Teaching kids & meeting new friends

After Xi'an we took a long slow train across the countryside of Shaanxi and Shanxi and slowly made our way towards the small ancient city of Pingyao. We spent hours talking with our Chinese bunkmates in the sleeper cabin. We had interesting conversation although they asked us why we were going to Pingyao, despite the fact that the entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We took everything they said with a grain of salt considering they also told us there is nothing to see in Tibet, Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia, and pretty much the entire North East of the country.

We arrived in Pingyao in the dark. We were the only ones to get off the train at this small train station, the only ones walking through the station. It was slightly eerie considering my time in China has shown the train stations to be the busiest places, filled with the most people, and with a population of 1.3 billion, I am talking a lot of people!

This should be interesting, we thought. But, it was great, the hotel sent a car to pick us up and the transition from the train station to the hotel was flawless. The best way to describe our ride to the hotel is "dark." There are barely any street lights in Pingyao and it is crazy dark! But people were still out, riding their bikes in the dark, selling fruit, playing games of cards on the side of the road.

Our hotel was in a traditional courtyard house.


View from the top looking down into the courtyard


The room had a traditional kang bed - it was huge, could easily sleep a family of 4! but it was hard, as expected, though not uncomfortable.


The bathroom was interesting because there is no separate shower... the room is very subtly tilted and the water drains even better than in a shower.


The next morning, we went with some local teachers to an English school to teach English to local elementary school children.

This says "English is the bridge to walk towards the world."


Us with the students, who were really amazing and brought smiles to our faces!




The gorgeous jewelry box our hosts gave us, as a thanks to us for helping them teach the kids English.



Afterwards, they took us to their local middle/high school and introduced us to the principal. They are very proud of their school, with good reason! The school is huge, has amazing facilities and is basically the equivalent to the campus of a community college in the U.S. Not only that, but the government doesn't fund the school -the money to build the school was obtained by loans, also, the school opened a local factory and proceeds from the factory benefit the school.


After this, our amazing hosts really took us under their wing. They told us their car is like our car, wherever we want to go, they will take us, they will show us Pingyao's famous sites and be our personal tour guides. These were the friendliest, warmest, most hospitable people I have ever met. I doubt you'd ever hear of this sort of thing happening to a foreigner visiting the U.S.!

They took also took us out to dinner twice, took us to a folk show and then to an amazing lunch where we were the guests of honor... after showing us Pingyao's most famous sites.