Hangzhou... 8 modes of transport

30/04/15 - 3/05/15
I boarded the train to Hangzhou, the slow train and guess what, the beds had sold out so I had to sit up for 12 hours with very bright lights. No sleep. When I was waiting for the gate to open, I saw that a few people had their own stools with them, I panicked and thought that there weren't going to be seats but thankfully when I got on, there was. Phew! After around one hour, a group of students asked if I wanted to play a card game with them, they were really lovely! We played for a couple of hours and I learnt some Chinese words, two of their names were Lava and Kathy. I asked if she knew what Lava was and she said yes, I wish I had a crazy name like that, would make things so much more interesting.
I think I may have dozed of for no longer than 30 minutes. When the sun began to rise, it was so beautiful. I went to the "bathroom" (two blocked sinks), and washed my face before I arrived in Hangzhou, the train arrived just before 7am and met Beth in the arrivals hall. She had bought me some water and dried fruit, definitely needed. We saw a lady being violently sick and then on the subway there was a child being sick, at that point I thought it might have been a good idea to get back on the train and go home hahaha. When we were on the subway, Beth thought that we had missed our stop so we got off and went to find the line that was going the opposite way but it turned out we hadn't missed it, she was just looking at the wrong map. So we laughed and got back onto the subway line that we had just got off. I got overly excited about the fact that there was hand soap in the station toilets too... Hangzhou seemed so luxurious to me by this point, easily pleased hey. After the subway journey, we had to take a "Rapid transit" bus, we also don't have these in Changsha, very posh! Beth had used this bus many times before, but after about 20 minutes everyone got off the bus and when we asked what was going on we were directed to a bus station, we asked someone again and were put on a random bus that Beth had never been on before. The driver was really helpful though and told us where to get off, then we realised that the bus we needed came to this stop. Finally it made sense. Buses really don't like following a route here in China. After a dramatic journey and zero sleep. We arrived at Beth and Nathan's apartment. It was lovely, she said it was sparse but I didn't think so. She took me to her favourite "Boatze" shop for breakfast, they were reallly good! After I had showered and made myself look slightly more presentable, we went for a walk around the complex, it was so relaxed, lots of places to just sit and chill out, lots of trees! It was so family orientated too, there were lots of places that held activities for families, very arty! The weather was so niiiice, it was really hot but not uncomfortable and humid like Changsha so I wasn't dripping in sweat. Although I needed some more "flowy" clothes, there was a stall outside of the complex and I saw a dress that I liked so I got my bargaining phrases out of the bag and ended up getting 20 kuai off, not the best but I did try. It's one of those dresses were you feel like you have no clothes on, but you still have the reassurance that you are wearing clothes. Always a good thing!!
Next, it was time to try some Hangzhou noodles, and I sure did try them, I tried so hard to finish them but it didn't happen, after eating them I felt like a waddling pregnant lady, not a good feeling. They were so different to Changsha, not spicy at all and more of a creamy/sweet sauce. In Changsha, it's all about the spice, with each country I go to, my spice tolerance is always pushed further. After the mammoth about of food we had consumed, we sat down to digest and figure out our plans for the rest of the weekend, we went through the guide/map and starred a few places we thought looked good and then narrowed them down and hit Google with our final choices. I also drank some coffee, I think I needed it to be fair but I don't want to start drinking it all of the time, I never thought I would like drinking coffee but I do like it now, mum will be proud hahaha.
In the afternoon, we took a bus ride to West Lake, a famous lake in China, it would take about 7 hours to walk around it. Beth shown me an app that she has been using to learn Chinese, its really good. Brainscape is what it's called so if any of you are interested, have a look! So we had a mini Chinese lesson, on the next bus, I then tried out my new Chinese on a lady who decided to take photos of me, not so subtly. I didn't get everything right and she found it quite funny but practise makes perfect right! When we arrived, there were sooo many people, never seen anything like it, I guess it was the holidays though. We wanted to take a boat ride so we began our search. This ended up with me shouting some average Chinese to a family that were having a chilled time on their boat, someone heard my desperate plea and told us where we could rent a boat, worth all of the stares! The place we were directed to was allllll the way around the other side, but the walk was beautiful so it was OK. We finally found a boat, it wad very typical, what you expect a boat to be like in China, there was an old man "paddling" the boat at the back. It was 150 kuai for an hour, so worth it. A Chinese lady joined us and we got on, she was really nice. The "Shifu" started singing, felt so cultural. I started trying to speak to him in Chinese, asking him to keep singing, he thought it was hilarious and asked us to sing so of course, me and Beth belted out a tune to the best of our ability... We had a blast on the boat, really relaxing yet entertaining. When we got off, we were about to pay and the Chinese lady wouldn't let us, she insisted on paying, she would have lost face if we continued to insist so we thanked her and took some photos with her, that seemed to be pleasing enough.

