Kunming, Week 1

So, I've started my studies here, and I guess I'll just let you know my thoughts on my program and Kunming, and me and China in general.

My "dorm" is really a hotel on the campus of Yunnan Normal University, complete with little soaps and towels and free tea. It's nice, relatively comfortable, but sort of a strange place to spend a few months. There's no desk, so to study, I've gone to a coffee shop or sat in an empty study abroad building classroom. Our living situation overall is kind of strange, since it's a hotel, and we have desk people who are there to take care of any sort of trouble we have, not to mention a Gomer Pyle looking PLA attache who's there to make sure we don't have any trouble. It all sort of makes me uncomfortable, since by being a foreigner, I automatically am priviledged. The Chinese don't seem to understand my basic lack of comfort at being waited on, and in a way, a lot of times, it's unavoidable since I don't always know what's happening. Other strange things about my dorm: the gates to the campus close at 1 am. No ifs, ands or buts. I didn't know that my first night, so I spent a panicked hour wandering around the campus before I finally decided to jump the fence, which I also had to do this weekend and probably will have to do again a few more times before the semester is out. Also, China has no dryers. As we speak, my clothes are hanging on the line, in the sun. The people in my program are pretty nice, and since there is just 11 of us and four or five teachers, we're pretty tight knit. Sometimes, however, I notice that I feel more alone and isolated with Americans than by myself.

Kunming is a great city, comfortable, not overwhelming, plenty to do and see. It occurs to me that it doesn't at all resemble the image of China people have back in the states. First, the weather here is beautiful, seventy and sunny everyday (although I'm told that the coming spring will mean lots of rain). Kunming is also full of foreigners, I don't quite know why, but it also often feels like a college town, with plenty of great bars and clubs with a diverse, young clientele. It's also filled with ethnic minorities. The streets are filled with Hui (ethnic Han Muslims), with their head scarves and skull caps; I even went into a mosque near the city center. I'm really interested in the Hui, how they interact with mainstream Han society, how connected they feel to the main branches of Islam. There are also tons of other ethnic minorities, in their own distinctive costumes. I'll take some pictures and show you guys, it's pretty wild. You'll be walking along, and all of the sudden, you'll see someone straight out of National Geographic in a headdress and a colorful shawl.

Another neat thing about staying in one place for a while (and eating with people who know what to order), is that you get a real grasp on the cuisine, and you get to eat absurdly well. Yunnan cuisine is very spicy. It's known for mushrooms, and rubing, a very mild, very delicious goat cheese. There's also a great mashed potatoes dish here. I eat like a pig, and feel guilty, but the thing is, since I'm spending on average about two bucks a meal, there's nothing to feel bad about. I've also been digging heavily on Muslim food here. I've had some great spicy beef skewers here for absurdly cheap off the street, and the other day, I paid under a dollar for a bowl of handmade noodles (you can actually see them stretching out the noodles), flavored with a spicy broth with just a hint of cilantro (that actually did not bother me as it does usually, but was pretty light and interesting). I feel like I might try to talk my way into the kitchen and videotape them making it, just to figure out what spices go into it, because I've never tasted anything like it in my life. It's a matter of time before these guys come to the states. They'll make Thai look like Red Italian.

My program is pretty damn intense. I have anywhere from two to three hours of Chinese, five days a week, in a four person class, starting at 9 AM. Considering that I used to consider an hour a day at 10 AM brutal, it's been quite an adjustment. Not to mention, we also have tons of homework, anywhere from two to four hours a night. My schedule during the week is pretty much go to school, lunch, check my email, do my homework, crash at twelve. It's not too bad though. I've started making tea in a thermos with dried looseleaf tea and boiled water, the way the Chinese do, and drinking bad coffee at night at local coffeshops. It's better than it could be, because my Chinese is at a level where we can have pretty entertaining discussions, and so it becomes more like a conversation class.

One part of this program that I really like is that we're matched up with a Chinese language partner. Mine is a sophomore girl here at the college from Xishuangbanna, a tourist region in the south of Yunnan famous for the Dai people and their "water throwing festival". It's really rewarding (although sometimes frustrating when I'm tired and my Chinese just falls apart), and very interesting. We're given a few questions and then we kind of just talk for an hour or so. We've discussed media censorship, the one child policy, college here and in America, and other issues. Sometimes, her views are wrong or misinformed, but I lack the vocab to debate her: for example, she seems to feel that the government's response to the Sichuan Earthquake was perfect, and while I feel it was pretty good, I know there were some problems. Talking about the One Child Policy was interesting. She thinks the policy is pretty just, and that China's population had to be controlled one way or the other. It was hard for me to get my own nuanced view across; that no government is justified in forced abortions, that while China had and still has a population problem, the one child policy may not have solved it. An interesting interaction was when I pointed out the demographic problem the policy has created. Not a problem, she explained, because in China, the young people always take care of the old. That's Chinese society, no exceptions. It's interesting to me the amount of faith that the Chinese seem to have in their own broad cultural messages.

On Friday, I went walking around the city. There's a very pleasant park within walking distance of the campus (cuihu). The blurred line here between public and commercial spaces is really something, only in China will you see the park filled with people selling stuff (one park here outside of old Kunming is basically an open air puppy market). On Saturday, we were taken on a tour of Old Kunming, which will probably be knocked down in a couple of days to make way for new office buildings/apartments/shopping malls. My ambivalence about the Haussmannization of China continues, and yesterday, I realized that it dovetails quite neatly with my own feelings about the gentrification of Brooklyn. On one hand, it's a tragedy that they're just razing those old buildings, probably giving residents little choice in the matter, and replacing them with inhuman, inaccesible big buildings. But on the other hand, those old buildings are not quite livable, and I wonder how the residents themselves feel about it, being moved to spaces that are probably much more modern than those old houses. After the tour and a long discussion at a nearby teahouse (a lovely converted family mansion with terrific pu'er tea), the professor cabbed with us to a local arts district, where we got a quick dinner and then went to a Nordic cultural center to watch the film "Songs From The Second Floor", and then discuss the film. The film is quite good, a dark brechtian farce, a little heavy-handed but very interesting and enjoyable, and it was also a downright surreal experience: discussing a Swedish film with a bunch of nice Scandanavians in English in China. I envy the Scandanavians; how I wish my government would pay for me to be a hipster around the world. I also felt a little weird about the experience. It seems a bit colonial to hold a discussion in English in China. It's a continued theme of my stay here: on one hand, I always hope to see English signs and translations, just because it makes my life easier, but on the other hand, I realize that we're asking the Chinese to go farther than we would go, and our demands are heeded because we have the economic power to make the Chinese listen.

Overall, I really feel like this decision, this journey has been worthwhile. I think China is really changing me, making me calmer, making me more humane. I feel like I'm actually making an effort to behave and to think in the ways that I've always told myself I should act and think, but never really followed through on. I also don't have that worry that I had before I came here, that this was pointless, that I probably won't even pursue Chinese when I get back. It's a joy just to be able to communicate, and to hear yourself getting better at it, and since I feel like the journey is building me as a person, I'm not worried about whether it was worth it in a meaner sense. Some days are better than others, but mostly, I'm pretty happy here, though I also certainly miss home.

I'll probably check in once a week, more often if anything particularly notable happens. My laptop is coming in the mail, and once I get it, I'll start posting my pictures, probably one day's worth of pictures, with captions, a day. I'll keep in touch, in any case.

2/12/09, Kunming

So, here I am, finally, in Kunming. Not a terribly eventful day today, just travel. Here's my route:
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Pretty much just woke up and went to the airport. I had to pay out the butt because my baggage was overweight, and this irritated me even more because it probably wouldn't have been had the signs not talked me into checking one of my carry-ons. It was also a laughably byzantine procedure. I had to get a ticket from one desk, and then give it to another desk, and then pay at another desk. Other than that, air travel is pretty much the same misery everywhere, and if anything, this trip was nicer than its American equivalent would be. I drank canned coffee, snacked on disgusting hard candies, and mostly slept on the flight, though I did get a lunch, even though it was only three and a half hours. The woman next to me kept frantically pointing at her wrist, wanting to know the time, which sort of pissed me off, because she could at least try to talk to me in Mandarin.

Once here, I was picked up and brought to the university by one of the professors, and my friend Nick from Wash U. It's good not to be alone again. I do have a roommate, and my dorm room is kind of odd; basically, it's just a hotel room, and has similar warmth (and similar single serving soap). I'll have to be a night showerer, since we only have hot water from 8 to 12 AM.

A nice English guy named James took me and the Duke kids from the dorms out to a local restaurant. James is good people, speaks excellent mandarin and has been studying here for a year or so, starting in the north, in Dalian. That's hardcore. Eating with him, I felt silly and envious. He bargains the check, and knows what to order and reads the mandarin, not-for-tourists menu. Meanwhile, I've been wandering around the country, poking and mumbling and stumbling around.

