Where you find it

I have made it home, and am now mostly adjusted to the Central time zone, after what ended up being 50 hours of travel between leaving Beijing to arriving in the City of Lakes. (My planned 7-hour lay-over in Chicago got extended by a delayed and oversold plane. At the 41-hour mark of my journey homeward, I accepted the airline's offer of 4 hours in a hotel in Chicago, a free ticket within the continental US, and first-class flight home the following morning.)

While I'm both tempted and reluctant to describe this return trip home as "epic," there is at least one sense in which that term is fitting: In re-acquainting myself to Minneapolis, I've been experiencing that wonderful sense of alienation that comes after travel, when familiar haunts, routines and habits both re-assert themselves and also seem strange, foreign and in some cases, downright odd.

It's been impossible, too, to resist comparisons between my experiences in China and life at home.

As I reflect on my diet in China (incredible diversity of ingredients, readily available, with an abundance of vegetables and fresh fish, and for me, a near-total absence of coffee and diary products), it's hard not to compare the waists and general fitness of people in China and here at home. It was shocking, actually, to land in Chicago and see people who seemed gigantic to me after spending a month of among folks -- Chinese people and lithe fellow travelers from around the world -- next to whom I often felt like, okay, it's time I really hit the gym.

As I try to describe the trip to others, I'm reminded of something Charlotte, a fellow traveler from New Zealand whom I met in Xi'an, said to me. She used the word tolerant to characterize her interactions with many Chinese people. She went on to share her impression that, in China, people seem to understand that everyone needs to get their needs met, and so there's a general willingness to make way for others and expect others to reciprocate, a camaraderie, if you will, that prevails over many interactions. Interactions which, back home, would cause frustration or even violence. Examples abound: the traffic flows in a way that feels more organic, less controlled, yet I didn't see the road rage I would expect at home; meals are almost always collective affairs, where the focus seems to be making sure the table has what it needs, rather than individual diners; any queue or collective wait creates a surge of people pressing forward and yet, appearance aside, no one seems particular harried in this collective mad dash.

These are only obvious, tangible examples, but they hint at something that I sensed on my trip, but don't yet have the words to adequately convey: a general ease and comfort you find in most people that things are moving forward, and even if it's a little messy, or a little difficult for some, overall things are moving in a good direction. That's still insufficient as a description, but it may capture the general, unhurried optimism I sensed in the attitude of many people I met in China. Optimism and patience. What a nice combination.

But there's certainly much more cogitating needed before I can do justice to this experience in words. (In fact, that point may never arrive.)

In the meantime, I'm having fun reconnecting with folks, unpacking my bags (the laundry situation might only be remedied with a bonfire), sifting through the zillion baffling scraps of paper I accumulated on this trip (including three receipts from one meal -- one for each dish or beverage ordered!), and organizing my photos from the trip (which I'll post soon).

And so far, here are the lessons for my packing for my next trip to China:

• Fewer clothes (The 4 long-sleeve shirts and 2 dressy pants I took were more than needed -- one of each could have sufficed for September, since I spent most days in a short-sleeve shirt and jeans. Besides, clothes are easy, cheap and fun to acquire during travels, and not maxing out one's pack is essential.)


• A bottle opener comes in handy (cigarette lighters there are made of softer plastic, and don't substitute for a good opener very well)


• A Skype headset and Skype-out credit with auto-recharging enabled, for staying in touch with the peeps


• TSA-approved combination locks (These are preferable to the key-locks I had with me, which required me to carry a key chain in my pocket, and also required the intervention of a hacksaw when I, um, locked said key chain inside my locker at a hostel in Beijing.)


• Less reading material, since there are foreign language bookstores with a decent English selection in most major cities


• An LED flashlight or headlamp, with good batteries (my headlamp apparently got turned on in my pack en route to China, and so was dead for the duration of my trip)


• A mobile phone that will accept a GSM SIM card


• A travel pillow, for plane, bus or train rides without sleeping berths, and to supplement rather skimpy or dingy pillows available at some hostels and sleeping berths

A couple of things would be handy to acquire as soon as you arrive in China, too. These include:

• A pocket knife


• A Chinese SIM card


• Loose-leaf tea of your choice and a handy tea thermos with a strainer (I bought mine at the base of the Yellow Mountains for about $1), which in combination with the abundant, free hot water in buses, trains, hotels and restaurants, means you have a tasty beverage anywhere in China.

Oh, one more lesson I learned today: Exchange your Chinese currency in China -- you'll do much better than the exchange rates back home (something that might apply to most currencies; the difference in exchange rates for converting Chinese yuan to dollars yielded 20% less at home than if I had exchanged them before I left).

My final thought for today:

Having returned home happy and healthy, I want to thank everyone who, through their own travels, emails, blog comments, telepathy and other means, joined me on this trip. It was a great pleasure to share this experience, and I look forward to continuing to share our travels, wherever they may take us.

Zaijian, Zhongguo (Goodbye, China)

This will likely be my last post from China (for a while at least!).

I've spent the past 24 hours saying farewell to Beijing and China as a
whole. Last night, fitting the occasion of mid-autumn moon festival, I
watched a red, full moon rising over Tianamen Square. A saturated
image, to be sure, but I find myself somehow reluctant to wring it for
metaphorical content. Perhaps because I just want to hold these last
impressions of this place, complex and uninterpreted, in the hopes
that they'll last a little longer. An impossible wish, but there you
have it.

Sampling moon cakes on this special night was memorable, but did not
feel especially Chinese, shared as it was with a couple of dozen
Western tourists. Of course, I am not surprised that my experience of
the occasion was one of being outside looking in; that is inevitable
to some extent. Much as the performance Daniel and I took in on
Tuesday morning: a celebration for mid-autumn moon festival involving
music, theater and dance at the Beijing Folk Museum, which we
literally watched from the wings, and whose twists and nuances we did
not follow (but enjoyed nonetheless).

Today, my last day in Beijing, I biked through thick (and thickening)
smog up to the Olympic Park that will be getting so much attention 10
months from now. As with many cities that host the Olympics, most of
Beijing's facilities are brand new. In this case, the elegant, modern
"Bird's Nest" stadium is surrounded by a formidable construction
wasteland, including some of the largest hotel complexes I have ever
seen that are being constructed adjacent to the Olympic park.

I have two brief stops remaining in Beijing before starting my rather
convoluted journey home tonight, which involves a night train to
Shanghai (12 hours), a lay-over there (8 hours), a flight to Chicago
(13 hours), a lay-over there (7 hours), a flight to Minneapolis (1
hour) and the cab ride home.

I anticipate getting home late Thursday (Minneapolis time; mid-day
Friday in China) exhausted, happy to be home, already nostalgic for my
time here, and changed by the remarkable people I have met in this
amazing place.

Echoes of the Forbidden City

Today was eventful, in part because I got an even earlier start than normal. (I've typically been getting up around 6 am -- the sun comes up even earlier, owing to the entire country being on one time zone, all the way to its western hinterlands, which means that in the places I've visited, it's dark before 7 pm and light far earlier than at home.)

I began with the expansive Forbidden City. The place is clearly designed with the word grandeur in mind, and it conveys nothing if not this impression. My travel companions and I were constantly amazed by the physical manifestations of deference to the head-honcho in the Forbidden City: several ornate bridges and passages that were reserved exclusively for the Emperor (with adjacent alternatives that one might be permitted to take, depending on one's rank). Don't get me wrong: I don't pretend that the halls of our government are as open as our democratic system would demand, but there's something so visceral about the idea that only one man's feet are allowed on a bridge. Oh yeah, and crawling on one's knees to approach a imperial audience also has that effect.

One nice thing about the early start: we'd already given the Forbidden City a decent once-over when the tour groups started arriving (many, many of them) around 10:30, as we were making our exit.

Our next stop was Tianemen Square. Standing in the place of the world-changing protest in June, 1989, I couldn't help but think of that lone student's courage, and to ponder his fate (and the thousands believed to be gunned down, imprisoned or both just outside the perimeter of the square). How many of us would have the fortitude to stand before a column of tanks? Facing certain death? Because we want access to information and a free press?

It has been a frequent subject of discussion among my hostel-mates, the irony that the reforms initiated after the Tianamen Square massacre have primarily resulted in opening China's marketplace, without much correponding reform demanded by those brave students. Again, in China, there is no BBC, no Wikipedia, no Blogspot.

