Letter from Lucretia Meece in China
January 17, 2008
Dear Friends,
Just a short note to let you know of my holiday activities. This time of year races by, with vacations, exams, turning in grades, conferences, etc.
We had a two-day holiday for Christmas, per the Amity contract with the school, so a friend and I headed to Guangzhou, formerly Canton. We caught the local bus (I mean really local) and went to Kaiping to see the watchtowers, each six- or seven-story structure built to house a family, but much more of a fortress to protect from bandits, attacking Japanese, etc. Some of them are 300 years old. A UNESCO site, there were 3,000 of these watchtowers at one point, but now there are about 1800.
Then we visited two temples, one Taoist and one Buddhist, tucked in the forests along a river a little north of Guangzhou. It was a beautiful ride, especially since we were the only passengers. My friend and I had to rent the 40 passenger boat and agreed it was well worth it. It got really cold and began to rain, so we had the mist and surreal views as the boat motored on.
Another highlight was dinner on December 23 at the China Hotel, Marriott. The buffet was 488.RMB (68 dollars, not our choice, as we earn 10 dollars a day), so we ate French onion soup and pizza as the strolling mariachi band (from the Philippines) serenaded us. It was so good that we went back the next day and had the same exact thing again!
Exams finished on January 8, I turned in grades on the 9th and headed out on the train to Guilin and Yangshuo, both places with a Western flavor. The train ride was a shocker. We could only get “hard seats,” that is, the last class of seating, where as many as possible cram into seats and the others stand. In a 10-foot area of aisle near me, there were 28 people standing. Four sat in each of the three-seat clusters. I did not scoot over, since I knew we had 14 hours of this, and my generosity of spirit stops before 14 hours, apparently. The lights stay on the whole time; people sit, lie, stand, and lean on anything possible. Going to the WC involved getting up-close and personal to at least a hundred people on the way. When the train arrived in Guilin (home to the magnificent limestone karst mountains), we made a beeline for the ticket window to get tickets home. (You can only buy tickets from the departure city—no round trips.) This is tricky when millions of students are headed home, millions of migrant workers are headed home, and foreign teachers are headed off on vacation. In God’s loving providence, we got soft sleepers for the trip home. Praise be! This return takes 16 hours. I gave up trying to understand that. Both ways involve pulling over to sidings and letting other trains go by, many times.
Guilin and Yangshuo were all we had hoped. In addition to meeting some other Amity teachers, we got our boat trip down the Li River and saw karst mountains that have made the Chinese write, paint, sing, and contemplate for thousands of years. I understand that now. It is truly magnificent; breathtaking, extending off into the distance, farther than the eye can see—folds and folds of peaks and valleys.
I returned home today to an apartment that was 38 degrees. Eight hours later, it’s now up to 40. I plan to move the space heater into the bedroom and aim it at the bed before I get in. Yikes!
I leave on Sunday, January 20, for the winter Amity conference in Guiyang, another remote minority province. Amity has many projects here, and we will get a tour of some of them. After that I will fly to Atlanta for a welcome rest and restoring time with family and friends while the Chinese celebrate Spring Festival.
Love to you all,
Lucretia
Nanchang
The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 99