Finished the night off in a nice bar in what's called foreigners street. Kunming's a sweet little town, what I've seen so far. Weird in that it's got an active nightlife that I can see, and it's full of young people, really does feel like a college town. Very pleasant.

Ok, not much to report so far. I'm going to stop posting for a little bit, because I have to study and take care of things, and anyways, I actually have things to do at night now and am getting sick of the internet cafe routine. I'll chime in every week or two, let you know how things are going. Any questions, email me, if you know my email. See you around.

2/11/09, Shanghai Art Museum/50 Moganshan Art Complex/Lu Xun Monument/Night on The Bund

Wow oh wow, this is it, the last day of my grand tour. Here's my route for the day:
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Before I forget again, two things I forgot to write about yesterday. 1, regarding the CCTV fire, don't say I didn't tell you so. When this blog eventually gets written up in the NY Times, I want "prophetic" to be the key descriptive word. The great thing is that they even have terrifying Cartoon PSAs about fireworks here, as if the problem is not just that people are lighting up fireworks in densely populated areas without the slightest hint of caution.

2, yesterday, at the Hangzhou train station, just as the train was about to arrive at the station, a little kid next to me gestured to his mom that he had to go to the bathroom. The anxious mom looked all around, and finally fixed on a potted plant in the corner. She brought the kid over to the plant, pulled his pants down, and let him do his things. Me and the other people in the waiting room laughed and exchanged "that's China" glances. Pretty awesome.

I woke up in the double digits today (so sue me, it's the last day of my vacation), had a few crab meat meatballs for breakfast (a famous shanghai snack)and headed over to the Shanghai Art Museum, which was right by my hotel. The building is beautiful, but the art was not so hot. One exhibit was by a painter named Wu Guanzhong. His oils are pretty disposable (knockoff cezannes), but his inks were not bad, combining the Zen ink tradition with abstract expressionism in a way that reveals a certain age to what we think of as recent, and illuminating how we construct an image. There was also an exhibit by a former culture minister who's retired to cut Chinese seals, and despite my new found interest in Chinese seals, it got to a point where I just wasn't up to checking out another seal commemorating the "reform and opening" policy.

Pretty bummed (and surprisingly, feeling decaffeinated - I think that tea yesterday, weak as I might have thought it was, gave me a big buzz), I went to Starbucks to plan the rest of my day. I figured out that it wouldn't be as much of a schlep to go to one of the contemporary art districts as I thought, so I headed over. 50 Moganshan is a huge place, just a big concentration of contemporary art, dozens of galleries filling an old factory and lining the streets around it. The art, as it does anywhere good, varied. Some of it was great, a lot of it was just ok, and some of it was just plain awful. A lot of Chinese artists fall into an old Chinese artist trap, producing political kitsch and art they think Westerners want to see or will buy, "Chinese art". One gallery was even titled after a quote from Confucius, "what a joy it is to welcome strangers from afar!" Indeed, I actually kept running into a couple from DUMBO - small world. It was nice, however, to see some good contemporary art. Being here has helped me to figure out things I enjoy and things I don't enjoy, and seeing new art is something I definitely enjoy.

After that, I headed over to Lu Xun Park, to see Lu Xun's tomb. Lu Xun is widely considered the founder of modern Chinese literature. The park was really nice. For once, I didn't feel like I was entering a national monument; I was just walking in a nice park where people went to relax. Unlike most of Shanghai, this park felt more Chinese, and lacked foreigners. It was nice to see the Chinese doing their thing. One thing I've noticed: I rarely see a solitary Chinese person. They always seem to be doing things with other people, whether arguing or playing Chinese chess or Badminton. Lu Xun's tomb was very simple, very nice. If I become a good enough writer that people care about me, I want to be buried in a nice-smelling park where people are playing games and talking and sitting. Incidentally, a story idea came to me today, or the beginnings of one, and that's always a good, hopeful feeling.

I then dragged myself, half-starved, over to what was billed by the guide book as a food road. It wasn't particularly, and I decided at random to sit in a restaurant where I saw a lot of people. Dinner today was a real wild card: I just had the waitress pick my dishes. I got two dishes, which was way more than I needed, but swallowed them down anyway. One was a pretty mediocre glass noodle, beef and mushroom broth, but the other one, beef with snow peas and potatoes in some sort of sauce, was killer. I really bolted them down. After that, on a whim, I went into a convenience store and indulged in the simple freedom of buying a half liter of Qingdao and drinking it as I walked to the Bund to take some night time pictures. Because, after all, here in Shanghai, not only am I of age, but there apparently (according to the shop keeper) is no brown bag law. Nice.

Incidentally, while the Chinese don't really give a damn about alcohol, what they do care about is pornography. A sign in my hotel (along with vaguely warning me to use the internet respectfully - eek) warns strongly against bringing pornography in, and on a street where you can clearly see prostitutes plying their trade, you won't ever see even a scrap of a nudie mag. Odd country, where you can get crunk on the street but can't enjoy a gentleman's magazine in the comfort of your own hotel room.

The Pudong and Bund are lovely at night, and I only realized today I didn't walk the whole length of the Bund. A photo vendor in Huangpu Park inexplicably played a Conway Twitty song - strange. The Chinese, also, hustle like crazy. I am constantly mobbed in Shanghai by people selling trinkets, photos, rolexes, girls, drugs, whatever. Today, as I was walking, a particularly aggressive hawker followed me down the street for a block, asking, "Boy want DVD? Boy want watch? Boy want T-shirt?" After I said no to each offer, exasperated, she asked, "What does boy want?", as if there was something wrong with me for not wanting anything. I had a laugh at that one.

So this is it, the end of my travelling for now. Tomorrow I fly into Kunming. It's been quite an experience, to say the least. Overall, top sights:
1. Taishan
2. Great Wall
3. Summer Palace
4. Suzhou
5. Beihai Park
Cities visited, from fave to least fave:
1. Shanghai
2. Suzhou
3. Hangzhou
4. Tai'an
5. Beijing
6. Chengde

Overall, it's cost me (excluding air fare, which I didn't pay for) around a thousand bucks. China is not a dream cheap world, though you can certainly do it for cheaper than I did. If I had a lot of money, I probably would live the same as I do now, but I'd travel a hell of a lot more. For me, it's worth it. I love to travel more than anything.

It's been a heck of an experience. Although during the middle of the trip, I had sort of a freak out about the stupidity and foolishness of the trip, I have to say, although I keep saying I'd do it differently if I had to do it again, the way I did it went pretty well. Actually, only one thing didn't work out according to plan: I didn't get to visit Qufu, which is regrettable. I saw some stuff and had some experiences that I probably wouldn't have if I had done things differently, and I feel like I really did get to know myself better. I'm generally kind of a solitary guy, but that's one thing and this is another. I've gotten to really analyze who I am and what I want and what makes me happy, and what I need to get along.

Damn, I'm talking about this trip as if it's already done. It still hasn't sunk in that I'm due to spend another four months here. Already, I miss my family (go figure) and my friends and America in general. Eh, I'll be back soon enough. I'll try to post tomorrow when I get in with my initial impressions of Kunming. In general, expect the postings to slow, since I'll be actually studying. I'll probably post once a week or so, general wrapups, or when something significant happens. Once I get my laptop, I'll post all the pictures I've been taking.

While climbing Taishan, I realized that, in a way, the Taoist quest for immortality represented by climbing Taishan is somewhat similar to this trip. Tao immortals do not find some secret potion to become immortal; they simply realize that life has no limits, and therefore they cannot die. This trip, also, has served to show me that my life has fewer limits than I thought, that I'm more capable than I thought. And while I'm not immortal (not by far), I'm certainly a lot more durable now than when I started.

Till tomorrow.

2/10/09, Hangzhou

It's the end of another nice relaxing day here, and I'm ready to just have a beer and coast on to Kunming. Definitely feeling like things are winding down. Here's my train route:
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And then my in-city route today:
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Another really easy train ride, direct hour long shuttle from Shanghai South railway station (only very recently rebuilt) to Hangzhou. I don't know if it's because I'm an American and they assume I want soft seat, or just that the routes and the times they want are all served by cushier, more expensive Z class trains, but here around Shanghai, I've been travelling really well. Walking around Hangzhou today reinforced for me how much more affluent and cosmopolitan the mid-southern regions are than the north. The odd thing is that stereotype has existed for centuries. It was the Han cultured heartland in Hangzhou and Nanjing versus the Manchu barbarian seat of power in Beijing.