Spending the day in the shadow of the enormous Chairman Mao portrait on the Gate of Heavenly Peace (facing the Square), there's also much to ponder about the cult of personality created around this man. Portraits, posters, wrist-watches and all manner of other trinkets with Mao, a broad smile on his face, abound here. His portrait graces every denomination of Chinese currency. The message of this regime appears bent on branding Chinese with Mao as its mascot, and yet the Chinese Communist Party's official line on Mao these days is that he was "70% right, and 30% wrong".

My fellow travelers and I have spent much time speculating about how deeply the adoration of Mao is felt. Every morning, the queue to view his preserved body stretches for hours (where, tomorrow, I plan to find myself). But I just can't tell whether his iconic status itself is what people adore, or if it's his policies, or if, in fact, the People's Republic offers a better life for people than the one people had under Chang Kiashek and the Nationalist Party.



It is no accident, to be sure, that the Tianamen protesters launched paint at the enormous Mao portrait on that fateful day in '89. (It was replaced with a duplicate within 24 hours.) How do such repression and adoration co-exist? (This is a question, of course, that I have had far too many occasions to ask at home in recent years, too.)

As Beijing prepares itself for the world spotlight with the start of the Olympic games (new buildings being constructed throughout the city testify to this fact), I hope the view the world gets of China grasps the complexity of this place -- its history, its potential but also the dangerously repressive practices of its government.

And, speaking of complexity... With the passage of time and conversations with fellow travelers, I've gained some additional (and disappointing) perspective on some of the warm welcome I received in Shanghai. In particular, I appear to have been taken in on some prominent scams perpetrated on visitors in many of the big city tourist destinations. My English-speaking tea-drinking 'friends' in Shanghai appear to have over-charged me pretty outrageously. It seemed expensive at the time, but as it was my first day in China, I had little frame of reference.

I consider it tuition, of a sort, but one that I'm not entirely excited to have paid. (We'll see if my credit card company has anything to say about it.) I also lost a little on my first day -- although much, much less -- to some 'art students' with a 'gallery' and an urgent need to show me their work. And yet, I have met (and continue to meet) hundreds people who are helpful, kind and generous for every one who's swindled me. Discerning one from the other certainly adds to the complexity of traveling here, but 100-to-1 still seems like a ratio that compares favorably with many parts of the world, my home turf included.

Meet the iClone

After receiving a tip from hostel-mates Sonia and Sophia, today I had
my hands on at least two different models of iPhone knock-offs, known
to be available in Beijing (pssst: at the silk market).

Contrary to reports in Popular Mechanics about the so-called
iClones, Apple has nothing to worry about from these cheap-looking,
inelegant pieces of crap, the most refined component of which is the
Apple and iPhone logos and start-up screens (way more elaborate than
on the bona fide device). One went so far as to include a terse
warning of copyright and trademark enfringement on any of Apple's
"pruducts." Brilliant.

From what I remember of their coverage, Popular Mechanics touted
the iClones abilities to use multiple SIM cards simultaneously (which
indeed would be a great asset over here) and that they run a version
of Linux.

It may be they are important as a representation of the potential
for a more open, less restricted device, but spending just a couple of
minutes using them tells me that it will be a long time before anyone
would want one of these over the real thing. The interface wouldn't
have to be as beautiful as the one coming out of Cupertino (if it had
desirable features the real one lacks), but it should at least not be
maddeningly obtuse and slow.

In general, these knock-off markets are quite a headache-inducing
trip, and if you are looking for cheap crap to pass off on
undiscerning others as the real thing, I recommend you visit. (There
wasn't even good kitsch, sadly.) The only other reason to go is if you
like hearing "Sir, Sir, please, have a look here!" forty thousand
times in an hour.

But I'm glad that at least I got to do the taste-test myself.

Saving the best for last

My time as Beijing continues to be among the best of entire trip (although I feel fortunate to have so many experiences vying to be on that list).

I haven't even written about the great fun I had at the dumpling-making party I stumbled into my first night in Beijing, or catching the live, free outdoor performances of the Beijing Screenings soundtracks (I heard soundtracks but saw none of the films -- they were difficult to find, and once found, were only in Chinese with no English subtitles). I've neglected to write about my first taste of duck (of the Peking variety) in twenty years. The days have just been too full!

In large part, the fun of Beijing is due to the company I've had here. I've fallen in with a group of fellow travelers who include Daniel (my train companion from Xi'an), four Germans (Anna, Annabelle, Ben and Maria), and another Daniel (from Madrid). Together, the seven of us rented bicycles yesterday for the 1.5 hour ride to the Summer Palace, in the northwest corner of Beijing. Getting all seven of us organized and then finding seven bikes to rent was a bit of a challenge, but once we got going, it was great fun. We were a cycle gang of sorts cruising down the bike lanes, Spanish, German and English flying as fast as our pedals.

We named our little festival of nations the Seven of Nine Million, after a song that Ben referenced, with the lyric 'there are 9 million bicycles in Beijing.' (Bonus points to whomever correctly IDs that song and artist. It may be in German, I'm not sure...)

After arriving and strolling the grounds of the pastoral Summer Palace, Anna had a special treat for us. She'd been to the Palace before and knew a spot where we could swim. It was a secluded rocky beach quite a distance from the main attractions and the hordes of tour groups, and appeared to be a favorite for a number of elderly Chinese men in old-school swimming trunks and swim caps. We'd all brought our swimming suits along, and when we first hit the water -- wow! To swim like an Emperor! You would expect it to be lovely, but this felt spectacular. After spending the day pedaling, walking and moving through Beijing's smoggy atmosphere, the water was clear, cool and utterly refreshing. (The clear days that greeted my arrival in Beijing were in part due to recent rains; as the days pass without rain, the smog intensifies.)

After swimming, we spread ourselves out along the rocks of the beach to dry. Daniel noticed a sign that, in large English and Chinese print, read: 'SWIMMING PROHIBITED. DRINKING WATER SOURCE.'

Um, oops. As we read the sign, there were dozens of Chinese men in the water. Hopefully, we stupid foreigners will be forgiven. Even as we apologize to the good people whose water might taste a little more like... a festival of nations.

Our bike ride home, after watching the sun set across the Palace lake, was punctuated by a dinner stop in a tiny road-side restaurant, where the food was delicious (garlicky potatoes and fried, spicy tofu that rank among the best meals of my trip) and cheap! The entire bill, for seven of us to eat so well, came to about $10. The 1.5 liter Tsingtao beers cost a ridiculous $0.40 each. Most importantly, it was a great end to one of the best days of my trip.

This afternoon, I bid farewell to Daniel (who returned to Nanjing, where he is working as a teacher for his friend's 7 and 9 year old kids, while their dad is the Art Director for a forthcoming movie starring Jodie Foster being filmed in Nanjing) and Anna (who is off to Shanghai). Thankfully, our experiences together feel indelible in the way that travel friendships can uniquely be.

It occurred to me just a couple of days ago that this trip will, in fact, come to an end. What once felt distant (my flight home) is now only a few days away.
As excited as I am to see friends and family, I am sad to sense the trip coming to a close. I feel newly comfortable here, at peace moving through these streets in a way that has only come with time, and I am not eager to say goodbye to all the fun, laughter and friends I've found in China.

The rest of today, I plan to relax, check out a nearby market, and find some tasty street food at the nearby night market (which is a total tourist trap, but memorable). Tonight I have my sights on tasting snake (one of the few 'exotic' foods pitched at tourists at this market that is authentically Chinese). And tomorrow, the Forbidden City!

___
P.S. I have managed to land a party for Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, and might even attend it with the members of the cycle gang who are still in Beijing at the time.

Really, really Great Wall

Today marked my first contact with the Great Wall. I am unexpectedly
at a loss for words to describe it, except to say that it ranks as one
of my best travel experiences, anywhere, ever.

I opted to join Daniel, a super friendly guy from Mexico City I've
been traveling with since the train ride from Xi'an, on a grueling
10km scramble up and down some of the Wall's steepest sections at
quite a distance (Simatai, 3 1/2 hours with a FAST mini-bus driver)
from Beijing. Most of this section of the Wall is unrestored, and so
there are many places where brick-robbers, the elements and plants are
trying to reclaim the Wall for themselves: towers with trees growing
in them, wild flowers springing up in the middle of the path, and many
sections where the ledges and brick pavers have long since
disappeared, leaving only large slippery stones and sand.

