October in China Part 6

Since I got tired of scrolling through the nonsense on social media, I figured I'd  get to work on this last installment, hold on to your hats, its a long one. The previous one featured our visit to the Ancient city of YeheNara. The next week and a half we spent in Siping City proper. Now you might be surprised at the amount there is to do there, as I was. Internet searches reveal little, but we kept fairly busy. The first three days we were entertained by Quiyan's friends. We typically ate breakfast at the apartment, which in China can be anything. It is just another meal, then we would eat a huge lunch and not eat the rest of the day. Typically I would have a protein bar in the evening. Monday featured a very nice meal.

Then it was off to karaoke. This is an extremely popular thing in China. The place we went to had a huge open bar area, and then numerous private rooms for parties. Our host for the day had gotten us a room. We feasted on fruit and the local beer (which does not have alcohol, because I had about 10 of them and never got a buzz). There is only a picture here of one of my performances. Video does exist, but I am not sharing.

Me singing (if you want to call it that) and Qiuyan accompanying me

The nice thing about the Chinese, they don't care about your skill. It is just fun to them. So while I would generally stay away from this I had no problem joining in. The place had a good selection in English. I wrapped up my singing with YMCA.

Then it was off to the botanical garden for an evening stroll. Being late October, and pretty far north, it wasn't as beautiful as it may have been in months past, but it was pretty nice just the same.

Me and our host for the day Tian Meng

It was really a great day. The next day we all met at a hotel for another meal. Sorry no pic of the food. I thought I had one but no. It was delicious though. 

Me and out host for the meal. Known only to me as The Piano Teacher. That's what she does. She had to leave after the meal to work unfortunately.

My Royal Highness being transported.

Our lunch group. After lunch we went to the woman's apartment on the left to hang out. She is a friend of Tian Meng second from left.

This model was over the door of the hotel Not sure what it is a model of, but, something seems amiss

Ahh yes, there is an attack helicopter on the roof. That almost qualifies as the strangest thing I saw in China.

We then walked to the one woman's apartment, ate some snacks, and drank a few beers. I listened to the woman and Qiuyan argue about politics for some time. Otherwise I ate, napped, drank, and surfed the net. I had signed up for AT&Ts coverage in China, I had full access to everything on the net via my phone. While pricey at $10 a day, it was well worth it.

The next day was quite eventful. First we met another fried of Qiuyan's, Xiu lin for a meal. This time it was hot pot. She also serenaded us with a couple songs on her Erhu.

Hot Pot is simply the best thing ever. We had it a couple more times during our stay. By far my favorite. One time we had it the stuff that goes into the pot came around on a train. Good times!

After that we hit a couple parks. The first featured a lake.

Pretty much every park in Siping has exercise equipment

Construction cranes are a very common sight in China. Siping alone had a dozen hi-rise apartment buildings being built. The new ones are really nice, spacious and very modern. But, still Chinese in function.

We were then off to another park. This one was larger and featured a number of things.

There were probably about 30 or so of these pagoda looking things. In each one there was a vignette telling a story of "filial piety". Filial piety is a huge thing in Chinese culture, though it is slowly fading. It is all about taking care of your family. And the children's responsibility to their parents. I hope it doesn't fade too fast. It is one of the things about Chinese culture I find to be the most important.

Then there was this cool waterfall, and this long lake like canal.

It's a random military type vehicle but hey if it is military I'll take a picture of it.

That was a cool park. They had paddle boats but they were closed for the winter. Down at the very end of the canal, was a small ostrich farm, of all things. Another oddity in Siping.

After this park we were off to the city center and the main square. But we made one last stop before that at the Martyrs Memorial. This is in the middle of a huge traffic circle, and getting over there is a bit tricky (traffic in Siping is almost a free for all). It memorializes the Red Army soldiers killed during the battles of Siping, in the Chinese Civil War (more on that later). 

Then off to the the park behind the main square where I indulged in the candied fruit treat that is common in Northern China.

And a pose with Xiu Lin's Erhu. That candied thing was so sweet, almost like eating mouthfuls of sugar. I managed 2/3's of it before I made Qiuyan eat the rest. Xiu Lin then took us over to meet her friends that come to the square to play music and sing.

