On the morning of Friday, June 19th, we packed our bags and got ready to leave ShangHai. Due to rush hour traffic it took over two hours to get to the airport, though we arrived in plenty of time. We got to our gate, and after about 40 minutes we heard the announcement that our flight would be delayed anyway. Although we had a huge breakfast at our hotel, by the time 2:00 p.m rolled around we were hungry again, and we decided to get some lunch at the little cafe in our departure gate area. They served such a variety of foods, and Perrie saw "Jamaican latte" on the menu, so she ordered one. Now here is where each member of our travel party has a different idea of just WHAT WAS IN THAT LATTE. We all sipped it, and it definitely had a strong smell and taste of alcohol. Please remember that Perrie is 16 years old, so we don't normally give her alcoholic beverages. This was quite intriguing....I thought it tasted like Kahlua, Caitlin thought it tasted like rum, Hannah thought it tasted "weird", and Paul thought it might be some strange spice we have never encountered before. The rum theory may be good because Jamaica is a big exporter of rum.....so I guess we will never know if Perrie's latte was spiked with rum, Kahlua, or just a strange spice. She didn't finish it in any case, as our flight was called and we had to leave.
We had a very smooth and comfortable flight from ShangHai to NanChang. Upon landing in NanChang we met our guide. He has taken an American name to make things easier for us, and he chose the name Coby. He pointed out that it is NOT spelled the same as the famous Kobe Briant the basketball player (I probably misspelled Kobe's last name). Of course being the kind of people we are, namely NOSY, we asked Coby what his Chinese name is. His name is GuiPing, which we like just as much as Coby.
Coby is 27 years old, and he has a girlfriend. He plans to marry her before he turns 30. I bet none of Coby's other tour guests ever interviewed him as thoroughly as we did....poor guy! Coby is wonderful, very funny, easy going, and so knowledgeable about this part of China. We left the airport and began the two hour drive up to the top of LuShan (which means Lu Mountain). To stay that the road was curvy is an understatement. The twists and turns give new meaning to the word hairpin turn. I thought for sure I would throw up all over the van due to motion sickness. As I gulped down breaths of air to keep from getting car sick, Coby entertained us with the history of the road we were traveling.
Chairman Mau loved LuShan, and he visited this area on three separate occasions. Mau wanted to know just how many curves there are in the road, so he devised a method of counting them that was foolproof. Mau had four boxes of matches...each box held 100 matches. As his driver went around each curve in the road, Mau would throw one match out the window. After many long hours he reached the top of LuShan. All the matches were gone. Ah, he said to his aide, you see there are 400 curves in this road. Cautiously, his aide ventured "Sir, I think there are only 396 curves". No, said Chairman Mau, all 400 matches are gone, so there are 400 curves in the road. Still more cautiously, his aide said, "But Chairman Mao, you are forgetting that four times we stopped along the road, and each time you smoked one cigarette. Therefore, there are only 396 curves in the road to LuShan." And of course he was right, and Chairman Mao admitted so.
Even if this is not true, it makes for a great story, and gives insight into the character of Chairman Mao. Later, I will tell you more things I learned about him and this special place.
When we arrived at our hotel, it was after 6:00 p.m. Our guide helped us check into our room, then suggested that perhaps we would like to walk to a nearby restaurant. So around 7:00 we headed down the mountain road a little ways until we came to an old building that was lit with spotlights and had picnic tables set up around it. The building was like something one might see in Europe or the United States....a rather large stone building that had a definite Western look about it. Coby told us it used to belong to an American missionary back around 1900. Many British and American missionaries had summer homes up here to get away from the heat of the cities down in the valleys. Today these buildings are part of the national park system here, and this one was being used as a restaurant with outdoor seating. Coby ordered some great food for us, our favorite being fresh fish caught in one of the nearby lakes.
We had a pleasant walk back to our hotel after dinner, and got ready for bed, promising to meet at the breakfast bar in the morning around 8:00. Paul and I have one room, Hannah and Perrie have another room, and Marilyn, Madeline, and Caitlin all share one room. Paul and I checked out the TV channels, but only found all the stations only broadcast in Chinese, unlike the ShangHai TV stations that offer a lot of programming in English. We ended up watching part of a Hong Kong police drama that had English subtitles. It was actually a good movie, but I feel asleep before it ended.
Everything is going so well here....I am happy that the Cleeff family also came along because Hannah and Madeline are like sisters already. They talk, talk, talk all day long and never seem to run out of things to say. I don't think they heard a single word Coby told us about the history surrounding us, but they seem so happy just being together and sharing this homecoming....today I heard them say "well we are Chinese" in response to something that else that someone said, and it made me so proud to hear them embrace their birth culture. Don't get me wrong....they are very American teenage girls, and proud to be Americans, but here in China they also get the chance to be proud of their Chinese roots.
This is a picture of the three girls plus our guide Coby using the laptop in our room at the GuoMei Hotel in LuShan
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