North Korea, Fireworks and Hospital Visits; or What exactly has Emily been doing this past month?

Of course, not all of those things happened at once, nor probably in the way that you would expect them to, but at least it got you interested. As I have been absent for quite a while this may be a long post, but I’ll try my best to keep it word light and picture heavy.

Also, in case you don’t make it all the way to the end, I am in the process of getting ready for a short trip to Yunnan (southwest China) to see the lovely and talented FD. The weather should be excellent and I am very much looking forward to seeing her and her situation (teaching English is rural China). I will do my best to post again immediately upon my return, because I have noticed I tend to slack after relocation/ vacationing. Not this time! Now back to our regularly scheduled program…

If you remember, my last post came right before our class trip to Dandong, a city right on the border of North Korea! We didn’t cross over of course, but we got pretty close at various points in our trip. We also explored smaller areas around Dandong including a cool mountain with temples and a beautiful park that has mountains similar to Guilin and Guizhou. This park is apparently the northernmost location in which they can be found. Ok, PICTURES!

Me on a boat on the border of North Korea.

KL playing with a dragon on the mountain we climbed.

Locks on a chain in one of the temples on the mountain. Many people do this to symbolize their love for each other.

Cool spiders we found. They were huge and everywhere.

For one night we stayed in a "rural village" and slept 5 to a kang, a stone bed with a furnace underneath.

One of the parks we went to, Bingyugou.

The scenery was just like Guilin and Guizhou.

Some classmates having fun.

Puppies in the village

The (severed) bridge between China and North Korea (i.e. the black spot on the other side of the bridge). The North Korean side was extremely dark. We only saw a few lights on the entire strip.

We also climbed part of the Great Wall in Dandong. Apparently this is the easternmost section of the wall.

View from the top

Me with North Korea in the background. We were that close.

The characters on the stone read: One Leap, because that's about how close were were to North Korea.

 

The first weekend after we got back from Dandong, China celebrated two national holidays: the mid autumn festival and the anniversary of the founding of the PRC. We didn’t really do anything to celebrate the latter, but for the mid autumn festival my friends and I went out on the town for a nice dinner and then took a stroll along Zhongyangdajie, a shopping district that is built on a cobblestone road left over from when Germans and Russians occupied Harbin.

Remember the China-Japan conflict over those islands? Many stores began using the slogan "The Diaoyu Islands belong to China" to advertise merchandise. This store even has a new line of clothes that all sported the nationalist logo I LOVE CHINA.

Me and KL at a nice restaurant.

Me eating a mooncake at the end of Zhongyangdajie near the Songhua river while people sent off paper lanterns into the night. KL and I later bought one and released it into the sky, but not before writing our wishes for the next year on its tissue paper skin.

We serendipitously ran into two other classmates (and fellow Fulbrighters) who were lighting sparklers alongside Songhua river.

Two more classmates/ Fulbrighters waiting for their own (heart shaped) paper lantern to fill with enough hot air to lift itself into the night sky.

 

Speaking of Russians, in the 1920’s or so many of the Russians in Harbin were Jewish! I went to the old synagogue (now a museum) with KL and her professor.

 

That weekend YM also arrived in Harbin to spend his break with me. Unfortunately, the weather did not agree with him and he got a pretty bad cold/flu, so we spent a lot of time in doctor’s offices, which in China means the hospital as there aren’t really clinics. By the time he was ready to go back to Xi’an he was feeling better, but we didn’t really get to explore Harbin together the way I had hoped.

Obligatory picture with university sign.

Chapel of St. Sophia at night.

YM eating the famous and delicious Russian ice cream on Zhongyangdajie.

 

I’ve had a few more small adventures since then, but those do not require much explanation.

To celebrate one classmate's birthday, we went to a Cultural Revolution themed restaurant and sat at one of the largest round tables I have ever seen, giant lady susan included.

This past weekend we visited "Old Harbin" which has a thriving Muslim district.

Me in front of the mosque.

The architecture was even more old and European than Harbin proper.

 That's all for now folks! Tune in next week (so long as I remember to update) for more interesting China adventures.