After about a month of teaching in Shenzhen came my first vacation: National Day. Myself and a group of 7 other teachers from CTLC had trouble finding tickets to anywhere we were super excited about going, so instead we headed to where we COULD find tickets: Xiamen. Fujian province is just north of Guangdong, and Xiamen is a port city that spent some time as a forced trade zone to foreign forces around the end of the Opium War.
Although we spent more time in the city of Xiamen, my highlight looking back is the countryside in Fujian where the Hakka minority has traditionally lived in round, earth, fortress-buildings called Tulou. We only spent one night in the area, but made time to visit several of the tulou and actually got to spend the night in one.
Unfortuantely, we didn’t have much time to spend in the fields. After one night, we bussed back to Xiamen and stumbled across a parade. About a month later, an email shows up from an ex-pat we had met at the parade. We’re small time celebrities in Xiamen, China!
