Excursion to Handan

Wednesday, May 23, 2001-07-31.

Handan - what is it? Where is it? And why are we going to this very place? - These kinds of questions we had in mind when we got to know about the 3-day excursion our hosts had planned for us.

It was described as a beautiful, old and rather small city (compared to Beijing), having a population of only 7 million people and lots of interesting and culturally important sights. Our exchange partners had prepared us for the worst situation that might arise in the countryside and had equipped us with a sufficient amount of toilet paper and lunch packets and so on May 23 we got on the train, which proved to be far more comfortable than we had expected. Notwithstanding certain smells of some of our fellow passengers travelling in the same compartment with us, which we had to get used to, this was one of the most impressive train journeys I have done in my life.
It was a fascinating experience to watch life outside the city of Beijing, even if only through the windows of our train. When leaving the capital, we were passing through suburbs marked by poverty. Narrow lanes are winding their ways between half-rotten huts, presenting room to live in for a large number of people. It is hard to imagine that people manage to live in these buildings without toilets and lavatories even in winter when the temperature drops to -20 degrees centigrade. Equally interesting to me was the trip around the countryside, as you can usually see it only in documentary films: People with large, round straw-hats worked in a stifling heat on the fields. The sun was stinging and our really full train arrived at its destination after about five hours.

After our arrival in Handan, we once again clearly realized that Middleschool No. 5 had not spared neither trouble nor expense to make our trip to China for us as convenient as possible. The hotel was, in comparison with the living conditions in some of the families, very luxurious. Our hosts had planned numerous excursions, the main focuses of which, however, were not always clear to us. For example, the extraordinary importance of a park presenting Chinese proverbs has remained a secret to us. For us it was far more interesting to go for a walk in the environment of our hotel at night, and we found a lot of little street which were very interesting to us. To do this, however, it took us quite a strong verbal fight with our travel agent and other couriers, because they thought it was too dangerous. This, however, turned out to be overcautious. Chinese people obviously like going out into the streets and onto the squares in the evening. Having summer temperatures, they dance, do gymnastics or just have a chat with their neighbours.

On both sides of the streets there are small stands and tables. We were astonished about the products we could not always identify; there were lots of things from the strangest fruit to old tools. The sellers lived directly behind their small stands in tiny little flats. Everywhere our group attracted the attention of the people living there; many of them starred at us, whispered, and some of them tried to palm something off on us. When we bought a water melon, within seconds our group was surrounded by a large crowd of people. Most of them smiled friendly and curiously, small children bashfully hid behind their mothers. Obviously they had never seen such "strange long noses" or such big eyes. We were an attraction and were gazed at like apes in the zoo, but after a while we got used to it.
Being happy and tired, in the evening we laid down in our noble, but even here quite hard hotel beds, the wind was blowing around the building in the 10. floor and we were eagerly looking forward to the following days.
(© Halina Apelles, Kathi Pöhlmann, July 2001)