Hefang street, a famous walking street, very touristy but all the same, a great experience. We started to walk there from West Lake. On our way whilst we were still at West Lake, me and Beth decided to sit by the Lake and dip our feet in whilst watching the sunset. We got so many funny looks and one lady even shouted something at us. It was a bit of water, wasn't going to kill us. I turned around and instantly recognised a certain phone case that I spotted and then I saw the girls face, it was one of the girls from the train!!! I didn't know what to say, I was so shocked. She was as much as me too. When I thought about how many people were at West Lake at that moment and we just happen to be in the same place, it's so mind blowing I think. We took photo's together and then said goodbye. When we eventually put our shoes and socks back on, we carried on our walk to Hefang Street, it was quite a way. We saw a young boy singing in an underpass, he was will an older guy who was disabled. They were begging. It hit me quite hard, what had that young boy done to deserve the injustice?
Henfag Street was insanely busy, as I expected it to be. I got some amazing souvenirs. I won't tell you about some because they're for people at home, don't want to ruin the surprise and all that. I will tell you about the one I got for me and Beth though, Beth spotted a stall, a guy was there and he had painted beautiful pictures into the inside of beads (if that makes sense). He was such a chilled person, it felt refreshing actually, the fact that he could sit quietly and concentrate on something so delicate in the middle of all of the crazy tourists. Just shows that whatever is going on around you, if there is something you want/need to do then you can put yourself into a state so that you are able to achieve your goal. I was looking through all of the beads for so long, they were incredible, then I spotted one with two footprints on, I automatically thought about how me and Beth had been sitting by the Lake with our feet in the water. There was only one that I could find so I took a chance and asked the guy if he could do another one and two minutes later it was done, we also got the date on them. Keeping hold of memories.
Over the course of this weekend, I felt so much more confident using Chinese, clearly because of how much I was practising and me and Beth spoke to each other in Chinese too which helped, oww I miss Beth, why is Hangzhou so far away... Dammmmn. There was also a famous pharmacy on Hefang Street, we went in and there was so much traditional Chinese medicine, it dated back to the 1600's I think, don't quote me. It was really interesting to see and great to see that the building is still being used for it's original purpose.
Afterwards, we went to find the subway station but couldn't find it so we asked someone and ended up with some escorts, everyone is so helpful. As my family say, "as long as you have a tongue in your head, you'll be OK"- it's so true, my Chinese isn't great but it got us to where we wanted to go, and Chinese people really like it when they hear you speaking Chinese, just have to try :)
We then got the night bus from Wulin Square, it was so packed so we ended up standing, we quickly got into a pretty deep conversation. We were supposed to be counting the stops, I thought it was going pretty well until we got to the stop which should have been the one to get off at but it wasn't, Beth didn't recognise it so I asked a lady and she told us it was the next one. Must have messed up the counting somewhere, ooops! We then went to "rice man", a guy who makes rice outside of Beth's apartment, we spoke to him and his friends for a while, they mostly laughed at us but it was OK and then we ate our rice on the balcony on a blanket, what an ending to a great day. It was definitely time to sleep after being awake for 41 hours.
I woke up and found out that Beth had been awake for hours figuring out how to get to the mountain that we wanted to go and climb. After a little drama with Beth's bank card we got ready and went out and I wore Beth's clothes, just like Beijing times but not with socks because I actually packed some for Hangzhou, I'm getting better. We had an interesting conversation over breakfast actually, we got onto birthdays and Beth told me how one year she actually bought her mum presents on her birthday. I guess it doesn't actually make sense for us to be showered with gifts on our birthdays because we didn't actually do anything. It's our mums that went through all of the pain and sacrifice for us. Bringing a life into the world is a pretty big thing to do so why aren't they praised and appreciated on the day that they did it? The mountain we wanted to climb, was called "Two peaks piercing the clouds", we left and we finally got there after having yet more escorts show/take us to the bus stop we needed. We definitely got off at the correct stop  and it stated on TravelChina that it was only 50m from the bus stop. Turns out it was only the sign, it took us so long to figure out where it was, it was so far from the sign which makes no sense whatsoever right? It was at least an hours walk. It was definitely worth the trouble of actually getting there anyway. We got there and began to climb. We realised that what they meant by rope way was a cable car. It wasn't so hard to climb, more fun. The views from the top were stunning, I don't think I've seen anything like it before. The clouds were swirling around the peaks, hence the name. On the way up we saw so many dead centipedes or millipedes, I'm not 100% which one. Me and Beth stopped to look at them which the Chinese people thought was really weird and then one guy picked one up and started chasing me with it, pretty weird. It was just over 3,000m that we climbed apparently, it took us around 2 hours and there was a big bell at the top that you could ring with  a bamboo barge pole. So Beth did but then of course we heard "er shi kuai" (20 yuan). I bought a red ribbon and we wrote some messages on it, along with our names and the date. We tied amongst some others. Then to get down, I took my first ever real cable car ride, it was so cool, we went through all of the lush, green surroundings.

