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Traveling to the conference center
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
I promised myself I would have an open mind about things.
Yesterday morning, we started out the devotion with the prayer of Jabez. There's also a Christian self help book, by the same name. The book describes a whole set of healthy guidelines to developing and maintaining a healthy spiritual walk. I haven't read the book, and I probably don't intend to, but it's something I immediately concluded and condemned as narcissistic, health and wealth gospel; typical of the warm fuzzy mindless drivel coming from the Christian self-help industry.
So much for keeping an open mind.
My partners quickly informed me that there's a deeper meaning to be learned by the passage.
After breakfast we made our way out to our destination, packing up and heading back to the Beijing airport. Since everyone's going places in China since it was a holiday, we got to the airport and found it packed. Supposedly its a pretty busy travel day, Chinese custom says you go home when you have a chance, and spend time with your family. Thus it's kind of like the days before Christmas right now.
The trip out to Yellow Sheep River was a three hour drive, across a pretty good road. It looked new, and wasn't too bumpy, but it wasn't a superhighway. One of my partners said that she thought the road was poorly built, because of all the bumps and potholes, they should have put expansion joints in it. And the road would be smoother. I thought the road was fine, it's not the superslab highways we're used to, but for a two lane road out in the country, it was no worse than the pothole ridden roads in Massachusetts. It's a two year old road, through the mountains in a place where it snows. Maintenance is a constant thing.
So you drive around and it's not modern and glitzy out here. But I wouldn't describe it as impoverished by any means. There's a good deal of construction going on. Not mad crazy construction, like Shanghai, but enough to indicate progress. I can pick out the cell phone towers, and the satellite dishes, next to the rural homes.
We saw the conference center, a five star hotel in the middle of a rural province 3 hours drive from the nearest airport. One has got to have vision to start something like that. The hotel wasn't done, but we did see the staff quarters. I thought the accommodations were great, bunk beds, and a bathroom about 30 feet down the hall. Plus I was drooling at the DSL connection, and computer center right outside the room. Plus it's right next to the school where we'll be teaching and since were going to be using the staff quarters as our center of operations, it made sense to stay there.
Nonetheless they insisted we drive 40 minutes to a hotel in Gui Zhou. The staff quarters, while not quite as private, IMHO they were nicer. I guess I'll make my case again tomorrow. I mentioned my theory why we weren't allowed to stay there to our leader, he laughed, and said despite the absurdity of there's a good chance it might be some truth to it.