Sanmenxia - 3 door gorge - 三门峽

Sanmenxia is the city where we worked in the orphanage. We were very delighted to find that it is a less humid, less hot, and less polluted city than much of China. When asked at the end of the trip by my Chinese colleague who had invited me on the trip which city was my favorite I told her that I enjoyed each city for different reasons. I enjoyed Sanmenxia because I felt like I got to get to know people there, see what normal (not tourist) life was like, and the people were so friendly and nice to each other and to us. Sanmenxia had a small town feel where people still felt connected to each other. At 6,000 people it is considered a small city by Chinese standards.

As I've stated before, the orphanage work was very intense. Intense because of the long hours and intense because of the wide range of strong emotions. The orphanage has requested confidentiality standards not dissimilar to what my employers in the States require so I can't show any pictures of our work there. Our work consisted of a needs assessment, training through treatment, and formal trainings. Our main focus was to bring more activities into the daily routines of the kids in order to foster development (cognitive, motor, etc).

We also had a bit of time to tour in Sanmenxia.

One morning I needed to go to the store before we went to the orphanage but found that it was not open so I took a walk up to a pagoda park not far from our hotel.

View of the pagoda from below

Detail of dragon at the gate

Looking back at the city from the pagoda

Marching drum group at Grand Opening celebration. I was talking to someone in broken Chinese & English while I was watching the drummers. He kept asking me, “What is this"?” and then he would say “beautiful”. I finally realized that he was asking me if I thought the music was beautiful. I was glad to finally be able to answer his question in the affirmative. He also kept saying “Kung Fu” and Chinese Boxing. I never could figure out why he was telling me that other than that he did Kung Fu =).

Sanmenxia has a city square that seems to be more in a downtown area. It was much busier than the area of town we were in. It was a lot of fun and I took several videos of the people doing group dancing and of a man doing Chinese calligraphy with water.

Just after I took this video one of the dance groups finished and a HUGE mass of people came toward me. I was about 15 feet from the rest of my group but it took a great effort to maneuver through all those people walking between us!

I loved this mural. It was right by one of the grocery stores that I frequented. I love the motorcycles parked beneath it, the Great Wall at the base, and the cuteness of it because the Chinese people love cute =).

One of the blue sky days in China. They were more common in Sanmenxia but uncommon in general.

We often drew a crowd wherever we went. In Sanmenxia Westerners are uncommon so the people were often interested to check out what we were like. The therapist from Taiwan shared a story with me of her American friend who taught English in Taiwan for seven years and a big part of why she enjoyed it there was because she was treated so special. I have to admit the attention was fun most of the time. It was the closest I will get to being famous =)

This is a radish sliced and formed into a flower. The food was always presented very decoratively. It is my understanding that this is more true in Henan province than in all of China in general.

Another unique feature of the area around Sanmenxia is that the land is made of a very fine mud. Because of this it is very easy to dig into the earth and build structures. The orphanage director took us to a tourist spot outside of town where there were many houses/rooms built underground.

The stairway into the underground houses.

Looking down into the underground houses from ground level.

Detail of a window at the underground houses.

The Yellow River also runs through Sanmenxia. There are two major rivers in China, the Yellow River being one of these. The Yellow River is of significance to Chinese people because it is a place from which their ancestors come from. They made the an analogy of these people being similar to an ancient native culture such as the Mayans. So being able to go to the Yellow River is like being able to go back to your roots.

We were trying to capture ourselves mid jump but never managed. It was funny all the same.

I was being posed for this picture by the office manager at the orphanage. She didn’t speak any English but told me through a blend of pantomime and translation to hug the Yellow River, so I did.

This was another pose I was told to do. Again, I have no idea why but it was fun =)

This is at the Dragon Boat celebration we did with the orphanage. I am making a sticky rice wrap with a date in it. There was a man who jumped in the river because he loved his country and it had been taken over by someone. The people made these sticky rice treats and threw them into the river so that the fish would not eat this man. So now as part of the Dragon Boat festival they make these treats. The necklaces around my neck are also part of the festival. They have sage inside which is believed to keep away demons and people that turn into animals. Another part of the Dragon Boat festival has something to do with a woman who turned into a White Snake. I never understood this part but we made these necklaces too. In the last part of the celebration, we made origami type lanterns that we then took down to the Yellow River canal (along with many of the kids from the orphanage) and put in the river and watched them float down. It was really fun. I got to walk down with one of the kids that I had worked quite a bit with and I loved seeing his face light up as he enjoyed all of the sights and sounds. One of my last memories of working with the orphanage was standing at the bridge over the river, watching the lanterns float down and seeing one of the kids point up to the stars. I said the word for “stars” in English and then one of the orphanage workers said the word in Chinese. It was a poetic moment of simple cultural exchange, respect, and enjoyment of life.