Walking the Wall

Well, not exactly old friends. More like recent friends, actually. But when everyone you encounter is a stranger, and when every place you go to is a new one, it’s nice to come across a familiar face once in a while.

You might recall the group of Hexi University students we met at Jiayuguan Fort (see “A Great Celebration” ). They thought we needed a bit of feeding, Chinese-style, so they arranged to meet us in Zhangye, where their university is, when we got back from Matisi. They also gave us about 10 minutes to plan what they called a “short” presentation on our walk – you know, 30 minutes or so. Not too long.

With students at a hot pot restaurant – Zhang Xiao, who organised the event, is on on the far let, Wang Junde, the head of the Hexi University Great Wall Protection Association, is on the far right

Chinese-style feeding is about food, food, and more food. And when you thought you’d just about had enough…still more food.

We went to a hot pot restaurant on Zhangye’s “food street”. The students ordered a yuan yang (two-birds) hot pot, which is a large bowl divided into two yin and yang shaped sides. One side holds a red, spicy sauce, the other a cream-coloured, more mild sauce. Then you get never-ending plates of meat and vegetables and cook them in the pot (this meal requires a lot of patience).

To add to the range of hues, we got several plates of “colourful jaozi” (dumplings). The orange ones are made from pumpkin flour, the green from mixed greens flour, and the white from just plain old flour. They were probably some of the best dumplings we’ve had (and we’ve sampled quite a few).

Zane Lee serving up our fourth plate

Zane (holding the dumplings above) is a history student from Datong, Shanxi. He is comfortably fluent in English – probably more so than any of his teachers – and he won second place in the Gansu Province English contest. He said he’s never been out of China, so he’s either supernaturally gifted with languages or he’s watched a lot of DVDs (most likely both).

At the gate of Hexi University

When we made it to the Hexi University grounds (only about an hour after schedule) more students met us and took us into a building where they had prepared a room for our presentation. We spoke for about 20 minutes (in English, with Zane’s help in translating) before their history professor, Xie Jizhong, opened the floor up to questions.

The students were shy at first, probably because the professor wanted them to ask questions in English, but then they started to open up. How do we think the wall should be preserved? Have we seen any damage done to the wall? What kind?

Then the probing questions started to flow: Are you enjoying yourselves? Emma, you’ve got a bit of sunburn on your face. How do you feel about that? And, finally . . .

“So, what is the real purpose of your trip?” “Ummm, could you please rephrase the question?”