Shanxi Province

For my first site visit in China for work, I had the opportunity to visit a children's AIDS hospital in Linfen in Shanxi Province with our Global Peds Director, who was in China for a visit, and the China Peds Manager. Shanxi is a major mining region and its biggest export is coal, followed by vinegar. The mines in the area has caused heavy pollution. As a result, Linfen has the dubious honor of being the most polluted city in China. Linfen, Taiyuan (the capital where we flew to) and Pingyao (where I visited an ancient Ming-dynasty city) all seem constantly cloaked in fog, except its not innocuous fog blanketing those cities, it's pollution. During the 3-hour drive from Taiyuan to Linfen, we passed by multiple quarries. Dug deep into the ground, they looked like massive green and yellow mountains with steps on the side. They are actually quite a sight to behold. We saw coal being hauled in small trucks everywhere.

According to the Global Peds Director, the hospital we visited is one of the nicest children's HIV/AIDS she has visited. In addition to medical facilities for the patients, there is an elementary school. Through a donation they received, they were able to purchase instruments for the children, and we caught them during music class. They performed a dance and played their instruments for us. It was absolutely adorable. There are also dorm rooms for the children and a vegetable and flower garden. They are also building apartment-like facilities for the patient's relatives to stay in when they visit. The whole thing was very well-thought out. The whole facility only serves a handful of patients at the moment, but they are thinking of expanding it to serve the entire community.

Besides coal mines, Shanxi is famous for its vinegar and its noodles. They make over 100 different kinds of noodles here. During lunch post-site visit, we tried 8 different kinds of noodles, including cat's ear (a pasta-like noodle shaped like cat's ear) that is a Shanxi specialty. My favorites include a sauteed noodle with vegetable called "knife sliced noodle" and a noodle that was shaped like a shell and cooked with a bit of vegetable and shrimp. Knife sliced noodle is a noodle made by using a knife to slice thin slivers from a big chunk of dough. We added a bit of vinegar to all the noodles we tried. The people of Shanxi are extremely proud of their vinegar and insist that everything tastes better with it. One little boy I met a couple of weeks ago, whose father was from Shanxi province originally told me that he didn't want to visit America because the food would be bad since there would be no vinegar. I found that really cute and funny. Trying to explain that we do have vinegar in America did not really work. In addition to eating just about everything with their vinegar, the women also insist that it does wonders for your skin (even the doctor told us that!). I bought some back to Beijing with me (but just to use with food, not for any type of beauty treatment).

Rather than coming straight back to Beijing, I took the opportunity to stay in Shanxi for an extra day to visit Pingyao. Pingyao is an interesting mix of old and new. Pingyao contains a city within a city. The ancient city of Pingyao, which is completely surrounded by an intact Ming-dynasty wall (supposedly the last remaining in China), is a charming little area with hundreds of old buildings featuring Ming-dyansty era architecture complete with courtyards located inside Pingyao - a relatively modern city. It feels like you have stepped straight into the past (except for the throngs of tourists). Even my hotel had a small but beautiful courtyard and my room featured a Ming-style bed, which looks like a platform with bedding on top of it. Most of the city is extremely well-preserved, but some of the less touristy parts are crumbling. Through the doorways of some houses and in the smaller alleys less frequented, you can see buildings that are falling apart, although some are being renovated.

Pingyao used to be a financial center and a thriving merchant town in the Ming and Qing dynasties. I visited several old banks and former residences of wealthy financiers, as well as a few temples. Many of the banks and residences are like mini-cities inside. Some have hundreds of rooms surrounding several courtyards, all enclosed within its own set of walls on the outside. The architecture of the buildings were all pretty similar, so it felt repetitive after a while, although they were all quite beautiful. One of the most interesting complex was the ancient government buildings. A vast maze of courtyards and rooms, it featured a cool photography exhibit on some of its walls.

The modes of transporation in Pingyao was really varied. There were donkey carts, bicycles, mopeds, big golf-cart like things serving as taxis, tricycles, trucks with only three wheels, cars, etc. I rented a bicycle early this morning and biked to Shuanglin Temple, approximately 7km from the ancient city. Every time I ride a bike, I still feel a sense of trepidation because I'm terrible at it, and I hate riding on streets congested with vehicles of all kinds coming at you from every direction. I was relieved when I found it. There were few visitors when I arrived but there were dozens of art students from Xian making clay sculptures. Shuanglin Temple is known for its clay sculptures but time has really washed out the colors of the scultpures and most of them were enclosed behind a cage-like barrier, which really detracted from the experience. While I was there, a monk started talking to me and decided to tell me my fortune. He claims I will have an unhappy marriage. Talk about incentive to stay single. Most of the stuff he said about my past were completely off (was not sick last September and no one in my family was sick either) and I am not really superstitious so I'll let the comment slide.

I stopped by the Qiao Family Courtyard House, the site where Zhang Zimou's film Raise the Red Lantern was filmed, on the way back to Taiyuan. The guy who built it was a wealthy merchant in the Ming or Qing Dynasty. I remember watching the movie back in high school and thinking that the buildings were gorgeous so I was excited to see the place in person. To get there, I had my first China long-distance bus experience. There was no schedule, which was kind of frustrating - the buses leave only when they are full - so I ended up wasting almost an hour sitting on the bus. When I finally made it there, it was like a zoo. There were requisite red lanterns hung all throughout the main corridor of the house as I had expected, but there were also dozens of tour groups packing the place, following tour guides holding flags and talking into microphones or megaphones. There were masses of people everywhere. It was total chaos. The place is big, but not that big so I quickly walked around and got out of there.

Getting back to Taiyuan from there was my sketchy bus experience #2 in China. I had to go across the street and flag a bus down. The bus was dirty and gross but had no choice at that point. I managed to make it back to Taiyuan without any major problems and am back in Beijing now. Here for a day and then I'm off for 3 weeks! Visiting Guangxi, Anhui, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces for work, and then going to Hubei (to see the Three Gorges) and Chongqing for October holidays. Am really excited.