Yunnan - Beijing to Dali

All the LI kids got on a bus to head to the airport at 6am. I did my packing 20 minutes before we left. I didn't need that much, just a few changes of clothes, the odd book and some power cables. I only have my backpack and huge duffel bag, so I brought both.

The flight was pretty scary. There was a lot of turbulence in the air - that I didn't mind. It was hair raising when we came in for landing. We would drop seemingly hundreds of feet at a time. Everyone clapped and cheered when we we finally on the ground. I had to agree, I was happy to be on solid ground.

Kunming's weather was beautiful. 80 degrees with a slight wind. Perfect compared to Beijing. Kunming is pretty for China. I'm afraid a lot of Kunmings income comes from tourism, but I hear a new international highway is being built. Kunming is expected to be a household name in the U.S. in a few years. A1, the group I was in, had a train to catch at 10pm. All the other groups got to spend a night in kunming before departing for their destinations. We dropped our bags off at the hotel and left on foot to explore the city for a few hours. It's nice to walk around with a vague goal in mind. Ours was the large central park. We walked through some streets buying last minute necessities like sunglasses, bottle openers and Snickers (a real life saver). We eventually made it to the park. As I expected it was teeming with people. C'mon. A verdant park, on Saturday, perfect weather...in China.

After just wasting time walking around and eating at a xiaochi, we eventually returned to the hotel and then onto the train station. Like my previous train station experience, there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of people there. After boarding the train everyone just wanted to sleep. We had fun and partied on the Harbin train, but we were all tired from traveling. For some reason they were playing a certain Chinese love song on loop from 10pm to about 11:30 or 12. It wasn't even a good song. The only line I can remember was in English "To kiss someone, to hold someone". Trains are my new favorite way to travel.

Dali (and the rest of this trip) is not like anywhere else in China. The skies are green and the people are not Han Chinese. 92% of Chinese people are of the Han ethnicity. Dali is primarily Bai. But they mostly still speak Mandarin, and can certainly understand Chinese characters. after arriving we went to breakfast with our new tour guide Jonathan from Kunming. Just as we were getting off the bus at the inn where we were eating Jonathan introduced the bus driver. Jonathan told us two things about him. His name and the fact he was a Muslim. I'm not sure why he mentioned his religion. Was it a warning? A funny quirk? I'm not sure, but if he had never told me I would have never known. 

The breakfast was the best breakfast I've had in China. This was because it was as western as it gets. Scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, orange juice and crappy coffee. I had to use the bathroom but like a lot of things in China this was an adventure. First, I forgot toilet paper. Chinese bathrooms often don't have toilet paper. BYOTP. After I got someone to bring me some, I went to flush. Uh oh....no water? But there's water in the toilet. Where did it come from? My rudimentary plumbing knowledge directed me to the cistern. Phewf. The ball that floats up stopping the flow of water was just stuck.  My toilet problems for this trip were only beginning.

After breakfast some of us went on a bike ride with Jonathan. At the bike rental shop we were told to pick out, from a selection of crappy mountain bikes, a bike that looked like it might fit us. As I was adjusting my saddle for my potential ride everyone just took off. I quickly jumped on my bike to catch them. I should point out that I was wearing my TOMS. Worst traveling shoes ever. They're basically slippers. My shoes were in the bus. After riding for about a minute I noticed my right foot hurt a lot more than the left one. They both hurt because the shoes were paper thin, but the right one just didn't feel ...right. I looked down to see half a pedal. Not even half. It was just a pole where the pedal should be. This sucked. Oh well. This wasn't my first rodeo. I've ridden a severely broken bike for much longer.

We rode through town, which isn't very big, through some fields, past some pagodas and down to Erhai lake. It's a pretty large lake, like Tahoe. It's what keeps Dali so humid and pleasant. We tried to walk out on a pier but we were told it would cost us. We didn't feel like paying so we walked away. As we were riding away a guy came up to us and offered to take us out on a fishing boat for a minimal charge. We haggled is down to 15 kuai per person. I'm glad we took the offer because it was a good story.

