Ben post #3

3. I am now eating breakfast with rice noodles and vegetables. As soon and we finish eating We head down to the boats to start fishing. We pull out the bamboo boat. He tells me to fetch the paddles from the shack. We head a little bit upstream and stick our nets in the water. We catch prawns, small fish, and many other fish. He thanks me for the help and waves goodbye. I start to realize that I need to get down stream faster. So I try to speed down the river. Pretty soon my face is freezing because of the wind. I decide to slow down. The Mountains are making a valley and the yangtze runs right through it. The finless porpoises rely on the yangtze fish to survive..  The river sturgeon and the baiji dolphin also need the Yangtze river to survive. The landscape around me is getting flatter as we reach the big city. My leg of the journey will be over before I know it. As I slowly float down the Yangtze river I pass a group of finless porpoises, one came up to my boat. These animals need the yangtze. If anything happened to the yangtze they would be screwed and go extinct. I stop at a restaurant to have a bite. The owner and chef was Hui Jong. He served me fresh fish with garlic and a lot of salt. I asked him why he put soo much salt. He said it is  because it is soo cheap because there are salt miners everywhere and the salt is really popular to find.

Ben post #2

2. As my journey brings me down the yangtze river. I can feel the calmness of the air around me. I pull my boat ashore and there are bamboo craftsmen making stuff out of bamboo. They were working on a couple of different things. Four of them were working on a giant house. I pulled my boat ashore and asked them what the house was for. One man walked up to me and introduced himself. His name is Hong sui. He said it was for himself because he just bought a cow and he needed some space to store it. I congratulated him for his cow. (cows are really important and valuable.) One of the other guys was making some sort of flute. I asked them if they liked their job. They all said “it is the only thing making me money so i guess I like any job.” I said goodbye and left on my boat. As I continue my way along the yangtze, I journey out of the mountains in into more dense jungle.  By the end of the day I was tired. I tried to find a village to find somewhere to sleep. There was a farmer sitting on a chair drinking. I pulled ashore and asked him if I could spend the night. He said only one one condition. If I helped him catch fish the next day. I woke up the next morning at about eight a.m. It was time for breakfast. I pulled out my chair and sat down.

Ben post #1

Hi I am Fu Zhang about to start my 3,988 mile journey along the Yangtze I am a old man about 40 years old in the Tang dynasty. and I took my lovely horse hui to the source  of the Yangtze river it was a great ride there. The Year is 700 A.D and It is about 100˚ degrees out right now. The time I went down the mountain it got bigger and bigger. the river got pretty big after thirty minutes. I decided to ride by boat because the land was a jungle and there were not that many pathways I trek on to a yak farm and ask the owner if I could buy his boat for my trip along the yangtze. He told be I would have to pay 100 dollars for it I thought that was a good deal and I took the boat and sped off…

As I continued my journey along the yangtze I ran into my uncle fang tui. He asked me where I got my boat. I told him “From a farmer down the river”. He asked me If he could come along. I said if he let me ask him about his job. Uncle Fang is a tea farmer. He told me about his tea tree and how he roasted the leaves. It’s amazing how when I was a little boy we were poor and tea was our living. Now Fang is crazy rich. The demand for tea has gone up because of the golden age and the wars were over because the soldiers could have something besides water to drink because in the war thats all they had.

Lijiang

4. As I continue up the river, I pass by another village where a few people are sitting at the shore of the river. They are carving amazing objects, and creating beautiful dresses. Some are making straw woven items and bamboo items, such as bowls and other pottery. With bamboo! They are making pottery with bamboo! I find the dresses the coolest though. They are made with such beautiful embroidery, and the people making them are so focused, so sucked into the idea of it. I see one get, up and walk into their home, and where they used to be sitting, is a humongous marking of her body. She must have been sitting there for hours! One of the woman drops her bowl, so I go pick it up. Before I could touch it, she yelled “Bú!!”. Which means NO! in Pinyin. After that, she apologized, but said that these bowls are very special to her, so she wants to make sure that they have a good “life”, and that nothing happened to them. She only trusts herself with them. She doesn’t even trust her own friend. I was a little shocked of how crazy she got, but it shows how much these people take pride in their work, and how important it is to them. A few days later, I start my journey back home. It was an amazing journey, and I really learned a lot. The tides and mountains were getting pretty hard for me anyways. I hope that all of the people that I visited will continue their lifestyle, and in one thousand years, their great x150 grand-children can have the same beauty of the river as these people did.

Almost at Lijiang

My journey has been a success so far. I’ve learned a good amount about how the people on this river live, and that’s exactly what I wanted to do. The river is now powering down, and I must walk along it now. It’s too steep, and too powerful. I’m now approaching the mountains. Unfortunately, I’m traveling in the summer, when water levels can get very very high, due to humongous thunderstorms. The clouds are getting gray, I think I should find shelter. I come to a village about a half mile away from the rushing river. Up here in the mountains, not many people live do to the climate. I’m lucky to have found a village. Walking up to the village, I can see that the people living there are wearing their dresses. This is very common in the Naxi religion. They must be Naxi. Now that I’ve entered the in the Yunnan Province, the Naxi people are very common. They are very welcoming, and invite me to stay the night. After having very good steamed bread and rice for dinner, we walk outside and watch a special tribal performance performed by some elders of the village. It was a very special night. The next morning, we ate some more bread and rice cakes, but when I walked outside, it was raining. The people of the village continued their normal daily routines though, despite the storm. They’re so used to it, that it doesn’t even stop them to do everything that they normally do. I love that.

Second day Pilgrimage

The next morning I woke up to a nice morning breeze. Time for more looking into the tang dynasty. Li Yuan founded the dynasty until 626 when his son named Li Shimin took the throne. He feared of getting assassinated so he killed 2 of his brothers named Li Yuanji and Li Jiancheng which was not the confucian way. He put buddhist monasteries next to the big wars so that they could pray for the fallen soldiers to go to heaven. The tang dynasty lasted from six hundred-eighteen to nine hundred- seven which is a very long time for a dynasty, even a good dynasty. The Tang recorded the population to be about fifty Million in the eighth and seventh centuries. That is a huge population! It has been proven that by the ninth century the population had increased and was now eighty million. That is a huge increase of thirty million. There were many awesome inventions made by the tang dynasty like toilet paper and woodblock prints. The tang dynasty a little later made smaller states so they could save money so they would be able to save enough food surplus for the people who didn’t have enough or if sickness spreads.

Halfway between Chonquing and Lijiang

Approaching my next village, I remember that today is a very important day. Today is examination day. Today, if you take the exam and pass it, you can move up in the world, get a job in the capital, or even get another job on the countryside. People come from far and wide to take the exam. In this village, it looks like you can’t even move. People and carriages are cramping up the road, all because they want to take the exam. I can see a little kid trying to get to the other side of the road, and literally having to crawl to get there! Moving on down the river, I find out from a local villager that there are some rough times ahead. The river’s dynamic gets very intense. At one point, It drops by over 4,000 feet! 4,000 feet! When I heard that, I was blown away. That’s amazing. A few miles after that village, I see a man painting on the side of the river. I went ashore to see what he was painting. As I got closer, I suddenly realized that it was Li Bai! Li Bai is one of the most famous poets/artists of this era! Li Bai is standing a few feet in front of me! I had to ask him a few questions. I peeked over his shoulder, and I saw that he was painting a picture of the river.(Li Bai actually painted a picture of the river) “Hello” I said.. “ Hello” He responded. I ended up talking with him for a few minutes! It was one of the highlights of my journey.