Crouch Group
Thursday, April 23, 1998
Author: Roland Liscano
Date of Writing: Wednesday, April 23, 1998
Type of Writing: Sports in Rural China
When I was in China, I noticed that many of the things that the Chinese people do for leisure aren't that different from what people in the U.S.A. do. When I first got to China, many of the people I observed were poor. They didn't look like they had time for leisure. I thought that many of the villages wouldn't have time to do anything but work on the farm and that they would be too tired for doing anything other than drinking tea and talking with friends. I soon found out that I was wrong. Many people in China have something that they do when they aren't working. They play many western sports like basketball, volleyball, and ping-pong.
On this day, I'm riding my bike on a dirt road, barely pulling my bike across on the last gear. When we stopped to rest, we saw an old man who tried to get us to play some games in his village. He was difficult to understand and we thought he was talking about playing basketball. So we all decided "What the heck, lets go and join them." We followed him into the village and parked our bikes. Then I saw a volleyball court and found out that they wanted to challenge us to play volleyball. We accepted, but first got their agreement to interview one of the village natives in order to understand the life of common farmers in China. In return for the interview, we gave them different complimentary hotel soap and shampoo bottles. They gladly took them, each trying to get more shampoo and soap than anyone else did. After about 15 minutes of interviewing, we agreed to play volleyball. Many of the group members thought that we could whip them. After all, we are from countries where playing such sports is very common, whereas we thought that the villagers would not have any experience with playing with what we assumed is a foreign sport. So we began the game against the villagers with much confidence. The volleyball court was rundown and the ball was dirty and flat. Because the court was located in the middle of the village, many of the villagers came to watch the game. We thought we had an audience to witness how good we foreigners are compared to a small rural village. We very soon found out that we were wrong! The villagers beat us so badly that we stopped counting the score. After the game, we asked why they were so good. They told us that they practice every day. So contrary to what we thought, the Chinese do have time for sports.
The Chinese play many western sports, like basketball, volleyball, table tennis, and even sometimes pool. They are very good at these sports, practicing everyday trying to perfect what they play. Basketball and volleyball are played mostly with makeshift hoops or nets. Some of the basketball hoops we saw were held up with bamboo branches, the backboard made from old wooden boards, and the hoops made from baskets (baskets to carry food). Some of the volleyball nets we saw looked like they were made from fishing nets. Pool tables look old and rundown. The one we saw looked warped and had lots of tape holding it together.
I learned an important lesson from exploring and observing sports played in rural villages of Guangdong Province (Southern China). That is that just because the villages look poor and have rundown equipment, doesn't mean that they are any less in sports than we are. From my team's experience of my team getting blown away in the volleyball game against the local villagers, I think that they are bigger sports fanatics than we are.
Author: Jamie Dunn
Date of Writing: April 23,1998
Type of Writing: Food streets of horror
It was a hot muggy day as our group trudged towards the wet markets. I didn’t know what I was feeling, was I nervous, scared, excited, and I didn’t know what to expect. I heard a lot of rumors of what it was like they said there would be mutilated monkey brains, dead skinned cats and all sorts of horrible things. But I thought to myself, "This can’t be true. There’s no way that the people would ever allow it."
Finally I arrived to the markets, and was I surprised! The smell was the first thing I noticed, it was an odder that you could never imagine! In my opinion this smell was three times as worse than any BO smell (Body Odor) ever smelt by a human or any manure smell ever to have past through nostrils. The smell never left you, it stuck to you like glue! Finally once I got used to the horrible smell I started to look around a little bit more, I noticed a lot of students crowding around a store. I got curious and walked over, it was a snake store, rows and rows of snakes in cages. Every type of snake you can possibly think of was there. Cobras, garden snakes corral snakes king snakes and even snakes found in wine. The most expensive snake being sold was about 500 dollars HK. Its about 8 dollars HK for every 1 dollar US. (It was a Cobra being sold). Keep in mind that these are living and they would kill them right in front of you. In one shop a guy was playing with a snake. It was poisonous and the snake man didn’t seem to care one bit. I’m quite sure all of you have seen snakes and its not such a big deal, but when I went to the meat department ( About as big as a supermarket), I was shocked. This place was a real " House of Horrors". Every sort of animal imaginable was there. We saw frogs, chickens, lizards, eels, catfish, baby eels, turtles, baby turtles, huge fish (like white bass and salmon), mudskippers, rabbits, dogs, weasels, possums, owls, cats that looked like small leopards or tigers, and goats. For all of you cat lovers and dog lovers, an average cat cost about 50 HK dollars to have it skinned, washed dried and bagged. An average dog cost about 20 to 60 HK dollars to have skinned and bagged. With a dog, you have to clobber it over the head with something strong, to knock it out or to kill it. Now put yourself in my shoes, I am witnessing all of this and smelling all of the blood spurting out of the animals. Do think you could have visited this market? The funniest bit about this trip was the market vendors and how they reacted. They were walking around with ice creams and sodas like nothing was happening. You should have seen our group and how terrified they were. My advice to anyone going to China: don’t ever visit the markets. If your parents make you, pretend that you’re sick. It would probably be the worst experience of your life!
