donbei day #2, part 2

Continued from previous post...

The first thing when we got into Beiji cun was to check out the river. It's called the Heilongjiang, or Black Dragon River, and it shares its name with this province. It's also the division between Russia and China. Of course there were the usual entrepreneurs lurking at the riverbank, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. There were only a few guys offering boat rides and a lone reindeer for picture taking purposes. At first it was strange to see a reindeer, but then I remembered that this place is the coldest in China in the winter. After taking a picture with the reindeer, definitely out of place in the heat of summer but couldn't pass it up for 20 cents, we proceeded down to the river and started bargaining for the cheapest boat possible. By the time we hopped in I paid less than $4, down from $8 or so. Now that I've written the US dollar amounts our bargaining looks wimpy, but at the time it felt great to get them down from 60 kuai to 30.

Sitting in the little motor boat, wind whipping across my face, I relaxed. I'd been feeling a little stressed all day by my new friend, the really annoying bus ride, the urgent travel pace, but now all that was gone. I was free to realize the humor and coolness of the moment: I was staring at China and Russia at the same time. I'd randomly had my picture taken with a reindeer. On top of that, when I asked if we could land on the Russia side, just for a second, they said there were spotters in the woods just waiting to catch and shoot people who tried. I was doubtful about the shooting part but it's not good to take chances. I guess people can get a little touchy about national boundaries.

My new friend Ma Jianbo left with the same rushed pace of Chinese travel. He decided to buy me one last meal at 12:20, knowing the bus was leaving at 12:30. Believe it or not, we managed to order and eat rice, a mushroom stir fry, eggs, and a couple big bottles of beer in that time. It wasn't exactly your usual lunch eating pace, but hey you do what circumstances demand. When the bus started pulling out into the street he calmly asked for the bill, then walked outside and waved his wallet wildly at the bus to indicate the situation and make them wait.

As soon as I saw the river and heard it was cleaner than most, I knew I had to take a swim. It's a tradition/challenge in our family to swim in all kinds of situations and water temperatures, and this was definitely too rich to pass up. When we went sailing with Grandpa Fred on the Zodiac, Sam and I dunked in the ocean every day regardless of weather and water temperature. With the Perkins at the base of Mount Stuart, with the cousins in the Yakima and many other places, this tradition had to be introduced to China. I stripped down to my shorts at my room and made the long walk down to the river, bare chest a gleaming white beacon all the way. At the river, I was again met with the mix of chinese travelers and locals peddling boat rides. I asked one of the boat drivers if I could swim and how deep it was, and he said sure, indicating neck level at the end of the dock. The guy he was taking to, from Beijing, seemed really concerned for me, first telling me it was too cold and then asking me if I could swim. Rivers can be dangerous and cold, but I can swim and I could tell this spot was not going to be a problem. It's a big river and it wasn't moving fast. I reassured him, then started walking the plank - literally, since their docks are just single boards resting on posts sticking out 20 feet into the river. The Beijing guy had quited down, but then had second thoughts when I reached the halfway point. He started shouting at me "Don't do it!", adding a level of drama that the situation really didn't deserve. His shouts and my bare white skin had attracted the attention of all assembled, so here I was walking a plank into the Black Dragon River with a man yelling "Don't do it" and a crowd of 40 or 50 Chinese onlookers watching intently. I yelled back at the guy "Don't worry!", then jumped. It's a good thing I decided not to dive because the guy had been wrong about neck level. The water was up to my belly button, and I landed hard because I hadn't been expecting it. Not exactly the graceful entry I'd been hoping for with so many people watching, but I think they'd all just been worried I'd die on impact because as soon as I hit, the guy stopped yelling and there was a smattering of applause along with a collective sigh of relief. I think a lot of Chinese people can't swim, so they're much more afraid of water than I'm used to. I know in America, jumping off of a dock into slow moving water and landing awkwardly gets laughs, not a sigh of relief. You've got to jump off something very high or into something very cold to get any reaction back home.

Later in the evening I went for a walk. Beiji cun is turning into a tourist destination, but it's not too far along and the original community of peasants is still the largest group. I walked away from the street that' the most developed with hotels and immediately was on dirt roads with fences and gardens on both sides. When I stopped to admire some flowers at one fence, an old man emerged and offered me a piece of corn on the cob. I accepted and sat down to talk with him. Our conversation was simple, about how good the corn tasted and how nice his flowers were. He seemed extremely proud of both. His corn really was much better than anything I'd had in Harbin from the street vendors. It was nice just to have a conversation with a random Chinese person, using what I've been working on all summer. After a minute his granddaughter emerged, a little girl about 8 or 9 year old, and I asked her if she knew any english. That's a good way to draw kids out around here because they almost all know a little, and parents are all really proud when I tell them their kid's english is good. She was no exception, and after a little coaxing (she didn't remember how to say hello) I got a "goodbye" out of her. I told her and her grandpa how good her pronunciation was. She told me her Chinese name, I forget it now, and asked me how it translated to English. Of course you can't just translate names, but I asked her if she wanted me to make up an English name for her. She said yes, so I thought about it and settled on Samantha because it sounded a little like her Chinse name. She was super excited and asked me to say it over and over, repeating it every time. It was incrdibly cute hearing this little chinese girl carefully enunciate "Samee-antha", showing the big gap in her front teeth every time. After a while she ran inside and got a pen and paper so I could write it down. Her grandpa was absolutely beaming through all of this. I took several pictures of and with them before moving on. I forgot my camera cord so the pictures and tons more I've been taking will be up on the yahoo album before too long. For anyone who hasn't seen the link, the yahoo album can be reached from the links at the end of every blog post.

The next point of interest on my walk was an older couple pitchforking loose hay from their trailer to their yard. I stopped and watched, thinking this was America not too long ago. I seem to remember Dad telling me about working with loose hay when he was a kid, so when they stopped pitchforking I told them about it. We chatted a little and then I asked permission to take some pictures of them at work. It was beautifully simple, this task that was something out of the past to me but so much a part of their everyday lives.

The last interesting thing on my walk was a couple of kids playing soccer. I stopped to watch and the little boy, I'd say 6 years old, took one look at me and gave me a big karate punch to the stomach. It reminded me of something Scott would do not too long ago, but I don't think he'd be so bold as to try it on a foreigner. Karate punches are good ice-breakers, so I started kicking the ball with them and asking the older girl, 14 years old, about school and soccer. She was playing to pass the time while her goats grazed in the courtyard behind us. That's when I noticed we were standing in the arched entry of the "计划生育中心". That's like "Family Planning Center". I've read that in these rural places, the "Family Planing Center" is more or less an abortion clinic. I was playing soccer and watching goats graze in the courtyard of the local abortion clinic. I'm not absolutely sure that's what it was, and I don't know how to say abortion in Chinese. Even if I did, I wasn't about to ask a couple of kids about it. I did ask the girl if it was a hospital, and she said yes, so that makes me think my suspicions were correct. What a day.