Seeing as I live up here in Manchuria, all the hubbub about Manchu stirred up my wanderlust instinct and I was chomping at the bit to go poke around in 三家子 (sānjiāzi) or someplace. On the map, I noticed that there were some Manchu villages nearby, so I heeded the call.
I met with my friend Alice and caught the 08:15 bus to 乌拉街 (Wūlājiē ). It took about an hour and twenty minutes to get there. During the ride, we asked some other passengers and the 车长 (chēzhǎng , conductor) if anybody could speak Manchu there. Everybody said that they didn’t know anyone who could speak, but they thought there still might be some old people who could. The 车长 said that she thought they taught Manchu in the area primary school, so that’s where we headed when we got off the bus.