Qinhuangdao, China

Sunday was a unique day. We left from Beijing and headed 4 hours east (2 by the fast train) to visit the city where Taylor taught during the year that we were engaged. It was great for me to see all the places that Taylor had spent time at during the time we were apart. I even got to see his old dorm room.

Several of Taylor's former students still live in Qinhuangdao, so we met up with them and hung out all day. The plan was to leave for Hangzhou (a city down south) at night by an overnight train. This was the first of many delays/adjustments to our travel plans. I mentioned a few posts back how important it is to be flexible when traveling and living in other countries, especially where you don't speak the language. Our flexibility was put to the test many, many times during our week in China.

We went with one of Taylor's former students to go buy tickets at the train station, only to find they were completely sold out, both for that same day and the next. We couldn't afford the time to stay in Qinhuangdao for so many days, with so much more to do and see in China. We couldn't even get a ticket leaving Qinhuangdao back to Beijing for the same day. We bought a ticket to go back to Beijing the next morning and planned to transfer from Beijing down to Hangzhou the next day. We found a place to stay in Qinhuangdao for the night. It's not so easy to find a hotel in Beijing. Only certain hotels are allowed to have foreigners, and even then, I think the number is limited. We finally found a hotel that would accept us and stayed the night there.

We had a great time with Taylor's former students. Chinese culture is very different from Western cultures in many regards. One way is with guests. Since we were visiting Taylor's students, they paid for everything for us (minus the hotel). They bought us lunch, paid for our bus tickets to go around the city. This happened countless times and there was no use convincing them otherwise. Taylor did find a way to sneak off and pay for dinner that night before they could pull out their wallets.