This fisherman was the most unique fisherman I have ever seen in my broad study of fishermen. We thought we were going to go on a large, diesel-powered, net-towing, fishing boat and taste the life of a seaman. But no. 8 of us piled into a glorified  rickety canoe. As we were waiting to depart the fisherman was getting birds out of what looked like upside down laundry baskets. He and his friend were tying reeds tightly around these birds (called yuying, fish-eagles). He threw 5 or 6 into the boat with us and pushed off. He rowed a few hundred feet from the dock and pushed the birds into the water. They swam around for a bit occasionally diving to get fish. I then realized why the birds had string/reeds around their necks. The birds couldn't swallow the fish. The fisherman would call the birds back to the boat when they had a fish and then empty their throat by force. It was actually a very successful way of fishing, albeit a disgusting and mean way.

After our brief foray into the world of bird fishing we cycled back to central Dali which is a web of touristy stores and hippie paraphernalia. Dali is full of dreadlocked white people. It's a big hippie town.  Occasionally we would have old women in traditional clothes come up to us and offer us marijuana...repeatedly. They really had no fear. 

For lunch we felt like eating hamburgers. We made our way up an alley with a little river running down the middle and sat down at an outside table. I flipped to the hamburger section and picked out what I thought sounded delicious -  and egg and cheese hamburger. After 20 minutes I was served my egg and cheese sandwich. It was just bread,cucumber, cheese and a fried egg. Bummer.

Shortly after we departed Dali by bus. On to Shaxi!

Yunnan Itinerary

This is the itinerary verbatim:

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2/25 - Early morning flight to Kunming, Overnight train to Dali

2/26 - Free morning in Dali, 12pm drive to Shaxi Ancient Town in Jianchuan

2/27 - Morning Bai Culture talk, afternoon hike 8km to Shibao Mountain Complex

2/28  - Early morning depart from Shaxi, 10pm* start hike - 18 switchback of hell 15km hike

2/29 - 15 km hike to Lower Gorge overnight at Chateau de Woody's

3/1 - Drive to Zhongdian (3hrs); afternoon at Songzanlin Monastery; evening enter Napa Village

3/2 - Napa Day 1 

3/3 - Napa Day 2

3/4 - Napa Day 3

3/5 - Napa Day 4

3/6 Morning flight to Kunming; Free Day in Kunming; late night flight to Beijing

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So from what I can tell from this itinerary and word of mouth, this is going to be an intense week and a half. Lot's of hiking, talking to locals and getting lost. Things I like.

There are 4 Yunnan groups. I think they split everyone up to make the groups easier to herd. Going anywhere in a big group sucks. I'm glad there is only 13 or so students on our trip. Also I really like the people in my group. It's not that I don't like the other people...it's just that I am pretty close with the people on my trip. There are two upper lever and two lower level groups. I'm not ashamed to say I'm in the lower level. A1 and A2 are the "northen", mountainous trips and B1 and B2 are the southern, tropical trips. A1 and A2 have the same itinerary but in opposite orders. I'm on A1. I don't know much about the B's.

Click picture for a bigger one.

