Summer around China

Well, I’m back in Shenzhen from my 3 ½ week trip around China! It was a really amazing experience and I think the biggest thing I noticed was how drastically different each part of the country was and how much variety there is.

Sorry about the lack of pictures...there's an explanation later on! Maybe later I'll be able to add some photos in, but in the meantime look at my picasa site (address is at the top of this page.)

I started my journey by taking a 24-hour express sleeper train from Shenzhen to Beijing. Once in Beijing, I set out the next day to hike the Great Wall and it was so impressive! We had to drive a bit further than usual, but then we were away from the crowds and got to experience part of the unrestored sections as well. I was surprised at how steep some of the section were – basically like a wide stone ladder! Next I visited the Forbidden City and although it was raining most of the time (which actually helped keep away some of the hordes) it was neat to see how huge the place was; I don’t know how people found their way around. I also visited the Olympic Park and saw the Bird’s Nest and Watercube lit up – again, the scale was impressive! During my stay there I met some fun people in my hostel and we had some good nights out complete with Beijing duck, local beer, an introduction to huasheng – a berry that tastes like juniper soap and has strong natural numbing qualities; it’s used medicinally as well as in various dishes, and lots of laughs.

Claire then flew in to Beijing and we met up to take a train to Xi’an. Now, I knew the trains were busy in China, but I really had no idea just how busy. I went to purchase our tickets 4 days in advance and figured I had left enough time to get the tickets we wanted…but after I waited in line for a sweaty and pushy hour with the throngs of others at the station, I was told there were only seats (not sleeper cars) left for the 18 hour journey. I chanced it and bought them…..and what an experience it turned out to be! The first 3 or 4 hours weren’t so bad, but after 6 hours of sitting completely upright with no armrests, having an old man continually falling asleep on me, people smoking, and the smell of toilets wafting through the car, I was ready to be there already….but we still had another 12 hours! By the time we got off in Xi’an, we vowed never to buy seat tickets again.

Xi’an itself was a pretty city with much cooler weather than Beijing. We rented bicycles and rode around the city walls where we could see the interesting mix of old (temples, the Muslim Quarter, the bell and drum towers) with the new (huge shopping malls and luxury stores.) Our main reason for coming here was to see the Terra Cotta Warriors but when we journeyed to check them out, we were actually a little underwhelmed. There are 3 pits that have been excavated, but only 1 of them has much of interest. It was neat to see how each soldier was just a bit different (the hair, or height, or uniform) but there was no way to really see them up close. The museum area was way, way too packed full with loud Chinese tour groups so we basically just did a walk through of that part. Also, the whole area has been extremely commercialized with shops and brand new buildings everywhere around. Good to see, but I wouldn't go back.

Next we were off to Kunming (flying this time – no way were we going to sit for a 36 hour train!) which lies in southern Yunnan province, so that we could get to the Tiger Leaping Gorge area. To do this, we needed to take an overnight sleeper bus to the small town of Lijiang. Our journey started out a bit confusingly, then about 2 hours in we came to a stand still. The ensuing hour and a half delay was due to the driver of a semi-truck, which was carrying 14 vans, falling asleep at the wheel and therefore crashing….blocking both lanes of traffic. Turns out this isn’t terribly uncommon. We also found out the hard way that petty theft is common on these buses, so upon awaking around 2 AM, Claire and I realized that despite our bags being right next to us, we were both missing all our cash and my camera (later we also realized that in addition to the obvious things stolen, our thief apparently needed cheap sunglasses, 1 sock and Bananagrams…how odd!) So when we arrived in Lijiang we were promptly picked up by the police (never thought I’d be in a Chinese police car!) and driven to the station to file a report. After this several hour long procedure, we were finally able to get out of there and head to the start of Tiger Leaping Gorge (in a harrowing 2 hour minivan ride where we were again delayed by an accident on the windy roads.)

Next day we started the trek, which we were apparently much better prepared for than we thought! We had read that it was a strenuous hike, even for serious hikers, so we allowed extra time. Maybe it was both of us growing up in the Rockies and hiking all while growing up, but we were nicely surprised. The views were absolutely amazing and it really made me feel tiny with the mountains rising straight up from the gorge bottom and disappearing into the misty clouds above. There were a few rustic guest houses along the way to stop either for the night or just for some tea and rice; it was one of my favorite things that I did on this trip (although if I do it again I would make sure my camera wasn’t stolen first!) I would highly recommend going here.

