My First Trip to China's Second Spring City

August 29, 2018

My week in Guizhou was incredible – if you’ve been following my Daily Discoveries at all over the course of the week I spent there, you’d have already seen for yourself a few of the experiences that awaited me in Guiyang, the Second Spring City of China. My friend and fellow PCV Conrad (who works at a university in Guiyang, the capital city of Guizhou, and let me stay with them for a week) told me that the honor of first Spring City goes to Kunming, a city in southern China that is definitely on my list of places to see before I head back to the US, though after a week in Guiyang, I’d have to argue that Guiyang can’t be too far behind.

It’s hard to put into words the emotions that I felt while in Guiyang, for they were emotions that I hadn’t expected to feel, but if I had sum them up, I’d lump them into a category of emotions I hadn’t tapped into too much previously: missing home.

From a simple glimpse at demographics and statistics, it’s hard to imagine that Guiyang and Westfield have much in common. One is small, the other is huge; from the train station to Conrad’s home it was a two-hour bus ride, enough time to drive either of my sisters to college and back. One is rural, the other is a sprawling metropolis; the population of one could likely easily fit in one apartment building of the other. One has a modern high-speed railway station that connects it to huge cities via trains that cruise at speeds over 180mph, the other is a quiet hub on an interstate that connects larger cities. And, of course, the food is wildly different.

Therefore, my feelings stem not from city life, but from nature. At this point, if you keep up with my blog (or you’re my family, which is probably everyone keeping up with my blog), you might be wondering, “Isaac, you miss home when you visit Guiyang? How did you not miss home when your family visited?” Well, I thought about that, too, and came up with the following rationale, and it made sense to some of the PC staff who asked me about my trip, so I figured I would go with it:

I didn’t miss home when my family visited, because what reminded me of home was them, and they were there, so there was nothing to miss. Yet, in Guiyang, it’s green, shockingly green to eyes accustomed to the drab grey and brown palette of Gansu, and it’s full of hills, rivers, streams, wetlands and woods. It’s full of the nature that reminded me of home, of gardening, of running with (chasing after) dogs behind the house, of competing in cross country races around Wisconsin, of walking along the lake in Madison. It’s full of nature I’d seemingly forgotten about, and lost my emotional connection to, until I saw it again. I feel that this was an incremental process that accompanied transitioning from living in the USA to China for service, from life in nature to life without much of it. It was a slow process, as if I were the frog being boiled in an increasingly hot kettle of water: from Westfield to San Francisco (an American city) to Chengdu (a large, active Chinese city) to Wuwei (a medium-sized spread out city lacking much green space), with the excitement of new experiences numbing me to the change.

For me, these feelings of missing home were not crippling, but comforting, a reminder of where I’ve been and where I’ll go again, and a connection to, an appreciation of, the place I am now.

A first look at great friends - my good friend Conrad, who works at 贵州民族大学, a university in the Huaxi district of Guiyang; they were amazing in not only letting me stay with them for a week, but also in showing me some of the best places in Guiyang - and green spaces. Rivers and wetlands intersect hills and mountains, creating beautiful areas for relaxation everywhere in the city!

I’ll share three highlights of this connection.

1. Bean Hot Pot (豆米火锅) – You likely know by now that hot pot (火锅) is a famous Chinese food, a staple of the cuisine in Sichuan and Chongqing, and is one of my favorite foods in China. You probably don’t know, however, that there is a special type of hot pot, a bean hot pot, that is essentially only found in Guiyang, the capital city of Guizhou province.

And it's delicious.

It’s delicious in that it is not just hot pot, and that it is not just beans, but that it is bean hot pot. It’s delicious in the sense that it brings back flavors and textures that I haven’t eaten since I left the US – beans are not a common food in China. It’s delicious in that it is a blend of spices that almost makes you feel as if you were eating Mexican food. It’s delicious in that no matter how terrible it looks in the camera frame, you have to take a picture to share with people, because it is that delicious. And it’s delicious in that it’s a hot pot experience that blows you away with flavor, instead of pure spicy flavor.

It works the same way as normal hot pot: you order the pot of broth (in this case, small or large, depending upon the number of people eating) and you order the vegetables and/or meat you’d like to cook in the pot. The food is served, the heater is lit, soup begins to boil, and vegetables are thrown in to cook. Friends chat. Friends eat. Friends are happy.

And while a normal hot pot experience ends here, bean hot pot takes it a step further: you eat, but you realize you mustn’t get full eating vegetables, because the best is yet to come. Friends chat. The broth cooks down and water boils away. Friends chat more. More water boils away.

Finally, it’s ready – the broth is thick, bubbling, rich, and full of spices and beans that make the short-lived transfer from the cooking pot to your personal dish, before hitting your taste buds and comforting your soul, reminding you of home, and that yes, you must come back to Guiyang … if only for the bean hot pot.

(If you’re ever planning a trip to Guiyang, let me know and I will send you the name and location of an incredible bean hot pot restaurant)

Above: The beginnings of a wonderful bean hot pot experience, full of spices and rich sauce, meaty beans; you can already see the broth starting to cook down and bubble, thickening the wonderfully concentrated remnants of a unique flavor experience.

Below: Two ways to eat enjoy the hot pot (the pictures are ugly, so perhaps in this case it should be said that 'a taste is worth a thousand pictures.' You can scoop out the soft beans and eat them .. or .. as I learned, you can wait until the broth has thickened to enjoy a stew-like bean soup!

2. The wetland park – Guiyang has an astounding assortment of natural parks and preservations open to the public, either free or for a small admission fee, and they are located throughout the city. Right next to Conrad’s university was the wetland park, an open natural space filled with lotus flowers, trees, fishermen, walking paths, bike paths, all congregating around a 5000m stretch of a small river that runs north and south through the city. It was a beautiful, peaceful place that was perfect for a walk during the cool evenings.

3. The “monkey mountain” – formally known as the Qianling Mountain Park, I think the moniker is more appropriate, for the mountain is absolutely teeming with monkeys. I saw one monkey and got super excited to walk after it and take a photo, until Conrad told me I shouldn’t worry, there would be plenty of monkey’s ahead… and they were right.

It was my first time ever seeing monkeys outside of a cage, and there were almost more monkeys than I wanted to see, so many that seeing the top of the mountain after a 30-minute hike was impossible, as it was overrun by monkeys aggressively grabbing at clothes and bags in search of food, trained to do so by any number of tourists I saw bringing snacks and junk food to hand out to monkeys, or throw at them if they didn’t approach.

I did manage to snag a few nice photos of a few monkeys, but then it was time to head down the mountain, walking along the road that cuts back and forth across the mountain as it descends, again reminding me of driving in the hills near La Crosse, though perhaps a bit less scary walking than riding in a vehicle.

And while it might be known as “monkey mountain,” it’s not just a mountain – they should call it “monkey mountain and lake,” to account for the huge reservoir of water on the backside of the mountain, with beautiful walking paths along both sides.

Oh, yeah, it only costs ¥5 ($0.74) to enter the park.

It’s now that point in the editing process where I look back at my terrible writing and realize, “Isaac, you’ve used the word beautiful excessively,” but it’s difficult to find other words to describe these experiences, so instead of continuing to search for words, I’ll end this blog post with a short video to really give you a better look at the Second Spring City of China.