关于五大连池的美好印象--------外籍友人的文章
8月初带着我的外教--肯一起游玩了五大连池。这是肯第一次参加这样的群活动。回去后他就写了日志。在这里我把他的日志转发给大家。很美的图片和文字。星星让我翻译---不好意思我的速度太慢。还是把原文粘给大家一起欣赏吧。肯---加拿大籍，在工程大学任教。来中国已经三年多。但汉语水平很差。不过和他学英语进步很快我就是这样的。和他学半年口语。我的雅思成绩就过关了！呵呵。乘机吹嘘一下自己:/019 One of my students is a member of an internet travel group, and last weekend the group went to a small town called Wudalianchi. In case you wonder what an internet travel group is, well, it was new to me as well. It seems they all like to travel, and various members of the group get together to organize potential trips each weekend. The trip to Wudalianchi was by bus, and said vehicle was to be met at a location I only had on a piece of paper—hand written—in Chinese. And I can only read a hundred characters, and only then if they are very nicely printed.So yes, at 4:40 am I was out on the street looking for a taxi, and wondering where it would take me. At five the taxi dropped me off in front of the main administration building of the communist party in Harbin. This was a little disconcerting, especially as there was no sign of anyone other than a grumpy looking security guard. Within five minutes a large red bus tooled by with Claire, the student, waving madly from beside the bus driver.
We then drove around Harbin for half an hour, at which point the driver parked the bus and began looking at maps. This did not bode well for the trip. We soon headed out of town, but almost immediately pulled into a gas station. You all know what gas stations look like. Here is the country version of a Chinese one. They all look just like this one, except their roof is not warped. That comes from the computer refusing to deal with the image properly when making a panorama. I tried several pieces of software, and this was the least badly damaged image, so don't complain.
.jpg]https://66ldgg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1mRffC_WbZ8IgHNDjKKH-FjrSyRTsE9E2w8p8HbtMBv8Ke9FWhWZRpg22EnuigQDSdjFQs_R8d44hHL8S-4cFjkQKJ9RoX-uOXuWEhTZjf9PAOE1BtMQTAQmYd4A8wJ4n6RCqjB9IVgahC8Fc1FwVueg/Gas%20station_thumb.jpg
That is Claire on the right, and others from the group are on the way back from what passes for a toilet in a Chinese gas station. The less I say about that topic the better!
.jpg]https://66ldgg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1mH5MfZpg9M44wEQpRslui_yMGlJx79XgMkXNcucQ7u39O_pRTpNS1ga4N72OPGI1iOnhqPeX2HxjzdwRfz1oYC5jz-FeFgwUM2Lq9h3ic63Yhrys4eHLWiUCT_IveS7cSsIV_2ubbu0pahbKKwWoETA/IMG_6300cr_thumb.jpg
You can tell from the picture that the road is pretty quiet. Heck, even the main highways can be pretty quiet. To say the Chinese are overbuilding for the current level of traffic is an understatement.
The driver continued to study his maps and I was told it was because the bridge on the best road was being replaced, so we couldn't use it. We took the route less travelled, and it made quite a difference. We started on a really nicely maintained small road—and yes, the flowers on the side of the road are typical. So are the types of vehicles. However, all too soon we ended up crawling along on roads like the one below.
In case you are wondering, yes, those trucks were stuck in the mud, but they did eventually get out of the way and our driver made it up the hill.I had thought it would be fun to take a video of the bus and passengers bouncing along on the horrible road. At one point the driver was nearly bumped out of his seat—but by the time I got the camera set up, the road was smooth again.
.jpg]https://dhzxuq.bay.livefilestore.com/y1mfOfsMdzlUed-ItMlK4oo7obNO9P_5aSYtT2XJZjwj8QMYmLcg-uIVRxQjqszQrIgOaFjSHFxnI4Itz37-9iSe7er_ot7L2Lu0dr38zn5nnJNeKdUP6yxPOmDuJ5STrLorlH5yHAO6u5c4EKuD2Y-3A/wudalianqi%20muddy%20road%20up_thumb.jpg
After about seven hours on the road we pulled into a hotel where I took a bunch of pictures with the camera accidentally on video, so the only evidence of being there is this curiously curved panorama of their nice, straight dock. It turned out the reason we went there was to check the maps once more—and try out the toilets. Chinese busses are not equipped with toilets. At least not the ones I’ve been on.