Today was one of my easiest days, blisfully unplanned and at a lovely pace. I really didn't have any specific things I wanted to see in Hangzhou, just a general desire to see the famous city (considered by many expats and by Marco Polo to be the most beautiful city in China). I basically just took the tourist bus (I learned my lesson from yesterday and coughed up the extra yuan) to the south of Hangzhou's famed West Lake, where the was a pretty set of paths over goldfish filled lakes. Took a ferry from there to an island in the middle of the lake, and then from that island to the north of the lake, where there is a gorgeous, pleasant little park, and a famous willow lined pedestrian causeway dating back to the Song Dynasty. And that was more or less the bulk of my day, three hours or so, just walking around.

Before that, however, I had another encounter with typical Chinese everyday madness. The ticket office in Hangzhou was a mess, and I had to wait in line for about half an hour to book my return leg. I got there at 10:50, and at 11:10, I nervously noticed that the window I was in line for shut down for lunch at 11:30. Luckily, I was able to get my ticket, and then had to search for the buses near the crowded train station. After maybe fifteen minutes, I found the silliest looking buses I've ever seen, done up like old street cars. Tourist bus indeed.

Hangzhou is a lovely city, and I mean that with the specific weight and connotation of lovely. It's not overpoweringly beautiful, like, say, Taishan or the Great Wall, but it was just pleasant to walk around in, especially with sunny weather in the sixties today. It even smelled nice, which made me regret not visiting in the spring. Of course, keep in mind that I only saw a small part of Hangzhou, the more tourist friendly part, so I'm making my judgment on that, which would be like judging NYC on the basis of Central Park. I would like to spend more time there, however.

An odd thing about Hangzhou: they pump this really sappy, elevator type music through many of their parks, which was just silly. I burst out laughing sometimes, just because the music was too much.

I had another conversation in Mandarin in Hangzhou, prompted by a really fashionable looking guy who called me over. I think he might have called me over because I might have looked at his girl too long, which I actually didn't think I did, but I do tend to stare. He told me that my Mandarin must improve (duh), and then we discussed the relative merits of Hangzhou and Shanghai, and then Chinese and American girls. I told him I preferred American girls. He said, "But they're so big! You must like big butts!" It was a pleasant conversation.

After walking for a few hours, I took another tourist bus (which was so empty it might as well have been a taxi) to a teahouse I had read about in the New York Times. Hangzhou is famous for its tea, Longjing (dragon well) tea, a special green tea made with water from the uh, Longjing. This place was a bit of a tourist trap, and a bit expensive, but impressive nonetheless. It was old school, with waiters in Qing era costumes, a nice calm decor, and even free snacks on the table. The thing this place is known for is trick pouring. The waiters have special longstemmed teapots and do all of these elaborate trick pours, like behind the back and over the shoulder. It was pretty cool and I got a picture, although I felt like a super tourist. Tea actually seemed a bit weak to me, but hey, what do I know. I paid a ridiculous amount (so much that, although not an over the top expense, it was an absurd amount for what I got even in American dollars) for a little bit of Longjing tea. Ehh, I don't buy many souvenirs and I love tea; might as well put out for the best.

Which reminds me, I haven't been haggling much here, maybe not as much as I should. Mostly, it's because I don't buy much, and what I do buy is in places where haggling is not done (restaurants, places with visible price tags). I just feel odd about it, because more often than not I'm happy to pay full price, so it just feels like a weird, unpleasant little game. I feel like it's as if someone said that Americans often whip each other with wet towels, and then every tourist who came to America started whipping us randomly with wet towels. It may be a cultural practice, but why would you do it if you're an outsider and there's no reason to?

For dinner, I sampled a Hangzhou delicacy, Dongpo Pork, which is slabs of pork cooked in Shaoxing wine. Pretty good, rich, stewy tasting, slightly aromatic. In typical Chinese style, a slab of pork meant a slab of pork, from meat to fat to skin. I was counting the hairs on this sucker. As far as food goes, this hasn't been an insane trip, the way I thought it might be. I often feel like I get the wrong thing, although I get some great dishes, and I just don't feel like I can really judge how good something is. Real Chinese food is to American Chinese food what Italian food is to Red Italian: more varied, more subtly flavored, with some stuff you can't find in America and without some stuff you can find everywhere in America (no Crab Rangoon, thank you). Hopefully, when I'm going with people who know what they're doing in Kunming, I'll do better.

So, tomorrow is my last day travelling. I'm ok with that, and am ready to just settle down and get to work. It'll be relaxing, with me just staying in one city for once, sleeping in just a bit late, checking out some of Shanghai's art galleries, possibly the Lu Xun memorial, and then nighttime visits to Pudong and the Bund. Hell, I might even study (gasp!). I'll check in with you afterwards. Till tomorrow.

2/9/09, Suzhou

Damn, another tiring (though pleasant) day. I've really worn myself down this trip, and I'll be glad to just sit in one place in Kunming, just studying and not running myself ragged. Here's my train route for today:
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And then, here's my walking route in Suzhou:
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The trains here have been a dream．Everything in this leg of the trip, actually, has just been easier. It was only a half hour out to the city of Suzhou, in a very comfortable Z class train. I've been eating these Macanese egg tarts for breakfast, pretty good, actually. Suzhou is a really great city, and is an emblem of the various paradoxes that define China. On one hand, Suzhou is right on the Shanghai-Beijing train line, basically a suburb of Shanghai, and has a population of about six million people. However, it's also one of the oldest cities in China, having been continuously settled since the 800s BC, a city visited and admired by Marco Polo, a city built around a series of lovely little canals. So what you end up getting when you visit Suzhou is a thoroughly modern, dynamic city with a population about the size of Chicago proper, built around picturesque canals and studded with lovely, world famous gardens. Pretty awesome.

It doesn't really make sense for me to discuss the gardens one by one, since they have a kind of unified effect. The first garden I went to, the Humble Administrator's Garden is the largest and the loveliest, which I happily spent a few hours in. The Lion Forest Gardens have these really neat arrangements of rocks which you can walk under and over. The Ming Scholar Garden in the Met is actually based on a section of the Master of Nets Garden. The last garden I only spent twenty odd minutes in, and wasn't too impressed by, but then I was tired. Chinese gardens are just plain lovely, and neat in that they present so many paths for you to walk, so you feel like you're discovering the garden for yourself. I love the zig zag stone buildings and elevated pavilions and especially the mandarin ducks. I certainly wouldn't mind living in one of these gardens.

I've noticed, especially in this last stretch, that I've been absolutely happy and content, totally devoid of any of those worries or ambitions that have always gnawed at me in the past. I wonder if it's just because of this situation, that I wake up every day and go see beautiful things and don't have to worry about money or work, or if it's a certain state of mind that I can access at home, a certain clear headedness, a contentness found in abandoning all those big worries. I resist that idea a little bit, in that I really can't see myself abandoning the desire to become a great writer, or to be somebody. But maybe that's the route to happiness, and it's not just a matter of China, but anywhere I am.

My lunch today was terrific. I went to a restaurant that apparently, was founded in the Ming Dynasty. Makes Antoine's in New Orleans seem like the new kid on the block. As recommended, I ordered an oily eel dish that was just damn insane. Really a great meal, maybe my best yet. This southern leg has treated me well, food wise.

I didn't realize how much I had walked today until I mapped it just now, but I knew it certainly felt like a lot. I didn't think the distance between points would be so great, so I spent the whole day walking in that giant circle from the train station. Whew, tomorrow, and from now on, even this walking lover is going to try and take the bus.

It is the Lantern Festival here, so, in line with tradition, I bought some special yuanxiao (sweet rice dumpling things, think mochi). I actually mandarined this one out, requesting "the special cookies Chinese people eat today"; they're pretty good, though I had to buy a set of them and as a result, I ate too many. The fireworks are booming once again here (The Lantern Festival marks the end of the New Year season), with the locals setting them off in the street with no regard for anybody's safety. Tis the season, I guess. Nothing special for dinner today, as I ducked into a ramen house here and just gulped it down.

Tomorrow, my last big excursion, to the city of Hangzhou. I'll let you know how it goes. Till tomorrow.

2/8/09, French Concession/Pudong

Today's post should be relatively short because it wasn't the busiest day. My uncle's father-in-law, who does some business in China, happened to be in Shanghai today, so I joined him for lunch and dinner, which was very pleasant and relaxing. Here's my route for today:
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I've been waking up later since I've gotten to Shanghai, mostly because my days here are less packed, and also just because I'm more at ease in this city. I only managed to get out of my hotel room today at 10 AM, and I walked over and hopped a quick train to get to the French Concession. The French Concession is simply a lovely area, half New Orleans old world charm, half 5th Avenue capitalist clout. It is in this neighborhood, ironically, that the Chinese Communist Party held their first national congress. The shock of going from the jewelry stores and bistros of the French Concession to the cradle of the largest communist party left in the world is quite palatable. The museum is small, rather new, and patrolled by an aggressive cadre (perhaps a literal cadre) of security guards who wouldn't even let me photograph Marxist, Cultural Revolution sounding declarations that "The Communist Party of China is the ultimate culmination of historical progress in China". It's quite a contrast between the capitalism and cosmopolitanism of the new Shanghai and the communist jargon of the museum, and between a corpratist party that controls a billion people, and seeing the start of the party, thirteen delegates in a room that's smaller than my bedroom. The historical distortions are interesting, notably, a diorama represents Mao as being central to the first congress, when he only became a predominant leader of the movement after the Long March.

