Picture series!!
I wanted to do this post as a photo series showing some of the funny and interesting things we've been encountering while in Changsha. So, here goes!
Food!!
A lazy-susan, the centerpiece of all large Chinese meals. This is meal has just started -- there is still space between the platters. The black squares in the foreground are stinky tofu, a popular dish in the area. Mao supposedly once said, "It smells horrible but tastes delicious." One of my friends on the other hand declared, "It smells like feet, and tastes like feet." Personally, I don't think it's half bad.
The necessary utensils.
A chicken, chopped into pieces and served whole in a broth (you can see the head in the upper left corner). The Chinese believe that food should be served whole, so we've ended up with a lot of chicken, ducks, and fish staring at us during meals. Personally, I've stopped asking what meat I'm eating, they usually tell me afterward anyway, and I don't want to have any reservations about trying things (we've had things like pig feet, goat, scorpion and pigeon, or possibly dove, they weren't consistent when answering). No dog yet though, although a friend told me her family has a dried one hanging in the kitchen right now.
From what I was told it says something like "Please do not smoke, it's bad for your health! ^_^" Smoking is a pretty major health problem in China right now, so I really loved this.
Signs
The pharmacy for Chinese herbal medicine at Xiangya Hospital, Changsha.
It's hard to read, but among the more unusual departments at Xiangya, they have a department of preventative medicine and a department of breast surgery.
I wrote in the last post that we had a blatant welcome at the university when we arrived in Changsha, well this banner was what was hanging over the main library at the entrance to the campus.
And this was on the guest house we stayed in the first night . .
This was Xiangya hospital when we visited . .
And this was the Xianjiahu Community Health Center . .
This was the Changsha Elderly Medical Care Center . .
And this was the Acme furnace factory. These were almost all our site visits, so as you can tell we are probably the most obvious group of foreigners in the city!
Funny Signs
So I love Engrish signs, and a couple they had at the zoo we visited last weekend were just too cute!
It really was quite an electrifying fence! So pretty and spikey.
I should mention, the exhibit behind this sign contains around fifteen crocodiles.
Also called Walking Street. It's basically the main shopping street, but ambulation is encouraged. We also saw a bunch on the highway to a site visit, and my favorite was "Buckley Up!"
This was on Orange Island. The paths were pretty narrow, so I killed a lot of tiny grass that day. I should note, most of the signs written in English have perfectly good, or relatively understandable grammar, it's only occasionally that they go a little awry. :)
Mao
I mentioned earlier that Mao was born near Changsha, and spent a number of important years in the area. Well, this has resulted in an inordinate amount of Mao statues within the immediate vicinity. Here is Mao near Yuelu Mountain (and my host sister is in the bottom right corner :D).
And here is Mao in Shaoshan, his hometown.
But wait! What is this?? It couldn't be . .
Is it really??
It's Mao! This is the 100 ft tall statue of his head on Orange Island. We were told by multiple people that it is an extremely accurate rendering of him from his youth. When I first saw it, my host sister's friend Sophia said exactly what I was thinking,
"He was a lot cuter when he was younger." And personally I think it's the hair -- it's especially windswept and 'alive' on the statue. :)
Yuelu Academy
So I included Yuelu Academy in the previous posts as one of the places we visited when we first got to Changsha, but I wanted to end with it here because it is probably my favorite place we've been to since we got here. When you first enter and walk through the courtyards it just feels like the archetypal ancient Chinese building, big doors, swooping roof, next room, more wood, stone, white walls and monotony. Not that I don't love the architecture, I've just seen a lot of it; Japanese buildings are largely styled after the Chinese.
But then as I began walking deeper into the structure . .
And further away from all the other tourists the atmosphere of the building changed . .
And took on a little mystery. Now I wanted to wander from the beaten path, to take that back staircase just to see where it lead.
Oh boy, following the little corridors and stairs took me to a gorgeous back garden surrounded by the open hallways of the building in the classic building-meets-nature style.
While the front of the academy, with the sequential rooms and a symmetrical floor plan epitomized the rigidity of the Confucian classics studied there for centuries, the back of the academy felt more like a home for the free spirit, a place to explore, a place where you were excited to turn the corner and see what surprises awaited there.
Within the back garden there were numerous smaller garden, and spaces set apart and cultivated individually. I wanted to spend hours there climbing up and down just to see if I really saw the world a little differently each time. Every piece of the place called out to me, but we had to rush off because we needed to meet our host families. It was quite a photogenic place, so I will let you peruse the rest of the pictures as you will...
I hope everyone reading this is having a wonderful spring, and is feeling good about themselves, their work, and the future.
Thank you for sticking with me so far, there are only six weeks left!!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
