Our two days at Pan-Pan's grandparents has been incredibly interesting. They live in a village of about two hundred people about an hour outside of the city of Fengjie. On the curving mountain road we experienced some of the most scary driving to date. The road is fairly new but it still is full of pot holes and holes too big to be called pot holes. The day we went up, it had stormed recently, and there had been several landslides that left heaps of stone in the middle of the road. At some places, red, muddy water streamed down the mountain and across the road. And if you think that the drivers here would refrain from passing cement trucks or motorcycles while taking a blind curve on a wet road on the edge of a cliff, then come to China and take a drive in the mountains and bring a sedative with you, because Pan-Pan almost had an anxiety attack! The driving in the cities was downright heavenly by comparison--at least our lives didn't seem at stake.
Anyway, the village is nestled in a mountain range that sits beside the mighty Yangtze river. It is very picturesque, although the farm and the village looks nothing like what the words might suggest. There isn't a whole lot of green space in the village itself, and the farms mostly consist of very small patches of land and maybe a pig sty. There is litter everywhere. It's pretty gritty. Of course, the people there were fascinated by me and I everywhere I went, I got plenty of stares.
Most of all I enjoyed meeting Pan-Pan's grandparents and the rest of her family on the Jiang side. Even knowing what I know about familial piety in China, their hospitality exceeded all expectations. Even with very little I was quite comfortable. We had many big feasts and I tried more interesting and traditional foods like pig's feet, which I didn't like. Typically, to eat, we would walk through a path through the woods to some sort of community cooking place. There'd be huge woks and pots sizzling under the tents and lots of people sitting around tables, who were very surprised to see me there. I was told that I'm the only foreigner to ever have been in the village. We ate very well because one of the old men was celebrating his 70th birthday. At night there were fireworks, with the mountains in the background--it was beautiful. Here is a view of the village, along with PP's little cousin:
And here is one of me and PP with her grandparents:
The next day we all travelled in PP's uncle's police SUV (he's a police officer) to a town to see a dragon boat race. SO many people. It took a long time to get there over treacherous roads and we didn't even see the dragon boats, because there was a miscommunication with a travel agent. We couldn't stay in time to see them because we had to get to another town on the Yangtze to leave for our Yangtze cruise, which took us to a site called the little Three Gorges. It is well known to be more gorgeous than the Three Gorges, because it is narrower and deeper. The scenery was very nice. PP and I had a good time with the whole family, but especially her 13 year old cousin Yao. He's a great kid. Here are a couple views from the boat:
When we left the farm the next day, it was sad, even though we were both ready to get back to the relative luxury of Fengjie. We are both going to miss PP's grandparents, who are really incredibly cute/funny/nice. They both cried when we left. They tried to give me 500 yuan (about $80-90 CDN) because its tradition. PP accepted but I didn't because it would be crazy for me to take such a huge amount of money from them, when they have so little and I already have so much.
We got back to Fengjie and have spent another couple of days here--originally supposed to be one day, made two because our ride to Chongqing was postponed. We've had some more huge meals at PP's aunts place.
I played a game of basketball at the community courts with PP's cousins and her uncle and I guess I wasn't up for it because I sprained my ankle pretty badly. Today, I went back to the hospital to get acupuncture for the second time. He stuck needles in my foot, around the bruise, and surged electricity through it--it was a strange feeling, at first very painful. Then he put sunction things on the bruise. I don't know what any of it did, or if it did any good. My ankle felt a little stronger afterwards. I guess I'll have to wait to see if it helped anything.
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