Chinese Road Trip
By Randy Green
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About this ebook
You are an American teacher at a university in Zhengzhou (pronounced “Jung Joe”), Henan province in mainland China. You are on your summer break; you have free time. It’s August, and it’s hot and humid on your campus. So what do you do? How about a road trip!
Chinese Road Trip is a two-day adventure away from the crowds and noise of the big city, away from the busy campus life of a foreign teacher.
Day One is the expedition, complete with trip jinx, to climb Song Shan (Song Mountain), one of China’s “Big Five”, with three university students. Disasters, exhaustion, and fun abound – and a few reflections also.
Day Two is a spent climbing a second mountain, one towering over a remote countryside village. Rough, unpopulated, and un-tourist visited, you journey back in time to a pre-digital world as you scramble up the mountainside in search of Nine Dragons Lake and, in the process, encounter experiences that will remain part of your memories forever.
Read Chinese Road Trip, a story about a brief interlude in the campus life of a foreign teacher in mainland China. Within these pages, maybe you will find your own friendly trip jinx to accompany you on your next road trip.
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Chinese Road Trip - Randy Green
Note
Dedication
To my father, who taught me, Until somebody puts some money on the table, all you have is talk.
PREFACE
I am an American but I have lived in China since 2004. I had been invited to come to China and be an English teacher at Zhengzhou (pronounced Jung Joe
) University in Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan province in north-central China. It would be an understatement to say that going from a small town in Missouri to a city of millions in the very heart of China was more than a mere geographical transition; population density, language, history, food, and music were all completely different. You could say it was culture shock on steroids.
However, I was very, very fortunate. I will leave out any attributions to karma, destiny, or fate and just say that everything went wonderfully well during the critical period when I was adapting to an entirely new lifestyle in my new time zone. Like the incident in this short book of nearly-but-not-quite falling off the side of a mountain, most events had a happy ending. Undoubtedly, positive expectations helped but good friends, good food, and good luck combined to provide a happy ending in this short, true story of a two-day road trip during my summer holiday from teaching.
But… beware of the trip jinxes!
If you would like to know more about why I was climbing mountains in central China… indeed, why I was in China as a foreign teacher, you can read the full story in China Bound; Relocate, Rebuild, Reinvent.
E:\CTN&CB\微信图片_20181013122625.jpgRandy Green
Chongqing, China
April 2019
Chinese Road Trip
Imagine you are at the airport in St. Louis, Missouri early one cold, snowy morning in the first week of February. You are traveling alone, accompanied only by three overstuffed suitcases, with a laptop computer as your carryon luggage. You fly to Chicago, then board a second plane for Beijing. Arriving in Beijing, you immediately transfer to a much smaller plane for a flight to Zhengzhou in Henan province in the very heart of China. You have accepted an invitation to be a teacher at a Chinese university. You should, naturally, expect a few changes in your lifestyle. There will be.
Now imagine that it is August, six months later. In the first week of that sweltering month, you find yourself near Zhengzhou climbing a mountain, Song Shan, one of China’s Big Five
. That hot August afternoon, halfway up the mountain, you are breathing heavily. Leg-weary, and sweating profusely from the summer heat and humidity with still a long, long climb remaining, you can well imagine asking, How did I get myself into this?
You might mean more than just why were you struggling up a mountain on a hot summer afternoon; you might mean the whole new life you had found.
This is a true story, my