After that, I walked a few blocks over to the chief residence of Sun Yatsen. It struck me what another time he lived in, how completely different China was eighty years ago compared to now. I wonder how things would have turned out had Sun Yatsen lived longer, whether he would have lost the relatively sainted status he has now, or whether his pragmatism would have made him another Gandhi. In any case, I got a good history buff rush looking at the old documents and memorbilia, and then returned to modernity with a cappuchino that cost more than my meal did last night.

I then joined my uncle's father-in-law for lunch and then dinner at his hotelm the St. Regis, in the Pudong business district. I took a few hours in between to walk around the Pudong, walking to the Huangpu river and then along it for a few yards. The St. Regis is a lovely hotel, and it was quite a contrast considering that just a week ago, I was riding hard seat to Chengde. It's amazing to me that such disparities in wealth and luxury can exist in the same country. The Pudong is quite an interesting place. It was nothing but marshy farmland until about fifteen years ago, and now it is packed with some of the tallest buildings in the world. My uncle's father-in-law started doing business here in 1981; I can't even begin to imagine what it was like. It's also a question whether China, a country that has pegged its future on continued growth that is now faced with a global recession, can keep it up. My uncle's father-in-law and his colleagues couldn't help but notice the decline in business at their hotel. It's going to be interesting to see how things develop.

Talking over my experiences with my uncle's father-in-law and his colleagues, I realized what an adventure I've been having. I've experienced some remarkable stuff, and while I might do it differently next time, I'm glad I did do it the way I did it, because I certainly got to see and experience things I wouldn't have otherwise. Of course, it's easy to say that now, in comfort, in Shanghai; on the bus back from Chengde, all I wanted was to go home.

This internet cafe, btw, is quite an interesting place. China's youth spend hours at smoky, shady places like these, with hundreds of computers, playing games and watching movies. It's really something. Also, the walk here is fun. It's on East Nanjing Road, which by day is a pretty nice pedestrian mall, but by night is the shadiest piece of real estate I've ever been on. I've been solicited by pimps and prostitutes and offered drugs more times in ten minutes here than I ever have in New York. Pretty wild.

Shoot, I'm talking about this trip as if it's over, but I've still got four days left, and then I go to Kunming for three months. I've got a ticket tomorrow for Suzhou, sold to me by the most rapid ticket clerk I've ever seen. I'll tell you how it goes. Till tomorrow.

2/6/09-2/7/09, Dai Miao/Train to Shanghai/Bund/Yu Gardens

Hey folks, sorry I missed a post last night, but the internet facilities at my hostel are standing up and outdoors, and since I got in late last night, I waited until I could find a good internet bar to send out another dispatch. Here was my route yesterday:
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And then my train route, roughly:
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And then, walking, today:
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I got up early in the morning, and dropped off my stuff at the train station (which, despite my paranoia, of course went off without a hitch) and caught the bus to Dai Miao, or the Dai Temple. This bus was really a piece of work, weaving through heavy, motorbike traffic on a half paved road. The temple itself (you may know it as - and here, my geekiness inevitably shows - the Daoist wonder from Civ IV), although recommended by the guidebook, was nothing really that special. It had a nice set of walls you could walk on, a bonzai garden and a fantastic mural dating back to the Song Dynasty in deplorable condition, but otherwise, not so impressive. There was, however, because of the Chinese New Year, a set of pretty awesome, wacked out floats that I can't even describe...just see the pictures, when I eventually post them.

I got to the station about two and a half hours early, having nothing better to do. This time, I was travelling de-luxe, soft seat, and so got to sit in the very special soft seat waiting room. Overall, the soft seat ride is more or less what you pay for, a nice seat, like one you'd get for forty bucks here in the states, with a sweet little bottle of mineral water thrown in. This trip was not particularly fun however. First of all, as is clear to everyone in China including me, I'm travelling with way too much stuff, especially my one huge bag. I think I could probably check this bag, but I don't want to have to worry about getting my bag back, so I keep it with me. On this train, I dragged the bag all the way down to my seat, bumping elbows, running over stuff and generally being a very evident nuisance, only to see that there was no way in hell it was fitting overhead, and then, red-faced, dragged it back to the end of the car as the whole car watched and frowned with disdain. I had no choice but to mutter "duibuqi" and slink back to my seat.

Part of the reason I've had a rough couple of days is all of this worry about transportation. Travelling around with all of your stuff and worrying about catching trains is hard enough as is, and when you never completely understand exactly what's going on and what you're supposed to do, it's that much worse. It also definitely makes you feel more alone; everyone else seems to know what to do, and if you screw up, it's just your problem.

True to form, not five minutes in Shanghai, I got ripped off bad. This one really burns because I should have known better. Touts mobbed me as soon as I got off the train, grabbed my bags, and got me into a van to my hotel for 80 yuan. I acquiesced because in Taishan, the touts led me to a legitimate taxi, but I knew this wasn't on the level. It really burned when I found out that my hostel was less than a kilometer from the station. These scams are worse since I'm a city kid and not born yesterday, after all, so I can see them coming, but I'm often too tired, frustrated and anxious to put up a big fight against pushy scammers for ten dollars.

In any case, I got to my hostel alright. It's a nice place, relatively new, with a chic little bar in the middle. The Chinese clearly just use it as a budget hotel, but it is designed like a hostel, and I share my bathroom with another room. Also, the location is great, right near Shanghai's central railway hub and park and walking distance from most major sights. It's like having a room for ten bucks near Columbus Circle.

Got out of bed around 9, and walked from my hostel to the Bund. Bottom line, I love Shanghai. Beijing may be China's national city, but Shanghai is an international city, more modern and more comfortable in every way. Shanghai really feels like New York, the same energy, the same international feel. Both of those cities are cities built around money, with all that entails: the freedom, the energy, and the cruelty. For once, there's no shouts of hellloooo, no picture requests, no waiguoren and no laowai. People here are all busy with their own thing, they've seen you before and they don't care. It's really refreshing. I've had a few Chinese strike up conversations with me, but they're clearly tourists; the Shanghainese are used to foreigners.

That said, I'm glad that I'm not doing my program here. Shanghai is comfortable, but a little too comfortable. I didn't come here to be perfectly at ease, I came here to be shaken just a bit. It disturbs me how much I have retreated back to certain comforts, and how badly I've reacted when I can't get to them. I want to grow, and Shanghai would be perfectly happy letting me lead my New York life. For example, I've mostly used English here, since many Shanghai residents speak it rather well, and so it makes no sense to break out the Mandarin just to frustrate everybody. The expat situation (gleaned from reading an expat magazine and watching the expats, some of them - gasp - even hipster looking) is disturbing. It seems like extraterritoriality still exists, even if not in name, in fact.

The Bund is nice, though not incredible. I had a shot of espresso in a lovely cafe in what used to be a foreign bank building, now filled with offices that reminded me of when I had to deliver packages for the ARChive (complete with that outsider feel). I like Shanghai the city much more than what's in Shanghai, pretty much exactly the opposite of my feelings on Beijing. I also had another great experience with street food. Seeing some Chinese eating some crazy stuff on a stick, I walked over, and ordered one shrimp (since the person before me ordered it) and one wild card looking thing. The shrimp was eh (basically like imitation crab from a california roll, but on a stick), but the wild card, aw man! New York could learn a lot about street food from China; I won't rest until I can get all sorts of weird stuff on a stick back in the States.

After the Bund, I walked down to Yu Gardens. To reach the gardens, I had to walk through an insane tourist/capitalist maelstrom, the likes of which only China could muster. The gardens themselves are very nice, very polite Ming era chinese gardens, beautiful architecture. It was a place I might actually want to live. A remarkable thing about walking around in the gardens: I heard Japanese. Sure enough, there were the world's greatest tourists, the Japanese, in big mobs. It's somewhat jarring, especially after visiting the Marco Polo Bridge, to see the home of China's Anti-Imperialist left welcome in the Japanese. But as I said before, Shanghai's a city of money, and that means old quarrels are forgotten, I guess.

I tried to get Shanghai's famous dumplings, xiaolongbao, at a noted place near the Gardens, but the line was insane and did not move. I opted for another place, and got some no problem. As I bit into the dumplings, I realized that they were my old friend, soup dumplings, and as usual, were pretty great. I guess it isn't called Joe's Shanghai for nothing.