2/20-22/09

After class on friday we took a trip to a culture/traditional crafts exhibition. Why? I don't know. Well at the time it made sense, but in retrospect it wasn't very informative. All the language kids took a charter bus all the way across town, fighting midday traffic the whole time. I'm not sure if this building was always used for these sorts of events or what but it looked like a really old wealthy chinese mansion. We saw a huge line for tickets, which I was very impressed with. As I've probably mentioned before, my biggest beef with China is the Chinese refusal to line up. I haven't really ever seen a line. They're more like formations. Formations toward a common goal. I've been reading Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost. It's amazing how much it has mirrored my experience in China. Maybe I'll blog about that book. I highly recommend that book. Go get it. He too has a similar disdain for the Chinese line forming abilities. As I think i mentioned in the Harbin post, they don't really do lines in traffic either. Driving at high speeds on highways is no problem in China. When you get to stop and go traffic you run into problems. Luckily you're never moving at high speed and the taxi drivers have an extra appendage know as their car. I rarely feel scared for my own safety in Chinese taxis. In traffic there is never a gap between cars. As soon as a gap is made it is immediately filled with a taxi, bus, bike, pedestrian or some combination of those four. I was wondering the other day if this is a more efficient way to move through traffic. I mean, there is absolutely no gaps in traffic so how could you be moving any faster. But then I realized that there's so much traffic  because vehicles are constantly changing lanes. This really slows stuff down. Drivers seem to think even if there's a gap in a clearly slower lane, it's better to jump in that gap. Oh well. I think this video adequately represents China.

Ok. So where were we. Oh yes, the huge line. It was about 200m long but moving very quickly. It was a slow walking pace. Ironically, halfway through the line we, IES students, got to cut the line and walk right in. 

There were so many people in this tiny museum. You would have thought we were at a outdoor market. We were supposed to have a tour guide, but I along with everyone else got split up and proceeded to wander around understanding nothing for an hour and a half. We walked past little booths of men and women doing their particular ancient art craft. There were painters, sculptors, instrument makers, umbrella makers, goldsmiths, silversmiths, tea connoisseurs, furniture builders and everything in between. Every sign was in Chinese so I didn't really learn anything beyond what I could see. Our teachers told us that there would be a few questions on the next test about what we learned at this museum. The only question I see myself answering correctly would be How many people were at this museum? - An uncountable amount.

Every stall was unbelievably crowded with Chinese people pushing to get a glimpse of each craft. The first time I saw a crowded stall, I too tried to push past and see what everyone was trying to see. It was just a guy painting some characters on some paper. Why was everybody pushing to see this? Indeed why do they always rush to get everywhere. China has a real knack for doing the complete opposite of the West. This is rarely a bad thing in my opinion. It's just different, and it's something you have to get used to. Times when a westerner would rush, the Chinese like to be very slow. Conversely times when we would be calm and slow, the Chinese shout and rush about. No one ever seems to be in a hurry when riding their bike. Most people rarely ride faster than a brisk walk. Waiters and waitresses hurry you and shove a menu in your face before you've taken off your coat, but as soon as you've ordered you don't see service again until you shout FUWUYUAN!!! across the restaurant. I've never understood people's hurry to board airplanes as soon as their flight is announced. The last thing I want to do before a cross country flight is spend an extra five minutes in the plane. If you thought some westerners hurry on board, come to China. Unless you've been to Pamplona I doubt you've seen people move with such fervor.

Yes. Quite a museum experience. I saw how a loom worked. I've never really understood them until I saw someone working one. Somethings you just have to see.

I've discovered a much better/faster/bigger way to imbed photos.

What else has happened.

Wow. Last night we went to a club and saw Paul Van Dyk. I've never really been a trance kinda guy. But this was super fun. We had dinner at our little xiaochi. I think the women know me by now, I think i have at least one meal there everyday. We've begun to talk more. I think I've begun to break the ice with regard to talking to strangers in Chinese. In the gym changing room two other guys were talking about me in Chinese. I startled them by saying I can understand a little, and confirmed their assumption that I was American. On the bus to GT Banana (Paul van Dyk show) I started up a conversation with a man I later found out was from Harbin. It's much easier talking about stuff you know - like Harbin. 

As I said the show was awesome .We had our own booth. The dance floor was on some sort of hydraulics. I couldn't tell if it was just moving in response to everyone jumping, or it actually moved independently. Either way it was a weird/really cool feeling. Naturally half way through the set a caged woman descended from the ceiling. A bar/club just doesn't feel right in China if there isn't some sort of half naked  elevated dancing woman somewhere. It was the most crowded place I've ever been. Everyone was so sweaty from dancing. If i had tried to traverse the dancefloor with dry clothes on I would have  exited wet. It was disgusting, but at the same time so much fun. Sporadically they would spray cold white air, either to cool us down or just because it looked cool. I think it was compressed CO2. It was kinda hard to breathe when that hit.

