Up, Up and Away in Yangshuo

From [09.04.07] Yangshuo

I’ve been a lot of breathtaking places in my still young life — the moonscaped landscapes of Iceland, Mt. Fuji at sunrise, the misty morning peaks of Machu Picchu, to name a few — but I honestly think I’ve found the most beautiful place on earth: Yangshuo.

Granted, Chinese and foreign tourists abound and downtown Yangshuo, while cute and offering what is the most picturesque McDonald’s I’ve ever encountered, isn’t my idea of ideal. However, get out of the city and into the countryside and the breathtaking karst scenery makes magic right before your eyes.

Yangshuo is famous for its limestone karst peaks. The peaks aren’t traditional hills and mountains that rise from below thanks to the whims of tectonics, but rather were carved by the elements thanks to the relatively soft and porous — read: easily erodible — limestone. Green bamboo and other vegetation blankets the peaks, and couple that with a cerulean sky and you have a bit of heaven.

The first day we arrived, we decided to split up so Sean and I could tackle some more strenuous activity, namely a climb to Moon Hill (so named because it resembles a moon bridge), biking into Yangshuo town, and then 3 more hours of biking through the local countryside, including some of the muddiest fields I’ve ever tried to get two wheels through.

That night, we opted to see the cormorant fisherman do their thing (which these days is unfortunately mostly solely for the benefit for tourists like us thanks to commercial fisherman). For hundreds of years, local fisherman have employed cormorants — water fowl known for their mad fishing skillz — to do the dirty work for them. The fishermen tie a small string around the birds’ necks to prevent them from swallowing the catch, then set them free to do their thing. When they catch a fish, the birds are trained to return to the boat, where the fisherman shake free the fish into a bucket. At the end of the night, the birds are rewarded with a portion of the haul.

The next day, we embarked upon the “must do” Li River cruise, opting for a shorter 2-hour highlights tour on a private raft instead of the full 6-hour big boat journey from Guilin. As you meander down the river, the peaks undulate on either side, many of them named for animals or scenes they may or may not resemble.

However, all of this activity paled in comparison to our afternoon adventure: an hour-long hot air balloon ride soaring over the hills and valleys of Yangshuo. We were all a bit nervous, but consoled ourselves by remembering that the teams do this twice a day everyday. And boy, was it worth it! We floated up to over 900m, gliding silently through the mist, gazing at the neverending dreamscape. It was definitely one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

[09.04.07] Yangshuo

Weekend Warriors: Xi’an

From [09.04.04] Xi'an

Back to my mom’s visit a month ago …

Originally, we planned to take a “romantic” overnight train journey to Xi’an. I put that in quote because I’ve done the overnight China train thing before, and it isn’t that great. Nevertheless, the visitors wanted to try, so we attempted to oblige. And failed. Apparently getting a train ticket in China is like trying to get Rolling Stones tickets when they first go on sale: a huge crap shoot, and it’s much easier if you have an in with the someone at the station.

We left Beijing on Saturday morning — via plane — and touched down in Xi’an a short two hours later. We immediately made our way to the city center to explore the Muslim quarter — one of central China’s biggest — and the ancient city wall. Xi’an is an ancient city, the birthplace of the first dynasty to unify much of China, the Qin. While many of China’s other cities have bulldozed their ancient walls and dwelling in the name of modernization, Xi’an somehow managed to keep its city wall entirely intact. You can walk or bike the full 17km length of the square wall, taking in the more modern portions of the city sprawling below.

We headed first to the Muslim quarter, where we explored the local mosque and dined on a stew of bread, beef and broth that was perfectly gooey and chewy. Next, we headed to the Drum and Bell towers. Right in the middle of town, they afford great views of Xi’an’s bustling thoroughfares, and of each other.

The next morning marked the main event: the terracotta army! This is the only reason most tourists pass through Xi’an, though I would argue with naysayers and say that the city itself is worth a day’s exploration. The warriors were built by Qin Shi Huang — the first emperor of China — to guard his tomb, and remained unknown until 1974 when local farmers digging a well made the find of many centuries. Estimates say there are about 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, but many still remain buried.

The warriors are truly a sight to behold, and dealing with the often pushy Chinese tour groups are but a small price to pay to see this amazing feat of construction and arrogance.