When they said part of this trek was steep, they weren't kidding: lots
of spots require your hands and feet to negotiate what the Lonely
Planet said are at times 70% inclines. And for all that we covered,
the mind boggles to see the structure continue humpbacking one
mountain after another, as far as the eye can see.

It was a physically challenging, exhilarating and completely
unforgettable 4 1/2 hour trek. We had cloudless blue skies, temps in
the high seventies and, after leaving our entry point where this photo
was taken, very few fellow travelers on this incredible edifice. All I
can say is WOW!

Green Beijing

So I have been warned, in a variety of ways and by a number of different people, to brace for my arrival in Beijing: suffocating pollution that creates an constant haze, road construction leading up the 2008 Olympics impeding movement around the city, and throngs of tourists congesting every square inch of scenic spots.

So far, I would have to say that only the last of these has proven true in the 10 or so hours I've had to explore the city. My train arrived, on schedule, at 6:30 a.m.. After chatting with a couple of folks from my hostel in Xi'an who were on the same train, I decided to ditch my hostel reservation (in a cozy and cheap, but remote location) and try for something more centrally located. I am now in a brand new, very institutional-looking youth hostel that's a five minute walk from the Forbidden City, and an easy bike ride just about everywhere else in town. And the bikes are free with the room! Now there's a perk I can get excited about.

They're decent bikes, too, modern Giant mountain bike frame and knobby tires, but still only a single speed. I spent my morning on bike circumnavigating the Forbidden City (now they'll let just about anyone in!), climbing a hill-top tower in an adjacent park which affords great views over the Forbidden City's walls, and taking in some other sites as I begin to get oriented to Beijing.

Overall, the impression I have on this warm, sunny, blue-sky day is that Beijing is a city with lots and lots of green-space, and a fair bit of water as well. I guess I'd somehow imagined there being lots of history, but finding it a lot less pleasant to wander around in than it turns out to be. Lucky me!

In my wanderings, I also learned there's a national film festival happening through tomorrow. I'm going to try to catch at least one flick tonight or tomorrow (although the web site makes it nigh-impossible to discern where the films are being screened or whether they are open to the public, even after asking several Chinese speakers for assistance with the Chinese version of the site).

I am also happy to learn that Shanghai was spared the worst of the typhoon heading its way, which makes my return there for my flight home continue to seem feasible...

I may decide to stay in Beijing for the mid-autumn moon festival next Tuesday, rather than return to Shanghai as originally planned, since folks report that it is also celebrated heartily here. It tends to be spent at parties in private homes rather than in public, akin to Thanksgiving or New Year's parties back home. My job over the next several days will be to see if I can get invited to a party. Now where is that gregariousness switch, again?

Leaving one wall for another

After visiting Han Jing's tomb (remarkable mainly in its contrast with
the terracotta warriors -- these figures depict daily life for men,
women and animals under his regime), I said goodbye to Xi'an with one
more bike ride on the city wall. I leave for the station in 15 minutes
to catch my night train to Beijing.

Xi'an (soft) rocks!

Well, let's call tonight's singer/songwriter experience in this garden-
level bar a good one, if a little soft in the rawk. The contrast
between the sentimental singing (including some covers in English --
right now, John Denver!) and the war movie backdrop was... intriguing,
too. Yeah, memorable.

Either the event, the venue or the performer go by the handle "Low
Bar" -- I wasn't sure which, but it kinda works all around.

Xi'an adieu

Tonight is my last in Xi'an, and I plan to enjoy it!

I'd contemplated adding a destination between Xi'an and Beijing,
either the sleepy, historic town of Pingyao, or Datong, situated near
some of the most amazing Buddhist sculptures, around 50,000 of them,
housed in nearby caves. After looking at the uncertainties with
connections (like a hotel memorialized in song, it may be possible to
get to those towns, but difficult to leave), I decided to keep with
the original plan and continue on directly to Beijing. I have booked
my sleeper train and hostel, and am again having that feeling of
having achieved some level of comfort navigating a place (including in
this case Xi'an's convoluted municipal bus system), only to pack up
and move on. Alas.

On that score, I have already started a list of all kinds of amazing
places that just won't fit in my month-long itinerary, and yet have
been highly recommended, many of which could reward a month-long visit
(or more) by themselves: Hong Kong, Tibet, the Jiuzhaigou nature
reserve, Guilin, Tai Shan, the beaches of Qingdao, and the list keeps
growing. This is a big place!

Imagine the converse: I've been asked several times where someone with
a month to spend in the U.S. should go. I now pose that question to
you. How would you advise an eager traveler with phrasebook English
visiting the U.S. for 30 days to spend their time? Post your two-cents
in the comments.

--

This morning I visited the Banpo Neolithic Village, the remains of a
settlement that existed circa 4,500 B.C. about 5 miles outside of
present-day Xi'an. It was a remarkable to see so many artifacts from
daily life so long ago, including some inscribed with a very early
form of Chinese characters. This civilization is believed to have been
matriarchal (an aspect overlooked in the dioramas of village life,
which contained exclusively male figurines), and made impressive
advances in pottery, weaving, agriculture and architecture.

Tomorrow, I head to my last historical stop near Xi'an, a tomb that
features terracotta statues of a different, far less militaristic
variety than yesterday's: the Tomb of Han Jing, a reportedly revered
ruler who used the Taoist principle of wuwei (non-action) during his
reign, which people understandably might appreciate better than the
ruthlessness of Emperor Qin.

But first, later tonight, I'll find some food and catch an 8:30
(sharp!) show at the Xi'an Turf Club. And then we'll see how China
rocks, baby.

My hostel roommate and new friend Nora departed for Suzhou today. She
and I arrived on the same train from Chengdu, where she is planning to
spend her second year dedicated to the study of Chinese language and
culture. It was great to travel Xi'an with her, especially given her
ability to read signs (most of which are only in Chinese characters),
ask for directions (and -- get this! -- understand the responses) and
converse (read: bargain) with vendors. Her knowledge of the language
and willingness to share it were terrific, and sorely missed as I now
return to the realm of single-word utterances ("Where <pointing at
Chinese characters in guidebook>?"
"Thanks!", "Sorry.", "Delicious!").

You know, "Thanks! Sorry. Delicious!" is about the best three word
summary of the trip so far I can imagine.

The last 24 hours in Xi'an will no doubt be memorable, however
succinctly they are described.

Games people play

In my quest for cinema yesterday, I encountered a packed arcade that
featured the familiar first-person shooters, driving games, dance
mania, whack-a-mole and a complete drum set attached to a screen and
scoreboard. Wow. And I thought percussionless arcades were loud.

I also had a chance to catch that other film this afternoon, which
turned out to be excellent, intriguingly nonlinear, and subtitled in
English. If you get a chance, see
The Sun Also Rises (Tai Yang Zhou Chang Shang Qi) and let's
discuss it.

Xi'an's city wall

This photo was taken from the top of the South Gate, a massive
structure on its own, and I can't tell you how difficult it is to
post it without a Pink Floyd reference...

My last will is comparatively simple

China's first emperor was a guy known for his ruthlessness, and was
also responsible for such things as unifying the country under one
rule (his) and, oh, beginning construction of that Great Wall so often
mentioned in the same breath as China. So when he kicked it after 37
years as emperor, you could expect it to be a big deal.

The most spectacular part of his tomb (discovered so far, anyway)
describes itself as the eighth wonder of the world. And it is hard to
argue.

Entombed with him were at least 8,000 soldiers made of terracotta and
sculpted in the likeness of his actual army. I mean, likeness. No two
are identical. Each were armed with brass weapons that when unearthed
in the '70s were reportedly still sharp after being interred for two
millennia. Originally, they were intricately painted, and represent
soldiers, archers, cavalry and charioteers of various ranks.

Many survived the ravages of history. (In China, then as more
recently, deliberate purges of antiquities have often been far more
destructive than the elements, as new regimes have tried to wipe the
slate clean for themselves.) In part because they were so well hidden.
Emperor Qin is thought to have executed everyone who worked on the
project to preserve its secrets. The museum estimates that 720,000
people were involved, and that construction took 40 years to complete.

This has been a jaw-dropping day. (I'm also feeling a little better,
which helps too.)

Sickly in Xi'an

The last couple of days I've been feeling the beginning of a cold -- and taking lots of fluids and ingesting vitamin C at every opportunity to stave it off.