Yeah. It has been a fun weekend. Next week we depart for Yunnan. I'll post about that laterrr.

Happy Trace?

2/16-17/09

On Monday we were introduced to our fudao, our personal tutor. Each IES student was paired up with a Chinese student who we must meet with 4 times a week for an hour. We were told to go to the Activity Room on the 4th floor after class. It was a cramped experience. Usually the activity room just barely seats every IES student, but today we had every IES student plus an equal number of tutors. The tutors were about a 95% women and 5% men. A teacher would call out our name and then another would call out our corresponding tutor. We both got up met in the front of the room, then left together to exchange phone numbers and discuss when we wanted to meet. I happened to get one of the few male tutors, which I was hoping for as all my other teachers are female, so I was hoping to get used to a male voice speaking Chinese. He's named Zou Jia Qiu. He's a nice guy. He rarely speaks English, which I think is helpful. It's clear that he can speak English, he just doesn't. It took about 5 minutes to convey that he wanted to meet downstairs the same day at 2 with my homework. 

Every little thing takes a while to explain and confirm for me in Chinese. By the end of every discussion I'm never 100% sure they said what I think they said. Context is very important to my understanding of spoken Chinese. If I'm in class, and I know what the teacher should be talking about I can pick out key words and retroactively piece them together to figure out the meaning. Chinese grammar is not like English, and word order is often reversed. For example, to say "after I studied last night I went to bed" you would say the equivalent of "I last night studied after went to bed".  And that's a pretty simple concept to get used to. If i don't have context, like if a waitress or cab driver just starts talking to me, I'm initially very lost until I can sink a linguistic anchor into what they're saying by understanding one sentence or even one word. Chinese, while it's writing system is the most complex system ever devised, is a very simple spoken language. By that I mean some sentences or thoughts can be expressing in only a few syllables. This can be very useful, or very difficult to understand if you don't know their meaning, as the anchor can't be sunk into as many words.

So we met later in the afternoon, looked over my homework and reading for the night. I read over the words and he would help me with pronunciation. When I would ask a question he would explain it with a combination of very fast spoken chinese and cocktail napkin-esque diagrams. A phrase I've become very good at saying is "Please say again" and "I do/don't understand". We've met three times this week and I think my Chinese is progressing.

Last night a few of us went to an American pizza place called The Kro's Nest. It's actually some of the best pizza I've ever had. The Chinese don't really do cheese. I heard one time Asian cultures don't like the idea of spoiled milk protein, or whatever cheese is. I find that very hard to believe. There are some very disturbing dietary/hygienic habits here so I can't imagine cheese would turn anyone's stomach. (AND they like yogurt).

But you know who loves cheese? This guy. I had wanted some pizza for a while and I certainly got my fill. There are a surprising and statistically unlikely amount of Jewish people among the IES students.  My point was that some of them are Kosher, which basically means vegetarian here in China. We got a half spinach and mushroom, half "Mighty Meat" pizza. I was a little unsure of how the rules of Kosher eating dealt with half and half pizza. It seemed that there was certainly meat and dairy on the same plate, moreover melting together in the same delicious pizza. Mark assured me that God would make an exception. Phewf.

We all went out to Wudaokou to ....watch the Grammies? They were projecting the coverage of the show on a large screen in a ex-pat bar above a bookstore called Lush. Was anyone else angry about Coldplay and their Sgt. Peppers outfits? Beside the super bowl, which doesn't really count as it was in my first few days here, watching the Grammies was my first American entertainment experience in China. It was so lame. Everything about that show was just so...lame. I don't really care about the Grammies in the first place, but it was borderline painful to watch this year. Everyone seemed to think the same thing. It was just so very unimportant.

