Northern Travels

Looking out over Kunming Lake around sunset, Summer Palace in upper right corner, Beijing. This was famed to be the most beautiful place in China as the emperor had explicitly designed much of the landscaping and architecture. So after the mistreatment of a British diplomat, the British decided to burn down the palace and the pagodas, ect back in the late 1800s leaving most of the current structures just over 100 years old.

This is from Chinese New Year in Beijing. Its really difficult to show what this was like without a video (which I have). Fireworks EVERYWHERE. So Beijing is home to some 13 million people. Imagine every family lighting off a fireworks display similar to your hometown 4th of July celebration. I have decided that one of the first orders of business when I return will be lighting off a roman candle I am holding in my hand.

The Great Wall at Badaling. There were surprisingly few people there.. maybe because it was wicked cold and windy (as my congested sinuses can testify to) but because we had just came back from Harbin we didn't think it was that cold.. See, we thought our train from Harbin to Beijing would take 20 hours (still not sure where that number came from) so when the train staff woke us up at 7am we were very confused because we'd only been on the train some 10 hours or so. This resulted in me leaving my contacts on the train and Morten his cell phone in haste (although Morten soon realized this and I was unaware until roughly 2 days later because I kept wearing my glasses). So we ended up with an extra day and spent it out at this section of the great wall.. a simple 12RMB bus ride out of town to the mountains.

Again, surprised by the lack of tourists over China's most important holiday. This is at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, where the emperor would go and pray for a good harvest... and something else I can't remember now. Each one of those little heads sticking out in horizontal rows on either side of the staircase are a different dragon.

Here I am about to slide off an ice castle in Harbin. Full size castles made out of ice. At night, they have colorful lights inside them so they glow. I have many more pictures of this, it was very impressive. Morten and I arrived around 1 and had to sit around eating jiao zi and sipping cocoa in a heated building till night fell.
In the forbidden city, Beijing. I was making an effort to only walk where the emperor did.

An ever increasing number of new photos can be found on the new facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2170971&l=3e1df&id=59501215
although this collection is still fairly limited. I feel like I should be doing other things than uploading as I am leaving the country fairly soon and hopefully I'll be able to show you my photos firsthand.

I am very happy that I delayed my trip home long enough to see Chinese New Year in China. The deafening fireworks coming from every alleyway, the red paper wrappings filling the street and blowing in the wind. We met up with some foreigners from a forum Morten is on. Meeting a large group of foreigners was reminiscent of going to college - except when you asked the obligatory "so where are you from" instead of people saying things like "Oshkosh" they would say Italy or Holland or Morocco or England or South Africa. At the little pub we were at people were walking around recruiting people to join their "couch surfing" organization- where people volunteer a couch for people to crash on and meals to weary travellers.

Yesterday we flew out of Beijing to Hangzhou a little after 4pm. Its about a 2 hour flight back to Hangzhou and we got in around 6. When we got off the plane we decided to take a bus back to Xiao Shan (which is the city the airport is actually in) because we knew there was a direct line back to Lin'an. Thankfully, my horrible Chinese was adquate to communicate that we were hoping to get a bus back to Lin'an from Xiao Shan and we were told there wouldn't be one until the following morning. Furthermore, he said there would be no buses from HANGZHOU until the morning as well. Apparently due to the Spring Festival they had cut the bus line back to Lin'an early. We quickly changed our tickets to a bus to Hangzhou, randomly got off the bus at the second stop, hopped in a taxi and I told him we wanted to go to the west bus station. Communicating with Hangzhou taxi drivers has always been a headache because they can never understand us. It was such a nice break to go to northern China where they actually speak standard mandarin (aka the language I'm learning) instead of the heavily accented Hangzhou dialect. But he understood where I wanted to go without me having to try to clumsily draw a Chinese character. I'd been calling my Chinese friends on the bus ride trying to get feedback if they would actually stop a bus line because of the holiday, and was fairly pessimistic about the prospect of getting our cheap 10 RMB bus back to Lin'an. Amazingly, when we arrived at the station the glorious 598 bus was sitting there waiting! It was a miracle! Then I looked at the tiny building next to the bus explaining the times the bus ran and I could read a full sentence of Chinese characters! Everything worked out perfectly! When we arrived in Lin'an and hopped a cab back to the univeristy I told the driver where I wanted to go, he asked if I wanted to go to the old or new campus, I said old campus, he asked if I wanted to go to the yi jin jie gate, I said no, we wanted to go to the east gate. There was nothing he said I didn't understand and he understood what I wanted. I actually have a functional level of Chinese! The basic things I need to do to get through a day I can do. I'm so happy to have had such a positive experience right before I leave- I think it will put my return in much more favorable light :).

Time to shower, pack, and see if I can find any place that is open to get some food. I fly out tomorrow evening at 6pm and then fly in to Chicago one hour before I left.

Happy 牛 year!!

catching up-

Well, these didn't really post in order, but hopefully they will provide some insight into the last few weeks.

This is from Drew and my attempt to make tuna noodle casserole using macaroni and cheese, potato chiips, a t-shirt strainer and a lamp because we had no stove or microwave. Really, my life isn't that pathetic, we just really thought tuna-noodle casserole said Christmas moreso than the egg-fried pumpkin I had earlier in the evening. And really- it wasn't half bad.

The view of Lin'an on a hazy Christmas day from the tower.