The girl from the train also told me that she saw us again asking for directions. When we got back, Beth took me to street food heaven, I can't believe how much I ate.
In the morning, we went to the clothing market, it was huge but we were limited for time as I had to get to the station to catch my train back to Changsha. I was trying on some things and found myself with an audience but most of it was all too small, Chinese girls are tiny! We left to try and find the subway station and again had to ask but had no luck. One of the motorbike taxis told us he would take us, I persuaded Beth and off we went, clutching onto each other. At one point he tried to go up a curb but couldn't do it with us, all we could do was laugh, everyone was staring anyway but even more so. It was a pretty hilarious ride and he got us to the right place.

We got to Hangzhou Dong Station. Before I entered departures, me and Beth sat and did some people watching. We soon noticed that there was a member of the SWAT team and two police officers stopping young men and checking/scanning their identity cards. It was also like a scene out of mice and men outside, men sat with their bundles of goods, must be migrant workers. This was my first bullet train ride so I was pretty excited. It was like an aeroplane and had a western toilet... wow. The "train hostesses" were dressed so smartly. It was a chilled train ride, I wrote my journal, read my book, learnt some Chinese and enjoyed the views. It didn't feel as long as it actually was. I had an apple but it wasn't washed so I was glad to realise that I had my water spray bottle with me, a necessity for travelling in China.