The cab ride home was fun. I sat in the front seat to explain where we wanted to go and actually had a little conversation with the cab driver. It was simple and I often had to ask the meaning of words but practice is practice. It was the first time beside talking with teachers, that I felt competent and understood by the driver.

snow

Haerbin - 哈尔滨

Just when I thought China couldn't get any more bizarre, interesting, exciting, inexpensive or frustrating I took a trip to Harbin. When I heard about an ice festival happening up north in Harbin I asked myself "Ice? I've seen ice before. How exciting could an entire festival devoted to it be?"  But I've very quickly learned that in China, and probably any semester abroad, you miss out on a lot by saying "No". This trip has been a lesson in the ways of saying "Hell yes." I paid for the trip at the last minute - 1075元  for a train ticket to Harbin, a plane ticket back, a night in a hotel and taxi to and from the hotel. That's only $168. I think it was a great deal.

I guess it's suitable to start from the beginning of the trip on Friday night. I packed a few crucial items in my one backpack. Change of underwear and socks, long johns, a sweatshirt, Ritz crackers etc. At the last minute I decided to throw my headlamp in there. It turned out to be very helpful. We were split into taxi groups. Nash, Lauren, Sheffin and I hailed a cab and headed to the train station we were told to go to - Beijing Bei Zhan. Half way through the cab ride we get a call from Max, the student in charge of the logistics, saying that we were going to the wrong station. Apparently they named two train stations almost the same thing. There's Beijing Bei Zhan and Beijing Zhan, meaning Beijing North Station and Beijing Station respectively. So after a very confusing conversation with the cab driver that to an untrained ear like mine just sounded like " beijing zhan beijing bei bei bei zhan beijing beijing zhan beijing bei zhan beijing" Somehow we managed to figure it all out just as we were passing a subway stop. We got out and jumped on line 2. This took us directly to Beijing Zhan. After all the discussion and confusing it appeared that we took the fastest way possible by accident. We were the first taxi group to the station. It was incredible.

Equally incredible was the immense number of people in the train station. We waited inside a restaurant because we were hungry and wanted to sit down. This restaurant solved both problems. We boarded our train without incident. To be honest, the cheapness of the tickets confirmed my suspicion that this train ride would be the worst traveling experience of my life. Not so. This was the best train ride/journey ever. There were six people to a "room". A room was just two walls near each other with six beds hung on the walls. No doors. It was very communal. But very pleasant. I can't do a side by side comparison to my bed in my dorm but I would argue the train bed was more comfortable. It was certainly more cosy. You could tell the other passengers hated us. Who would want to spend a 10 hour overnight train ride with 30 American college students? The train hand (? the guy who check tickets...we just used the generic fuwuyuan) insisted on climbing all over us and our bags to simply close the window curtains as we started to depart. He was very insistent on doing it himself when it would have been clearly easy, even with our language barrier, to ask us to do it ourselves. Leaving Beijing t night was a little disappointing. I kind of wanted to see the sprawl of factories and housing. Oh well.

We played electronic Catch Phrase, the game where you have to describe something without using the words. We got pretty rowdy naturally, but eventually hit the hay. The train was a little chilly but we had HUGE blankets. The movement of the train was actually very soothing so I fell asleep quickly. At one point I could feel us slowing down in the night, presumably to go safely through a station. In the morning we looked out the window to fields of snowy fields, crumbling buildings, piles of coal and chimney stacks. This is the communist experience I've been looking for. Once I found it, I had had enough. I see now why people have thrown off the ideals of communism in search of financial success in any form possible. We were definitely between Eastern Russia and North Korea. If the sprawling snowy decay outside hadn't tipped me off, the thick ice forming around the window on the inside confirmed my other suspicion that Harbin would be cold. Very cold.

