Cloud Gate

This morning A Jing and I went to Yunmen Shan to watch the sunrise. I found out Yunmen Shan meant Cloudgate Mountain. My alarm didn't go off, and she woke up late too. You have to enter the gates before 6:00 a.m. to get in for free, so we ran into the street and took a taxi. The taxi took us to the summit and we ran for the gates. We both forgot our phones, so had no way to take pictures. As most of you can imagine, I quickly realized I had made a terrible over-estimation of my own physical ability. Halfway up the mountain I realized that my body had completely given out, and was trudging forward through sheer force of will. Luckily, I highly esteem my force of will, and so it got me to the top. Every 30 steps or so I would stop walking and look back down the mountain and out at the view. Yes, I wanted to look at the beautiful view, but more than that, I wanted an excuse to stop and take a rest. I kept saying to A Jing, "Let's just have another look." A smoker should not climb mountains. It was pathetic. I also quickly realized that a thermos of hot chocolate was useless to me, as I was beginning to sweat profusely, and a bottle of water would have been better. But when we got to the top, this breeze suddenly hit my face hard, and my face was so hot. A Jing and I sat on the edge of a jutting ledge, and she was terrified, and I was fearless. The view from the ledge was clear and expansive, and we watched the sun rise. We shared a thermos of hot chocolate. I smoked a cigarette. We visited the ancient temple on the top of the mountain and lit incense for our families, for their health and happiness. We wandered around the rocks to try and find the best views. I wish I could have taken pictures, but it's probably best, as my hair was greasy and wet and plastered around my face by the time we reached the top. As we sat on the rocks and looked out at the mountains, we began talking about ourselves. She said she wanted to do nursing abroad, anywhere, but she really wanted to go to America. I told her I loved to travel, and I really wanted to see more of China. We talked about what we would do when I came home with her for the spring festival, also called the new year festival, also called winter holiday. She said we're going to stay with her parents for two weeks, watch the festival and climb Yellow Mountain in her hometown. Then we'll go south to visit some friends of her parents, see the biggest river in China and ride a boat down it, maybe see Shanghai. I hope these plans work out, because it sounds incredibly fun.

When we climbed back down (which was much easier), we went to have breakfast at a noodle shop. Lo mein, pronounced something like lah mee-in, with beef slices and green onions. It was delicious. We had two Fantas and ate our noodles with raw garlic. But suddenly it was nine, and I had plans to meet Susan and go to her house to learn to make dumplings. On Halloween, my students taught me to make dumplings, or so I thought. But I had assumed that the filling was just meat and chopped green onions. It's actually a good thing Susan showed me, because it's actually a lot more complex than that. You boil these Chinese carrots, they're something like carrots, except they're green and yellow. The sad thing is, I'm pretty sure they don't have this kind of vegetable in America. I'll have to ask someone who knows. You chop and boil these Chinese carrots, and while they're boiling you chop green onions and ginger, mix it all up in a bowl with some meat, and add soy sauce, salt, and a kind of spice that I recognized the smell, but couldn't name. I'll ask someone who knows. Then you mix flour with water and make dough, which you roll out into little circles and put the stuffing in the middle and fold them up. Susan was really fast at folding them, but I was terrible. I thought my practice last week would have made me better, but it didn't. We sat and made dumplings and then ate them, and I came home.