Well, today after my bike ride atop the remaining traversable sections of the wall (which was even more fun in daylight than it was last night), this cold finally caught up with me. I spent the afternoon in bed resting, and have now gone to my happy place: the movies. I am waiting for what is sure to be a TERRIBLE flick titled "Prey" starring Peter Weller to begin. From the posters, the plot appears to be: White couple go on safari. Hungry lions attack. Couple escapes being eaten, unlike their African guides, and learns valuable lesson about the wildness of nature.

My first choice was what appears to be a revolutionary drama in China circa 1910, but I was not confident I'd follow those plot twists quite as readily sans English.

Awesome! The movie has started, and is dubbed into Chinese. So far my read of the plot appears on track, except that the couple brought their two kids along (a plucky ten year old boy and a preening, iPod-addicted teenage daughter) and the guide was a white, rough-and-tumble ex-pat who just sacrificed himself to save the family. (Gosh, those heroic Americans!) And the African would-be rescuers are poachers, naturally.

We might question the quality of China's pharmaceutical exports, but the two primary US exports I've encountered (fast food and bad entertainment) shouldn't have us strutting, either.

This is the third flick I've seen in China (if you include portions of that overdubbed Shirley Temple). The first -- to escape the oppressive humidity in Shanghai -- was a Chinese slapstick about, as best I could tell, getting ahead in business. Buster Keaton understood that words can often get in the way, and I suspect I enjoyed that movie at least as well as the Chinese-speaking audience who followed the dialogue.

Some notes about the movie-going experience here: the chairs are really comfy, although often covered with sunflower seed shells (a de rigeur snack throughout the places I've visited). A large portion of the audience arrived after the movie started (not that they can't catch up). The popcorn (a de rigeur snack for me) is sweet, covered in sugar like candy corn.

Oh, and nigh-geriatric Peter Weller (RoboCop) and svelte, scantily-clad Bridgette Moynihan do not a believable couple make.

Kites aloft

Last night, dozens of these kites were out, slender fingers reaching
skyward from the courtyard adjacent to the bell tower in the center of
town. These particular models consist of many small (perhaps 6"
across) kites tethered together. They seem able to get airborne with
virtually no wind. I haven't seen this kind of group kite flying
previously on this trip (just vendors hawking their wares in
Shanghai), so I don't know how unique it may be to Xi'an, but is fun
to watch (and can't help but remind me of the celebration of Ben Franklin's 300th birthday on Lake Harriet, marked by the
flying of many, many kites on a cold January day).

Xi'an!

I survived an evening of getting thrown around the top bunk of a herky-jerky sleeper train from Chengdu (as Sammy'd say, it seemed like the driver had one foot on the brake and one on the gas), and am now bunked up in a hostel that could not be more centrally located: it's about 100 feet from the town center, a tower containing an enormous 1,300 year old bell that tolls each morning, summoning the day.

I spent the afternoon and evening exploring Xi'an's Great Mosque, a tribute to the intersection of cultures along the Silk Road, and including a minaret that quite possibly has the most Asian-influenced architecture of any in the world.

The streets surrounding the Mosque are known as Muslim Quarter, where many of Xi'an's 100,000 Muslims keep shop, and the best place in town to buy street food (of a different range and variety than I've encountered elsewhere on this trip) or souvenirs. I picked up a book of quotations from Chairman Mao that should make for some interesting reading.

I also had a chance to bike for 16 km on top of the imposing wall that rings the old part of Xi'an, accessed via the South Gate pictured here (hmmm, this photo does not want to show up, despite several attempts...). (Many Chinese cities had such walls in antiquity, but few are so well preserved.) Some sections of the wall are missing, so circumnavigating the city isn't possible. Tomorrow, I plan to ride the remaining 10 km (which I ran out of time to ride tonight).

So far, Xi'an seems the most majestic of the cities I've visited, not surprising given its past as the capitol city for China's first dynastic empire and, for a time, a rival of Rome and Constantinople for the most advanced and populated city in the world. The sidewalks and boulevards are spacious, verdant and afford amazing views bisecting the city east-west or north-south.

Given this history and feel, it's probably no surprise that it is also the most touristy city I've visited yet (with Beijing still to come), and there are throngs of tourists here, including many white Westerners in shorts, with fanny or camera packs, shutters clicking. (Surprisingly few Americans, however! The most represented non-Chinese nationality I've encountered would have to be the Dutch (!), with Israelis and Germans not too far behind.)

Since I prefer not to travel in the wake of tourist buses, I will save the biggest draws (especially the famed terracotta army) for a weekday, spending tomorrow (Sunday) continuing to explore the city. (I am delighted to have several days here in Xi'an -- my tentative itinerary would give me up to five days here -- so that I can stretch out and relax, instead of dashing from one attraction to the next.)

I also found the Turf Club of Xi'an: a nondescript basement bar that I passed while strolling around, replete with CDs hanging from the ceiling (now we know where those went!) and Chinese punk coming through its outdoor speakers. Poking around, I learned there was a show tonight, and the most "alt" Chinese kids I've seen yet (many with hipster t-shirts, long, meticulous hair, and fancy shoes) were already gathering outside. There were three acts, with doors at 8:30.

Sadly, when I returned at 10:30, the show was already over! Fini. End of (Saturday) evening.

Can we even call it punk if it's over in time to catch the Chinese equivalent of Letterman (which, by the way, I would love to see)? I have, on several occasions, been surprised by the hours that many Chinese people and establishments keep. Maybe it has something to do with that bell...

Sweden wins...

...the popular vote, to be sure. Sweden was the CLEAR favorite of the
crowd. (There were even some boos directed at the American team when
they first took the field.) Once play was underway, folks tended to
cheer whenever a good play was made, regardless of who made it.

It was a hard-fought game. Final score: Sweden 0, USA 2.

Continuing adventures in Chengdu

Yesterday, post-pandas, I spent the next part of my day trying to get my photos uploaded over the incredibly slow (but free) internet connection at the hostel, since I've maxed out my digital camera's cards and the iPhone's free space.¹

After succeeding but spending more time on this than I care to admit, I got my train ticket for this evening to my next destination (Xi'an, 16.5 hours away, via the upper bunk on an ominous-sounding "hard sleeper") and scored some tickets to tonight's FIFA Women's World Cup match between (get this!) Sweden and the USA. It's happening right here in Chengdu! (I'm guessing most folks in the bleachers might be hard pressed to guess which I'll be rooting for -- myself included. After buying my ticket, I met Andreas at the hostel, a Swede who is also attending the game. We'll be going together, a microcosm of fans for each side.)

I then spent some time in People's Park, which has been the most interesting, concentrated experience of Chinese culture yet in Chengdu. People's Park totally kicks ass over the park I visited the day before (Culture Park, and no, I'm not making these names up). Amid the scenes at People's Park: lots and lots of groups engaged in synchronized dancing (styles from around the world); karaoke galore (miked and heavily amplified without shame, nor often talent); men standing in circles around games of Go; couples paddling themselves in rowboats on the aptly named Artificial Lake; hormone-crazed teens playing a flirtatious games of bumper-boats on the same lake (and with the same boats); children ga-ga over playground equipment at Children's Paradise; and hundreds and hundreds of people in the tea houses sprinkled throughout the park. All of this taking place within earshot of all the rest. A beautiful, if cacophonous, expression of People.



The atmosphere was jovial and relaxed. Although it was only about 4:30 or 5:00, I had the sense that folks had been hanging out all day, and would be here late into the evening (although I don't know whether either is true).

After this, I began a meandering quest for a late lunch. The food experience here in Sichuan is such a big part of the experience. I decided to try Chengdu's famous "little eats," which are plentiful but only available during the typically Chinese lunch and dinner times (which are much earlier than my habitual mealtimes). Again, the joy of street food is that you get to see what you'd like to eat, the curse being that I don't know what to call it in English.

I can ask for steamed vegetable buns in Chinese pretty reliably now (and have only had what I ordered turn out to have meat in it twice), so I started with a delicious, airy bun with green onions and green beans inside.

This was followed an hour or so later with what I think must be the Sichuan equivalent of french fries: boiled potatoes (which tasted more like new potatoes that your generic spud), pressed and then julienned into a familiar french fry profile (but thinner), and covered with red peppers and red pepper oil. (With all that oil, they may be about as healthy as french fries too, despite never hitting a deep-fryer.) You are given a serving in a plastic cup with a toothpick, which you use to convey them to your awaiting taste buds. The heat was present, but nothing too powerful.

