Searching for Scenic Spots in Textbooks
Over the years, while accompanying my child in learning, I often came across a location, a building, or a scenic spot mentioned in a sentence or an article from Chinese language textbooks. This gave me the idea of taking my child to see these places. In earlier years, I traveled without much purpose, but in recent years, I have developed a clear goal: to travel following the textbooks. Recalling the cities I've visited, I realized there are quite a few textbook-mentioned spots. These include the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace in Beijing; Daming Lake and Baotu Spring in Jinan; the Chengde Mountain Resort and Eastern Qing Tombs in Hebei; the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an; none in Jincheng, Shanxi; the Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan; Orange Isle and Yuelu Mountain in Changsha; Yueyang Tower in Yueyang; Poyang Lake and Pavilion of Prince Teng in Nanchang; Lushan Waterfall in Jiujiang; none in Shanghai; Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing; none in Xuzhou; Suzhou gardens and Hanshan Temple in Suzhou; Taihu Lake in Wuxi; the Yin Ruins and Longmen Grottoes in Henan; none in Lijiang; West Lake and Leifeng Pagoda in Hangzhou; Thousand Island Lake in Tai'an, etc. In the past few years, due to the pandemic, I haven't traveled much. Here I'll talk about our recent trip to Changsha. On July 26th, I went with my child. On the train, I booked a hotel near Wuyi Square. We arrived at noon, got off the subway, and immediately ate Changsha stinky tofu. I must say it was far better than what they make in Zhengzhou—even I, who never eats it, found it quite good. After eating, we found a rice noodle shop. Indeed, Hunan rice noodles were delicious. My son boasted they were better than those in Zhengzhou. After two days of eating, I can say that Changsha's stir-fried dishes, rice noodles, and snacks are all amazing. Perhaps we were hungry, and the food was tasty; we each had three big bowls. Then we went to the hotel to take a shower. The weather in Changsha was really hot.
On the way back to the hotel, I noticed that ear cleaning and massage shops were everywhere in Changsha. Every shop on the street had power banks for rent. Also, there were many snacks, and the roads were greasy. We rested at the hotel for a while. Around five o'clock, we went to Orange Isle, where the great man once pointed at the landscape and composed poems. We walked there, and when we reached the Orange Isle Bridge over the Xiang River, we found we couldn't get down. So we hailed two motor tricycles. At the scenic spot ticket office, a ticket seemed to be 168 yuan. We bought two tickets for the sightseeing car, which included the car fare. We arrived at the pier as dusk was falling. There was a long queue. Among the crowd, there was a flat-chested girl wearing only a bra—anyway, if you're not embarrassed, I am. Looking around, most visitors in Changsha were young people, and their clothes were pleasant to the eye.
As night fell, we boarded the top deck of the cruise ship. The river breeze brought by the ship's movement added a touch of pleasure to the otherwise sweltering summer. In the distance, the reflections of high-rise building light shows on the river added a dynamic quality to the calm water surface. At that moment, I had a thought of wanting to stop time.
But then I remembered a book saying that time does not exist in itself—only motion exists, and we use motion to define time. For example, the Earth's orbit around the sun is a year, the Moon's orbit around Earth is a month, etc. Thinking about it, where does time come from? The Big Bang? Suddenly, my son interrupted my thoughts, saying there was a performance downstairs. We went back into the cabin, where a veiled woman was playing the erhu. The rhythm of the music was fast and didn't quite match the scene. After the boat circled around, we returned to the starting point. We followed the massive crowd to take the subway. Back at the hotel, I booked high-speed train tickets to Yueyang for the next day. After showering and playing a game, we went to sleep.
The next day, we arrived in Yueyang at 8 a.m. Then we took a taxi to Yueyang Tower. I bought tickets on the same app and entered directly. It wasn't crowded. I hired a guide for 100 yuan to explain the origin and stories of Yueyang Tower to my child; otherwise, there wasn't much to see. The guide talked all the way until we reached the top floor of Yueyang Tower. Looking into the distance, Dongting Lake merged with the sky, which broadened my mind. After the tour, my son bought a souvenir, and we planned to head back. At the exit, there was a free bus to an island. After hesitating, we got on and went to see. But when we arrived, we didn't want to go in—mainly because it was too hot. So we took the bus back. It was a failure. Back, we heard that the Huishui (returning) fish of Dongting Lake is excellent. So we found a restaurant and ordered a fish. My son and I agreed it was indeed very good.
After eating, we took the high-speed train back to Changsha. We rested at the hotel for a while, then went to Yuelu Mountain. We took a taxi directly to the entrance and bought round-trip tickets for the sightseeing car. Actually, the return ticket wasn't necessary. We got off at the sightseeing car stop and started walking. The paths in Yuelu Mountain were as numerous as blood vessels. We turned on the navigation and followed it step by step. When we found we were wrong, we corrected in time. In this way, we found the much-sought-after Aiwan Pavilion and Yuelu Academy. As per my son's habit, he bought a souvenir at the scenic spot.
Afterward, we followed the navigation and eventually exited through the main gate of Hunan University. I said to my son, "Why not aim for Hunan University in the future?" He replied, "It's a 985 university; I can't get in." I said, "You're at least among the top 30 in your school; you should have confidence." I kept educating him like this all the way to the east gate. There were many snacks along the roadside at the east gate, all tempting, but our stomachs weren't in the mood.
Back at the hotel, I had a thought that I didn't want to go to the Three Gorges in Yichang anymore. So I discussed with my son and canceled the hotel and train tickets. I bought tickets to go back home. The next day, we headed back, ending this trip.
