I spent three nights at my ancestral village. My experiences at the village have by far been the most life changing for me. For the three nights that I stayed, it felt like traveling to a completely different universe. The food, washrooms and culture were all so foreign to me. All fruits and vegetables were home grown and all meats were from their own farms. There was definitely a distinct form of taste that is harvested in their cooking styles, a lot of their dishes were oily and salty. Their washrooms were, one word: unbearable. They were unbearable for me because I had to squat down and there were no toilet seats to sit on and it wasn’t easy to flush them either. To flush the toilets, you had to scoop out some water from the sink and pour it into where you “did your business”. Gross? Yea, I still can’t believe how I stayed there for three nights. This all may seem gross to us, since we live in North America where all toilets are nicely equipped with seats, toilet paper and a flush that actually works. However, to many of the locals there in the village, all this is normal to them. It would probably feel very awkward for them to sit on a toilet seat as opposed to squatting. The culture in the village was still very rigid. By rigid, I mean the gender roles of men and women. The women fulfilled all household duties while the men would wait for meals to be served. Most of the men in the village still preferred their sons in keeping the family name.
My third destination was: Wuhan, Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Beijing
In all five of these cities, I visited the tourist “hot spots” which included historical buildings and monuments, such as the Great Wall, Tiananmen square. I had a great time exploring and looking back at the different Chinese emperors and where they lived.
In addition, the food and shopping was great, things were cheap – very cheap, only if you really knew how to bargain. Most Chinese shoppers bargain when they buy things. All store owners are prepared to set the price real high because ultimate shoppers tend to bargain at very, very low prices, which was why shopping in Beijing especially was scary but fun, because I got lots of affordable stuff.
Another thing that I noticed was how bad the air quality was in China. It’s unfortunate that the Chinese government doesn’t have any strong regulations on smoking or alcohol, which explains why the air quality in most of the Chinese cities that I visited was so bad. I counted and almost 9 out of every 10 men smoke. My life span would literally shorten by a year if I lived there from inhaling all that second hand smoke.
Moreover, the washrooms were similar to the ones that I experienced in the village. No toilet seats and no toilet paper. Everywhere I went, I had to carry with me a pack of tissues. I have a whole collection of washroom stories, which I will not share with you because they would just make you sick, so I’ll just leave it at that.
I had a fun time during my trip, I learned a lot. I learned how privileged I was to be living in North America. How something as basic as a toilet seat could sometimes be taken for granted, how speaking English was seen to be somewhat “superior” and most of all, how big the world really is. There are so many other places around that world that I have yet to see.
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