Next, after a walk, I encountered a crock-pot full of white-and-brown mottled eggs, which are plentiful here (every store seems to have them out front). The look like eggs that have been soaked in soy sauce or something. (Are these the famed "thousand year eggs?" They don't seem nearly pungent enough to be.) This time, they were being sold off the back of a bike, and instead of chicken eggs, the pot was also contained smaller eggs. Quail, perhaps? Snake? The egg was hard-hard-boiled, with the yolk partially green inside, and the way they have been cooked, which gives their shells the spotted appearance, also imparts some of that color to the inside of the egg. Ideas what kind of egg this was, anyone? Here's a photo to help.



The final course of this street-food meal was a bread pocket stuffed with shredded vegetables. The bread was about the taste and consistency of an English muffin. The veggies were spicy, but again, not intensely so. I bought this from a woman also selling it off the back of her bike. Interestingly, just as I approached her and the group of vendors she was a part of, they all quickly covered their wares and scattered. It wasn't xenophobia -- I looked over my shoulder to see a police officer on a motorcycle who pulled up immediately behind me. Apparently, these vendors weren't supposed to be there, but this seemed like a rather comic game of cat-and-mouse, since most of the vendors went perhaps only twenty feet behind the cop and immediately began selling again. The officer had a look on his face of resignation, and did not turn around or look in his mirrors: the point seemed to be more to disrupt these vendors periodically than to actually have any hope of stopping them.

Speaking of police, I witnessed two minor fender-benders in traffic yesterday. Both were resolved quickly with some conversation between the drivers (in one case, a rather heated exchange) and money changing hands to compensate the wronged party. (In both cases, these were minor incidents, involving mere scratches on a bumper.) It appears the rules of the road here are akin to skiing's mantra that the downhill skier always has the right of way. In this case, the forward vehicle always appears to have the right of way, and folks behind need to be prepared for that forward car to perform any manner of stunt. It's less clear what the rules are at intersections. It's a bit like playing chicken: if I'm trying to cross your lane of traffic, and get my vehicle sufficiently in the way of yours, then I get the right of way. There are traffic enforcement officers at busy intersections in Chengdu, the first I've seen in China. Like the traffic lights, they are sometimes, but not always, heeded.

Much like the trash and recycling bins, which are plentiful but do not seem to be effectively separating trash from recycling -- people seem to use them interchangeably.

Chengdu has also provided my second encounters with people who appear to be homeless (Shanghai being the first). The range of people's apparent situations runs an all-too-familiar gamut: older single men and women with their possessions on their back; parents with babies (mostly women but I've also seen one man holding an ailing daughter, asking for help); and a few youth who I suspect may be living on the street. One of the most impactful encounters was with a guy engaged in a kind of street performance to demonstrate that he could not use his legs. He would throw his body around and drag himself along the sidewalk with his arms to catch the attention of passersby. Shocking, sad, and powerful indication of what he was willing to do to survive.

Street homelessness here is far less common than most American cities of its size, but is no less perplexing given the safeguards and safety nets that ought to be afforded by the Chinese government. It is hard to say how many others might be without adequate, safe and affordable housing here -- which I'm sure hinges a lot on how you define such things in this context -- but I would not be surprised if it were a large number. Most towns I've visited have an older part of town that verges on being a shanty-town. Of special importance will be to watch what happens to the residents of these neighborhoods as China's gang-busters pace of development continues.

__
¹For the iPhone wish list, let's include a way to delete any content on the iPhone, especially podcasts I have already listened to. Right now, you can only delete text (emails, bookmarks and notes) and video, and in fact, an annoying prompt appears every time you finish a video, asking if you want to delete it. Now, I don't know how many times I'll watch Serenity on this trip, but I brought it expecting that number could be greater than 1. I'd much rather delete media in the same easy, elegant way you can delete text. (I hope that helps, Mr. Jobs. Oh, and by the way, you owe me $200.)

Pandamonium

To say these things are cute does not begin to describe it. They really are walking teddy bears.

In addition to seeing the young and adolescent pandas wrestling and climbing, and some older ones chewing bamboo ponderously, I also had a chance to see the twins born in mid-August (they would fit in your palm), and a video showing panda births.

Often, panda mothers are surprised by their first birth and don't know how to treat newborns, swatting at them in their hairless, sightless helplessness. This fact, combined with the stunning statistic that they typically only have sex once per year (!), the increasing encroachment into their territory, their solitary natures, their strong preferences about what species of bamboo they eat, and the limited nutrition they can derive it anyway (they can only metabolize about 20% of the food they eat, which means they must down about 100 pounds of it per day), all serve to explain their small numbers (1,590 worldwide, according to one person at the panda center, including perhaps a third of that number that are in captivity).

The panda center is putting out one heck of an effort to help their numbers grow, including the equivalent of a panda dating service (if that fails, resorting to artificial insemination), but it's a going to take a long time...

Musings on (dis)connectivity

Last night I arrived at friendly Dragon Town Hostel in Chengdu, almost an hour earlier than I'd expected, and in the grips of the first substantial bout of homesickness I've felt so far. Sure, I've missed y'all and the comforts of home, but this was different. For a little while last night, I just wanted to close my eyes, open them and find myself in familiar surroundings, with friends and family, speaking in complete English sentences.

It is not lost on me that this moment arrived at the half-way mark of this trip, or that it intensified after dropping my pack in my room and walking across the street to a noisy bar filled with raucous, inebriated groups of Chinese friends sharing food, drink and laughter. I had the brilliant notion that this would be a good time to pull out my guidebook and bone up on Chinese history. Well, for future reference, tales of feudal and imperial China are not comfort-reading. (The violence of American history is arguably worse, and more concentrated, but is not as expansive. In China, there's been ample time for lots and lots of bad stuff to happen. Thousands of years worth of tear- and blood-stained conflict, continuing through today, as the recent reports of child slavery and indentured servitude suggest.)

After a passable night's sleep*, I feel better and ready to encounter Chengdu. I'm going to take it easy today, and may begin with a massage at a place down the block I learned about from Annamarie, a Dutch traveler I met in Chongqing. She reported that the cost of a 90-minute treatment followed by a foot rub runs something like $6.00. Sounds heavenly. (With each step, my legs are still aware of the stair climb, so I may have them focus most of those 90 minutes on my calves.)

Tomorrow, I get to see pandas! The world's research and breeding center for pandas is just a few miles from here, and among the sights are lots of baby pandas, including twins born recently.

Thanks to the three of you who've broken the news about the precipitous drop in the cost of the iPhone, and the dangers of racking up insane bills while I'm over here. It has been an amazing tool for staying in touch, and although I have been deliberate about how often I'm connecting up to the network and incurring charges, I've done so far more than I'd anticipated. It's going to be a scary cell phone bill for September.

Apple and AT&T (the only service carrier for the iPhone) really don't have their act together for international travelers: if you allow the iPhone to connect to any network at all (even a free Wifi), there's no way to prevent it from attempting to connect with the AT&T network. In other words, there's no way, if you use it wirelessly at all, to prevent it from incurring some costs. More importantly, while back home the data plan is unlimited, over here there's an outrageous charge for every kilobyte transferred. (AT&T must be embarrassed by the comparatively faster data network over here, and is trying to prevent folks from discovering how much better it could be back home.) And unlike fellow-traveler Annamarie, who could just drop a new SIM card into her phone to have it behave like a super-affordable, super-convenient Chinese cell phone, all the forum and blog postings I read about this before I left suggested you could attempt the same with the iPhone only at your own risk, with unknown consequences for your iPhone's information, and dubious access to reliable data service. (I have not taken the risk.)

Knowing what I know now, I'd strongly recommend that travelers on a trip like this bring along a cell phone with a SIM card you can safely replace, and make getting a new Chinese SIM card with a pre-paid number of minutes one of your first orders of business. Having an operable cell phone would be infinitely easier, cheaper and more useful than my failed attempts to buy various "smartcards" to use in payphones (which are subject to the limited availability of such phones in the first place, and to the byzantine rules attached to the cards and printed only in Chinese, including the inability with most of them to use the cards anywhere except the city in which you purchase them). With two weeks left, I am still tempted to buy a Chinese cell phone, in part because what could be more fun than having my own number in China?