[09.04.04] Xi'an

Bell of the Ball: Beijing’s Big Bell Temple

From [09.04.21] Big Bell Temple

Taking advantage of the glorious weather today — a big wind has swept away any vestiges of pollution — we popped over to the nearby attraction of the Big Bell Temple. Home to, you guessed it, a great big bell. The biggest in China, in fact, which is saying a lot since the Chinese love their bells. Besides the proliferation of bells, what makes the temple stand out is the excellent and extensive English descriptions all over the grounds of the temple/museum, a rarity in China. My favorite part of the lesser known tourist sites like this one is the relative lack of overeager Chinese tour groups, and regular tourists in general. It’s a nice respite to be able to enjoy Chinese culture and history without having to elbow your way to the front of a viewing spot and without the blast of small bullhorns and shouts of tour guides. Peace in Beijing is rare, and as such, is savored.

[09.04.21] Big Bell Temple

We’re Coming to America!

We’ve done it.

We’ve booked out tickets home.

我们回国。

We’re touching down in LA on June 29th and will spend the next two months weaving our way through SoCal, San Fran, Boston, New York, D.C. and Florida, until Sean settles in D.C. and me in Chicago (Evanston to be precise).

I can’t believe we’re in the final stretch of our initial Chinese adventure. Luckily we’ve got a lot more adventure to squeeze out of this country before we return.

Things that Make You Go BOOM!

From [09.04.19] Military Museum and Capitol Museum

Yeah … that was probably not the most tactful title.

I’ll post the rest of the pics and stories from my mom’s trip — which was the epitome of awesome — over the course of this week, but I wanted to quickly slap up my shots from the Military Museum and the Capitol Museum from yesterday.

If there’s one thing China takes seriously … well, it takes a lot of things seriously, like blocking YouTube (which, subsequently, has made my life a little dimmer for lack of random 80s videos, baby pandas sneezing and Susan Boyle).

Anyway, what does China care a lot about? The PLA!

That’s People’s Liberation Army, and the guns and weapons they used to rise to power are the real deal here. I know there are military museums in the US; maybe I’ve been to them and the tree-hugging, liberal hippie part of my brain is stamping out any dirty memories of marveling at American artistry in weaponry … but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing on this scale. It was room after room of AK-47s, rocket launchers, anti-aircraft weaponry, and, yes, BFRs*. There was even this lovely sign:

From [09.04.19] Military Museum and Capitol Museum

But not to worry! It’s not all brute force and blow-em-up bravado. Read down … keep going … keep going past the guns … below the sabers and ammunition… oh, there’s sculpture arts!:

From [09.04.19] Military Museum and Capitol Museum

The testosterone was so strong my voice dropped two keys, so we headed to something more my style: Art. The Capitol Museum is more impressive for its architecture than for its relatively meager collection. You’d figure with the thousands of years of Chinese history and arts there would be more than a few sparsely populated floors, right? Oh, yeah. The West pillaged all this stuff long ago. Nevertheless, I loved the bronze and gold Buddhas.

As usual, click below for the full range of photos.

*Big Fucking Rockets

From [09.04.19] Military Museum and Capitol Museum

Confucius Says … It’s Temple Time!

From [09.03.31] Lama Temple, Confucius Temple and the Olympic Park

Since we’ve been there one too many times, we sent Mom and Paula to Tiananmen and the Forbidden City by themselves in the morning, and just met up with them in the afternoon for some temple going. Beijing’s biggest temple is the lamasery (Center of Tibetan Buddhism) the Lama Temple. The Temple was actually built for an emperor as his stomping grounds until the dynasty upgraded its digs to the Forbidden City. After they shipped out, the area became the temple it is today.

Given the sacred nature of the place, we could only take pics around the grounds. The inside of the temples sport giant Buddhas. While our guests genuinely enjoyed the space — and not to say I didn’t — I think the tons of temples we witnessed over our Cambodia and Vietnam travels has left us a little jaded, especially because the temples of SE Asia are so much more over the top in their gaudy sparkliness.

We next strolled over to the Confucius Temple, catching it just before closing. The temple is a bastion of quiet in an often overly noisy city, and we were able to wander among the giant stelae engraved with the Confucian classics in relative peace.