I finished the day off at the Shanghai Museum. Here in Shanghai, it seems the Chinese have finally mastered the very necessary art of curation. The museum's collection is not exactly huge (I did most of the museum in about an hour and twenty minutes, on slightly quick museum pace), but there are some lovely pieces in there. The ceramics and bronzes are exceptional, and I even liked the painting and calligraphy, which usually aren't my thing. I found the seal galleries particularly interesting, since I had never thought about all the artistic elements of the seal: not only the decorative carving, but the calligraphy and composition of the characters.

I went to get dinner at a place in the French Concession, and it was probably my best meal yet. It was a small noodle shop off a main street, run by elderly Chinese women who bared an uncanny resemblance to my paternal grandmother. For once, I did this pretty much entirely in Mandarin, with little recourse even to pointing. I got spicy pork with noodles in a fish broth, and it was filling, and so incredibly delicious I do not know what to say. After a few minutes, the most surly Shanghai women I have ever seen were seated next to me, Carnegie Deli style, but that didn't get me down. The best part? My best meal was probably also my cheapest meal, at a little under three dollars american. Hell yes.

Shanghai's had me thinking a bit. First, my first week in China, I've felt particularly American, but here, I realize, feeling so at home, my real identity is more linked to the international, cosmopolitan city. I am more home here than say, in St. Louis. I don't know how to feel about that. The cosmopolitan identity is a particularly bourgeoise identity, available to people only of a certain status and background. My retreat into comfort plays into this. It gets harder to say that everyone's going to need to live less well when you have sampled the realities of a country like China, and realize that you miss certain facets of middle class existence. I think that maybe, the goal is to spread this existence as much as possible, and just cut over the top consumption. Although, Marx, in his critique of bourgeoise socialism, points out that this is an impossible and ineffectual goal, with quite solid logic, but then, who knows, he certainly wasn't right about everything.

It's certainly the goal of the Communist party. Walking around here, I realize more and more that the goal of the CCP - started in Shanghai, and dominated by quite a few Shanghai party members - is to Shanghaize the country. There is an interesting slogan here, related to the 2010 Shanghai expo, which is as much a crazed state objective here as the Olympics were a year ago for Beijing. It is "chengshi, rang shenghuo geng meihao", and is translated as "Better city, better life", but a more accurate translation would be "City, make life even grander". The urban, cosmopolitan existence of Shanghai seems to be seen as a dream and a goal for all of China. Whether it's attainable or sustainable, well, we'll see how well the party can do it.

The other three big words I see around China coming from the government are "wenming" (civilized), "hexie" (harmonious) and "heping" (fair). They all have interesting connotations, particularly "wenming", which is everywhere and related to all sorts of things. It seems to mean more Western, quieter, more developed. It makes dissent seem like a question of good manners.

So I'm doing pretty good here, and am looking forward tomorrow. I'll probably do some combination of the French Concession, Pudong or the Lu Xun memorial. See you folks tomorrow.

2/4/09-2/5/09, Marco Polo Bridge/Ming City Walls/Overnight Hard Sleeper/Taishan

If I just stop making any sense at all in the middle of this post, I apologize. I can barely keep my eyes open, which is understandable, since I did climb a damn mountain today. Yesterday was probably my worst day in China (for a few hours, anyhow) and today was probably my best. Here was my route for yesterday:
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And then for the journey:
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And then for today:
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I checked out of my beloved hostel early yesterday morning and schlepped my stupid heavy bags to the train station by subway. It is really, obviously dumb to carry this much stuff with me, and the Chinese make fun of me for it or grunt with annoyance. At the train station, I had probably my worst mandarin experience of the trip, having the woman scream with annoyance at me, not understanding a damn word, as I tried to squeeze my bags into the lockers. She also tried to convey to me the closing date, which I understood, but the way she insisted on it made it sound like the Apocalypse. I felt awful, dispirited and depressed; I wanted to just curl up in the fetal position. But since I had already paid to store my bags, I went to the Marco Polo Bridge,

I took the bus to the bridge, and it actually went very smoothly. I got a bunch of odd looks and mutters from the locals (it was in a part of the city where the signs aren't even transliterated into pinyin, and that's a part of town that you know must not see a lot of westerners). One of the buses I took was more or less the crosstown local, and if you could pack more people into a bus, I'd like to see it. It even makes the rush hour IRT look like a cakewalk. I spent pretty much the whole hour-long ride standing up, pressed up against the window, just trying to keep it together, while thinking about everything I don't like about Beijing. There were people on that bus who were more intimate with my body than some girls I've hooked up with.

There is a memorial at the bridge (where World War II started, if you count the Sino-Japanese war, which you probably should) which I found a stirring, amazing piece of Socialist Realism. People knock socialist realism for being trash, and most of it definitely is, but it's also art designed for a specific purpose, and when it's employed for that purpose, the effect can be striking. There were a series of remarkable reliefs, with dramatic, exciting compositions, and creepy ideas about why the Chinese prevailed (the creepiest: "undying hatred for the enemy"). What it impressed on me is the reality that we in America have no comprehension of the sheer disaster and horror that the Sino-Japanese war and the various conflicts preceding it was for the Chinese. The slaughter and the terror is simply unimaginable, and the memory burns brightly at least in the government approved narrative of the conflict. It is something they won't just forget and maybe that we shouldn't expect them to forget.

What I wasn't taught in Social Studies was that the Marco Polo Bridge was not only where World War II started (and, in fact, it didn't actually start there, but right nearby, at a railway junction near the walled village of Wanping) but a gorgeous piece of architecture. The bridge is lined with about 150 carved stone lions, each of them unique. This was one of the few times this trip where I was really impressed by something on an artistic level. The detail and posing of these lions is really exquisite. It's also one of the few really old things in Beijing, dating back to the Liao Dynasty. Most of Beijing is actually relatively new, since the Mongols razed Beijing to the ground in the 1100s, and the Ming destroyed most of the old Yuan structures. Additionally, what many people don't realize (or at least, I didn't) is that Beijing was not the capital or even main city in China until Kublai Khan's time. Most native Chinese dynasties had other cities (Nanjing, Xian, Kaifeng) as their capital. The Ming were the only fully Chinese dynasty to have Beijing as their capital.

I loved the bridge, and spent a few hours walking up and down. I sat and finished the spare ribs from the previous night for lunch, which, as expected, were hella delicious. Then I took the bus back to the subway, and headed off to walk along the old Ming City Walls. The walls themselves are nothing special, not particularly beautiful, but interesting for historical reasons and for the purposes of envisioning what the old city must have been like. Also, the city walls park borders a busy, noisy, heavily trafficked street and so is Beijing in a microcosm, the tranquil ancient and the hectic modern in direct juxtaposition, in a strange coexistence.

Once that was done, I found that I still had a bunch of hours to kill, but no hotel and nowhere particular to go. I just walked around the railway station, which was a bad idea. That atmosphere is absolutely lethal to me, and left to my own devices, with nothing better to do, I just kept running the nightmare scenarios over and over again in my head: I wouldn't get my bags back, I wouldn't be able to get them on the train, I'd miss my stop, I wouldn't be able to find my hotel. This trip, I must say, has really humbled me. I was so arrogant in planning it, so sure I could do things myself and it would all go swimmingly. I wouldn't listen to anybody's advice. Having worked myself into a panic, I retreated to a familiar haven: Starbucks. I could probably write a paper on the symbolism that swirls around coffee in modern China: it is the affluent West and its attending freedoms and culture of the individual in a cup. In any case, as stupid and as much of a ripoff as it was, I was glad to retreat into a familiar world of cushy chairs, tables with things written on them, soft American music and lattes (although here, it is pronounced natie).

I got an awful set of baozi (big bready dumplings) and ate what I could of them while wandering around. Then I returned to my bags, and a funny thing happened. The same woman was sitting, watching them, and she engaged me in a long conversation about Beijing, and she was perfectly lovely and nice. It was a revalation. I had totally misjudged the situation before, and it served as a perfect example of how these sort of cross-cultural communications can be totally misread. I left with my bags, and absolutely sure everything was going to be alright.

Beijing is a city of twenty million people and a hundred damn chairs in the train waiting room. I sat on the floor for a few hours with my bags, listening to my iPod (Clipse's "Chinese New Year" acquires quite another meaning when listened to here). Then we crowded on to the train (which makes no goddamn sense, but the Chinese crowd on to everything). Hard sleeper is really fine, perfectly comfortable, and I slept pretty much as soon as I hit the sack. I was concerned about missing my stop because it wasn't the last on the line (doubly so when a woman said that I had gotten on the wrong train; I was proud of myself, however, because I also understood that she was mistaken) but the conductor woke me up, and so it was a nonissue. Once arrived here, I headed straight for the ticket counter. To my disappointment, they didn't have any tickets for Shanghai tomorrow, except for a Soft Sleeper in the afternoon, which put me out a few yuan and means I'll have to miss Qufu, which I'm really pissed about. On the other hand, it might be a good idea to waste a day, if it means giving me a night to get comfortable in Shanghai.