Before you answer that question, one exciting development has been the emergence of web portals for Skype (and probably other internet-based international phone services) which let you use you a website (e.g., Skype for iPhone) to initiate a call between two phone numbers anywhere in the world, costing just pennies a minute compared to the absurd $2.29 / min AT&T would charge me for phone service here. For this to be practical, a local phone number is both essential and muy convenient.

Still, this hardly feels elegant. I can imagine the day when my nephew will be able to stay in touch affordably while traveling the world, without having to learn such arcane (and quickly obsolete) technical knowledge. Let's hope the rest of us live to see that day, too.

__
*Can we all agree that if any of us are bunked in an eight-person dormitory, thou shalt not set a cell phone alarm to ring before the sixth hour of thy day, or if thou must, thou shalt not have an annoying alarm sound, or if thou cannot change thy alarm tone, thou shalt not press snooze, or if thou does, thou shalt not do so more than once, and thou shalt absolutely not press snooze five times?

Chongqing at "night"

Remember those cheesy laser shows at the Minneapolis Planetarium
(R.I.P.)? Pink Floyd and all that?

I think someone in Chongqing saw a show like that a few too many
times. Like their Mayor or something.

I thought some of the towns I passed on the Yangtze put on a good show
at night, but Chongqing leaves them all in the dust. Or the dark. Last
night, I went on a river cruise around the city (which is situated on
an island). The light show is BLINDING. Like the over-active
imagination of a 10-year old boy who has just heard about ray guns. If
modernity is measured in lumens, Chongqing is the most modern city of
them all.

(Ironically, it was the city's invisibility beneath the blanket of its
persistent fog that saved it from Japanese bombers. Now I'm quite sure
Martians could bomb it without even aiming.)

Iw cawn't feewl my townge

I have survived my first exposure to Chongqing hotpot (huoguo in
Chinese, literally "fire pot"), perhaps the spiciest food in all of
China!

I don't think of myself as a slouch when it comes to spicy food, and
enjoy quite a bit of heat. I'm even known for my caliente popcorn. The
heat of today's lunch makes everything else I have ever had pale in
comparison: nothing in India, nothing in Mexico, nothing in the best
Szechuan or Latin American or Indian restaurants back home, not my
most scorching batch o' corn -- none of it comes close.

The big and happy surprise was how enjoyable this heat turned out to be.

I walked up and down Wuyi Lu, known locally as "hotpot lane" for all
of its establishments, until I found the spot I picked for my first
contact. I was ushered in by a friendly woman who, thanks to my
phrasebook and without a word of English, quickly understood that I
wanted to try vegetable and seafood options, and that I would follow
her recommendations. She put me down for some octopus and a head of
green leaf lettuce, and also suggested a beer, which I happily
accepted. (In addition to being tasty, it's great relief for a spice-
saturated mouth.) She also brought me a package of tissues that looked
like they would last a week. I smugly thought, "I'll be walking out of
here with most of those."

There are many ways the hotpot itself can be filled. She chose the
yuanyang option for me -- a popular choice for the uninitiated. It has
the hotpot divided in two, with a fiery hot side and a mellow, tasty
chicken or fish broth on the other side. (Other hotpot options can
give you multiple versions of fire, or simply one big pot of the
volcanic stuff.)

You place your food, which arrives on separate plates, into the hotpot
and leave it in there to cook and soak in the heat as long as you
wish, to taste. (Think: fondue, on the sun, without the silly forks.)

The fiery side is essentially a red pepper broth. A deeply, deeply
concentrated red pepper broth. There were so many peppers and
peppercorns in there that it was actually thick and substantial to
drag a chopstick through, and it sometimes took a while to find your
food in the pot, so teaming with peppers this thing was. The hotpot is
heated by a burner recessed in the table, and simmers for the duration
of your meal.

My food was served with a small bowl of crushed garlic (yummy and
strong enough to vie with the heat for the attention of your taste
buds) and a bowl of a slightly sweet, syrupy, brown translucent sauce.
(The latter, I discovered later, is great tongue-balm.)

So, into the pot goes my first piece of octopus. I pulled it out after
a little while, and my chopsticks, the octopus and anything they touch
are immediately stained red.

Into my mouth... And nothing!

Wait... Now there's someth-

BAM!

Not unbearable heat, by any means, but a no-messing-around, "you ain't
in Kansas anymore, Dorothy" sting. Quite a nice accent, actually, for
the taste and texture of octopus.

A little sip of pijuo (beer), and I'm ready for round two.

BAM! BAM! (You can see where this is going...)

By the third bite, my lips are numb. By the fifth, I can't feel my
tongue. By the tenth, I'm sweating.

I don't really have words to describe the experience, though, because
even though it was so intense that it was positively tingly, it was
not unpleasant at all. I enjoyed all of my octopus on the fiery side,
and half of my lettuce, before reaching the point that additional heat
was unnecessary -- my tongue felt maxed out, and I was, um, out of
tissues and low on beer.

Folks (and guidebooks) might naturally focus on the peppers when
talking about this cuisine, but for me the best part was the
combination of the heat, the garlic and the light, crisp Pilsner-esque
beer, plus the experience of cooking your own food right in front of
you (which, like fondue, reminds me of my brother Nathan and I
roasting pieces of steak over the dining room candles as kids whenever
we could get away with it or our parents weren't looking): it's just
plain fun! And it certainly makes you know you're alive (and
apparently, living in a blast furnace).

I ended the meal by trying the vegetables on the mellow side of the
pot. To my surprise, my taste buds recovered almost immediately. The
tomatoes, green onions and Chinese cucumber, in particular, were
flavorful, salty (always a big hit with me) and when dipped in the
brown sauce, also a little sweet. I finished the meal at a leisurely
pace and found that when I got up to leave, I had a rush of what I
think must have been endorphins not dissimilar to how I felt after
completing the endless stair climb. A little woozy, but content and
even a bit euphoric.

I can't wait to try it again. (Hmmm... You don't think this stuff is
addictive, do you?)

--

P.S. Happy birthday, Craig! I hope the day is memorable (but this
time, without explosives).

Welcome to (foodie) paradise

I was reflecting a few moments ago on the fact that my veg-aquarianism
has been a complete non-issue on this trip thus far. I've had one bowl
of noodles arrive with a pile of beef on top of it, and in Hangzhou
some friends ordered sticky rice, which just like back home came
wrapped in a leaf and included pork. I didn't expect that I would ever
be far from good veggie food -- it was just asking for and receiving
it that I wasn't sure about. So far, so good. Delicious, in fact.
(That's one of the few Chinese expressions I have mastered: wei dao
hao.)

As the terrain around the Yangtze flattens (the gorges have given way
to bluffs, and these will soon be replaced by farm land), I approach
the foodie Mecca of this trip: Chongqing and the Sichuan province.
(Sichuan is where szechuan cuisine comes from. The different spellings
reflect a recent standardization of how Chinese characters are
transliterated into roman alphabets, called pinyin, which was adopted
after "szechuan" was already in circulation, in large part due to its
famous dishes.)

Chongqing used to be part of Sichuan, but has been given a special
designation as a "municipality" encompassing a three-county area and
under direct control of the central government (read: no longer under
Sichuan's thumb). This change also made it the largest "city" in
China, with 32.5 million people.

Some of this is just semantics, though, since the large Chongqing
municipality contains many cities, including Chongqing. Confused?
Good, then I'm not alone.

Suffice it to say that when I wake in the morning in Chongqing, I
should be prepared to light my mouth on fire, since that's what this
place is famous for. But before then, I have one more relaxed,
peaceful evening of this unforgettable trip on one of the world's
greatest rivers. I plan to spend it sitting on the deck of this ship*,
enjoying the cool air (it's that temp that you don't even feel in a T-
shirt and there are no bugs at all) and bidding farewell to the Yangtze.

__
*This afternoon I realized that this ship bears some resemblance to the
vessel in Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo." Let's just hope my river
trip reaches a less dramatic conclusion...

Sunrise on the Yangtze

I am in the second day of my trip up the Yangtze -- just leaving the
port that marks half-way on this journey -- on a boat whose
accommodations are minimalistic: shared (and rather grotty) washrooms,
marginal bedding, rusty flooring, and, um, no-frills eating. An
authentic experience, if not an overly cushy one.

