PIGEON DAY!

We all slept in Tracy and Cecelia’s Dad’s room, and slept until 10am! We realized we were late to get Sunia at the airport. She had been visiting her cousins in another city for the week.

Clark, Kevin, Cecelia and I were dropped off at her mom and stepfather’s apartment. We were formally welcomed and she made us tea in the traditional way; by heating and steaming all the glasses, pouring boiling water over everything onto a special tray, and then adding the tea leaves and water in a pot. Finally the tea minus the leaves was poured into another glass container, which was then poured over everything again, and finally poured into the glasses for us to drink. This was very neat to watch and inspired me to want a tea set! The tea was very good also.

It was difficult to communicate, and Ceclia only translated some of the things that were said. We showed them some pictures of what we’d done so far.

Peter Sunia and Tracy arrived and we got a tour of the house. It was 3 floors, which is HUGE for Chinese standards, and very modern. The master bedroom had a western toilet and a Jacuzzi! They also had a piano. The family clearly had money, and was very generous in sharing their home and allowing us to look around! I also noticed there were a lot of large pictures of their mom all over the apartment. Peter said this is more traditionally Chinese.

We drove to lunch in 2 separate cars at a really nice Sechuan hotpot (See Clark's restaurant blog) restaurant. There was an inner port that was less spicy and an outer pot that was quite spicy. When I sat down, the first thing I saw was a bird’s neck, head and beak sticking out of the middle pot. It turned out to be a whole pigeon cooking. This was disturbing to see! They kept dumping in platefuls of intestine/stomach, duck blood, chicken feet, and some beef and pork. Luckily there were lots of vegetables, and specifically a lot of mushrooms!

Ultimately it was a cool experience, I wish I could have stomached more of the unique delicacies, but it was tough enough just to look at them throughout the meal! We had several formal toasts and learned that it’s good to show respect by getting the rim of your glass lower than the other person’s. The mom commented that Kevin looked like a movie star and that Sunia had a great personality.

She seemed very focused on looks, but I guess she had to be because we couldn’t speak to each other. She wore a traditional fancy dress, was very pale, and had her eyebrows all plucked, and then painted in with higher arches. She commented that I didn’t eat very much, and I felt bad that I couldn’t eat more. But by the end I was full, even if I mainly ate vegetables. They were very gracious hosts, and paid for the meal.

They drove us all to the boat ticket office. The mom was singing in the car and had a beautiful voice. We were told she is also a very good dancer. We got our tickets from Jimmy and then walked a ways to get to the bus. We said goodbye to Kevin Tracy and Cecelia. Kevin had to head back to Beijing for a flight back to DC the next day.

Drew was supposed to join us but ended up booking a ticket on a slow train from Beijing to Chonqing, so he arrived 3 hours after our bus left for the boat. He wound up staying with Tracy and Cecelia a few days instead.

We boarded the boat and had a very small cabin toward the rear of the ship, right next to the kitchen. There were 3 sets of bunks in it with a bathroom in the back. Our roommate was an older man from Japan. There was only one key to the room, so we constantly had to find each other if we needed to get in. We dropped our stuff and went to eat in the boat restaurant. The food wasn’t very good, but we ate a lot of it!

We kept waiting for the boat to leave, but finally got tired and went to bed around 10. The boat finally left at midnight, so we missed the first of the 3 big gorges. The beds were exactly 6 feet long so a little uncomfortable, but at this point we were getting good at sleeping almost anywhere!