Ah Spring time! The forgiving of trespasses, blooming of flowers, cleaning of homes, buying of new clothes, the welcoming of Spring is heralded worldwide often through festivals. There is the Songkran Festival in Thailand, Las Fallas in Spain, Easter in the United States, Nowruz in Persia, The Spring Festival in China, Holi in India and many, many more.

This past weekend I celebrated the Indian Holi Festival here in China at the Redfort Indian Restaurant. An Indian couple that worked at the same school as my husband resigned and Saturday was their last day here. Several of us joined them in celebrating Holi as a farewell party. If they were not leaving I wouldn’t have even known about the event at the restaurant.

Holi is all about frolic and play. Traditionally anyone in an open space is fare game to have dye thrown on them but for us it was a bit subdued. We were quite the spectacle as there were a bunch of Indians and white folk dancing and throwing colored dye on each other in the designated area while scores of Chinese people stood around watching us and taking pictures.

There was an all you can eat and drink buffet for $30. There was music, dancing, throwing of colored dye, water guns, and yoga performances.

Many of you know that in my twenties I did the totally stereotypical spiritual quest that many Western youngsters do and became very interested in Eastern culture. I’m still extremely interested in Indian culture and I’d love to visit or even live there for a while sometime.

I’ve participated in many Indian themed events but truly this Holi festival at the Redfort was by far my favorite. The all you can drink part helped with the awkwardness of being around some of the people that were there that aren’t exactly my favorite people in the world, Indian food is one of my all time favorite foods, and I love dancing.

Indian men are always the best dancers and I’ve always had a thing for Indian men so with the combination of great food, wine, music, and attractive men covered in paint dancing in front of me it was a pretty awesome time.

We took our daughter and thought she would have a blast but instead what she did most of the day was hide and cry. It turns out loud music and a bunch of adults dancing while covered in paint is more scary to an 8 year old than it is fun. It makes me feel like a bad artist mom. As if I haven’t exposed my child to enough craziness. Well I guess I can’t do everything for her. She’s 8 and she’s been to 13 countries I shouldn’t be too upset that dancing purple people scared her.

Here’s a short video I made.

My family and I went to 华山, Mount Hua, yesterday. It is about an hour and a half outside of Xi’An by train. I had read about it online before moving here and I’ve wanted to go ever since we arrived. There were a lot of stairs. Our legs are very sore today. But it was totally worth it! I got to walk on one of the world’s craziest/scariest/most dangerous hikes and I loved it! 

We wanted to take our daughter with us but after standing in line for quite a while we were told no children allowed so my husband was totally awesome and watched our daughter while I go to do the hike. Getting down to the plank was terrifying. Once I was firmly on the wooden platform I felt secure. I moved faster than everyone else. I made it to the end, had someone take my picture, and passed everyone up going back before most of them were even halfway across. I think I may have done a bit more adventuring in my life than the average Chinese person.

I passed one poor girl on my way to the end and on my way back. She was frozen in fear and crying. I tried to help her but to no avail. I spoke to her in my broken Chinese and offered her my hand but she wasn’t comforted in the slightest. Passing people was wild. The trail is very narrow with a 2,000ft drop and it is a two-way path. When you meet someone going the opposite way as you the two of you have to work out who’s going to hug the wall and who’s going to go on the outside. While you are strapped in it’s still pretty scary. You have two straps with 2 separate carabiners. You unhook one, reach around the person, hook it to the cable beyond them, unhook the other, do the same, then carefully pass them while hugging as tightly as you can. This is the scene looking down. Yes that is my foot. Not something you want to be whimsical of.

This is the tiny temple at the very end of the trail.  I can say I’m one of the few people form the US that has ever seen this temple. 

Here is a video of me walking on the plank.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCjArHoEUBk&feature=youtu.be

We were invited by our friend to his home for the Chinese Spring Festival. They prepared a feast for us and there was opera sung for us.  It was amazing being there. This is our friend 杨朋延 singing and below is a video of a friend of his singing,

In China baby’s pants have a slit in the middle and when they have to go to the bathroom the parent just stops where ever they are and baby pees or poops. In the middle of the sidewalk? Yes. Inside a store? Yes. On the steps outside your apartment building? Yes.

Grown adults will drop their pants and take a poo on the sidewalk too.  I’m not kidding.

The really weird thing? Pets are not terribly popular but some people do have dogs they walk on leashes. I have seen several people clean up their dog’s poop. Yep. They clean up dog poop but leave the baby poop in the middle of the sidewalk. They don’t even move off to the side. They literally stop what they’re doing and squat for the baby to poop or pee where ever they are.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Adjusting to my new life in China has been quite interesting. For the first time ever I was completely and I mean COMPLETELY out of my element.  Sure I’ve spent several months back packing Latin America but you can almost always find someone that speaks English somewhere and often times signs are in both English and Spanish. It’s not like that here and if a sign is in English it may as well be in German because the translation is so poor most of the time I have no idea what it supposed to say anyway.

First off let me say that most Western people stick to Shanghai or Beijing and if they do get to my city at all it’s only for a day or two to see the terra cotta warriors.  I live in Xi’an. It’s a city of 9 million people and on any given day the total number of foreigners is less than 300. That’s including foreigners living here like myself, my family, and my husband’s co-workers along with tourists. So 300/9,000,000 means there aren’t a whole lot of people around here that look like me or can talk to me.

And yes I did say 9 MILLION. I’ve had several people message me and ask me what’s the closest big city to where you live? I only assume they ask because the only place in China they know if is Beijing. Well, I’m over 1,000 miles from there but I think 9,000,000 constitutes a big city.

Chinese people do study English in school but the quality of their English education is about as good as foreign language education in the US. If the student is highly motivated they can learn a bit of English but most just breeze on through only learning the basics.

I know a couple Americans on Facebook living in Beijing or Shanghai and when we talk about what it’s like living in China they may as well be living in different world compared to my experiences. There is no vibrant ex-pat community here. I don’t ever walk down the road and happen to meet someone that speaks English. It just doesn’t happen. It’s a very surreal thing living here.

I have finally made some local friends. There is a section of society that does speak English fairly well. The poor people don’t and the extremely wealthy don’t but the upper class do. When I say upper class let me put it into perspective: $433 USD a month is a very respectable wage here.

So in a nutshell there are 9,000,000 people in my city and I’d say maybe 2,000 that I can talk to until my Chinese gets better. I’m working on finding them but the going is slow.