Next we made it back down to Lijiang (surprise, surprise; there was another accident on the way down!) and spent a few days in and around the old town of Lijiang. It’s fairly touristy, but still a gorgeous little place with windy cobblestone streets and small bridges over the streams that flow through the town. We also rented bicycles here and ventured out into the farmland on little dirt roads. The whole area is up at higher altitude and surrounded by tall mountains, which combined with fields of sunflowers and a perfectly sunny day, made for an amazing day (although we felt like fried chicken from the sun and lack of sunblock - oops.)

From there we took a 4 hour bus ride to the west to Dali (comical since most of the journey was over half constructed bumpy roads, the driver was playing chicken with oncoming buses on the particularly windy parts, greasy haired toothless men were yelling over and over ‘eeen-gu-leesh, een-gu-leesh!’ at us since we were the only 'weiguoren' [foreigners] onboard.) We joined up with a Spaniard who we’d first met on our fateful journey to Lijiang and visited some of the little villages in the area. One of them had a crazy market where absolutely anything was for sale…cheap plastic rain boots, medieval-looking farm tools, huge melons, woven baskets, watches made in 'Switzerland,' majhong sets, traditionally dyed blue and white batik clothes, pig’s heads, jewellery, incense sticks the size of industrial fireworks, ugly sunglasses, Karma Sutra tiles, and potatoes by the truckload.

Our next destination was Yangshuo, which is famous for its numerous craggy limestone peaks that sprout up everywhere. It’s also the scene on the 20 Yuan note. It’s a really gorgeous place and also fairly touristy (interestingly enough this was the only place we saw ‘deep fried cat’ on a menu – either it was for real or it was a mistranslation; both are equally likely.) We rented bicycles to cycle around the area. It was fun, minus the Chinese drivers who incessantly honk, honk, honk, and we saw some really pretty areas. We also went down the Li River on a bamboo raft, where I managed to lose just one of my flipflops in the river and had to walk around barefoot the rest of the afternoon, which led to even more stares than usual.

The last place I went was the Longsheng rice terraces. We signed up for a tour through our hostel – big mistake! This is how we accidentally took a Chinese tour, complete with a long bus ride where the tour guide yacked away for most of the 3 hour journey through a megaphone, then informed us we needed to pay more for something else we didn’t want to do (with our only other option to just stay on the bus for an hour.) When we finally arrived, we were given only an hour and a half to eat lunch and view the terraces…luckily I (Claire needed to go back with the bus to catch her next train North) ditched the group and started the 5 hour hike through to another village. It was absolutely stunning – like something out of a movie! Midway through it started dumping typhoon level rain and we met a few of the local women who were out picking firewood. Since it was nearing the end of the day and we were only about half finished the hike, I decided/got convinced to stay in their village for the night. It felt like a complete time warp where everything was so simple and idyllic and location could not have been better. I toured through the 800-person village (where we saw a large portrait of Stalin next to pictures of naked women on the walls of one of the old women’s houses) then got a home cooked meal, complete with home brewed rice wine for dinner AND breakfast, and stayed in their house….then was off the next morning. It was just stunning with each curve around the hill showing yet another beautiful scene.

This trip was truly amazing and I was awed at just how huge and diverse the country is. Yet again, I’m left feeling that I only scratched the surface and want to see so much more of it! Luckily I’ll be in the country for a bit yet. I'm just starting up full-time Chinese classes next week, so I'll be busy for the next few months being a student again!

Results from Dragon Boat!

Well, it's now Monday evening - the end of Dragon Boat Festival weekend. It was a great time with perfect weather and fun people!

During race #2

We started out the weekend with our first race early on Saturday morning. We were racing against 3 other teams - a legal aid foundation, RT Mart (a superstore here in Taiwan), and another unknown Taiwanese team. The conditions were good with the current going in our favor and our team won by over 30 seconds (out of a 3 1/2 minute race!) It was really exciting to see all the other teams around too. There were numerous teams of course from Taiwan from various high schools, companies, and government offices, then there were also teams who traveled from the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, the US, and Japan, as well as various expat teams from South Africa, France, and Holland.

