School Visits in Qijang & Zhonghua Mountain Village

We drove about 2.5 hours Southwest from Chongqing to a beautiful and serene "rural" area called Qijang.  I put the term rural in quotations because the population of this area is a whopping 960,000 and the high school we visited is home to almost 7,000 students and teachers.  Everything is relative here in China and the Zhonghua village we visited after lunch did seem more rural than the part of town where the school is located.  I didn't think it was possible to get any hotter, but I was wrong!  

The schools we visited have entrance exams and are very competitive.  Most of the students in attendance come from surrounding areas and are the children of the growing migrant worker class. They study hard and sometimes, especially prepping for the gaokao college entrance exam in their senior year, they may be at school and studying way into the wee hours of the night.  Getting placed in a university in China is similar to American Medical School residency programs-you can list your preferences, but ultimately the Chinese government and the universities will pick you and you have no final say in the matter.  Performing well on the exam and getting into a good school is one's only hope of fulfilling your parent's dreams of escaping the hard life of a struggling migrant.  Many families are split up as students live on campus at most of the good schools...while their parents travel from city to city lookig for work or stay at home in a smaller town to farm the land.

When we first arrived we met students and they practiced their English with us.  School was already out for summer, but they came back just to welcome us. They were so sad to see us go and both sides waved goodbye until we were no longer in sight.

She is an art teacher too!  You can see the work of her talented high school students below...

School grounds...

After lunch, we visited the Qijang #1 Experimental Primary School. The experimental part is that they are trying out more student centered, small group questioning type teaching methods like we use in the states; as opposed to the typical lecture style teaching more common in China.  The school is similar in concept to a magnet or gifted school back home.  They encourage use of the fine arts (drama, music, visual art, etc...) to make learning more engaging for the students.  Sounds like arts integration to me! :)

The kids performed a scene from Mulan.  They were beautiful and so was their English!

After the performance, some of them shared their hobbies and interests with us...

She and her teacher collaborated to make this ornate costume with recycled milk cartons.

After visiting the primary school, we drove a little further into the countryside...many students come from this area...

Kids performing a traditional percussion and horn show.  This musical tradition has been passed down through families for 18 generations. It dates back over 300 hundred years!

Some of us learn how to play Mahjong...

Grinding beans to make fresh tofu

Spices out in preparation for dinner...

View on the ride back

Dazu Buddhist Rock Carvings

We took a two hour bus ride from Chongqing to see the Dazu Buddhist rock carvings.  They date as far back as the 7th century AD and became enlisted as a World Heritage Site in 1999.  I was flooded with memories of visiting the Buddhist rock cut caves of Ajanta and Ellora in India several years back; yet the imagery here at Dazu was decidedly Chinese for sure. You can see the influence of Taoism and Confuscious teachings within the Buddhist imagery; which gives a glimpse of how linked these three religions were and still are in China.  Again, I was reminded of how Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism seemed to often commingle in India.  The two largest carvings were undergoing renovations, but you can see the grandiose scale of the reclining/sleeping Buddha in the picture above.

Sakyamuni Buddha

The Wheel of Life...birth, death, rebirth...re-incarnation...all radiating from the Buddha center...

Inside one of the carved out niches

Look how long and curvy his fingers are!

Giant incense for sale outside the temple by the exit...

Chongqing: the biggest city you've never heard of...

Chongqing is my favorite city visited in China so far. It sits right in the middle of two rivers converging (on one side a yellow colored river and on the other green...like a giant palette of swirling, mixing paint).  Some people in our group have compared the landscape here to that of New York or Pitsburgh. Compared to Beijing and Xi'an, this city is very quaint and charming...yet just as bustling. The population is almost at 25 million; larger than Beijing but less dense.

Chongqing has a rich past dating back over 3,000 years and was a capital city during certain Imperial dynasties.  Recent scientific findings even suggest that the human activities in this area date as far back as the end of the old Stone Age-approximately 2 million years ago-which is the oldest evidence of humans in China.  During WWII, Chongqing was major post for the Allies; at first under the guidance of General Stillwell. Between 1938-1943 the Japanese launched an indiscriminate bombing campaign on the area (fist real evidence of "terrorism" as we know it).  In these 5 years there were around 11,500 bombs dropped during 5,000 separate bombings.  Many targeted areas included schools, hospitals, and residential areas.  This became a part of daily life here and many tunnels we set up as bomb shelters...unfortunately the chaos and crowding led to many tragic deaths due to lack of oxygen and trampling.  We had our hot-pot dinner in one of the old tunnel bomb shelters. The wartime culture transformed Chongqing from an already established city and set it off on the trajectory to become the city it is today.  It is currently listed as #65 on a list of global cities and the GDP here is growing at twice the rate of the Chinese national average.  In 1997, the status of Chongqing was promoted to be the 4th provincial level city in China; and the only one in West China.  In 2007, president Hu Jintao  delivered an important speech about the importance of Chongqing and it was also designated as one of two cities (the other Chengdu) to enact experimential policy changes to narrow the urban-rural gap (think affirmitive action and other US policies of that nature).

The climate, food and people are spicy! In Chinese people call the hot pot (which was created in Chongqing long ago by the workers as a respite from the long cold winter days) Ma-la-tang. This means numb-spicy-hot! The Sichuan peppers are numbing and I joked that there was new ring road of numbness built around my lips when I was eating my hot pot dinner.  The people here are so friendly and easy going!

One nickname for Chongqing is Bridge City. There are 29 bridges here and this one looks like a needle being threaded.

We went on a 1 hour river cruise at sunset and got to see the city transform into a bright nightscape.

In Ci Qi Kou, they have created an old town feel with quaint architecture that is a nice juxtaposition to the towering skyscrapers.  There are lots of beautiful scrolls and other art for sale here as well as various other touristy shops and food vendors.

An talented, yet armless, man paints animals from the Chinese zodiac on the street!

Giant cotton candy...

Making noodles...

Hot pot (to be sung to the tune of the hot pocket jingle) ;). The meat to the left of the twisty bread is pig kidneys.

Tim eats what we were told is eel, but looks and tastes more like a small fish (bones, fins, and all).

Boiling away...

MSG on the table...

We went for a 100 minute reflexology foot massage and this guy greeted us when we entered the building.

Waiting for my massage...

Towards the end of the massage a flame was put inside this bamboo cup and suctioned onto my foot ( this Traditional Chinese Medicine method is called cupping).