We collected our belongings and jumped off the train. Leaving any large building or event with Chinese people is an experience. Lining up is not really..done. You just walk forward as far as you can, in any direction until you get where you need to go. You'd think young people would be the most eager and fit to be "rude" but no. The old people are much more willing to give you an elbow in the ribs to get that subway ticket before you. This mindset they take to the road. Beijing taxis hadn't been too bad so far. I've heard horror stories of scary cab rides, but I experienced my first 3 heart attacks in Harbin. No one seems to have right of way. If you can get to where you need to be on the road before the next person, do it. If your side of the road is full there's a perfectly empty on coming traffic lane right next to you, use it! I can see why foreigners are not allowed to drive here.

We lived. We got to our hotel, which again far surpassed my expectations. While it didn't have  the biggest rooms, it had a bed, a shower and a toilet. All I needed. I'm not certain but I think every piece of furniture came from an Ikea liquidation sale.

It felt like noon but it was only 8:30. We split up to find breakfast. I wasn't particularly hungry for some reason, so Molly and I decided to explore this old Russian orthodox church we passed on the way to the hotel. Harbin has a large Russian influence. A lot of people (particularly Jews fleeing WW2) emigrated early in the 20th century. This church was no a museum. It was filled with old pictures of Harbin and stereotypical Christian accoutrement. The paintings and decor in this church were to a real western Church as Outback Steakhouse is to Australia. They had the right idea but I don't think Di Vinci's last super is kept in a Harbin museum.

Outside were some people playing this cool game. It was like a cross between tennis and lacrosse. They tossed this soft rubber ball to each other with rackets also made of rubber. It was a fluid motion so as to keep the ball attached to the racket. It was a high school physics problem in action. Maybe I'll post the video later when my internet is running faster.

We hung around the hotel until we departed for the tiger park. Let's just say this place and PETA would not be friends. It had started to snow as we got to the park - Harbin is really cold btw. We all got on a caged bus and drove though a big fiber glass tiger mouth, Jurassic Park style. We all pitched in and bought five chickens and two goats to feed, live, to the cats. I was under the impression there for a few big cats. This place had to have had maybe 50 tigers and half as many lions. In addition a few jaguars, white lions and leopards. Tigers are huge. They would walk past our bus and I was genuinely a little scared. Nothing in China has filled me with confidence that it would work and the cages on this bus were by no means an exception. We drove around from section to section, Jurassic Park style. Another little SUV covered in cages would follow us around sporadically throwing livestock to the cats. I would have expected a complex animal dispersing safety mechanism to ensure the people in the car were as safe as possible. It turns out there was one person driving the car who would just open his door and toss out a chicken or goat. The chickens made a valiant effort. The would give the tigers a little chase, but the goats had no idea what to do. They basically laid down and got eaten. Big time. It was actually interesting to see the difference between tigers and lions and how they feast. The lions shared their meat whereas the tigers caught their food and ran off with it to enjoy in solitude. My hands got so cold trying to film all this as snow blew in through the window. We took the bus back to the wood floored high speed internet capable hotel after we were done feeding our primal urges of bloodlust.

A few of us ate at a mall food court. They had this weird system I have yet to see in Beijing but saw twice in Harbin. To buy food at this court you have to buy a card, put money on it, spend the money then return the card for your money back. I don't understand the middle man. Perhaps it's so the money only goes through one person.  As always the food was delicious, stir-fried and noodley.

After dinner we left for the Ice Festival. Yes it requires capital letters. This was The Ice Festival. I have no idea how to describe this. Imagine, if you know it, Zilker Park covered in snow with a dozen or so castles, yes castles, made out of ice. Immense buildings made entirely of ice and a little bit of steel for safety. Then imagine all this ice with neon lights in it.  Then imagine sleigh rides, arctic foxes, camels, ice slides, frozen port-a-potties and hot cocoa. All in one place. It looked like a level from Mario Galaxy, or some other insane Asian fantasy game. My favorite thing were the ice slides. It was the little kid in me. OH. On one side of the park in front of a castle, weird asian/polka techno was playing. As we always do when we go somewhere we started dancing and all these Chinese people joined in with us. We roamed this dreamworld until our noses started to harden on the inside. Yeah, it was so cold our nose-liquid(??) was freezing.

