offerendum

Hui! This are huge pots! Glad I mustnīt use old style bathrooms

mel737

Because satellite (T3D) opened a lot later to public than main terminal (T3C), like 5 years later.

steveman518

My family in Hunan primarily lives in the countryside, so when we go back we usually take a day and those of us in the city come back for the whole family to get together. Usually this is a big deal, but the occasions where we come back from the US to visit are especially a big deal. Recently with all of the highways that China has been building (and are generally empty away from the cities), the drive has been reduced from over 3 hours of local roads to under 2 hours via the highway. The arrival is either met with a roll of firecrackers or even some basic fireworks.

The area is nearest to Huitang (灰汤), a "metropolitan area" of approximately 95,000 (and about 25,000 in the town itself) that's gradually "incorporating" nearby areas to help promote its hot springs

passing through Huitang


one of the roads in the countryside


fireworks box (with remnants of the firecrackers)


some housing


some more housing (naturally you can tell pictures with clearer skies are from previous visits)


inside a house


toilet level: still a hole in the ground-it's the country after all


a typical bedroom (with some storage)


Those in the country tend to not enjoy some of the luxuries we take for granted. After all, "countryside" doesn't mean idyllic "rustic" (which IMHO is one of the worst words in the English language) settings with houses overlooking wide plains of grasslands while sipping sweet tea. There's a special room in the house called the "AC room" because it actually has air conditioning!

The family raises some animals, but primarily plants crops. The winter crop season isn't particularly exciting, but the rice crop season is much more scenic.



fishing for dinner


chickens


In addition to seeing everyone, the primary reason for the gathering is to perform exercises in ancestral worship (拜祭/拜年) (naturally no pictures of the actual processes). While filial piety is still supposed to be an important part of Chinese culture, the actual practice of ancestral worship is not something necessarily performed by a lot of people, especially younger folks and/or city folks. Now I'm not completely clear on how all of this works or what everything means, but I'll give it my best shot (and please fill in/correct if you know what's going on)

The first part is where the former heads of the house are worshipped, with their pictures on the wall and a shrine placed below with offerings including food, incense, special candles, and incense paper (money for the afterlife). Everyone does an individual ritual, asking the former heads of the household for guidance/protection/well-being/etc (usually silently) before doing the requisite bows, all while an older member may be asking for everyone's general well-being aloud.

The second part involves walking through the mountains in the area, since many deceased family members are buried in the mountain with each grave marked by a small tomb. The graves are placed in the mountainside in locations of good feng shui, and we go through the mountains to pay our respects to our deceased relatives. These mountains tend not to have paths (so imagine carrying the coffin), so this endeavor can be quite challenging. At each site the incense and candles are lit and the incense paper is burned (the paper has to be completely be burned through)

beginning of a path to one of the tombs


closest thing to a trail away from the trailhead


After paying respects to the deceased eating and general socializing (aka playing mahjong for money) fill up most of the rest of the time. Those of us coming into town generally eat at one of the nicer tables available in the home.

steveman518

Thanks for reading! It's been a great trip so far

Thanks for following along! Looks like mel737 might be right. Plus also fewer people to ruin nice things

For LH F I couldn't get the timing of the flight to work (ie minimizing days off between family and work). The LH flight leaves PEK in the afternoon and doesn't catch the morning bank of flights to the US (in addition of making for a really long layover at PEK). CA has two flights, one around the same time as the LH flight and one late at night that does catch the morning FRA-US flights. I also already had CA F in place for PEK-FRA and LH J on the FRA-SEA direct (744 no F), so it was easier to just change the FRA-US flight to LH F. Currently PEK-FRA is wide open on LH F on my day of departure though...I'd almost be tempted if my schedule was a little more flexible...

Brother for scale too
It's a little bit of an adventure the first time around each time I go back, but I suppose I get used to it after a bit

DFW_CK

Amazing trip report - especially the experiences and pictures in the countryside. Thank you for sharing.

