Changsha: Hunan Provincial Museum

Friday, October 24. Get to station in time for 10:47 a.m. train. I'm going to Changsha by myself. After 3 months in China, I'm starting to feel a little more self-sufficient - even if getting there involves showing the taxi driver the characters for "train station" in my Mandarin phrase book! Hey, whatever works.

Sitting in waiting room at train station:
-People here travel with the most amazing bundles and packages. Some have large plaid plastic zippered bags, like the sort of thing a large comforter would come in. Others use big black plastic garbage bags, strapped together with duct tapeinto giant bundles. Often they will have two of these giant bundles hung at either end of a pole that they carry across their shoulders. Some have stacks of boxes tied together or large satchels. My little rolling suitcase is an anomaly; I see only two others.
-It sometimes seems as though everyone in China eats or snacks constantly (and yet they are still so thin!). So much stuff to eat/drink is sold at the train station: outside there are many little food stalls, inside the station downstairs, upstairs, everywhere!
-When the train is ready to board, it's always a madhouse, although I don't really understand why as everyone who has a ticket is assigned to a particular car and seat (or just a particular car if you have a standing only ticket which I do today). This seems to be the Chinese way! But I've learned to push and shove with the best of them. :)
-I'm sitting next to a mother and father with a cute baby and am overcome with the strongest urge to sniff the baby's head! I wonder what they would think if I did?! I settle for taking a picture of him.
-One of the things I like best about traveling by myself is that I have time to think.

On the train, I have a standing ticket, but a nice, older gentleman (he's probably younger than I am!) indicates that I should sit next to a woman who is holding her child of about 2 years. So I gingerly sit on the edge of the seat. A little time goes by and I start making eyes at the little girl - talking and smiling to her and playing with her little rabbit. She is just staring at me with these big eyes and suddenly bursts into tears and scrambles up onto her mother as far away from me as she can get. And we're not talking just little tears here - we're talking sobbing, wailing - and she keeps saying something over and over in Chinese, which I can only imagine is something like "Get that horrible, scary person away from me!" The sobbing and wailing continues until a nice young man in the seat across the aisle switches with me. It's very embarrassing but also kind of amusing. I feel so bad. But then I think back to the time that my friend Rosemary had a 2nd birthday party for her son Ryan and invited a clown. Ryan was terrified of the clown and would have nothing to do with him - screaming and crying. And when you think about it, I probably look somewhat the same to this little Chinese girl: white skin, a red mouth (lipstick) and big white scary teeth. She doesn't know whether I'm smiling or getting ready to eat her up!

We finally arrive in Changsha, I get into the taxi queue and head for our old hangout (during orientation), the JinJiang Inn. Feels just like home. I walk over to YiZhong (school) to meet Diana and we go up to the WT office so I can get some books. The "library," such as it is, consists of books thrown willy-nilly onto a bookcase that is not well designed to hold books. However, I decide that things must be organized. Diana is very good-natured and patient about taking time out of her day to indulge me, and when we are done, it looks a lot better. We have a section for hard cover/large-format books, another for non-fiction, another for fiction (divided into two sections depending on size of book) and the last for detective/thrillers. Very satisfying work!

We go to the noodle restaurant across from the school for lunch where I have tomatos, scrambled eggs and noodles. Delicious! After, I drop the books I've borrowed from WT library off at the hotel and then walk up the street (about 15 minute walk) to the Hunan Provincial Museum on Dong Feng Lu.

Hunan Provincial Museum. There is an amazing exhibition of Western art at the museum titled: From the Academia to Impressionism - Masterpieces of the 19th Century. Here's a little blurb from a Chinese website:
"These 100 masterpieces [include] recognized names from 19th Europe, such Frederic Leighton, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, Claude Monet...However, these paintings are rarely seen by public since they were collected by . . . [Mexican businessman] Juan Antonio Perez Simon, the most important art collector in North America." The exhibition was in Beijing and Shanghai before coming to Changsha and will go to Guangdong later.

I feel very fortunate to be in Changsha at this moment to see these paintings. The museum itself, apart from the exhibition, is remarkable. A tomb more than 2000 years old was excavated in Hunan (actually just outside Changsha) in the early 70s, and the collection of things from the tomb, the tomb itself, the inner coffins and the 2000-year-old mummy are amazing. Also beautiful bronzes, calligraphy, paintings, pottery. I definitely will go back as I spent so much time in the exhibition that I couldn't do justice to the rest before closing time.

Walk back to hotel. Read for awhile before meeting Tara, Brigham and Maria for dinner in little Hunan restaurant across from YiZhong. I laugh until my sides hurt listening to Tara and Maria tell about their adventures with the wild monkeys at Wulingyuan! All in all, a wonderful day.