Getting to the hotel turned out to be fine. After a mantralike repeating of the information I had about the hotel to the assembled cab drivers, it clicked for one of them and we got there, no problem. He was a really nice guy, though as with most cab drivers, the driving itself was probably not the best. My suitcase didn't fit all the way in the trunk, so he just let the trunk flap open, and there was a full on roll cage, right out of "Death Proof", for the driver, but not for me. When I looked back at the trunk nervously after we hit a bump, the driver said, oh, it's nothing, and I said, I hope it's nothing. The hotel I am staying at here is embarassingly ritzy, although, as a lovely added touch, it quite openly advertises a prostitute service in the room and in the lobby. Stay classy, China.

Overall, I wonder if my rough first week was more of a Beijing issue than a China issue. People here in Shandong are mostly friendly and very pleasant, and I'm less on edge as a result. Tai'an is an ugly, noisy little city, that somehow has worse air than Beijing. But the people have been really great, and it picks me up.

After putting my stuff in my room and taking a shower, I headed off for Taishan, China's holiest mountain. Mao climbed the top of Taishan to watch the sunrise and famously proclaimed, "The East is Red", which is something that's always captivated me, I don't know quite why. Confucius and a variety of emperors, dating back to ancient times, have climbed up Taishan's 6600 steps to the peak. It's said if you climb to the top of Taishan, you live for a 100 years. So that's what I decided to do.

It's not an easy climb, but it's doable for a not-particularly-in-shape amateur (like me), or Chinese grandmothers, or even a couple of daring crippled beggars. The mountain itself is gorgeous, all cypress and pine and ancient rocks. Taishan is one of those places where you sit and look and listen, and it seems like nature is of one piece, and that it was created and is working towards a unified purpose. Even the rocks, billion year old metamorphic schists (think Old Man in The Mountain back in the states), have a sort of ancient mystery to them.

I've been having an interesting experience visiting these holy sights, because invariably there are shrines with idols, and the Chinese want you to bow and offer incense. What's surprised me is how much I resist this. I am a Jew and I do believe in God, but I've never thought of him as this jealous human presense, God with a capital G. Yet something in me makes it feel wrong to bow down to an idol, something deep inside of me. Today, at the urging of the Chinese, I made an awkward bow to the deity of Taishan, but I felt bad immediately afterward and said the sh'ma to myself. It's a funny thing.

The foreigner experience on Taishan was unreal, because I was one of the only white faces there. I was asked to take a picture with someone no less than four times today (which gets annoying, but how can I say no?), and I cannot count how many times I heard "Hello!" said half in jest, or was referred to as a foreigner. It's just odd to me, at this point, that the Chinese would still be so startled by a foreigner. Also, in case you were wondering if the Chinese wouldn't spit on Taishan, they did spit on Taishan. At this point, I don't understand the spitting from a physical perspective; I don't understand how the Chinese can have so much spit in them.

But Taishan, Taishan was magnificent. My happiest day, and probably the best thing I've seen here. The view is amazing. I went to the platform overlooking the ancient state of Lu and sat there alone, reading the Dao De Jing, and suddenly, I felt a distinct harmony with the universe. For the first time in my life, I really felt small. I realized that it wasn't Confucius that made the mountain, but the mountain that made Confucius. And suddenly, with this uncanny feeling of being nothing before the universe, all the petty anxieties over whether I'm a good enough writer, whether I'll ever get a job, all the anger and loneliness that I usually feel, melted away. I walked around so blissful that I didn't want to come down. I seriously just wanted to stay on top of Taishan forever. It actually felt like a spiritual experience, and its kind of shaken me.

I did, however, eventually catch the cable car and then a bus down, with the intention of seeing Taishan's other site, the Dai Temple. Unfortunately, the temple was closed for a New Year's event. I'll try to see it tomorrow maybe. I walked around and went to this dumpling house recommended by the guide book, and to my surprise, a couple of westerners walked in. I invited them to eat with me. They were Dutch post-grad travellers who planned on spending four months in China, and were really doing the lonely planet thing, hard seating it everywhere. They were nice guys, and I was happy to have someone to discuss my experiences with and not to eat alone for once.

Tomorrow should be pretty boring, just the train, although if I can store my bags, I'll try to see the Dai Temple too. I'll have to see what the internet situation is, but I'll probably be able to write an abbreviated (for once) dispatch. Till tomorrow.

2/3/09, The Great Wall

Today was my happiest day by far in Beijing, and I couldn't say exactly why. I was in a good mood and comfortable even when I was lost. It's my last night in Beijing, and I'm sorry that I'm leaving here just as I was starting to get accustomed to it. Still probably don't want to live here, though. There's just not enough from block to block, way too much sprawl. But today was a good day. Here was my route:
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Just once, I'd like to have a day without a major transportation snafu. I was so sure that today was going to be a cinch, because I was following exact instructions given to me by both the guidebook and the Beijing subway system: line 2 to Jishuiping, line 919 to Badaling. Of course, however, something did happen. What neither source told me was that there are multiple 919s, and unless I walked to the exact right station, I would not catch the one going to Badaling. I rode the wrong 919 to the end of the line and only then asked about the Great Wall, earning a bemused response from the bus driver and the conductor. So once again, in the middle of nowhere, I allowed myself to be hustled into a ripoff, definitely not on the level cab. This time, my Mandarin really did save me. I was able to nail him down to a price (still way too much, 100 yuan) and not let him drag me to anywhere I didn't want to go. At the end of the day, I'm ok with it, since I'd rather be where I want to be then wander on endlessly just to avoid spending a few yuan.

I'm not entirely sure what to say about the Great Wall, and feel like quoting President Nixon, whose response was "This is a Great Wall". It is unimaginably majestic, sweeping views of gorgeous mountains and valleys, and with an elegant simplicity. I spent three hours just walking up and down and looking, and even having people take my picture. I also got my second picture request on the Great Wall. I accepted it, of course. I owe my adoring public.

On the Wall, besides gaping in awe and being happy to be around all this beauty, I thought about a couple of things. I've always been sort of a military history buff, and so I thought about the military efficacy of the wall. The Great Wall is a massive failure, and the main reason, as Genghis Khan famously put it, is that, ultimately, the strength of a wall depends on the courage of its fortifications. But outside of that, walking the wall today, I thought of another reason why the Great Wall was not particularly wise. The terrain there is already rough, and a wall on those mountains only serves to waste men by forcing them to spread out. A better strategy would be, along the lines of the Maginot line, to fortify the difficult to defend terrain to force the enemy over the bad terrain. Or that's what it seems like to me, anyhow. Really, it struck me, the purposes of the Great Wall must have been internal political reasons: Qin Huangdi showing his sheer might, chutzpah and ability. I also thought, in a more abstract sense, about the way some of our greatest achievements and demonstrations of human capability are also products of tyranny, how monuments of great beauty often come directly out of deep oppression.

I almost forgot! While I was climbing the Great Wall, I heard two familiar beeps. Impossible, I thought, it's someone else. My cell phone hasn't worked since I got to China. But sho'nuff, it was two text messages welcoming me to China. I guess the height of the Great Wall allowed the satellite to find it, or something. This is great, because now I have a reliable alarm clock, and I can be reached if there's an emergency, or if I'm just totally lost. Nothing else though, please; it'd cost a fortune. In the understatement of the century, my cell phone says that I'm "roaming".

Another cute little story on the Great Wall. A little Chinese kid came running at me, pointing and shouting a not so nice word for foreigner. I looked at him, smiled, and said softly in Mandarin, you're not very polite. He was immediately chastened and me and his family both laughed. Me 1, the Chinese a couple hundred yuan.

I often, btw, get complimented on my Mandarin, but generally, my conversations consist of the same four or five questions: what nationality are you, where did you learn Mandarin, where are you going, your chinese is very good, etc. Also, generally, these are people who are recieving my money. Whenever something comes out of left field, or comes very fast, my comprehension and speaking skill breaks down crazy quickly. And it varies, from day to day, and from interaction to interaction.

I caught the right bus back from Badaling. I was originally planning to see the Ming Tombs, but I percieved what a transportation nightmare that'd likely be, and chose to skip it. I tried to fit in a visit to a Taoist Temple here in Beijing, but I got back too late. Which was fine by me, I could have spent all day at the Great Wall. For once, I just stayed in my hotel and relaxed a bit, watching the CCTV english station (even CCTV's english speakers aren't very good) and a couple of rare Max Fleischer cartoons that are hard to find in the states. After chilling for an hour, I headed out to a restaurant in East Beijing recommended by the guidebook for Beijing style food. Today, I ordered the recommended dish, fried spareribs, and some noodles to go with it. I thought I wouldn't be in the mood for fried spareribs, and I was right, but I have to say, I've never had something so delicately fried, and the pepper salt that went with it had a neat, numbing heat. I was expecting half a rack and got a whole one, and could barely finish half, so I saved some for lunch tomorrow. The noodles, on the other hand, were just American lo mein, nothing special, and the guy laughed when I said I didn't want them packed up to go, I think he knew what was up.