Gender equality and empowerment of women (HUGS HUNAN) Union of Ghanaian students

I feel really lucky to have been invited to such an important event. If I hadn't of met Quame, I wouldn't have got the opportuntity, he and his colleagues put in so much work to ensure it ran as smoothly as possible and that everyone had a great time. I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say that it what very successful, it was an honour to listen to such excellent people talk about an incredibly relevant topic. After being scammed by the taxi driver on the way, I arrived at the hotel where the event was being held, I was actually one of the first people to arrive, Ghana time in China, I have to say I have missed it so I began to enjoy the wait. I met Quame inside, he was really busy as he was organising everything. When other people started to arrive, I moved to talk to the people behind me, three girls who are studying medicine here in Changsha, two from Zambia and one from Nigeria. We spoke about life in China, our likes and dislikes and then of course, they wondered why I was actually at the seminar, so I told them about my experiences in Ghana how I'd met Quame, what shocked them most was that I like Fufu "You can eat Fufu?!", always seems so shocking. The seminar began at around 11am, started with an opening prayer and then the Ghanaian National Anthem, it took me back to the early mornings at Golden Gate, singing and learning the words at the front of assembly.
The Women's Commissioner of NUGS Hunan, Ms. Omar Nuratu gave a welcoming address, giving us an idea of how she felt towards the topic. She talked about how women impact on every sector of society and that if women are allowed to succeed then nations will prosper. It was a great way to open as it started the thought process. The Spouse of the Ghanaian ambassador to China, Mrs Huseina Demuyakor gave us a speech, she started with a question, a very important one at that. What is empowerment? Or actually, is empowerment just a myth, a concept that just gets thrown around? The general idea the majority of the population have about empowerment is that it is a fuel, a gas that gives us energy to change certain things. A definition that came around in 1999 is that... Empowerment is a range of processes that helps those who have been denied choices, it helps them to aquire the ability to make choices and think for themselves freely. She then went on to discuss The Power Cube, a model produced by J. Gaventa in 2006. The Power Cube is a device used for analysing how strategies for change can in turn change power relations. I would definitely advise that you read more about it if you are interested. Click the link (The Power Cube) above.
Hidden power: This is the power that isn't public but within families and communities, more hidden in smaller villages etc. This kind of power struggle can leave the victim (mainly women- for the purpose of this seminar) with mental damage and even physical, depending on each individual circumstance of course. This kind of power struggle, for me is the most dangerous as it's usually only a small amout of people who are aware of this but even so they aren't aware of the damage that is occuring as it is seen as normal. When talking about smaller, more rural areas, we would guess that if you are educated then you are empowered right? Not necessarily. There are so many areas of someones life that oppression can be present, relationships are perhaps the most common and most severe source of female oppression. Mrs Huseina Demuyakor said "In the name of love, women are raped and psychologically assaulted". Such a strong statement to make, yet it seems to be the norm, everyone knows that this happens within some relationships. What if it were to happen in your relationship or to someone very close to you? The manipulation that occurs often causes the victim to feel like it's fine for it to be happening. Now that is dangerous, just think for a moment about how many women have been raped, murdered, tortured by someone that is supposed to love them. They are made to feel like they deserve it. Let's get something straight, the empowerment of women is as much a benefit to men as it is of women, when men come to realise that women are equal to them, I believe that more relationships will become happier and in turn, more stable.
Mrs Demuyakor then went on to talk about babies. When an ultrasound scan shows the beating heart of a girl, it is seen to be negative in so many ways in so many parts of the world. Currently being here in China, this is something I have been so interested in, I've asked many questions but haven't had anybody be honest with me about the negative impacts that the One Child Policy has had. I see it with my own eyes everyday in my classes, there is an obvious difference in the numbers of girls and boys in my classes. Thankfully China has changed their policy slightly, I really hope that it will continue to be adjusted until girls are valued as much as boys completely. So much so that women are being put through "back street" abortions, often leading to severe gynaecological problems. If a baby girl is "lucky" enough to survive, when she is of age then there will be discussions about who she will be married to, these discussions are often held without the presence of the young girl. Here's a scenario. If the mother of the young girl, felt like she had the power to stand up for her daughter, to tell her husband that she is too young to be married then imagine the impact that decision would have on the rest of her life. Women DO have the power and ability to make their children happy. They are mediators in so many aspects of life, yet they are so poorly equiped compared to men. SO many womens lives are absorbed in the struggle to support the rest of their family emotionally and physically yet they're uneducated. Perhaps the thought of an educated women is too intimidating for some men?

Women A + B
There are two areas in which I think empowerment is most relevant in life. There is the need for personal liberation and with this the need for the individual to decide if education is the key to that liberation. Everyone thinks that education is the key to the empowerment of women but it's definitely not, not everyone feels that a high level of education is for them. Having the freedom to make the choice is an aspect of a womens life that can lead to personal liberation. The other area would then be educaton, having the power to make decisions about your own life and learning to make educated decisions... It sounds incredibly basic to me and to many other people but believe me this is so far from many young girls reality.