CappuccinoAddict

This is a wonderful trip report! Thank you for sharing your family experiences with family with us and for your explanations

tennislover9

Great lesson in Chinese Culture and Life. Thanks for sharing!

mel737

There's car everywhere in China and is a cause of airpocalypse (aka 500+ AQI), as you can see from this photo.

farbster

Terrific report. Your hotel looked pretty nice. How much was it?

Thanks for sharing your personal trip (not just another "hey, i'm in London" trip).

Bretteee

Fascinating. Thanks for the family pictures.

I remember in the 1960s even in Italy there were areas where the toilets were just holes in the ground.

The deserts on United look awful to me.

steveman518

So there are a couple of tourist-ish destinations we did go to, but they tend to be frequented by Chinese instead of being places foreigners would ever really want to go to.

On the way back to the city from the countryside we stopped by Shaoshan (韶山), the hometown of Chairman Mao. To be honest, there isn't really much to see, since it's basically his childhood home and then a giant statue of him on the other side of town. IMO it's more of a pilgrimage destination for the "good Chinese citizen" to visit. Photos inside the house were "not allowed", but if I did take any photos of the interior it wouldn't have been particularly noteworthy. As a side note, China has an odd obsession with this whole "former home of important figures"-more to come later.

The government is trying to make this attraction "more organized" (aka trying to make it more impressive than it is) by now having a road blockade into town and building a huge bus station away from town to shuttle people back and forth into town (none of which was there a few years ago). Of course it kind of falls flat and ends up costing money for the shuttle.

giant building to buy tickets/bus station


new scenery all over the place (and a newly built area to queue to enter the house)


outside of the house


The paddies and ponds during the winter season


and during the summer season (pre-smog)


A walk towards the the other side of town (and conveniently towards the busses that will take you back to the bus station) leads to the esteemed Chairman




pre-smog Chairman looks far more glorious


Our other destination in Hunan was Hengshan/Heng mountain (衡山), one of the "Five Great Mountains" of China. Unfortunately, due to all the smog, we decided not to go up because, well, you wouldn't see anything.

There might be a mountain up there


We had also come to the area to visit Nanyue temple (南岳大庙), apparently the largest temple in southern China, which is visited by my family annually. It's a combined Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism temple and is a decently popular/important destination for those nearby. The temple is more of a complex containing about 16 temples, with each temple "representing" a different deity and/or facet of life (naturally pictures inside the temples themselves are not kosher). At each of the temples you do the same bowing rituals and the practice of kau cim (求簽), where you shake a stick out of a small bucket as a fortune of sorts, which can be interpreted by a temple monk/priest for a small "donation".

On the way to the area there are many stores that sell those candles/incense/incense paper/etc that try to flag down cars and sell their wares. Many of them offer a combined "ritual goods + lunch" combo to entice customers (though to be fair they're all basically the same after a bit).

inside a store


one of many selling food/goods along the street


writing personal information so that the deities know to protect/guide you


largest temple


At this particular location, you don't leave most items at the altars, but instead there are two "fire pits" (for lack of a better term) where you just chuck bags of offerings into. If I remember correctly one of the pits is for the deities/etc, whereas the other one is for ancestors.

"fire pit"


Afterwards we went back to the store to have lunch. In certain areas (especially rural) you may find your tableware wrapped up in plastic to show that it's been "sterilized". However usually you will want to clean your tableware beforehand anyways, especially if there is a bucket on offer on or around the table. In that case you take the hot water/hot tea, and rinse all your tableware with it and dump it into the bucket

saran-wrapped dishware + bucket


now with more food


toilet level: two holes in the ground next to each other (should also note than when a full bathroom has a hole in the ground, the hole in the ground also acts as the shower drain)


After lunch we decided that going up the mountain wasn't going to be useful, so we went back to town.

steveman518

Thanks for reading! It's always fun for me to go back for a day or two (though if I stayed in the country for an extended period of time I might feel differently...)

Thanks for following along! More to come!

Thanks for reading!

