Living with Locals in Zhengzhou!

Well, after days of feeling so exhausted from being taken from here to there to everywhere, its nice to be in Xi'an going at our own pace again. In Xi'an you ask?? Yes, that's where we are. We had no chance to email during our time in Zhengzhou - we had no time to do anything really. Read on and I will explain...

Last week Friday, Martin and I were on a train from Taiyuan to Zhengzhou when we met a lovely young girl. She told us her name was Apple and she was 9 years old. Her English was so cute to hear... and really rather good. She was taken by Martin, playing games with him and showing him all her recent purchases (she and her parents had been travelling for 10 days during her holidays). Anyway, we spent the day chatting to her and enjoying her monkey antics (climbing all over the sleeper beds in the train!). When we were about 2 hours away from Zhengzhou, she suddenly asked us to come and stay with her and her family when we arrived. We didn't really know how to respond (what if her parents had no idea and we just followed them off the train... oops!) so remained vague and eventually I mentioned her parents. "Oh yes" she said and scurried off. Flip! She hadn't even checked with them yet!! But it all turned out ok, she came back (with mum and dad in tow), introduced us all and said that her father wanted to welcome us to his home. How lovely!! We were still a little sceptical but accepted their invitation (free accomodation, yeah!!)... and with that... we had new friends.

When we arrived in Zhengzhou at about 7:30 that evening we were bustled through the crowds outside the train station, onto the bus, and into their house. They lived on the top floor of a 7 storey building with no elevator!! Try walking up all those stairs with backpacks and daypacks and plastic bags full of water etc... nice and sweaty!!! Their apartment was lovely, clean and quite large for a Chinese family I think. Apple had her own bedroom, there was a lounge, a kitchen, a reading room and a little bathroom. Pretty much like something we would have rented in Taiwan I thought.

As soon as we'd set down our bags we were instructed to wash hands and faces and then we set out again to eat dinner. They took us to a lovely restaurant where we ate hand-pulled noodles, duck and all sorts of other culinary delights. Martin was immediately roped in to drinking baijou (strong clear liquor - about 45%!) with Apple's father, but I managed to opt out and sat with Apple drinking pineapple pop!! Of course after the meal, they wouldn't let us pay for any of it (typical of the Chinese when they invite people out to dine with them). And that was the course of the next few days as well... the whole time we were there they didn't let us pay for anything... we ate with them, drank with them, slept in their house... all for free. Such generous and lovely people!!

When we got back to the house we were told that we were sleeping in the parents double bed. What?? Such generosity! Mum was going to sleep with Apple on her bed and Dad was choosing the couch. We tried to protest but Apple told us very firmly that her father loves sleeping on the bed... "he always sleep there, he very like look tv!!"

On Saturday we were woken at 8am for a breakfast of fried eggs, Chinese bread (very heavy, quite dry and fried but delicious all the same) and warm milk made from powder. We weren't allowed to help clean up at all and just when we thought we'd like very much to crawl back into bed and get some more sleep we were told what was going to happen for the day. That morning we were going to see Renmin Amusement Park with Apple and her father, after that we would have lunch, then go and see Apple's English school. Ok?? Although we didn't have much choice it was nice being with people who really knew the city and all the nice places to go.

Renmin Park was fun... free entrance, but then all the rides and entertainment cost a bomb!! We had fun wandering around (staying under the lovely trees trying to be cooler) and munching icecreams. Martin and I took Apple on a ride similar to the London Eye, from which we could see all over the city. We also went to an ice-sculpture exhibition held right in the middle of the park. We walked through thick doors wondering if the room could possibly be cold enough to keep ice sculptures in the middle of China's summer heat... but the answer hit is in the face - it was freezing inside!! We had to wear thick winter coats which kept us warm on top but our poor bare feet didn't enjoy it very much. The sculptures were ok, but I thought they might be a bit more spectacular. Apple enjoyed herself though, running around and wanting to be photographed with all the sculptures :)

After the park we went to Apple's grandparents house (on her mother's side) to have lunch with the family. Her grandparents were really sweet, not a word of English but were always smiling at us and laughing when we said things. They enjoyed watching us eat with chopsticks (thank goodness we've mastered the art after so many years in Taiwan!!). Once lunch was over it was time to move on again (the Chinese never sit still!!), and we were off back to our home. From there we split into 2 parties. Martin and our adopted father were off to the train station to buy tickets for us to Xi'an, and Apple and I were headed to her English school. We had a lovely walk there, and then I was deposited outside to wait for her to finish her first hour of class. I sat in the garden and relaxed for the first time that day, but was soon disturbed by the arrival of Martin and Dad. We all sat together waiting for Apple and when she came out we met her teacher and her classmates. Such a small classroom - and so different from our experiences in Taiwan I think. The school was really small with different textbooks too (more for kindergarten than 9 year olds!).
After school we walked back to the house, and spent the evening with the family eating dinner and looking through photo albums.

On Sunday Martin and I had the day to ourselves as we were going to do the tourist sightseeing thing. Zhengzhou is a perfect place to stop if you want to see the Shaolin Monastery. The Shaolin Monastery is where Zen Buddhism began and is known as the cradle of Chinese martial arts. Hundreds of boys still study various forms of kung-fu here today.

We went to the bus station to buy a one-way ticket to the monastery and ended up on a tour bus to all sorts of places we hadn't planned on seeing. Not part of the plan, but it was really fun - we felt like real Chinese tourists for the day, being rushed around from place to place following a tour guide with a big flag!! It was fun.
The stops on the way to Shaolin included a Temple, a Confucious academy (temple looking place) and a small Shaolin (just another temple really!). By the time that was over it was quite late in the day and we were itching to see the real Shaolin!! But they were interesting places and I'm glad they were included in the tour. The first temple we went to was my favourite... it's many buildings stretched up into the mountainside and it was a really lovely walk in the trees. They also had a group of four iron men statues that we had to rub - the Chinese believe that if you rub these statues and then touch a sore part of your body, that part will be healed... so dutifully rubbed ourselves all over these iron men - ha ha ha!!

We finally arrived at the Shaolin Monastery at about 3pm and had to rush to watch the last kung-fu performance of the day. That was amazing!!! These boys certainly know their stuff... we ooohed and aaahed over all their cool moves!



Talk about flexible.


After the kung-fu show we were free to wander around the area until about 6pm. There are so many things to see here that we didn't get to half of them but we really enjoyed the things we did see. My favourite was the pagoda forest... loads of pagodas all over the mountainside, so many that I'm sure you'd get lost if you were there alone at night!! We also bargained for some beads from vendors, and I now have a lovely set of black wooden beads adorning my wrist!

Boys practicing outside one of the temples.


The pagoda forest.


Once the tour of the monastery was over, we jumped back on the bus and set out for home. I'd even begun to miss our adopted Chinese family over the course of the day. We got back at about 8pm feeling extreemly guilty as the family had been waiting for us since 6pm! Oops. But all was forgotten soon enough and we sat down to have supper with them and share our stories from the day. We were so exhausted that we could barely make conversation by the end of the evening, so excused ourselves and went off to bed.

On Monday we'd thought to have a little sleep-in as our train was only at midday... but that was not to be! Woken again at about 7:30 our 'dad' had breakfast ready on the table and continued to hurry us up all morning so that we were at the train station at about 10am. Two hours early but otherwise ok. They were such a wonderful family and took such good care of us that we can't really complain about being woken up too early!!

So what we've concluded is that the Chinese are the most hospitable and lovely people... you just have to find the right ones :)