After a quick recovery at the hotel we left for a club/bar. We got the name from the hotel lobby staff. Babi Jiuba. Sounds fun, right? When we got their we read the English name below the characters. Club Barbie. To be honest it was the "coolest" club we've been to. This weird fat guy came on stage and started singing and dancing and getting undressed. Nash and Bo decided to leave without jackets to get some chuanr. We didn't know, so when we left we couldn't find them and had to take their jackets with us. They had a very cold taxi ride home.

In the morning/mid afternoon we went to another ice festival - this one doesn't deserve capital letters. It was Disney themed (sweet?) This one did have a much bigger slide and ferris wheel. There was a section of ice sculptures. Apparently it was an international competition because each sculpture had plaque with a team name and country. The Chinese ones were impressive, even more so were the Russian entries. But the U.S. one sucked. It wasn't even a sculpture. It was some freeform blobs. I had no idea what it was supposed to be. The Thai team was by far the most impressive. Do they even have ice in Thailand?! Come on America. Step it up. I have a sneaking suspicion it was intentionally bad. To make America look bad. Who knows.

After a bowl of what was essentially chicken noodle soup we headed back for the hotel and eventually the airport. The plane ride was fantastic. It was a really empty flight so we all had two seats to ourselves. Movies, in English, on demand on screens behind the seats. AND it was Air China. I flew Air China from San Francisco and it sucked. They redeemed themselves.

One of the students, Max, with the help of a few IES people here, arranged this whole trip for us. It was the most impressive impromptu assumption of responsibility I've seen from someone my age. Props to him. And props to you if you read all of that.

I'll post pictures and/or video later.

2/11-12/09

Today was a day off from class. Sorta. We didn't have language class in the morning so a bunch of us went to find the silk market. Traveling in big groups sucks. Everything moves exponentially slower with every person added to our groups. If you want to get something done here do it by yourself or with one other person. Because we had such a big group we knew we weren't going to get back to Beiwai in time for afternoon class so Zach, a student from last semester took us to a closer cheap clothes market - a lot of people needed warm clothes for Harbin.

We went to a 5 story mall closer to the center of town. It wasn't like the other mall i went to and it's nothing like an American mall. There are little cubicles selling almost the exact same thing in each. The same knock-off brand shirts, jeans and shoes. I'm not really sure how these places make that much money all selling the same thing. I heard families often own multiple stands or are in co-ops with other stand

s. I didn't really need anything so i just wandered around without everyone else. I got into an accidental haggling with a lady selling be a button down shirt. I just wanted to know my size, so she measured me. I said I didn't want the shirt, or any shirt, but she took this as lower the price. I got this price down to 30 kuai, about 5 bucks. Pretty neat for not even trying.

We were a little bored and hungry so we wandered down to a Korean restaurant. In the same building was a Dairy Queen (wtttffff?!?!) I've already mentioned this, but this dairy queen only sold milkshakes, ice cream, coffee and hot dogs. What? No chicken fried steak burgers?! What's wrong with this country....

That night after coming back from the gym everybody had eaten so I went out to the xiaochi to get some quick noodles. Upon entering I saw three of the RA's, who had just ordered, and sat down with them. They were in the middle of a discussion about cannibalism and the ethics of eating people in emergency situations - great pre-meal chit chat.  They kept referencing the Donner party and getting lost in the mountains. I couldn't help but think about our upcoming trips to Harbin (where right now it's -16

 C) and Yunnan, a Tibet-like province which brushes the Himalayas. Was this discussion friendly banter or prudent planning?

Nothing worth mentioning happened the next day. Class in the morning, studying in the afternoon.

NO it rained that day. It was cloudy all day but I didn't think it would rain. But it did. First rain in a very long time, I hear.

