A long weekend in Xuzhou
06.09.2024 - 10.09.2024 35 °C
I was extremely disappointed in my location again this semester. It took me 2.5 hours to get to the train station on the teacher bus and it took me 3 hours to get back from the train station on the light rail. Let's not mention the 1 km walk back from the train station to my apartment as well. It's pretty much as bad as it was last semester. I would say it's even worse because there's no trees nor stray cats any longer. It's just a big dusty campus on flat land with a lot of wind and right now, a lot of unbearable hot sun.
Anyway, I made it to Xuzhou by taking the 12:30 p.m. teacher bus to Nanjing, which is another downgrade, because last year, the bus left at 8 a.m., allowing me to capitalize on the day. I decided to take the slow train as most of the day was wasted on the teacher bus anyways. Then, by the time I bought my train ticket and took the four hour journey to Xuzhou, I was more than ready for bed.
In the morning, I decided to use my tourist pass for the "dinosaur park", and after a two hour bus ride, found that it no longer existed.
The bus driver tried to tell me that, but of course I couldn't understand him. The same guy picked me up on the way back and we laughed about it anyways. Then, I tried to find a way to Pan'An wetland but the bus that I waited for (for over and hour) never came. I gave up and decided just to scrap the whole day.
The next day I went out pretty early and on my way there, I met a bunch of deaf men who were going the same way as me. After we got off the bus together, I realized we were going to the same place. It was quite the hike to the entrance of the park, so I just followed them and they brought me there. They took me to the boat launch and then mimed that they were going to drink baijiu so I took the hint and knew I wasn't invited. I said goodbye and walked the other way. I wasn't in the mood for the boat ride but I didn't tell them that.
I hiked around for a while and a staff member found me and told me that I was out of bounds. The map didn't show any out of bounds areas so I was weirded out by that. He brought me back in his little car, but I was glad for that in the end because it was a huge park. Then I bumped into the deaf guys again and one of them told me to come with him into the hotel lobby. I was not sure how this would go, so I just followed him, noticing that there were a lot of kids around and it looked like a huge family event. I translated on my phone and asked if it was a wedding and he said that it was. I missed the ceremony but was just in time for the reception. How could I turn that down?
Some of the deaf guys.
Everyone walking from the ceremony to the reception
The happy couple.
We all went into a private room, maybe this was the special room for the deaf people, I don't know, because there was a bigger banquet hall that we weren't supposed to stay in. I have to say though, we did not go hungry or receive sub par food and booze in any way. The table was piled high with all kinds of Jiangsu style dishes and we had a bunch of bottles of $60 baijiu on the table too!
The whole thing took about an hour or two, unlike Canadian weddings that last all night. Someone drove me and all the deaf guys back to the bus station that we had hiked from earlier and I was whisked away within seconds by a bus that had come along right away. None of the deaf guys were taking that bus so I said goodbye and went back to my hotel.
I didn't think that anything could top that wedding invitation, but of course, I still went out the next day to another tourist spot I had a free ticket to. This time it was called Yao Wan ancient town. Usually these ancient towns are underwhelming but this one was alright. I could tell they had invested quite a bit of money into the museum and restoring an old church.
A really nicely carved old jug
Republic of China military stuff
This is for making pickles
A tobacco exhibit (these are zillions of cigarette packages)
This is a part of the Beijing-Hangzhou canal, which is how Yao Wan became a big city back in the day, famous for its kilns and proximity to the waterway for easy transport. It was the halfway point along the way, so a lot of people established businesses there, starting from 610 AD.
There were even water misters around the area to keep everyone cool. I jumped through one, but then remembered that's how Legionnaire's disease spreads. I didn't jump through anymore after that. In addition to this, there were a lot of little gnats biting me and I was ready to go home quite early.
I took the first bus I saw that was leaving, but it was going the wrong way. I thought, who cares I'll just take it to whatever train station and get back to Xuzhou. Except, I forgot my passport. I meekly went up to the ticket agent and asked him for mercy. I had photos of my work permit on my phone and he graciously let me go back to Xuzhou. For a minute there, I was panicking, thinking I'd be stuck in Xinyi for the night. Or worse, have to take some sort of weird bus all the way back.
Looks like a fun (albeit hot) weekend. At least you can scratch 'attend deaf Chinese wedding' off your bucket list! lol
by Tom