Tomorrow's kind of a wild card day, and I've left it wide open. Depending on how it goes at the train station, I might try to squeeze in a trip to the Marco Polo Bridge or Tianning Temple, but we'll see. I'm extremely anxious about my trip to Taishan, now that I'm in China aware of everything that can go wrong: my bag might be too big, I might have to check my bag, I might not be able to get my bag back, I'll miss my stop, I won't be able to find my hotel (which I don't even have an exact address for), I won't be able to get a train out. And those aren't even the unknown unknowns. As the Chinese say, don't worry about ten thousand, just worry about one in ten thousand. I'm getting sick of moving around at this point, and just want the assurance that I'll be somewhere safe. I've learned my lesson; no more travelling alone. Next time I do something like this, I don't care if I get physically pulled around with a leash by the tour guide, better that than dealing with this stuff. Well, maybe not quite that much. But I definitely am never travelling alone again.

Eh, things always tend to end up right side up for me, though. I might not be able to blog tomorrow, unless I can find an internet cafe near the train station. We'll see. Till tomorrow.

2/2/09, Chengde

I realize, from the reaction that I've been getting to the blog, that I might be overemphasizing the anxiety provoking parts of this trip. Really, it's not all like that. It's been more of a thrill ride in the full sense of the term, in that I go from having amazing experiences and interactions and absolutely loving it to being pretty sure that I'm going to be stranded on the streets of Beijing until I starve to death. Case in point: today, there was barely a moment where I didn't say to myself, this is insane, this is insane, this is insane. But now that I'm safely back at the hostel, I can look back on it and think that I had some great experiences, and at least have a few good stories to tell. Here was my route:
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Let me start by saying, up front, that no part of today was a good idea. It was crazy to think I could go to Chengde in a day. It was crazier going when I knew there was only one train back I could realistically take. I'm getting ahead of myself, but it's important to establish, upfront, how nuts my plan was even from the outset, and how, if I were travelling with somebody, I could probably have been moved to my better senses. Also, an important element of today was that I was the sole foreigner everywhere I went, so today really was diving head first into China.

I didn't sleep well last night because I was so anxious about my first encounter with the Chinese railway system. As is, it turned out ok. My Chinese is good enough that I was able to figure out where I had to go, and from there, I followed the crowds and did what they did. I've been meaning to take more pictures of these huge institutional structures and the masses of people moving through them; they're really astounding. Not until I took my "hard seat" did I realize how native I was going, right with the tired migrants in a yes, hard seat right next to a heater. The train ride to Chengde was incredible. Between the train itself and the old villages and dramatic terraced hills and mountains visible from the train, I felt like I was in a National Geographic spread. I ought to have taken more pictures, but I didn't want to disturb my sleeping neighbors.

Once off the train, having a scant two or three hours before I needed to catch my return train, I headed straight to the Chengde ticket office to buy my return ticket. In China, you can't buy round trip tickets. I don't know why this is; I don't think it's incredibly uncommon for people to want to return to places where they've been. The whole place looked like a bank panic, typical China madness, with a long line. I sensed that something was up when people got into prolonged arguments with the teller. I waited for twenty minutes, then stepped up to the window and requested my ticket in Mandarin. Her response?

"Mei you", there aren't any. I responded, absolutely none? "Mei you", she said. Now I want you to repeat that phrase to yourself, "mei you". See if you can imagine the sinking feeling and the pure terror associated with realizing you might be stuck in the middle of China in a strange city for an indeterminate amount of time. I stumbled out in a daze. Luckily, I had my guidebook, which told me that I could catch buses out of the train station parking lot, buses which I subsequently saw. I was still uneasy; the trains are government run and reliable, but I had no idea how the buses worked or what I'd be getting into.

In any case, I was there. I grabbed a cab and headed over to my reason for going to Chengde, Puning Temple. My cab driver was a friendly fellow, who insisted on engaging me in Mandarin, becoming increasingly frustrated with me half understanding what he said. I sometimes think that my half-knowing Mandarin puts me in a worse position than if I didn't know Mandarin at all, because if I didn't speak any at all, we could revert to the old common denominator of hand signals, rather than continue these desperate attempts to make ourselves understood. Some of my communications go better than others, and this one with the cab driver went pretty well, even though he spoke with a heavy Northern accent and I lost him half the time. He took me on a quick tour around Chengde, and pointed out some sights, explaining their significance. One thing that's been a common experience and I have little understanding of is that the Chinese make no attempt to adjust their language level when it's clear that I have no goddamn idea what they're saying. They tend to just jabber at me even more insistently, as if a sterner tone would force me to understand.

Chengde itself is a lovely, if a little dirty, city of 700,000 in Northern China. It's in a gorgeous little river valley surrounded by mountains. The city was the Camp David of the Qing Dynasty, where they'd go to receive foreign dignitaries and negotiate treaties. One interesting facet of this function of the city was that they built several temples, associated with Chinese satellite states like Tibet, in order to awe and cater to the foreigners. Puning is one of these temples, a Lamaist temple. It was incredibly quiet and lovely when I visited. Mostly, it was the same sort of thing as the Lama Temple here in Beijing, but quieter, and also, had a band of old lamas who would perform a beautiful chant when paid. Also, the temple is built into a mountain and provides a breathtaking view of the city. Finally, the temple is home to an awe-inspiring (and the reason for the temple's UNESCO World Heritage designation) statue of Guanyin, a female incarnation of the Buddha, that stands about two stories tall. This statue is a true masterpiece, remarkable not only for its size, but as a beautiful work of sculpture. There really do seem to be a thousand limbs, each intricately articulated in a different way, according to the dictates of Buddhist symbology. And the folds in the fabric over the Guanyin, and the detail of her attendants, also about two stories tall, was exquisite.

I enjoyed Puning temple. A weird thing happened to me when I realized I might be trapped in the city indefinitely, or at least for the night. I kind of just let go, let go of everything and took it in. Puning is a beautiful place and I'm glad I went.

I was originally only planning to visit Puning, but now, with my time constraints temporarily lifted, for better or for worse, I decided to head to the Summer Retreat. I caught the bus, which was a little bit nerve racking, since I had only a rough sense of where I needed to go from the taxi ride and the guidebook, and I was just keeping alert to see where I should get off, and praying I wouldn't get hopelessly lost. At that point, I was starving, and luckily, the guidebook identified a snack street near the Retreat. I ponied up to the first place I saw, which had various kinds of meat on a stick. A confused communication got me ten little sticks of beef for about a dollar, and damn, was I ever glad I got it. I could tell from the spices that it was Muslim, or at least Northern, and the Muslims have done well by me on this trip, it was freakin' delicious.

Full up, I went to the Summer Retreat. Honestly, I didn't enjoy it that much. It was kind of on the same theme as the Summer Palace, but more wild, with deer, and more buildings made out of wood. It's beautiful, but I preferred the Summer Palace. Also, I didn't know, but was made aware by a plaque with a creepy injunction to "Never forget the national shame!", that this was where the Unequal Treaties were signed. To be honest, the bigger factor was a gnawing anxiety over not being able to get back to Beijing. I couldn't really enjoy myself.

I did have one great encounter in the Summer Retreat that had me beaming for a while. An old man sitting in a pagoda intercepted me as I was walking. What nationality are you, he asked me in Chinese. I'm American, I said. American?, he said, American. Ao-ba-ma! I laughed and repeated, Obama, yes. Then he said in Mandarin, Obama. America isn't bad. I made some light conversation and walked away totally charmed. China's not that bad either, my friend.

I ended up walking all the way from the summer retreat back to the train station (a couple of hard miles) because I didn't know the bus routes and couldn't manage to grab a taxi. Once there, I cautiously approached the minibuses, and was rapidly hustled by a couple of touts into a bus to Beijing (Here, I should note, that I might be underestimating the usefulness of my Chinese because I take character reading for granted. My ability to read characters saved my butt here, because I knew I was going to Beijing) In America, I'd probably never do that, but I was short on options. It was pretty much a Chinatown Bus, but, like, in China, and it was certainly the shadiest feeling thing I've ever been roped into. Highly confused, I joined the all Chinese passengers on the bus, and grabbed the last empty seat, next to an incredibly fat Chinese teenager (with a fat brother in the seat in front of him), the kind of fat that makes you understand why the airlines charge for two seats for these people. My butt was half in the aisle, and I wasn't exactly looking forward to the next three or four hours, squeezed against a broken plastic armrest by the fattest f-ing Chinese person I'd ever seen, understanding absolutely nothing of what was going on, and praying to God I'd get back to Beijing in one piece.

