Carl and I arrived in a city in north west Hunnan last night. We hiked through the Tiger Leaping Gorge the past few days blown away by its beauty - sunsets, stars galore, mountains, waterfalls, and sunrises.
We jumped in a bus - I got a spot right next to the lady hugging the waste basket - and 1 and a half hour later we arrived in Shangri-La. Moments before arriving I read in the Lonely Planet travel book:
Shangri-La was named as such to lure tourists in. Odly enough, it has worked - backpackers, tourists, and all sorts of people have flocked to Shangri-La. Do not bother heading to Shangri-La during the winter time as most of it is closed.
I miss Minesota.
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We just got back from climbing a mountain and biking around the city. We paused for a moment in a tiny village to watch a bunch of Tibetians playing tug-o-war before getting invited to have dinner with a family. The dinner was Yak Butter Tea (I've been hearing a lot about this stuff since picking up the book 3 Cups of Tea) Bautze, and pickled vegitables.
I am tired and moments from crashing. We saw some snow on the mountain so that made me feel a little more at home. Nothing else here really feels like home - hiking in the mountains amongst yaks, pigs, wild dogs, and birds.
Shangri-La!
Broken Camera, Computer Access limited
Yesterday I went to charge my camera and the battery didn't respond. I convinced myself the next day that it charged and just didn't tell me. That day my camera didn't work. I am going to look for a camera before heading out on your hiking trek but I am nervous about finding the right quality, price, etc while travelling.
Yesterday Carl and I arrived in Hunnan. We stayed at a beautiful hostel and I learned to play the guitar. Today we are hanging out in town then at night we will climb aboard a night bus and ride to Tiger Leaping Gorge.
After hitting up Tiger Leaping Gorge, we will probably if we have time head up to a city name Shangri-La.
New YEAR
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!
Today is the first day of the Chinese new year. Yesterday we ate a HUGE lunch with Teddy's parents -more than 20 dishes, a few courses, some expensive wine, and sharkfin soup = /. The whole lunch was repeatedly interrupted by people cheering eachother wishing them a good next year. There were many speeches and lunch took a few hours.
We then went and played frisbee in a park and returned to Teddy's house for dinner. After dinner we sat on the couch and watched the Chinese new year program on TV. Lots of dancing and good performences. Teddy's parents came out with gifts, and we accepted them out of respect.
We stole out into the darkness only to find the sky exploding with fireworks. Children littered the streets throwing fireworks and giggling with merryment. It was an amazing day to be in China
Mount Emie #2
January 21
Today we woke up at 7 and went to take a bus up Mount Emei to the trails. 3 hours of winding mountain roads we arrivd at a trail head where a few people were selling shoe spikes. Bought them and hiked up the icy path winding through an area of aggressive monkies which knew how to open bottles and attacked anyone carrying a bag.
We briefly stopped for some tea before continuing on to the giant temple on the mountain. From the top we could look out at other mountain peaks which poked out over the sea of clouds. It was beautiful and reminded me of the pictures of China I had seen in Chinese buffets as a young child.
We Climbed down the mountain and called it a night after getting a message.
Mount Emie #1
January 20
We packed our bags and took off for a 2 day trip which turned into 3 days. On the way to our main destination we stopped at a temple which housed the largest buddha statue in China. Standing infront of it I hardly came up to his ankle. We walked around the temple area and climbed back in the car. We drove to our hotel in a temple at the foot of mount Emei and called it an early night
Arrival in Chengdu
Today we woke up in Chengdu after a late drive from the airport. Teddy's aunt and uncle moved in with Teddy's parents for the week so we could use their house as a 'base of opperations' while we are here in Chengdu. WOW
We drank some coffee and walked over to meet teddy's parents and gave them some rose candy we had bough in GuiZhou, and some shredded beef snack we picked up from Kevin's father's factory. We looked at photos Teddy's father had taken during the earthquake and ate a big lunch with his family.
We then went to ground zero where the earthquake happened. We walked through a field of trailor homes the residents were temporarily (or permanently) residing. A few of the trailors were school trailors. Next to the houses were a row of shops which faced the main road. These shops sold various offerings for the deceased. Paper shoes, dress, cell phone and make up for girls -- and shoes, tie dress shirt, and a cell phone for the guys. You unwrap them from their plastic encasing and burn them -- sending the paper objects to the dead. Other shops offered paper money, Plastic gold bricks, bank notes (titled hell's currency), paper cars, licenses, id cards, bank cards, houses and more.
We walked up to a ruins which used to be a school. When the earthquake struck 2,000 students died leaving only the 200 hundred students who were out on recess.
We walked further down the main road and came to a gate we could not pass. They told us that we could, if we wanted, walk up the road and look down on the rest of the city from a designated spot. On the road we looked down and saw the city where more than 300,000 people were killed. The city was nestled in the mountains and a huge landslide burried a school and many houses - losing those within. Along the road there were DVDs and pictures being sold showing before and after views of the city.