The boat I'm on appears to be a favorite for regular Chinese folks
traversing the river, but it's hardly a sight-seeing cruise. Despite
the 11 a.m. clearly printed on my ticket, we departed at 6 p.m.. It
sails all night long, stops only to allow passengers to board or
disembark, and does not wait for any side-trip excursions. This
explains the great price, I suppose, but feels inexplicable in the
ways that only language barriers can be. Chalk it up to another
adventure in cross-cultural communication (but future travelers be
warned, or at least prepared).

The only other Westerners on the boat, two friendly women from Poland
also on a month-long trip, got off the boat early to continue their
trip over land. It was fun to exchange observations with them in
English.

From all the efforts to communicate with Chinese speakers, I find my
English has become a patois or sorts, using the most basic English
words I can, in grammatical constructions designed to mimic Chinese.
For example, you don't conjugate verbs in Chinese, so to indicate verb
tense, you typically add phrases to indicate when the verb took place.
So, you'd say "I run here a moment ago" instead of "I ran here." For
future tense, the typical construct is to say you want to do
something, instead of saying you will do it. These tricks have proven
helpful with Chinese speakers who know English, but might not have
mastered our comparatively complex verb tenses and their associated
connotations. But I feel like it will take me a few days back home
before I'll be speaking normally again.

This river is amazing. The gorges, even though 127 meters shorter than
they were (the water has already risen that much because of the dam),
are stunning, and go on for 200 km. You get to the point that you
think there can't possibly be another set of misty peaks around the
bend, but turning the corner, sure enough, they stretch to the limits
of your vision.

It is also shockingly dirty. Our boat plows through floating mats of
refuse regularly, and near the dam you could clearly see the traffic
lanes on the water because there was junk floating undisturbed
elsewhere. The garbage appears composed of styrofoam, chunks of lumber
and bamboo, plastic wrappers and shoes! We've driven over hundreds of
shoes. Where are all these barefoot people, who can't take better care
of their footwear when walking along the river?

The Yangtze is also a muddy river, a point driven home when we
approached its confluence with a clear, blue river from the north.
There was a well-defined boundary where the rivers collided, in two
distinct colors, with a demonstration of turbulence at their interface
that Mr. Science could not improve. The mud comes from its origins in
the west. The Yangtze, like the Mississippi, is slowly carrying its
country to the sea.

We've passed many towns and settlements that will be underwater when
the waters reach their full height. They stand mournfully on the
banks, often just below the new developments created for their former
inhabitants. One of these new cities was surrealistically lit like a
disco, with ample neon and colored searchlights roving the sky. It was
trippy. (But even if you like the nightlife and like to boogie, I
would not recommend living in a Yangtze port town: ships ply these
waters at all hours of the day, and blow a skull-rattling horn
whenever they approach the pier to dock. China, in general, has the
volume turned to 11.)

I wish I could see what lurks beneath these waves, the buildings
already submerged, the history now given to the fish and refuse. We
continue onward...

Damn!

I am in Yichang, with a boat ticket for an 11 a.m. departure up the
river, waiting for a bus that will take me to the Three Gorges Dam
(known locally as "sanxia daba," or "sanxia big dam"), five times the
size of the Hoover Dam, and one of the major milestones of this trip.

This dam will forever change the Yangtze, especially the scenic and
historic Three Gorges area, displacing nearly 2 million people,
submerging 8,000 archaeological sites and stopping the river's flow for
480 km.

My guidebook tells me that if the dam breaks after the reservoir
behind it is full (sometime between 2009 and 2011), the 4 million
inhabitants of Yichang are predicted to be dead in an hour in a
horrific rush of water. More alarming still: two large dams did fail
in the Henan province in 1975, killing 230,000 people. That event
remained a state secret until recently. A few years ago, a hundred or
so cracks were discovered on the downstream face of the big dam.
Opinions diverge on what they represented: just a glitch in
construction, which has since been remedied, or a portent of things to
come.

As I look around at the people of Yichang, and attempt to gauge their
opinions about the dam, it seems most are in favor (that is, if they
understand my question). I hope Yichang, its people and its
environment can thrive in the lee of this mammoth engineering project,
but it is hard not to be skeptical.

"Sleeper Bus" is an oxymoron...

...just for the record.

I spent the first 10 hours of my bus trip to the Yangtze in an
oversold bus that had people sleeping in the aisles. I was in the
center bottom bunk in the last row of the bus, bouncing along all
night through rough roads, frequent stops and the aftershocks of an
immediate neighbor to my right who every few minutes would utter
something plaintively in Chinese (my hunch: "fuck, this is
uncomfortable!"), then throw himself skyward writhing like a fish out
of water to land in a new position, for the next five minutes. At one
stop, my immediate neighbor and his immediate neighbor (who I took to
be his wife or girlfriend) got in an argument -- full volume, several
minutes long, people all around. It was perhaps 2 a.m.. I'm guessing
one of them was questioning the other's choice of transportation.

When I say immediate neighbor, I mean we spent the entire evening with
our bodies pressed against each other. Flying fish on my right, and a
Brit traveling for seven months through Asia to my left. (That poor
guy got moved by the steward when I boarded from the relative comfort
of a second story bunk to an aisle mattress adjacent to me. We could
only infer it was so we fellow English-speakers could keep each other
company.) I was grateful for the sleeping mask on loan from my honey,
as the cabin lights would periodically turn on when people moved
around or at various stops, and the rampant road construction and toll
stops lit the place like a rock show.

Remarkably, though, when I arrived in Wuhan at 4 a.m., and got off the
bus and said "Yichang" (where I will board a boat for the trip
upriver), I was whisked into a taxi to the other bus terminal by the
shepherding hand of a woman who at first I thought was also traveling
to Yichang, but who in fact was acting as travel-agent-on-the-spot. As
we drove to the other station, there were frantic cell phone calls. I
exited the cab and a moment latter, a bus rounded the corner which she
flagged down, asked for about $20 cash (150 yuan) and ushered me
aboard. Her commission for this service, as best I could tell from the
money changing hands, was 10 yuan, about $1.50. Well worth it.

Thankfully, the bus is far more comfortable, with smoother roads and a
comparatively cushy second tier bunk. Even with the chain-smoking
driver and steward just in front of me, I even managed a little sleep.

Plus, I am now going to be arriving in Yichang around 8 a.m., which
might mean I can board a ship directly and be in the river today.
(Tourist boats leave in the morning, so I'd been anticipating needing
an overnight in Yichang.)

So, although nowhere near as restful as the bus-train-bus connections
I originally envisioned between the Yellow Mountains and Yichang, it
has been logistically far simpler and quite a bit quicker, too. And
most importantly, an experience I am not soon to forget.

And on the downside: censorship

Well, since I've been pretty glowing in my praise for this place, I think it's important to highlight one rather startling way I've encountered Chinese censorship routinely: China's government blocks access to (most of or all of) Blogspot. Yup, that's right, I can't see my own blog (or anyone else's) by typing the URL into a browser in the regular way. The list of verbotten sites used to be longer (including, gasp, Google), but some are no longer censored. I'm not sure how sites are added to or removed from the list, and I wouldn't imagine it is well publicized, either.

Part of what is so surprising about this censorship is how ineffectual it is, and how easy it is to defeat. There are any number of what are called proxy servers out on the interweb that will act as a go-between. If you can get to the proxy server, and the proxy server can reach your intended destination, then viola, you can see your intended destination. (This kind of relaying is central to the technologies at the heart of the internet, which allow many paths to any source of information.) Google even has one, of a sort: their web toolkit. You can browse to http://www.google.com/gwt/n and type in a URL you'd like to visit and, badda-boom, badda-bing, you're viewing a stripped-down version of the page. (It's great for mobile phones or when your connection is slow. You can even have it omit images for you.) I've been using it a lot over here, including to keep up with my blog reading.

There is no doubt volumes to say about this censorship. (And those in glass houses...) Still, it is so incongruous with the rest of my experience here. I can only hope that as China's development continues, it promotes and results in more and more openness and freedom of information.

Sunrise at Celestial Capital Peak

I got some sweet photos with my bigger camera on a 3-second exposure,
which I'll upload if I have access to a PC. The sunrise was beautiful
and festive, with people crowding into every square inch of the peak
for a view of the sun breaking over the horizon, and cheering as it did.

Up, up, up!

