Tobacco

Sometimes Chinese people can be a little too hospitable. After getting into Ninghua, I called up a contact that the people in Qingliu knew, and was just hoping to get some advice on roads and where to go from here (I'm hoping to go up into the mountains crossing over into Jiangxi, and not all mountain roads are shown on the map, and some are sometimes impassable, and often the maps are just plain wrong, showing roads that actually don't exist). Well, after reaching him (His name is Luo), I suddenly found myself eating a huge dinner with a bunch of people (around 12) from the Chinese tobacco company that he worked with. It turns out that Ninghua is in the center of China's tobacco district - I had noticed this along the road, as most farmers were growing tobacco. Anyways, it was a great dinner - and because I've washed my clothes and it takes at least a full day to dry, they suggested I go out to check out the Tian'edong (Heavenly Swan Cave) that is about 20 km out of town.

So I woke up that morning, and they had planned to take me out for breakfast as well......so soon I was going off to breakfast with the whole tobacco company again. Again, I ate way too much (they keep stuffing me), and then because it was raining, they said that taking the bus to the cave would be too slow. So they got the company four by four SUV, and started to drive me out to the cave (don't these people need to work........?????). However, the road was being "repaired", which means that they have removed all the concrete/ashphalt, leaving a large expanse of mud - not far ahead there was a long line of trucks stuck at an impasse (I had passed a similar impasse a couple of times on my bike, and I felt exceptionally cool when I did), and instead of sticking around, we turned the SUV around, and headed in the other direction to the "Hakka homeland".

The Hakka Homeland is a large ancestral temple dedicated to all Hakka around the world. Supposedly the place has excellent Fengshui. Although I am not Hakka, they were quite happy to show me the history of my Chinese surname (Feng), and it turns out that in ancient times there was a Feng Kingdom up in Shaanxi. Someday I'll have to go check out the sights of ancient Feng Kingdom - kind of reminds me of Friesland......

Despite not being Hakka (or Chinese for that matter), I was still encouraged to burn some incense to honor my Feng ancestors (all for the cheap price of 10 yuan!). I decided that I might as well, so I have now honored my nonexistent Feng ancestors. But they did give me a memento (see the cheap red necklace thing) of the Hakka Homeland.

While there, we had lunch, which was a traditional Hakka soup called Leicha (Lei Tea) - except it wasn't really tea, it was soup (it is often ridiculously difficult to determine whether or not I can partake of a certain drink - we can drink herbal teas, but not anything with actual tea leaves in it - so I'll have to ask, "does it have tea leaves", which is "chaye", and they'll often be like "well, it's called 'cha'", and they'll not have really answered my question. So I wasn't really certain whether I could actually drink it or not - they often call any hot drink "cha", but they often aren't really "cha", and it is ok for me to drink. Very strange situation that often confuses the Chinese as well). Anyways, after finally determining that it was ok to drink this soup - it was composed of green mush, peanuts, some sort of fungus, and a kind of animal giblet that was extremely chewy - I determined that it was nasty. Of course, the Chinese people are going on about what a wonderful traditional Hakka dish this was, and I made the mistake of going along with it, and saying that I liked it. Four bowls of the stuff later, I was finally able to proclaim that I was full, and we left.

So that was pretty interesting. Anyways, now it is the afternoon (the Chinese usually have a siesta in the afternoon, so I escaped), but I think that tonight I'm going to get fed again. I haven't quite escaped yet.........