If 800,000 Chinese people were killed in the earthquake, the ripple effect is staggering. We went and ate some hot pot - duck's tongue, cow stomache, rabbit, pig intestine, and liver.
Departure of GuiZhou
January 19, 2009
We woke up and went to his dad's factory and saw 200 workers filling little plastic packets with shredded beef snack. It was remarkable to see so many working on the task - all by hand. Then we toured the place where the cattle are kept. We stopped by the factory store and Kevin bought each of us a GIANT box of beef snacks as well as a bag filled with 8 large jars of spicy beef jelly. We thanked them and returned to Austin's house to take a much needed shower. We gave Austin the snacks to ship them to us in Zhuhai after the trip so we wouldn't have to carry them with us.
We went to town to grab some sushi. we bought Austin's dad an electric razor - very expensive - to thank him for all of his generosity. We gave him the razor at our final meal together and he was throughly happy once again offering us their home if we ever return.
Visiting Kevin
Today we woke up and headed out to meet Kevin and his girlfriend at a park. After missing them a few times because their driver kept getting lost, we decided to stop and eat breakfast without them, A noodle dish with raw garlic cloves on a plate to throw in your mouth every few bites. It was really tasty. After breakfast we met up with Kevin, his driver, and his girlfirend at an old village where we ate lunch - pig hooves and a viscous porridge.
We arrived at one of the largest temples in the province if GuiZhou. Most of it was unbuilt ut it was very beautiful. It was nestled between 9 mountains which were thought to be 9 dragons. The whole time Kevin & his girl friend were quiet and stuck to themselves.
After the temple we went to Kevin's home town and ate dinner - a goat - with his father who was pretty quiet. We finnished dinner and went to buy some fireworks. After buyin the fireworks we went to Kevin's house, the biggest house I have seen in China, 4 stories witha rooftop garden. We played GuiZhou style Mahjong with his brother and then departed to a nearby bridge to launch the fareworks off. We bought one firework for a few hundred RMB and lit if off. It filled the sky with Minnesota fourth of July valued fireworks. Giant colored plumes and even the famous cracklers - It was bizzare how cheap and extensive the firework was.
We went a KTV bar where we sang kareoke and played a Chinese dice game. We got tired quickly and returned to a hotel Kevin had gotten us and played Texas Holdem for a bit before crashing.
No pictures? No more!
I have tons of picture to put up but I can't find them on Austin's computer...It's all in Chinese. It turns out that going to Tibet could be impossible. It's too snowy and expensive they say. So we may be heading to Shangri-la instead.
Today we woke up to the roaring of the waterfall next to our hostel and climbed into the car to visit a giant multicambered cave illuminated by multicolored lights. After exploring the cave and getting our fill of pictures we climbed back into the van and headed to a village made of stone where we we told we could buy a home starting at 1000 RMB or 150 USD. They were pretty big, but lacked stability and cleanlieness. After being split up from Carl and Austin I was chased out of the village by a swarm of dogs. Luckly Austin and Carl met up with me at the entrance and we were able to take off to the next site.
I just found out how to load some pictures so I will upload them now.
Monkeys in waterfalls
January 16th 2009
Ahh my parents tell me that my blog doesn't have dates attached, so it's hard to tell when I post things. Well maybe this will start a trend, I'm not sure. Today we woke up a little later, ate breakfast with Chou and Austin: rice noodle-type things, chives, and some bok choy type stuff. After breakfast we said goodbye to Chou and took off to see the Huangguoshu waterfall cluster. We drove a few hours out of GuiYang and finally arrived at the entry to the waterfall area where we bought tickets to the three primary sites, ate lunch, and headed to the first site, the main waterfall area. We took our time walking through a large area filled with more than 100 bonsai trees of all types, and began our decent to see the waterfall.
The waterfall was beautiful. After a slow decent of picture taking merriment, we crossed a swinging bridge and began to go inside the 'curtain waterfall'. After taking the trail under the waterfall we came to a sign which explained that this very waterfall was found by a certain monkey, a very famous monkey. It turns out that this very waterfall was where the Buddhist monkey from Journey to the West lived as king with his monkey ilk. Wow. That's amazing...and depressing. I remembered the story faintly, but there were tons of monkey ilk and to be honest, the passage under the waterfall could hold 50 monkeys tops.
We returned to the car and drove to the second site. We walked through the entry passage and began walking on stepping stones leading through several ponds each labeled a different day in the year starting with January 1, January 2, etc. On the bottom of some of the plaques were Chinese characters, of which Austin assured me they were the names of famous Chinese people born on these days. We walked along until we hit March 28, anticipation was in my heart...what great hero would be born on my day, hopefully someone great, hopefully someone at all (some stones just had the date and no name listed underneath). We came to my birthday and there were three characters listed below. I looked to Austin to let me know what great person was born on this day. He was on the phone with the driver... I scowled and pressed onward to find out which brilliant individual was born on my birthday...
