#susong

From Sunday - Wednesday, I went with my student and friend to his home in Anhui Province. His English name is Andy (his Chinese name is Yang Huang Lei) and he’s virtually my only student in my IELTS class for post-graduate students. He’s 26 and studying for his Master’s Degree in Computer Science. He first invited me to come with him to his home over May Day over a month ago, but we didn’t know each other as well then. In addition to our weekly class, I also usually have lunch with him on Thursdays to provide more practice opportunities and we’ve gotten to know each other reasonably well.

First we went to Susong Xian (Susong County 宿松县 - this is pretty much just for Emily...) in the county seat. The bus ride there took about four hours. Susong is in the Southern part of Anhui province, not far from the border with Jiangxi.

Bus Station

Bus - also, the tall apartment buildings in the background are EXTREMELY typical.

The county seat (both Andy and his friend Shi Qi kept using the term “county” to refer to the small city that acted as the county’s capital) was a fairly small city, probably around 90,000-100,000 people. We met up with Andy’s friend Shi Qi, who works for the Susong County Museum. She invited us to a speech competition she was judging in one of the local villages. Afterwards, we had dinner with her family. Her mother, upon hearing that I didn’t have any cloth shoes (slippers), gave me some. I tried to turn them down, but she was quite insistent.

Slippers

Afterwards, we went out to Andy’s village, which is a part of Chenhan Township (陈汉乡) which was quite small. His grandmother owns a clothing shop in the town center, but his parents live out in one of the villages and work as farmers. The experience was quite different from Nanchang. We took the bus and a few shuttles, which let us ride for free. I was the first foreigner they’d met or had ride their bus. Most University educated young people (twenty somethings) had met one or two foreigners before (one young woman said, “I met a black man once.”), but most of the people we met in the village hadn’t met a foreigner in person before. I got to see his parents’ house, walk around the surrounding farmland and countryside, and get a very brief, very incomplete peek into rural Chinese life. Everyone was overwhelmingly welcoming and warm.

Susong

Chenhan Town Center

Village

Oh! Also, this doesn’t fit thematically with any of my other posts, so I’m going to stick it on here. I didn’t get a great picture of this, but in the cab in Susong, there was a TV screen in the front of the cab that the driver was watching.

A guest post by Susong reviewing Hopscotch. My own top 5 will follow shortly.

Favorite Hopscotch Shows –

1.       Damien Jurado – incredibly intense hour long set from one guy and his guitar.

2.       Megafaun – great seeing one of my favorite bands again up close.

3.       Zammuto – probably the most interesting music of the weekend. Battles-esque instrumentation.

4.       The Roots – Look, I don’t listen to a lot of hip hop and definitely don’t go to hip hop shows. But this was something else entirely. All live instrumentation, great random covers thrown in, Questlove bein all Questlove-y and great energy from the band and the crowd.

5.       Mount Moriah – really good songs and great pixie-ish lead singer. Will check them out again if they make it to Charlotte

Honorable Mention – Silver Swans: Excellent dream pop sound even though the venue was the size of a shot of Fireball. I was disappointed I wouldn’t get to see them up close but then noticed the Moog synths in the back that were available for us to play. Bill Fleming and I spent the rest of the show messing with them trying to sync up the sound to the band’s. Very fun times.