When Marco Polo left Italy for China in the year 1271 with his father and uncle he had no idea what he was in store for.
Along a similar vein, two weeks ago every Peace Corps Trainee received their site placement for the next two years. It is the place where they will teach and eat and live. It is the next step on each of our journeys and it represents the end of our time together as Trainees. It was a big event where each one of us read out our new city and the university where we will be teaching. Honestly, I felt a little like Marco as I read off my site placement. Nervous, but excited. But also really, really nervous.
New ventures mean new questions and new possibilities. It was no different for ancient wanderers than it is for us today. What will happen? Will there be WiFi? Is it possible to eat pig feet AND goat bladder all in the same lunch?! For me, new ventures also mean slightly new intestinal problems.
Taking a Train
This last week we spread all throughout south-central China to see what awaits us and to visit those who will become our new community of colleagues and friends. Our site was chosen for us by our Provincial Manager, who is a Chinese national employed by the Peace Corps to manage the volunteers in one of the four provinces. They made this decision based on observations they had been making of us throughout PST and anticipating where our best fit would be.
I travelled north from Chengdu to the beautiful province of Gansu. Mr. Polo himself passed through here more than 750 years ago along the Silk Road (which still stands) as he made his way to what is now Beijing on the eastern coast of China. He could never have known that his name would be forever memorialised as a summertime pool game for kids because of this.
To get to my new home I needed to board a train for seventeen hours. It was the first time I have ever taken one. I honestly felt like I was boarding the Hogwarts Express and heading to a strange, new world. Anything could happen. At first I was channelling Harry Potter, but it turned out to be more like Lord of the Rings.
I travelled with two of my fellow trainees who will be living in roughly the same area of rural Gansu as me. They will be in Tianshui, a small city of one million people. Where I am from in Minnesota, a small rural city is something like 5,000 people in population size.
It was nice to pass the time by playing cards, talking about life and anxiously preparing for the next moving squat toilet surprise. The struggle is real, but it can feel even realer when your bed is twelve inches from the ceiling.
Hustling to get our dress clothes on in the dark, we got off the train in Tianshui together at 4:07 in the morning. I was feeling nervous about making a first impression and we were all quiet. Next thing I knew I was being whisked away by the Waiban (read: Foreign Affairs Office) Assistant of my school to a hotel where I would sleep for another couple of hours before heading to my city.
Chengxian – Pop. 10,000
I will be living in a town another two and a half hours south of Tianshui. It is called Chengxian (chung – she – in) and is very, very rural. There is no airport and no train station. The county I will live in has a population of 250,000 people. The city where I will work has a population of 10,000 people. My college is called Longnan Teacher’s University and it has around 6,000 students.
I was told that this is the smallest site in Peace Corps China. I am nervous about this, but also excited about the possibilities it means for intensive cultural immersion. It will be vastly different from my current life in the large city of Chengdu.
I am stoked about the close proximity of the mountains! I cannot wait to see what it means for hiking and trail running later on. Word has it that there are ancient monasteries and temples out there on the side of some of these mountains!
Chengxian has beautiful mountains, but it’s people are what really make it beautiful. I was treated enormously well by the folks there during my two day visit. From fresh cut, homemade beef noodle bowls to being the VIP at a professional Gansu basketball game, I felt very welcomed.
– On the Road to Chengxian
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