Right before I wrote this piece, I ate dinner at the hotel. There was a lot of meat on the table that I really didn’t recognize. Tonight I only ate the vegetables and rice. Why do you think that is??? I’m thinking about never eating a "hot dog" again!
Author: Jeff Hung
Date of Writing: Wednesday, April 23, 1998
Type of Writing: "Smells of China"
When I was in Hong Kong, I thought the smells there were diverse enough. One minute you could smell perfume in the shop and another minute you could be on the street with fumes from the sewers making you sick. But when I came to China I was blown out of my mind with the different smells and odors. Here in Guang Dong province I have experienced many more smells. Most of the really bad smells came from the countryside rather than the city. Although there were many smells, only a few of them were pleasant. Most of the smells in the city are from the diesel emissions from the buses and trucks.
The cities that we have seen in China are pretty much like every other in the world. Like the look, the smells are also pretty average for a city. Most of the odors are from the emissions from cars, buses, and trucks. Today in Tai Shan the traffic was so bad you could see all the dust in the air. There is a lot of traffic and the street is almost always smelling like burnt gasoline. Most of the shops in the city have perfumes and air conditioning which block out the smells outside. The best smelling shop was probably the teashop, which has a strong smell of tealeaves. Although the city generally doesn’t have harshly pungent smells the quality of air in small cities or towns are worse.
It’s funny in China how the smaller the town or village you go to the less technological advanced they are. Sometimes the change is dramatic sometimes it is not. The biggest difference is probably between the vehicles on the road. Tractors and trucks are a lot more common in the villages than the city. Tractors let out much more emission in the form of black smoke. It is extremely visible and smells a lot like burnt coal. Towns are also the homes of small factories that are run by a few people. These factories are extremely inefficient and let out the most air pollution and probably the most disgusting smell you can find in a town. These small factories make bricks, baskets, and recycle rubber. All of these factories produce smoke or smells, except the basket factory since it works with reeds. The worst one is the rubber-recycling factory. I don’t even understand why it was there. Isn’t recycling meant for the good of the environment? The smoke was so thick, black, and disgusting in smell it stung my eyes and forced me to hold my breath while biking through that area. It smelled like burnt rubber and plastic. Coals could also be smelled. After riding through the factory area the fumes that I inhaled made my headache and my eyes sting. The only other thing that even came close was the market place in town. The smell there of meats is totally vile and "un-standable". Odors of rotting meat and blood fills the air around you. It is like putting all the bad smells you could find together into the mother of disgusting odors. One unusual observation we made was that there weren’t many flies there. The only explanation we could think of was that the smell was even too bad for the flies. It was terrible! A second unusual observation we made was that the people working there didn’t take any notice of the smells. There was even a kid doing his homework in the midst of goat heads and gutted cats. These people probably got used to the smell because they go to the markets and stay there for hours every day. I thought these smells were bad but when I went to the countryside the smells were pungent beyond belief.
Smells in the countryside are the worst that I have ever encountered. Have you ever smelled cake of cow manure piled high in the road. It smells just like human poo but is ten times worse. The horrific smell don’t just come from one place, but from everywhere around you since the stuff is EVERYWHERE! Chicken and other farm animals poo also smell pretty bad. Since most of the road is pavement when trucks pass by they churn up dust which smells like dirt and makes you cough a lot. Other than that the clean fresh air smells nice and clean like the rice fields. Although the countryside isn’t the best smelling place I like the smells here best since they are all natural.
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