He covered the mouthpiece on the phone, "I have no idea, I just know that it's some famous person."
I didn't even take the time to write the name down and do the research on my own. I'm pretty sure if Austin took the time he would have seen that the three Chinese characters on the rock translated perfectly into my name, something like 'J' 'O' 'N'. We continued along the rocks to find Austin's birthday which had no name listed below the date. Carl's date wasn't even on the rocks at all, apparently December 19th and on just get left out of whatever was happening on these rocks. The whole time we were hopping from rock to rock a swarm of beggar children hopped with us. We gave them peanuts and tried to play games like rock-paper-scissors with us. They kept chanting in unison that they wanted money for school books and pencils. When we offered the peanuts to them they would say they wouldn't want them, but when we would set them on the rocks they were trying to sell us they would smile and eat them anyways.
We then came to a lake where the monkey's pig friend in Journey to the West fell in love with a beautiful woman. The lake was small and didn't have much interesting going on so we took a picture of the sign and continued on.
Next up was the largest cave I have ever set foot into. After entering through a long corridor the cave opened up to an astounding size. Stalagmites and stalactites surrounded us wet, seemingly permanently damp from the humid stale cave air. We explored the cave for a bit, walking around the stone trail lit by various colored lights ranging from purple to orange. We hiked around a bit more and exited the second site panting and ready to call it a day. Our driver came and picked us up and took us to a restaurant where we ate a meal with several interesting dishes. One dish was chicken pieces - feet, heart, stomach, liver, intestine, etc. Another dish we had tried the previous night supposedly protected GuiZhou citizens from contracting SARS. There was a fried bok choy dish, and 2 soups. One of the soups as congeled blood, tofu, and chives (the only dish I didn't try...its true I ate the intestines, heart, etc.). The other soup was a bird, like a chicken which we later found out was possibly endangered and illegal to hunt because the government was trying to help 'save the animals population'. Carl is a biologist, and was quite furious to hear this. We have yet to find out what exactly the bird was, or if Austin really understood what we were saying when we asked if it was 'rare' animal.
A night at the moives with Chou
January 15th 2009
We woke up at 8 in the morning to meet Austin's friend 'Chou' and began our day by heading down to eat breakfast at a local restaurant. We ate a spicy GuiZhou breakfast consisting of a fried egg thrown in a soup with egg noodles, sprouts, red tofu (see past posts on congealed blood), and pig stomach (the last two of which I was able to dodge). We all climbed back into the car with Austin's dad's driver and headed up to the temple. The temple lied in a larger park which cost about 30 RMB a person but Austin wouldn't let us contribute. Chou, Austin, Carl, and I entered the park area to find it filled with people over the age of 40. As we climbed a hill to the entrance of an actual Buddhist temple, we saw a number of 40-somethings stretching, singing karaoke, line-dancing, sword dancing, and straight up chillin' and chatting with each other. Austin suggested that these people were retired and didn't have anything to do, so they came to the park.
At the top of the hill we entered the temple. My second on the trip. Austin knew about my interest in visiting the temples so he had our visit set up so we could eat lunch with the monks. We settled down to eat after walking around the temples and seeing an interesting worship ceremony (7 monks walked around a room chanting with an audio recording while a tv played in the front of the room which showed 5 buddha statues burning with flame - the color of the flame would change every few minutes). The lunch was spectacular maybe the best on the trip. It was prepared without meat, and very simple. Some fried green plants, some spicy dishes, and a bunch of rice...it wasn't very oily.
After eating lunch we left the temple and walked around the park a little more. We found ourselves on a ridge with signs posted all over saying do not get too close to the monkeys. After walking a little past the signs we found 10 or 15 monkeys running around causing a ruckus in the trees, bushes, and benches. After taking a few odd pictures we decided to continue on towards a zoo which was located in the park. Later on we were to find out that monkey's originally were not found in the park, but quite awhile ago, a few monkeys escaped from their cages and begun living up the road from the actual zoo.
The zoo was a depressing collection of cages the size of the average large room in the US. There was a lion, a leopard, a cheetah, a giant camel, a few cages of monkeys, peacocks, deer with their antlers shaved off, and a few other animals. We slowly worked our way through the area and out of the park.
We then went shopping for a bit, ate a spectacular dinner, played some Mahjong, went to the largest movie theater in the province to see a movie called Red Cliff or The Art of War. Carl and I just spent a while discussing this... We aren't sure which is the name of the film because the whole movie seemed like a long preview.