After a Western-style dinner (e.g., pizza, soup and salad) at The Vineyard, we cabbed up to the Olympic Park to see the lights of the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube dance in the night. Unfortunately, the Mongolian wind whipped us silly and we only stayed long enough to get some photos before retreating to the warmth of a taxi.

[09.03.31] Lama Temple, Confucius Temple and the Olympic Park

China Southern Can Sucka Big Fat One

Believe it our not, our time in China is ticking down faster than my biological clock — April Fool’s! The time on that hasn’t even been set yet. Anyway, the point is that we suddenly find ourselves nostalgic for Beijing while we’re still here, AND encountering the task of finding a plane ticket home.

While we have since learned we should have booked open-ended tickets (who knew?), we are relegated to purchasing one ways back to the States in late June. We’ve decided, after much hemming and hawing, to fly into LA to see Sean’s folks, then pop up to San Fran for Fourth of July weekend to see a gaggle of friends and fam. After that, I’ll head over to Boston and Sean will go back to SoCal for some more family time.

We got over here on about $650 each, both flying Air Canada from different departure points. Well, apparently our good fortune has ended, and we are now looking at flights up around $800 to just LA! It would cost me a grand to get all the way to Boston from here. TFB.

We decide to look into China Southern’s China>LAX flights since we’ve had good luck with them intra-China. And looky here! There’s a fare for $420 per person! What’s more, the next week the fare drops to $360 pp.

Not so fast.

We found all these fares on the China Southern Web site, and once you get to the final payment step, the a “cannot complete order; please call …” message interrupts the process. We’ve now called China Southern seven times, spoken with both the reservations department and online support in addition to trying to book these tickets on three different computers at different locations all over Beijing. No luck. China Southern gives us the lame “it must be problem with your computer” excuse, but I don’t buy it.

I think these hyper-low fares don’t really exist, and they are just a way to get people to call up China Southern and book the more expensive over-the-phone tickets. Why do I think this? Because we can easily get through to the payment page when we select the $800 tickets.

I want to give CS the benefit of the doubt, but they won’t budge one bit on helping us, claiming that the low price can only be secured by booking through your computer. What a bunch of baloney.

Acrobats and Uzbeks

From [09.03.30] Houhai, Acrobats and Shash

Since I’m taking the whole week off next week, I didn’t want to miss any class this week while my mother and Paula are here. Therefore, I told them they would have to find their own way around the city in the mornings until I get out of class. To aid this, I created an elaborate itinerary. Unfortunately, the weather — or more accurately, the weathermen — had different plans for me, as Monday predicted rain (it never actually rained). I scrapped my suggestion to go to the Summer Palace — basically a big outdoor park — and told them to do a little shopping around Nanluo Guxiang, my favorite street in their area.

They survived, thank goodness.

After we met up, we wandered to grab lunch at a Tianjin baozi shop. Baozi is a snack especially found in the Northeast of China, and consists of a fluffy steamed bread shell wrapped around a meat or vegetable filling. We plowed through three plates of the yummy morsels before heading to the Three Stone Kite Shop. The store was set up by the family’s grandfather long ago, and all the kites are still handmade by family members. The frames are entirely bamboo and the silk on each kite is hand-painted.

Since we had time to kill, we wandered a bit around Houhai lake. In the last ten years or so, Houhai has become a popular nightlife and eating destination, with many cafes and bars holding court lakeside. At night, the area sparkles with colored lights; it’s very romantic.

After picking up our tickets for the acrobatics show that evening, we stopped over at Emily’s place to say hi, since my mother hadn’t seen Emily since college. Back at the show, we were treated to an excellent modern performance of ancient Chinese acrobatics tricks and feats. I’ve seen the show before, and it’s still a crowd-pleaser. Post-show, we polished off some Uzbekistani cuisine at Shash, a wildly decorative restaurant featuring live music and singing. The food balances somewhere between Xinjiang Muslim and Russian, and was quite tasty.

