In the closing days of my Summer holiday, as I was moving into my new apartment, one of my new room-mates let us know that she would be traveling to visit her family in Hunnan Province a couple of days later. I was a little disappointed with not having made any trips over the break, so I invited myself along … asked if I could come.
We arrived the first day at 7 oclock in the morning at Yueyang, a small city (7 million people) in Northern Hunnan. I was excited to see China’s second largest lake, Dongting Hu, but Cherry’s family lives in a small village outside of the town … really outside of the town. After another 2.5 hours on a small bus, walking, then the back of a motorcycle, we arrived. I went for a run and then fell asleep until 1pm. I got a lot of looks during this trip and at its longest stretch, I didn’t see any white people for 5 days. When I woke up, we had lunch with the neighbors of froglegs, little shrimp, eggplant, etc … very traditional. Cherry’s parents are teachers, and they live in a buidling for teachers near the school. Also in the village are farmers, but Cherry’s parents could never own farmland because they aren’t farmers. They were chosen to be teachers.
Later that afternoon, we took another small bus to a slightly larger town to see Cherry’s cousin and her baby boy Dingding. I have decided that I only like kids for their ability to amuse me. Dingding couldn’t even sit up or say anything, so I got bored pretty quickly. Later that night we went to a club in Yueyang …