I passed the first hour by finishing Su Tong's book, Rice, which is an absolute masterpiece, btw. I then looked up from the book and saw a series of crenellated walls and towers weaving their way over the mountains. I was intrigued at first, and then it hit me: this was my first view of the Great Wall, and it happened completely by chance. Amazing, and it only happened because I was doing an insane thing.

I started watching the driver go, and as soon as I did, I wished I hadn't. I took a sick enjoyment out of watching this guy's MO: he would tailgate the car in front of him until he was practically up the other car's butt, he would honk, and then he would pass the car by going in the other lane. Of a two lane road. With traffic coming in the other direction. There's a point at which recklessness reaches virtuosity, and this is it. The best was when the cars that were this close to getting in a head-on collision with us would blink their warning lights, signifying the obvious, and our driver would resentfully get in the right lane, but only until another passing opportunity arose. To make matters worse, the transmission sounded fatally wounded. I wasn't worried though. I tend to think that people who do incredibly stupid, insane things make out ok.

I did manage to get to Beijing, of course. I realized 2/3rds of the way through the drive that while I knew the bus was going to Beijing, I had no idea where in Beijing. Making matters worse, individuals would get off the bus at seemingly random intervals, and I couldn't understand what was going on. I simply steeled myself and told myself I'd just get off when everyone else did, following the crowd. Thankfully, this strategy worked, and when I got to the Beijing Subway, I could barely believe I was there.

I had dinner today at a a nice old-style Beijing restaurant near the hotel. I picked the wrong dish, however, pig intestines. I was used to the tripe-y stuff you get in Flushing, and figured I'd be getting that, but the intestines had an awful aftertaste that I couldn't really stomach. I ate enough however, and it was a nice place, so nice I might go back tomorrow.

That was my day, probably my most nuts day so far. I'm glad it happened though. Although, on the other hand, one of the things I'm realizing is how much I really do rely on those little things that make us comfortable. I really don't enjoy being out of my comfort zone, and I don't fetishize it either. I'd prefer to see this amazing stuff and still get to live in American comfort, and understand what the hell I'm doing, and where I am, and not be crowded all the time. I really hope Kunming is not like this, otherwise it might be a rough couple of months. It might help just to have a place to be and a support network, however.

Tomorrow, one and only one thing: The Great Wall. Should be straight forward. Till then.

2/1/09, Summer Palace/Confucius Temple/Peking Duck

I am dead tired, and might pass out midway through this post. My legs are killing me, I'm cramping so bad I'm limping. However, I had a pretty good day, and am starting to get a little adjusted to the rhythms of the city. I still have those moments, when I don't know exactly where I am, where I get frustrated and depressed. It's impossible to get around in this city, when a block can be half a mile long, and it's not readily apparent where exactly the buses go. I wonder, however, whether I would feel this way if I was in an American city. Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't. Hard to say. Here's my route for today:
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I got a little bit more sleep today, which was worth it, although it did give me a late start. I was sure I had the transportation system all figured out, now that I had a handy dandy Beijing map. Of course, what ended up happening is that I got out at the stop for the Summer Palace and wandered around for like a half hour. The real problem with getting around in this city is the signage. There are practically no signs midway through the street, meaning you sometimes have to walk to the end of a very long block to get your bearings, and even then, the signs are hard to see. I don't understand why they don't hang tourist friendly signs around routes to popular sites; there's no reason not to. I finally caved and called for a cab, overcoming my fear of the cabs left from my first night here. This actually went alright this time, and to my shame, I found that the park was just a long, but doable walk away, if only I knew where exactly to go.

The Summer Palace absolutely deserves to be on the UNESCO World Heritage list. It's simply magnificent. Lovely gardens of pine and willow, beautiful pagodas and old stone bridges, all at a breathtaking scale. A giant hill with a temple with an incredible view, and also, a marble boat. The story behind the marble boat is that the Empress Dowager Cixi, one of the worst, most negligent rulers ever to hold absolute power over a people, embezzled the money intended to build the Chinese Navy and used it instead to renovate the palace. Then, as some sort of sick joke, she built a marble boat. Once again proving that being truly wealthy means you can buy stuff that just makes no damn sense.

I've noticed that describing sites here, I've tended not to mention my mental engagement and have relied on cliche. Part of it is because I'm just not as well versed in the Chinese artistic tradition, but part of it, I realized today, is because this art is intended to empty the mind, not fill it. The Chinese design their gardens to seem like they happened naturally, natural looking parks, villages that you come upon in the woods. If it works, it does seem almost natural, and you have nothing to say but that it's totally gorgeous.

I enjoyed the Summer Palace also because it was less crowded than the other sites, maybe because of its size, but hopefully also because the Chinese New Year is winding down, and so the tour groups are finally abating. I mostly just walked around Kunming lake, in a big, exhausting circle. Unfortunately, my camera battery died near the beginning, so while I have some pictures, I don't have a lot of pictures and none of the Confucius Temple or getting Peking Duck, which is a shame. Kunming Lake was frozen over, and despite numerous signs warning people to stay off the ice, the Chinese, as I could have predicted, happily tramped over the frozen lake, some people walking all the way across. I bet it's just breathtaking in the spring; I regret not coming in the spring, but I had no choice, and in any case, I don't miss too much with China's pine centered gardens.

I had my first picture request today, in the Summer Palace. I was climbing down the stairs from the Buddhist shrine with a family, and an older relative, on a whim, had me pose with the kid (There are many little Chinese children btw, and they're freakin' adorable. The Chinese are often very doting with their children). I didn't mind, and I wished them well. Have to say, it's an ego boost, even if it's not much of a compliment to be asked for a picture just because you're a foreigner. Still, with an ego as big as mine, you take what you can get.

I spent most of the day at the Summer Palace, and then headed back. I was planning to go to the Marco Polo Bridge today, but then decided, all the way across the city and with only two hours to get there, it was just a bridge too far (har har har). I'll likely see it my last day here. I decided instead to visit the Confucius Temple and Imperial College, near the Lama Temple. The street outside of the temple is a protected and "restored" area, probably in response to criticism for the Chinese government's disregard for architectural history. It's actually really lovely, however. The temple was very nice also, very quiet, and filled with massive stone tablets dedicated to Confucius by the emperor. The Imperial College is right next door, and has probably the nicest imperial throne I've seen here. Looking at the Imperial Confucian education system is like looking at a strange alternate universe, and as a university student, I found it really fascinating. It might seem odd, but it's really no more odd than the Aristotelean acadamies of the middle ages, or heck, even our system, what with the robes and tenure and sabbatical. I've always found the Imperial examination system fascinating, being a product of a meritocratic testing system as well. What's more, the Imperial College museum is recent, and the captions don't possess the casual negligence of, say, the Forbidden City. They instead serve to further a couple of very specific government discourses (a united China, Communism as progress). So that was pretty interesting to see as well.

I made another bold swipe at the Chinese train system today, this time heading to Beijing West Station, where I was guaranteed that there was a foreigner office. The train station and the brutal walk there made me damn miserable, again, but I talked briefly with a very nice old man, a Russian Professor, who was learning English. I also achieved success this time, and got an early morning ticket to Chengde.

From there, I headed to Wangfujing, determined to get Peking Duck at the place recommended by the guide book. The subway opened up into a massive shopping center in Wangfujing, which was pretty jarring, since I wasn't expecting it, and since it contrasted sharply with, say, the Confucius temple. It also was the cause of some miserable wandering and limping again, though I was dead set on getting duck today. I'm glad I saw it though, the over-the-top Chinese concept of capitalism is both familiar and just damn insane. I particularly enjoyed the "BMW Lifestyle" store.

This restaurant was a five story monster, and I had to wait twenty minutes to get seated by the no nonsense staff, who had little patience for me. The Chinese mobbed this place: think Grimaldi's, or more accurately, Joe's in Miami Beach. Once again, I felt guilty and silly for ordering half a duck (the smallest portion) for just myself. Then I did the math and found that my massive extravagance came to...about 18 dollars. So you know, not a huge deal. Besides, half a duck is not actually that much, I found out. And this duck...hot damn. This was the stuff. The spectacle (they carve it off the bone at the table) was great, and the duck, juicy on the inside, crisp on the outside, was just too good. There's also something to be said for poking at a weird shaped piece of duck meat and figuring out that, yep, that's the head. I ate as much of the head even as I could, since I only had ritz crackers to eat today.

BTW, interesting Beijing food fact. For whatever reason, though Beijing does have coffee, they only have expresso. Whenever I've tried to order American coffee, or plain black coffee, they give me an Americano, which is probably the biggest insult to the US there is. I really just have to switch to tea.

So that was my day. I'm waking up eaaaarly tomorrow (4:30 AM) to try and squeeze Chengde into a day; also, to have my first encounter with the Chinese railway system. Hopefully, my leg will uncramp by then. When I get to Kunming, I think I'll just sit for a looong while. Till tomorrow!