She sang a song, then the "band" sang for me the only song in English that they knew, auld lang syne. To be honest I was touched by the gesture. In fact I found the Chinese people, everywhere I went to be kind and gracious to me, whether it was the old guy at the food court offering me noodles and booze, or these guys playing a song for me. After this we started heading for the square. On the way there were some statues depicting the Chinese zodiac. Being born in the year of the tiger I wanted to get a picture with the statue. Which I did.

 After that, from about thirty feet away some woman in a bright pink beret and jacket, comes running up, grabs my arm, and has someone take a picture of us. Then she ran off showing her friends. That folks was my one and only Rock Star moment. We then proceeded over to the square where I met another new friend.

Every night in the squares people get together to play music sing, play games, exercise, you name it. One of the aspects of Chinese life I find appealing. But particularly dancing. This night I saw traditional Chinese dance, Fan Dance, line dancing, a conga line looking thing, and ballroom. Anyone can just get in there and do it if you like.

Tian Meng and I getting in on the ballroom action

The rest of the week was shopping, eating, and family gatherings. Qiuyan's niece Shen Yan, or Yan Yan as she is called came by and cooked dinner for us one night.

And then we had the pleasure of dining with her nephew, whose nick name is Obama. I am not sure why they call him that, or what his real name is, but he is known as Obama. He is the only boy child, therefore he is the favorite, but I think he feels the pressure of that as well. He came up from Shenzhen just to see us.

And yes, he can make his ears wiggle.

The next big adventure we took was to the Siping Battle Memorial Museum. The Battle of Siping was four different clashes between the Red Army and the Nationalist Army, involving up to 900,000 troops combined. They certainly were not skirmishes. The museum is well done and modern. I was allowed in early, being a foreigner and all ( I doubt they get many foreign visitors). So the three of us, me Qiuyan and Zhuoyue had the place to ourselves. Most of it is in Mandarin but there were a few signs in English. They are, at times, odd. It is difficult to translate between the two languages. Here is a photo montage of the museum.

As you can see from the pictures, the city was the center of the fighting. Siping was virtually destroyed.. I did not see one building that I could classify as being older than the 1949-1950 era. I doubt much was left. The pictures are in order of how they came in the museum. I can't write a narrative because most of the details are in Chinese. The third from last picture was from a mini, animated cyclorama type thing. It had narration, flashing lights, sounds, and stuff to give you the feeling of being in the battle. It was kind of dark in there so the picture is not great.I was able to locate this book about the battles in English.

I've not read it yet, but I m certainly looking forward to it. I guess the author lived in Siping for a time Found it on Amazon.

So our last week rolled around and it was time to treat everyone to a big lunch. All the friends from before and a few ones I had not met showed up. It was a really fun meal. Fish, smoked goose and a bunch of other stuff. "The Piano Teacher" even treated us to a song.

We had all this food and drink plus additional for around $40 Can't complain about that. After our meal we went outside and had the obligatory picture session. I had my picture taken hundreds of times the 2 weeks we were in Siping. Then most of us walked around this beautiful lake.

We then hiked a couple miles to another park. Now I has seen this one on google earth. named the Military Sciences park. It is located next to a military base, and as we walked up to the park fighters were doing touch and go's, So that lent an air of ambiance to our visit. The park looked like it was being renovated or upgraded. There was a ton of landscaping going on. And what I took as a visitors center was closed. They had an area for static aircraft display but the two planes there were wrapped in tarps. Could have been a combination of construction and being closed for the winter. Anyway here are a few pics.

Entrance to the park, what I assume is the visitor center in the background

The reason I think the park is getting an upgrade is the condition of that monument behind us. It was pretty ratty

They had this little trench and two bunkers. Hey I'm a grunt, I had to get down in there.

Our last few days were spent visiting Dad and wrapping up some stuff. On our way to visiting Dad we had to walk through this street market.

Saw pretty much anything you could possibly want at this market it was huge, probably at least a mile or more long. They do butcher meat out in the open, live fish, frozen fish you name it. 

Well that is the end of our trip. We took the train back to Beijing, then flew back to the US in the last couple days. Hopefully you all found this somewhat interesting. I definitely look forward to more traveling in the future once things have gotten back to some sense of normalcy. Have lots I want to see all over the world and in China. Kind of sketching out the next China trip, day in Beijing to see the Ming Wall and the Museum of the Revolution, Train to Xian, couple days there, then back to see the family in Siping. One of Qiuyan's friends wants to take us to see the Mongol living history not too far away. Plenty to look forward to.