A Saturday Outing

As you may have read from Janet's blog, this past Saturday we visited HuGuangYan and Donghai Island with some friends from Zhanjiang.

HuGuangYan is a maar lake, that is a crater lake created by a volcano. Supposedly, this is the second largest lake of this type in the world and is a UNESCO recognized World Geopark. It is the most famous site around Zhanjiang. With that said, it is actually not much to look at. While it may have been at the top of a volcano at one time, the lake now more or less looks like any other you would see. Maybe similar to Lake Jackson, except with water.

In addition to walking around the lake, there are many other fun activities to do: drinking milk fresh from a coconut, traversing a series of rope bridges, shooting a tennis ball cannon and brushing up on your archery.

After the park, we traveled to nearby Donghai island, which is the fourth largest island in China. Our guide, English name Steven (a friend of our Chinese tutor), told us this. He informed us that the largest island in China was Hainan, the second largest in China is Taiwan province and Donghai was the fourth largest (don't remember the third).

The beach was nice. The wind was blowing in decent sized waves, which apparently meant that you were not allowed in the water, despite having purchased a mandatory insurance policy as a part of the park admission. Many Chinese do not know how to swim, but we do and wanted to enjoy the ocean. After two attempts at going out and having some Chinese people angrily "whistle" us back to shore, we gave up. I am of the mind that if I purchase an insurance policy, I should have then have the right to take the risks that I am insured against. The Chinese did not agree.

During the trip, we met and spoke with Jaime, the newest addition to the Zhanjiang foreign teacher family. He is originally from Wales, then taught for a few years in the Ukraine and Russia. Jaime, unlike most of us who teach English, is here as a piano teacher for some of the Chinese fine art majors at the Normal College.

Overall it was a nice outing, though it was a little bittersweet as we struck off two things from the all too short "stuff to do around Zhanjiang" list in one day.