us making these things, although they didn't speak English, they were very kind and my helper lady even made another perfume bag for me. 

Then we had a painting/calligraphy class in the appropriately named painting and calligraphy classroom which had a very authentic look with all the painting items and of course our lao shi (teacher) was the typical old man you would expect to be doing calligraphy. He showed us how he drew a blossoming tree and explained about all the inks and brushes and then it was our turn. 

Painting/calligraphy class

The lao shi

Dumpling making evening

Dumpling making evening

Some of the Chinese student volunteers

My beautiful works of art - blossom tree painting and perfume "fragrant" bags

Yangzhou

For our free day, some of us decided to visit the city of Yangzhou, near the junction of the Grand canal and the Yangzi river, about 100km north of Nanjing.

The K222 train we took from Nanjing to Yangzhou costing only 17 RMB

One of the canals/rivers

The museum/temple of the 8 eccentric painters

Statues of the 8 eccentric painters and others

One of the paintings

Lucky temple reflection

 Passing a few local markets, bridges and canals we visited the Slender west lake park. Being a Sunday, it was full of people, but still really worth going. The timing was perfect because everything is now blossoming. It almost looks like snow falling down from the trees. The park was beautiful and was just like being at home with all the bridges, small canals, ducks and even tulips! There were so many tulips. 
But we only had 2 hours until we were planning on heading back to the city, so later on because of the tight time, we took the mini train/bus to the other side of the park where the Damming temple and the 9 storey Qiling pagoda (built in 1996) were located and then took a bus to the city centre to have dinner. 

Slender west lake park - beautiful blossoms

Slender west lake park

Slender west lake park - 24 bridge, making almost a complete circle for boats to easily pass through

Slender west lake park

We had a bit of a problem getting back to Nanjing because the last train left at 18.20 and the last bus was supposed to be around 19.30. So we went to the bus station and ran around to look for the right bus, but everything seemed closed and dark and no one was around. I asked a security man and he pointed to a bus and said something which included Nanjing so we ran to it and were so happy to be on. There were only 2 other people on the big bus and the man in charge was asking 60 quai per person. Obviously this was not a normal bus service and since the bus was probably going back to Nanjing anyway, the driver and the man wanted a good deal. But we didn't mind because this was our last way out for the night until the next train at midnight. However the man and another passenger girl were having a very big argument. We of course couldn't understand what it was about but the man was so loud and aggressive sounding is wasn't too nice. Then after a few minutes we were told to get off the bus. There we were, left on the street with shouting people around us. Later on we found out through Daniel, the other passenger with us, who was in Yangzhou for his work as a beauty advisor for Lancome, told us this whole problem was because the girl wanted to go to another place and not Nanjing and she wasn't agreeing with the price. So in the end she drove off in a taxi and we stood around on the road for about an hour until the situation changed. It seemed as if we were hitch hiking, a sign was put out in front of a tree with "Nanjing" written on it. In the end, we were told to get into a car and for 60 RMB each would be taken to Nanjing. A bit dodgy? I know this sounds wrong and it did feel a bit of a wrong thing to do at the time, but because Daniel was coming with us in the car, it seemed more reliable. This story does sound like it would end with the guys kidnapping us but that would be another story and not this one because after 2 hours of being squashed with 3 other people in the back seat with a smelly smoking Chinese driver we eventually made it to Nanjing. 

Never trust anyone!

Early morning start visiting the Purple mountain. It was not purple and actually looked more like a hill, but okay. Being a Saturday, it was crowded with tourists, mostly other chinese, everything went well until about lunch time when I got robbed of my video camera. This happened in the bathroom, I felt something happening to my backpack and felt for my camera and the next second it was gone. I tried to stop all the ladies from leaving but it was really difficult because there were at least 15 in the small area and no one spoke English. There was one lady who quickly left the bathroom and I am suspecting her as the one. It was really sad because I hadn't yet taken off all the videos I had made until so far, so now all my videos are lost for ever. I'm sure the person will just delete everything and sell the camera for a much lower price than that it's worth. Therefore after this happening I am not trusting anyone anyone anyone any more! And this has definitely made my experience of China and the "lovely" Chinese people less pleasurable. 