Most definitely, but it also doesn't help when the area (and a lot of the country) is heavily industrialized

Thanks for following along! I believe the hotel was about 260 Yuan/night including breakfast (the Hilton and Marriott are both about 500/night). While it may seem cheap, keep in mind that the cost of living (and wages) is much lower.

It truly is another world out there. The small bites were actually not bad, though not necessarily something I'd buy on the ground.

offerendum

You really like toilets

dcapal

Great insight into the real China. I love the toilet shots :-)

steveman518

I've just completed the return journey the other day, and oh boy first time in F is something special

After 3 days it came time to travel to visit the other side of my family. Naturally my family is not very good at this whole timing thing and insisted we didn't need to leave for CSX until 7:30 for a 9:20 flight (despite an hour drive time+checked bags). Naturally we were having none of that and planned for a 7am departure out to CSX. Even then we only passed security after boarding had already begun. The lounge isn't worth noting, as it follows the typical Chinese outstation model of having many smaller lounges instead of having a few larger lounges and each of them tends to only have seating with basic drinks and snacks.

MF8025
CSX-HGH
Boeing 737-800
Seat 55J

This segment is lean on pictures because this was the only flight I flew with family members. However it wasn't particularly memorable anyways. Imagine a Boeing 737-800 with the Boeing sky interior with 8 domestic F seats, and that's pretty much the whole plane. The colors were very...blue, and FA uniforms varied between the blue of the seats and a baby blue.

XiamenAir (Xiamen Airlines until recently), like some other Chinese carriers, start their Y cabin with a high row number, so 55 was the second exit row. The first exit row had extra legroom, while the second exit row had standard legroom without the window seat.

obligatory legroom shot


just blue


We were delayed on the ground for about 20 minutes, and the FAs basically conducted the whole snack service on the ground. The service consisted of a bottle of water, a small bag of mixed nuts, and a small bag of dried olives. It wasn't much, but considering that we hadn't really had breakfast, it held us over to HGH. The flight itself was uneventful, and overall there really wasn't much to report.

After arrival we were picked up and driven to Shengzhou (嵊州), which is about 90 minutes from HGH/Hangzhou (杭州). The town/city doesn't have a major chain hotel, so we stayed in the Shengzhou city hotel (嵊州城市酒店), which prominently displayed its 3 stars.

Since the area is much less industrialized, there was a lot less smog this time around (AQI ~150 upon arrival, as low at 60 after some rain)


room


toilet level: western


breakfast spread-imagine basically a slightly sad version of the breakfast from the previous hotel


There are a few things I probably should have mentioned throughout the TR that I have forgotten to mention that I have kind of taken as the norm in China that may seem a little different for new visitors.
For those of you that have been to China you know that drivers everywhere are awful, and the rules are truly just guidelines. Scooters go as they please, and no one has any lane integrity. If you want to make a left turn into a driveway, you just gently shove your way across the lanes until opposing traffic stops and you do it the whole way across the road. If there's something blocking your way you just kind of go around it, even if it means going into the opposite lane (and even around the car in front of you trying to make a left turn). Certain places have literally put up barriers on the median in city streets to try to improve lane integrity (I suppose that's the case when there's an actual fence there). I'm sure if you search for videos of Chinese traffic you'll see some of these things.
Smoking. Everywhere. Even in areas that are supposed to be "no smoking", because no one really cares. A lot of the time in the hotels you can smell smoke in the hallways or lobby. China is also a loud place in general. It doesn't help that people seem to prefer voice messages and speakerphones in public is really a thing.
Most of my relatives in Hunan (first place) speak the Hunan dialect, which is slightly difficult to understand, but you do start to understand what they're saying after a while. Shaoxing dialect (second place), on the other hand, is impossible for me to understand, because it's spoken so much faster than mandarin is. Mandarin is supposed to be spoken for all "official business", but away from large areas, no one really cares and the local dialects are still used for official business. Also because laws are only "guidelines" because it's China.
I've seen a few TRs where people complain about how firm beds/sleeping surfaces are, but that's just how it is in Asia. I like it a lot, so I slept very well at the hotels.