Visit to Benxi Caves and Villagers' Home

All of the foreign teachers, the Chinese staff and three Canadians from Red River College in Winnipeg (the school our school is associated with) went to visit Benxi Caves. The caves are about an hour’s drive outside of Shenyang and it is the longest underground river that you can travel by boat in the world. There were many interesting stalagmites and stalactites that formed shapes. Many of them had names like “Seal Playing with a Pearl” or “Jade Palace”. The most interesting one, that really looked like its name was one in the shape of an elephant. We took two boats down the river. Our mischievous friend Pete said that he was on a dragon hunt and kept making scary “dragon noises” which really just sounded like “ooooooooh, oooooooooh”. Then he suggested that we scare the boat of Chinese tourists that was about to pass beside our boat, so at the same time we all yelled “Rarrrrhhhhhhh!” and scared the daylights out of them. Of course we all enjoyed a big laugh.

After the cave, we went to this museum type building that had replicas of the Terracotta Warriors, then it led to another part of the museum that contained all sorts of horrific imagery, including many scenes of people bleeding and mutilated and many including Christian references. It was all very strange and kind of beyond explanation. Suffice it to say that we all left there scratching our heads and saying “What the heck was that all about??”.

We went for an interesting lunch and then were invited to go and visit the home of some villagers. The man was out front, cutting and boiling huge piles of cabbage that they keep throughout the winter to feed the pigs they keep in the yard. Inside the home, there was a small kitchen, a room that appeared to serve the purpose of a place to dry corn kernels (corn is a staple of Northern Chinese diets, you see many, many fields of it everywhere and ears of corn are often seen drying on people’s roofs). There was one room that was the living/bedroom for all the inhabitants of the house. No bed, just a kind of stage for them to sleep on. It is clear that these people live a simple life, but they seemed quite happy and satisfied, and welcomed us kindly into their home. It was very interesting to see life outside of the huge city.