Henan?...He...what?

Me: “Do you think Henan is a nice place?”

W.: “No!”

Good thing to know before going to Henan for my midstay. First of all I will explain what a midstay is. As I was sent by the exchange organization “AFS” this midstay was also an activity by them. The midstay is a time for the participants of “cross-cultural exchange” programs to reflect their current situation and hear about what is going to happen next and of course time to complain about the situations in order to think about how the problem can be solved. To get an environment where everybody can talk with some distance of their daily life the midstay is often also combined with some travelling and sightseeing. In our case the actual midstay wasn’t really planned as it supposed to be. I don’t want to complain but talk about my overall experience…but let´s say it is not thaaaat good to reflect if the whole attention of a city is drawn upon on you being an attraction or if you have to stay in a host family. In those cases it was kind of fun but not how a midstay is supposed to be.

Anyway, the trip started last Friday afternoon with entering the train to Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province in the north-east-centre of China. We had beds to sleep in for the over-night, 15 hours train ride. In one wagon were probably 20 “stacks” of each three beds with two building one cabin, of course no doors. At exactly 10 pm the light is switched of and it stays this way till 6 am. At this time you are forced to sleep because any kind of too loud communication will have a harsh demand to lower the voice by the train staff or banging on the partition walls involved.

As we arrived, stinky, tired and starving (wait…not me: I prepared sandwiches with wholegrain bread, salami and cheese. It is seriously hard to get all those ingredients in China) we were separated into host families, with standing in group surrounded by the future host families and we were picked by them like we were some kind of goods on a market. Luckily as it turns out I had big luck with my host family. They had a quite big apartment and surprisingly it was warm!!! Yes, it was of the heating they are allowed to have since they are north of the Yangtze River. All cities south of the Yangtze are not allowed to have heaters in their houses! That is the main reason why it´s outside 0 degree and inside as well in SH.

My host brother turned out to be pretty cool and his friends seemed so much more mature than Shanghainese children in their age, 15 to 16. In the group of German volunteers with discussed this matter and we came to the conclusion that the more loose school system is the reason. Different than in Shanghai the school doesn’t seem to be so important. Of course they still start their lesson at 7 am and have school till late but it seems not to be that serious as it is back here in Shanghai. They even have girl- or boyfriends and are flirting in public…….in SH this is probably comparable with the pope committing one of the seven deadly sins. During the day we often played Basketball or pool. They were a pretty cool crowd and it was fun. When we played basketball I thought that I OF COURSE would be superior due to my height…no, I wasn´t and it is still not easy for me to talk about how my ass got kicked by these 1.50 meter “tall” fast and skillful mates. Anyway I had a lot of fun with them and even though their English was really shit communicating was easy. We even went into some kind of Turkish bath where my host bro, his best friend and went and I really enjoyed the sauna, the hot bath and the Pingpong game afterwards in one of the many relax-areas: NOW I kicked their ass…Chinese people are sooo overrated regarding table tennis ;-)

 Altogether all were very open and completely friendly. The reason for that may be explained when you regard me the first foreigner they have ever seen in their life (ATTENTION: exaggeration). Anyway my host mum was probably the most caring person ever! In a good way though, not too much annoying and a terrific cook. She really made great dumplings, great spicy noodles (Henan is famous for their thick noodles) and her good choice for restaurants was also remarkable. But one thing will stick in my head, ok let´s say tongue: Hunan food is the m***erf***ing spiciest food ever!!! I really like spicy food but this…I can´t even describe. It totally killed me and I had to drink much beer to have the pain reduced!

Anyway after my time in the host family all Germans moved into a “Family Inn” hotel. One really remarkable thing about the hotel was that the 5^th floor was pretty much the “home/office” to several prostitutes and even the security guard praised them several times. Of course we also got an offer, 200 RMB and we even could first look at the hooker. Isn´t that called good service? In the end nobody actually got with a hooker because the price seemed too high ;-)

I don’t want to bore any of you with the details of our actual mid-stay meetings. Lets say they were successful and we had a good time. On the last day of our travel the big sight-seeing began: First the famous Shaolin temple and then some ancient Buddha grottoes’. Both places where pretty remarkable and even though it was freeeeezing (down to -7 degree) I pretty much enjoyed the sights. Especially the Kongfu School next to the Shaolin temple was impressive. Hundreds of students had their training session on a bid plain field and a lot of them even had some kind of test where they had to present choreography of Kongfu moves. I wondered what these guys will do for a living after their school education since there are not 1000 open places to be filled as the next Bruce Lee, Jet Li or Jackie Chan. Actually they all WILL go into the movie business, as stuntmen for the enormously big movie industry in Hong Kong! So maybe some of those guys will actually be punched in the face by one of the listed Kongfu movie-stars, you never know.

By the way: In the Shaolin Temple I bought a knife for 80 RMB (about 8 €). His name is “Jungle King 1” and it looks pretty much like the one Rambo uses. Just to let you know, “JK1” and me together will get the power over the world latest till June 2016. And yes I am REALLY confident about it. Just google “Rambo+Knife” and you will know why ;-)

After we visited the sights we went to Luoyang to catch our train back to Shanghai where we arrived on Thursday midday. The train ride was the usual, only with the exception that we started our trip at about 9:11 pm and we had 49 minutes till we were forced to shut up, both by the “friendly” demand of the staff and some banging on the partition wall by our dear neighbors who thought that 10 pm is too late for grownups to be awake!

As for now that’s it! Shanghai is turning Christmas. Is it? Maybe…so be tensed :-)

Cheers

L.