Submitted by Perry Enns
Thirty Eight students from Sacred Heart High School recently embarked on an amazing 10 day tour of China.
We began our trek leaving SHHS at 12:30 a.m. on Friday March 29. After a bus ride to Regina, then a "short" flight to Toronto we then boarded the flight to the capital city of China. After 13.5 hours, three airplane meals and several time zones later we arrived in Beijing, a city of 21 million people.
We began with a tour of the Summer Palace, an amazing complex of buildings, well-manicured grounds and even a man-made lake which was built almost 400 years ago. There were many examples of "culture shock" while on tour but it was here that our students first felt like Rock Stars! Our tour director told us that many of the Chinese tourists there were from the interior of China and had never seen a white person before so a picture with us was a must for them. All of the girls were in high demand for pictures, especially the tall blonde girls. One of the Grade 12 boys had a baby thrust into his arms to hold for a picture. Posing for pictures was something we did throughout the trip.
Next, we visited Tiananmen Square and then toured the 600 year old Forbidden City which has an astonishing 9999 rooms. On our last day in Beijing we visited the Beijing zoo and the world famous Pandas. We then traveled out of the city to the mountains to visit a section of The Great Wall of China. Climbing the Great Wall is exhausting but to stand on the wall and gaze out across the mountains was incredible.
Our group then flew to Xi'an (pronounced Shi-ahn) a city of only eight million people. The SHHS group biked along the 3,000 year-old city wall and attended the Tang Dynasty show which included a five course meal and live music with traditional dances.
The highlight of Xi'an are the Terracotta Warriors. They were discovered by a farmer who was drilling a new well in 1974. There are over 8,000 life-size Terracotta soldiers and each one is different. They were hand made for Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China around 200 B.C. Another 1,000 terracotta horses and chariots complete the terracotta army that was built to protect the emperor in the afterlife.
Next we flew south to Yangshuo to experience rural China. It was a stark contrast to see the rice paddies and water buffaloes compared to the frantic pace of the large cities. We spent the morning climbing over 800 steps up Moon Hill for some amazing views of the Mountains and surrounding countryside.
Then came a bamboo Raft ride down the Li River and we were lucky enough to see a local man using his trained cormorant birds that would dive into the water, catch a fish and then bring it back to him.
One more flight took us to Shanghai where we enjoyed a night river cruise and marveled at the impressive skyline of the city that only 20 years earlier were farmers' fields.
The entire China tour truly was a trip of a lifetime that the students of SHHS will never forget. Experiences such as trying to cross the street in Beijing, having rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner or trying to buy snacks based on the picture on the package at the Wu Mart grocery store provided stories the Sacred Heart students will talk about for a lifetime.
The Sacred Heart Travel Club is already planning the next tour to Europe Easter 2014. The tour is called the Canadian Battlefields Tour which includes stops in the Netherlands, Belgium and France to visit the sites of the Battle of Passchendaele, Vimy Ridge and the D-Day landings at Normandy.