Some random girl asking for a picture with me

The 393 steps leading to the mausoleum

No.1 High school

Checked out of hotel early in the morning around 8am so didn’t have time for breakfast. Then walked to the university and had Chinese lesson which was nice, really enjoyed it. We checked into the university accommodation, the international students hotel in room 1811 sharing with Roxy. We unpacked a bit and then went to the German bakery for lunch where I had a pretzel, a pain au chocolat and a almost real bruine bolletje. It was so nice, quite pricey for China but really so yummy breads.

Our room on the Nanjing university campus in the 5 star Xi Yuan Mandarin hotel which is the accommodation for international students

Later at 13.30pm we boarded buses and after literally taking 20 minutes to get out of the university street, after causing a crash on the main road, we finally headed towards the Nanjing no.1 high school. There we had a short presentation about the history of the school and a tour around the university museum and also had our picture taken with the Chinese student volunteers. We were each assigned to a local student and they took us around the city. This was so lovely.

My partner was called Vera or “Si si” as her nickname. She was 17 years old but I really thought she looked more like 13 or 14 years old. She was very sweet and could speak English really well. She participates in a lot of English language speaking competitions where their spoken English is judged. Her next one is this Sunday. Vera lives 1 hour by subway away from the school. She leaves every day at 6am and gets back home at 6pm in the evening so quite long and tiring days. Even in the weekends, she has extra English tutoring at home with an American teacher, she calls it foreign lessons. Her parents want her to wake up at 7am during the weekends but she usually wakes up at 9am, which she also thinks is too late.

My buddy Vera

She took me around the Gan Xi residence, had dinner at a local restaurant and walked around the Confucius temple looking at the little stalls and buying some souvenirs with our names on them. I had a really nice drink, think it was called glue rice ball drink or something, it was very sweet and sort of jelly rice balls in it.

Vera at the Gan Xi Residence

Rice glue ball drink

It was a really good experience to be with local students today because they could tell us all the tips and tell us what’s good to have, for example the rice ball drink and this other sort of soup I had at the restaurant.

Rice and bean soup

 

Vera and her classmate friends

Vera’s dream is to become a film/tv producer and she would like to study at university either in Beijing, Shanghai or abroad. Her English accent was really good and she was easy to understand unlike most Chinese people I’ve spoken to.

I got laughed at in the lift of the hotel by two Chinese women. I have no idea why. They said something, pointed at me and burst out laughing. It was a bit strange.

In the evening we went to Ellen’s bar and then to a gay bar with a drag show. I joined some Chinese people at a table and they gave me lots of snacks. They were really friendly and kept on smiling and saying things to me, but in the end sort of gave up because they realized I couldn’t actually speak Chinese, so sad. It was funny to see the drag show. The “ladies” looked really good and it was even hard to tell that they were actually men. The he-she’s were really convincing. Some guys sang on stage and other men/ladies came up and put money, 100 RMB each, into their shirt, pocket or pants. 

Day 2 SCP

Today we had a lecture about "Foreign Relations of People's Republic of China (PRC)" which was very interesting, also because the guy speaking, Gabriel was honest and told his own opinions, although this did cause some arguments and discussions between each other.
He told us all about the history of China starting from 1840 with the first Opium war with the English and this is when the treaty of Nanjing and the treaty of Tianjin were signed. The second Opium war was in 1856 and these wars opened China to the world.
Then he went on about the Republic period (1912-1937) with the Japanese war, the foundation of the nation in 1949 and the Korean war with USA from 1951 to 1953. Until 1953, the government didn't have total control of whole of China and the Principles of peaceful coexistence were put in place.

Unlike I've heard from other locals, Gabriel also told us "we have freedom of speech" and he thought that freedom of speech is not a human right.
Some other interesting points are:
"The USA had 100 years between their war and democracy, why can't we have 50?"
This is quite true, because it has only taken China 30 years to get from zero to where it is today, so it's moving very fast. It's the second strongest economy in the world.

"Economic growth is number one" "It's going the right way"
Question about one thing China should learn from Western countries : "China needs to learn how to be strong" Yeah, the Chinese culture is not an aggressive one, it's quite defensive, take for example the Great Wall.

Also something else he said, about the pollution in China, well the developed countries are to be blamed for this because they come to China to set up factories and produce everything here, so that China has to pay for the decreased environment conditions. But if China does something to stop this, the companies will just move to another country such as Vietnam so to keep the strong economy here, China will have to keep up with it and unfortunately the consequences as well.

Xuanwu lake park