Me and my coworker Rachel

Hess treated us to a nice lunch at a Taiwanese restaurant, where of course way too much delicious food was ordered. Each 8 person table ended up with about 4 heaped plates left over! The food we did have was great though - shrimp and pineapple, cold pickled cabbage, various types of tofu, 3 cup chicken, fried rice, deep fried mushrooms.... We had a bit of time to kill before we had to head back to the river park for the opening ceremony (no one could figure out why the opening ceremony wasn't at the beginning of the day...) so we popped over to our team organizer's house nearby for some sun and drinks on her rooftop. After a few hours (which included group work on the daily crossword puzzle!) we all taxied back to the park. Walking the last little bit over the bridge, we saw some curious items in the stream tributary: computer keyboards, furniture, a few dead looking rats... :s yuck. The opening ceremony involved a few fun performances by one of the Filipino teams and some juggling. Very fun!

Our whole team

Sunday we had our second race against other teams who made it through to the second round. It was a bit windier, and a lot hotter (not a cloud in the sky and about 34C/95F with the usual high humidity.) We raced hard but came in 3rd, so we didn't make it to the final round. There's a tradition with dragon boat to trade uniforms with another team and the team that won against us came over to trade with us! I'm still not sure which team they were, but basically you look for someone your size, then right then and there you take of your sweaty, river-watered shirt and switch! Their outfits looked nice, although being black they were were scorchingly hot and even stinkier than ours...haha.

Catching the flag

Later that evening we went out to a pub for some dinner and drinks where coincidentally the French Open was playing. It was great meeting new people and getting to know them more this weekend. We're all Hess English teachers, but everyone has a different story. And of course, we traded some teaching stories and inadvertently played 'who has the grossest kindergarten moment story!' Then today was the national holiday so everyone was off work. We all attended the closing ceremony where shockingly no one suffered from heat stroke (except an Australian). . . today was even hotter and we were all crowded in like cattle in direct sun!

The whole weekend was great fun, and it was really cool to take part in a traditional Taiwanese activity!

Dragon Boat

In Asian countries, (particularly ones with significant Chinese populations) there is a holiday each year around the beginning of June called Dragon Boat Festival. Long ago in China, there was a poet named Qu Yuan who was accused of treason. He then threw himself into a river to protest and drowned. Then the local people, who admired him, threw lumps of rice into the river to feed the fish so that they wouldn't eat his body. There is now a special glutinous rice dumpling, zongzi (which apparently has such an extremely high calorie count that the government warns against overeating at this time of year.) The local people also paddled out on boats, either to scare the fish away or to retrieve his body. This last part is what I'll be doing next week! (Minus the dead poet in the water...)

My school (and all the other branches) is large enough to have a team for the 20+person boat, so we have been practicing each Sunday morning for the past 6 weeks. First we started in the 'bucket' - basically a large metal shipping container filled with water with seats on the outside. It was conveniently located on a grungy concrete slab beneath a major freeway overpass where we shared the space with resting taxis, sleeping dogs, and a ballroom dance class just prior to our practice. Very multi-use! We practiced our technique in this for 2 weeks so that when we got in the actual boats, we could make full use of our open-water practices. The race is sponsored by the Taipei city government and they own all the carved wooden boats, but to keep things fair for all the teams, they don't release the boats for practice until 4 weeks before the competition so that everyone has the same time to get ready. It's been really fun so far, and the festival is next weekend. In previous years, our team has made it past the first and second heat, but never to the third, so that's the goal for this year. Hopefully all goes well for race day!

Taipei, so yummy!

