It was another scorcher today. Thankfully it wasn't humid. For the past two days Li Lei had been explaining to me the difference in weather between the southern and northern parts of China. Essentially: north, dry heat, south, humid heat.
The bus drove for a little while before we hit the rural part of Xian.
We saw them as we drove in. Little school children chased after our buses, apparently oblivious to the danger. Or they'd done it before, many times. They didn't seem scared at all to see us. Formed into two straight lines and posed for photos.
We filed into a small classroom. They still used wooden chairs and desks. No electronics. At the back of the room, examples of their handwriting were put on display. I couldn't recognise all of the characters. They wrote a lot better than I did as well. Hardly surprising though. On another wall was a framed copy of the school code. Walter later revealed on the bus that while the code said, 'love the government' (a given), it also said 'love science'. And as a scientist, Walter was particularly happy about that one. An idea of what the room looked like.
I kind of felt like a kid again, sitting at one of those desks. Krissy managed to catch me daydreaming.
So Li Lei and Xiaodong asked them introduce themselves. They looked pretty nervous, getting up to speak in front of all these older brothers and sisters, but they were up to the task. Typically they'd tell us what their name was, and what their favourite subject was at school. Then they'd write their name on the board. One little girl in particular was very enthusiastic about being called up. She also told us what her favourite fruit was (apples? forgot), and who her favourite cartoon character was (Doraemon). She even sang for us.
Teacher Carrie with all the kids.
After we left, Xiao Dong took up the mic on the bus and took us on a tour around his university. I'm not sure what it's called exactly, so I just call it the Northwestern Agricultural University. By then I'd decided to be sick, so sick I was. Turn to my two doctors for help. Eva gives me some bepto pismol. Or pepto bismol. One of those. Had to get past the child-proof lid first. Kristina gives me two immodium tablets. I said I'd try them later.
So we get into this huge shed. There's a bit of dirt and mud on the ground. Someone from the university starts talking about it. Apparently the shed can simulate different types of rain, and thus allow students to observe how different types of rain can affect plant growth and soil erosion. And of course, there had to be a demonstration.
Next up was the...
I'd never seen a cloned animal before (don't think they're allowed in Australia) so I thought it'd be interesting to see what they looked like. Turns out they look exactly the same as normal animals. Obviously they age faster. But I couldn't tell the difference between a cloned and a naturally conceived animal. Can you?
Though seriously, this one looked a little funny. Doggish.
I still wasn't feeling too good, and lunch didn't seem to be something I wanted. I still managed a bowl of plain white rice and some kind of drinkable yoghurt (drink looking thing below), thanks to the insistence of a few mates.
Random anecdote: The yoghurt covering was apparently quite hard to pierce with a straw - for the ladies at least. For the men, it was a little different. Me: One hit KO strategy. Sirui, or was it Chun Ping came up with the other: repeatedly stab the same spot with the straw until it breaks through. Moral of the story: none really, but if you want one then you could say there are usually a few ways to do the same thing.
The rest of the day wasn't much better for me or my stomach. The heat didn't help much either. We visited an insect museum that was shaped like a ladybug.
Oh, and before I died, I had to use the toilet there. Now China may have advanced beyond anyone's expectations in the past thirty years since it's opening up to the world, but - and this is the important bit for most people - it is still nigh impossible to find a seated toilet. Seriously, I can only name a few places in China that had seated toilets. Every hotel we went to. The People's Hall (you'd hope so). And a corporate business headquarters which we would visit it Beijing. I don't know why they haven't installed seated toilets, because I'm sure if they can afford to build things as huge as what I've shown you, they can afford to install seated toilets as well. Logically, the only other possible reason is for hygiene reasons. And everyone knows you can line the toilet seat with paper. So seriously, no more excuses China. I wonder how the Olympic spectators are going to deal with this. And while I'm on a spiel about toilets, here's another thing. Chinese toilets do not flush hard. It's seriously like, a trickle of water. Should you be lucky enough to find a seated toilet, you'd be hard pressed not to clog it up for the next person if you do decide to go down the sanitary route and line the toilet seat. In the People's Hall, three out of the five seated toilets were clogged. Fantastic. Ok, toilet spiel over.
Got woken up at around 4pm. Stumbled back on the bus for an hour ride to the restaurant where we'd have dinner. At approximately 5pm we were shuffling into the restaurant. It had no air-conditioning. Awesome. I still didn't feel like eating anything. Nobody really felt like eating anything that early. Plus, it was so warm inside that restaurant as well. Karen brought some watermelon over just in case I 'changed my mind'. I was seriously contemplating it but Li Lei dragged me off to the doctors who were travelling with us (yes, we got travelling doctors. Seriously VIP. I also forgot to mention we got police escorts around Guangzhou. Just cause we're that important.). Chunping came along to see what the matter was. The doctor asked me a few questions and gave me a thermometer to stick up my armpit. According to the mercury, I had a slight fever (38.3 degrees Celsius I think). Li Lei told me to go into the one air-conditioned room in the restaurant, and Chunping brought me warm glasses of water every so often. I'm not sure if he comprehended me when I said 'thanks' that day for looking after me, so I'm going to take this opportunity now to say 谢谢你平平. He really is one of the best people I've ever met.
Another bus ride I don't remember too clearly took us to the Xian railway station. It was so crowded there. We were told to keep our bags in front of us. 'If it's not in front of you, it's not yours'.
It was quite a beautiful sunset though.
Inside the station wasn't too much better. Luckily we were ushered into the VIP room. The trains in China are quite interesting. They're a bit like CountryLink trains in Australia, and they're divided into three classes I think. First class (four soft bunks to a room) which we were on, second class (six hard bunks to a room) and coach (seats). Each carriage had 36 bunks, and had just one squat down toilet. Thankfully, I hadn't eaten much that day. But it didn't really matter, I was gone as soon as I hit that bunk.
Due to my current state of health Monica and Eva honourably postponed their makeover attack on me until our next train trip, from Beijing to Shanghai.
But I wasn't worried about that. Just wanted...to...sleep... ... ...
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