Gender equality and sexual health by Dr. Mamoudou Camara (President of Guinea entrepreneurs in China)
Dr Camara began by talking about the need for positivity when talking about sexuality and sexual behaviour. There have been so much negative media surrounding sex, all of the bad things it can do to you. For example, the HIV epedemic, people are afraid to have sex because now all they know is that it could kill you... There are around 40 million people who have AIDS right now and in 2001 there were 14,000 new cases each day, 95% of those were in developing countries and out of 5 million, 800,000 are children. You can't pretend that these facts aren't powerful, as the human race, we can't afford the consequences of selective silence. Ill sexual health can also lead to infertility, unwanted pregnancy (leading to unsafe abortion) or another unpleasant sexually transmitted disease (STD). The word "sex" doesn't just refer to intercourse itself, it refers to our biological characteristics. It is so important to have a healthy sex life, and no I don't mean that you should have sex twice a day...  I mean, it should be healthy in many ways. Physically, emotionally, mentally and socially. Sex is a deeper topic than most people think, who'd have thought it could effect you in so many different ways.

Rights
We all have rights, each one of us. Although in some places around the world these rights are compromised or not observed at all. There are national and international laws surrounding human rights but also within a relationship, when talking about sex within a relationship, it's important to remember that everyone involved has a right and a choice. They also have the right to sexual healthcare. This is a tough topic because it's known that in some developing countries, access to this kind of healthcare is minimal and also seen as "taboo". If a women is known to have sought any then it is likely that she will not be able to get married or even be divorced.

Female Genital Mutilation
If a girl has not gone through the horrific process of FGM then she is seen as unclean and therefore will be unwanted by a future husband. This is why so many young girls are forced to have it done to them, because in developing countries, parents cannot afford to keep their children after a certain age so girls need to be married. To know more about FGM, click on the subtitle.

Talking about the lack of sex education in developing countries is serious. The effects of the silence can be seen all over, when I was teaching at a Senior High School in Ghana, I was teaching a geography lesson and we got onto demographics and then of course, contraception arose, they did not have a clue what it was. No clue. And then the next week, guess what the news was. One of the girls in my class was pregnant, she was so smart, such a waste of an intelligent girl, all because she didn't know anything about sexual health.

Women and Leadership
You can be a leader in different aspects of your life, professional, social and within the family. Leadership is when you can demonstrate the skills needed to direct, guide and influence the behaviour of others in order to work in a team. Malawi and Liberia currently have female leaders which is a great step, they have recognised that women too, do have invaluable leadership skills. It's important to stay humble when you are in a position of leadership, not to get ahead of yourself and take too much pride. You need to relate, mentor and encourage your "team" and of course, if we are generalising, these qualities are typical of women right? Women mostly have the ability to go deeper to find the reasoning behind something and not to be so sceptical or scripted. A good quote that I picked up from the seminar was "Women are like tea bags, you don't know how strong they are until you put them in hot water". An interesting take on the topic... I guess I would say, the longer women are in "hot water" the stronger they get, but of course, this could also apply to men aswell. I think the point that is being portrayed here is that, the longer women are oppressed, the stronger they will be.

Gender fairness in education
There are 41 million girls who have not been educated at Primary level and 2/3 illiterate people are women, thats 10 million more illiterate women than men. Girls are marginalised for no reason at all within education, most of the time its subconsiously because of how societal norms have influenced us. The fact that males are educated more than girls is kind of crazy when taking other facts into consideration, 70% of failures and school dropouts are boys and 4/5 crimes committed are by males. Looks like investing in the education of males isn't actually that worthwhile.

To sum up the seminar, I would have to say that it was like 3 worlds collided. I never imagined that I would get the opportunity to attend a seminar, on a topic that is really important to me, held by people from my favourite nation whilst in China. China is the land of opportunities... I want to mention "metaphorical miles", it was amazing to see so many women from different places that clearly have all come so far, not only within themselves but literally, coming from the African continent all the way to China to persue their dreams. Let's take the world girls!