Yesterday Katelin and I went to the Taipei International Food Festival. Her Chinese tutor gave her the invitation, saying that they needed foreigners to eat some food. So we went, only knowing vaguely where to show up and not really what to expect of the whole thing! Turns out there was a tent set up on the sidewalk area around the 101 with about 100 seats inside. We were shown to our seats, while being videoed! I have never been filmed before, so I didn't really know what to do. We knew the show had started when a man in a white medical coat (one of the official judges) picked up a big red mallet and hit the large gong on stage. There were maybe 9 or 10 different chef stations set up around the perimeter, and the hostess of the whole production talked briefly with each one (the whole thing was being videod and shown on a big screen at the front, behind the stage.) Most of the chefs were from Taiwanese restaurants, but there were also some from Japan and Thailand. We’re guessing that why we were invited as foreigners (without having to pay anything!) is because it was Western day, although none of the food was particularly Western.
We were each given a slip of paper as well; Katelin and I figured out by reading that one line was for our name, but we had to ‘cheat’ and look at someone else’s to figure out what else we were supposed to write for the other one. At least it was easy compared to the 3 page survey we were given at the end, which we ended up getting help to fill out.
Then we got individually served some of every dish that was made – it was amazing food! We had linguine with egg yolk balls, grapefruit-sized potato balls, tuna rolls, shrimp with mango, salmon steaks, chicken asparagus rolls, spicy Thai vegetables, Japanese hot pot soup, chicken skewers, and fried fat lumps in a pancake. Strange as the last one sounds, when each audience member picked their favourite dish by placing a small silver spoon in front of the dish, the fat lumps won by a land slide!
We also got a show with our meal as a bartender spun flaming bottles while making cocktails on the front stage. Impressive!

Sunrise Hike

Katelin and I decided that we wanted to hike up Mt. Qixing (the highest peak -1120m- in Yangmingshan National Park) and watch the sunrise. So, we planned it all out and left our apartment early this morning at 2:30am, making the necessary 7-11 stop for coffee. Then we made the 30 minute scooter ride up to the park and found the trailhead. Things were still pitch black at this point so we were equipped with a headlamp and flashlight. The wind was blowing and the bamboo makes a pretty eerie sound when it rustles together and there’s no one else around, and to complete the scene, there was also a garbage can lid banging in the wind – eek! We set off and almost immediately encountered a massive toad the size of a large grapefruit in the path – both of us shrieked in surprise, but luckily those were the only animals we saw. (We were a bit concerned about seeing any of the numerous poisonous snakes that lurk in the vegetation here...)


We got about 2/3 of the way up and all the sudden we realized that we were in pea-soup fog, so we decided to hike back down so we wouldn’t get stuck up there and see if we could find another place to watch the sunrise. Once back at the trailhead, we drove just about 5 minutes and found a suitable place – we had a perfect view of the sunrise as we ate some fruit and drank milk tea on the side of the road. We were commenting on how pretty it was, and all of a sudden we realized we could also see the ocean! By then it was pretty light out and still only 5:15am, so we decided to make a short impromptu scooter trip. We drove up through the mountains to the northern coast, and made it about 3/4 of the way to the beach before we turned around because we were tired of being on the scooter. We found a very large cemetery with an accompanying crematorium/shrine/mausoleum thing – quite impressive!

So we arrived back at our apartment at 7:30...usually about the time I’m getting up for work during the week! I won’t be doing these sunrise hikes often, but it was really fun and quite pretty with all the colors and wispy clouds.

Cinco de Mayo

Don't worry! Cinco de Mayo is not celebrated (in any strange way) in Taiwan, but I couldn't think of another name for this post. Anyhow, things have been busy as usual here. I haven't been able to keep up on here, and now it's hard to condense everything from the past 2 months, but I will try.

I started Chinese classes 2 times a week and it's great to see a little progress by being able to understand some of what people say, and also talk a little. I am also learning to read and write the characters but that takes a long time since each word has a different character and they can combine to form new words! It is a difficult language, but I am determined to keep it up.

My parents also visited in mid March and we had an amazing time! We got to go to some places that I had already visited so I could be of a little help in showing them around (Jioufen, Taroko Gorge, and of course Taipei.) We also went to some new places - Green Island in the South, and we also did some driving along the Eastern coast. The scenery is absolutely spectacular in those areas, especially when it's sunny and the water is a perfect aquamarine with white waves and lush greenery.

I just signed another year contract at my same school, so I will be teaching the little kindergarteners again next year! I will have the younger class (right now I teach 4-5 year old), so I will have the 3-4 year olds - it will be fun, funny, and a huge challenge all at once.


