Day 39-41: Beijing to Liupanshui County, in Guizhou Province

We finally made it to Guizhou! Guizhou is really nice, and the city we're in, Liupanshui, is really big. At least bigger than I thought. It has 3.4 million people in this county, and 460,000 people in the city center. The air is quite clean, which I'm a fan of. It feels good to breathe here, and the sky is blue, too, another plus. Our train ride was quite interesting. We had hard-sleeper beds, which is quite the experience itself. Imagine one train car with 11 sections/room with no doors, just 6 beds in each of the rooms, and the toilet smell wafting in every 5 minutes. It felt like a sleepover... but with 65 other strangers who could at any time steal my stuff.... well besides my Tsinghua friends, who by the way are amazing! They're all so friendly and it's hard to believe that we've only known each other for less than a week. We all get along great and are having fun exploring Liupanshui together.

Tomorrow we're going to the countryside to a village that is literally called "Water City". There, we'll do some research at a primary school and visit with the kids, who all just finished their exams. Today we walked around the city, after arriving at 2am, and also met with the school officials. Serious commy action. They told us about the teaching and education situation in this region. Lots of statistics and stuff. The one I found most interesting is that out of the 690,000 students that enroll in school in Liupanshui, only around 8500 make it to college. Most students drop out after high school, since the first nine years of school are compulsory and paid for by the government. After that, students have to pay for high school themselves, which equates to 5,000 rmb a year for tuition and school fees. Only a handful make it to the elite schools like Tsinghua University, though the situation in Liupanshui is better than other areas in Guizhou Province.

I'm currently in a greasy internet cafe, and the cars are going crazy outside. It's so noisy from all the honking, it reminds me of New York City. The food we've had so far is spicy and delicious, and we're really looking forward to trying more local treats! I don't have internet at the dorm we're staying at, so I'll have to find a way to update more pictures later, because I have a lot of great ones! I'll write more later! Miss you all!

-b

PS: Alex: I concur with your feelings about being patriotic, and though sometimes I still feel like it's hard to express them in a foreign country when I'm trying to be culturally sensitive. But I really enjoyed reading what you had to say! And look forward to creating some delicious Chinese dishes with you and Wei when we celebrate National Holiday in October! :)