Thursday morning (6/26/14) I was able to sleep in, but tried to get up quickly when I heard a lot of people moving around outside my door. As I stepped out to the common room threre were two older people standing by the doorway talking to my supervisor. They seemed surprised to see me and started asking questions in rapid Chinese. My supervisor explained to them that I was a student who was visiting but they didn’t seem satisfied. They left rather quickly after asking to see my passport.

Breakfast ended up being dim sum!  Which is a pretty standard Chinese breakfast.  I couldn’t have been more thrilled.

I was given some small booklets about the orgainization and a laptop to use while I am here.  Everything was in Chinese though!  Including the language setting for the computer.  I suddenly had a lot of vocabulary building to do.  I was excited to see that they have a type of tiger lily that grows in the the mountain areas close by, one of my favorite wildflowers!  this one is called 虎皮百合 (hu pi baihe), or “tiger skin lily.”

After not too long there was a sharp knock on the door.  When it was answered, two policemen entered and began interogating my supervisor.  They demanded to see my passport and didn’t seem satisfied with the claim that I was just visiting.  Yelling agrily, they told my superviser that we would need to go to the police station to fill out paperwork.  City regulations require documentation for all foreigners.  They left, and my supervisor filled me in on the things that I wasn’t able to understand.  While I am here for both an internship and tourism, my VISA is for tourism so we needed to emphasize that when we went to the station.  Non paid internships are a grey area, but now it seemed that they were definitely leaning more toward the black, especially because it’s for an environmental non government organization (NGO).  Environmental NGOs and their work are still a very sensitive subject in China, even though they were legalized in 1994.  Bottom line, emphasize that I’m a visiting student with tourists intentions and keep things simple.  The fact that I have I friend who’s hometown is in the nereby city of Hefei would help.  I had plans to visit her for sure, she was an exchange student at my school and we had a class together last semester.

When we left the office I got to the see the streets of Wuhu in the daylight for the first time.  I quickly realized that this was the kind of Chinese city I wanted to see, one off the beaten path, where I could observe the average lifestyle away from most tourism.  I snapped a few pictures as we waited to catch a cab.

These are a couple of pictures of the area accross the street from the neighborhood, there was an array of shops and a Tsingtao brewing factory.

Unfortunately the driver of the taxi we caught didn’t know where to go so she let us off not far from where we started.  We tried to catch another one but were unsuccessful.  Apparently it’s harder to catch taxis on rainy days.  My supervisor asked for directions from a random person and we continued on foot as the rain got heavier.  Pretty soon it was a downpour and even though we had umbrellas we were getting soaked.  We tried two police offices but they were both incorrect so one of the young policemen offered to take us to the right place.  After a short ride in the policecar we were finally there.  We headed upstairs to see the officer and fill out paperwork.  They wanted to see my passport, student ID, and take a picture of me.  Fortunately everything seemed to go ok and we were finally able to leave.

On the way back we stopped stopped at a tiny noodle place for lunch.  It was AMAZING!  I had a boiled egg, soy beans and 黄花菜 (huanghua cai, “yellow flower vegetable”) with my noodles and it was so good, especially on such a rainy day.  This noodle shop ended up being one of my favorite places to eat.

We returned to the offices and everyone continued working desks.  About mid afternoon we had a meeting to introduce the organization and staff to me and to discuss my participation.  The staff was composed of students and somewhat recent graduates, only a couple of which spoke good english.  The organization does environmental public education, river pollution monitoring, zero waste projects, and ecosystem research and protection in the nearby Huangshan area.  It was decided that I would help with some data collection near Huangshan, do some sharing about environmental NGOs in California, and help the staff with their English.  After the meeting there was more time to catch up on work items and then we all walked to a nearby restuarant for dinner.  By that time it had stopped raining so many more people out and about.  While walking down the street I got many weird stares and looks of surprise from various people.  It was rather amusing.  With my blonde hair and blue eyes I stick out worse than a sore thumb.  I wanted to take so many pictures of the surroundings but I didn’t have time.  Dinner was at a small chain restaurant where you could pick your food from a buffet and pay per dish.  It was good, but not too different from Chinese food back home.

Back at the office that evening my supervisor and I talked for several hours about why environmental NGOs (ENGOs) are still such a sensitive subject in China, and the local people’s attitude towards environmental issues.  The central government in China wants to have total control, and doesn’t like the fact that they can’t control everthing that ENGOs do.  However, they have the power to shut down these organizations at anytime, for any reason.  So even though ENGOs are working for many of the same goals as the government (better pollution standards, environmental protection, etc…), they still need to be very careful with how they hadle their affairs.  As for the general public, aside from the universal problem of people who don’t care about the environment at all, many people think that it is only the government’s responsibility to protect the environment.  They also feel that the only way that they can contribute towards improving environmental issues is if they have are rich.  For most, that will never happen so the organization tries to teach people about the things that they can do in their current situation, similar to many organizations back at home.

It got late, and after spending some time with the adorable resident cat, I went to bed.

The view from the balcony of the office