Leaving Yingtan (for now).

My time at present in Yingtan is almost over, tomorrow evening I take an overnight train to Yangzhou in Jiangsu province where I will be taking part in a summer camp, it was an enjoyable experience last year, so I am hoping it goes as well again this year.

I have been here for about ten days and apart from the first day when I was taken for lunch, dinner and lots of drinking (you can read about that in the blog post, Chinese Drinking Games), it has been mostly relaxing and preparing my classes for the upcoming summer camp. I have been doing some work, trying to rearrange my websites and blogs, so some research and writing, also for the past seven mornings I have been teaching twelve students and trying to improve their English speaking skills.

The students were aged from 11 to 13, and although many of them were shy at first it was good to see most of them showing their personality and using English in short conversations by the end of the week. On the second to last day, the classroom was in darkness as we began our lesson, in fact a power cut was affecting all the local area, so we walked along to KFC where they had A/C and tables where we could hold our class in some comfort, as well as some chicken, fries and cola.

Yingtan 鹰潭, a small third or fourth tier city in the east of Jiangxi province literally means ‘Eagle Pond’ when translated from Mandarin Chinese. It is close to the borders of Fujian and Zhejiang provinces to the east and south east, making it an importantly strategic city for hundreds of years. It is a major rail transportation hub with two train stations serving cities as far away as Beijing, Chongqing, Chengdu, Kunming, Guangzhou and Shanghai.

Less than 20 km to the south of Yingtan lies the resort area of Longhushan or Mount Longhu meaning Dragon and Tiger Mountain. This area is largely unknown outside of China with very few international tourists. Longhushan is purported to be the birthplace of Taoism and so the area is very important with great symbolic value to anyone that follows Taoism. Inside the resort area you can find many cave complexes, temples, traditional villages and mountains.

Mount Longhu is known as one of the ‘Four Sacred Mountains of Taoism.’ The area is also historically important to the Guyue people who placed their dead relatives in ‘hanging coffins’ on the steep sided cliff faces of the mountains that overlook the river.

I prepare to leave Yingtan once again, knowing I will be returning in a few weeks.