This last weekend there was a traditional Chinese holiday called Dragon Boat Festival. Almost everyone gets to play hooky from school for it in China. During the holiday families celebrate by racing little toy boats down rivers and by eating zongzi (traditional leaf-wrapped rice dumplings).
As for me, I started a campfire with a koala bear.
A fellow Peace Corps volunteer in Gansu came to my city to go backpacking during the long weekend. He brought along a small two-person tent that he had packed for China, but hadn’t used here yet.
Ooo la la
His name is Ben and he was the first other China volunteer I met during Staging in San Francisco.
That was nearly one year ago today. We were on the shuttle bus from the airport to our hotel and I, foaming at the mouth, asked aloud on public transportation if “anyone else was going to China?”
Thankfully Ben spoke up with a “ni hao.” Turns out he actually studied Chinese in college and can speak it pretty well.
During our time together we got to interact with a lot of locals and I admittedly felt extra nervous speaking Chinese in front of him. But he complimented my abilities, saying something along the lines of:
“I think you can speak Chinese better now after a year than I could after three years of college. And I majored in it!”
Killn it …also photo by Ben Elmakias
It felt good to hear that from someone so knowledgeable in Chinese and who, relatively speaking, had a similar upbringing to my own (he also grew up in the Midwest – Madison, WI).
For a minute I was even inspired to sit down and really put in some work towards further improving my Chinese. For a minute.
The first day of our hike Ben and I headed to Feng Huang Mountain. We went to the Temple of the Sleeping God, explored some dry goat-feces carpeted caves, walked through a rural farming village where a family was pouring the foundation of a new house, and peaked the mountain before walking back to my apartment. It was fun!
Ben was awe-struck by the beauty of this area and took many pictures of the land and people. We were there during the late afternoon, which is like the Golden Hour for photo lighting and getting epic pictures. We both got our fair share.
Most of these were taken by Ben, though.
We had lots of good, sometimes deep, sometimes funny talks along the way. He’s a pretty smart guy and our conversation was full of interesting stories.
We talked about spoken word poetry and the difficulty involved in writing, which reminded me of something I once heard back at camp in Colorado.
Somebody had asked our talented family camp guitarist, James Hersch, how he had gotten so good at writing songs. I’m glad I was there to listen to his response. He told us this story:
Growing up I loved music and writing song lyrics. When I was eighteen I had about ten songs that I thought were pretty good. So I went to a local studio and they laughed me right back out the door. My songs were all trash, apparently. I had an older friend who had been writing lyrics and playing guitar his whole life. So I asked him, “why didn’t they like my songs? What should I do now?” He told me to, “fill a wooden barrel with your songs.” …what? “Fill a big empty wooden barrel with your sheet music. It’s not until then that your songs will be any good.” So I got to work.
James used to do special concerts with all the kids at family camp. They would, over the course of one hour, write a song together about any topic the kids wanted. Then they’d perform it for us all, with James plucking away a new guitar riff while the kids sang fresh and funny verses packed with real story. We’d be blown away. I think he filled his barrel.
These are the kinds of things you can talk about no matter where you are – whether in the mountains of China or in the middle of a Lord of the Rings movie marathon. James’ story vibed well with my long weekend breather mountain hiking because it reminded me that everything is a process, including the Peace Corps. If you can just stick to the process you’ll be alright, kid.
The next day we slept in, ate a lot and went to hike Ji Feng Mountain, the most prominent peak in my county. We also wanted to camp out that night, so we had to get a move on.
Hiking Ji Feng Mountain is like stepping back in time…
yikes
Mixed with a little modernity.
It was on Ji Feng Mountain where I first tried Soylent, an FDA-approved concoction of all the nutrients a human body needs for a day.
It tasted like pancake mix to me, so I greedily snarfed it down like a meth addict.
The monks at the monastery offered us cigarettes and a bowl of noodles, but we were determined to leave the mountain as fast as possible. Daylight was running out and we needed to hit the next trailhead and find our campsite on South Mountain.
We ended up finding a good place to camp underneath a sheer cliff face. It moved more than my bowels to watch the waning pink-orange light play off the cliff while building our koala bear fire as the sun set in the West.
…your what fire?
The next morning we went up to another monastery nearby and drank tea with the locals. One of them, a 77 year old man missing his left hand at the wrist, is an expert at traditional Chinese handwriting. We got to enjoy watching him write a few lines for us.
me not understanding a single word this guy said
This guy is seriously a stud. We’ve met before and he thought my name was Luke!
Seriously check out that bamboo pipe… I know what I’m buying before moving back to Colorado
All in all Ben and I had a great time hiking together, full of everything we needed to feel reset for the final push of the semester.
Ben was happy that he came down and wants to come again with his Chinese girlfriend next time… and maybe even one of her friends!
Originally posted in an old blog.
My Peace Corps timeline of service.
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