Sandra and I have been "on the road" away from our "home" in Taipei for about a week now. We are now in Shenzhen and will return to Taipei on Sunday evening - for a total of ten days off for Chinese New Year holidays. It's been a satisfying, educational and relaxing vacation after only two months in Taiwan. We're ending with a weekend at our friends F and T's apartment in Shenzhen. We got here this afternoon and are now enjoying a comfortable evening hanging out with F and T. I'm taking the opportunity to blog while Sandra is introducing our friends to Season 6 of 24. Two more to be added to the list of addicted shortly!
We chose to have a very limited itinerary (including a one way ticket into Chengdu, Sichuan) for this trip and see where we would end up. Our itinerary ended up being: Hong Kong - Thursday to Sunday, Chengdu - Sunday to Thursday, Guangzhou - Thursday to Friday, Shenzhen - Friday to Sunday.
Each and every one of our trips to Mainland China end up rich with now more familiar as well as new experiences:
- Challenging questions to think about (e.g. our unplanned trip to Guangzhou and wandering into a very "local" and non-tourist area gave rise to questions about those who are "born" into a lower social-economical circumstance and the cycle of "entrepreneurial survival";
- Adventures in pushing ourselves to do "local stuff" but recognizing that we are "wealthy" by local standards and with that comes privileges (e.g. taking advantage of the local Chengdu bus system including a 40 km ride to the Panda Breeding Centre for 2RMB ($0.30 Cdn) along with upwards of 80 people but recognizing that as brave as we were with local food, local transportation, etc. that we always had the option of hopping into a taxi with an affordable (to us) rate of 1.60RMB per km;
- Recognizing how "big" China really is - in its cultural differences, language differences (e.g. we realized that Taiwan Mandarin and pace of speech is easier for us to understand than local Sichuan dialect) and geography;
- Unplanned, but not by chance, encounters with people (e.g. numerous people fascinated with our ability and choice to converse with one another in English including a lengthy conversation with a store clerk in Guangzhou about the trend of a shift from the prominent Cantonese dialect in Guangzhou to Mandarin / Putonghua);
- Networking, appreciating that old and new friends from all over the world are a blessing and a gift in our journey to experience life to it's fullest (e.g. time in HK was a casual yet stimulating reminder of why we're out here, friends to graciously host us, not only physically, but also to help us gain a deeper understanding of life elsewhere, friends to make connections for deals, jobs and who knows what!); and
- Food - we love the food in China and recognize now the statement that the west primarily knows Chinese food as the "Cantonese food" that the early Cantonese emigrants introduced. We are building our list of favourites (e.g. zha jiang mien), but love the regional foods. It's also official that Sandra can't handle Sichuan spicy, but Ray can handle it most of time, especially when we say "bu tai la".
All of the experiences of our time in the past week cannot be documented here. Many thanks again to our short-term missions leaders and teammates who were so instrumental in setting the foundation for our experiences in China and other cultures. The willingness to experience different elements of the social-economical spectrum, the openness and sensitivity to ask God to show us things in people and places that we wouldn't otherwise see and instilling us in an attitude of flexibility and humbleness to learn has been invaluable. Perhaps I'll write more on this later, but to our team, you've given us an "approach" or "methodology" to new places and people that continues to evolve.
In addition to the above points that I've just listed in no particular order, the most important is also recognizing that God is always a few steps ahead of us! Related to this point is also recognizing that the full revelation and integration of our experiences, even on vacation, may not fully come until later. As I posted earlier, picking Chengdu wasn't much more sophisticated than spinning the "China globe" and picking a spot to visit that was reasonable in distance and airfare (and of course a new place to visit). However, spending some great fellowship time with mission-minded and mission-experienced friends in HK reminded us of good friends who have participated in trips with a well respected mission organization that does a lot of work in Sichuan province. A take away from this whole week for Ray is to pray about potential opportunities to volunteer / serve with this organization. More details to come, but at a high level, the organization's philosophy / approach (including its relationship with local government and people) as well as the actual work (education / training with university students in business and management) are completely in line. Lots to consider... Chengdu was more than about seeing Giant Pandas!
So... that's all for now about China. Sandra will blog about a few things (I'm sure this will include quite a bit about Giant Pandas). With each trip comes with more desire to learn more about Chinese culture. On one hand, we feel like we're getting more comfortable with learning to navigate through China public transportation, knowing the price of staples such as bottled water, on the other hand, we continue to make some judgement errors that cost us more travel time or booking hotels that are not our first choice, etc. It's all part of the fun of travelling in China! We even travelled a little heavier than usual reserving space in our packs for red pockets, gifts from outside of China and a set of nicer clothes. Unfortunately, while we were ready for it, we didn't get invited to any unplanned banquets on this trip... Oh well, maybe next time!
Vacations and extended trips away from "home" and "routine" are opportunities for reflection upon life and often (well... for Ray, always) create a sense of urgency upon return. Here are a few things that are on my mind to focus on or get done when we get back to Taiwan: 1) register for Mandarin lessons - time is flying by and I am severely inadequate in language skills - no excuses anymore, just start and 2) set some goals for deciding on what ministries to focus on in Taipei - work will get busy from March onwards - need to set boundaries.
Okay, I'm told I need to go to sleep. We'll aim to upload some pictures on the blog or flickr with some more tidbits of observations shortly.
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