On nights on the town we usually end up walking by this decibal counter downtown- and scream at it to make it go as high as possible. Don't worry- there are police in a little booth across the street, who we usually say hi to. Then we usually run into some Chinese people who try to out-decibal us. Its a good cultural bridge I say.

This is from a night out with a bunch of people at a fairly typical Chinese bar, although this one actually has a dance floor and a lack of scantily clad women (which I enjoyed but probably disappointed the boys). You usually get a little private table and they always light a candle and bring out elaborately cut fruit and nuts. Beer is cheaper by the 6 pack, wine usually comes with some kind of 7up like drink to mix it, or you can buy a bottle of your favorite liquor and mix it with ice tea. The latter two don't tend to be popular with whatever crowd I'm with.

These are from my recent trip to Guilin- here I am with Kali- a girl who graduated the UWEC geology program at the end of my freshman year. She has a sister who is teaching English closer to Beijing. Apparently we really impressed her and her mom with our ability to order an entire meal in Chinese. I didn't think I would see a familiar face while I was here, so this was a very pleasant surprise.

Views of those crazy mountains from the Li River.

Looking across to downtown Guilin from a little mountain on the east side of town.

Now, I'm about two set off on 45 days of paid vacation. I am extremely proud of myself for navigating a Chinese website well enough to purchase plane tickets to Beijing without the help of any Chinese people. Yes, I had been walked through the process back in December when I bought tickets to Guilin, but let me explain the process a bit to you.

One of the many incentives to buying tickets off a Chinese site was being able to use my Chinese debit card so I could directly use money from my account here without transferring funds back to my US account. But, in order to use my debit card to make online purchases I first needed to pay to have this function added to my card. So I go to the China Construction Bank with my student (and friend) Julia. Apparently, this branch of CCB had SOLD OUT of the function to make online purchases on my debit card. So we needed to hop 7 blocks or so down the street to a larger branch. 40 yuan later, I had a little flash drive in my hand and apparently the ability to buy things online..

When I went to buy the tickets, I selected which bank I had, which sent me to the CCB website. I then needed to put this little "USB key" into my laptop, enter my passport number, enter my pin number, and BOOM- tickets paid for. This method seems much more secure than just typing your card number on the internet- but definitely seemed excessive at the time.

Buying tickets on a Chinese website is easily half the price of buying them off an English one. kayak.com advertised fares to Beijing from Hangzhou for $160- my tickets were 440RMB or about $64. Ok, not quite half. But still pretty significant.

We have a hostel booked in Beijing- but the next thing we are going to do is check out the train station and try to get tickets to Harbin (crazy far north- they have a big ice festival and are right next to Russia). 4 hours, by train, from Harbin is Daqing where there is a delightful (I hope) little oil field (*cough* biggest in China) that is apparently quite interested in me working in their English development/geology proofreading... department? Well, there's a lady who will show us around and hopefully we'll make it up there. Then, I have a student in Qingdao (home of the Tsingdao brewery, thanks to the Germans who settled there a hundred years ago) I might visit. Hope to make it back to Zhejiang Province and maybe visit some more students (especially in Ningbo). My boss invited me to make jiaozi (dumplings) with his family on the Chinese New Year (Jan. 27) and then I am flying home the 29th for two weeks. If you are reading this, I really hope I will get a chance to see you between Jan. 30 and February 11th when I fly back. On the flight out I will get the joy of sitting in one of those inner seats..... but thankfully I have a shiny new mp4 player that should keep me occupied. And the flight is much nicer than the one here- direct Shanghai to Chicago! then just a little hop up to Madison. Whoops- I mean I'll actually be home the 29th- leaving at 6pm, arriving at 9:40. That sure is a nice way to hit the international date line.

I've been horribly homesick, especially with that ray of familiarity (from S. Carolina) leaving. So I think a little trip home is a good way to use some extra RMB's to recharge the batteries. By also trekking up north I'm also using this opportunity to see some more of China too- so I think this has been a good compremise. A vacation stateside- wow, it feels pretty cool to have enough money to pull this stuff off. I almost feel like some sort of ..... adult.

On a final note, now that I am 23 and the Chinese New Year is fast approaching, we will be entereing the year of the cow. Now, for all the other 23 year olds out there that means bad luck for the coming year... that is unless you wear as many red things as possible. I bought a red scarf today. But if you want to be REALLY lucky, you need to convince a member of the opposite sex to buy you red underwear. There are stores in town that sell nothing but red things... including walls of red underwear. I don't know if any 23 year old boys read my blog, but let me know if you're interested.

a little note between grading exams..

The last several weeks have been busy with holidays, Christmas, travel (when I should be finishing paperwork), and shopping for clothes to make me appear more Chinese. In my eternal quest for a Chinese boyfriend I have had to settle for this very Chinese-looking boy from South Carolina (check out those pants!)(side note: I have failed to actually wear my Chinese jeans in this photo, but they have similar staining to Drew's). We travelled together to Guilin and back through Shanghai this last week. I was desperately trying to find boots my size (most stores only carried a few sizes that were 3 sizes smaller than what I need) but happend to stumble into the largest boot store I've ever seen in downtown Shanghai. Morten says I look like an 18th century Prussian calvary officer. Regrettably, the South Carolinian is flying home Thursday and all of my paperwork is due tomorrow and I have a hair appointment now... *sigh*. I'll write more later- hopefully when there are fewer other things I should be doing. But I do have a 45 day vacation coming up, so hopefully that won't be a problem. I basically just wanted to post a picture of my new Chinese clothes.

Whew... 23 tomorrow! damn..