GuiZhou
January 14th 2009
Carl and I were skeptical about getting to the flight on time so we took a bus to the airport, arriving more than seven hours before our flight departed. We played frisbee with some airport employees, ate McDonalds, and read our books until our flight departed. When we touched down in Guizhou were picked up by Austin and his dad. We climbed into the car and began the two hour trek to Austin's parent's apartment located on the 37th floor of the tallest building in town. We were shown to our beds and we crashed shortly there after.
Next Steps
Chinese New Year is coming! And With it, I am going with a fellow T.A. (Carl) to GuiYang in the GuiZhou province of China for a few days to stay with a student/friends family (Austin). On the 21 I will Leave to Chengdu in the Shezuan province to stay with another student/friends family (Teddy) while our application for a VISA to Tibet clears. Four-Five days later Teddy, Austin, Carl, and I will be flying into Tibet for the rest of the month. We are extremely excited and I have spent the night packing. Chinese people usually spend the Chinese new year with family, but both Teddy and Austin's families see the value in travelling and spending time with two Americans -- So they were more than happy to allow them to accompany us. We are lucky to have two Chinese speakers as guides and we will try to the fullest to not put them in any sort of difficult situation.
Carl and I have spent the past few days preparing. Our altitude promises a challenge and we have packed altitude sickness pills. The cold suggests a challenge as we all brought warm weather clothes and this is Tibetian winter. The travel distence will be the furthest we have traveled into mainland China, more than 4 flights. The language barrier should be lessened by the help of our friends, and Carl and I have been studying Chinese most studiously. I am most aware of the fact that this will be a difficult journey but these challeneges have been outmatched step by step with anticipation and excitement.
Visiting Tibet has been a point of interest for me for quite awhile now - a landlocked land of intregue. As my cousin who visited Tibet in the most recent past have put it - "it is a land of extreme beauty and depression". I have as little understanding of the working of Tibet as the average Minnesotain but I have been doing my research and slowly building knowledge of the area.
I look forward to updating you all on my travels as soon as we get out and moving but I cannot guarantee when the next post will be. Thank you dear family, friends - Minnesotains, Wisconsinites, Montanians, Gustavians, Saint Paulites, Southtowners, and anyone else who has been following my adventure and supporting me!
Chinese Brewing - Balloons, Tubes, and Explosions
A few months ago while in Saint Paul I began to brew my first two bottles of mead (honey wine) with a friend of mine. We used honey, lemon, wine yeast, tea, and water to create a tasty concoction mostly only known by Renaissance fair attendees and brewers.
The other day when I was in Jusco, a Japaneese based grocery store, I came across a honey stand which featured 9 taps of honey. Inspiration seized me and I began to seek out the other ingredients and supplies -- tea being the most accessible. This took a few days and a great deal of help from my Chinese friends and other T.A.s.
I began a brew today in a glass bottle with a balloon on top. I am going on vacation in a few days to GuiZhou and Tibet so I was excited to get the brew going -- Hopefully being able to return to find a surprise. My excitement got the best of me. I checked on the bottle a few hours later and found the balloon inflated and hardly any activity in the bottle. At this rate the balloon would burst before vacation and the whole batch would be ruined...or worse, I would leave and return from vacation to find yeast sprayed all over, the balloon popped, and the wine completely wasted.
So it was time to go back to the drawing board and go shopping again. We went back to Jusco to find a large plastic tube and prepare for a big BBQ party we are throwing at our house tomorrow. Without much luck finding a tube, we spent 2 hours of shopping for groceries and gave up on the tube. With our hands full of bags we returned to the bus stop to return home. On the way we crossed a faucet shop with 10 different sized tubes, one of which was perfect for the job. Anyways this story is dragging on a bit and I am not sure how interesting you will find it but I have everything set up so that my worries have been relieved and excitement is growing. I will take pictures and post them later. The batch is very small, but I am excited to share it with my friends who have ever so willingly helped me get the supplies and drag them around the city. I hope this works!
Charades
I went to the store to buy some lighter fluid for the grill we bought a few days ago. We've been pining for a good burger (American food) since we've got here and last week my roomate (Ben) bought a grill. He also bought some charcoal at that time, and yesterday we bought a slew of hamburger meat hoping to make some patties.
At the store I was received by 3 workers who eagerly tried to play a game of charades with me, and the topic was lighter-fluid.
If you have children, and you want them to be world travelers be sure to play charades with them as much as possible -- as this will ensure their life success. Moreover, if you want them to truly succeed, put them on the team in which their partners are terrible at the game. If you do such, your kids will be looked to in any situation.
At a restaurant, if you want to order Sweet and Sour pork, you won't look for the person who is fluent in the local language, you will want the person who can act it out in the best possible way.
Back to my story of getting lighter-fluid -- I was unsuccessful. It wasn't that my game was off, it was more a matter of they didn't carry lighter-fluid.
