National Holidays

Around Chengdu

With her English corner friend Jenny, Ruth recently took advantage of the opportunity for a pedicab ride downtown.

Kent and Mia tried on the local garb during our recent tour of a Chengdu silk factory.

During our visit to the Panda Research Center in northeastern Chengdu, Martha stopped to pose with a new friend. The center also had half a dozen month-old pandas in incubators when we visited a week ago. The Center is set in the midst of a park studded with bamboo groves (Martha and Elizabeth). Inspired by the pandas at the Research Center, Jessica and Elizabeth took a snack break to gnaw on bamboo. leaves.

National Holidays

Thousands of country people flocked to downtown Chengdu during the National Holidays, filling the shopping plazas with more than the usual extraordinary number of gazers. All but service- and construction-industry workers had a break from their labors.

The Graber Millers stayed at home base throughout the week, enjoying the sunshine and blue skies provided, at least in part, by the closing of factories during the week. Here, displaying their talents in the non-leader-approved activity of bungee-jumping, Martha and Sophie leap from the air-conditioning unit on the Graber Miller's patio Sunday afternoon.

The China SST students traveled extensively (in most cases with newfound Chinese friends) during the holidays. As they returned to campus this weekend, students regaled each other with stories of goat roasts over outdoor rotisseries; renting a room in a Chinese family's home because all of the hotels were full; talking with friends' grandparents about their lives in China over the last seven decades; eating such delicacies as pickled chicken feet; watching hours of the Asian Games on television with a friend's family; participating in a mock wedding; ballroom dancing with elderly Chinese men and women in the town square; trips to the zoo; cooking a Western breakfast for Chinese hosts; seeing crystal-blue lakes and streams in one of the most scenic areas of China; horseback riding in snow-covered mountains; taking grueling 15-hour bus rides; and dancing and singing around a bonfire in a village in the Tibetan region of Sichuan province.

Abby and Jessica, had traveled to the Tibetan region of Sichuan Province with their Chinese friends Fiona and Wendy. Here they model some of their Tibetan garb, which they bought for warmth more than style. Jessica is giving Abby a wedding sash in the manner in which she was given one during a festival they attended.

 

Rachel, Kate, Jessica, Sophie, and Martha were glad to get back to one of their usual lunch haunts Sunday afternoon. For most of their meals, students eat just outside the back gate or the north gate of campus.