I'm writing after completing the ascent of the entire Eastern Stairs
to the top of the Yellow Mountains. Distance estimates vary between 9
- 11 miles, and the photo here (approaching the summit) is fairly
typical of the climb. Who knew that a staircase could go up for ten
miles? Yeah, this is about as butch as I ever feel. Butch and really
stinky.

After this experience, I have a renewed appreciation for the Red
Ribbon Riders on their 84-mile hill day, and perhaps also for Sam and
Frodo on the secret stairs. I kept hearing Gollum's raspy whisper in
my ear. The monkeys in the area could have been his stand-in.

Dad, you were right about the possibility of seeing them, and although
I didn't, signs warned in English not to "flirt the monkeys with food"
and not to "feed or play them."

Thankfully, at the top of the climb, instead of a ravenous spider,
I've met -- you guessed it! -- some unbelievably friendly people. I am
bunked in a hostel-like dormitory with vacationing families and
friends, appear to be the only Westerner in the area, and was in my
room for not five minutes when I was invited to dinner and to join one
of the families at the challenging hour of 3 a.m. for a hike to the
optimal vista for watching the sunrise. Of course I'm in! (I just hope
my legs will be too when I wake up.)

My RRR friends should know that my only trick to the ascent was
hydration: I think I drank 2.5 liters of water on the climb, although
it wouldn't surprise me a bit if I lost more than that. I looked a
little bit like a wet dog when I arrived at the top, especially
striking in its contrast with the incredible workers who make their
living carry yokes loaded with cargo or even passengers up and down
the stairs. They carry more, make it appear effortless, and don't even
seem to break a sweat.

Apart from the early start, tomorrow should be less physically taxing
and primarily downhill. But it may be taxing in other ways: after my
descent, I board an overnight bus to Wuhan (6 p.m to 10 a.m. --
ouch!), then catch another bus to Yichang (4 more hours) where I will
try to book passage on a river boat heading up the Yangtze. I'll have
to light a cigar when I'm finally standing on the prow of that ship
heading upriver...

From an island on West Lake

The scenery makes me want to reach for (or invent) adjectives. And do
they have someone stationed in the hills to create that mist, or what?

Lotus blossoms on West Lake

If Minneapolis is the City of Lakes, Hangzhou is the City of Views.
Around every corner, another will catch you off guard. The season has
passed for most of the lotus, but their presence is still spectacular.

Brand identity theft

I've done a double-take every time I've passed this coffee joint --
just the intended effect, to be sure. There are Starbucks aplenty
(along with the ubiquitous KFC's, McD's and Pizza Huts), but even in
my darkest coffee-craving, caffeine-withdrawal moments (read: most
mornings) I have yet to set foot in one on some probably-misguided
principle. Truly, it doesn't hold much allure: there's tea everywhere,
and decent coffee many places as well.

Still, I wake to nightmares of having the americana melt-down: a pizza-
stuffed popcorn chicken Happy Meal with a double shot of frappacino to
wash it down. Can I get extra cheese on that?

I leave you to ponder the horror (or new fast food chain concept), as
I also take my leave of Hangzhou, my most beautiful stop so far.

(Btw, the bike in the photo took me around West Lake today.)

Labor Pains

Happy Labor Day everyone.

Hopefully you've got it a little better at your job than bank teller #30303. Just outside his window was this placard indicating that his "Service Level" was one (of five) stars (five being best), and asking you for your "valuable opinions" by rating your interaction with the teller, in real time, on a scale of "Satisfied", "Average" and "Dissatisfied".

I got drenched yesterday -- a persistent rain all day long and a Gortex jacket that has somehow become porous, left almost everything I was wearing or carrying absolutely sopping wet. (The old but originally spendy Gortex jacket has now been replaced by a $1.25 umbrella.) My travel books now have the waffle-paged appearance of that favorite book you just couldn't help but read in the tub, until...

At least now they look used (and are no less readable). I spent the evening last night with my roommates here at the hostel. They are vacationing and looking for work here in Hangzhou, and were fabulous teachers of Chinese. We traded language lessons (their English is already so impressive, so my assistance was primarily in unpacking some idioms) for the whole evening, and hatched a plan to visit West Lake together today. I think we are going to rent a row boat and paddle ourselves, which should be a good adventure. The rain is slated to continue through Thursday, so I'm not sure that I will see Hangzhou in the sunshine.

Tone and content

I had a memorable Friday evening, circumstantially crashing a birthday
party: I ended up sitting at a large table with the party, and offered
to give them my seat, but was invited to stay because "the more, the
better." (My kind of people.) This segued into an evening of fun at a
nearby bar.

Among those assembled: three folks from Suzhou, two Italians (one of
whom was also a native French speaker), a Dane (also fluent in German)
and yours truly. It was fascinating to hear all the languages around
the table bubble and shift. I got to break out some of my very rusty
French and a couple of handy phrases in Italian. It was hard to say
whether Italian, English or Chinese was the dominant language over
dinner.

(So far, my feeble attempts at the tonality of Chinese speech have
inspired many half-formed thoughts about the role of language in
shaping mental constructs, a la Wittgenstein, and how this manifests
in intercultural communication when the root languages are so
different. I.e., the obvious fact that it's not as simple as having
different names for the same things.)

One member of the group at dinner was a guy I'd met briefly at the
hostel in Shanghai. We'd conversed for a couple of minutes in the
lobby just before setting out for Suzhou, and I had already felt
suffocated by him. One of those guys who will just keep talking and
talking about himself (now bear in my that I'm blogging this) without
taking a breath or asking what YOU think of him.

When I saw him again in Suzhou, I said hello before even really
thinking of it, and sure enough I had a companion for the evening.
He's gregarious (in his overbearing way), and definitely interesting
(in his late forties or early fifties, I'm guessing, and in the last
quarter of a year-long trip around the world). But my initial sense of
friction was quickly reconfirmed: we met while I was en route to
dinner. On the way to the restaurant, he decided to get a tea from a
sidewalk vendor. He approached the counter and "I'LL HAVE A STRAWBERRY
BUBBLE TEA" escaped his lips, in English, at a deafening volume. When
the poor teenagers behind the counter looked at him with mouths open,
he repeated it, a little slower and a little louder, and this time
accompanied by animated gestures directed at the large menu posted
above (sufficiently laden with items in small print that you'd be
challenged to specify your order with a laser pointer).

So much for blending in!

I was mortified, and without really meaning to, took a couple of steps
away from him.

As I've reflected on this moment, it's fairly obvious that a lot of my
reaction to this behavior stems from wanting at all costs not to be an
ugly American: to bull-doze the experience of being a guest in someone
else's home with an expectation that they rearrange the furniture to
suit me and, by the way, do you mind if we call this a "couch" instead
of a "sofa?"

A subtler aspect of this reaction is that, my word, there is simply no
way to escape that this IS what I'm doing by traveling here: walking
into a place equipped with three stock phrases and zero listening
comprehension, in the hope that gestures, smiles and good will will
make it all work out. Which, it usually does.

(For lunch yesterday, I popped into a busy noddle shop prepared with:
"Hello, I am a vegetarian. I would like to try your local specialty."
After lots of back-and-forth which I did not follow, and consultations
between the wait-staff and nearby patrons to decipher what I could
have meant, a plate of garlic-covered green beans, a bowl of rice and
a cup of hot water arrived at my table. Not what I had imagined, but
quite delicious.)

My point with this is not to say that I feel like an ass for traveling
here without being better equipped to blend in (I don't, even though
my lack of Chinese is an often a source of embarrassment, bemusement
or both): it is rather to say that between peaceful world traveling
and ugly Americana is a continuum with many, many shades of gray.

I am reminded of Okokon Udo's notion that connecting across difference
requires engaged curiosity and what he terms radical hospitality, or
Maria Lugones' essay on playfulness and world traveling: in both,
there's an element of openness and willingness to get a little messy
in the process that seems crucial and, to me, intoxicating.

And thankfully, I have yet to meet a stranger here who doesn't also
seem to approach my presence with a similar curiosity.

Which brings me back home: I have been repeatedly struck by the
contrast between the warm welcome I receive here on every street
corner, and suspicion, fear and derision we direct toward visitors and
immigrants back home. I am ashamed every time I hear stories (there
have been several) of how impossible it is to get an American visa,
even just to visit. I would so much prefer to be from a place that is
known for and prides itself on its hospitality. There's no reason in
the world why it should be any other way.