Alright. So right now it's Friday afternoon. We had our first kaoshi, test, today. It wasn't too bad. I have my first calligraphy class this afternoon. I hear the teacher used to ride a Harley Davidson around Beijing in the 80's and can trace his lineage back to the last emperor of China. 

After class we're leaving for Harbin. The plan is to take an overnight train - 10 hours. We'll hang out in Harbin and visit the ice festival there. There's some sort of tiger and lion park there too. We've heard, but not confirmed, t

hat we'll have the ability to buy some sort of small livestock and feed it to the big cats there...alive. I, for one, am excited. Some people are disgusted. I'm not really sure why. We humans kill thousands of cows, goats and sheep per day anyway. And lions and tigers kill animals in the wild all the time too. I think it will be an interesting biological lesson. Oh well. We fly back Sunday night so we can get to class in the morning.

Here's a nice lil' map.

So yeah this will be my last post until we get back.

再见

2/9-10/09

This post will be a mix of two days. 

So you might have seen the video I posted of the fireworks. What an odd experience that was. The last day of spring festival was really big. Once the sun went down people started lighting fireworks and didn't stop until the early morning. The whole city was just exploding in fireworks. A bunch of us took the subway down to tiananmen to see if anything was going on.

The subways here are really nice. Very very modern. The cars feel like they're floating on air. I haven't been on a subway/train since England but from what i can remember their trains were very shaky and jolty. These subways are so smooth. They also have this really bizarre, totally redundant advertising space. When the train is speeding through the tunnel on the wall outside is a screen that appears to be moving with the train. I'm still trying to figure out just how this technology worked. Some people thought it was just one long LED screen and the picture just keeps up with the train, but others thought it was just a bunch of permanent images that you speed past giving the illusion of motion, like a really high tech zoetrope. It was cool however they did it.

So the stop we tried to get off at was closed that night so we had to get off early and walk to Tiananmen. There were crowds of people, more than usual, just milling about not doing anything in particular. We thought we were walking to some festival or show but we weren't. Like everyone else we were just milling about the streets watching kids throw firecrackers and waiters outside restaurants launching roman candles. It was a little disappointing but at the same time an unforgettable experience. We didn't understand how it was safe to be launching millions of pounds of fireworks in the heart of a city in a country that just declared a drought emergency. We found out the next morning it wasn't safe at all. 

This is the Mandarin Oriental Hotel burning down..... we didn't see it. It's on the east side of the city, and we're on the west. And you couldn't see half a mile through the smoke that night..

We stopped in at KFC on the way back to the subway. KFC here is weird. Infact, all western fastfood chains here are nothing like their American counterparts. I didn't eat any, but the fried chicken was all dark dark crappy(er) meat. And they have more sandwiches. And weird crab balls. Today we found a Dairy Queen. It only sold milkshakes and hot dogs. I don't really understand why they don't serve it the same way as the U.S..I'm sure they've spent millions of dollars on marketing this stuff to China but....is this really the best they came up with. To be fair, I've never seen a bigger or more busy KFC. So something's working. 

OOK

Yesterday. Again pretty normal. Class in the morning. Free in the afternoon. Actually today was really boring. By which I mean i have nothing really to talk about. OH 

Wednesdays we don't have class in the morning, so we all went out to Wudaokou. It's a pretty western bar area. Everybody wanted to eat at different places so Nash, Dan and I found this little hole in the wall restaurant. It, like most things, was strange. Everything on the menu was deep fried. Deep fried (insert meat here) was all you could get. And every picture on the menu was the exact same thing. Literally. They copy and pasted the same picture 20 times.... my pork loin was great. It came with a bowl of miso soup and some rice. Nash's chicken sucked. He wishes he had had mine....

After that we went to some bars, ate some chuanr and called it a night. 

chuanr (pronounced chwar) = meat on a stick. It's typically sold out of windows or street vendors . This particular chuanr was cooked over a coal filled steel I-beam on a street corner. We think Bo got sick from eating it.

That's about all I have for today