Journey to the South

Upon arriving in Yibin on Monday of last week, my fellow volunteer and I were pleasantly surprised to find a reasonably developed city located at the head of the Yangtze River. The heat was intense as Yibin is situated in a very humid/subtropical climate, but the nights were cool and such astounding temperatures are not expected to remain past August. We would remain there for one week, living with a Chinese host family and exploring the city.

My first impression of Yibin was that it was rather touristy. At least four sites were popular amongst Chinese-a stone and bamboo forest, a world class baijiu (Chinese alcohol) factory, the Yangtze and some popular cave areas. However the town is much more than that, at least in comparison to other touristy Chinese cities I have visited, and has developed fine schools and hospitals which appear to be boosting the cities growth as well.

My host family consisted of a 16 year old girl and her two parents. During the academic year the daughter heads to Chengdu to attend high school and has already achieved better English than my Chinese. Both the mother and father are professors at the city college where I will be teaching. The family was incredibly hospitable and I was grateful for all the kindness they showed me . Just as in Chengdu, it was nice to observe and become close to a traditional Chinese home.

We spent much of last week on the go. The family was anxious to show me any and all of what the city had to offer-the downtown shopping center, the baijiu factory, even Walmart, which they evidently believed was essential for us to be able to locate, and which I still can’t believe the city had.

As we toured the city I again felt like I was being given the royal treatment. The idea of me serving in the Peace Corps during the day and going to Walmart in the afternoon never entered my wildest imagination before I left, but I imagine that those luxuries would rarely enter my life during actual service. In fact visiting Yibin was a perfect time to reflect on how serving in this city would really feel, and what affect being alone and mostly isolated from American culture would actually have upon me. Besides one other fellow PC volunteer, only three other foreigners were known to live in the city-one British and two Japanese. For a city of roughly 1 million people, such a small number of foreigners indicated that we would be the subject of constant attention and countless stereotypes. I expected this, there are still a small number of foreigners in China overall, but it can get surprisingly nerve racking nonetheless.

While riding the bus through the city or strolling through the Yibin college campus, I chose not to dwell on the negative aspects of the next two years. The cultural barriers would just take getting used to, and anyway wasn’t this the reason why I came to Peace Corps in the first place? Two years is a long time, and I would learn so much during that period that frustrations would be worth the cost. I have no serious complaints and find myself lucky to have been placed in such an exciting city.

I returned to Chengdu yesterday, excited to see my PC friends again and ready to enjoy the last two weeks before our official completion of Peace Corps training. At dinner late last night, I gathered with my friends and each anxiously shared stories about their site. The excitement was palpable. We would finally be becoming Peace Corps volunteers in a remote city. After a full week without seeing them it felt strange to be back, and I had time to reflect on how few of these get-togethers we would have left. Our training was coming to an end. Our new journey was just beginning.