.jpg]https://66ldgg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1m1QygOAi-KOsgZ8u9HoQXxN1q_n1HhxXrNUhkJ-iWY7Yjv9pEyU0a9JPemIpFM8IpcjZFJ1TFJeP8WvTpui2goOHQawLbeITrsXaaJL73VbInYVD9NTcUvgAzBolZmVFj4wACd3cT-NgVlleyA8jEVg/pano_cr_thumb.jpg
So the next 'event' I got to take pictures of was the ice caves. Now you have to understand that in China, all tourist attractions are rated on a 'star' system, and out of five possible stars, Wudalianchi has not managed to earn itself a single one. So here are pictures of the famous ice cavern in the lava. Right.
.jpg]https://66ldgg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1mQXIaL23j9va4oSdloxP7jaIAC9wko5bXRYSFosJ0_QI16LQTKLB2JhB6isYZ18Y6VWDb0npR7Eju5mJVNbpFV_4NOT_dJdsMMM10uVeTYSpZ5Q4Z_Kp2gstD1aij05eTJ0XaA1WFcTjRaRh-JzMTtw/IMG_6327_thumb.jpg
It is a cold place, maybe fifteen meters underground, with lots of ice sculptures, mostly lit by LED Christmas lights, with a few colored fluorescent bulbs frozen into the sculptures. The picture looks a little foggy as I had to increase the brightness to stop details getting lost.
If you look at the roof very carefully, you will see it is at strange angles, and lots of heavy steel bars are reinforcing it. Natural it is not. The uneven surface is because it was created by the contraction of a lava bed, and I haven't figured out how they got the floor so smooth. Probably just flooded the place. The average temperature down there is minus 5.
You may also notice that everyone is either clutching a camera or a water bottle. These are the two essentials for travel in China! Since water is so important, naturally the next thing we did was visit a cold spring. This area apparently has the third largest cold spring in the world, as the lava flow trapped most of a river system underground, and blockaded the rest. The name of the town roughly translates as ‘five long stringy lakes’ and they are what is left of the river.
So we had to visit the spring, and here is how the water is described, in all its curiously translated glory. In case you are wondering, the text is cut into polished stone and is reflecting all of us tourists.
.jpg]https://66ldgg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1meyKWqYJonlJqJ7mgQLfu94K4ot5vFbjwVjt5F0cKzMtRsDM1fJopK0BFQvWtIoQ_CCscEYj5nwtVPrzWBnCIRPd2P-NGl5sNNOHRQ4jN5wHHTTJVd6I5o-lfIaOwhJx9QQr9HHVabRH8CHtT93e6Sg/IMG_6336cr_thumb.jpg
Tourist attractions often like to provide something extra. You can see below that this spring had a well dressed, but slightly aggravated monkey, which is with Jiang Xiaofan, a girl who is brave enough to pose with a monkey and to use her Chinese name with us foreigners. Why do I say brave to use her real name? Because foreigners invariably butcher (and easily forget) Chinese names until we get reasonably good at Chinese. I’m not nearly there yet.
The monkey did NOT like having its picture taken, and was continually trying to jump off whoever was paying to get their picture taken with it, and get back with its owner. I hope Ms. Jiang doesn’t mind if I tell about her experience. After dinner she described its misbehavior, and its claws, which were unbelievably soft. I couldn’t resist explaining that birds have claws, cats and dogs have paws, but because a monkey is so like a person, we call those appendages hands and feet. She was mortified, wailing apologetically that she hasn’t spoken English for three years. I was stunned, as she is finishing her BA in English! (In case you wonder, that was the only mistake I noticed in her English….)
On the right we are fulfilling the purpose of this park by filling our containers with medicinal water. We were told it could only be kept for 4 hours or it would oxidize and become poisonous. Hmmm. This slightly seedy building has taps around the outside for filling your bottles. Don't ask me what that thingy is inside it.... 非常遗憾照片看不到。还有很多大家如果愿意看的话明天再给大家。 照片怎么看不到呢？求助！！ /:02/:02/:02 真急人呀啊:/018/:024 看看，我说的吧！现代白求恩啊！祝贺你！！飘渺 如可以把相片发我信箱awei8701@hotmail.com,我替你代发 在五大连池2天的短暂旅程中，我没和外籍朋友说过话，但在餐桌上我们友好的相视微笑。给我的印象，这个外籍朋友是个内向 斯文 彬彬有礼的朋友。:/042 以后我家孩子学外语就找你了!! 你可不能推辞!! 谢谢楼上各位支持。我把材料传给张威。英语吗？:/019不怕耽误孩子前程的就可以。或者我可以帮你找外教。
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