Our semester here ends in July, so once our big end-of-the-year show finishes, I will pop onto a plane the next day and head to Thailand! I will be meeting my boyfriend there and we will travel around for 2 weeks before school starts again. It will be a really relaxing way to spend my vacation. I still feel so lucky that I'm able to go to all these places and see such amazing things! I was a little hesitant about booking tickets to fly into Bangkok because of the current situation there, but I thought that since my trip is 3 months away, something most likely will have been figured out by then. So we'll just see...

ವಿಎತ್ನಂ - Vietnam

My latest adventure over my Chinese New Year break was a great time! There was lots of traveling involved as we had to cover 1700km in 9 days, (in our 8 nights, we spent 4 in hotel beds and 4 in various forms of transport - bus, boat, train, and taxi) but well worth it!

Kenzie and I flew into Hanoi and promptly took a bus to our hotel that blared music videos from the '80s on the mini DVD player the whole 45 minute journey. Then we wandered around and found that many things were closed because it was the beginning of Tet (lunar new year festivities.) The next day we journeyed to Halong Bay and got on a 'junk' boat for an overnight tour of the area. It was fun - we stopped at a cave on an island that was lit with bright colored lights, kayaked, and had a great evening that included our tour guides/boat operators drinking loads of Vietnamese vodka and singing bad karaoke....


We also went to Hoi An, a place famous for hundreds of tailors that custom-make clothes for cheap, where we took a full-day motorcycle tour in the countryside. At one point we came to a long floating wooden bridge and jokingly asked our tour guide if anyone had ever fallen in; his response: 'we just started using this bridge...' Hah, but it was a great way to see things a little more off the beaten path. We also spent a day to go diving again - although the site was supposed to be the best in Vietnam, Kenzie and I didn't think it was that special, but I think we were spoiled having already dived in Bali (which is world-class with beautiful corals and different fish.)

We finally made it down to Ho Chi Minh City, (HCMC) which was an epic adventure that took 8 hours overnight in a taxi. Basically up until that point we would buy our tickets to get to the next city the day before we left and it worked out fine, but when we needed to get to HCMC, everything was full (bus, train, plane) because it was nearing the end of Tet holiday. So, we hired a taxi with 2 other people we had met. It was a crazy ride because we left at midnight (so we wouldn't waste daylight hours traveling) and the only main road going south was clogged with 3 lanes of massive tour buses - all swerving and honking madly- on the 2 lane road. So the whole journey, I kept seeing headlights coming straight towards us, only to veer back just before we collided. This was all set to the tune of acoustic '80s pop songs that our driver (and no one else) enjoyed. Oh boy! Up until that point we hadn't seen any accidents, but as we approached HCMC just as the sun was rising, there was a car that had been reduced to about half it's original size from a massive crash - pretty scary. Later on, one of our tour guides cheerfully informed us that while over 400 people had died during that week alone due to traffic accidents, 'it's a good number-don't you think?' !!! Vietnamese traffic is generally is chaotic, but slower paced than here in Taiwan. However, they do not have any stoplights or stop signs, so this means that everyone uses their horn at all times. Even if you have already crossed the street and are on the next 'sidewalk,' they still give you a toot or 2 on their way by...

When we got to HCMC at 8 in the morning, we popped across the street into one of the numerous 'travel agencies' to learn that we had just 15 minutes before the tour of the CucChi tunnels left, so we hurriedly stashed our things in the back of the office and brushed our teeth before climbing on bus for another hour of transit. The tunnels were pretty amazing, especially when we learned that people basically lived for years inside them. They are tiny, and although I'm not claustrophobic, it was not comfortable even for the 5 minutes I was inside. There were also displays of some of the traps the local people used against soldiers; they were very crude but extremely damaging to anyone who came upon them. We also visited 2 museums about the war and the War Remnants Museum was particularly dark. It was mostly pictures from international photographers during the war, and it was hard to look at a lot of them. Even though I learned about the war during school, I feel like I understand a lot more about what happened and why the whole event was such a disaster.

So my trip was a really good time and I was left knowing that I want to go back at some point, for at least several weeks. There was so much to see and now I know which places I want to go back to!