[09.03.30] Houhai, Acrobats and Shash

From Dirt to Diamonds (Well, Pearls): Panjiayuan, Temple of Heaven, Hongqiao & Peking Duck

From [09.03.29] Panjiayuan, Tiantan, Hongqiao and Peking Duck

Day 2 was a doozy in terms of what I had planned — I’m a planner; so sue me — so Sean and I awoke bright and shiny expecting the normally early-risers to call us around 8, especially given the jetlag. When 10AM rolled around and they still hadn’t called, we texted them. Our text turned into their alarm clock — they were both still sleeping! It took me two weeks to get over jetlag and they are over it in a day!?!?

Since it only gets good on weekend, we started the day at Panjiayuan, the “dirt market.” This is one of my favorite places in Beijing. They started unloading their cash on souvenirs, with which we happily helped bargain and translate. We quickly learned they are a liability, especially when I tried to pull the student card when bargaining something down and the woman replied, “We both know your mother is paying for this.” Going forward, if they saw something they wanted, I took them away and Sean went in for the kill. A+ for team effort!

We dinet at a 老北京 (Old Beijing) restaurant for lunch. The highlight of the meal was the toffee-covered banana slices. They arrived so hot that you had to quickly dip them in water to cool and harden the toffee before eating. Unfortunately, we didn’t distribute fast enough, and they hardened into a giant mass of hard sugar and banana mush. Whatever. It was delicious anyway.

After lunch, we journeyed to Tiantan, the Temple of Heaven. In its heyday, the park was only used once per year to pray for a good harvest. Mortals (read: everyone except the emperor) weren’t allowed in the temple nor could they even look at the procession, in which the emperor road from the Forbidden City down to the temple to perform the annual rites.

Well, looks like those mortals are making up for lost time, because the place is absolutely thronged with Chinese tour groups. While you can still enjoy the scenery now, I can’t imagine how crowded it gets in the summer months.

Next up: Hongqiao Pearl Market. My mom had been talking about buying jade and pearls since the second she booked her ticket, so I took the ladies to Sharon’s Store, my favorite pearl and jewelry dealer in Beijing. We went to town trying on all the baubles, and everyone except Sean left with a nice purchase.

We topped off the night with the ultimate in Beijing cuisine: Peking duck, or Beijing kaoya in Chinese. Jimmy came along as it was his very last night in the city. After feasting our way through two ducks, we parted ways, happy to rest our weary feet and wallets.

[09.03.29] Panjiayuan, Tiantan, Hongqiao and Peking Duck

Beijing or Bust

From [09.03.28] Mom and Paula Arrive in Beijing

At long last, my mother and Paula descended upon our fair city on Saturday. Since then, it’s been one fun/chaotic/hilarious/adventuresome moment after the next. We’ve been flying around the city so much that I’ve nary a minute to breathe, let alone to post. Since I sent them to the Great Wall today, I finally got a few hours to catch up on homework and scratch out a little update.

They arrived to much fanfare — well, as much fanfare as I can produce, which is surprisingly a lot — on Saturday afternoon, a bit worse for the wear from the long flight but nonetheless ready to tackle the Orient. While Paula grabbed a little catnap, my mom — high on adrenalin — accompanied myself and Sean to Beihai Park, a green retreat featuring a small lake and island right in the heart of Beijing. The park was constructed way back in the 1300s, some say at the request of Kublai Khan. The earth dug out to create the lake was piled up in the middle to make Jade Island, atop which was placed a lovely white dagoba. The views from the top of the island are wonderful; Beijing rolls out in every direction. As Spring is just starting to awaken, we were treated to glimmers of green, pink and yellow everywhere.

After rousing Paula, we took the ladies to their first Chinese meal, hotpot on GuiJie (Ghost Street). The street, dappled with shining red lanterns and bustling with hungry locals, packs in gobs of Chinese restaurants into a small strip. The restaurant we prefer, Xiao Shan Cheng, is always crowded, and we had to wait in cramped quarters for a good 20 minutes. After sitting down, we ordered the requisite raw meat and veggies, which we then self-cook in giant vats of broth (spicy for Sean and I, not spicy for the ladies). After some false starts with the chopsticks, everyone was enjoying the food and we polished off a nice hearty portion. Once we put our guests to bed, we briefly stopped by our friends Jimmy and Heng’s going away party. Big day on Sunday meant we hit the hay early!

[09.03.28] Mom and Paula Arrive in Beijing