Friday October 30th we went on a field trip with the other international students – one of the first times we’ve gotten to interact with them at length, actually! – and some of the Chinese students to Jiu Ding Ta, which is a… “cultural amusement park” about an hour out of Jinan. The park’s attractions include typical amusement-park rides (bumper cars, bumper-boats, a couple small roller coasters, some obstacle bridges over the canyon, and a zip line), a Buddhist temple pagoda (from which the park gets its name), an equestrian acrobatics drama performance, and some miniature model ethnic townships where you can sample ethnic cuisine and (supposedly) members of the involved ethnic minority give performances of cultural dances.
The politics of representation that are involved in this kind of cultural tourism are… complex, both for domestic Chinese citizens and for non-Chinese Western observers, who look at this and see blatant racism and exploitation. So I’m not going to go into them here, though trust me, we all talked about them, both amongst ourselves and with our Chinese friends. It was… interesting, and very educational.
Here’s a shot of the pagoda courtesy of one of our Chinese professors:
Really, the park in general was stunning. It was starting to get cold, but I’m still quite glad we could go.
Mostly we spent the afternoon clambering over the various rope and wood bridges – theoretically built in “culturally accurate” ways to the communities that tend them (I’m still not sure what that’s supposed to mean) – set up across the two hills that make up the park. It was one of the only times we’ve gotten to really mix with the other students at SDNU and it was super great. I want to post more pictures, buuut alas the internet has refused for over an hour now. Looks like that’s it for this post. Check back again later, maybe the picture situation will have improved~